Page 30 of The Man in the Cottage

I try to listen. I laugh in the right places. I pour more wine and pass around the cheese plate I made and pretend to be present.

But my mind is across the yard, in the dark cottage, with a man who's been lying to me since the day we met.

The party winds down around eleven.

Brit and Mona head to bed first, claiming exhaustion from the drive. Nicole lingers in the kitchen, helping me clean up, which I know is just an excuse to get me alone.

"So," she says, drying a wine glass. "You want to tell me what's really going on?"

"There's nothing to tell. You saw what happened."

"I saw a man who looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor. I saw you look at him like your heart was breaking." She sets down the glass. "How long have you had feelings for him?"

"I don't have feelings for him."

"Kelly."

"I don't know." I lean against the counter, suddenly exhausted. "A few weeks, maybe. It just kind of... happened. He was here all the time, fixing things, and we started talking, and..." I shake my head. "It doesn't matter now."

"Why not?"

"Because he lied to me. For weeks. He let me think he was just some guy, and the whole time he was hiding this huge thing. He beat someone up, Nicole. Bad enough that it made the news, bad enough that he had to hide in my grandmother's backyard."

"Did you ask him why?"

"What?"

"Why he did it. What happened. Did you ask, or did you just watch him leave?"

I don't answer. We both know I didn't ask.

"The article Brit found doesn't say much," Nicole continues. "Just that he attacked a photographer outside a hospice. That's weird, right? Why would he be at a hospice?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you should find out." She picks up another glass. "I'm not defending him. If he's dangerous, you need to know. But I'm just saying—there might be more to the story than what's in the headlines. There usually is."

I think about my grandmother's note. He's a good one. He just needs somewhere to be invisible.

My grandmother wasn't naive. She'd lived eighty-three years, raised kids, buried a husband, seen enough of the world to know what people were capable of. If she let Travis stay, she had a reason. If she called him a good one, she meant it.

But did she know? Did she know what he'd done, who he was? Or did he hide it from her too?

"I should talk to him," I say.

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. I can't just leave it like this. He's over there thinking I hate him, and I don't even know what actually happened. The article just says he attacked a photographer. It doesn't say why."

"Maybe there wasn't a why. Maybe he just snapped."

"Maybe." But I don't believe that. The Travis I know doesn't snap. He's the most controlled person I've ever met—careful with his words, careful with his movements, always holding something back. For him to hit someone, there had to be a reason. "Or maybe there's more to it."

"Only one way to find out."

I think about the past few weeks. All those conversations where he almost told me something and then pulled back. All those times I saw the weight he was carrying and chose not to ask about it. I told him I wouldn't push. I told him he could tell me when he was ready.

Well, he wasn't ready. And now I'm finding out from Google instead of from him.