Addison scowled as she remembered that night. After reading Fran’s text and discovering that her voice mail was one she had left the day before, Addison had placed a dozen calls to Fran as she rushed to the airport, but all had gone unanswered. During the flight back to England, she had placed even more calls to Evelyn and Millie, and texts by the dozens had been sent, but when no replies were received, by the time Addison stepped foot on the tarmac in London, her temper was far beyond simmering.

Climbing into her waiting limo, Addison ordered David to take her to the hospital, but when she found out that none of the staff were privy to Joanna’s location, she took out her mobile and began calling Evelyn, Millie, and Fran again. For two hours, she paced around the car, sending text after text as her blood pressure continued to rise until finally, she had no choice but to tell David to take her to The Oaks. Just before they reached the gated entrance to her estate, Addison’s phone finally chimed with a text message from Fran. It was short. It was not sweet...and Addison’s tempered boiled over.

“I panicked and shouldn’t have texted. She’s fine, but doesn’t want to see you. She’s made sure you can’t find her. Sorry, Addison. That’s all I’m allowed to say."

Dynamite had nothing on Addison when she climbed from the car. After taking out her frustrations on the pristine exterior of the 1972 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI, she fired David on the spot and then went into the house and drowned her anger with scotch.

It was not one of her finer moments, and as Addison thought about it, she sighed. “You know about that, do you?”

“I know more than you think.”

It was one of the hardest things Joanna had ever done, but during the renovations and repair of The Oaks, she had returned to her father’s room for the first time since his death. Refusing to live in the past like her wife, although she had shed buckets of tears as she gathered his things, it was time to move on. She tenderly packed up his clothes, methodically going from one drawer to the next, but when Joanna opened his nightstand drawer, she found a thick wad of papers covered in her father’s left-handed sloppy scrawl.

Prudence Craddick had stolen what she believed to be important, but she had left behind the scribbles of a rambling man. A man who spoke of a woman with piercing blue eyes and a kindness he felt served his daughter well. He wrote about ice cream and secrets, about assumptions and judgments, and about how wrong he had been.