But there weren’t any plants up there to give her a good excuse to intrude on his privacy. And she didn’t want him to come home and catch her. Being found where she shouldn’t be—again—would be awkward indeed.

Since the guesthouse was starting to feel more like a prison than a refuge, she ambled around the yard, picked a few oranges and then some grapefruit.

There was a lock on the pool gate to keep kids who happened to be on the property safe, but she knew the code. It was the same as the one required to get onto the property in the first place. After putting down the fruit, which she planned to grab on her way back, she punched in the numbers, let herself through and settled on a chaise to watch clouds drift across the moon.

Although it was cold out, she had on a thick sweater. She inhaled deeply, drawing in the smell of the citrus trees nearby and the stronger scent of chlorine from the pool. She could heal in this place, couldn’t she? When she didn’t allow herself to think about her family, or her career, or her face, she almost felt like herself again.

But then she would see a mirror or get a message from home, and reality would intrude...

Determined to hold off that moment of reckoning as long as possible, she got up and bent to test the temperature of the water in the hot tub. Maybe she’d get in. Just because she’d given up the main house to Seth didn’t mean she had any less right to the pool and Jacuzzi.

After going back to get her bathing suit, she spent half an hour in the hot tub. But once that was over, she was looking down the barrel of another long, lonely night. She couldn’t bear to turn on the TV. Streaming one show after the other was all she’d done since the accident. There was nothing left to watch. But she had to keep busy or the regret and pain would get the best of her as it had every other night.

After a shower, she dropped onto the couch, pulled out her phone and finally started to listen to the voice mails she’d ignored over the past month.

Barbie Kowalski, a woman about her age she’d met in acting school, had tried several times to reach her. Tia had lived with Barbie for years, before Barbie moved in with her boyfriend. “God, Tia. Where are you? Why won’t you respond to me? You must be going through hell, and I’m so sorry. I love you, girl.”