to drag her protesting daughter away from her new friends. All before Pete arrived for the evening.
Pete, who had probably been on her trail for years.
Dana got to her feet in dismissal. “Thank you for caring. Lizzie and I are lucky.”
“You’ll be careful?” Tracy looked concerned.
“I’m the most careful person you’ve ever met.” Except, of course, this once, when caution had failed her completely.
The others stood, and Dana walked them down the driveway. All dreams of a better life for Lizzie had evaporated. If she and her daughter were lucky enough to get away, they would continue their hand-to-mouth existence. Before his death, Fargo had tried to set her life and Lizzie’s on a better path. Dana hoped it gained him points in whatever afterlife had awaited him.
Then again, her brother had never believed in an afterlife. From earliest childhood he had lived exclusively for the moment. Only at the end, in prison, when he knew his moments were numbered, had he thought to contact her and tell her to go back to Happiness Haven and search for her own happy ending.
“You will be okay?” Janya asked.
“I make a habit of it,” Dana said.
“You let me know if you change your mind,” Wanda said.
“I still think Ken could do a little research and put your mind to rest…or not.”
Dana managed the trace of a smile. “I’ll do that. You have a good evening.”
She watched them walk down the road. Time was passing. Pete hadn’t been clear about when he would arrive this evening, so she didn’t know how much time she had. She just knew that she had to time her departure carefully. She didn’t want the women to see her leave, but she couldn’t wait until it was dark or Pete might show up.
She thought of other times here, times when she and Fargo had still been young enough to believe that life was easy and happiness was guaranteed. His life had ended in a prison hospital.
She hoped that hers didn’t end in prison, too.
chapter thirty
“So, did you believe her?” Wanda asked, as the three women started back toward their houses.
While they were still in earshot of Dana’s place, Tracy had asked herself the same question and been unable to answer. Now that they weren’t, she still didn’t have a clue.
She tried to put thoughts into words. “Like I said when you first told us about Pete, he and Dana have had more than a few opportunities for serious pillow talk. And if you watched her expression when you told her Pete used to be a cop, you know she was stunned. She looked like somebody who just found out her best friend was murdered.”
“But would it not be bad enough news just to learn the man you were intimate with hadn’t told you something so important?” Janya asked. “That could explain the reaction.”
“No, it was more like she thought she was in danger.”
“I need a drink and a chance to mull this over,” Wanda said. “You two have time?”
As usual, Tracy had no plans for the evening. Every night since her breakfast with Henrietta, she had considered calling CJ to apologize. Every evening she had stopped short of picking up the telephone.
Maybe she was simply not a person who forgave easily, although she’d never thought of herself that way. But she couldn’t seem to overcome her suspicions. She was unconvinced that CJ’s arrival in Florida had been motivated by a desire for a reunion with his ex, yet she couldn’t find any other reason for his presence here or his interest in making Happiness Key a going concern. He had gone over the property with a fine-tooth comb, just to help her.
Maybe prison had changed him after all.
“I’ve got a great bottle of Zinfandel,” she told Wanda, thinking of the one Marsh had arrived with on the night she’d ruined their plan for mutual seduction. “I’ve been saving it, but I don’t know for what.”
“You keep saving it,” Wanda said. “I’m making margaritas.”
They followed Wanda to her house. Janya rarely drank, but she made an exception for Wanda’s margaritas. The women didn’t have much to say as Wanda assembled ingredients and the blender whirred. They took the finished product into her eye-popping living room, with its neon colors and tropical prints. George, a lime-green stuffed monkey puppet, peered down from a shelf adorned with photos of Elvis at his sexiest, and Wanda’s kids and grandkids.
“So help me, I’m losing my mind, but I’m beginning to see why you