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“Tom? Are you there? It’s Kelly.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m here. What’s wrong?”

Tom understood that something must have happened. Something bad. Kelly hadn’t called him in ten years, though at first he had deluded himself that she might.

“I don’t know if you heard about Lillith Griggs. I mean, she became Lillith Griggs—you knew she and Jacob got married, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew that.” He and Jacob still kept in touch, still wrote now and then, though of course, Jacob didn’t admit that to Lillith, who had, like Kelly, been one of Sophie’s bridesmaids and therefore subscribed to the official position that Tom Beckham was scum. “What about Lillith?”

“She was killed in a car accident. Three days ago.”

Tom hadn’t known Lillith well, but she’d always seemed much more…alive than most people. She was a beauty, a brain and a class clown all in one. What kind of accident had been potent enough to extinguish all that?

“I’m sorry to hear that. How is Jacob?”

“He’s a mess,” Kelly said. “That’s why I’m calling. The funeral is tomorrow and he hopes you can come. He needs a friend…and you seem to be the one he wants.”

It was subtle but he could hear how inexplicable she found that fact to be. “Okay,” he said.

“You’ll come?” She must have been expecting an argument.

“Yes. Tell him I’ll be there. What time is the funeral?”

“One. But Tom, if I tell him you’re coming, and then you…”

“Kelly, I’m telling you I will be there. Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” she said slowly. “Not to me.”

Happily Never After
Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Sometimes, true love makes an appearance at the worst possible moment. When you’re too young, when you’re living on another continent, when you’re on opposite sides of a stormy issue. Or when you’re about to marry her best friend.

For Tom Beckham, the hero of Happily Never After, falling in love with Kelly was the dumbest thing he could do. Well, maybe the second-dumbest. The first was getting engaged to beautiful but troubled heiress Sophie Mellon.

The three glamorous Mellon siblings have always been clouded in a miasma of rumors. Their neighbors hear things they can’t quite understand—and don’t dare to repeat. But Tom, a young, ambitious lawyer, didn’t care. Sophie’s good looks and impressive mansion could help his career, and that was all that mattered.

Until he fell in love with her bridesmaid. Until ugly rumors became hideous truth. Until he left Sophie at the church, dressed in antique lace, her beautiful face streaming with tears.

He spent ten years trying to forget Kelly—and the terrible truth about the woman he almost married. But now members of the wedding party are starting to die. He’ll have to face all his old demons—including his love for Kelly—if he’s going to survive.

I have a special fondness for the “reunion” romance. I adore the thought that, like water seeking an outlet, true love can trickle through the years, overcoming the most daunting barriers, navigating the most amazing bends and turns. And then, somehow, find its way safely home. I hope you enjoy watching Tom and Kelly earn their second chance.

My next Harlequin Signature Select book, Quiet as the Grave, will also feature a couple who must endure years of separation. Thanks to my Firefly Glen readers who wrote asking for Mike and Suzie’s story, these two fascinating characters will finally find out whether puppy love has the strength to survive in the real—and very dangerous—adult world.

I love to hear from readers! Please visit my Web site at www.KathleenOBrien.net, or write me at P.O. Box 947633, Maitland, FL 32794.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Bonus Features

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEST VIEW of the tortured and beautiful Mellon house was from the top of the East River Bridge. In winter, when the elm trees had shivered themselves to skeletons, you could see everything, right down to the statue that had toppled over in the fern garden twenty years ago and had never been set right.

Mrs. Mellon must hate to see the sheltering leaves fall, Kelly Ralston thought as she turned right on Market and headed toward the bridge. The proud old woman would hate feeling so exposed. Coeur Volé had been built a hundred years ago, but even then it had been designed for privacy. And that was long before Sebastian’s accident, Mr. Mellon’s death or Sophie’s…

Long before tragedy knocked on the door of Coeur Volé and apparently moved in to stay.

Even so, Kelly—and probably half the population of Cathedral Cove—never crossed the bridge without slowing down to stare. She did it now, though it was a foggy autumn midnight, not winter, and she couldn’t realistically expect to see anything but shadows.

Lillith Griggs, whose restored Jaguar was right in front of Kelly’s, wasn’t slowing down, though. Lightning Lillith, as her husband teasingly called her, was infamous for collecting the most speeding tickets in Cathedral Cove. Of course, she was a lawyer, so she wiggled her way out of a lot of them.

Suddenly the cell phone tucked into Kelly’s cup holder vibrated noisily.

“Hey, I meant to ask you,” Lillith said without preamble. “Did you hear that Sophie’s checked herself out again?”

“No. Really? Is she back at home?” Kelly maneuvered onto the bridge, keeping close to her friend’s car. In an un-characteristic display of caution, Lillith had asked Kelly to follow her home from the bar where they’d had a late dinner. Lillith was ordinarily the most self-confident person Kelly had ever met. But she’d been getting weird phone calls, she said. And for the past few days, she’d had the feeling someone was following her.

Kelly had a horrible thought. “God, Lily. Are you saying you think Sophie’s been following you?”

“Well, no, probably not. Actually, I’m sorry I even mentioned that. I’m probably imagining it all.” Lillith laughed, and for the first time tonight she sounded like herself. “It’s probably just this spooky feeling of having another person living in my own body. Pregnancy is weird, if you really think about it.”

Kelly laughed, but kept both hands on the wheel. The East River Bridge was steep, and they were reaching the peak. “No, it’s not. It’s perfectly normal and wonderful. I can’t wait to hear what Jacob says when you tell him. Promise you’ll call me immediately.”

“I won’t have to. You’ll hear him all the way out to your studio, beating his breast and whooping like the darling dumb jock he is. He’ll be insufferable. He’ll act like his sperm has made a field goal from the fifty-yard line.”

“In a way, it has.” Kelly didn’t pay much attention to Lillith’s acerbic tone. The Griggses had been married six years, and they were silly in love. Kelly had always struggled with a little jealousy, not being very good at the marriage thing herself. And now that there was a Griggs baby on the way…

But just then Kelly caught her first glimpse of the strange, needlelike tower of Coeur Volé piercing the low-lying fog, and she remembered that she had a lot to be grateful for, after all. She might not be as happy as Lily Griggs, but at least she wasn’t cursed.

Her car crested the top of the bridge, just feet behind Lillith’s. Over the phone line she heard Lillith’s sudden intake of breath. “What the hell?”

