panic, had made a shabby attempt at CPR until the medics came and finally pulled her away. None of them knew how much that moment had tipped Bree over the edge.
She knew her family had their suspicions that losing Nana was harder for Bree than she let on. The fact was, they didn’t know how hard. How deep she had sunk. How dark everything had become in recent months.
Unlike everyone else in the family, Bree couldn’t keep herself together when she saw Anna. Ironic as it was, she—the only one getting paid to pretend—was the only one in the family who couldn’t slap on a happy face and keep conversation light in Anna’s presence. Her niece, just a child, was dying, and one day someone would wake up and find her the way Bree had found Nana. She tried to muster courage two months ago, at a family supper, and panicked. Ended up in a bathroom stall heaving.
Bree pushed everything about Anna away—her name, her image—looking instead to the fuming grill that edged closer to her bumper with each second.
“Chill out, you old rattletrap,” Bree said aloud, waving with her old coffee cup toward a couple pushing a stroller across. “You think I don’t have somewhere to go, too, buddy?”
For a moment she considered darting around them, and her toes lifted off the brake. But then a curly-headed boy on a bike jumped in front of her, pedaling fast toward his parents.
One more agonizing moment of watching the boy cross the road, and she hit the pedal.
“Sorry, Cass. What were you saying?”
“I was asking about next weekend.”
“We have shows all day,” Bree said, stopping at the stop sign and looking left, then right, then back at the truck who hit the gas at an alarming speed.
She turned onto Valley Street and, to her chagrin, the truck lurched in her direction with so much vim she jerked her wheel. Drops of the cold black coffee splattered the skirt of her borrowed dress.
“Shoot.” Bree rammed her cup into the cup holder and began swiping at the spill.
The engine behind her roared.
“I’m going to kill this guy behind me.”
Deidre’s muffled voice came from far off in the background.
“No, honey,” Cassie said. “Bree isn’t going to kill anyone. She didn’t really mean that—”
“Yes, I did,” Bree said.
“Ha-ha!” Cassie replied in an overbright tone. “No, of course she didn’t.”
Bree bit her lip. “Did.”
There was a pause. Muffled words in the background.
“Of course she won’t go to jail,” Cassie said.
More muffled words.
“Yes, well, even if she does go to jail, she’ll still send you Christmas presents . . .”
She turned on Court Street and blinked as the truck jerked left as well.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Bree hissed.
Was he following her on purpose? Who was this guy?
Bree maneuvered with sleek precision around a car parked along the slim street. She did a full swivel-head twist at the truck riding so close to her Subaru anyone would have assumed it was hitched to the back.
“Bree.”
Perhaps it was some eccentric art critic who didn’t appreciate her costume fiasco. Her disruption in the play was entirely out of line, and in order to save the world from terrible actors, he was hunting her down.
“Bree?”
The Deranged Art Critic Serial Killer. He’d be known in the newspapers simply as The Critic. He would ride her bumper until she hit the lip of a small road, right next to a cliff, and ease her right on over . . .
Cassie’s thoughts must have been on par with her own, because the next thing Bree knew, Cassie’s voice was off speaker and booming in her ear. “Bree.”
Bree winced and pulled the phone away. “What?”
“Don’t do anything stupid. Just let the guy pass.”
A chant of “stupid, stupid” began in the background.
Bree squinted in the mirror. It was time for a dose of his own medicine. “Oh, I’m letting him pass.”
“No, you sound like you’re forming an evil plan. Use a normal voice. A nonmalicious voice. Let’s try it now. I am letting him pass.”
“I’m letting him pass.” The words held all the unyielding weight of Thor’s hammer.
“See? That’s exactly what I just told you not to sound like.”
With a quick, one-handed swerve, Bree stole between two parked cars in front of a two-story Colonial. The roar of the truck’s rusted-out exhaust pipe shook her car as it passed. She gripped the worn leather of the steering wheel, her hawk eyes now as focused on the truck as if it were her last meal.