ABSCISSION
Nolan
THE COTTAGE IS DARK WHEN I enter, the corners in deep shadow. Morpheus caws from the open window when I step inside. Only the barest hint of fading light from the late summer sunset reaches Harper where she sits in the living room.
I know something is wrong before I even see her face. She stares straight ahead toward the chessboard, her expression eerily blank, her posture rigid.
My heart buckles under a sense of dread when I say, “What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t answer.
I let my bag slide from my shoulder, setting it on the floor.
“Did something happen?”
I take a step toward her. There’s a flash of motion, and I react just fast enough to catch a metal object before it hits me in the face. I briefly glance at it before looking to Harper, who’s returned to her statuesque position. The only movement she makes is the tightening of her fist where it rests on her
knee.
“What is this?” I ask.
It takes her a beat to unlock her jaw and say, “What does it look like?”
Her words are cold, calculated, a scalpel slicing through my skin.
Emotionless. Merciless. Indifferent to the distress that’s churning beneath my bones. Just like how I’d use my knife to carve out my trophies. Now it feels
like it’s twisting through me.
Memento mori.
Harper still doesn’t move, not even to glance in my direction. She just waits. I tear my attention away from her to look more closely at the shining
object in my hand. It’s a long silver plate, perforated by holes, some of them plugged by screws. There are scratches on its surface as though something metallic attempted to tear through it but failed. And it’s still affixed to a shard of shattered bone.
“It’s a titanium surgical implant,” I finally answer.
“Bingo,” Harper says, slowly turning enough to lay her gaze on me. I was wrong when I thought there was no emotion in her expression. It’s all right there in her eyes. Fury. Rage. She’s ready to kill. “And for an extra point, how about you tell me why you put it in Arthur’s garden?”
I blink at her, my skin ice cold despite the sweat that rises to my palms.
“What?”
“You . . . ” She rises. “Tell me . . . ” Turns to face me. There’s a flash of something metallic at her side that she keeps close to her thigh. “How and why you put it in Arthur’s fucking garden.”
There’s a quiet click of a manual safety on the handgun in her grip, a stamp of finality to her words. The raven croaks from the window.
I put my hands up, though she keeps the weapon tight against her thigh.
“Harper . . . I have no idea how it got there.”
“Try again.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
“And you’re the only person who knew. The only one I told.” Harper’s grip flexes on the weapon. Tears shine in her eyes. “Is this your way of getting back at me?”
I take a step closer. She takes one back. It feels like my body is being hollowed out. Like she’s cutting herself out of me, one slice at a time.
“Getting back at you for what?”
“Leaving you and your brother behind to die so I could fuck off into a new life would be my guess,” she says. Every muscle in her body is winding tighter. Her shoulders shake with rage. “Makes sense as a pretty strong motivator, seeing as how you’ve already killed everyone else who left you on
that road.”
“Harper, I would never hurt you.”
“You came here to kill me.”
“I did,” I admit. It’s like a slap to hear it out loud, even though we both
already know it. I’m not sure if it makes the breath of silence between us better or worse. I hold my hands out toward her, a plea for a pause. “I did.
You’re right. But that’s not why I’m here now. I know you’re confused—”
“I’m not confused,” she snarls, her voice breaking. She takes another step back, even though I haven’t moved. “I’m very fucking clear—”
“I don’t know how the bone got there, Harper. I really don’t. But it means you’re not safe here.”
She lets out a mirthless breath of a laugh. “I couldn’t agree more. That’s why you’re over there and I’m over here and there’s a fucking gun between us.”
“Please . . . ” I take a step. Her lip trembles. But her eyes shine with a pure and feral fury and it’s not just directed at me. I can see it in the way she clears her tears away with a harsh swipe of her hand. She’s angry at herself. Every time grief flashes across her face, she replaces it with rage. And that’s what truly scares me. “Harper . . . let’s just sit down and figure this out.”
I venture another small step, and this time, her leg hits the armchair as she backs away. She knows she’s blocked in.
Harper raises the gun with a shaking hand and points it at my heart.
“The anniversary was today.” Tears stream down her cheeks now, her face a study in torment. She fights to maintain control of herself, but she’s losing.
“You knew today was the day Adam died.”
