“Sure,” Mills said. He was good with Robert, I’d discovered. Giant Mills with his eight-pack and his hooded eyes liked babies. His sister had two kids, he said. I found it touching, even sweet, and these days I took sweetness anywhere I found it.

I brought the mail back to my bedroom. I locked the door and leaned against it.

I would not read the letter. I’d decided. There was nothing Coral Lee Pine could tell me that was true. It would do me no good at all. I would take it to the master bath and burn it in the sink. I had a lighter in there for my scented candles. Trey had told me he saw our family as a bull’s-eye after Anna-Claire was born. The baby in the middle. Us around the baby in concentric circles. I realized now a bull’s-eye was a target. I could not weaken us with Lexie still unfound—and maybe aimed at us. I had to keep Robert and his sisters safe, at center, and I wanted Trey wrapped tight around them. To not read was to choose to wrap around them all, my husband included.

I dropped the pile of mail on the bed, then fished her envelope out from between the bills and glossy catalogs.

I was halfway to the bathroom before I registered the small red stamps running in a chain along the edge. A long envelope from Visa had hidden the words before.

photographs, do not bend. photographs, do not bend. photographs, do not bend.

24

This was how affairs began. Marshall should not be standing on Bree’s porch, readying to meet her one-on-one to talk about her problems with her husband. That was the first step in the How to Screw Up Someone’s Marriage handbook.

On the other hand, there wasn’t a universe where she called him weeping that way and he didn’t go to her. It didn’t feel physically possible.

She’d been so upset on the phone that he’d had a hard time understanding anything beyond the bare facts. Coral had sent a letter. An explanation, apparently, for all the damage she and her daughter had done. He hadn’t been able to make out much beyond that, she’d been sobbing so hard.

Bree had asked, “How can I stay married?” He’d heard that question loud and very damn clear. So here he was to talk with Bree about leaving her husband, and he was . . . what? Supposed to be objective?