Catch up on the previous chapters here
Adam stepped into the spare bedroom for a phone call, but Nell wasn’t going to get her hopes up. He had more to do than babysit them, the cast-offs from an out of state cold case, and man, was she in a bad mood today. Something was possibly finally happening, but it wasn’t enough. They were closer than ever to figuring out who murdered Margaret and Trevor and Kelsey and Ashleigh and Heidi, names that Nell had almost stopped running in a loop in her subconscious, but close wasn’t actually there.
Her friends were going to push Since You Went Away to the top of the bestseller list, and O’Connell wasn’t even going to be hit with the Son of Sam laws. Nobody cared if you made money off a crime as long as it couldn’t be proved that you were the one who’d committed them.
Kent brought her a glass of room-temperature water and stood there. “Drain it.” That was why it wasn’t cold: hydration without the ice pick. “I mean it,” he added when she sighed. “Chug.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She did not chug it, thanks, but she did manage to drink it all. Nell put the pillow back and adjusted her position on the couch when he returned to the kitchen to refill her drink, putting ice in it this time. “You still glass half fulling this thing?”
Kent looked down at the water, but she didn’t think he’d misinterpreted. “Yeah,” he finally said, but only after he sat down again. “Anything to turn a spotlight on this guy. When we know what he looks like, we can keep an eye out for him. Maybe they can’t get him for what he’s already done, but they can stop him from doing more.”
She nodded at the coffee table. “His ‘more’ is writing a novel.”
“And that’s weird, right?” He grinned a little ruefully. “I mean, I never really liked English class, but even people who did think novels are a lot of work, right? And publishing timelines are slow, so … what, he whipped that up before we even moved here and piled up a stack of rejections?”
“Yeah, for being the kid who didn’t like English, you know a lot more about that whole process than I do. Ask me how long it’d take him to learn to do latte art and I’ve got an answer, but …”
He shrugged. “You were always better at writing things than I was.”
Nell wrinkled her nose because she wasn’t so sure about that, but she’d certainly been required to write more than he had. “So you think he started this right after we left?
“Maybe. Or maybe he’d already written a lot of it. That last part, though … the final little thing that isn’t labeled a chapter but isn’t really an epilogue?”
She nodded.
“That’s where I think he’s the clearest about what he wants.”
Nell took a deep breath and straightjacketed her arms around herself, but she wasn’t a constrictor snake. She couldn’t keep tightening it even as she exhaled. “Me.”
“You,” he agreed.
Except, by that point, she’d been truly gone. She’d still had her purse over her shoulder, at least, but the police took over the entire apartment, so she wouldn’t have been able to take her laptop even if she’d wanted it. It was just Nell, in her date-night outfit, and Kent, who at least hadn’t brought his duffel into the apartment yet, first taking his car to the police station, and then talking to the FBI agents, and then Kent calling his dad.
At the time Nell had thought his dad worked at a bank or as an accountant or something. The suits and the haircut could’ve gone either way.
Kent kissed her temple softly. “Earth to Nell.”
“You’ve reached Nell’s answering service. Leave a message and she’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her. “I know this can’t possibly be true, but I feel like I’ve been thinking about back then more than I ever have before.”
She licked her lips, but the question was too big. Kent was the one who’d left the most. He was the one who got family photos, and wedding photos, and photos of nieces and nephews he’d never met. Nell leaned back a little, just enough to catch his eye. “Do you regret it?”
Kent nodded once, not as his answer but an acknowledgment that yes, it was indeed the one big question they’d never discussed. “I think mostly I feel guilty. Nell …” He took her hand, frowning a little. “You know I was stuck. That it wasn’t working out, but I was too far in … the fact that I only got to do this, to figure things out without the whole family expectations hanging over me, because so many of your friends were murdered … I regret that part. That the price was so steep. But this?” He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it gently. “I’m more me today than I’ve ever been. And you still seem to want me around, so …”
“I love you.”
He grinned like it was the first he’d ever heard of it. “I love you, too.” He leaned in to kiss her slowly, the kind of kiss that would have led to far more if there weren’t still an FBI agent in the apartment. Maybe it was the thought of Adam that made him pull back and frown a little down at her. “What about you? Do you miss the person you thought you would’ve been?”
It was his wording more than the question that made her frown and really try to think it through. She chewed on her lip and shook her head slowly. “I think about the only clear thing I had in mind for my future was being married to you. The job … I couldn’t really imagine it.”
“Kids?” he prompted softly.
This head shake was firmer. “I couldn’t really see that happening. It was sort of a vague ‘Yeah, someday’ thing.” And someday was still in the future because neither of them really felt comfortable embarking on that whole experience when there was still someone out there who might try to find Nell again.
