“Tanya, listen to what the mediator is telling you,” Letty said. “Stop picking fights with Evan. If you stop threatening him, he’ll settle. If you do that, you can move on and put all this crap behind you.”

“I’m moving on all right, all the way to California,” Tanya retorted. “I’m taking Maya with me, and there’s not a damned thing Evan Wingfield can do to stop me. Not if he wants to stay out of prison.”

Letty could feel her anxiety spiraling. Tanya’s prediction had been devastatingly accurate. Evan Wingfield had killed her sister, she was sure. And now he was after her. Her first instinct was to run—to pack up this child, asleep in the bed beside her, and flee into the darkness.

Maya sighed softly and burrowed into Letty’s side, flinging an arm across her chest. Letty inhaled the sweet smell of baby shampoo and brushed a damp curl off the child’s forehead.

Now was not the time to run, she decided. Maya needed to feel safe. She needed time to forget the trauma of whatever she had witnessed. And Letty needed time. To think, and plan. To figure out what their future would look like and yes, to find out what Tanya’s attachment was to the Murmuring Surf.

This morning, Maya was bright-eyed and cheerful, as though nothing had happened at the beach on Sunday, but Letty was what Mimi would have called “a hot mess.”

She donned the pink polo shirt with the Murmuring Surf embroidered logo, dabbed some concealer onto the dark circles under her eyes, and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Okay, let’s go to work,” she told her niece.

“You’re early,” Ava exclaimed, as Letty and Maya entered the Murmuring Surf office.

“Gotta make a good impression on my first day,” Letty said.

“How are you this morning, Miss Maya?” Ava asked, kneeling down so that she was at eye level with the little girl.

“I got all my stuff in here,” Maya said proudly, holding out her Frozen pocketbook for inspection.

Ava dutifully looked inside the purse, holding up each item for examination. “Mmm-hmm. Lipstick, comb, granola bar, jewelry box…”

“What?” Letty grabbed the black velvet box, her heart pounding. “Maya, you’re not supposed to have this.”

The little girl’s upper lip began to quiver. “Mommy said it was for me. I want it.”

Letty didn’t dare open the box in front of Ava, but as she tucked it in her pocket she could feel something rattling inside the box. Maya had always loved playing with the contents of Tanya’s jewelry box, draping her neck and wrists with ropes of fake pearls, gaudy colored beads and gold chains. Before Tanya split with Evan, when she still wore the push present diamond ring, she’d sometimes allow Maya to slip the ring onto her thumb to admire it.