Page 22 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth

Twenty-One

Alex

E mily sheds her layers. Off comes the scarf, hat, gloves, heavy coat, and not one but two sweaters. She sits on the bench along the wall to unlace her shoes and looks up at me.

“Thank you.” Her voice is soft.

I don’t respond. I let her in, not out of sympathy, but out of surprise and curiosity.

It can’t be a coincidence that Tristan’s wife’s roommate was stabbed to death.

I want to know the details. And Emily isn’t lying about her mental state.

I can see she’s teetering on the very edge of a full-blown panic attack, which won’t do either of us any good.

So I make myself smile. “Well, I can’t resist homemade lasagna.”

She manages a giggle. It sounds forced, but I’ll take what I can get.

“Don’t forget the wine.”

I’m about to say I don’t think it’s a good idea to drink alcohol in her condition, but I stop myself. One, I’m not this woman’s mother, and two, the wine might loosen her tongue and lower her inhibitions. And what I need from Emily is information, as much information as I can glean.

“Why don’t we have a glass before we eat?” I suggest instead. “I’ll uncork it while you warm up by the fire.”

I hold out my hand. She grabs the bottle by its neck and passes it to me, then pads in her socks to the couch near the fire.

As I head into the kitchen to look for the corkscrew, I glance back to see Emily beginning to wrap herself in the blanket I used for my nap. Then she sniffs it and frowns.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Oh, um, yeah,” she answers, but she neatly folds the blanket and places it on the far end of the couch.

“You’re welcome to use that.”

“No, that’s okay. I have an aversion to the scent of sandalwood. It’s a long story.”

I shrug then continue into the kitchen. I uncork the wine and grab two glasses from the shelf. “There are more blankets in the chest by the window. Help yourself,” I call over my shoulder as I pour two generous servings of the red wine.

When I join her in the living room, She’s wrapped up in a quilt I bought at a farmer’s market down in the valley. I pass her a glass.

“Thanks.” She takes it with a small smile.

“To homemade lasagna?” I propose with false cheer.

We clink our glasses together and I sit in the rocking chair across from her. For a while, we sip in silence. The storm howls. She watches the flames flicker and dance in the fireplace. I watch her face.

I want to make sure she’s calmed down before I bring up the stabbing. She has, so I take a drink and say, “I’m sorry about your roommate.”

She snaps her eyes toward me in surprise, almost as if she forgot she told me.

“Oh,” Emily begins, her voice shaking. “Thanks. It happened a long time ago.”

“How long?” I ask.

“I was in college. It was seven years ago this month.”

“And you found her.”

She bites her lip. “Yeah.”

This is like pulling teeth. But I persist, keeping my tone friendly and concerned. “It was storming?”

She lets out a ragged sigh. “Right. Our apartment leaked—in Cassie’s bedroom.

So when it rained hard, she just slept in my room.

Our landlord kept promising to fix it, and there were only a few months left in the semester.

So we just dealt with it. The night she died, I had been at a poetry reading a few towns over from ours.

The storm came out of nowhere. It was a downpour.

Visibility was so bad, and it took me a long time to get home. It was intense.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say to encourage her to keep talking. “I’ve lived through storms like that.”

We both glance at the window, probably thinking the same thing. We’re living through one right now. As if to prove the point, the wind picks up, knocking a chunk of snow from the roof. It lands on the porch with a thud. We both jump.

I tell myself to keep it together. This woman and her story must be getting to me. Despite my history, I rarely have a strong startle response.

“Anyway,” Emily continues, clearly invested in finishing this story now that she started it.

“It was almost five in the morning by the time I finally got home. I was drenched just from running from my car to the building. And I remember, standing on the floor mat inside the door dripping and I swore I heard it raining inside.”

“The leaky roof,” I guess.

“No, it was more than a leak. I could hear the whole storm, the wind, the lightning, all of it. It sounded too close. When I went into my bedroom, that’s what I saw first, that the window by my bed was broken.

It was storming in the bedroom. The rain was coming in through the shattered pane and it was nearly as windy in there as it had been outside. ”

“That’s how the killer got in? Through your bedroom window?”

“Yes. I was so focused on the rain coming in the window that I almost tripped on Cassie before I saw her on the floor by my bed. She must have been asleep because the blanket was hanging off the edge of the bed, soaked in her blood. There was so much blood.” Her voice quakes.

“She was covered in blood, and her throat was hanging open. She looked like she was staring up at the ceiling, but I knew she was dead.”

She closes her eyes as if that might block out the images in her head and drains her glass. I ease it from her hand to refill it, then top off my own because I’m nearly as shaken as she is.

When I return to the living room, her eyes are open and she’s just staring off into middle distance. I don’t like to touch people or be touched unless it’s by Robert, but something about the abject misery on Emily’s face makes me reach out and squeeze her hand.

“I know what you’ve been through,” I tell her.

Emily laughs shortly. “You can’t.”

“You’d be surprised.” I hand her the glass and sit down next to her.

Emily wipes her tears and flicks her gaze toward me. “What, you found your roommate stabbed to death, too?”

“Not exactly. I’ll tell you the story, but first can I ask you a question?”

She nods wordlessly.

“Was Tristan with you at the poetry reading? Did he come home with you that night?”

She gives me a confused look. “What?”

“Tristan. Your husband,” I prompt.

“Oh, no, we didn’t start dating until after. I met Tristan almost a year after Cassie died.”

This isn’t the response I expected. I press my lips together and try not to frown. “How did you meet him?”

Emily smiles despite the pain on her face. “I ran into him, literally, in the lobby of my psychotherapist’s office.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Something like that.”

“What do you know about his family?” I probe.

It’s her turn to frown. She draws her pretty eyebrows together and shakes her head.

“Not much. His stepfather died before we got married. I only met him a few times, but he was a nice man, a good man. He always treated Tristan like his son. Jon adopted him. It was what Tristan wanted for his twelfth birthday.”

“And his mom?”

“Tara’s quiet. Kind of like me, I guess. She always seems a bit sad, subdued. But she’s been lovely to me. I don’t know much about what happened between her and Tristan’s dad. He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t talk about Windy Rock at all, really.”

I hesitate, take a breath, then steel myself. “How close is he with his brother?”

She blinks. “Tristan doesn’t have a brother.”

I feel my eyes widen. “Yes, he does. Tate. Tate Weakes.”

She’s shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so. Tristan’s never mentioned a brother. Neither has his mom. There’s no pictures of a brother. Maybe you have him mixed up with someone else.”

“No,” I insist, surprised by the force in my voice. “Your husband has a brother.”