Lethal Love novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: No Body

I held the phone with both hands.

Oakley's laugh was frozen over her shoulder.

His brother's fingers were laced through hers.

"What was his name?" I said.

"Matty."

"How old?"

"Twenty-four."

I handed the phone back.

Dom put it in his coat without looking at the screen again.

"He met her on that app," he said. "Same gold icon. She wrote to him for three weeks."

He looked out the window. "He showed Cosima her picture at Sunday dinner and said she was the one."

"Who's Cosima?"

"My sister. She cooked for his funeral. She hasn't laughed right since."

The car came off the bridge into Brooklyn.

"Tell me about him," I said.

He looked at me like I'd asked for something nobody had asked for in a long time.

"He did the books at Cosima's restaurant and couldn't add," he said.

He almost smiled. "He wore that Mets cap to our father's grave. He cried at commercials with dogs in them."

"What did he want to be?"

"Mine," Dom said. "He wanted to be in my business. I said no. I said it every year."

The car went quiet.

"Pull over on Shore Road," he told the driver. "By the bridge."

We got out by the promenade.

The Verrazzano was lit up over the Narrows, a long string of pearls in the black.

He stood at the railing with his coat open in the wind.

"The red dress," he said. "It's the one she wore that night."

He kept his eyes on the bridge. "If Oakley had been writing to me, she'd have known exactly which one I meant."

"And I said I didn't own one."

"You said you didn't own one."

I held the railing.

The metal was so cold it hurt.

"What happens to her now?" I said.

He didn't answer.

"Dom."

It was the first time I'd said his name.

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