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  Not that she hasn’t already had that talk on some level, countless times, over the years. The message, regardless of the topic: Don’t Do It.

  “Did you, when you were my age?” Caroline asked the last time Marin brought up underage drinking.

  Marin faltered, unable to remember the latest parenting advice. Were you supposed to admit your own teenage sins, or not? She was pretty sure the jury was still out, so she chose to sidestep the question.

  This morning, feeling the effects of too much wine last night, she’s a prime example of what happens to people who overindulge.

  And when it comes to the repercussions of premarital sex—

  I could write a book, Marin thinks sadly.

  But she won’t, of course, because she and Garvey swore they would never tell. The news would most certainly destroy his prospects of running on the conservative ticket.

  Even though, Marin thinks grimly, it all happened more than twenty years ago. Even though we did the so-called right thing and had the baby.

  Lauren is dousing her head beneath the hot spray when someone bangs on the bathroom door. She sighs. Does it ever fail?

  “Use the downstairs bathroom!” she calls, lathering her hair.

  More banging. “Mom!”

  It’s Ryan.

  Lauren parts the vinyl shower curtain—which, she notices, is dotted with mildew. “Use the downstairs, Ry! I’m in the shower.”

  “No, I don’t have to go. The maids are here!”

  Oh no—the maids!

  How could she have spaced out like that? She knows they always come on Tuesdays.

  “I’ll be right out,” she tells Ryan hurriedly. “Just tell your sisters we have to clear out of here. And…can you make sure your room is picked up?”

  Ryan grumbles something on the other side of the door. Lauren doesn’t bother to ask him to repeat it. She sticks her head under the water again, doing her best to get all the suds out and skipping the conditioner.

  After swiftly toweling off, she grabs her terry bathrobe, belts it on, and reaches for the doorknob.

  Before she can touch it, the door jerks open.

  “Oh, sorry!” A middle-aged blond woman with a strikingly pretty face—who also happens to be a complete stranger—faces her from the opposite side of the threshold. She’s wearing a Magic Maids T-shirt and carrying a bucket filled with cleaning supplies.

  “It’s okay. I was just…”

  Naked. I was just naked, and you almost caught me. And this is turning into an even crappier day than I expected.

  “Go ahead.” Lauren steps past her and flees down the hall to her bedroom. There, she finds Olga, one of the regulars, stripping the sheets from the mattress.

  “Hello, Mrs. Lauren,” Olga says pleasantly—though obviously a little taken aback to see her there in her robe.

  “Hi, Olga. I’m sorry—I forgot you were coming.”

  “Miss Rosa didn’t call?”

  “No, she called, I just…forgot. The kids and I will be out of the way in a few minutes. I need to put on my clothes.”

  “Of course.” Olga steps out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

  Lauren dives into shorts, a T-shirt, flip-flops. She runs a brush through her wet hair, grabs a pair of sunglasses, and, as an afterthought, a bathing suit.

  She might as well take the kids to the pool again. Maybe she’ll be able to swim some laps today, work off some of the bad energy.

  Speaking of bad energy…

  Maybe Beth will be there. And if she is, maybe I’ll ask her what the hell is up with Nick.

  Opening the bedroom door, Lauren finds Olga standing down the hall in front of Sadie’s room—which appears to be barricaded by Sadie herself. Wearing a defiant scowl, she’s standing with her arms folded across her stomach, her back against the closed door.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren asks brightly—though it’s pretty obvious.

  “Your daughter, she doesn’t want me to go in there.”

  “Sadie, Olga just needs to clean your room.”

  “No!”

  “Sweetie, we’re going out now anyway. When we get back, you can go back into your room, okay?” Until it’s time for the appointment with Dr. Prentiss, anyway.

  Judging by her daughter’s troubled expression and the adamant shake of her head, Lauren figures that the appointment can’t come soon enough.

  “No! No one can go into my room.”

  “I’m just going to clean it. I’m not going to touch anything, honey.”

  “No!” Sadie screams at poor Olga, who takes a step backward.

  “Okay, you know what, Sadie? You don’t talk to people that way. Ever. Apologize to Olga right now.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sadie bows her head.

  “I’m sorry, too, Olga. She can be very touchy about her things.”

  “It’s okay. I have kids too.” Olga smiles, revealing a gold tooth that matches the gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand—and tells Lauren that Olga’s kids probably aren’t dealing with the same problems her own kids are facing.

  “Sadie.” She rests a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

  Sadie looks up. “What?”

  The bleak look in her eyes and the defeated slump of her narrow shoulders worries Lauren.

  “You want Olga to skip your room for today? How about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Lauren turns to Olga, who nods that she understands, just as the other maid steps out of the bathroom to empty the waste can into a large garbage bag in the hall.

  “Mary—it’s Mary, right?” Olga asks.

  The woman nods.

  “This is Mrs. Lauren.”

  “We met, sort of. Hello again, Mary.” Lauren smiles at the new woman, who looks as though it pains her to smile back.

  “And this is her little girl. That’s her room. She doesn’t want us to clean it today, okay?”

  Mary nods briefly, then disappears back into the bathroom.

  She’s either very shy, Lauren decides, or very unfriendly, or she doesn’t speak much English. Probably not the latter, though you never know. At first glance, Mary struck her as the all-American type.

