Текст книги "The Perfect Stranger"

Автор книги: Wendy Corsi Staub

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

They’re strangers, Landry . . .

With Rob’s comment echoing in her ears, and now this, suddenly, it seems not only possible, but plausible . . .

Still, maybe she’s just paranoid.

Who wouldn’t be, sitting here being interrogated by a homicide detective?

Okay, this isn’t an interrogation; it’s an interview. She knows there’s a distinct difference between the two, and Detective Burns made it very clear up front that she was interested in conducting the latter.

But now that the woman has abruptly stopped taking notes and is sitting there as if she’s just been handed an incriminating piece of evidence, Landry backtracks through the conversation, wondering what she could possibly have said to inspire the reaction.

She was merely spelling Jaycee’s name, and Detective Burns was in the midst of writing it down. Before that . . .

Shifting her weight in the chair as if snapping out of a trance, the woman resumes writing, then looks up again at Landry.

“Jaycee. You say she lives in New York? As in New York City?”

“That’s right.”

Detective Burns types something into her laptop, focused on the screen as she asks, “What else do you know about her?”

“She has some kind of corporate job—”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Now the detective is looking at her. “But she told you this?”

Landry considers the question. Did Jaycee actually tell her, or did she simply infer it based on the fact that Jaycee was frequently traveling and talking about meetings?

“I’m not sure.”

The follow-up questions come fast and furious, punctuated by the tapping keys of Detective Burns’s keyboard: How long has Jaycee been blogging? Has Landry ever met her in person? Ever spoken to her on the phone? What does Jaycee sound like? What does she look like?

“I’ve never seen her,” is Landry’s response to the last question. “She doesn’t post personal pictures.”

Seeing the expression on the detective’s face as she utters those words, Landry realizes that they do, indeed, seem incriminating.

“But lots of people don’t post photos of themselves,” she finds herself hastily adding, struck by the instinct to protect Jaycee.

Why?

Because I’m sure she’s innocent?

Or just because she’s one of us?

That, she realizes, is the reason, pure and simple. It was the same back in her sorority days. She didn’t know some of her sisters nearly as well as others, and while she loved many of them, there were a few she didn’t even like very much. Still, they were bound by sisterhood and had each other’s backs, always.

Looking thoughtful, Detective Burns returns her gaze to the screen and rhythmically taps the same key on her laptop—as if she’s scrolling down a page, Landry thinks. Probably Jaycee’s blog.

She asks a few other questions about Jaycee—questions Landry can’t answer, like whether she’s married or has children; where she grew up; exactly when she was diagnosed; where she might be today, at this very minute.

“All right,” the detective says, in a shifting gears tone, “let’s take a look at something.”

Relieved to be moving on to a new topic, Landry watches her type something on her keyboard, wait and then peer at the screen.

After a moment Detective Burns turns the laptop around so it’s facing Landry. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Landry leans in to look. There’s a glare, and she can’t see anything until she reaches out and tilts the screen at a different angle.

Now the image on the screen is plainly visible—and instantly recognizable. Landry immediately says, “That’s Jenna Coeur. I actually just read an article about her in the newspaper this morning, on the plane.”

“How much do you know about her?”

“Quite a bit,” she admits. “I’ve seen all her movies—I mean who hasn’t? But I also read a lot of celebrity magazines and books, and I read that true crime best seller a few years ago. Coldhearted, I think was the title, and it was . . .”

She trails off as a terrible, preposterous thought occurs to her.

“You don’t think Jenna Coeur had something to do with Meredith’s death?”

“Do you?” the detective returns.

“No! Why would she? It’s not like she and Meredith knew each other . . .”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’m positive.”

“Because Jenna Coeur was at the funeral today. So obviously, there was a connection.”

Speechless, Landry can only shake her head, her mind reeling.

Surely Meredith would have mentioned a personal connection with a woman who went overnight from being one of the most beloved movie stars of the twenty-first century to one of the most notorious murderesses of all time. That’s not the kind of thing you keep to yourself. Not if you’re Meredith, who not only appreciated, but seemed to share, her own interest in all things Hollywood.

One of Meredith’s many off-topic-of-breast-cancer blogs was about her random brushes with celebrity, like spotting Nicolas Cage in a New Orleans restaurant and seeing one of the Real Housewives at an airport. That was a popular post: most of the other bloggers shared their own celebrity run-ins in the comments section. Kay mentioned Timothy McVeigh’s execution at the prison where she worked. You’d think that alone would have inspired Meredith to mention her own connection to another notorious criminal.

