As soon as she was inside, she sagged down on the couch and stared blindly at the Siamese cats on the mantel. She’d spent more time lately thinking about her youthful love affair than the demise of her ten-year marriage. But her affair with David had such a clear beginning and end, while the course of her marriage had been so very murky.

She slipped her heels off. The sandals she wore every day had left tan marks on her bare feet. Not that she had much of a tan. This was as dark as she got, a touch of honey and a few more freckles, which made it even more ironic that she’d been charged with raising a young black male.

Despite what she’d told Mike and Toby, she wasn’t ready to tackle melting beeswax today, so after she’d changed clothes, she found paper and began sketching some ideas for handmade note cards. But her heart wasn’t in it, and she couldn’t come up with anything she liked. Eventually she heard Toby burst into the house and head for his room. She listened for the sound of the Cadillac pulling away from the cottage. It didn’t come.

“I know you’re mad at me, but what’s new, right?” Mike said from the doorway.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She got up from the table.

In his businessman’s navy suit, he seemed bigger than ever, and despite her own height, she felt as if he were looming over her. “What I told Toby about David and Star was true.”

She began gathering up her drawing materials. “Only to you.”

He tugged absentmindedly on his necktie. “You want to believe you and David were Romeo and Juliet, but the truth is, you were a rich white girl from Grosse Pointe, and he was a black kid from Gary.” He shifted his car keys from one hand to the other. “David was fascinated by you, but he never loved you.”

She stuffed the notepad in the junk drawer. “Are you done?”

“It was different with Star.” Mike filled the room, sucking up her air. “Neither of them had money. They were both ambitious, charismatic, maybe a little ruthless. They understood each other in ways you and David couldn’t.”

“Then why did she leave?” The junk drawer banged as she shoved it in. “If they were such passionate lovers, why did Star run off?”

“He took a job in Wisconsin after she’d begged him not to. She always hated it when he was gone, and she wanted to punish him. I doubt she planned on being gone for long. She sure didn’t count on sliding off the road and going through the ice in that drainage canal.”

Bree wasn’t buying it. “They found a man in the car with her.”

“A drifter. She was always picking people up. My guess is he was hitchhiking.”