“What?” Kelly asked, but then she saw it. The stained glass in the highest tower window was glowing. “It’s probably Sophie. She’s always had trouble sleeping, even as a teenager. And now that she spends so much time in institutions—”

She heard a low curse from Lillith’s end, and an ominous, repetitive thumping sound. “Damn it,” Lillith said harshly. “What’s wrong with this damn thing?”

“What?” But suddenly Kelly realized that Lillith’s gasp hadn’t been a reaction to the tower light. She probably hadn’t even seen it.

Something was wrong with Lillith’s car. She was taking the down slope of the bridge much too fast, even for Lightning Lillith. Fog shot from beneath her tires like jet contrails. Her taillights were pulling away, stretching the distance between their two cars.

At the foot of the bridge, hidden at the moment in a blanket of damp silver fog, the road made a sharp right-hand curve to avoid the first of the riverfront mansions. If Lillith didn’t slow down…

“Lily!” Kelly realized she was shouting into the cell phone. But Lillith’s car was still gathering speed, sucked down by gravity, going twice as fast now as Kelly’s. Kelly had to fight the instinct to hit the accelerator, to try to catch her. That would be madness. And yet, it was impossible to accept that there was nothing she could do.

“Lily, for God’s sake, slow down!”

“Damn it.” Lillith’s voice was tight and husky, as if her throat were raw. The thumping sound continued. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What’s happening?”

“The brakes.” And then Lillith’s voice seemed to come from a distance, and Kelly knew she’d dropped the cell phone. “Damn it, damn it. Catch, damn it. Why won’t—”

“Lily! The hand brake! Pull the hand brake!”

Was that the right advice? Kelly’s mind wasn’t working, didn’t have time to work. Maybe Lillith should turn the car in a circle, or try to use the median to interrupt the momentum—

The red sports car changed lanes, deliberately, Kelly thought. Then it clipped the guardrail of the bridge. Yellow and white sparks flew as the two metals kissed. It helped a little, but they were running out of time, running out of bridge. Kelly began to pray.

At the last minute, Lillith swerved, but it was too late. The car was still going much too fast. Though Kelly was now a hundred yards behind, she felt the shudder as Lillith’s car lifted off the asphalt, bumped over the curb, shot across the smooth green grass of an elegant lawn, and finally rammed headfirst into the scarred trunk of an ancient, unyielding oak.

The car seemed for a horrible instant to be trying to climb the tree, but of course it couldn’t be. The nose of the car collapsed like an accordion, and the air exploded with lightning bolts of broken glass.

And then everything was still.

Kelly slammed on her brakes and tumbled out of her car without even stopping to turn off the engine. She was trying to punch in 911 on her cell phone, but her fingers were like rubber, and she misdialed twice before she got through. She ran, but her legs were shaking so hard she twisted her ankle and had to hobble the last few yards.

“We need an ambulance. There’s been a terrible accident.”

“Where are you?”

She looked around. For a moment she couldn’t think where they were. It was so dark. Everything was foggy and silent, except for the hiss of something coming out of Lillith’s car.

“The bridge,” she managed to say. She stumbled over the curb and dropped the telephone. Somehow she found it again, just in time to hear the voice on the other end asking her which bridge.

Which bridge? This bridge. This cruel, dangerous, deadly bridge. But what was it called? She needed to be more coherent. She had always hoped she was the kind of person who would be good in a crisis. But she felt as if her heart and mind had collapsed, just like the hood of Lillith’s car.

“The foot of the East River Bridge,” she said. “The south side, the Destiny Drive side. She hit a tree. Please. Send someone right away.”

Her toe jammed a boulder half-hidden by the fog. Pain streaked up her shin, and once again she dropped the telephone. This time it clattered against other rocks and disappeared into the fog. Kelly felt the ground for it briefly, but then she heard a sound coming from the Jaguar. A low, moaning sound.

“I’m here,” she called out. She scrambled over wet grass until she finally reached the car.

It was the saddest sight she’d ever seen.

Everything gaped unnaturally, pitifully exposed. The right front headlight had been knocked free and was dangling by wires. Both doors had been ripped open, and the trunk was open, too. Even the glove box had been knocked loose.

Lillith’s personal things were scattered all over the ground—her purse, a pair of running shoes tied together by the laces, an old McDonald’s cup with the straw still in it, her billfold with a picture of Jacob smiling, and a Boudoir Boutique sack full of smashed bath beads that filled the air with the scents of sandalwood and vanilla.

It was so wrong. Lillith was always so elegant and organized. Though Kelly knew it didn’t really matter right now, she had to fight the urge to gather up the things, to protect the privacy that had been so heartlessly violated.

“I’m here,” she said again, though she hadn’t heard any more sounds. She rushed to the driver’s side. Lillith was still sitting upright, the lap belt still connected. This old classic sports car didn’t have an air bag, though Jacob was always bugging Lillith to install one.

Under the distorted hood, the hoses were steaming and hissing, as if they were mad with fury. The front tires no longer touched the ground, and when Kelly reached out to touch Lillith, the car wobbled.

“Lily,” she said. “Lily, are you all right?”

Lillith turned her head slowly and tried to speak. Kelly felt the air draining out of her lungs, the strength out of her muscles, but somehow she found the courage to keep from fainting.

It wasn’t even Lillith anymore. Blood coated everything, but under the blood Lillith’s face was crushed. One cheekbone had disappeared entirely, and her eye seemed to melt into the hollow below. Her nose was flat, and something white poked through the bloody mess of skin. And her mouth…

Everything was swollen, and broken and rearranged. Kelly saw a tooth lying in a gleaming pool of blood on Lillith’s chin, and her stomach spasmed, sending a gag of half-digested spaghetti erupting toward her throat.

She fought it back.

“Hold on, Lily,” she said, and suddenly her voice was strong again. “The ambulance is coming.”

Lillith seemed to be trying to shake her head. She closed her eyes—though the one over the sunken cheek wouldn’t shut properly.

“I’ve already called 911,” Kelly said. Miraculously, one of Lillith’s hands seemed untouched. Kelly took it into her own. It was cold. “They’ll be here soon. They’ll know what to do.”

Lillith moved her lips again. Kelly tried to hear—she made out an e, but the consonants were all a bubbling mush of blood.

Maybe it was Kelly.

Or maybe baby.

Or perhaps it was simply Help me.

“Lily,” she said again. In the movies, people always begged dying friends to keep talking. Was there some magic in that? But how could she ask those mangled lips to try to form words?

