Текст книги "Missing You"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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“I’m not looking away now.” Kat reached out her hand again. “Please tell me where he went.”

“The truth? I don’t know.”

“But you know more than you’re telling me.”

“He was a good man, your father. He provided for you and your brothers. He taught you right from wrong. He worked long hours and made sure that you all got a college education.”

“Did you love him?” she asked.

Mom started busying herself, rinsing a cup in the sink, putting the mayo back in the fridge. “Oh, he was so handsome when we met, your father. Every girl wanted to date him.” There was a faraway look in her eye. “I wasn’t so bad back then either.”

“You’re not so bad now.”

Mom ignored the remark.

“Did you love him?”

“The best I could,” she said, blinking until the faraway look was no more. “But it’s never enough.”

Chapter 25

Kat started back toward the 7 train. School must have been letting out. Kids with giant backpacks shuffled by, their eyes down, most playing with their smartphones. Two girls from St. Francis Prep walked by in their cheerleader uniforms. To the shock of all who knew her, Kat had tried out for cheerleading her sophomore year. Their main cheer was the old standby: “We’re St. Francis Prep, we don’t come any prouder, and if you can’t hear us, we’ll shout it a little louder.” Then you repeat the cheer louder and then louder still until it all felt a tad inane. The other cheer—she smiled at the memory—was when your team made a mistake. They’d do a quick clap while shouting, “That’s all right, that’s okay, we’re gonna beat you anyway.” A few years ago, Kat had gone to a game and noticed that they changed the cheer from “we’re gonna beat you” to the more politically correct “we’re gonna win.”

Progress?

Kat was just in front of Tessie’s house when her cell phone rang. It was Chaz.

“You got my text?”

“About the license plate? Yeah, thanks.”

“Dead end?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Because,” Chaz said, “there was one thing about the license plate that bothered me.”

Kat squinted into the sun. “What?”

“The registration was for a black Lincoln Town Car. Not a stretch. Do you know anything about stretches?”

“Not really, no.”

“They are all custom-made. You take a regular car, you strip the interior, and then you literally slice it in half. Then you pull it back, install the prefab exterior, rebuild the interior with a bar or TV or whatever.”

More kids ambled past her, heading home from school. Again she thought back to her own days, when school dismissal was boisterous. None of these kids said a word. They just stared at their phones.

“Okay,” Kat said, “so?”

“So James Isherwood’s registration didn’t read ‘stretch.’ It could be an oversight, no big deal. But I decided to take a deeper look. The car also doesn’t have a livery license. Again, that isn’t a huge deal. If the car was privately owned, that wouldn’t be necessary. But the boyfriend’s name isn’t Isherwood, correct?”

“Correct,” Kat said.

“So I looked some more. No harm, right? I called Isherwood’s house.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t home. Let me cut to the chase, okay? Isherwood lives in Islip, but he works for an energy company headquartered in Dallas. He flies out there a lot. That’s where he is now. So, see, he parked his car in long-term parking.”

A dark, cold shiver eased its way down the back of Kat’s neck. “And someone stole his license plate.”

“Bingo.”

Amateurs steal cars to commit crimes. That was messy. Stolen cars are immediately reported to the police. But if you swipe a license plate, especially a front one from some long-term garage, it could be days or weeks before the theft is reported. Even then, it is harder to spot a license plate than an entire car. With a stolen car, you can be on the lookout for a specific make and model. With a stolen license plate, especially if you’re smart enough to steal it off a car with a similar make . . .

Chaz said, “Kat?”

“We need to find out everything we can about Dana Phelps. See if we can ping her phone location. Get her recent texts.”

“This isn’t our jurisdiction. They live in Connecticut.”

The front door of Tessie’s house opened. Tessie stepped outside.

“I know,” Kat said. “Tell you what. E-mail all you got to a Detective Schwartz at the Greenwich Police Department. I’ll contact him later.”

Kat hung up the phone. What the hell was going on? She debated calling Brandon, but that seemed premature. She needed to think it through. Chaz was right—this wasn’t their case. That was clear. Plus, Kat had her own issues right now, thank you very much. She would pass it on to Joe Schwartz and leave it at that.

