What She Didn't Know (What She 1)

“Who?” She lifted Malcolm’s beer to her lips again.

“You’re such a fucking cu—” Malcolm began, but I kicked his shin. He bit back the rest of it.

She turned her gaze on him. “How have you been, Malcolm?” she asked. Her eyes roamed up and down his body as she licked her lips. Even I felt violated. He ground his teeth and said nothing.

“What do you want, Shelly?” I drummed my thumb on the table, my hand flat. It was a technique I often used with patients, so I could knock them off center. If they were concentrating on my hands, they sometimes couldn’t concentrate enough to lie effectively.

She rested her elbow on the table, set her chin on it, and blinked her blue eyes at me. “What makes you think I want anything?”

“Because you always want something,” Malcolm murmured.

“At one point, I wanted you,” she said, giving him the brilliance of her silky smile. “And yet you still have such animosity toward me. I just don’t understand it.”

“Said the spider,” Malcolm replied.

“Where is she?” I asked again. I tried to remain calm and keep the desperation out of my voice.

She gave a single bob of her head. “She’s safe.” A single nod. That’s all I got.

“Where?” I continued to drum my thumb on the table.

She rolled her eyes. “At my apartment. Where else?”

I knew Lynn’s friends often went to Shelly’s apartment. Ash stored her bag there when she didn’t want to carry it around. And they all stored their credit cards, provided by Shelly, of course, and their personal stuff. Jamie would leave her tool belt there. And Charlie would leave her combat boots, when she wasn’t wearing them. It was kind of their hub. But Shelly’s apartment changed locations like I changed my underwear. I never knew where it was. No one ever told me, under strict orders from Shelly.

“Is she all right?”

“Define all right.” She narrowed her eyes at me, her chin still resting in her upturned palm.

I was getting nowhere with her quantifying every question. “When is she coming home?”

“She’s sorting through some things in her head.” She shrugged.

“What kinds of things?”

“Not my story to tell,” she sang out. She lifted her hand to roll her pearls between her fingers. It was a habit of hers.

“Where did you get those pearls?” I asked, out of the blue. I don’t know why I’d never thought to ask before. I’d never seen Shelly without them.

“From our grandmother. The woman who raised me.”

“The one in Georgia.”

“The one and the same.”

She sat back, letting her hand fall to the table.

“What was she like?” Lynn hadn’t ever gone to see her, or at least not that I knew of, so I didn’t know anything about her.

“Well, she raised a psychopath,” Shelly said.

“Takes one to know one,” Malcolm replied.

Shelly narrowed her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. If I didn’t know her better, I’d have said it was adorable. That was mainly because she looked so much like Lynn when she did it. But she wasn’t Lynn. She was Shelly. She was not my wife.

“You’re referring to your father,” I said.

“Yes.” A shade fell across her eyes, and I was almost immediately blinded by the truth. She’d been hurt by him too.