“So did Arthur, and Lukas.”
“But neither of them knew where the bone was. I never even told Arthur what Bryce’s name was, let alone that I still had any of his remains. Only you knew that. And you put it in the garden where you knew the mayor and sheriff would be inspecting.”
I force myself to take one agonizing step backward, hoping the space will somehow help. But deep down, I know it won’t.
Desperation chokes up my throat. My eyes sting. I can feel every thread of us unraveling, and I’m fucking powerless to stop it. “I swear to you, it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You know that I saw what you put in your scrapbook when I first took it, Nolan. The photographs. Those pieces of skin. You tortured everyone who was connected to that accident. And what better way to torture me than to fill
my heart and then crush it.” Harper falters, as though hearing those words makes them unbearably real. “You knew it would hurt me more than any blade. It’s the one thing worse than dying.”
“I know that. I promise you, I would never.” I keep one hand raised as I slide the other into my jacket pocket, every movement careful and slow.
Maybe I could wait until one of the moments where she falters and try to rush her. Knock the gun from her hand. Pin her down until she’s forced to see that I’m telling the truth. But I already know she’ll never believe me. So this is the last thing I can do. And it’s not how I ever expected it to go.
I pull a box from my pocket—the one I’ve stared into countless times over the last two days. I saw joy in her face when I imagined this moment. A whole life mapped out before us. And now I’m grasping at the last filaments of something evaporating before my eyes.
“I love you, Harper. I know we didn’t start off right, like normal people do. Life hasn’t been fair to you. I certainly wasn’t.” I hold the box between us with one hand, slowly moving the other closer so I can open it. Harper’s lips press together as a fresh wave of tears glaze her eyes. “I am being honest with you. I came here to kill you, and I wish I could take that back. But then I got to know you. I saw how brave you are. How loyal. How smart and funny and resilient. How complex and beautiful—your light and your dark and all the shades in between. And I would never do anything to purposely hurt you.”
A battle flickers across her face—the life she still wants, and the one she’s ready to walk away from. It’s a crack in her armor, a first shimmer of hope.
I open the box. Harper’s lips part on a shuddering inhalation. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Harper.”
Three things happen all at once.
I drop to one knee.
The raven says a single word. “Autumn.”
And the light in Harper’s eyes flares to white-hot rage before it dies.
“Autumn,” the bird croaks again from the windowsill. But just like a moment ago, it sounds different. It’s not Harper’s voice. It’s a much lower register. A man’s voice.
Harper’s grip firms on the gun. Her jaw is set. Determination glares down
the muzzle at me. “Get up,” she hisses.
“That wasn’t me. I’m not the only one who knows your name.”
“Get. Up.”
“Please don’t do this. I never trained him to say that, I swear. I’m begging you, Harper,” I say, lowering until I’m on both knees. “Please.”
“Get the fuck up.” Harper’s voice cracks, her eyes shining with violence.
She keeps the gun trained on me as she gives me a wide berth and storms toward the door. I turn enough to watch through tears as she yanks the door open, then picks up my backpack and tosses it onto the flagstone path. “Get the fuck out of my house. Don’t make me kill you.”
“Do it,” I say, lowering my hands to my sides. I shake my head. “I can’t do this life without you.”
“Right. Because I’m yours. Yours to manipulate. Yours to hurt. Yours to destroy.” She steps back from the open door, giving me plenty of space, the gun never wavering in her grip. There’s no shake in her shoulders anymore.
She’s decided. Determined. Defiant. “If you cared about me at all, you will get the fuck up and leave, not make me mop your blood off my floor and put your body through a fucking woodchipper.”
Those words unleash the final flicker of pain in her face. And then it’s gone.
I hang my head. How could we fucking end up here? How could everything crumble to this when it feels like we’ve been through so much?
I set the open box on the side table next to me, taking one last glance at the diamond ring that was meant to represent our future. And then I rise. My steps are slow and measured as I walk to the door. I pause at the threshold, not bothering to wipe the tears that fall from my lashes. “I just want to love
you.”
“You can’t.”
The moment that stretches between us will be burned into my memory forever. The endless well of hurt behind her fierce glare. The red that rims her eyes. The threat of destruction painted into her furrowed brow. She’s so fucking beautiful. And so fucking broken.
