He picked up a small pink apple, rubbed it to a shine on his shirt, then took a bite.

He slowly walked back to his house, deciding that he would put the apples in a box tomorrow and take them to Claire, tell her what happened. It would be a good excuse to see her again.

It was probably just another instance of following a woman to a dead end.

But what the hell.

Do the things you do best.

The last thing he remembered was putting his foot on the bottom step of the back porch.

Then he had the most amazing dream.

CHAPTER

2

Ten days earlier
Seattle, Washington

Sydney walked over to her daughter’s bed. “Wake up, honey.”

When Bay opened her eyes, Sydney put her finger to the little girl’s lips.

“We’re going to leave, and we don’t want Susan to hear, so let’s be quiet. Remember? Like we planned.”

Bay got up without a word and went to the bathroom and remembered not to flush the commode, because the two town houses shared a wall and Susan would be able to hear. Bay then put on her shoes with the soft, quiet soles and dressed in the layers Sydney had set out for her because it was colder that morning than it would be later, but there wouldn’t be time to stop and change.

Sydney paced while Bay dressed. David had gone to L.A. on business, and he always had the older lady in the town house next door keep an eye on Sydney and Bay. For the past week, Sydney had been taking clothes and food and other items out of the house in her tote bag, not deviating from the routine David held her to, the one Susan kept watch over. She was allowed to take Bay to the park on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and to go to the grocery store on Fridays. Two months ago she met a mother at the park who’d had the nerve to ask what the other mothers couldn’t. Why so many bruises? Why so jumpy? She helped Sydney buy an old Subaru for three hundred dollars, a good chunk of the money Sydney had managed to save in the past two years by taking one-dollar bills out of David’s wallet every so often, collecting the change in the couch cushions, and taking back items for cash that she’d bought with a check, the account for which David kept a sharp eye on. She’d been taking the food and clothes to the lady in the park, to be put in the car. Sydney hoped to God that the lady, Greta, hadn’t forgotten to park the car where they’d agreed. The last she’d talked to her was Thursday, and it was Sunday. David would be back that night.

Every two or three months, David would fly to L.A. to check in person how the restaurant he’d bought into was running. He always stayed to party with his partners, old college buddies from his UCLA days. He’d come home happy, still a little buzzed, and that would last until he wanted sex and she wouldn’t compare with the girls he’d been with in L.A. She used to be like those girls, long ago. And dangerous men had been her specialty, just as she always imagined it had been for her mother—one of the many reasons she left Bascom with nothing but a backpack and a few photos of her mother as a traveling companion.