But how hard that must have been to keep up living a lie! All the maneuvering, all the pretense! Yet Lauren understood what might drive Piper to have done it. If something happened to Matthew—something could have, the night in the kitchen, if Graham’s fist had been a few inches higher—Lauren would have fallen apart, too. She could see the comfort in imagining a child growing and changing, achieving milestones. She could see how it could be a coping mechanism to buy new toys for him appropriate to the age he’d be if he’d continued to grow. She could see making a room for him in a new house, placing the books he might have read on the shelves, the posters of sports stars he might have liked on the walls. Lauren got it. She did. Maybe anyone was capable of doing such a thing, if the circumstances were just right.

She pushed to her feet, squeezing one of Matthew’s chunky arms. “You’re doing so good, buddy.” She cast Clarissa a departing smile and fetched her bag. “I won’t be too long.”

“Take your time!” Clarissa said, almost too quickly.

Lauren turned without saying anything else. For the first time since Clarissa had come to work for her, Lauren left without feeling ashamed, or guilty, or judged. Clarissa was no longer here as a buffer against Lauren’s instability; she was here to simply lend a hand.

And that reframing made all the difference.

•   •   •

There was a guard at Piper’s room. Not because the staff feared someone might attack her—although, with the news of the embezzlement scheme, that wasn’t so far-fetched—but because now that she was awake and growing stronger, she was a flight risk. Once the doctors cleared Piper to go, she would be thrown into county jail alongside Carson to await her trial and sentencing. The public, who’d so recently praised Piper and damned Lauren and the others, had quickly changed their tune. Lauren’s, Andrea’s, and Ronnie’s struggles were set aside—even Andrea, who’d been so worried Carson was going to expose her in retaliation, hadn’t had to deal with that yet.