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“Yeah, but then I had to marry him. You're not getting off that easy. You can beat me up later.”

“Promise?”

Her feet were moving now, shuffling beneath her in lockstep with the discomfort that was rising to the surface.

Eva was steadfast before her, as she had always been.

“I thought I understood what she was feeling. I thought I could predict what she would do. But this . . .” Rosalyn looked back at the blood and shook her head.

Eva's voice was firm as she took Rosalyn's arms, forcing her to look at her again. “You do know what she's feeling. And the fact that she drove a car into a tree instead of sleeping with that little weenie is
because
you know . . . because she has you for a mother and not Mrs. Eddings.”

“How can you say that?” Rosalyn looked at her with disbelief. “She could have been killed!”

“Yes, she could have been killed. But you're missing the point. She didn't go to her room to plot ways to get Kyle back. She ran from it, from everything she's feeling. She
ran.
She's crying out for help. Now it's up to you to give it to her.”

Rosalyn shook her head. She felt too damned tired to help anyone, to do anything at all but stare at the blackened snow. Her thoughts were spinning, the sense she had made of her daughter and Kyle Conrad was all but gone. Eva was wrong. She remembered everything. Jeb Ashton had been her Kyle Conrad twenty-five years before, and she would never forget the things she did whenever he asked, the price she paid to be with him and how happy it made her mother. But it was not Jeb Ashton who filled her thoughts every day.

“I still think about him, you know.”

Eva nodded. “I know.”

“Every day. Every goddamned day.”

“Be honest. Not
every
day. You probably didn't think about him the days you gave birth. All that yelling. All those drugs.”

“Okay, every day but five. And I Google him once in a while.”

“Ever find anything?”

Rosalyn shook her head. “He wasn't the Google type. Probably has a little farm somewhere. A perfect wife, three lovely kids.”

Eva looked at her with empathy. “You were seventeen. It was one summer in Paris. It was doomed from the start.”

Rosalyn's expression grew solemn, as though she were remembering the dead. “I wonder about that all the time. What if I had fought harder? What if
I hadn't caved in to my mother? I've never loved anyone like that again. Not ever. And now look at the life I have instead.”

“Rosalyn Barlow! Is that a tear I see? Christ, woman, get ahold of yourself.” Eva pulled her in and held her while she cried. It lasted a mere moment.

“This is the second time tonight,” Rosalyn said, stepping away to wipe her eyes.

“That's a record, I think.”

The two women smiled at each other.

“Can I ask you one more thing without having you fall to pieces?”

“Like it would matter anyway.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously? Okay. You can ask one more question.”

“Would you really have done anything differently if you'd had the choice?”

Rosalyn was taken by surprise. It had always been the story, the one they'd shared all these years, and the facts had never been disputed. Rosalyn had fallen in love in Paris, and her mother had forced her to return home to finish school, forced her to make amends with Jeb Ashton, to sell her soul for the good of the Eddings family reputation. They had threatened to disown her. She had been a victim, and later a survivor by moving away to college, dumping Jeb, and choosing Ernest Barlow. And as much as her love for Barlow had been real, her true love had been a casualty of her evil mother. Now Eva was questioning the bedrock of this history—a history that had become the core of her very being.

Had there been a choice? Not really. What could she have done at seventeen with no degree, no money? Still, to think she would have taken the same course of action on her own would change everything. She would no longer be a victim of her mother. She would be a product of her own making. Maybe she knew she could never live on a farm.

The answer was there, and despite its murky disposition, it was profoundly unsettling.

Rosalyn looked at Eva one last time before heading for the house. “I don't know,” she said. And that was the truth.

They walked across the snow in silence, their thoughts lost in years long gone. Rosalyn hugged Eva, then watched her drive off. Inside, the house was
quiet. Hoping to escape another lecture, the boys had gone to bed. Cait was in her room, the light was dim.

And Barlow was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of scotch. “Are you all right?” he asked of his wife as she walked in the room.

They hadn't spoken since the plane ride, since making love for the first time in nearly six months. Still, they had been gentle with each other, kind and soft with their words.

“I'm fine. You?” Rosalyn did not stop walking until she was settled in at her desk.

Barlow followed with his drink. “What are you doing?” he asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.

But she did not feel the same beneath his touch as she had for that brief moment on the plane. Instead, she felt entirely too much like herself. “Just looking over the schedule.”

She turned and smiled at him, though her hand reached for his and slowly removed it from her body. It was gone now, the need she'd felt on that plane that had been strong enough to overcome everything else that was still between them. His affair, the things he'd said to her, the worry for Cait and how to make this go away before the town returned from its vacation. She had things to do. Keep the Conrads out of the club, deal with her teenage son, and now rethink how to save her daughter. The wall was still there, and now the small window they had climbed through to reach each other had been closed.

Rosalyn looked at her screen, feeling Barlow beside her as he let the realization sink in. And when he did, he said nothing but instead retreated alone to their bedroom upstairs.

 

 

 

 

 

J
ACKS HEARD THE BUZZING
from her cell phone, but she let it be. They were on the porch that looked out at the Pacific, enjoying their morning coffee. The kids were playing on the beach with the nanny. The day was just beginning, and Jacks wanted to spend it like the others that had passed. Busy and distracted.