God, she was useless. The truth was, she had no idea what to do.

“Lily, I love you,” Kelly said, because there was nothing else to say, and because it seemed important. She was aware that tears were flooding down her face.

Lillith nodded a fraction of an inch. Or maybe Kelly just wanted to believe she did. And then Lillith seemed to try to speak again. Kelly leaned forward.

It was as wet and half-formed as before.

But this time it sounded like Sophie.

It was the last word Lillith Griggs ever spoke. She was dead before the ambulance arrived.

CHAPTER TWO

TOM BECKHAM HAD A SIXTH SENSE about parties. He could predict to within about ten minutes when they were going to go bad or get ugly.

As a rule, that instinct was quite useful. He always slipped out the door just before the champagne or the conversation fell flat. He said his goodbyes five minutes before the fight broke out on the patio or the junior partner puked in the pool.

But fat lot of good that sixth sense could do him today, at this party, which was being held on a boat, about three hundred yards off the Georgia coast. Though his instincts were definitely telling him to get the hell out of here, he couldn’t really do anything about it.

He glanced over the side of the seventy-five-foot yacht, where the Atlantic was sparkling under the cold September sun like a million sequin-tipped knifepoints. Swimming was out of the question, he supposed.

But if things kept deteriorating—and the ratio of guests to alcohol indicated it would—he just might consider it.

“Tom!” A hand grabbed Tom’s forearm so hard he spilled his drink, which, now that the ice had melted, was filled to overflowing. Watered-down scotch mapped cool trails down his hand. “You’re not thinking of jumping overboard, are you? The Smythe case couldn’t have bothered you that much. Everybody loses now and then.”

Shaking scotch from his hand, Tom turned with a smile. Bailey Ormonde, senior partner and head estate-planning attorney in Tom’s law firm, always talked too loudly and shook hands too firmly as a way of compensating for being about five-three. But he wasn’t at heart a bad guy.

“If I jump, it won’t be because of Smythe,” Tom said. “I didn’t lose that case—justice won. The guy had a second set of financial records hidden in his underwear drawer, for God’s sake. It took them about five minutes to find it.”

“What a moron.” Bailey snorted. “Still, this is the second time you’ve mentioned Justice, capital J, in the past week. Not a good thing in our favorite civil litigator. I’m starting to worry about you, pal. What’s the matter?”

Trust Bailey to home in on the real issue. Lawyers in the elite firm of Ormonde, White and Murray weren’t supposed to value Justice over Victory. Justice was a malleable concept. It was whatever you wanted it to be. Victory, on the other hand, was absolute. In the lofty heavens of their penthouse world, the Client was God, and the Blind Lady was either supposed to join the choir or get out of the way.

Tom had understood that when he’d joined the firm ten years ago. He understood it still. So what was the matter with him? Midlife crisis? A little early for that, at only thirty-five. Professional burnout? Ditto on that.

Too soon to grow a conscience, as well—his portfolio wasn’t anywhere nearly big enough yet.

Nope, too early for any of that. So why, in some deep, unspoken place, did he sometimes have the feeling it might be a great deal too late?

But this wasn’t the time for soul-searching, and Bailey was no Freud anyhow. So instead of answering, Tom sipped at his drink and squinted at the cluster of guests near the starboard railing. Such beautiful people, bronzed by expensive machines, and then gilded by the sunlight until they looked like golden statues from the lobby of some fin de siècle opera house.

Bailey was too smart to push it. He knew that, in his way, he’d put Tom on notice, and he trusted Tom to read between the lines.

“So where is your gorgeous lady friend?” Bailey raised one eyebrow. “I hope you haven’t let Coach O’Toole get his hands on her.”

Tom scanned the crowd. Darlene was undoubtedly in there somewhere, though she had arrived on her own, as she’d been running late this morning.

Yep, there she was. Bailey wasn’t exaggerating. She was gorgeous. She stood in a nimbus of sunlight, one hand at her breast and the other lightly curved just at the apex of her thighs, looking for all the world like a Botticelli Venus—not a coincidence, Tom felt sure. Her dress was virginal white, but so filmy and formfitting she looked as if she’d been dipped in milk and set out to be licked clean.

Tom waited for the appreciative twitch to register in his groin, but it didn’t come. Poor Darlene. Not even a twitch, where once there had been earthquakes.

She had no idea, but their clock had just struck midnight. Her magic had run out.

Frankly, he hadn’t even wanted her to come today. She’d begun vigorously working the crowd at these events, smiling her heart out while she talked him up. It annoyed him. It looked like an audition for the role of trophy wife.

“You’re a lucky devil, Beckham,” Bailey said, shaking his head and making a noise that, if he hadn’t been the senior partner, would have been smacking his lips. “When does her lease expire? You always trade ’em in after a year, right? Any chance she thinks short guys are hot?”

Tom wondered if his thoughts about Darlene had registered on his face. He rearranged his features. “Women don’t care if you’re small as long as you’ve got a great big—” he grinned “—credit limit. In that department, you’ve got everyone on this boat whipped. Even Coach O’Toole, in spite of that ridiculous bonus the alums have just added to his paycheck.”

Bailey eyed Mick O’Toole, the head coach for the Midwest Georgia University football team, who stood talking to his host, the most arrogant MGU alum of them all, Trent Saroyan. Saroyan owned the boat, and it might be successfully argued that he owned O’Toole, too.

He’d thrown the party today to celebrate a strong 2–0 start for O’Toole’s second season as MGU head coach. The Spitfires had had a 15–2 season last year, almost making it to the National Championship game. The party, the yacht and the bonus were just the alum’s polite way of saying that this year it had better be the gold ring.

“You think he knows he’s going to get shitcanned if he loses even one game this season?” Bailey’s shrewd eyes held a hint of pity. But just a hint. Their firm represented Trent Saroyan, the yachtsman and check-writer, not the coach.

“Nope,” Tom said. “Look at him. He’s still naive enough to think he can get loud with the boosters.”

Oh, hell. That must be what had activated his sixth sense. Mick O’Toole and Trent Saroyan were standing too close together, and their voices were rising, developing sharp edges. They were arguing about O’Toole’s choice of starting quarterback.

“Crap,” Bailey said. “I’d better try to do something about that.” He dropped his cocktail glass on the mahogany bar and departed.