Tessie was making her way toward her. Kat flashed back to when she was nine years old, hiding behind the kitchen door, listening to Tessie cry about being pregnant. Tessie was one of those people who kept it all hidden with a smile. She had eight kids in twelve years in an era when husbands would sooner drink from a septic tank than change a diaper. Her children were scattered around the country now as though tossed by a giant hand. Some kept moving. Usually at least one still stayed at their childhood home. Tessie didn’t care. She didn’t like the company or dislike it. Motherhood was over for her, at least the labor-intensive part. They could stay or they could leave. She might make the occasional tuna fish sandwich for Brian or she might not. It didn’t matter to her.

“Is everything okay?” Tessie asked.

“Fine.”

Tessie looked doubtful. “Sit with me a minute?”

“Sure,” Kat said. “I’d like that.”

Tessie had always been Kat’s favorite of Mom’s friends. During Kat’s childhood, despite the chaos and exhaustion, Tessie always found time to chat with her. Kat had worried that she was yet another burden or obligation, but somewhere along the way, she realized that wasn’t the case, that Tessie enjoyed their time together. Tessie had trouble communicating with her own daughters, and Kat, of course, had the same issue with her mother. Some might call their rapport special—that Tessie should have been Kat’s mom or something like that—but more likely, it was just that they weren’t related and could both relax.

Maybe familiarity—accent on the familia—did indeed breed contempt.

Tessie’s house was a tired Tudor. It was spacious enough, but when it had housed ten, it seemed as though the walls were buckling from the onslaught. There was a fence across the driveway. Tessie opened it so they could head into the backyard, where she kept her small garden.

“Bad year again,” Tessie said, pointing toward the tomato plants. “This global warming or whatever keeps messing with my timing.”

Kat sat on the bench.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, then,” Tessie said, spreading her arms. “Tell me.”

So Kat did.

“Little Willy Cozone,” Tessie said, with a shake of her head when Kat finished. “You know he’s from the neighborhood, right? Grew up on Farrington Street near the car wash.”

Kat nodded.

“My older brother, Terry, graduated from Bishop Reilly with him. Cozone was a scrawny kid. Threw up in first grade at St. Mary’s. Vomited all over the nun, right in the middle of class. Stunk up the whole room. The kids started picking on him after that. Called him Stinky or Smelly or something. Real original.” She shook her head. “You know how he stopped it?”

“Stopped what?”

“Being picked on.”

“No. How?”

“Cozone beat a kid to death when he was in fifth grade. Took a hammer to school and bashed his head in. Pried open the back of the skull with the claw part.”

Kat tried not to make a face. “I didn’t see that in the files.”

“The records were sealed, or maybe they never convicted him, I don’t know. It was kept pretty hush-hush.”

Kat just shook her head.

“When Cozone was around, well, pets used to disappear from this neighborhood, if you know what I’m saying. They’d find like a paw or something in the trash. That would be it. You know he lost his whole family to violence.”

“Yes,” Kat said. “And all this, I mean, that’s why I don’t believe my dad worked for him.”

“I don’t know one way or the other,” Tessie said.

Tessie started busying herself with the garden, retying the plants to the stakes.

“What do you know, Tessie?”

She inspected a tomato, still on the vine. It was both too small and too green. She let it go.

“You were around,” Kat said. “You knew about my father’s vanishing acts.”

“I did, yes. Your mother used to pretend it was all okay. Even to Flo and me, she’d lie.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“But you had some idea.”

Tessie stopped fiddling with the tomatoes and stood up straight. “I’m of two minds on this.”

“That being?”

“The obvious. It’s none of my business. It’s none of your business. And it all happened a long time ago. We should respect your mother’s wishes.”

Kat nodded. “Understandable.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s the other mind?”

Tessie sat down next to her. “When you’re young, you think you have all the answers. You’re right wing or you’re left wing and the other side is a bunch of idiots. You know. When you get a little older, though, you start to more and more see the grays. Now I understand that true idiots are the ones who are certain they have the answers. It is never that simple. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“I’m not saying there’s no such thing as right or wrong. But I’m saying what may work for some doesn’t work for others. You talked before about your mother confusing memories with illusion. But that’s okay. That’s how she survives. Some people need illusions. And some people, like you, need answers.”

Kat waited.

“You also need to weigh the hurts,” Tessie said.

“What do you mean?”

“If I tell you what I know, it is going to hurt you. A lot, probably. I love you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Kat knew that Tessie, unlike Flo or even Mom, did not lean toward the melodramatic. It was not a warning to take lightly. “I can take it,” Kat said.

“I’m sure you can. Plus, I have to weigh that hurt against the dull ache you feel from always wondering, from never knowing. There’s a pain in that too.”