David sat beside her with the paper on his lap. It was his excuse not to talk, though she could tell he hadn't read a single word, because the page had not been turned for over twenty minutes. Still, he was there, he was present and, as always, playful with the children. He'd gone on the roller coasters at Disneyland, walked through the entire San Diego Zoo, and explored most of Legoland. Yesterday, he'd gone with the big kids for a surf lesson. Jeff the surfer with the lean, tan body and nipple piercings had found them waves and pushed them into shore, and David had crashed over and over, each time getting up with a smile on his face. It was so uncanny, this ability to fake life, that Jacks had begun to believe that he wasn't faking it at all—that everything was as fine as Kelly seemed to think. The case against him was over and that meeting with the Mafia lawyer was no longer of any consequence. There had been no phone calls, no ominous signs of doom that Jacks had begun to read into everything back home. So now, she
had decided to sit back and try like hell to get on the same ride they all seemed to be on.

“I'll get more coffee,” she said, smiling at her sister, who was watching the kids play. As she got up, she casually grabbed the phone from her purse and slipped inside.

Ducking into the bathroom when she saw the Barlows' number appear, she called for her messages. It was not like him to call like this, when he knew she was with David, but the voice she heard was not his. It was Rosalyn's. As she heard the news, she sank to the floor. Cait, the accident, the drugs. She thought about Barlow there, alone with his grief and worry. Rosalyn would be struggling in her own way, but Jacks knew them both too well to think they would find any lasting comfort in each other. This would have to be managed, and that would be Rosalyn's job. Barlow wouldn't have a job, and that was precisely why he would be such a mess. That, and the fact that he had been sleeping with his wife's best friend instead of tending to their daughter.

“We're all fine. I just wanted you to know so you wouldn't worry.” Rosalyn's last words were painful to hear. There was not a chance that she was feeling as stoic as she sounded, but the affair with Barlow would now keep Jacks from reaching out to either of them.

She held the phone in her hands as she sat on the bathroom floor, thinking. Then she got up and headed for the porch. “I'm going for a walk on the beach. Can you watch the kids?”

David looked up and smiled. “Sure, honey. Go for a walk.”

She leaned down and kissed him, catching his eyes as she pulled away. Something was in there, something alive that breathed air and spoke words. But it was not her husband. She was sure of it.

Kelly got up then, grabbing her sunglasses. “I'll come,” she said.

“Great. You two have fun.”

He was being too nice, too formal. It was eerie, and Jacks could tell that Kelly had sensed it as well. There was no other reason for her to come on the walk. Kelly didn't like exercise in any form, especially if it meant leaving her coffee behind.

They stopped to tell the nanny, say good-bye to the kids, then they were on their way.

“Was that Barlow?” It was the first thing Kelly said when the house disappeared from sight.

“Rosalyn, actually. Their daughter had an accident.”

Kelly stopped and faced her sister. “Is she . . .”

“She's fine. Maybe I should I call him?” Jacks pulled out the phone, but Kelly grabbed her arm.

“Wait. Just wait a minute.”

But Jacks didn't want to wait, she didn't want to stop or even slow down, for that matter. She needed to tend to one thing at a time, one crisis, one man, one day. And at the moment, that meant deciding what to do about the Barlows.

“Barlow can wait. He knows you're with your family. Besides, you said Rosalyn called.”

“He's probably too afraid.”

Kelly held her arm. “Just wait and see. See if he calls you.”

Jacks put the phone away and started to walk again.

Kelly chased after her sister, who was moving fast. “Hold on!” she called.

Stopping suddenly, Jacks could no longer contain the anxiety that had been coming all week.

“Something's wrong. I know it,” she said, almost pleading with Kelly to see what it was she was missing. Kelly had always been her beacon of reality. Kelly had seen far more.

“Can't you see how different he is? He's not himself, Kel. It's not my husband in that house.”

Kelly sighed and looked out at the ocean. The view was indescribable compared with the decay she saw from every window of her own life. Real or not, she wanted to hold on to it for as long as she could. But Jacks was waiting for an answer.

“Please . . . tell me you see it.”

Kelly closed her eyes, shutting out the surroundings that were tempting her to place reality on hold, even for a few more days.

“I see it,” she said finally. “I see it.”

It was their past that was now captured on David's face, in the pleasant but vacant expression it held and the absence of a human essence, the demarcations of a personality. He was in hiding within himself, and whether it was a conscious covering up of worry or a sign of a mental break mattered little to Kelly, because both scenarios pointed down the same road.

But it did matter to Jacks. This was her husband. “Tell me what it is, Kel. What has happened to him?”

“I don't know. I've told you everything I can about the investigation. Red is a little piece-of-shit drunk, and he could only do so much. There are no more letters, no more phone calls. Whatever is going on, we're not going to find it.”

Jacks began to pace, running her hands through her hair, which was blowing wildly in the wind.

“He hasn't been the same since that day. But nothing has happened. If something happened, I could deal with it. This is like fighting with a ghost,” she said, struggling now to keep her hair out of her face. “I'm really scared this time.”

“Stop it!” Kelly's face was flushed as she grabbed her sister's arms. “Just stop it. I won't be scared with you, do you hear me?”

Jacks looked at her, surprised by her outburst. “It's getting to you, too, isn't it? It was one thing when he was just in financial trouble. But this is different, isn't it? I told you. Something is wrong.”

Kelly closed her eyes again, this time to block out the face of her sister and to try to stop the thoughts that were once again in her mind. But it was not possible. It was all coming back, the past was now here, in the present in spite of everything they had done to keep it at bay. “I can see it, Jacks. I can see Daddy, the way he would disappear like that until he came back and then broke before our eyes. I can see it. Does that make you happy?”