When Jenna Coeur’s televised high-profile trial was unfolding, it seemed like the entire world was tuned into Court TV—including Rob, who was far more interested in the legal posturing than the movie star aspect of the case.

Jenna wasn’t convicted, but only because she had the best defense team her millions could buy. She reportedly wanted to take the stand, but her lawyers refused to allow her to testify. Later, she never issued a statement other than to say—through her attorneys—that she was relieved the ordeal was over, was grateful to her legal team, and would appreciate privacy as she tried to rebuild her life.

That didn’t seem likely. Every journalist in the country sought the big interview with her. But she never stepped back into the spotlight to proclaim her own innocence. She simply faded into obscurity . . .

Only to pop up today at Meredith Heywood’s funeral in Ohio?

It made no sense. None whatsoever.

“If Meredith knew Jenna Coeur, she probably would have mentioned it at some point. So I honestly don’t think she did,” Landry tells the detective again. It’s either that, or I didn’t know Meredith.

“Unless,” Detective Burns says, “Meredith wasn’t aware that she knew Jenna Coeur.”

Momentarily confused, Landry digests the comment and her eyes widen. “You think they were connected online?”

“It’s feasible, isn’t it?”

Landry nods slowly as her mind hurtles through various scenarios. Plucking the most logical one, she asks, “So you think she was lurking on Meredith’s blog?”

“Maybe lurking. Or maybe interacting, but disguised.”

“I didn’t even know she had cancer.” You’d think something like that would get out.

“Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s just pretending she does.”

Landry’s jaw drops. “Why would anyone in their right mind—” She cuts herself off. No one in her right mind would fake cancer. Just as no one in her right mind would slaughter her own daughter in cold blood.

Cold-blooded . . . coldhearted . . .

That’s Jenna Coeur.

Detective Burns rests her elbow on her table and her chin in her hand. “Tell me again,” she says with quiet deliberation, “what you know about your blogger friend Jaycee.”

Wondering why she’s abruptly shifting gears, Landry tries to tear her thoughts away from Jenna Coeur and focus on the question at hand. Belatedly, she realizes that the detective is pronouncing Jaycee’s name oddly, without the emphasis on the first syllable and with a distinct pause before the second.

Then it hits her: Detective Burns hasn’t shifted gears at all.

“You think . . .” Landry shakes her head in disbelief, even as a forgotten thought tries to barge back into her head. “You think Jaycee is really Jenna Coeur?”

She pauses for the inevitable response—“Do you?”—but receives only a shrug.

Jaycee . . .

J.C. . . .

Jenna Coeur . . .

An elusive thought flits at the edge of her consciousness. There’s something she should remember . . .

“Can I take a quick look at her blog page?” she asks the detective, gesturing at the laptop. “I just want to see . . . maybe there’s something there that will give her away if it’s her.”

“Be my guest. I don’t think there is, though.”

Landry clicks over to Jaycee’s blog, noting that there have been no new entries all week. That’s not unusual—none of them have been posting. She’d assumed everyone is, like her, too shell-shocked by Meredith’s death—not wanting to put the loss into words yet, but not able to write about anything else, either.

“She usually writes about general topics related to breast cancer—usually political stuff, criticizing spending, encouraging lobbying . . . that sort of thing.”

“Jenna Coeur was one of Hollywood’s most vocal political activists.”

“That’s right. I remember.” Truly, she knows her movie stars. Reads about them, follows them online, watches those gossipy infotainment shows on television . . .

And there’s something . . .

Something else . . .

“It’s not a stretch to think that if she wanted to pose as a blogger,” Detective Burns is saying, “she’d cover topics that might actually mean something to her.”

“No, that does make sense.”

Landry scrolls down the page, tap, tap, tapping the down arrow key, knowing there’s something she should be remembering.

Frustrated, she flips over to her own blog and clicks to the archived entry about brushes with celebrity, wondering whether Jaycee contributed to the barrage of comments. As she scans them, finding nothing, the detective continues to question her.

“When you spoke to her on the phone this week, did she—”

“Oh my God! That’s it! That’s the thing I was trying to—when she called me, it was from a California area code. She said she was at a hotel in L.A.”

