happened in the park or while she was driving. But they didn’t do that. She didn’t lie to Greg—not since they’d been married. Sins of omission didn’t count, did they? The letters. The heart. He didn’t need to know about those things; that’s what she told herself. He’d only worry.
Fidelity is more than what we say, it’s even more than what we do, her mother had written in one of her novels, The Widow, about a woman who’d lost her husband only to find that she never knew him at all. It’s who we are in our relationship, it’s about sharing the nether regions of our hearts.
“I don’t have any excuses,” she said. “I went from Tess’s place to the old Kreskey house. I was just following the story. My story.”
“Your story,” he repeated, a low note. “And in telling it—what?”
“In telling it…I release it, finally,” she said. “I own it and control it.”
Yes, that was it. That was the truth of it.
“You know,” he said, shaking his head. He looked down into the glass as if he might see the future there. “I wish I believed that. I think in some way, you keep going back there because on some deep subconscious level you believe it should have been you that day. That Kreskey should have gotten you. That you should be dead, Tess alive, Reams unharmed.”
“He came for me.”
Greg dipped his head in his hand for a moment, then looked up at her.
“You had a right to survive him, Rain,” he said softly. “You all did. But you got lucky. I’m sorry, but that’s not a reason to carry guilt for the rest of your life.”
Wasn’t it, though? She drained her glass and poured herself some more. She was tipsy. It felt good, some of the day’s tension draining.
“What would you tell Lily if she were sitting where you are now?” he went on. “Would you tell her to fight a monster or run for her life? Would you want our twelve-year-old daughter to take on Kreskey?”
The thought made her sick. “Of course not.”
“Then you can’t hold little Lara Winter responsible for what happened to them.”
I’ve got the Winter girl! Detective Harper’s voice bouncing off the trees. She was still that girl inside, frozen, half-gone.
“I have to do this,” she said. “Anyway, we could use the money.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“What about Lily?” he asked.
“I’ll work it out.” Her voice sounded weak, uncertain.
“Like you did today.”
She leaned forward to defend herself, then sank back. She could still hear Lily crying. She’d left her baby alone in the car to chase after some weird old woman in the woods, on the abandoned property of the man who killed her childhood friend, while she was “investigating” a “story” that no one had officially hired her to tell. She wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.
“It will never happen again,” she said. “It was an unthinking moment—I got carried away.” Just like her father. Just like she always did when she was following a story.
She lifted a palm when he opened his mouth to protest.
“I’ll get help,” she said. “Just part-time. Lily comes first. That’s my promise to all of us.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she stared into the fire, her mind drifting back to Kreskey’s house, that old woman, the things Tess’s mother had said—and hadn’t said. Don’t go down this road.
“What about him?” said Greg.
“Hank?” she said. “We’re tied together by the past. That’s all.”
She moved over to her husband, slid in close beside him. He was stiff for a moment, then wrapped her up in his arms, rested his lips on the crown of her head. He was the first safe place she’d found in her life. Upright. In charge of himself, but not controlling. Frugal, but not cheap. Studious, but not lost in his head. The opposite of her father.
In his letters, Hank accused her of choosing the safe man over the man she really wanted. But it wasn’t true. She loved Greg because he was good and strong, because his love was all light. She chose him because he was nothing like her father, nothing like the man Hank became—nothing like Rain.
She saw the darkness in Hank almost right away. He was not the boy she knew. Still, she knew him immediately. The man in the back of the room at her father’s book signing, hair long, a thick, full beard. He’d grown tall. She could see the muscles straining against his leather jacket. The