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Authors: Judith Arnold

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“Scones?” He shot an even more bemused look at Sally.

“I bring leftovers home from the café. Blueberry scones are her favorite.” She headed down the hall to the kitchen to get Rosie some animal crackers. She supposed she should offer Todd a drink or something, too. He hadn't offered her anything at his home yesterday, but she could be more hospitable than he was. “Would you like a beer?”

The question seemed to stun him. He halted in the kitchen doorway, staring at her as if he wasn't sure who she was. She hoped he'd say no to the beer, because there were limits to how sociable she wanted to be—especially while he had the Laura letters in his possession. But she didn't regret having offered the drink, because it threw him off balance.

“No, thanks,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

She tossed her bag onto the table and pulled a box of animal crackers from the cabinet for Rosie. “Go ahead and ask,” she said, setting the box on the table before Rosie.

His gaze circled the room, taking in the stained-glass
ornaments that hung on hooks suctioned to the window, the sun filtering through the tinted glass to spray multicolored light on the opposite wall. He continued his survey of the room, which was larger than his kitchen but furnished with older appliances. Several of Rosie's drawings were fastened to the refrigerator with magnets. A wicker basket filled with coupons, pencil stubs and scraps of string stood on the counter. The braided rug on the floor was slightly off center. Rosie had probably kicked it out of position when she'd scampered into the room.

“Do you wanna learn how to play DragonKeeper?” she asked before taking a lusty bite of one of the crackers. “I'm real good at that game, too. I'm prob'ly the best computer-game player I know, now that Daddy is dead.”

“I can't believe your father was much of a computer-game player,” Todd remarked. “He had too much important work to do.”

Oh, yes. Important work, Sally thought, suppressing a snort. Important work like plugging people's names into boilerplate wills and proofreading real-estate sales contracts. And scheduling rendezvous with his paramour. Very, very important work.

Todd let his gaze settle on the doorway. Sally guessed that he wanted to leave the kitchen. To get away from Rosie, no doubt. If Sally had been feeling vindictive, she would have ignored his hint and made herself comfortable in the kitchen, forcing him to remain there, as well. But he'd been exerting himself to be nice, so she decided to exert herself, too. Kissing the crown of Rosie's head, she said, “Daddy's friend and I will be in the living room.”

Todd gestured for her to precede him from the kitch
en, and he followed her into the living room. Unlike his, it wasn't teeming with books and model cars. It was occupied by a collection of stuffed beasts—Rosie's menagerie—and enough potted plants to reforest large swaths of Brazil. Teeming with life and color, it was a much prettier living room than Todd's.

Sally settled on the sofa, and he perched on the ottoman in front of what had once been Paul's easy chair. Paul used to growl whenever anyone else sat in it, and for the first few months after he died, Sally hadn't been able to bring herself to use it. Once she'd found the letters, however, she'd happily slouched in it, desecrating it by propping sweating glasses of iced tea on the upholstered arms of the chair and resting her feet on the ottoman without removing her shoes first. Who cared? Her husband had defiled their marriage. She could defile his chair.

She watched Todd fold and unfold his thick fingers, tap his foot, scrub a hand through his hair. Then he offered a patently strained smile. “I was going through that list I found on one of the disks from Paul's office,” he said.

“The list of his classmates from prep school?”

“I don't think they're from prep school,” Todd told her. “I called a few of the numbers. I went oh-for-five. None of them prepped with Paul.”

She tried not to look as curious as she felt. She was grateful to Todd for sharing this information with her, and it made her want to know more. “Who were they?”

“Other lawyers, mostly.”

“Really? All those names?” Just a bit more proof that there were too many lawyers in the world. “Why was he storing their phone numbers on a disk?”

“I thought you might know.”

She pondered the possibilities. “He wasn't serving on any American Bar Association committees,” she said. “Maybe he was planning to run for office in the ABA.”

“One of them said something…” He eyed her, as if trying to decide whether to share his information with her.