“Do you still have the number? Was it on your home phone, or—”

“No, it was on my cell . . .” Landry is already pulling it out of her pocket. “And at the time, I thought there was something familiar about her voice . . . I kept thinking she reminded me of someone. No wonder.”

She quickly scrolls through the call log, hoping the number is still there.

It is.

She reads it off to Detective Burns, who jots it down, then grabs the laptop and enters it in a search engine. “She wasn’t lying about where she was. The number belongs to a hotel off the Sunset Strip. Do you have a phone number for her in New York, or her cell?”

“No—yes!” Landry remembers. “She gave me her cell, then hung up before I could get the home number.”

“Do you have it in your phone contacts?”

“No, I wrote it down somewhere at home.”

“Do you think you can get it?”

“I can try.”

Detective Crystal nods and gestures at the phone in Landry’s hand.

“Oh—you mean right now?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll just call home and . . .” She dials the house, trying to remember where the number might be. For all she knows she scribbled it on a napkin and then mistakenly threw it away.

Rob answers. “What’s up? Everything okay? How’d it go with the detective?”

“I’m still . . . listen, can you do me a quick favor? I need you to find a phone number I wrote down a few days ago. I might have put it on the bulletin board like I did the insurance cards.”

“I’ll check.”

He does, and reports that it’s not there. Hearing voices in the background, Landry asks, “Is that the kids? Can you put Addison on the phone?”

“Sure. Tucker’s here, too. You can talk to them both. But don’t you want that phone number first?”

“I do want it—that’s why I need Addison. She’s a lot better at finding things than y’all are.”

“Ouch,” he says mildly, and hands the phone over to their daughter.

“Mom?”

A new wave of homesickness washes over her with the sound of her daughter’s voice. “Hi, sweetie. I need your help. I wrote down a phone number the other day, probably on scrap paper, and it’s around there somewhere. Can you look for it? I was in my bedroom, I think, when I talked to her, so you might want to start there.”

“Sure. Hang on a second.”

Landry nods at Detective Burns. “My daughter’s looking.”

“Gotcha. For what it’s worth, my husband can never find anything either. Men, right?”

Caught up in the unexpected moment of female bonding, and forgetting all about why they’re here, Landry shakes her head with a smile. “Right. My son is the same way. Do you have kids?”

“I had a son.”

Had means she lost him—and Landry can see it in the sorrow in her dark brown eyes.

Before she can figure out what to say—what else is there, besides I’m so sorry?—Addison is back on the line. “I think I found it. Is it written in blue Sharpie on the back of a supermarket receipt?”

“That’s it. Can you read it off for me?”

Addison does, repeating it twice to make sure Landry gets it right as she relays it to Detective Burns, who immediately Googles it.

“Thanks, sweetie. I’ll call back a little later to talk to you and to Tucker, too.”

“Okay. I miss you. I love you.”

“I miss you and love you, too. I’ll be home tomorrow.”

Hanging up, she’s pretty sure she glimpses a fleeting bittersweet expression on Detective Burns’s face, and she wonders again about the child she lost.

But the moment is gone; the detective is frowning at the computer. “That’s the phone number for a sushi place in New York. Unless your daughter got it wrong.”

“She wouldn’t. But I’ll make sure.” She quickly texts Addison, asking her to double-check the number.

The response is, predictably, prompt and efficient. The number was right—as in wrong. As in, it looks like Jaycee deliberately withheld her real number.

“I’ll call it”—Detective Burns is already dialing– “just to be sure.”

Landry is sure even before she hears the detective say into the phone, “I’m sorry, I dialed the wrong number,” and hang up.

She looks at Landry. “That was Wasabi Express asking me for my take-out order. Looks like your friend Jaycee had no intention of letting you find her.”

Diagnosis: Trypanophobia

That’s the official name for this crippling lifelong affliction of mine. Trypanophobia, otherwise known as fear of needles.

Not just needles prodding into me, but into anyone at all. I’m ashamed to admit it, but when my kids were little, I used to have my mother—and then, after she passed away, a friend or neighbor—come with me to the pediatrician’s office on days they needed shots or to have blood drawn. I’d sit in the waiting room while someone else held my children’s hands as needles poked into their arms. I’ve always felt guilty about that. But I couldn’t help it.

I have thin veins; it’s never been easy for a nurse or doctor to tap into one without a whole lot of painful poking around. And if my phobia didn’t ease up with pregnancy or motherhood, then it sure as hell didn’t happen after my cancer diagnosis. If anything, it became worse than ever.