“A greater pain, I’d argue,” Kat said.

“And I don’t disagree.” Tessie let loose a long breath. “There is one more problem.”

“I’m listening.”

“My information. It is all based on rumors. A friend of Gary’s—you remember Gary?”

“Flo’s husband.”

“Right. So a friend of Gary’s told Gary and Gary told Flo and Flo told me. So for all I know, it’s a load of garbage.”

“But you don’t think it is,” Kat said.

“Right, I don’t think it is. I think it’s the truth.”

Tessie seemed to be bracing herself.

“It’s okay,” Kat said in the gentlest voice she could muster. “Tell me.”

“Your father had a girlfriend.”

Kat blinked twice. Tessie had warned that this revelation would hurt. It would, Kat supposed, but right now, it was as though the words were skimming the surface, not yet penetrating the skin.

Tessie kept her eyes on Kat. “I would say it’s no big deal—hell, I’d bet more than half the married men in this town had girls—but there were a few things that made this case different.”

Kat swallowed, trying to sort her thoughts. “Like what?”

“You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“No, Aunt Tessie, I’m fine.” Kat straightened her back and fought through it. “What made my father’s case different?”

“For one thing, it seemed to be ongoing. Your father spent quite a bit of time with her. Most guys, it’s one night, one hour, a strip club, maybe a short fling with a girl at work. This wasn’t like that. This was more serious. That’s what the rumors were, anyway. That’s why he’d disappear. They traveled together, I guess, I don’t know.”

“Mom knew?”

“I don’t know, honey.” Then: “Yes, I think so.”

“Why didn’t she leave him?”

Tessie smiled. “And go where, sweetheart? Your mother was raising three children. He was the provider and the husband. We didn’t have options back then. Plus, well, your mother loved him. And he loved her.”

Kat snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”

Tessie shook her head. “See, you’re young. You think things are simple. My Ed had girlfriends too. You want to know the truth? I didn’t care. Better her than me, that’s what I thought. I had all these kids and was always pregnant—I was happy he was leaving me alone, if you want to know the truth. You don’t imagine feeling that way when you’re young, but you do.”

So that was it, Kat thought. Dad had a girlfriend. A whole bunch of emotions ricocheted through her. Per her yoga training, she saw the emotions, but for right now, because she needed to stay focused, she simply let them go.

“There’s something else,” Tessie said.

Kat raised her head and looked at her.

“You have to remember where we live. Who we are. What the times were like.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your father’s girlfriend,” Tessie said. “Well, again this is what Gary’s friend said. See, a married man with another woman? No surprise, right. No one would have said boo. Gary’s friend wouldn’t have even noticed, except he said that this girlfriend was, um, black.”

Again Kat blinked, not sure what to make of it. “Black? You mean like African American?”

Tessie nodded. “Rumor—and again, this is just rumor probably fueled by racism—but someone thought she was some prostitute he busted. That was how they met or something. I don’t know, I doubt that.”

Kat felt dizzy. “Did my mother know?”

“I never told her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Then Kat remembered something. “Wait, Flo told her, didn’t she?”

Tessie didn’t bother to confirm or deny. Now, finally, Kat knew another truth—why there had been a yearlong silence between Flo and Mom. Flo had told Mom about the black prostitute, and Mom had promptly gone into denial.

But as emotionally wrenching as this was—Kat still didn’t know how she felt other than sad—it also seemed irrelevant to the issue at hand. She could cry about it later. For now, Kat needed to figure out if any of this had anything to do with her father’s murder.

“Do you know the woman’s name?” Kat asked.

“Not really, no.”

Kat frowned. “Not really?”

“Let it go, honey.”

“You know I can’t,” Kat said.

Tessie looked everywhere but at Kat. “Gary said her street name was Sugar.”

“Sugar?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

“Sugar what?”

“I don’t know.”

The blows just kept coming. Kat wanted to curl up in a ball and ride them out, but she didn’t have that luxury. “Do you know what happened to Sugar after my father’s murder?”

“No,” Tessie said.

“Did she—”

“That’s all I know, Kat. There’s nothing more.” Tessie started back on the plants again. “So what are you going to do now?”

Kat thought about it. “I’m not sure.”

“You know the truth now. Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Sometimes,” Kat agreed.

“But not this time?”

“Something like that,” Kat said.

“The truth may be better than lies,” Tessie said. “But it doesn’t always set you free.”

