However, I didn’t care about that.
Instead, I focused on the white pickup truck parked at the curb. The truck had a painted logo on the door for Ryan Construction.
Scotty Ryan.
He was inside the house.
I heard a roaring in my head, a thump-thump-thump as my heartbeat took off. I hadn’t had a drink all day, so there was no excuse for making a foolish mistake. No good could come from seeing him.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop myself. I walked down the sidewalk and stood in front of the white picket fence. The house was neatly put together, freshly painted, with flowers growing in the window boxes. The front door was open, and I could hear the whine of a power saw inside. My common sense sent me a very clear message to walk away, which my heart ignored. I let myself inside the fence and headed for the steps. I hesitated only briefly at the house’s screen door before I ripped it open.
The interior had the sweet smell of cut wood. Plastic sheeting lined the living room floor. The noise of the saw deafened me, but then it cut off, leaving a stark silence. Scotty Ryan stood behind the saw, holding up a long length of oak trim to examine the cut. As he did, he saw me.
His whole body stiffened. When he recovered, he took off his noise-canceling headphones and his safety goggles and canvas gloves. He was dressed in jeans and work boots, with a loose Black Hawks jersey over his long torso. Sawdust made a film on his arms.
“Hello, Dylan,” he said.
“Scotty.”
We faced each other across the room. The standoff between us was like two tough dogs growling in an alley.
Scotty Ryan was forty years old, so nearly a decade older than me. He was half a foot taller, too, with a lanky, almost rubbery frame. He had wavy reddish-blond hair, and his face was sunburned pink from time spent in the sun. When he talked, he had an aw-shucks drawl in his voice, and his words always came out slowly, like honey from a jar. His casual good humor made him a difficult man to dislike, but believe me, I’d found a way.
“I’m really sorry,” Scotty said, which covered a lot of ground. “You can’t imagine how sorry I am.”
“You should be.”
My verbal blow rolled off him without causing any damage. He brushed his hand through his thick hair, and I could see the glow of sweat on his face. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I’m crushed. I’m sure you must be, too.”
“Wow. You think?”
Scotty shrugged his wide shoulders. “Hey, it’s hard to tell with you, Dylan. Karly always said you kept things locked up tight. You never showed her anything. That drove her crazy. No offense.”
Because adding “no offense” made everything better, coming from the man who’d slept with my wife.
“I have a question, Scotty.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“How long were you in love with Karly? How long were you hiding that little secret?”
Scotty rubbed his jutting chin and took his time to answer, the way he always did. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this now, Dylan.”
“How. Long?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably from the day I met her. I’ve known her a lot longer than you. I think she was only eighteen back then, but I never thought of her as young. She was so smart, confident, full of herself. I knew she was way out of my league, but yeah, I guess I had a crush on her from day one. Not that I ever intended to do anything about it.”
“Or you were just biding your time. Waiting until she was vulnerable.”
“That’s not how it went down. I swear. That’s not what happened.”
“Then what did happen?”
I took a couple of steps toward him. The plastic sheeting crinkled under my feet. He watched me warily, like a fighter in the ring.
“Look, what else do you want to know? I’m sure Karly already filled you in. When she called me, she said she was going to tell you everything.”
“You talked to her? Are you kidding me? When?”
“The day after,” Scotty admitted. “She was upset, blaming herself, said she couldn’t believe she’d made such a stupid mistake. She was going to tell you the truth, and she wanted me to know. For what it’s worth, I told her to keep it to herself and not risk her marriage over this. Believe me, I knew she had no intention of leaving you for me. That’s not what it was about. Whatever that night meant to me, it was just a drunken error in judgment to her. You should know what that’s like. You’ve made enough of those yourself, am I right?”
I didn’t take the bait.
“The details, Scotty. How did it happen?”
Scotty shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Dylan. Karly and I have been friends for a long time, and yeah, it’s always been more than that for me. If she knew how I felt, she was classy enough not to let on and embarrass me. But the last few months, she started telling me things. Personal things. Confiding in me about her problems. She needed to talk to someone, because you weren’t listening.”
“And there you were, with a shoulder for her to cry on.”
“You think Karly was the only one turning to someone else? She said you told your assistant Tai more than you ever told her.”
I felt slapped. “There was nothing between me and Tai. There never was. Karly knew that.”
“Did she?”
“Don’t try to put any of this on me.”
Scotty rolled his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not. Seriously, man, I’m not. I’m just telling you the way it was. You were running so fast in your life that you never saw that Karly wanted to slow things down. She was ready to quit, Dylan. To tell her mother that she wanted out of the real estate business. She was always more like her dad than her mom — you know that. A book type. A poet. Karly was ready to have kids. She wanted all of that more than anything, but she didn’t think you’d ever go for it. It was eating her up inside.”
“I never said anything like that to her.”
“I don’t care what you said. I’m telling you what she heard. That night? Her and me? She’d landed a buyer on that place in Schaumburg for Vernon Hotels, and the renovations were all done. I opened champagne for us, and yeah, we had too much. But if that’s all it was, nothing would have happened. Except the more she drank, the more Karly started talking about wanting a different life and not knowing how to tell you. She didn’t blame you for it, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just upset, and she started crying. I hugged her. I wanted to comfort her, and one thing led to another. Neither one of us planned it, and Karly hated herself for letting it happen. You can believe this or not, but I’m sorry it happened, too.”
I didn’t need a drink now to be losing control.
“You killed her,” I snapped. “It’s your fault she’s gone. We were out there in the middle of nowhere because of you.”
Scotty’s casual demeanor hardened into anger. Our nerves were both fraying. “Hey, you can blame me for the affair. I’ll take that. But I’m not the reason she died. If you want someone to blame for that, look in the mirror.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean, what happened in that river, Dylan? Explain it to me. Tell me the truth. Why are you here and she’s not?”