She gave him what she hoped was an ingratiating smile.

“He implied that Paul wasn't satisfied with his current position.”

“You mean, he was thinking of leaving Wittig, Mott, Driver?” Sally fell back against the sofa cushions. A strange lump dug into the small of her back. Reaching behind her, she pulled Mr. Pinko, Rosie's stuffed baby pig, from where he'd been wedged into the upholstery and tossed him onto the floor with the other animals. “No,” she said. “He would have told me if he'd been planning to leave the firm. He had no reason to want to leave. His home was here in Winfield. His family. His roots.” But not his mistress. Laura Hawkes was in Boston.

Oh, God. Had he been planning to abandon her and Rosie? To move to Boston, join another firm and start a new life with Laura?

That Sally could have been living with him, sleeping with him, building her life with him while he'd been plotting under her nose to run off and join a new practice sent a ripple of horror through her. She already knew she'd been blind when it came to her husband; now she was learning she'd also been deaf and extremely dumb.

“Maybe he wasn't looking for another firm to join,” Todd suggested. “There were at least fifty names on that list. Why would he be looking into fifty different partnerships? I think maybe the list was for something else.”

She tapped her fingers together to burn off nervous energy. “Maybe it was a list of experts,” she suggested. “Lawyers who'd tried certain kinds of cases. He might have wanted to have a list so if he ever faced a similar case he could call someone for help.” As if he ever faced a case in Winfield that would have taxed his knowledge of the law. Oh, those wills and real-estate transactions! Bring on the courtroom powerhouses!

“Well, here's what I was wondering,” Todd said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe Laura is one of those names. I know, they were all men's names, and the few I called were men. But they could have been covering for Laura, or Laura could have been the partner of one of them. And she
could
have been on the list. Some of the names had just initials.”

“Was there an ‘L'?”

“No, but…Look, if he was having an affair that he didn't want anyone to know about, he'd disguise her name, wouldn't he?”

“By hiding it in a list of fifty other names? Or do you think he was having affairs with all fifty people on the list?” It was an outrageous charge. Paul didn't have enough energy to have that many affairs. Even as fit as he was, he'd never have been able to juggle fifty tootsies. He'd still been making love to Sally, after all. Sally plus Laura plus fifty more? No way.

“Or maybe Laura was the wife of one of them. Maybe they were lawyers he'd met at parties, and Laura was at one of the parties.”

“If he went to parties, he didn't take me along,” Sally told him. As happy as she'd been not to have to socialize with his business associates, now she wondered whether
he'd been even happier. Without her by his side, he'd been free to hit on other women.

If he went to parties. Which, Sally was reasonably sure, he didn't. Not very often. Not in Winfield.

“I was really hoping you might be able to help me out here,” he said. She didn't like the way Todd was looking at her. His eyes were too dark, too beseeching. She could imagine him asking for a bank loan, or wheedling information for a newspaper article out of the mayor, or inquiring if a sweet young thing might consider spending the night with him. With his dark, dangerously beautiful eyes, he probably had an easy time of enticing people into doing his bidding.

She wasn't a mayor or a loan officer, and she definitely wasn't a sweet young thing. Yet simply looking at him made her regret that she couldn't help him out.

She could. She could tell him about Laura Hawkes in Boston. She'd found out about Laura Hawkes herself, outinvestigating the investigative reporter with a fancy degree from an Ivy League school of journalism, the fellow with a million connections in town, the man who knew about everything and everyone, from the mayor to Joey the Crazy Guy, who stood on the corner of Main and East streets, playing a steel drum and improvising calypso songs about the pedestrians strolling past him, from the president of Winfield College to the locals who played pool all night in the neon-lit bars on the south side of town.

But he didn't know about Laura Hawkes.

Sally did.

He'd come to her hoping she could help him. If she wanted to, she could. If she thought about the fact that they'd both been deceived by Paul, and he did have that
list and it might hold some vital piece of information that she might eventually need…

She could help him. If she felt like it. If she forgot how annoying it was to have him staring at her with those deep-set eyes, using them to seduce her into not hating him.

