Page 28 of Zen's Crash

“Sounds like she might have had some kind of crisis in her life that gave her bad dreams. I don’t know if it was related to the perp that killed that co-ed, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

She takes a drink of her coffee and looks out the window before admitting, “I look a lot like my mother did when she was my age.”

This is the part that makes my chest hurt, the part I didn’t want to come right and say. “Yeah, I noticed that as well.”

“If my dad had told that asshole where I was, he might still be alive today.”

I stop eating and put my fork down. “Your dad doesn’t sound like the kind of man who would throw his wife or daughter under the bus to save himself. He was a hero who protected the women in his life. He has my respect for that.”

“I was thinking the whole time you were talking in the meeting room. I never went through my mom’s things when she died, or my father’s when he was murdered. I don’t know why. I think with my mother, it was because my father didn’t want any of her stuff disturbed. And with my father it was because the loss was too fresh, you know?”

“Yeah, I do know. But now I think it’s time to have a look, see if we can find clues to help make sense of this situation.”

“Okay, do you want to do that when we’re finished eating? I have a feeling that if I wait, I’ll chicken out.”

“Sure. We can do it together. No matter what we find, I promise that everything will be okay.” I take a bite of my food and chase it down with coffee before asking, “You told me about that odd behavior of that food delivery person. Have other strange things happened to you, things that might be related to your father’s death?”

“No, not really. The only weird things that have happened are related to my PTSD, not the case.”

“You mean like bad dreams and stuff?” I ask, wiping my fingers on my napkin.

She nods, “Yeah, my therapist said to expect stuff like that. She said it’s perfectly normal after what I’ve been through.”

***

After lunch during which we talked politely about anything and everything that wasn’t related to her father’s brutal murder, we head to her place. We park in the back and enter through the back door because she said she prefers to avoid the living room where her father was killed. It makes perfect sense.

The thing is, when we approach the back door, there’s a bag on the mat from a local restaurant. “Did you order food?”

“No. Of course not. We just ate.”

I bend down, pick up the bag, and peer inside. Instead of food from the restaurant, inside the bag there’s box of heart-shaped chocolates with a note that reads, ‘Through time and space some hearts are meant to be joined’.

Showing her the note, I ask, “Are you seeing someone?”

“Of course not. It’s probably been delivered to the wrong address. You know how those delivery drivers can be.”

I’m not sure I believe her, but I let it lie.

Unlocking her door and pushing it open, she adds, “I bet there’s probably some sad lady who didn’t get her gift.”

I flip the note over and look at the back before discarding it on the kitchen table. We make our way through the house to the master bedroom. Her house looks very dated but nice. It’s clear her parents liked collecting things but were nowhere near having a hoarding mentality.

When she opens her parents’ bedroom door, the room is immaculate. All her mother’s personal effects are still in place around the room.

She turns around to look at me, “Where do we start?”

“I say we start at the dresser and move around the room in a circle that way we don’t miss anything.”

“Sounds good,” she responds.

We approach the dresser. Lexi’s shaking hands reach out to pick up her mother’s large jewelry box. We dump it all out and she begins combing through it while I inspect the jewelry box itself. I quickly realize there’s nothing unusual about the box, and Lexi begins dumping all the jewelry back into it.

We start searching through all the dresser drawers, finding nothing of note. If I’m being honest, going through dead people’s stuff is a bit unnerving. It feels like a personal violation, although with them both being dead, I can’t imagine what kind of violation it would be.

We continue going through the whole room, finding all kinds of interesting things—like a hatbox full of pictures, a small box full of Lexi’s childhood mementos, some stuffed animals, and random antique collectibles. It’s sweet how Lexi takes a trip down memory lane with each new item we find. She tells me when and where her parents got the item and why. Lexi’s family reminds me a lot of my own.

I pull out yet another hatbox from the top of her mother’s closet. Lexi lifts a tiny pillbox hat out of the box and puts it on her head. “This belonged to my grandmother. I never met her, but my mom used to tell me stories about her.”

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