Kat understood that. She didn’t expect to be free. She didn’t expect to be happier even. She just expected . . .

What exactly?

There was nothing to be gained here. Her mother would be hurt. Stagger, who probably did this out of loyalty to her father, could be open to tampering charges if he convinced Monte Leburne to stay quiet or change his testimony. Kat knew the truth now. Enough anyway.

“Thank you, Aunt Tessie.”

“For what?”

“For telling me.”

“I don’t think a ‘you’re welcome’ fits here,” Tessie said, bending down and picking up the spade. Then: “You’re not going to leave it alone, are you, Kat?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Even if it hurts a lot of people.”

“Even if.”

Tessie nodded, digging the spade deep into the fresh soil. “It’s getting late, Kat. I think maybe it’s time you headed back home.”

 • • •

The revelation began to sink in during the subway ride home.

It was easy to feel angry and betrayed and disgusted.

Her father had been her hero. Kat got, of course, that he wasn’t perfect, but this was the man who climbed up a ladder and hung up the moon for her. She had honestly believed it—that her father had taken the ladder out of the garage and put up the moon just for her benefit—but, of course, when you stop and think about it, that had been a lie too.

Sometimes she imagined that her father used to disappear because he was saving lives, working undercover, doing something grand and brave. Now Kat knew that he had abandoned and terrified his entire family to shack up with a hooker.

So that would be the easy way for her emotions to go—in the direction of disgust, anger, betrayal, maybe even hate.

But as Tessie had warned her, life was rarely that simple.

Her overwhelming emotion was sadness. There was sadness for a father who was so unhappy at home that he ended up living a lie. There was sadness too for Kat’s mother for all the obvious reasons, for also being forced to live the lie, and when she looked at it carefully, maybe there was sadness because this news didn’t shock Kat as much as she might now claim. Maybe Kat had subconsciously suspected this kind of ugliness. Maybe this had been the root cause for her tense relationship with her mother—a stupid, subconscious belief that somehow Mom didn’t do enough to make Dad happy and so he would go away and Kat would be scared that he would never come back and it would be Mom’s fault.

She also wondered whether Sugar, if that was her name, made her father happy. There had been no passion in his marriage. There had been respect and companionship and partnership, but had her father found something approaching romantic love with this other woman? Suppose he had been happy with this other, forbidden woman. How should Kat feel about that? Should she feel anger and betrayal—or some form of joy that Dad found something to cherish?

She wanted to go home and lie down and cry.

Her phone didn’t work until she was out of the subway tunnel. There were three missed calls from Chaz’s cell phone. Kat called him back as soon as she was at street level.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“You sound like crap.”

“Rough day.”

“It may get rougher.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got something on that Swiss bank account. I think you’ll want to see this.”

Chapter 26

Titus got tired of the prostitution ring.

The world was getting dangerous, tricky, and even boring. Whenever you had a good thing going, too many dumb people with overly violent tendencies had a habit of getting involved. The mob moved in and wanted a piece. Lazy men saw this as easy money—abuse a desperate girlfriend, make her do what you want, collect the cash. His mentor, Louis Castman, had long since disappeared, retiring, Titus figured, to some island in the South Pacific. The Internet, which made so many retail businesses and go-betweens obsolete, had made the pimp that much less valuable. The whore-to-john connection became much more streamlined with the web or with larger consolidators who swallowed the smaller pimps in the same way that Home Depot swallowed the mom-and-pop hardware store.

Prostitution had become too small-time for Titus. The risks had started to outweigh the benefits.

But like any business, when one aspect became obsolete, the top entrepreneurs found new avenues. Technology might have hurt the street business, but it also opened up new worlds online. For a while, Titus became one of those consolidators, but it became too rote, too distant, sitting behind a computer and making appointments and transactions. He moved on and ran online cons with some backers in Nigeria. No, he didn’t run the easy-to-spot spam e-mails about helping someone who owed or wanted to give away money. Titus had always been about seduction—about sex, about love, about the interplay between them. For a while, his best “romantic scam” was to pretend that he was a soldier serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. He would set up fake identities for his soldiers on social media sites and then start to romance single women he would meet online. Eventually, he would “reluctantly” ask for help so he could purchase a laptop, or airfare so they could meet in person, or maybe he would need money for rehabilitation after a war-related injury. When he needed quick cash, Titus would pretend he was a soldier being deployed and needing to sell a vehicle on the cheap, sending perspective buyers bogus registration and information and having them wire the money to third-party accounts.

