Chapter 18: The Cooler

Declan's POV

I stood in the middle of my own restaurant and watched my wife walk out of it.

Eighty people stared at me, and I stared back.

"Declan," my mother said. "Sit down."

"You took her ring."

"I asked her to take it off."

"In front of everyone." My voice shook. "You humiliated the one person in this room who told the truth tonight."

"I don't know what the truth is," my mother said, and her eyes were wet. "Neither do you."

That was fair, and it made me angrier.

Across the room, Tierney was winding the cable around her laptop with her head bowed, playing the hurt friend.

She looked up and met my eyes.

She did not smile.

She did not need to.

"Detective," I said.

"We're working on it," the Chicago detective said behind me. "Get your wife."

I did not remember leaving.

Hazel drove, because my hands wouldn't work.

"She'll go to the shop," Hazel said, running a yellow light. "Where else does she have?"

"I'm the only place she had."

"Then you're an idiot, and you'd better be a quick one."

We got there at midnight.

The lights in Halsey Blooms were off, but the back door was open, and a line of cold air came out of it.

Miriam sat on the floor of the walk-in cooler, among buckets of white roses, with her knees up and her back against the shelves.

It was the same cooler where I had found her crying a month ago.

I stopped in the doorway, because I did not know if I was allowed in.

"Hazel," Miriam said without turning. "You can go."

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