You can’t stop me, I think. But I don’t say those words out loud.
I take a step onto the flagstone. My body is barely clear of the house
before the door slams shut and locks behind me.
I wait for just a moment, as though this is a nightmare I can wake from.
But when I hear Harper’s desolate sob, I know this is real. Her heart is being torn right out of her chest. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I pick up my backpack and head to my car in a daze.
When I step out of my vehicle at the Capeside Inn, I don’t remember anything about the drive to get there. I never considered the rest of my clothes, or my toothbrush, or anything else that I left behind in the cottage.
All I have is what’s on my back, and the thought of a tense coordination with Harper in the coming hours or days to retrieve my belongings makes me feel physically sick. I can’t bear the image of her cold detachment, or the more likely scenario of her packing my things up to leave them on the front step.
The realization that I might never see her smile at me again is a blade digging into my chest, and I stop for a moment with my hand over my heart before I force myself to cross the hotel parking lot.
When I enter the lobby, Irene is bent over a crossword puzzle at the reception desk, a magnifying glass clutched in her crooked fingers.
Irene is rarely awake at the reception desk, especially the times when I’ve come and gone in the evening. But of course she would be here now, at the lowest point in my fucking life, so she can broadcast the news to the rest of the town that Harper kicked me out of the cottage. By tomorrow morning, it’ll be a headline in the gossip section of the Capeside Chronicle. “Harper Starling Rejects Tourist’s Marriage Proposal at Gunpoint.” Jesus fucking Christ.
I stifle a groan and force a smile her way as I take a few unsteady steps forward.
“Oh hello, Mr. Rhodes. I didn’t expect to be seeing you this evening,”
Irene says, pushing her glasses up her nose to regard me.
“Yeah . . . ” My brain seems to have been emptied and filled with cotton fuzz, because that’s all I can come up with. I slow to a stop in the center of the lobby.
Irene’s white brows knit together, deep trenches appearing between them as she surveys my reddened eyes and the despair I struggle to hide.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“Hmm.” She raps her fingernails on the wooden counter. “Everything not okay?”
“Umm . . . ” “Murder Daddy Thrown Out of House by Gardening Star,” I think as the image of another headline flashes through my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut for a beat to force it away. “I just need to sleep.”
The look on Irene’s face is pitying. Which is the worst. “All right, my boy.
Breakfast is at—”
“Six to ten,” I interject with a weak salute. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I start making my way to the corridor that leads to my room, but Irene calls out my name and I halt once more. I take a deep breath to pull myself together, then turn and face her. “Here, take this, just in case you need it,” she says, and places a travel-sized toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter. “Oh, and this too.” She reaches down to the shelves behind the counter and deposits a handful of mini bourbon bottles next to her crossword puzzle. “No Piggly Wiggly in the booze this time. I promise.”
I hesitate before heading to the counter to retrieve her offerings, sliding my bag from my shoulder to place everything inside. When I’m done, she grabs my arm, a kind and gentle smile lifting the corners of her lips. “She’ll come around.”
I don’t even try to hide the pain from my expression this time. It burns so hot in my chest that I swear my heart is turning to ash. “I don’t think so,
ma’am.”
“You giving up so fast?”
I meet her eyes. And somehow, I’m shaking my head no. I’m not giving up.
“Good. Then have some drinks. Get some sleep. Let her calm down. And then fix it tomorrow.” She squeezes my wrist with surprising strength. “Love is rarely a walk in the sun, my boy. It’s a battleground. So fight.”
With a final press of her palm, she lets me go. I know she doesn’t understand just how complex the situation with Harper is, or how deep the damage goes. But her words still give me the faintest glimmer of hope.
Determination is a quality I’ve honed. Fighting is a skill I’m good at. Trauma and grief, anger and loss—those are enemies I’ve faced before. So maybe
she’s right. I need to lick the wounds of a battle lost, and come back tomorrow to win the war.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say as I hike the strap of my backpack up my shoulder. “I appreciate it.”
She nods and gives me a reassuring smile, and then I turn and head to my room.
It’s not easy to keep that small flame of hope alive when I get to my hotel suite. It feels like being trapped in a memory I don’t want to relive. Those days when I first arrived in Cape Carnage belong to another man, one I don’t want to remember. But maybe I have to face him one more time before I can truly move forward.
