the wind. What if, as everyone believed, Ava truly was paranoid? She thought of her recent session with the therapist. What if Wyatt and Evelyn McPherson weren’t involved? What if Ava’s tormented mind had conjured up her husband’s infidelity?
A wife always knows.
Someone had told her that a long time ago.
But that someone may just have been wrong.
Later, in the rec room that smelled of furniture polish, Trent confirmed that Evelyn McPherson Stone had been his date at the Christmas party. “Come on, Ava, you remember me introducing you to her,” he said, racking the balls on the pool table.
She didn’t.
“In the kitchen. We came in through the back door and caught hell from Virginia for it.” He centered the triangular rack, the colorful balls spinning on the dark green felt. “You were hurrying through, too, looking for something—more glasses, I think? Anyway, Virginia was mean as a snake that night. She told you something about not being able to work this way.”
As he whipped the rack off the neatly positioned balls, Ava tried to bring back the memory. From the kitchen, she heard the sound of Virginia’s off-key humming. Vaguely, she recalled the cook’s rebuke and her unusual bad mood. At the time, Ava had attributed Virginia’s scowls to the fact that she had to work that night and her daughter had remarried Simon; Virginia hadn’t been happy about it.
Yes, Ava had hurried through the kitchen, nearly knocking into a waiter carrying a platter of hors d’oeuvres. He’d spun deftly away, not losing a single appetizer from his silver tray, but Virginia had been beside herself, struggling to keep her tongue inside her head.
“It all happened near the pantry and the back staircase,” he recounted. “I remember because Virginia was all bent out of shape and had shooed us out of the room so the caterers could work. Man, she was in one helluva mood.”
“That’s right,” Ava said as the image grew stronger. She remembered being distracted, looking for the extra wineglasses as Wyatt was about to make his annual holiday toast. Somehow they’d ended up three glasses short, and Ava had remembered the extra stemware boxed in the shelves near the pantry in a closet where they’d stored odds and ends, everything from extra keys to lightbulbs to holiday decorations.
In her search for the glasses, she had come across Trent and he’d been with a woman she’d never met before: Dr. McPherson. “You introduced her as Eve.”
“I know. I still call her that. It’s how we were introduced way back when at a party before a Ducks football game,” he said, referring to the University of Oregon athletic team. “We were tailgating, I think.”
Is that what he’d said at the party? It didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t completely remember, and now, as he leaned across the table, trying for what seemed an impossible shot, she recalled shaking the woman’s hand as they were introduced.
He flashed her a smile. “You’ll remember it all soon, right? It’s coming back to you.” He leaned over the table, snapped back his cue stick, and sent the ball spinning. Crack! The billiard balls spun to all sides of the table.
“I hope.”
“Be patient.”
“I think I have been.”
“Never your strong suit.”
She couldn’t argue that fact as he took the next shot, sending the cue ball into a cluster of other balls. The five spun into a corner pocket.
“It’s just that there are holes in my memory, and they don’t seem to be closing.”
“They are. Just not as fast as you want.”
She wasn’t so certain. “Ever since Noah disappeared . . .”
“Before that,” he said, eyeing the balls remaining on the table. “After Kelvin died.”
She held up a hand. “That’s not right.”
“Sure it is. That’s when you started having . . . mental issues.”
“Before the baby was kidnapped?” No. No. This was all wrong.
Trent’s head snapped up. “Not kidnapped, Ava. There was no ransom note.” He walked closer to her. “No one contacted the family after Noah went missing.”
“What do you think the word kidnapped means? Someone took Noah. Out of his bed!” Her heart was beginning to pound a little more wildly. “That happened.”
“He went missing. Yes. We don’t know how.”
“He was two years old. He couldn’t just get out of bed himself and . . . and what . . .” Her heart turned to ice as she imagined her child climbing out of his bed as he had at least once before and wandering around his room, walking into the hallway. “I don’t