Not a moment too soon, either. Saroyan held a shot glass in his right hand, but his index finger was extended, and he’d begun to jab it toward O’Toole’s left shoulder, which was a very bad sign.

And here came another one. Apparently noticing that Tom was alone, Darlene began murmuring and air-kissing her way out of her crowd and gliding back over toward him. Her smile didn’t look right. Shit. What had he done now? Had he violated the twenty-minute rule? That was about how long she could take being ignored without getting snitty.

Tom glanced at the water again and wondered how many degrees it was. If only he weren’t wearing his most comfortable old cords, he might actually do it. Between Darlene and O’Toole, this party was going down.

“Hey,” Darlene said, making the word two warm syllables with honey on top. Darlene’s body might be Botticelli, but her voice was pure Gone with the Wind. Still, her smile didn’t look right.

“Hey, there,” he responded carefully. He wondered if it was possible she’d heard Bailey’s comment about her lease expiring. Like all good old boys, Bailey did tend to boom a bit.

But would that be so terrible? Tom was going to have to end it soon anyhow. He didn’t want a trophy wife. He didn’t want a wife period.

Ten years ago, after the…fiasco…he’d decided his life needed some strict ground rules. He had no intentions of living as a monk, all hair shirts and no sex, but he did try to keep all his relationships clean and sweet and mutually satisfying. He’d been pretty successful, so far. That sixth sense about parties applied to love affairs, too, ordinarily.

“I stopped by the apartment on my way over here,” she said.

He tried not to react to her word choice. The apartment, she said these days. Not your apartment. It was just one step short of our apartment, and it was a big mistake, though she obviously didn’t know it.

“I got Otis to let me in,” she added casually.

He wasn’t sure why that shocked him so much. Otis was the seventy-year-old doorman, and he was drooling in love with Darlene. Otis would probably agree to let her into any apartment in the building, even if she were carrying a metal detector and a large black sack.

Tom supposed he was shocked that Darlene would take advantage of the nice old guy like that. Whatever the reason, his smile felt tight.

“And why did you do that?”

“I’d left my driver’s license next to the sofa,” she said, and he had to admit she told the lie beautifully. “Anyhow, I also picked up the mail for you. I knew you’d been waiting for that transcript.”

“Really. Was it there?”

“No.” She lifted her gold clutch and opened it deftly. “But this was.”

She held out a small pink envelope. Immediately he caught the cloying scent of gardenias.

Damn it to hell. He had hoped he’d never see another one of these. But even if he had to, he wasn’t supposed to get it yet. Not for another week.

Could it possibly be a coincidence?

But he knew it wasn’t.

He knew it was Sophie.

As always, he felt his lungs tightening, as if they wanted to reject the sickeningly sweet smell. Or was he just trying to reject the idea that Sophie had sent him another “anniversary” card? Every year he told himself that surely this would be the last. She’d forget, she’d lose interest, her therapists would finally convince her that it did no good, especially since he never responded.

It had been ten years now. Ten years since he’d walked out of a church filled with these poisonously sweet white flowers. Ten years since he’d walked out on Sophie.

But she’d never forgotten. And she clearly intended to make sure that he didn’t, either. Which was fairly ironic, actually.

Darlene pushed the card forward a fraction of an inch, and he realized he needed to do something. He held out his hand calmly and took it. He flipped it over, glanced at the return address just to be sure the gardenia smell hadn’t tricked him, then flipped it back to see whether Sophie had addressed his name the usual way, with a small heart where the O in Tom should be.

She had.

No wonder Darlene’s smile looked so tight and thin.

“Well?” She snapped her little gold clutch shut sharply.

“Well, what?” He slipped the envelope into his wind-breaker pocket, patted it to be sure it was secure, then zipped up his jacket against the fresh, high wind that hinted at a squall before sunset.

Darlene paused, her mouth half-open. She obviously knew the next few moments were dangerous and was looking for the right words.

“It’s really too cold for a boat party, don’t you think?” He hunched his shoulders. “But I guess Saroyan couldn’t wait till spring to show off his new baby.”

In his head Tom begged Darlene to be very careful, to take the conversational fire exit he was offering. He didn’t like being cornered, and she’d gone too far when she’d pawed through his mail. And he damn sure didn’t want to talk to her about Sophie.

If she forced him to do this now, he might say things he’d regret.

She wasn’t great at reading his thoughts, though, and he knew his face revealed only a tilted smile and a slightly sarcastic arch to one brow. It was an expression he’d perfected over the last decade.

The arched brow probably tipped her over the edge. Darlene had odd moments of self-respect, and though she might let a man cheat on her, she wouldn’t stand for being mocked.

“Who exactly,” she demanded, “is this Sophie Mellon?”

What a stupid question. What did it matter? When a love affair was over, did it make any difference exactly what, or who, had killed it?

When he didn’t answer, Darlene’s jaw tightened. “So far I know this much. She writes your name like a lovesick adolescent, and she soaks her cards in cheap perfume. Things haven’t been right between us lately, Tom. Is this why? Is she someone I should worry about? Or is she just a—”

A what? Darlene seemed to understand she’d gone too far, but the echo of the unspoken thought seemed to hang in the air between them. What word had she been going to say?

And what was the right word, anyhow? What was Sophie? Slut? Stalker? Psycho? Maybe all those labels applied. And many more, as well.

Maybe the best word was cursed. Poor beautiful, tormented Sophie was cursed, and still she signed his name with a heart.

Suddenly Tom realized he was furious. If Darlene insisted on doing this right here, right now, he was ready. He felt his smile tilt another inch. It probably looked like a smirk by now. He didn’t give a damn about that, either.

“Sophie Mellon is the woman I almost married.”

“What?” Darlene’s eyebrows knitted hard. “Married? When?”

“Ten years ago.”

She shook her head, looking confused and slightly annoyed. She looked, he thought, like an infant rejecting an unappetizing spoonful of strained peas. “But surely…” She took a breath. “If that’s true, why—why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”

“It wasn’t important.”

Her chin went up. “Wasn’t important?”

He shrugged. “Not to you.”

That was rough. Two circles of hot pink broke out on her skin. But her chin didn’t waver. She was a strong woman, and a distant part of Tom admired her. Maybe she was strong enough that, someday soon, she’d thank him for setting her free.

“When you say you almost married her… What does almost mean? How close did you come?”

“Close enough to hear the wedding bells at my back as I drove out of town.”

“My God. You mean you left her waiting at the altar?”