Or she could help him for the extremely selfish reason that joining forces with him might enable her to find Laura Hawkes more quickly and efficiently.

“All right,” she said. She'd probably regret mentioning this once she thought about it, but she didn't feel like thinking about it anymore. She didn't feel like acknowledging that Todd had somehow gotten to her. She was tired—it had been a long day—and for some reason, she didn't have the strength to despise him right now. “I'm going to Boston this weekend to find a woman,” she said. “Her name is Laura Hawkes, and Paul knew her, and maybe she's the one. If you want, you can come, too.”

Six

S
ally stood on her front porch, hands planted on hips, and glowered at his car. “You drive a Snob?”

“It's a
Saab
,” he said, clamping a lid on his temper, “and I'm doing the driving today.” He had to remember that she'd been extraordinarily generous in sharing her information with him—and letting him accompany her to Boston. But he'd be damned if he'd travel to Boston in her car. She drove a soup can on wheels, and if he was going to embark on a two-hour drive, particularly with her in the seat next to him, he wanted to make sure his transportation wouldn't conk out en route.

Her little girl pushed past her and scampered down the porch steps. “What a cool car!” she screeched.

Take that, Sally
, he thought smugly.
Your daughter has better taste in cars than you
. And why shouldn't she? She carried Paul's DNA in every cell of her stumpy little body.

Sally descended from the porch at a plodding pace, disapproval emanating from her in nearly palpable waves. Todd stood resolutely beside his silver 900S. Three years old, it took as good care of him as he did of it. Its five-speed manual gave him the power he needed, and its leather seats gave him the comfort he deserved.

She frowned as she circled the car, scrutinizing its
slanting hatchback as if it were the devil's personal ski slope. “Well, if you insist on doing the driving, I'm going to have to get Rosie's car seat.”

“Her what?” He spun around, searching for the little girl he'd fleetingly liked because she'd said nice things about his wheels.

“Her car seat.” Sally yanked up the garage door and vanished inside.

“She's not coming with us, is she?” he shouted into the garage's shadows.

Sally emerged holding an object of molded plastic layered with padding in strategic places. “Of course she's coming with us. What did you think, I'd leave her home alone?”

“No. I thought you'd leave her home with a baby-sitter.”
Like a normal person
, he added silently.

“She's coming with us,” Sally said with finality. “Does that car of yours—” her nose twitched in disapproval when she uttered the word
car
“—have a tape deck or a CD player?”

“A CD player.”

“Fine.” Sally ducked back into the garage for a moment, then returned, still carrying the car seat. Her voluminous straw tote bag dangled by its straps from her forearm, and her broad-brimmed straw hat was going to block his side vision if she insisted on wearing it in the car. She also had on one of her billowy dresses, a soft blue shade that seemed to mirror the cloudless spring sky, white anklets and leather sandals.

He watched with increasing apprehension as she swung open the back door of his car, arranged Rosie's seat and set her straw hat on the leather upholstery next to it. “Okay, Rosie—hop in!” she hollered to the kid, who seemed to have vanished. “Rosie? Rosie!”

The girl darted into view from the side of the house. “I was just saying goodbye to Trevor,” she explained as she climbed into the seat. Sally belted her into place and straightened up.

Todd felt trapped. Sure, she'd been generous, but that didn't give her the right to subject him to her child for a long drive. Especially when the child had on a stupid purple hat. What was it with these Driver women and their hats?

He was not a hat person. His hair was too thick. It felt clumpy under a hat—and when the hat was removed, his hair looked even clumpier. Sally's straw hat seemed to have had a negligible effect on her hair, which flowed down her back in long, undisciplined ripples of red-tinged brown.

