Page 34 of Tragic (Lark Cove 3)

“It’s got to be those damn eggs.”

How old was that carton? I’d bought those eggs thinking I’d swap out my morning cereal for something with protein. But it turns out, I hadn’t miraculously learned how to cook eggs, and I didn’t like them much to begin with.

I plugged my nose, sucked in some air and held my breath as I braved the door. The expiration date on the egg carton read three months past edible.

The smell had gotten steadily worse and worse, but I’d been too lazy to deal with it. That voice in my head came back, but this time it sounded like Piper’s gasp of disgust. So I got out a garbage bag and cleared away the rotten eggs along with all of the other expired items.

There wasn’t much left at that point, so after taking the trash outside, I emptied the refrigerator shelves and cleaned until the foul odor had been erased with bleach.

That one simple task sparked a cleaning rampage.

My bathroom was atrocious, with beard clippings on the countertops stuck in toothpaste-spit splatters and soap residue. I was ashamed of myself for letting the tile in the shower become so coated with grime. It took me an hour to make it clean enough that I wouldn’t be embarrassed if a certain neighbor stopped by.

From there, I tackled the rest of the kitchen and the living room.

The only articles in my house that didn’t need a thorough scrubbing were all of the wood pieces I’d made over the last few years. Nightstands. My coffee table. The small, round dining table that I rarely sat at with its pedestal base. Those I oiled and kept dusted on a regular basis.

Everything else got a long-overdue scouring. It took all day, and like work had been the last few days, thoughts of Piper kept me company. Though unlike in the shop, those thoughts didn’t distract me from my progress. Instead, they fueled me forward.

I pictured her stepping inside my house, scanning each room with those brown eyes. I cleaned so there wouldn’t be a cringe on her features if she did stop by. I didn’t want her to flinch at the home I’d let go.

By the time I was ready to tackle my bedroom at the back of the house, I’d already washed two loads of laundry. The first load had been my bedsheets. Clean linens hadn’t been a top priority for me in the past, but that was before I’d started screwing my neighbor.

Stripping my bed, along with doing the dishes, would become a regular chore.

I stopped by the laundry room to grab the clothes I’d shoved in an hour ago. The timer on my dryer didn’t work and if I let it, the thing would run for days. I filled a basket full of ratty T-shirts, briefs and socks.

Then I brought the basket to my bed, tossing its contents out on the ugly, pea-green quilt.

Not much thought had gone into decorating this house. That quilt was the first one I’d touched at the home store, so I’d bought it. The same was true with my towels and sheets. I’d furnished this place in under twenty minutes at a department store in Kalispell, shoving items in my cart and getting the fuck out of that hellhole.

Nothing matched. The colors were dull. And before today, I hadn’t given a shit.

But then Piper’s face flashed in my mind. She looked at my bed and grimaced.

This woman. She was ruining me.

I’d never cared about matching things. As long as I was warm at night, the color of my bedding was irrelevant to how I slept. I hadn’t even cared what color Shannon had picked out for the nursery.

Pain slashed through my chest, stealing my breath, and I sank onto the edge of the bed.

When was the last time I’d thought about that nursery? When was the last time I’d even let myself think Shannon’s name?

A year. Maybe two.

I’d blocked it all out. I’d spent years refusing those memories.

My eyes drifted slowly to the closet. At the top, shoved in the farthest corner, was a box I hadn’t opened since the cardboard flaps had been closed.

Of all the belongings in my former life, that box was the only thing to come with me up here, except for the clothes on my back and the truck that had carried me away. Everything else had been left behind and forgotten.

I stood and stepped to the closet, taking down the box. Then I went back to the bed, collapsing on the edge with shaking knees. With the box on my lap, the log-and-mortar walls closed in. The air was too thick to breathe.

Before my brain could throw up roadblocks on this trip down memory lane, I jerked one flap open, sending the rest popping free.

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Pink. The inside was full of pink.