“No,” he said, still smiling. “Technically, that’s what jilted grooms do. I believe the bride waits in an anteroom off to the side until her husband-to-be shows up and takes his place.”

She hesitated. “But you didn’t. Show up, I mean.”

“No.”

The pink cheeks had faded, leaving behind an ivory pall of shock. It was finally sinking in. Her gaze scoured his face, as if she wondered where her charming Tom had gone.

He wouldn’t be receiving cards from this one for the next decade, that was sure. Good. One tearstained ghost, annually rattling the rusty chains of his ruined conscience, was enough for any man.

She swallowed. “But why? Why didn’t you go through with it?”

For the first time, he hesitated, too.

“Let’s just say…I decided I’d make a rotten husband.”

Amazingly, she balked at that. She wasn’t ready to let go of all her illusions—or her plans.

“Oh, Tom,” she said, reaching out with gentling fingers. “Honey. Don’t say—”

He backed up a quarter of an inch and restored his tilted, insulting smile. “Why not? It’s true—I’m not good husband material. I think I knew that the night I almost screwed her bridesmaid.”

A gasp. And then, as if by instinct, she reared back and slapped him.

It would have caused quite a stir, except that, at the exact same moment, Trent Saroyan shoved Coach O’Toole over the yacht’s elegant teak railing and into the Atlantic Ocean and, as Tom had predicted, all hell broke loose at the party.

THOUGH IT WAS ONLY about eleven-thirty, the darkness out here in the rural Georgia woods was cool, deep and damp, the kind of night that predicted pea-soup fog in the morning.

Kelly stood at her worktable, so absorbed in cutting a very expensive sheet of purple drapery glass that she listened to the muffled twig-cracking sound several seconds before she realized it was the wrong sound at the wrong time. Most of the little animals that shared these woods with her went to bed early—and few of them were capable of producing such big noises anyhow.

Carefully she put down the glass cutter and listened. The sounds continued, quite close now.

It was probably nothing. Maybe something bigger than usual, like a deer, had wandered into her yard.

Still, a shiver of fear shimmied through her.

She stared at the studio window. She couldn’t see anything, of course. Nothing but her own reflection. The old, warped glass distorted a lot, but she still saw a skinny, scruffy redhead with a sad, wide-eyed face.

A sudden heavy, muffled thud came from just beyond the back door.

What was wrong with her? She couldn’t just stand here, frozen. When she’d bought this old place for her stained-glass studio three months ago, her ex-husband Brian had warned that she’d be a nervous wreck way out here with no neighbors. She hadn’t been, though. She’d done fine until two nights ago, when Lily had…

When Lily had died.

In the long, painful forty-eight hours since then, Kelly had been reduced to a mass of singing nerves and emotional confusion. Tears were never more than one thought away. And fear, too. Not active terror, but a shadowy sense that the world was not benign, or even neutral, but was instead somehow malignant, just waiting for you to make a mistake it could exploit.

Like Lily, who’d rushed through life and had never wanted to stop for boring maintenance chores, like putting brake fluid in an aging car.

Or like Kelly, working alone late at night in a falling-down studio with no locks on the doors.

The doctor who’d seen Kelly that night had assured her this reaction would be quite normal. He had prescribed sleeping pills, which she didn’t take, because they seemed to open the floodgate to dreams. She turned to her work instead. She had several commissions to complete in the next weeks, and besides, the precision and focus required calmed her. The careful piecing together of small, seemingly random shapes, which came together to create a coherent whole, comforted her. Stained glass, she realized, was a pretty good analogy for life.

It had only been two days, she reminded herself. The funeral wasn’t even scheduled until the day after tomorrow. Eventually, she’d find her equilibrium again. For now, she just had to force herself to pretend a courage she didn’t really possess.

Though she’d been cutting without her work gloves on—one of her habitual sins—she quietly reached over, opened her drawer and slid her right hand into the soft, protective leather.

Then she picked up the freshly bisected sheet of glass, which came to a lethal point at the tip, and walked to the back of the studio.

She adjusted her grip on the glass. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel her pulse in her fingertips. Slowly, she opened the door….

And found herself looking into the shining black-marble eyes of a raccoon, who had somehow managed to climb to the very top of her three-tiered plant stand and was trying to reach the bird feeder that hung from the soffit.

The poor thing looked mortified, just as frozen into his awkward position as she had been moments earlier. He was huge, with a fat, sprawling belly that suggested this wasn’t his first late-night raid. The long gray streamer of moss that dangled from his ear proved he had tried other approaches first.

One of the branches of the nearest oak came within six feet of the bird feeder. That must have been the thud she’d heard. The little scavenger had jumped and missed.

His stricken gaze seemed to be asking her to pretend she didn’t see him. Smiling a little, she turned her head away. She wasn’t even sure raccoons ate seeds, but if he wanted them that badly, he could have them. She could refill the feeder for the birds in the morning.

It was time to go to bed. She put her hand on the doorknob.

Someone touched her shoulder.

Electric currents of panic shot, primal and unwilled, through every vein. Her right arm came up.

“Kelly?”

“Jacob?” The sudden withdrawal of adrenaline left her limbs weak. With a loud exhale, she slumped against the door, just under the bare bulb that served as an entry light.

“God, Jacob,” she breathed.

Thankfully she’d recognized the voice before she’d had time to slash out with the glass. As it was, she had already raised it to breast level.

Jacob Griggs, Lillith’s husband, looked down at her makeshift weapon, but it didn’t seem to frighten him. He seemed beyond caring that he’d come within six inches of being impaled on a dagger of cut glass.

“I scared you,” he said heavily. He looked up at her. “I’m sorry.”

He looked horrible. His face was gray, but his eyes were small and red-rimmed inside puffy circles of grief. His hair, normally so thick and shiny Lillith had rarely been able to keep her fingers out of it, seemed to have dulled and thinned almost overnight.

“It’s okay,” Kelly said. She took his arm, and realized it was shaking. Two days ago, Jacob had been a thirty-five-year-old lawyer who jogged and played racquetball and danced and gave great parties, and generally made every woman in Cathedral Cove jealous of Lillith. In forty-eight hours, he had turned into an old man.

But what was he doing here at nearly midnight? She looked into those eyes again and wondered if he even knew where he was.

“Jacob, do you want to come in?”

He just stared at her.

She squeezed his hand. “Did you need to talk?”