She made herself ominously at home in the passenger seat, arranging her skirt, propping her tote on the floor beneath the glove compartment, smoothing the shoulder belt between her breasts and folding her hands in her lap. Shoving his misgivings to a vacant corner of his brain, he got in behind the wheel, revved the engine aggressively—just in case Sally had any questions about how powerful his beloved car was—and backed out of her driveway.

She's doing you a favor
, he reminded himself.
She's cutting you in on her deal
. That fact only added to his irritation, however. It pissed the hell out of him that she'd gotten information from Patty Pleckart, information he'd failed to get. For God's sake, he'd been Patty Pleckart's lover in high school, more or less. Why had Patty given the answer to Sally and not him?

Either because he hadn't posed the right questions and Sally had, or else because his performance with Patty in
high school had been so excruciatingly bad she was still punishing him for it all these years later.

“Where exactly in Boston are we going?” he asked.

“Just drive into town. We'll figure it out from there,” Sally said.

Her vagueness stoked his dread. “I like to know where I'm going.”

“I bet you never ask for directions, either.” She twisted in her seat to check out the kid. “Are you okay, Rosie?”

“I'm bored,” Rosie replied.

Terrific. They hadn't even reached the town limits, and Rosie was already bored. In another ten minutes, she'd probably be screaming at the top of her lungs. In fifteen, she'd be trying to climb out the window. Where was the child-lock button for the back-seat windows? He knew there was a switch somewhere that would prevent Rosie from opening them, but he had no idea where it was. Before today, the button had been irrelevant to his life.

Sally turned forward, dug through her bag and pulled out a compact disc. She scrutinized his dashboard and pressed the radio power button. “Good Vibrations” blasted through the rear speakers, causing Rosie to shriek.

He twisted the volume dial to a quieter setting. Obviously, the child's delicate eardrums couldn't withstand classic rock.

“You listen to The Beach Boys?” Sally asked incredulously.

“It's up to the deejay what I listen to,” he said. He wasn't going to defend his choice in radio stations to her. She probably liked New Age stuff, gongs and bells and flute-voiced women chanting holistic gibberish. He
loved rock. Any kind, old, new or in between. Every FM button on his car radio was set to a rock station.

If Sally's CD had gongs and bells and flute-voiced women on it, Todd was going to object, loudly and firmly.

She studied the radio's controls long enough to figure out how to make the CD tray slide out. “I hope you don't mind,” she thought to mention before inserting the CD. He braced himself for gongs.

Instead he heard the strum of an acoustic guitar, and a chipper male voice embark on a cute, bouncy jingle: “I'm a porcupine and I'm okay, just as long as you stay away…”

“What the hell is that?”

“‘Animal Sweet,'” she told him.

“What the hell is ‘Animal Sweet'?”

“They sing songs about animals. Sweet is a pun—it's like the songs are a suite. S-U-I-T-E,” she clarified, maybe for Rosie's sake. Todd was a newspaper editor; he knew how to spell.

They'd reached the Mass Pike. He had never in his life suffered from motion disturbance, but the prospect of driving east for the next hour and a half listening to songs about animals gave him an idea of what car sickness might feel like. “You'd rather listen to this than The Beach Boys?”

“It's Rosie's favorite CD.”

“Rosie's taste in music sucks.”

Sally glanced over her shoulder again, as if concerned that Rosie might have heard this unforgivable insult. She couldn't have heard it; she was singing along with the CD. “‘I'm spiny and shiny and whiny sometimes, I'm sticky and tricky and prickly sometimes, and I'm a por
cupine
all-l-l-l-l
the time!'” Her voice was lusty and painfully flat.

“She's only five,” Sally whispered, turning back to him.

“You shouldn't have brought her along.”

“She loves Boston.”

“She's only five,” he said, tossing Sally's words back at her. “How can she love Boston?”

Sally's fingers curled palmward and she pursed her lips. “The truth is, she's never been to downtown Boston before. It's important for children to visit cities. I never saw a city until I was fourteen—and the city was Albany, New York, so it hardly counted. I want my daughter to grow up exposed to different things.”

