And then I shut the door. I didn’t see Kristen again. Not for quite a while. Not until the day I found out that Aubrey was not my biological daughter.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

LEE

I don’t tell Adam about the straw hat. How I found it under the Wisteria when I searched the old rumrunners’ passageway between the cabins. I don’t tell him as he stands there in his fancy clothes that I know I’ve been lied to. I don’t tell him any of that because when he sets down his phone to refresh his drink, I notice the pendant that caught my eye in the interview with Kristen and Connor.

Art deco. Platinum. Sapphires.

It’s coiled like a snake on the table next to Adam’s drink. It is almost like I’ve been swallowed by a black hole in the middle of that expensive sofa. Down some huge drain and into the sewer.

Everybody lies.

It wasn’t Connor at all.

It was Adam and Kristen.

I try to slow my heart rate and appear calm.

“I’ll take that drink,” I tell Adam. “If you’re still offering.”

He’s oblivious to my shift in demeanor. Or maybe I’m more adept at hiding how I feel than I think I am.

He flashes that perfect smile. Before I saw a Cruise smile, a Clooney grin. Now I see Jaws.

“I can do that,” he says. “One quick drink, and then I need to get out of here.” He turns his back to me and makes it, then hands me a glass. I take the smallest of sips. I wonder now if he spiked my beer that night at the cabin. It passes through my mind now that the boy who saved me when I was a girl has become a worse monster than my rapist and captor, Albert Hodge.

How is it that I could be so intuitive with so many, but fail with the one who had saved me? The one I thought I knew better than anyone?

“How’s Aubrey?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation going. “Must be hard caring for her.”

He wipes the lenses of his glasses with a tissue.

“I have Katrina,” he says.

“That’s right. She must be a big help.”

He sees me a little differently now. I can feel it.

“Where is she now?”

“They stay at Katrina’s on Saturdays so I can get things done around here. It’s tough doing it on your own.”

You don’t have a job, I think.

“I’m sure.”

I avert my stare.

“Something’s up,” he says. “What’s going on with you? Are you all right?”

I think about what card to play. Adam knows me well. He knows every tell that I have.

I start with Aubrey.

“I ran into Dan Belding today at Sister’s.”

He shakes his head. “That place still open?”