To her horror, he began to cry. His face twisted with the agony of trying to hold it back. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She put her arm around his waist, though he was a full five inches taller. She wasn’t sure he wouldn’t collapse.

He was still repeating the same broken words. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he moaned.

“What is it? What don’t you know, Jacob?”

He shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. His lips were dripping with tears. Finally he groaned and bent over double, his hands on his knees, like a runner pushed beyond endurance. “I don’t know how to live without her.”

CHAPTER THREE

IMOGENE MELLON HAD LONG AGO stopped believing in justice.

Maybe, she thought as she slowly descended Coeur Volé’s wide, twining staircase in the predawn hours, that had happened on her wedding night. The longest night of her life.

The night she’d discovered her handsome, socially prominent husband wasn’t normal.

Well, maybe she should choose another phrase. In Imogene’s youth “not normal” had been a euphemism for homosexual, and lots of young women had no doubt found themselves married to men who were merely looking for camouflage. Imogene believed she could have lived with that. At least then, maybe she and Adler might have learned to be friends.

Instead she had discovered that Adler liked women just fine. He specifically liked to hurt them. Nothing too dramatic. Nothing that left marks or required care. He’d called it “spicing things up.” He’d implied that if you peeked into any bedroom in town you’d find a few of these “toys.”

It made him extremely potent. By the end of her first week of marriage, Imogene was pregnant with Sebastian. A year later, Sophie was conceived. After that, Imogene took birth-control pills secretly for several years. When Adler found out, he broke her wrist, and two months later she was pregnant again, with Samantha.

Her beautiful babies, almost all of them conceived in undignified tableaux of sadism and pain. Still, the children should have been her consolation, her reward for enduring without complaint. And they were, for a while. Then, gradually, she’d begun to understand that they weren’t normal, either.

So much for justice.

She reached the wide staircase landing now, and, as she did almost every morning, she paused to appreciate the way the rising sun lit the huge stained-glass window. She liked to watch the figures come to life. It made her feel less alone in this haunted mansion.

Jean Laurent, the French artist Adler had hired, had done a magnificent job. The twenty-by-twelve window of St. George slaying the dragon had bold colors and great drama.

The dying dragon dominated the bottom third of the window, his sinuous body curled around the feet of the knight, his scales shining like peacock feathers. Up from the dragon, St. George rose like a human tower, tall and triumphant. He lifted his sword into the air, and on the tip of the sword he had impaled the dragon’s glowing red heart.

It was not any failing of Jean Laurent’s talent that caused Imogene to identify more with the dragon than with the resplendent knight. After all, from ground level, the dragon was mostly what one saw. And, naturally, Imogene couldn’t help comparing the handsome St. George to the handsome Adler Mellon. St. George seemed to be enjoying his kill a little too much.

Imogene sometimes wondered whether Jean Laurent might have liked the dragon best, as well. The artist had spent so much time and empathetic energy on the dragon’s face. Its eyes were almost human—green, gray, silver and blue pools of inarticulate misery.

It took about twenty minutes for the sun to climb high enough to illuminate the entire window, but Imogene always waited patiently for the transformation to complete itself. The heart, naturally, was the last to burst into brilliance. The red, jewel-like heart, so real it seemed to be still throbbing.

Imogene had asked Jean Laurent if the window had a name, like any other work of art. He had smiled and turned to Adler with a bow. Coeur Volé, Jean had said. Of course.

Another reason to think perhaps Jean had sympathized with the dragon.

Coeur Volé was French for Stolen Heart.

“Mom?” Samantha was standing about ten steps above her. She still wore her nightgown. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Imogene said. What a ridiculous question. Of course she wasn’t all right. She was dying. They had told her she had maybe a month or two, no longer. “I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“No.”

Still Samantha hesitated, her hand on the banister. “Do you want anything?”

I want to live.

And I want justice. For my own tormented body, and for the poisoned lives of my children.

She let her gaze leave the agonized eyes of the doomed dragon. She let it slide up the shining armor, through the muscular thighs and powerful shoulders, and into the lusty, inflamed eyes of St. George.

Yes, she thought, feeling something stir in her own loins, finally. This, here at the very end, was what she wanted.

I want, for once in my life, to be the one holding the sword.

TOM HAD A BAD TASTE in his mouth, and it wasn’t from the salmon salad, which he ordered every time he came to this restaurant and which had been as delicious as ever.

The taste came instead from the conversation, especially his part of it. His words had a sticky, artificial after-taste. The hard-to-digest flavor of manipulative half-truths and sugarcoated threats.

From the minute Coach Mick O’Toole had been fished out of the ocean, red-faced and spluttering and flailing his arms wildly, splashing everyone on the boat with salt water, Bailey Ormonde had made it clear that it would be Tom’s job to make sure the man didn’t sue.

Thus, this hastily arranged lunch with O’Toole, who hadn’t even had the sense to bring his own lawyer.

Tom knew the drill. There wasn’t much O’Toole could really do to hurt Saroyan, even if he did decide to sue. People like Saroyan paid big bucks to Ormonde, White and Murray to do what they euphemistically called “asset-protection planning.” That was Murray’s specialty, and he was good at it. Saroyan could pretty much get drunk and run down a convent full of nuns with his SUV, and, though he might do time in the slammer, he’d emerge as rich as ever.

One soggy football coach claiming whiplash didn’t have a chance. But he could annoy and embarrass Saroyan, who had a very thin skin. Saroyan didn’t want a nuisance lawsuit that would keep this unfortunate anecdote alive at every party for the next year. As he’d said during their meeting yesterday, “Goddamn it, boy, just make it go away.”

Considering that Saroyan was only about ten years older than Tom, and had earned every penny of his fortune buying up slums in Atlanta and then painting over the rotten buildings and raising the rents, that “boy” comment had annoyed the hell out of Tom.

Still…this was his job. Bailey always said lawyers were actually diplomats. More like gymnasts, was how Tom saw it. He’d just spent the past hour kissing O’Toole’s dumb ass while twisting his arms back and tying his hands.

He ordered coffee to help with the foul taste in his mouth.

“You know, I’m used to tempers,” O’Toole was saying. He adjusted his neck brace, which did look damn uncomfortable. “Try coaching a bunch of college kids, and you’ll learn about tempers, that’s for sure. The real problem with Saroyan is that he doesn’t understand football. And if he thinks he’s going to call the plays on the field, he’s got another think coming.”