That was why I ultimately opted to have a port implanted to deliver chemo medication—not that I could avoid the needles even then. There were plenty of other reasons for doctors and nurses to jab me, sometimes repeatedly, with every office visit.

But I remind myself that the needles I’ve always dreaded have become my lifeline now. And that’s reason enough to put up with them and to wear every bandage that covers a bloody cotton ball like a badge of honor.

—Excerpt from Meredith’s blog, Pink Stinks

Chapter 12

Crossing the threshold to her Manhattan apartment at one o’clock Sunday morning, Jaycee locks the door behind her and peels off the blond wig at last. She throws it on the nearest surface—a table where she usually tosses what little incoming mail she receives here.

Mostly it’s just catalogues, fliers, takeout menus, and envelopes filled with coupons, addressed to Resident. The real stuff—bills, bank statements, correspondence, most of which is funneled through a mail drop—goes to Cory.

He’s been handling it all for her ever since the old days, when she was being hunted for drastically different reasons.

In some ways there’s quite a contrast in being sought-after because you’re a movie star and being sought-after because you’re a cold-blooded killer.

In other ways there’s no difference at all.

Back then she was often alone, and not by choice. Everyone wanted something from her. Everyone, it seemed, except Cory, and . . .

Her.

She’d thought Olivia was different. That was why she’d let her in. Trusted her, just as she’d trusted Steve all those years ago.

That time, it led to heartbreak. This time, it proved to be a fatal mistake . . .

Fatal for Olivia.

She closes her eyes, trying to forget, listening to the sound of her own breathing, and then . . .

Forty-odd stories below, sirens race down the avenue.

Sirens . . .

There were sirens that night. She’s the one who called 911 when it was over, hands sticky-slick with Olivia’s blood.

She doesn’t remember it, or what she said to the dispatcher.

But everything was admitted as evidence at the trial: the bloody fingerprints on the telephone, even—despite her lawyers’ protests, which were overruled—the recorded conversation that opened with her own voice—robotic, not frantic—reporting, “She’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?” the operator asked.

“Olivia. She’s—my daughter. I killed her.”

By the time the sensational headlines hit the morning papers—JENNA COEUR MURDERS TEEN DAUGHTER—she was under arrest, sitting in jail while Cory, ever the efficient manager, assembled the stellar defense team that would coach her through the trial and eventually get her off the hook.

Reasonable doubt was the key. Her lawyers moved heaven and earth to produce it.

She initially thought building a self-defense case would be a much safer bet, but they wouldn’t hear of it.

“In a parent’s murder of a child? No jury would buy it. Not with all the evidence against you.”

“But—”

“Look, Jenna, the prosecution is going to bring in a bunch of experts who are going to testify that you’re guilty as hell. And the jury is going to believe them. Unless—until—we blast holes into every one of those experts’ testimonies. Got it?”

She did get it—once she realized that her lawyers didn’t actually give a damn whether she was innocent or guilty. She’d hired them to get her acquitted, and they did.

Five years ago she walked out of jail a free woman. She spent the first two years contentedly hidden away at a Caribbean island home owned by her lead attorney. The only people who ever laid eyes on her were the household help, and they either didn’t recognize her or were paid well enough not to care who she was.

But she couldn’t stay there forever. With Cory’s help, she made her way back to New York. But it took months before she even dared emerge from her apartment.

She never would have dreamed she’d eventually agree to take part in Cory’s crazy plan, the one that led her to Meredith and the others . . .

And to being recognized by that detective at the funeral.

She has no doubt that at this very moment the homicide investigators are trying to figure out why Jenna Coeur would have been there.

Sooner or later they’re bound to make the connection, if they haven’t already.

But she sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around Cincinnati worrying about it.

No, much better to stick around here and worry about it, helpless as a bird with clipped wings in a treetop nest.

She opens her eyes and sighs.

The street sirens have faded into the distance.

Just one more week of this, she promises herself, kicking off her shoes and padding into the bathroom to scrub off her makeup. Next week at this time it will all be over and she can move on at last.

Wide-awake, too disturbed—and too cold—to sleep, Kay lies stiffly in the unfamiliar bed listening to the strange night sounds: thumps and footsteps from the other side of the wall, voices and closing doors in the hall, the on-off clunking and hum of the air-conditioning unit whose temperature she can’t seem to regulate.

If she could only get some rest . . .

