…HUSBAND.”
The words blurred as my hands started to shake. I flipped the heavy cardstock over again. It wasn’t entirely white; it featured a faint, subtle rose background—a specific custom stationery design Sarah and I had obsessed over in high school. Nobody else would know that detail. Nobody.
I listened to the rhythmic sound of a knife chopping vegetables coming from the kitchen downstairs. Greg, my husband of fifteen years, was making dinner. Greg, the man I met at a grief support group two years after Sarah vanished. Greg, who had held me while I cried, who had gently convinced me to fire the last private investigator because it was “destroying my mental health,” and who had insisted we move to this isolated house with its sweeping blue sea surround, far away from my family and old friends.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I slipped the postcard into my pocket and crept out of the bedroom. I didn’t go downstairs. I went straight to Greg’s home office.
He always kept the bottom drawer of his mahogany desk locked. He claimed it was for sensitive financial documents. My hands were slick with cold sweat as I grabbed the heavy bronze letter opener from his desk and wedged it into the drawer’s crack, ignoring the splintering wood. I threw my weight into it. With a sharp snap, the lock gave way.
I pulled the drawer open. There were no financial documents.
Instead, sitting on top of a faded map of Italy, was a thick stack of identical blank postcards, these ones featuring the subtle diamond background pattern we used to buy from a boutique downtown. Beside them lay Sarah’s silver locket—the one she swore she would never take off.
But it was the photograph underneath the locket that stopped the breath in my lungs. It was a picture of Greg, looking much younger, standing in a dimly lit room. Tied to a chair in the background, looking absolutely terrified, was Sarah. The digital date stamped on the bottom corner was from three weeks after the police said her trail went cold.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
“Dinner is almost ready, honey,” Greg’s voice was soft, reasonable, and terrifyingly calm.
I spun around. He was leaning against the doorframe, the chef’s knife still resting casually in his hand, blocking the only way out.
“I see you checked the mail,” he smiled.