Tom considered giving O’Toole a little friendly advice, but then he looked at that thick neck and those beady eyes, and he decided to have another sip of coffee instead.

“Saroyan didn’t even play football when he was at MGU. He was a math major.” O’Toole said math as if it were something ridiculous, like majoring in tiddlywinks. He didn’t seem to see the connection between Saroyan’s studies and his ability to buy and sell O’Toole ten times a day.

Tom drained his coffee and tilted his watch under the table. Fifteen more minutes of this, at least, before he could check his watch openly, gasp and imply that he’d been enjoying himself so much he’d lost track of the time.

Diplomat? Gymnast? Babysitter might be more accurate. Ego babysitter. He tried to tune out the little voice that said this was nothing a grown man should be doing for a living.

Suddenly, his cell phone began to vibrate. Apparently there was a God.

Giving O’Toole a “gosh, isn’t this annoying, just when we were having such a good time?” smile, Tom unclipped his phone and answered without even bothering to look at the caller ID. Ordinarily he screened, having just enough old girlfriends to be cautious, but right now he’d welcome a call from any one of them.

“This is Tom Beckham,” he said formally, already folding his napkin and crooking a finger to let the waiter know it was time for the check. Whoever really was on the other end of this telephone, as far as O’Toole was concerned, it was urgent firm business.

At first there was just silence. And then he heard a soft female voice.

“Tom?”

For about six tenths of a second he honestly didn’t recognize the voice. And then it hit him. Hit him hard.

It was Kelly.

An image rushed toward him, leapfrogging the years. An image of the two of them in a dark corner, laughing at first, and then touching, and then she was crying, and he was up against her, and she was kissing him and whispering his name, but crying, crying the whole time.

Her red-gold hair falling loose against the green satin of her dress, the fresh-apple smell of her, the salt of her tears on his lips, the insanity inside him.

“Tom? Are you there? It’s Kelly. Kelly Ralston…I mean Kelly Carpenter.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m here. What’s wrong?”

Now that his mind was working again, he understood that something must have happened. Something bad. She hadn’t called him in ten years, though at first he had deluded himself that she might. No one from the wedding party had ever called him, except Mr. Mellon, who had actually come out to Atlanta ready to beat Tom, he’d said, until he no longer knew his own name and had to be fed with a straw.

“I—I don’t know if you heard,” she said, her voice still somber and husky. He wondered if she’d been crying again. Who made her cry these days?

“Heard what?”

“About Lillith. Lillith Griggs. I mean, she became Lillith Griggs, you knew she and Jacob got married, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew that.” He and Jacob had been good friends back in law school. Jacob still kept in touch, still wrote now and then, though of course he didn’t admit that to Lillith, who had, like Kelly, been one of Sophie’s bridesmaids and therefore subscribed to the official position that Tom Beckham was scum. “What about Lillith?”

“She was in a car accident. Three days ago.”

“Is she all right?”

“No.” A wretched pause. “She was killed.”

The waiter came over then and held a check for Tom to sign. He scrawled something, almost glad of the distraction. He needed time to absorb the news.

He hadn’t known Lillith well, but she’d always seemed much more…alive than most people. She was always the one laughing, playing practical jokes like wearing stiletto heels to the rehearsal so that the lineup by height suddenly seemed all wrong. She was a beauty and a brain and a class clown all in one. What kind of automobile accident had been savage enough to extinguish all that?

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said carefully, glancing over at O’Toole, who was tonguing around in his empty drink, trying to hook a piece of ice and suck any lingering vodka from its surface. O’Toole met Tom’s gaze over the glass and frowned, pointing at the telephone.

Tom covered the mouthpiece with his palm.

“We’re done here, O’Toole,” he said, though he knew that those four words might well undo all the goodwill he’d spent the past hour building.

O’Toole put his glass down slowly, giving Tom an incredulous look. “Damn right we are,” he said. He tossed his napkin on the table, scraped his chair back loudly and walked away.

“Tom, are you still there?”

Tom took his hand off the telephone. “Yes. Sorry. How is Jacob?”

“He’s a mess,” Kelly said. “That’s why I’m calling. The funeral is tomorrow, and he asked me to let you know. He hopes you can come. I do, too. He needs a friend…and you seem to be the one he wants.”

It was subtle, but he could hear how inexplicable she found that fact to be.

“Okay,” he said.

There was another pause. “You’ll come?” She must have been expecting an argument.

“Yes,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be there. What time is the funeral?”

“One. We’re all meeting at the house and riding together. His house.” She took an audible breath. “But Tom…if I tell him you’re coming, if I get his hopes up, and then you—”

“I’ll be there.” He heard the doubt quivering in her silence. He couldn’t blame her. She couldn’t know that, since he’d left Cathedral Cove, he had never made a promise he didn’t keep. Of course, he made damn few promises.

“Kelly, I’m telling you I will be there. Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” she said slowly. “Not to me.”

“Then trust me,” he said, and in spite of himself a wry note crept in. He could feel his tilted smile nudging at his lips. But come on. Had anyone on this earth ever spoken a more ironic sentence? “I’ll be there.”

KELLY KNEW BETTER than to trust Tom Beckham, so she couldn’t understand why she was so upset when he didn’t show up at the funeral home, or at the graveside service.

She was just mad at herself, that was all. She should never have told Jacob that Tom was coming. He had kept glancing over his shoulder at the service, and now that they were back at home, every time the door opened he looked up expectantly.

She stood in the kitchen, carefully pulling the plastic wrap off plates of deviled eggs and pans of meat loaf, and trying not to feel a little angry with Jacob, too.

But darn it. He had friends, lots of them. People who really cared about him, people who filled his house and his refrigerator, people who called and stopped by, who prayed at his side and cried at his side and loved Lily almost as much as he did.

Why weren’t they enough? Why did he need Tom Beckham, too?

Why did anyone need Tom Beckham?

The door opened, and to Kelly’s surprise a lovely blonde walked in, dressed in the most elegant little black funeral dress she’d ever seen. It was Samantha Mellon, Sophie’s little sister.

“Hi, Kelly,” Samantha said softly, brushing her long, silky hair back behind her shoulder and smiling. “They told me you were in here. I thought maybe I could help?”

Kelly stuffed the plastic into the trash can, wiped her hands on a towel, and reached out to give Samantha a hello hug. It was very sweet of her to come—and probably somewhat risky. Over the years, her mother and brother had developed an intractably hostile attitude toward every one of the young men and women who had been in Sophie’s wedding party.

