His kindness was her undoing. She could be as tough as she had to be, but kindness . . . she couldn’t manage that. No matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut, the tears still came.

“Come here,” Vince whispered. He slipped his arms around her and drew her close as carefully as if she were made of fine porcelain. “It’s all right. This shoulder has been cried on before.”

For the first time that week Anne let go. She let the fraying ends of control slip through her fingers, and let loose the pressure that had been building and building inside her.

She let Vince Leone hold her and cradle her head against his chest and tell her she would be all right, that she would make it through this. She took the comfort of a stranger and somehow she didn’t feel like she was free-falling. She felt . . . protected, safe. It took a moment for her to even realize what the feeling was.

Vince came up with a pristine white handkerchief and dabbed gently at the tears on her cheeks, but he seemed in no hurry to let her go. And Anne felt in no hurry to leave.

She tilted her chin up and looked at him, no longer caring what he saw in her eyes—sadness, vulnerability, longing. He settled his mouth on hers for a kiss that was long and deep. And when it was finished, she pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heart beat for a long while.

Chapter 43

43

“Are you and Mom getting divorced?”

The question just came out, like a hiccup or a cough. Wendy opened her mouth and the words just tumbled out. They were in the backyard, beyond the swimming pool, away from the house where her mother was fixing dinner. Her father had picked her up at school and suggested a game of catch because they hadn’t played in a long time.

“Because you’re never home,” she had said.

She was tired and in a bad mood. It seemed like life was never going to be the same again since they had found the body in the park. School wasn’t the same. Tommy wasn’t the same. Nobody treated her the same. Her parents weren’t the same. It sucked.

Her dad stopped his throwing motion as her question hit him. He looked shocked, which just went to show how oblivious adults were. Like they didn’t think their kids could hear, or that they didn’t live in the same house, or had no clue what was going on around them.

“No,” he said, coming over to her. He tried to laugh it off—as if that question could ever have been part of a joke. “No. What would make you think that, Wendy?”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Dad, I’m not a baby. I know what goes on.”