GRIPPING THE STEERING wheel tightly, Serenity Alston navigated the winding freeway heading east toward Donner Summit. Dark, ominous clouds hung low on the horizon. Although she was driving a BMW X5, which had 4-wheel drive, if it started to snow, the highway patrol could close the road before she could get over the pass. This was California, where even a little bad weather was cause for panic.
The Lumineers’ “Ho Hey,” a song that had been popular when she’d first married Sean eight years ago, came over the sound system, bringing to mind the way he’d been back then—handsome, charming and so earnest and true.
Or so it had seemed...
She told Siri to delete it, but the next song—Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up”—brought painful memories of how committed she’d been to him, and what it had cost her.
Unwilling to go through her entire playlist right now, for fear she’d be tempted to delete most of her collection—and lose too much of her focus—she turned off the music. Snow didn’t often come to the Sierra Nevada Mountains after April. But here it was nearing the end of May and those dark clouds loomed ahead. She needed to beat the storm, just in case. The two women she was meeting at the cabin were relative strangers; only she had a key. If she got caught on the road, how would they get in?
Although...
She eased off the gas pedal. Maybe it would be better if she didn’t make it through. She’d been experiencing some regret since she first set this up. Sean’s trial was over. She could finally close that chapter of her life, put it behind her and move on. Why ask for a whole new problem? One that could easily create more wreckage in her life? Right now her family was strong, functional, happy. They could stay that way if she ignored what she’d found, just let it go.
Part of her was tempted to do that. She could head back right now. But another part—her natural compulsion to reach the truth at any cost—won out. She’d never been able to turn a blind eye to anything, which was why, she supposed, she’d become a true-crime writer.
At any rate, she couldn’t ask two people to come clear across the country to meet her and then stand them up.
Her phone rang and Bluetooth announced that it was her mother.
Damn.
After taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she told it to answer. For the sake of everyone involved, she had to continue to act as though nothing had changed. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey!” her mother chirped, as breezy as ever.
Serenity winced at the sound of her voice. Hiding anything from Charlotte was difficult. But if she hadn’t answered, her mother would’ve just called back. And if she didn’t behave normally, Charlotte might begin to suspect something was wrong, which would only make the next days and weeks, maybe months, while she was trying to figure this thing out, that much harder to navigate. “Hi, Mom.”
“What are you up to?” she asked.
Serenity adjusted the heat, increasing the warmth inside the car. “I’m heading to the cabin.” She spoke casually, as though this trip was just like every other, even though it wasn’t remotely the same.
“Again?”
“Sure, why not?” Serenity couldn’t see why her mother would mind, not if she didn’t know what Serenity had planned. Ever since her parents had moved away from Berkeley, where she lived, to San Diego, the place sat empty. With the rest of the family nowhere near Tahoe, it wasn’t as if anyone else could drive to the cabin for just a couple of days. Serenity had a brother and two sisters, but her brother, the youngest at twenty-four, was getting his master’s at UCLA, and her twin sisters, who were twenty-eight, both lived in San Antonio. One had married a man who was from there, and the other had married a man who was flexible enough to move to Texas so the twins wouldn’t have to live too far apart.
“It’s just... I don’t know,” her mother said. “You’ve been going to Tahoe almost every weekend.”