“And Harold,” she called after him. “I still expect to receive that twenty grand you agreed to. So I suggest you look into a mortgage on that hideous house you love so much. I’ll have my attorney contact you.”

He didn’t even look back at her when he jumped in his car and tore out down the road. Marina watched the dust collect behind the Mercedes as it rounded the corner and felt her chest tighten just a little. She’d done the right thing. She knew that. But it still wasn’t as easy as she thought it should have been. She’d never know for sure if Harold had ever loved her but she knew she’d loved him once. She just didn’t anymore.

And all of that made her sad.

She slumped back in her chair and pondered the scant number of relationships she’d had over the course of her life. The best one, of course, was with Halcyon. The sisters had been tight from the first moment their father had shoved them into a playpen together, and it had always been the two of them against the world. But even though she loved her sister with all her heart and was certain Halcyon felt the same, Marina had been surprised lately to realize all the things they’d never said to each other. That they rarely talked about the most serious things they were dealing with.

She supposed it was because neither wanted to create friction or lower morale within the only great relationship they had. But for Marina, it was also because she didn’t want Halcyon to know how much she struggled with certain things. She’d always been the calm, strong one when it came to just dealing with day-to-day life. She didn’t want her sister to know that some days she’d taken a drive in her car just to cry without anyone seeing her. Or that sometimes she went days without sleeping because an overwhelming feeling of restlessness nagged at her.

Then there was Letitia. The problems Marina had with her mother had embarrassed her so badly that she didn’t want anyone to know the extent of the issues. Sure, some things got around but few people would have had the balls to go tattling to Halcyon about Marina. So she’d remained ignorant on the extent of Letitia’s bad behavior. And when they were kids, Halcyon wasn’t allowed to visit Marina’s house, so she never saw firsthand how Letitia treated her.

Constance hadn’t liked Marina and she’d hated Letitia, but she’d let the girls play together at her place because it was what their father wanted. Now that she was older, Marina understood that Constance hadn’t really loved their father, either. She wasn’t capable. But she’d wanted him and that desire had kept her doing his bidding. By the time he passed away, the sisters’ relationship was cemented so strongly it would have taken dynamite to blast them apart.

Mostly, when she and Halcyon got together, it was to have a good time. Share some drinks and some gossip and generally escape all the things they were forced to deal with. Even when it was a bitch session, it was something fairly innocuous, like how big a butthole Patricia was or how Halcyon kept having to tell the local busybodies to butt out of her theater productions. So maybe it was as simple as neither of them wanting to drag their serious baggage into the only escape time they had.