I knew my husband. He was honest to a fault. One time he had ordered a camera, the cheapest one that the company offered, and when it arrived in the mail, Ben instantly knew he had gotten the wrong model. It was way nicer than the one he had paid for. Without hesitating, he called the company and offered to return it in exchange for the lesser camera. So Ben sent it back and waited. And waited some more. In the end, we got billed for two cameras but ended up with none when they claimed they had already sent the correct camera.
‘No good deed goes unpunished,’ I’d told Ben that day.
‘And no bad deed goes unseen,’ he’d replied. That experience taught me something important about Ben’s character – that he valued integrity over everything. My husband was not a scam artist. Detective Meltzer had it all wrong.
‘No one ever does imagine horrible things about someone they love, Harper. It’s how people like that get away with it. The mirage of good hides the face of evil. I see it all the time.’
For real villains, sure. Serial killers, yeah. The Ted Bundys and Charles Mansons that no one expected were psychopaths. But not a husband who stopped at the grocery store to pick up flowers, or a father who carried his kids on his shoulders. Ben was good at heart. ‘You don’t know Ben like I do. That’s not who he was.’
‘Did you know he held a private bank account under another name?’
I couldn’t have heard him correctly.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘We think your husband was hiding money in other accounts.’
I shook my head, sending the words loose in my brain. Hiding money? Other accounts? Did he mean the trust funds for the kids?
‘We set up accounts for the kids when they were born. That must be what you found.’
‘No, Harper. This isn’t the kids’ accounts.’
I felt my heart seize a little. Who would he have possibly been sending money to? Maybe I didn’t know Ben at all. My shock must have given me away.
‘I can see that’s news to you. I think you need to reconsider what kind of man your husband really was.’
‘What name was the other account under?’ It had to be the home-wrecking whore. I knew she existed. I’d seen her. That was the only possible explanation; he was funding her lifestyle while banging her.
‘Does the name Medea Kent mean anything to you?’
Medea? What kind of name was that? ‘No, that doesn’t sound familiar.’ From my purse the envelope with my to-do list poked out of the top. I pulled it out, had Detective Meltzer spell her crazy-ass name, and made a mental note to look her up later. ‘How much money is in this secret account?’
‘I can’t divulge the specifics yet, since it’s still under investigation. There’s a lot we still have to look into. Once we have a full list of people he stole from, we’ll compile a list of suspects and keep you informed. Until then, just sit tight.’ He rapped his knuckles on the butcher block. ‘We still have a lot of unanswered questions at this point, but we’ll get answers, I promise you.’
It was the resounding theme of this investigation – unanswered questions. Including the question of what Ben had hidden from me and why. We were never desperate for money, so why would he feel the need to steal from innocent clients? What had he gotten himself involved in? Who was this Medea person? And did it have anything to do with why he took his own life?
I shoved the one question I truly wanted answered down my throat until it stuck there. It would only paint me in a terrible light. If the investigation didn’t close, would I ever see a dime of the life insurance money? Would access to my bank accounts ever be restored? But the bigger concern was what would happen when they found out what I had done, because I could feel the past clawing its way to the surface. With this investigation getting more complicated – more unique, as Detective Meltzer put it – and drawing more focus on our family’s skeletons, it was only a matter of time before my own secret slipped out and the truth caught up with me.
Ben’s voice beyond the grave slipped into my brain, quoting his favorite movie of all time. You can’t handle the truth! Maybe Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men was right. I couldn’t handle the truth. It wouldn’t set me free. It would put me behind bars.
Chapter 6
Harper
Detective Meltzer was not yoked to sentimentality. His heart simply beat while mine thrummed with complex feelings. I understood the difference now. For him, death was a mystery to solve, not an experience to suffer through. After the detective left, confirming that he’d find me at Lane’s with any new developments, I felt that raw ache of loneliness all over again, standing at the kitchen sink, listening to the shuffle of my children’s feet above me.
Like teeth gnawing on my soul, I had lost parts of me piece by piece. At first, it was the joy in small things, like my first cup of coffee each morning. Then it grew into the big things, like not caring when Elise earned straight A’s, or when shy little Jackson made a friend at school. Before I knew it, I had stopped doing more than just existing, every memory and emotion leading back to a time I couldn’t reach. Back when my life was whole.
‘Moooom!’ I was convinced Elise’s voice could travel light-years. With her penchant for drama and unnaturally strong vocal
