“You heard me. You need a lot of help. You’ve got a house that’s falling down around you and a job that takes a lot of your time. On top of that you’re worried about your son and I don’t blame you. Right now Stephen’s rebelling all over the place. Maybe it has to do with Philip’s death, but maybe it runs deeper. No one knows, but the simple fact is that he looks like he’s been in a prison fight and he’s probably still in some trouble with the police. Whether you admit it or not, you’re afraid that he’s somehow connected with Isaac Wells’s disappearance.”

“He’s just a boy!” she protested.

“A boy who might know too much. He’s running with a rough crowd, getting into fights and you don’t know how much else, but the fact of the matter is he ended up with Isaac Wells’s keys.”

“It was a dare.”

“One he shouldn’t have taken,” J.D. said, seeing her face whiten in the night.

“Then there’s your daughter.”

She gasped. “Christina’s fine.”

“Is she? Why the nightmares every night?”

Tiffany bristled and set her drink on the ground. What was J.D.’s game? What did he want? “What do you expect, Jay? She was barely three when she watched her father die, for God’s sake. Of course that’s going to cause some trauma But it’s normal. She’s been to a child psychologist.” Tiffany crossed her arms under her breasts and glared at him. What did he know about raising kids? About becoming a single parent? About dealing with a truckload of guilt because your husband died in an automobile accident while you survived? About facing yourself every morning knowing that you were at the wheel of the car when it slid out of control? Her stomach twisted into painful knots and she cleared her throat.

“I’m just concerned,” he said so quietly that for a split second, she believed him.

“Why all of a sudden? Most of Stephen’s life you haven’t been around.”

“I had my reasons,” he said.

“Which were?”

He leveled her with a gaze that caused her heart to knock. “You don’t want to know.”

“Of course I do.”

He lowered his glass to the ground and grabbed her bare shoulders in his big, callused hands. She started to shrink from him, but held her ground and inched her chin up a notch. “If you want to know the truth—”

“I do.” Or did she?

“Most of my reasons for staying away had to do with you, Tiffany.”