There were problems with these scams, however. First, the money was relatively small and took a great deal of effort. People were dumb, but alas, they were getting shrewder. Second, as with anything profitable, too many amateurs heard about it and rushed into the business. The Army Criminal Investigation began issuing warnings and going after the perpetrators in a more serious manner. For his partners in western Africa, that wasn’t a big problem. For Titus, it could very well be.

But more than that, it was again small-time with the lowest-case s imaginable. Titus, like any businessman, was looking for ways to expand and capitalize. These cons had been a step up from his earlier pimping days, but how big a step? He needed a new challenge—something bigger, faster, more profitable, and completely safe.

Titus had used up almost his entire life savings to get his new venture off the ground. But it was paying off big-time.

Clem Sison, the new chauffeur, came into the farmhouse. He was wearing Claude’s black suit. “How do I look?”

It was a little baggy in the shoulders, but it would do. “You understand your training.”

“Yes.”

“No deviations from the plan,” Titus said. “Do you understand?”

“Sure, of course. She comes straight here.”

“Then go get her now.”

 • • •

Chaz’s shift was over, so Kat met him at his apartment in the ritzy Lock-Horne Building on Park Avenue and 46th Street. Kat had come to an office party here two years ago when Stacy was dating the playboy who owned the building. The playboy, whose name was Wilson or Windsor or something else overtly preppy, was brilliant and rich and handsome and now, if rumors were true, had lost his mind à la Howard Hughes and become a complete recluse. Recently, the building had converted some office floors into residential space.

That was where Chaz Faircloth lived. Quick albeit obvious conclusion: Coming from great wealth was nice.

When Chaz opened the door, his white shirt was opened a button more than it should have been, revealing pecs so waxed they made a baby’s butt look like it had a five o’clock shadow. He smiled with the perfect teeth and said, “Come in.”

She glanced around the apartment. “Label me surprised.”

“What?”

Kat had expected a man cave or bachelor pad and instead found the place almost too classily decorated with old wood and antiques and tapestries and oriental rugs. Everything was rich and expensive yet understated.

“The décor,” Kat said.

“You like?”

“I do.”

“I know, right? My mom decorated the place with family heirlooms and whatnot. I was going to change it up, you know, make it more me, but then I found that chicks actually love this stuff. Makes me look more sensitive and stuff.”

So much for the surprise.

Chaz moved behind the bar and picked up a bottle of Macallan Scotch 25 Year. Kat’s eyes went wide.

“You’re a Scotch drinker,” he said.

She tried not to lick her lips. “I don’t think I should right now.”

“Kat?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re staring at that bottle like I stare at ample cleavage.”

She frowned. “Ample?”

Chaz smiled with the even teeth. “Have you ever had the twenty-five?”

“I had the twenty-one once.”

“And?”

“I almost asked it for a ring.”

Chaz grabbed two whiskey glasses. “This sells for about eight hundred dollars a bottle.” He poured both and handed one to her. Kat held the glass as if it were a baby bird.

“Cheers.”

She took a single sip. Her eyes closed. She wondered whether it was possible to drink this and keep your eyes open.

“How is it?” he asked.

“I may shoot you just so I can take the bottle home.”

Chaz laughed. “I guess we should get on with it.”

Kat almost shook her head and told him it could wait. She didn’t want to hear about the Swiss bank account. The realization of what her life had been—what her parents’ lives had been—was beginning to burrow through her mental blockades. Every house on every street is really just a family facade. We look at it and think we know what’s going on inside, but we never really have any idea. That was one thing, sure—to be fooled that way. She could get past that. But to be on the inside, to live behind the facade and still realize she had no idea of the unhappiness, the broken dreams, the lies and delusions being played out right in front of her, made Kat just want to sit on this perfect leather couch and sip this primo beverage and let it all slip into the wonderful numb.

“Kat?”

“I’m listening.”

“What’s going on with you and Captain Stagger?”

“You don’t want to get in the middle of that, Chaz.”

“Are you coming back soon?”

“I don’t know. It’s not important.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” Kat said. It was time to change subjects. “I thought you wanted to see me about the numbered Swiss bank account.”

“I did, yes.”

“Well?”

Chaz put the glass down. “I did what you asked. I reached out to your contact at the Department of Treasury. I just asked him if he could put the account on their watch list. The list is huge, by the way. I guess the IRS is going hard after the secret Swiss accounts, and the Swiss are fighting back. Unless there is a strong hint of terrorism, they’re pretty backlogged, so I don’t think they’ve picked up on this yet.”