Sometimes she lies awake at night worrying that cancer cells are growing again inside her body. Imagining how they will spread and destroy it, section by section, a stealthy predator bent on eventually robbing her of her senses, of her ability to reason, to move, to breathe . . .

Tonight she trades troubling thoughts of disease for speculation about the strange twist in the murder case.

Jenna Coeur . . .

When Detective Burns showed her the photo, she didn’t immediately recognize the woman.

“Should I?” she’d asked.

“Most people do.”

She shook her head. “Who is she?”

The moment Detective Burns said the name, the light dawned.

It would be hard to find a living soul who hadn’t heard of Jenna Coeur. Kay isn’t a movie fan and she doesn’t watch much TV, but you couldn’t really escape her altogether. The famed award-winning method actress was on the cover of every magazine and supermarket tabloid long before her notorious murder trial.

Detective Burns refreshed Kay’s memory a bit, and so did Landry and Elena, after they’d all been interviewed by the detectives—one of the most nerve-racking experiences of Kay’s entire life.

“This is my cell phone number,” Detective Burns said at the end, handing over a card. “If you think of anything else—anything at all—that might help us find out who did this to your friend, promise that you’ll call me right away. Any time of the day or night.”

Kay promised.

When it was over, she felt better that both Landry and Elena confessed that they, too, had been anxious—even more so now that they knew about the Jenna Coeur connection.

By then it was late. No one was in the mood to go out to dinner as they’d planned. The three of them just sprawled together on the bed in Elena’s room, sipping cocktails they mixed from the minibar and discussing the bizarre turn of events.

It was almost like an old-fashioned slumber party. Kay felt closer than ever to her new friends. Only, instead of telling scary, made-up stories, the three of them discussed the terrifying notion that Jaycee—their Jaycee—is really Jenna Coeur.

Detective Burns seems to think so, and both Elena and Landry believe it as well. Kay pretended to agree, because it was easier than arguing with two strong-willed women like that—particularly Elena. But deep down inside she isn’t convinced.

Maybe you just don’t want to be convinced.

Maybe it terrifies you to think that somebody in your little circle is not who she’s pretending to be.

“How much did you share with Jaycee?” the three of them took turns asking each other, worriedly.

They tried to remember how many details they’d revealed. For Kay, not a whole lot. Later, alone in her room, she went back over her e-mails and private messages just to be sure, although . . .

Does it really matter now?

Jaycee—or Jenna—whoever she is . . .

“She’s not going to come after us anyway,” Elena said firmly. “We don’t have to worry.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Landry agreed. “I just wish you hadn’t told her about next weekend.”

“She didn’t even respond. Don’t worry.”

Kay reluctantly suggested they cancel the girls’ getaway plans, but neither of them wanted to.

“We’re doing it, and you’re coming, too, Kay,” Elena said firmly, pulling out her phone. “Here, let’s get online and find you a plane ticket.”

“I don’t know. I’m not crazy about flying. I haven’t even been on a plane in years,” she confessed.

“I used to be a nervous flier,” Landry said. “Before cancer. But now I always think that if the plane crashes, well . . .” She shrugged. “It’s out of my hands.”

“And there are worse ways to go,” Elena added. “In a plane crash, you’re there one minute, gone the next. It’s not death that scares me. It’s dying.”

Kay told her that she feels exactly the same way.

Then she found herself remembering her mother’s final tortured weeks on this earth—not to mention the agonizing final blog posts from Whoa Nellie and others who had gone down that terminal road. And Meredith’s trepidation as she faced the final stages of her disease.

Meredith was terrified over the prospect of what might lie ahead. She didn’t want to go through that; didn’t want to put her family through it.

I’ve always been the kind of person, she wrote to Kay, who likes to get the first flight out the morning a vacation ends. Once I know it’s over and I have to go, I just want to go. Get it over with. It was like that when we left our kids off at college, too. No long, drawn-out good-byes for me. I couldn’t stand it. Years later the kids told me they were surprised I didn’t leave skid marks getting out of there, while all the other parents were lingering. Of course, they didn’t understand that it was because I loved them too much—not that I didn’t love them enough.

Thinking of her own mother, Kay wanted to tell Meredith that she knew all about not loving someone enough, both on the receiving end and on the giving end. But she didn’t say it.

She didn’t like to talk about her mother ever, not even with Meredith.

