pattern. A senior nurse, she worked shifts in a rotation. This week was the night shift.
Cora was an aeronautical computer specialist on the early shift at the moment. She headed out around the time Alice came home. No wonder Adrian had a standing appointment. Aside from the Fitzpatricks—and Calvin, I supposed—Alice and Cora were the only ones in the Cul-de-Sac who worked “normal” jobs, but they weren’t exactly average in the financial stakes.
The house had been a gift from Cora’s wealthy family, and I’m sure that family continued to funnel more money their way. The house was well maintained, Cora and Alice’s daughter attended an exclusive private school, and both women drove luxury cars.
A curtain twitched on a second-floor window: Grandma Elei. Alice’s mother and keeper of her secrets. She didn’t wave back when I raised my hand, just dropped the curtain and pretended she hadn’t been watching.
Making a spontaneous decision, I found myself walking up the drive to the front door. Alice opened it soon after my knock. “Aarav,” she said, propping one hip against the doorjamb. “You want to borrow a cup of sugar?” Flirtatious words, but she had a lazy, satisfied look in her eye.
“I need to get away from my father,” I said with my best smile. “Invite me in for coffee?”
Husky laughter before she stepped back in welcome. “Ishaan is a bit of an asshole, isn’t he? You know he made me and Cora take down that old cherry blossom tree by the fence? Threatened to report it as a hazard.”
“He just can’t stand two strong, successful women next door.”
“You got it. You gonna be okay on this floor?” She nodded at the smooth and slick hardwood below my feet.
“Cane has a rubber grip on the bottom.”
I followed her swaying hips down the hall without a problem. The place was tidy but no showpiece—despite the fact I knew it boasted a mini-theater in the basement. Even though Manaia had been gone a couple of weeks, you could tell a kid lived here—her sneakers lay kicked off by the door, her softball gear sat forgotten in a corner in the kitchen, and a school timetable was held to the fridge by a magnet in the shape of the Colosseum.
Manaia’s class had gone to Rome as part of their geography lessons.
Also on the fridge were multiple family snapshots. Alice was a compulsive photographer, making use of both professional-type equipment and her handy phone camera. I’d seen her sticking her head out of her mother’s bedroom window, a camera with a massive zoom lens held to her eye, but hadn’t yet figured out what or whom she was photographing.
Might just be the bush in all its changing moods.
“So,” she said after putting on the coffee, “you’re not hankering to move back in with dear old Dad after this little return?”
“Shoot me now.”
Her laughter was warm and full-bodied, her confidence in her body a statement. At around five-eight, she was all curves and lithe muscle, and she knew she looked good. I could see why Adrian had no trouble with this appointment. “Hard workout?”
A secret smile. “You could say that.”
“Don’t you ever worry?” I asked.
A raised eyebrow.
“About Cora finding out?”
No obvious panic on her face, but I barely caught a glimpse of that face before she turned away to reach into the fridge for the milk. “Not you, too. I thought it was just our friendly local walkers who thrived on gossip.”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit.” I’d just wanted her off-balance. “You’re hot as hell and Cora has—to put it kindly—let herself go.” It had begun with a mugging that had left her with a permanently damaged left hand that might’ve derailed her career if she hadn’t already been a supervisor at the time; she was apparently brilliant at running her team and ensuring all work that came out of it was of the highest standard.
I knew that because a local newspaper had profiled her a year earlier. “I could’ve permitted my injury to stop me,” she’d said. “Instead, I took it as a challenge to find innovative new ways of working. I now do much of my input via voice-recognition systems, an area that’s a particular interest of mine.”
Professional success or not, the Amazonian Cora of my childhood was now . . . diminished. She still had the cheekbones and the height, her hair as dazzlingly white-blonde as always, but gone was the muscle and the intensity. “And you don’t exactly hide your sessions with Adrian,” I