“Picked up on?”

“You said the account was new, right?”

“Right. Supposedly Dana Phelps just opened it.”

“When exactly?”

“I don’t know. From what her financial guy said, I’d assumed that she set it up two days ago when she transferred the funds into it.”

“That can’t be,” Chaz said.

“Why not?”

“Because someone already issued a Suspicious Activity Report on it.”

Kat put the glass down. “When?”

“A week ago.”

“Do you know what the report said?”

“A Massachusetts resident transferred over three hundred thousand dollars into that same account.”

Chaz opened up the laptop sitting on the coffee table and began to type.

“Do you have the name of the person who made the transfer?” Kat asked.

“No, it was left out of the report.”

“Do you know who issued the SAR?”

“A man named Asghar Chuback. He’s a partner at an investment firm called Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell Investments and Securities. They’re located in Northampton, Massachusetts.”

Chaz spun the laptop toward her. The Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell web page was the digital equivalent of thick ivory stock and embossed logos—rich, fancy, upper class—the kind of design that told those without eight-figure portfolios not to bother.

“Did you tell Detective Schwartz about this?” Kat asked.

“Not yet. Frankly, he didn’t seem all that impressed with the stolen license plate.”

There were links on the site for wealth management, institutional services, global investments. There was a lot of talk about privacy and discretion. “We’ll never get them to talk to us,” Kat said.

“Wrong.”

“How so?”

“I thought the same thing, but I made the call anyway,” Chaz said. “He’s willing. I made you an appointment.”

“With Chuback?”

“Yep.”

“For when?”

“Anytime tonight. His secretary said he’s working with the overseas market and will be there all night. Weird, but he seems anxious to talk. The ride should take about three hours.” He snapped the laptop closed and stood. “I’ll drive.”

Kat didn’t want that. Yes, she trusted Chaz and all, but she still hadn’t told him all the details, especially about the personal Jeff-Ron connection. That wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted around the precinct. Plus, much as he might be getting better, three hours in a car with Chaz—six hours round-trip—was something she wasn’t yet ready to handle.

“I’ll drive myself up,” she said. “You stay here in case we need some kind of follow-up.”

She expected an argument. She didn’t get one.

“Okay,” he said, “but it’ll be faster if you just take my car. Come on. The garage is around the corner.”

 • • •

Martha Paquet carried her suitcase to the door. The suitcase was old, predating the invention of the rolling ones, or maybe Harold had been too cheap, even back then. Harold hated to travel, except twice a year when he did a “Vegas run” with his drinking buddies, the kind of trip that caused cringing winks and snickers from all upon their return. For those outings, he used a fancy Tumi carry-on—it was only for his use, he said—but he’d taken that, and pretty much everything else of value in their condo, years ago, before the final divorce. Harold didn’t wait for the courts. He rented a U-Haul, took everything he could from the condo, and told her, “Try to get it back, bitch.”

Long time ago.

Martha looked out the window. “This is crazy,” she said to her sister, Sandi.

“You only live once.”

“Yes, I know.”

Sandi put her arm around her. “And you deserve this. Mom and Dad would so approve.”

Martha arched her eyebrow. “Oh, I doubt that.”

Her parents had been deeply religious people. After years of domestic abuse at the hands of Harold—no reason to go into that—Martha had ended up moving back here to help Dad take care of her terminally ill mom. But as it often plays out, Dad, the healthy one, had died of a sudden heart attack six years ago. Mom had finally passed last year. Mom had firmly believed she was going to Paradise with Dad—claimed she couldn’t wait for that day—but that hadn’t stopped her from fighting and scraping and enduring agonizing treatments to hang on to this mortal coil.

Martha had stayed with her mother the whole time, living in this house as her nurse and companion. She didn’t mind. There was no talk of sending Mom to hospice or a nursing home or even hiring someone. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it, and Martha, who loved her mother dearly, would never have asked.

“You put your life on hold long enough,” Sandi reminded her. “You’re due for some fun.”

She was, she guessed. There had been attempts at relationships after the divorce, but her caring for Mom, not to mention her own wariness after Harold, got in the way. Martha never complained. It wasn’t her way. She was glad for her lot in life. She didn’t ask or expect more. That wasn’t to say she didn’t long.

“It only takes one person to change your life,” Sandi said. “You.”