All Good People Here

by Ashley Flowers

Story was always adorned with pearls of sweetness to coat its sharp edges:

This life—her family, their farm and house—wasn’t what she’d wanted, wasn’t even close, but it was more than she’d ever had before, and so she held on to it, hands tight.

She spotted the writing on the wall before she even made it down the last step, her breath kicking out of her lungs. Scrawled in blood-red oversized letters read three horrific messages: Fuck Your Family…That Bitch Is Gone…This Is What You Get.

Here something was horribly, horribly wrong, and all she’d been able to think was What will the neighbors say?

Krissy couldn’t have known then everything that kiss would lead to. If she had, she never would have done it. If she had, she would have run fast in the opposite direction.

Nor would she tell him the other thing. The cost of this marriage, she knew, would be keeping those secrets. She just hoped it would be worth it.

The person who killed January couldn’t possibly have kidnapped Natalie Clark, because January’s murderer is dead.”

Now, standing across from Jace in the doorway of their hotel room, Krissy thought of everything she’d done last night to protect him, every lie she’d told Billy and the detectives to keep him safe. And she wondered, as he gazed back at her with those flat, serious eyes, if she’d made the right decision, or if protecting him had been a horrible mistake.