So far, her daughter had been exposed to a flaky mother and a two-timing father. Compared with them, Boston was safe and dull. “You never saw a city until you were fourteen?”

“I never went anywhere.”

“Why not?”

Sally sighed. “I wasn't…” Another sigh. He let his gaze stray from the highway long enough to catch a glimpse of her faint, wistful smile. “I wasn't raised the way you were. Or Paul. I grew up in a trailer behind my grandparents' house in a little podunk town forty miles from Albany. There was nothing to do there, nowhere to go. People watched television, they shopped at the local stores, and for excitement they tried to come up with ways to separate the tourists from their money.”

“Tourists?”

“Trout fishermen. I grew up in trout country.”

Trout country. He hadn't known such a thing existed.

“We had some of the finest trout rivers in the world running through our area. People would come from all
over to fish. The local stores would overcharge them for everything. A ten-dollar hamburger. A five-dollar glass of beer.”

“It sounds like Boston,” he commented. “Except for the trout.”

“Anyway, I think Rosie should be raised with a broader perspective on things. She should know that a universe exists beyond Winfield, and it's hers to explore.” Sally sighed yet again. “Besides,” she said in a quieter voice, as if Rosie might hear over the cloying “Animal Sweet” music that filled the car, “I want this Laura person to see Paul's daughter. I want her to see what she was jeopardizing: the happiness of the sweetest, brightest, most vulnerable little girl in the world.”

Sweet, bright
and
vulnerable
were not words he would use to describe Rosie Driver. She struck him more as the kind of girl who believed the whole wide world existed for the sole purpose of giving her something to explore.

He sent another quick look Sally's way. A trailer dweller from trout country. Why hadn't he known this? Why hadn't Paul told him? Had Paul been afraid Todd would sneer?

He wasn't that narrow-minded, even if he did drive a Snob—a
Saab
. And he hadn't had to know about Sally's deprived background to sneer at her. He'd done ample sneering based on the assumption that she was a waitress who'd conned his best friend into marrying her. Which she was.

But never to have seen a city until she was fourteen? And then to lose her urban virginity to
Albany?
It was almost tragic.

They drove for a while in silence—or at least, as much
silence as could exist with “Animal Sweet” resonating from Todd's top-of-the-line Bose speakers. A new song began: “Why get a puppy when you can get a guppy?”

“This music is really bad,” he muttered.

“I didn't have to tell you about Laura Hawkes,” Sally reminded him just a touch defensively.

“If you'd gone into Boston alone, you would have botched it. You need me here with you to make sure the whole thing doesn't get fucked up.”

“Number one, I don't need you here, there or anywhere. And number two, watch your language. Rosie's only five.”

“I know how old she is,” he retorted, though he silently pledged to avoid swearing around the kid. “And you do need me. Your car would have died somewhere west of Worcester. It's not fit for long-distance driving.”

“How do you know that?”

“Paul told me.”

“He told you my car wasn't fit for long-distance driving?”

“He told me it wasn't fit for a run to the supermarket.”

“He never mentioned his concerns to me.” She lapsed into thought for a moment. “Do you suppose he wanted my car to die on me?”

Good question. If Paul had been concerned enough about the condition of Sally's car to discuss it with Todd, why hadn't he discussed it with Sally? Why hadn't he suggested that she ditch the car and buy herself something more reliable? It wasn't as if they couldn't afford a new vehicle.

Had he wanted Sally to get stranded somewhere? Had he wanted her to wind up on the shoulder of a road, trying to flag down a passing motorist for help because
her car had given up the ghost? What if she'd been picked up by a sicko, a demented road warrior looking for someone to rape and then slaughter? Was that what Paul had wanted for his wife?

Or had he simply been making snide jokes about her car—as Todd recalled, Paul had described it as something that might pass for a lawn ornament in certain less enlightened parts of Appalachia—as a substitute for making snide jokes about her?

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