Chapter 4 The First Crack

Ava's Point Of View

The rain strikes the glass walls, as fidgety fingers. The room is dim, with the sound of lights below.

I spin around, and my heart is racing. “What did you just say?”

Liam’s gaze doesn’t waver. His face cannot be read, it is almost placid. He places a folder on his desk and sits up slightly, the stormlight glimpsing his face.

“I said Ava,” he murmurs. Since... you resemble somebody I knew.

His voice is so uniform as to be almost casual. Almost.

He stares a little more and then leaves and picks up the folder once again, flipping its pages without the slightest regard of the dialogue.

The air between us tightens. I can’t breathe.

My mouth opens, then closes. And the question I wish to know was who that was. I want to ask what he means. However, the words stick in my mouth.

He doesn’t look at me again. “You should go home. It’s late.”

And so he dies--out of the office, along the hall, the sound of his footsteps disappearing in the storm.

I stand alone in the semi-darkness, and my heart is tight and aching.

Relief. Fear. Confusion. They weave and reweave each other so that I cannot distinguish them.

He doesn’t know it’s me. Not yet. But he saw something. And that’s almost worse.

The following day I go through work like a ghost. Each touch of my typewriter is deafening. My shoulders tighten every time Liam is passing.

He is relaxed, as usual, though I hear some small cracks in that relaxedness now, the way he rubs between his temples when he believes no one notices, the way his jaw becomes tight when his phone rings.

In the evening when the majority of the population has already dispersed, I come to shred old papers. The silence is broken by the constant buzz of the machine. Then I hear his voice on the half-open office door.

Low, sharp, tired.

“Noah, stop running from it.” A pause. I cannot continue to clean up after you.

I freeze.

It is not anger in his voice, it is guilt. Heavy. Familiar.

Noah.

The title burns in my head. I’ve never heard of it before. But the manner in which he does it, as though it were the origin of all that he is bearing, makes me sure that it does matter.

I lean forward, heart beating wildly, and the talk is closed by the tedious wave of him hanging up.

By looking in, I see him standing before the window, again, looking at the rain. His reflection looks lonely. Almost haunted.

It is the first time I am questioning whether maybe I have been pursuing the wrong monster.

Late at night I am in the copy machine feeding papers through the shredder. My thoughts won’t stop racing.

Liam steps in quietly. “You’re still here.”

I leap, almost slicing my finger on the corner of a paper. I feel a pierced sting in my hand.

Blood, damn, I hiss inwardly, blood comes up the nick.

Before I can move, he’s there. “Let me see.”

“It’s fine—”

He puts my hand in his, and it is a firm and tender grip. His touch is warm, grounding. He examines the trivial laceration, his brows contracting. “You should be more careful.”

I can’t look away. He speaks in a low voice much softer than I ever heard him.

He puts a folded handkerchief in his pocket and neatly wraps it around my finger. It is fine, slightly scented with cedar and something darker--him.

I think the air goes away when his thumb touches my skin.

I whisper, “You don’t have to—”

He cuts me off quietly. “You remind me of her.”

My heart stops. “Of who?”

He looks up, meeting my eyes. Some one who believed in me. The silence stretches. The gap between us is filled by the sound of the rain.

He drops it gradually with an inexpressible expression. “Go home, Ms. Moore.”

And in another moment away he goes. But my pulse doesn’t calm.

Many hours have passed and the office is empty. The remaining light is dim in the office of Liam, which is silver through the glass walls.

I shouldn’t be here. But now I cannot forget the name Noah.

I need to know whether he is defending a person, whether he is lying--then I must know.

I squeeze in, the door falling behind me. His cologne scent still lingers in the air, fresh, cold, exasperating.

The room is now too small. All the things appear intimate: the half-full glass on the desk, the slight smear of his fingerprint on the window, the photo frame itself, averted slightly out of sight.

I go to the desk, cautious, silent. I begin to open drawers- papers, pens, invoices. Normal things. Then something else is discoverable by my fingers.

The bottom drawer has a little panel below.

I squeeze, and it bursts open.

Inside: a stack of old photos.

My breath catches.

Ethan.

He appears in each of them, laughing, gripping a drink, standing next to Liam. In one, they both have beaming faces like brothers. In the other, Ethan has his arm around the shoulders of Liam.

My throat tightens. The air feels too thin.

At the bottom of the photos is a tiny silver key. There is a label with fine handwriting: Storage 11B.

My heart thuds as I turn the key over in my hand. Whatever this opens--it belongs to the truth.

Why does Liam hide the pictures of Ethan, and does not show them? Why guard them like secrets?

Perhaps guilt constructed this shrine. Or maybe love did. I can’t tell anymore.

I slap the key into my pocket when the lights go winking over.

The low moan of electricity halts, and comes back.

I freeze.

Down the hall go the footsteps-- steady, slow. I put out the lamp on the desk and went to the corner, breathing very hard. The corridor lights shine in the frosted glass door.

It is crossed by a shadow--tall, male, conscious.

Then a voice. Low. Calm. Not Liam’s. You ought not to have discovered it, Miss Moore. The doorknob turns.