She thought of Officer White’s face yesterday. The hatred in her eyes. What would’ve happened if Glen Elmore hadn’t shown up? Liv was being silly. The cop was just trying to scare her. Liv was fourth-generation Adair, so one would think they’d cut her a break. But the town was unforgiving. It was a wonder that her sister chose to stay behind. And she hoped her father would never understand the dreadful turn of events. He’d loved this place, as had she, and it would devastate him.

She thought again about the empty plots next to her mother’s grave. Would she someday be buried there? That was what her will instructed. So did Evan’s. But they’d made those choices when the kids were little. Before Danny’s arrest and imprisonment, before “A Violent Nature.”

The world was divided into before and after those events.

Liv’s world had been secretly divided even further. Before the affair with Noah, and after. In the wake of Danny’s arrest, she’d vowed to leave Noah in the past. To never be alone with him, and avoid even talking to him if possible. It had been a mistake fueled by too much wine and, for lack of a better excuse, a midlife crisis. Liv had chosen this life, giving up a career to raise a family in a small town. But as the children grew older and needed her less—and as she and Evan had lost themselves to parenting—she started entertaining fantasies about where life could’ve taken her. She was still an attractive woman, but she wasn’t getting any younger. And the heads she turned these days were typically topped with gray. She didn’t want to admit it, but her looks had always been a big part of her identity. What would she be when they were gone? When the kids were gone? Then she’d run into Noah at the supermarket, of all places.

One thing led to another, as they say. It lasted exactly one month. She’d visit him at his office and he’d bend her over his mahogany desk. She’d straddle him in the front seat of the car parked in a cornfield they’d frequented as teenagers. She’d slink to his hotel when he stayed the night in Lincoln for work. The sneaking around—the risk—was part of the thrill, if she was honest about it. Noah had been a single man since his wife died, but the lieutenant governor sleeping with a married woman would still be a scandal in conservative Nebraska. And she of course could lose everything.

In a way she did.