Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

goes to the fridge and pulls out two beers. He hands one to me and, watching each other, we twist off the caps and sip.
    “How’s the investigation going on the hit-skip?” he asks.
    “It hasn’t changed in the last hour.” I’m still reeling from the effects of the kiss as I relay everything I know so far.
    “You think it’s someone local?” he asks.
    I go to the fridge, find some grapes, cheese, and crackers, and toss them onto a plate. “Probably. If not Painters Mill proper, then Holmes County or one of the surrounding counties. Vehicle was probably a truck.” I carry the plate to the table and sit.
    Tomasetti takes the chair across from me, and for several moments we’re caught up in our thoughts.
    “How’s your friend doing?” he asks.
    “She’s devastated. Camped out at the hospital waiting for word on her son.”
    “He going to be okay?”
    “Not sure yet.”
    “Anything I can do?”
    “In the coming days, we’ll probably be using the lab. If things get jammed up, it would be a huge help if you could expedite.”
    “I’ll do what I can.”
    We stare across the table at each other for a moment, then he says, “Now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way, I’ve got something to tell you.”
    A small thread of anxiety zips through me. Generally, I don’t like surprises. I prefer to know what’s coming so I can be prepared when it arrives. Tomasetti is a wild card. When I met him, he’d just lost his wife and children in a home invasion that left his life in tatters. Afterward, he fell to taking prescription drugs, mixing them with alcohol. I know he spent some time in an institution. He doesn’t talk about it, so details are sketchy. I’ve never pressed him.
    He’s better now. Not fully healed, but I know he has happiness and hope in his life. I know I’m part of both of those things and that we’ve been good for each other.
    “Do you remember that house in Wooster I told you about last summer?” he begins.
    “The old farmhouse, on acreage?” An alarm begins to wail in the back of my head. A few months ago, I consulted on a case for the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. Several Amish teens had disappeared during their rumspringas. During that investigation he told me about a farmhouse he was thinking about buying, and then shocked the hell out of me by asking me to move in with him. I panicked and waffled and basically handled the situation badly, giving him a slew of mixed signals instead of the straightforward answer he deserved.
    It was a cowardly response, but I’d felt waylaid and unprepared. He was astute enough to give me an out, but I knew the issue would resurface. He isn’t the kind of man to give up, after all, especially when he wants something. I’m going to have to figure out how I feel about the prospect of moving in with him and give him a definitive answer, whether it’s the one he wants to hear or not.
    “I bought it,” he tells me. “I closed last month.”
    I stare at him, aware that I’ve broken a sweat. The bottle of beer feels like an icicle in my hand, the cold emanating up my arm and into my shoulder.
    “Congratulations,” I manage.
    “The place needs work, so I took some time off. New kitchen. Painting. Floors need refinishing.”
    Discomfort climbs over me, a big, lumbering beast that presses down with the weight of a house. I don’t know how to react to this. I’m not sure what to say or how to feel. I look away, take a long drink of beer.
    “If you’re game, I’d like to show it to you.”
    I meet his gaze to find his eyes already on me. He’s looking at me as if I’m a math problem that has unexpectedly perplexed him. “Sure.”
    “I promise not to tie you to a chair and keep you as my sex slave.”
    I laugh outright and some of the discomfort sloughs off. “Are you thinking about moving in?”
    “When it’s ready.”
    “What about the commute?”
    “It’s a forty-five-minute drive from my office in Richfield.” His eyes burn into mine. “Half an hour from Painters Mill.”
    “Convenient.”
    “You’re afraid I’m going to ask you to move in with me again.” Studying me, he takes a long pull of beer. “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
    “I’m not sure what I want. I think that’s part of the problem.” I set down my beer, look down at the tabletop. “Tomasetti, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
    He laughs. It’s not the response I expected.