“Why send me roses?”
“He didn’t,” Kellan said. “We think the bouquet was a decoy. We think Daniel recently found your father’s old case notes, and Amos realized he was getting closer to the truth.”
My chest tightened. “Did Daniel know?”
“Maybe he was trying to protect you.”
I’d spent an entire night believing my husband was a monster. Maybe, instead, he was fighting one.
Coming home
The police tracked Amos to an abandoned hunting cabin outside the city. I wasn’t allowed to go. I sat in the station, twisting Daniel’s wedding ring—he’d left it on the dresser before his “trip”—until Kellan returned, his eyes watering.
“He’s alive,” she said.
I don’t remember standing up. I don’t remember the sound I made, something between a sob and a prayer.
Daniel came home two days later: his face bruised, his wrist bandaged, guilt written all over his face. I ran to him before the door even closed.
“I thought you were dead,” I shouted.
“I found your father’s old notes in a box,” she whispered into my hair. “I thought I could stop this before someone got hurt.”
“You should have told me.”
“I was worried about you.”
Amos was arrested. Evidence found in the cabin finally linked him to all three original disappearances. After twenty-two years, three families finally got the answers they had almost given up hope of.
I didn’t want to see a yellow rose anymore.
Weeks later, Daniel and I were sitting together on the porch as the sky darkened.
“Those flowers weren’t meant for me,” I said.
He intertwined his fingers with mine. “No.”
“They were meant for you.”
He nodded, his eyes filled with regret.
That bouquet of flowers wasn’t a romantic gesture. It wasn’t even a real threat directed at me.
It was meant for the person the killer feared the most.
And somehow, even from the grave, my father had found a way to bring us both home.