I crack open one of the bottles of bourbon and take a long sip. The burn slides down my throat as I sit on the edge of the bed to stare into the nothingness between me and the floor.
Harper isn’t safe here, she never has been. And someone is clearly fucking with her. The first name that comes to mind is Arthur—he has the access, the intelligence. He knows her true identity. He could be trying to drive me out of her life to ensure she stays subservient to him. And the cottage is his property. Even though he legitimately seems reluctant to go inside, he still could have faced his fears long enough to install hidden cameras, if he had been motivated enough. And if he had, maybe he’d seen her put the bone in her freezer and had figured it was the perfect opportunity to fuck with her.
The trouble is, he’d risk his whole plan going sideways.
I take another swig of bourbon, finishing the first mini bottle as I mull over the likelihood of Arthur’s involvement.
Lukas crosses my mind next. He’s a less likely culprit. He’s been too busy with his work to pull off something so ingenious, unless that’s been part of his cover. Maybe he wants to take Harper out of the picture completely, particularly if he has concerns about the inheritance of Arthur’s estate once he passes. Perhaps his hope was that she’d be discovered. But Harper seems to be confident that he really doesn’t know anything about Arthur’s pastimes.
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. Truthfully, neither Arthur nor Lukas feels quite right. There’s another piece of the puzzle that I’m missing.
Maybe a Sleuthseeker who hasn’t yet revealed themselves, or someone with a
long-standing grudge. A shadow lurking beyond my view. A ghost in the periphery. But no matter how many times I look at this problem head-on, I can’t pull a figure from the smoke. It’s the why that I can’t make sense of. It feels as though someone is trying to destabilize Harper. To isolate her. But to what end? Revenge, perhaps? Other motives that I can’t see?
I drink all six mini bottles of bourbon and I’m no closer to figuring that out. Which tracks, I guess, given booze and thinking don’t always go together. And the problem is, the more I drink, the more I just see Harper’s face. The pain and sorrow. The rage. The fury at herself is what scares me the most, because she’s the one person she will never forgive.
That’s my last thought as I finally fall asleep near midnight.
When I wake, the room is dark. I reach for Harper out of instinct. I take a disoriented breath before I realize I’m not in the cottage. And then everything floods back to me, carving fresh wounds across my battered heart.
I groan and look at my watch. Just after three in the morning.
I swing my legs off the side of my bed, cataloging the physical aches that plague my body. My knee. My elbow. I tilt my head from one side to the other and a series of pops radiate down my neck. Then I stand and stretch before padding across the room, already knowing sleep is now a lost cause.
I stand in front of the French doors that face the sea, its surface shimmering in the moonlight. The sky is still clear, the stars shining in the black blanket of night between tendrils of cloud, but the wind is picking up in advance of the storm that’s due to hit Cape Carnage by sunrise. It’s churning the water, the waves crashing furiously against the cliff a short distance away.
My thoughts are tied up with Harper, like they always are. But never more than when I look at the water. Every time, I hear her calling for me. I feel that burst of panic. I can’t reach her beneath the waves. And now, I can’t see what
it is that’s pulling her away.
If I could just look into the abyss.
I rub my eyes and sigh into my palms.
I need to go back to her cottage. I need to tear it apart. Something’s not right there. It doesn’t add up. There must be someone watching—someone listening. Someone who knows the most intimate and darkest details of her life, and yet, for some reason, isn’t turning her in. She is someone’s game,
and the answer must be in her house.
I blow out a long breath, the fire of determination growing hotter in my veins. She won’t like what I’m about to do. I’ll have to break in. Tie her up.
Force her to watch as I find whatever it is that’s hiding in her house. And then we’ll figure this out. We’ll fix it. Together.
With a final, steadying breath, I let my hands fall to my sides and open my eyes. There’s a subtle movement. I lean a little closer to the glass, my pulse stuttering. At first, I think it’s something ahead, maybe something I can’t quite make out in the distant dark. A movement on the growing wind. But it’s not. It’s a ghost in the reflection of the glass.
I wheel around. Something strikes me in the temple.
And then I see nothing at all.
