Chapter 25 - The Husband I Buried

Now

I stayed near Luis’s grave, trying to figure out what I’d just witnessed. And then a sickening thought crept into my mind.

Had Luis been having an affair?

Another thing I couldn’t believe, but then I wouldn’t have believed I’d run into the husband I had buried four months previously.

I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand there crying about another missed opportunity, though.

‘Come on, Tess,’ I said, watching her paw at the ground. ‘Let’s go figure this out.’

The lawyer in me took over. If I wanted answers, I was going to have to find them.

Luis had told me about an ex. Sofia. From what he’d said, he was once head over heels in love with her. They’d broken up long before we started dating, but she was the kind of ex who left a bruise, not a scar. I’d never met her, but she might’ve heard about Luis’s death and wanted to say her goodbyes.

I looked at the photo I’d snapped and cursed, trying to remember if Luis had ever given me specific details. What color was Sofia’s hair? Her eyes?

The photo was terrible anyway. Blurry. Taken from too far away, with shaky hands. Although I’d almost caught the side of her face, I couldn’t properly make out any features with the dark glasses she wore. Even if I could, I wouldn’t know if it was Sofia because I didn’t know what she looked like.

I hated loose ends. They always frayed. Right now, that’s how my entire life felt. Like one big loose end. I needed to rule Sofia out.

It might be nice to swap stories about Luis. I’d always wondered who he was back then, before I’d known him. His parents had told me plenty of stories, but I wanted to know what he was really like. Not the dialed-down version his parents knew.

I scooped Tess into my arms and started down the path, the gravel crunching beneath my sneakers, the wind tugging at my hair.

I scanned the rows of tombstones, my eyes darting between marble slabs and weathered plaques. There was only stillness now – the kind that hums in your ears when the world’s holding its breath.

‘Shit,’ I muttered under my breath.

I walked back to Luis’s grave and sat down in front of the heavy stone that was supposed to mark his resting place. The cold from the grass seeped through my jeans and crawled up my legs.

Tess sniffed the dirt, blissfully unaware.

‘Usually, I’d talk to you about this,’ I said quietly, staring at his name. ‘But there’s no point in doing that now, is there?’

My voice cracked. I pressed my palms to my face. Inhaled. Exhaled. I needed to decide my next steps, but all I could think was how mad I was at Luis for leaving.

I worked through impossible problems every day in my job. I’d faced clients who’d lied through their teeth, witnesses who changed their stories mid-testimony, but I’d always found the truth buried somewhere. I could find it again. Even if this time, the liar was my husband, someone I had trusted.

It was easier when you had both sides of the story to sift through. But whatever Luis’s story was, he wasn’t here to give it.

I’d have to go by the information I found on my own.

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. The obvious first step would be to look for something tangible. Evidence. Luis and I had a joint bank account. If he was alive, he’d need money. Food. Shelter. Maybe a burner phone.

I pulled out my phone and opened the banking app we used to share, scrolling through months of transactions.

There was nothing. No transfers, no strange withdrawals. As I scrolled forward again, going back through, Luis’s credits stopped. It was just my salary, the usual bills, the mortgage repayments we made every fortnight. Even in the months before and after he’d gone, there were no strange transactions. No large sums taken out, and no odd accounts paid into. It would be easy enough to squirrel cash away if he’d planned this. It was possible he had an account I didn’t know about. Something his parents had set up maybe? But that would be difficult to find.

I needed to look back through the account history, right back to a couple of years ago. I set a reminder for later. Right now, I just wanted to get out of there.

I chewed my thumbnail, thinking about Luis’s parents. Remembering their tears at his funeral. Maybe they were as in the dark as I was.

I reached down and rubbed Tess’s head, her fur soft and comforting beneath my fingers. ‘We’ll figure this out,’ I said, though I wasn’t sure which of us I was trying to convince.

First things first, I needed to call work. Then, I needed to somehow find Sofia. If she was the woman at Luis’s grave, then I could pick her brain to find out what she knew – about Luis, about the Coterie Institute note . . .

And if it wasn’t her, then things might be about to get a lot stranger.