Page 49 of Eden

There had to be an explanation.

She looked up when she saw officers ascending the stairs. For some reason, she felt uncomfortable with them in his house without him being here. Without his permission.

She moved toward the stairs, following them up. She climbed them two at a time and entered the first door on the left.

Bethenny inhaled deeply as she found herself in what she concluded was the master bedroom. His bedroom.

The bed was perfectly made—so perfectly, in fact, it reflected his paramilitary background. The bedside tables were bare save for a lamp and a phone charger.

No photos, no reminders of his past.

Sadness crept into her heart like fog crawling across a wet lawn.

The room was so clinical it was hard to reconcile it with the man she’d connected with last night. But he’d said he’d been running from his past, and his bedroom only confirmed that.

She walked into the closet where a row of shirts hung organized on their hangers. Same for pants and jackets. Sweaters were folded neatly on the shelves. Everything was in order, and again, it only reinforced his need for control, to keep the pain of his past at bay.

His meticulously tidy bathroom came as no surprise. Nothing was out of place. Hand soap, cologne, and a toothbrush and toothpaste sat upon the vanity, but otherwise it was bare.

Lachlan Taylor wasn’t a man of many things.

Bethenny looked at the cabinets, again feeling like she was invading his privacy, but she thought it was better she did it than the other officers. She knew how she’d feel sitting at the station while her colleagues searched her house. It would make her sick to her stomach. She shook her head, unable to believe how quickly everything had escalated this morning. When they’d finally gone to their separate beds last night, she could not have predicted the morning would unfold like this.

She opened the drawers, which were essentially empty save for a few products. The cabinets underneath the sink were empty too—the good news is that it wouldn’t take long to search his home.

She went back to the closet and checked the pockets of his jackets and pants, then unfolded the sweaters and refolded them. She looked for any hidden cavities in the walls. With every minute she searched, her heart beat a little faster. It was an unsettling cocktail of guilt and unease.

This felt wrong. So wrong.

She stood at his bed, eyeing his bedside tables.

She hesitated, but then heard officers in the hallway. If she didn’t search the drawers, they would.

She inhaled deeply. Her hand shook as she reached for the drawer knob. She chided herself.

Focus, Bethenny.

She knew she needed to keep an open mind—she could not definitively rule him out as the killer, but everything within her screamed his innocence.

Bethenny had been wrong before, though. She had looked into the eyes of an innocent man and believed he was guilty. So how could she trust that the innocence in Lachlan’s eyes was real?

She opened the drawer, not sure what she would find. Bedside drawers could be a perilous place.

Nothing but a few dust bunnies.

She raised an eyebrow. She would’ve concluded that this wasn’t the master bedroom except that his clothes were hanging in the closet.

But maybe he didn’t sleep in this room for some reason?

She shook her head, not sold on that conclusion.

She walked around the bed and opened the other drawer. A well-worn Bible sat in the drawer with a pen and what looked to be an old watch. Maybe it had belonged to his father, or grandfather?

Bethenny noticed the bookmark in the Bible. She picked up the Bible and opened it, revealing a photograph of Lachlan and Eden—taken somewhere in Europe, based on the landscape. She thought it was the south of France, but she couldn’t be sure.

Her eyes lingered on the photograph. They looked happy, so happy.

She was glad he’d kept this photograph, of some part of his past. As painful as it was, he needed to remember her and the good times they’d had together, because the memories were all he had left.

---