Despite her earlier exhaustion—when she didn’t know how she was going to keep her eyes open until sundown—Beck has yet to fall asleep. Now the sun is coming up again, casting rosy shadows through the crack in the sunshine-and-sky-colored curtains her mother hung at her bedroom windows the spring before she left for college. Cheerful curtains, Mom called them.

“I feel so bad we couldn’t afford to buy them until now,” she said. “You can take them with you, and the new bedspread, too, for your dorm room when you leave.”

“No,” Beck said. “They belong here, for when I come home.”

Home . . .

She’d never considered the concept before—never realized that home was less about the place than it was about people in it. Without Mom here, home has become just a house.

Now just she and her father are left to rattle around in it. Her brothers and their families left even before some of the postfuneral crowd did, but she, of course, is stuck here. She can’t leave Dad alone, and even if someone else were willing to stay with him—

Where would I go?

The house she shares with Keith is no longer home either.

I have no home.

What now?

Dad will sell the house. He’ll need a place to live. So will she. But not here, in Cincinnati. It would be too far a commute to her job in Lexington.

Anyway, there’s nothing really keeping Dad here now that Mom is gone. He doesn’t even have a job.

Maybe he’ll want to make a fresh start someplace new . . .

But . . .

All alone?

Will he be alone?

Thoughts of what might possibly happen next for him—for all of them—continue to spiral in Beck’s head until at last she gets out of bed, too depleted to lie here for another moment listening to the morning birds and the patio wind chimes tinkling gently below, stirred by a warm morning breeze that tickles the cheerful drapes.

Opening her bedroom door, she half expects to smell coffee brewing and hear pots and pans clattering in the kitchen. Mom always liked to make pancakes for breakfast on Sunday mornings. Even later, especially when the grandkids slept over. She liked to play restaurant with them the way she did with Beck and her brothers when they were little.

They got such a kick out of the way she’d pretend to be a waitress taking their orders, and would dream up all kinds of crazy things—beef-’n’-booger surprise was one of Beck’s brothers’ favorites, and now it’s her nephews’, too.

No matter what the kids would try to order, though, Mom would say, “One stinkerdoodle special, coming right up!”

Then she’d bring them a plate filled with pancakes that had smiley faces made out of chocolate chips or raisins.

On this Sunday morning, there are no pancakes on the griddle and there’s no coffee wafting in the air.

The house creeps with silent shadows as Beck descends to the first floor, on tiptoe in the hope that her father is still asleep on his recliner in the den.

He isn’t, though.

The door is ajar and the lamp is on; when she peeks in to check on him, she sees him sitting at his desk in front of the computer.

“Dad?”

He jumps, cries out.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing?”

“Nothing, just . . . nothing.” He pushes his reading glasses up onto his forehead and rubs his eyes.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asks him, and he shakes his head. “I didn’t either. I was going to make some coffee.”

He makes a face. “I drank enough coffee yesterday to kill someone.”

The words hang uncomfortably in the air for a moment.

“So did I,” Beck says, “but I need more anyway, if I’m going to make it through this day.”

“I’d better have some, too. Be there in a few minutes. I just want to finish something.”

He’s back to typing on the keyboard as she leaves the den.

In the kitchen, she starts the coffee, then busies herself reorganizing the kitchen cabinets, moving around all the serving bowls and platters well-meaning neighbors and friends insisted on washing last night before they left. At that point she was so tired of people she’d have been more appreciative if everyone had just cleared out of here and left the mess to her.

Now, as she puts things back where they belong, she finds that every piece invokes a memory. Mom always served Christmas cookies and Valentine’s Day brownies on the red oval platter. The big cut-glass bowl had held fruit salad at every Easter brunch. And she’d just seen the white ceramic pedestal plate a few weeks ago, holding the cheesecake she’d picked up at a bakery on her way into town. She’d been planning on baking one from scratch, using Mom’s own recipe, but she and Keith had gotten into a monster argument the night before and she didn’t have the time—or the heart—to putter in the kitchen.

She remembers wistfully watching her parents that day, thinking their marriage seemed idyllic compared to her own.

Well, whose wouldn’t?

Is it possible her perspective was skewed because of her own miserable life with Keith? Was she just imagining that her parents were happily married? Was there something brewing beneath the surface, something she should have noticed; something she could have stopped in time, had she only known?

No. Dad had nothing to do with what happened to her. He loved her. That was that.

And yet, another memory nibbles away at the edge of Beck’s consciousness; one she’s been trying to keep at bay.