A concern that felt a lot more real since Wednesday.
“Okay,” Adam announced as he came out of the back bedroom, as though he needed them to know he was returning, but his quick stride wouldn’t have allowed them much time to stop making out or readjust clothing or anything. Nell straightened up, anyway, because he was both focused and distracted. “We’ve got an author photo of O’Connell. That’s all they’re calling it—an author photo, so they’re not committing to it being the actual guy, but since he’s going to be going on tours and giving readings and all …”
Nell held out both hands for his phone because they were shaking too hard for her to take it with just the one and not drop it, and she pulled it in close and hunched over it like it was a scrying glass and she was a bog witch. Kent leaned in, too, but she barely noticed as she looked at the headshot of a man who wasn’t quite smiling as he looked directly at the camera. He had brown hair, just long enough to hint at curls, and the sort of beard outlining his jaw that meant he still spent time every morning shaving part of his face. His eyes—when she zoomed in to be sure—were also brown, very dark, and it was hard to tell exactly what emotion they betrayed. There were lines at the corners of those eyes, but for some reason she thought they were more from squinting than from smiling. The background was a greenish blur, like he was outside among the trees, and he didn’t have a tie, but he wore a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the top.
Zooming back out again, she tried to take all of it in as though she’d just passed this man on the street. As a quick assessment, he was cold and reserved. He wasn’t the Mona Lisa but a guy who realized a camera was on him and tried to do something with his face that wasn’t simply a blank stare. His mouth hadn’t been caught halfway into or out of a smile, because this man didn’t know how to smile. Even if he formed his mouth into the expected shape, his eyes were simply dead. They weren’t warm brown. They were mud.
“And?” Adam prompted, because apparently even FBI agents trained in interrogation tactics had a limit to how much silence they could take.
Kent shook his head, clearly passing the answer on to Nell.
But she had to shake hers, too. “I have absolutely no idea who this is. I’d say I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
from Since You Went Away by C. J. O’Connell (Penguin, 2024)
Duke only calls me after hours if it’s an emergency, but this isn’t the normal kind of emergency. I answer right away, because that’s job security and I’m the most dependable one on the team, and even though my screen tells me it’s one of Duke’s numbers, it doesn’t sound like Duke. “Cal.”
And that’s it. Usually he doesn’t even say hello and it’s just straight to the problem, but that’s it: half my name. “Yeah? I’m here.”
“Cal, there’s been …” A break, and a honk, like he’s blowing his nose. Like he’s crying? “There’s been a murder. In 12.”
My hand goes numb and I almost drop the phone.
“It’s—Cal, I don’t know, okay? One of them was out with a friend, and came home, and the two of them found the other one, and it’s … it’s bad, but I don’t know which one. Okay?”
I can’t feel my lips and tongue, either, but I hear a sort of padded “Rosie had dinner with a friend tonight” come out. There aren’t any sharp corners to the words. They’ve all been filed off. Novocained.
“Okay. Okay, but I also need you to remember that the police have the witnesses, so if you can’t get a hold of her right away …”
My mind keeps replaying the sound bite. There’s been a murder. In 12. There’s been a murder. In 12.
No. Just no. Either way it’s another one, another K senior, and they all know each other, and now Rosie—please God let it be Rosie—is alone and, what, giving testimony? Trying to recall every man who ever looked at Hailey wrong? Listing off her favorite bars so they can check the security footage and trying to remember which dating apps she has on her phone and hoping she’s got some sort of alibi to back up when she left earlier tonight?
Dinner with a friend. She had dinner with a friend, and they went out, so there’s the friend and everyone at the restaurant. I don’t know what restaurant. They dined in somewhere, so it wasn’t something like Burger King, but they hadn’t decided where to go last time I talked to her.
Let it be someplace sit-down, where they laughed with the waitress and left a nice tip, and other diners looked over and admired two friends having a good time, and maybe one of them ordered a drink so they had to show an ID, and maybe they paid with credit cards …
And why is that where my mind’s gone? Rosie didn’t do this. She’d never dream of doing it. But she’s the roommate, so if there isn’t a convenient ex-boyfriend around …
“Are they still there?” I ask without meaning too. “The police and Rosie. Are they still there?”
“I don’t know. I’m not there yet—I just got the call myself, but … Cal …”
He’s not convinced. He called me to tell me someone’s dead and he doesn’t know for sure who it is, but he’s ready for it to be Rosie. He probably only knows Hailey’s name because of the checks every month, but he knows who Rosie is. Why Rosie matters.
He’s called me and he’s not even there yet to see how bad it is.
This is the end of Part One.
Chapter Eleven – coming January 11
Rebecca Frost 
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