her grip firm but not crushing. “I was so sorry to hear about your husband.”
Anahera still didn’t know what to do when people offered their sympathies about Edward; it wasn’t as if she could open her mouth and say, “I’m not sure I’m grieving for the bastard. You see, I found out he was a lying, cheating piece of scum two hours after I stood trembling over his body in the morgue.”
His lips had been blue, his face so waxy he hadn’t looked real. A mannequin shaped like Edward, that’s what her brain had kept trying to tell her. Just a mannequin. Not real. Nothing to do with her.
One hundred and twenty-seven minutes later, forty-nine minutes after news of Edward’s death hit the media, she’d opened the door of their home to a sobbing stranger who’d collapsed into her arms with a wail of grief.
23
Anahera’s tight smile seemed to satisfy Jemima.
The other woman sipped at her coffee, then said, “Not the kind of homecoming you would’ve wished for.”
“No.” She’d expected and been prepared for old memories and older anger, but not this. “I remember Miriama as a young girl, but I’ve only met her twice as an adult.”
Jemima’s eyelids lowered, her hands cupping her mug as she took a deeper drink. When she looked up again, her gaze was softer yet oddly difficult to read. A woman, Anahera thought, who was used to putting on a mask that didn’t look like a mask. Necessary for someone who wanted to stand next to the man who would be prime minister.
“I’m afraid I’ve never really gotten to know her,” Vincent’s wife admitted. “She’s so much younger. Just that age gap where we don’t really have anything in common, you know? I feel so old saying that.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Anahera said, liking the self-deprecating woman under the polish and spin. “There’s such a difference between nineteen and twenty-nine. Ten short years but a lifetime apart.”
“It’s even worse between nineteen and thirty-one.” Jemima’s smile was quick, bright. “I married a younger man,” she whispered.
“Sorry, you fail the scandalous test. Unless you were sixteen and Vincent was fourteen when you met, and I know that didn’t happen.”
Jemima’s smile deepened, reaching the sea green of her eyes. “After this is all over”—the smile rubbed away, her gaze going to the map before meeting Anahera’s again—“and I mean when it’s settled in a good way, with the best news, I hope you’ll come up to the house for a coffee or to have lunch.”
Anahera hesitated; she hadn’t come to Golden Cove to make friends. She’d come here to lose herself in the shadows.
In front of her, Jemima’s expression began to grow distant and Anahera knew suddenly that the other woman was used to rebuffs from Vincent’s friends—or perhaps it was from all of the locals. She certainly didn’t seem the kind of person others would shut out, but on the other hand, she was wealthy and lovely and an outsider; just because she’d married one of their own didn’t mean she would’ve been welcomed with open arms. Still, it was odd, given how well Vincent was liked.
“I’d like to,” she found herself saying. “I may not be the best company, though—I’m not sure I’m at the point where I can socialize.”
Jemima’s expression fell. “Oh, God, I’m stupid. I should’ve realized.” She touched her fingers hesitantly to Anahera’s hand. “Whenever you’re ready, the invitation is open. Here”—she dug around in a jacket pocket, found what she was looking for—“this has all my contact details.”
Anahera took the crumpled card, slipped it safely away. “Thank you.” She could detect nothing false in Jemima, which made the fact that she seemed to have been braced for rejection even less understandable.
Jemima spoke again, both slender hands back around her mug. “I love this part of the country, but Vincent and I are away so often that I haven’t had a chance to really nest here, if you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do.” She’d loved Edward, and so she’d tried to love London, too. Just as she’d tried not to miss the water that crashed so hard against the rocks that it sent up a white spray, the grit of sand between her toes, and the green, the endless dark green that could never be tamed.
All things she’d wanted to escape as a girl.
All things she’d ached for desperately when surrounded by red double-decker buses and stately museums, designer shops and theaters that glittered, the civility of it threaded by a