As best Kelly could understand, Mrs. Mellon and Sebastian felt that the bridesmaids and groomsmen had all abandoned Sophie after she’d been jilted. True friends would have stuck by her, defended her. If they had, Sophie might never have ended up in an institution.

Was that true? Kelly’s memory of that time was clouded with misery and guilt. It was true that the friendships had ended when the wedding fell apart, but whose choice had that been? Had Sophie avoided them because they reminded her of a day so horrible she couldn’t bear to relive it? Or had they avoided her, the way you might instinctively avoid someone whose luck seemed to have turned spectacularly bad?

Some of them had tried to make contact in the weeks after Tom disappeared, Kelly was sure of that. But Sophie hadn’t been willing. Or maybe she just hadn’t been ready.

Maybe they should have tried harder.

Kelly hadn’t been able to try at all. A huge wall stood between them. She always wondered if Sophie knew about the night that Kelly and Tom had…

Just as she’d always wondered whether that night had played a part in the tragedy that came next.

But there was no one to ask. Tom was gone, and, soon after, Sophie was lost to them, too.

Kelly and Samantha hadn’t seen much of each other through the years—things would always be too awkward for that. But Kelly was still fond of her.

Suddenly she remembered what Lillith had been saying right before the accident. That Sophie had been let out again.

“Sam, Sophie didn’t come with you, did she?”

Samantha’s gray-blue eyes widened. “Of course not. Sophie is—” She hesitated. “She’s still in North Carolina.”

In North Carolina. Is that where the newest mental-health facility was? Over the past decade, if the grapevine could be trusted, Sophie had been in and out of five or six different resident institutions.

So did that mean Lillith had been wrong? Did that mean the light in the tower window hadn’t been Sophie after all?

“She hasn’t come home? I heard that she had.”

“No, she’s not up to being on her own right now. The doctor said, with the anniversary coming up so soon…” Samantha looked perplexed. “Who told you she was?”

“I think Lillith had heard it somewhere.”

Samantha shook her head sadly. “The gossips must be at it again. I think the anniversary always stirs things up, don’t you? But frankly, this terrible accident would be so hard for her. Just this once, I’m glad she’s not here.”

Kelly reached out and touched Samantha’s hand. Poor Sam. Now that Sebastian had married and moved to Raleigh, Sam was living alone at Coeur Volé with their mother, who had never been a picnic but who had become even more eccentric through the years.

Sam looked amazingly like Sophie these days. All the Mellon siblings looked similar—the lush blond hair, the deep-set eyes, the sex appeal and the elegance. Sebastian and Sophie had often been mistaken for twins. They were only a year apart and they had an intimacy that seemed almost preternatural, the kind you sometimes do see in twins.

Samantha was five years younger, and it wasn’t until she grew up that the striking Mellon looks displayed themselves. Now the only real difference was in the eyes. Sophie’s and Sebastian’s were a dramatic peacock blue, and they sparkled with an essence of danger, a flash of the untamable. Sam’s eyes were light, and her gaze was gentle, almost humble.

It made Kelly’s heart ache to look at her. This was what Sophie should have been.

“Well, anyway, I’d love some help,” Kelly said. “So many people have brought food. He’ll never eat it all, so we might as well use it up today.”

Samantha nodded and began efficiently stacking small sandwiches on a large silver plate. “He seems very weak,” she said. “It’s so terrible. It’s obviously broken his heart.”

“Yes.” Kelly blinked back moisture. This wasn’t her tragedy. This wasn’t her day to cry. But it was hard. A week ago she’d been in this kitchen drinking coffee with Lily from these same cups. “I suppose time will help. It’s still so new.”

“When I talked to him just now, he told me he was waiting for Tom Beckham.” Sam looked over at Kelly somberly. “Is that true, or is it just wishful thinking? I didn’t think we’d ever see Tom in Cathedral Cove again.”

Kelly sighed and slid the rest of the potato salad into the refrigerator. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He asked me to call Tom, and I did. Tom promised he’d be here, but—”

Samantha smiled ruefully. “But historically Tom’s promises haven’t really been worth much.”

“Right. You wouldn’t believe how distant he sounded on the phone when I told him about Lillith.”

She didn’t mention that it had taken her two hours to get up the nerve to dial the number, and when he’d answered she’d found that she needed to sit down, because her legs wouldn’t hold her.

“Ten years,” she said. “We hadn’t exchanged a single word in ten years. And yet, throughout the call his voice was completely bland and impersonal. He might as well have been talking to his secretary.”

Samantha lifted one graceful shoulder philosophically, as if to say what did you expect?

Good question. It made Kelly feel ridiculous to admit that she had expected more. In the private photo album of her heart, Tom Beckham had been the most-often-relived memory, in spite of the ache it always brought. She had about a dozen pictures that never seemed to fade: Tom in the gardens of Coeur Volé, with roses behind him and the river at his feet; Tom dancing with Sophie, tall and handsome in his tuxedo, with Sophie’s silver dress flashing rainbows as she twirled under the chandelier; Tom turning to Kelly in the darkness, fierce and full of hunger…

She was a fool. While she’d been wistfully fingering those images, she’d assumed that he, too, took them out now and then and remembered. But apparently he’d long since thrown them away. As she should have.

“I heard that you were behind her when it happened,” Samantha said suddenly. “I heard you were with her when she died.”

Kelly looked up. “Yes.”

“That must have been awful. I’m so sorry. But at least—at least she wasn’t alone at the end.”

“Yes.” Kelly had thought of that, but she wondered how much comfort she had really been. Lillith had seemed dazed, already moving away from the blood and the fog and the hissing car. Her cold hand had not responded to Kelly’s touch. Kelly had been just inches away, but in every way that mattered, Lillith had died alone anyhow. Perhaps everyone did.

“Was she still conscious? Did she say anything?”

Kelly closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Sam, but if I keep talking about this, I’m going to fall apart, and Jacob doesn’t need that today.” She picked up the plate of deviled eggs and handed it to the other woman. “Let’s get the food out there, okay?”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Samantha was embarrassed, her fair skin tinged with pink.

Kelly remembered how easy it used to be for Sophie to hurt Sam’s feelings. “Scram, brat,” Sophie would say, and Sam’s blue eyes would fill with tears. She had idolized her older siblings, and Sophie and Bastian had exploited that shamelessly.