  “I’ll tell the other two ladies, too,” Olga promises.

  “Thank you.” Lauren starts to turn toward the stairs. “Wait—there are two more women here today?”

  “Four of us. Yes.”

  “I thought there were going to be just three.” Maybe she misunderstood Rosa’s message.

  “Sometimes we change things,” Olga explains. “Depending on who is around. The more ladies, the faster it goes.”

  Lauren nods. Whatever. She just needs to make sure she leaves tips for four instead of three.

  “Come on, Sadie,” she says, “let’s get moving.”

  “Just a second.” Her daughter crouches in front of her bedroom door as if she’s looking for something.

  Lauren is about to ask her what she’s doing, but she gives an abrupt nod and straightens again. “Okay. Let’s go, Mommy.”

  Lauren ushers her toward the stairs, worried. Sadie’s behavior is growing stranger by the day.

  Thank goodness for the child psychiatrist. Hopefully Dr. Prentiss will say that it’s all totally normal, just a phase. If not…

  We’ll just have to handle it, Lauren tells herself—then she remembers. No, I’ll just have to handle it.

  She’d be a fool to count on Nick for anything, ever again.

  Elsa pulled out of her driveway back in Groton at eight o’clock this morning, just after Brett left for work. He had no idea about her little excursion, and she wasn’t about to tell him. She knew what he would say.

  Don’t do that to yourself. Why pour salt on an unhealed wound?

  He was right, she’d thought at the time. Of course he was.

  But then yesterday, when she held that orphaned puppy, and Karyn told her she’d have been a good mother, and the flower garden came back to life…

 
; According to the GPS on the dashboard, Elsa should have been in Boston by ten—barring traffic complications. Ha. As always, Interstate 95 was riddled with construction zones and accidents.

  The legendary Big Dig—a construction nightmare—might have wound down over the years, but the city is by no means a pleasure to navigate. It’s been almost fourteen years since she negotiated the narrow network of Boston streets, yet it all comes right back to her: the endless congestion, the shortcuts and detours, the roads that unexpectedly fork off without advance signage, the streets that begin as one-way but wind up two-way, and vice versa.

  Something else comes back to her, too: the countless visits into the city to take Jeremy to various doctors and experts, none of whom was really able to help him.

  Oh, Jeremy. I failed you. I’m so sorry.

  It’s well past noon by the time she pulls into the parking garage off Hanover Street, having had plenty of time to rethink the meeting with Mike. It seemed like a good idea yesterday, when she impulsively made the call. Now, however, she has to force herself to get out of the car.

  She smooths her trim black suit, pulled from the back of her closet, shrouded in clear plastic from a San Diego dry cleaner. She’d gotten rid of plenty of clothes over the year, but she kept this one. Not just because of the designer label, but because she knew, with morbid practicality, that the day might come when she might need a black suit.

  Not this day. Not under these circumstances. But it’s all she could find in her closet that doesn’t scream small-town housewife.

  Or does it? Are pencil skirts even still in style? Are sling backs? she wonders, her heels tapping briskly along the sidewalk as she makes her way past the neighborhood’s tenement architecture toward the café.

  Does it matter what she’s wearing?

  No. But cities tend to evoke faint memories of her fashionista past—a life that might as well have belonged to someone else.

  Who am I now?

  Why am I even here?

  Pausing to wait for a pedestrian signal to change, Elsa fights the urge to turn around and run back to the car, to get the hell out of here and go back home where she belongs.

  But that house isn’t home—not really. She doesn’t feel as though she belongs there yet. Oh hell, she doesn’t feel as though she belongs anywhere without Jeremy.

  The light changes, and she makes her way across the street.

  I have to touch base with Mike in person. Just to remind him that I haven’t given up on finding Jeremy, and to find out whether he’s made any progress on my other requests. Just to see if there’s anything new at all, any shred of information…

  Mike Fantoni knows as well as anyone that Elsa is desperate to have her son back—or at least to learn his fate. Mike would never withhold information.

  No—but maybe seeing her in person will trigger something. Some forgotten detail, some new avenue to explore, perhaps just the renewed need to do whatever it takes to pick up a trail that’s been cold for fourteen years.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ryan really didn’t want to come to the pool today. His friends are all busy with dentists’ appointments and shopping and day trips and all the other stuff parents like to squeeze in before school starts.

  All except Ian, anyway. Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing today, and he didn’t call to find out. Ian doesn’t go to the town pool since he has one in his own backyard. He’d probably invite Ryan over, but then Ryan would have to deal with Mrs. Wasserman and her nosy questions again. No thanks.

  So here he is, dangling his feet in the shallow end, chewing on his pinky fingernail, and watching his little sister splash around. Lucy is off somewhere flirting with Josh, and Mom is swimming laps. Talk about a sucky way to spend a precious summer day…

  Though, to be fair, Mom did offer to pay him to mind Sadie, and he can sure use the money. Dad always slips him a few bucks when Ryan sees him, but it’s been a while, and now who knows when Dad is coming back?

  At first, Ryan was so relieved to get the text message from his father that he didn’t even think much about what it said. He’d been so worried something bad might have happened, and he knew Mom and Lucy and even Sadie were worried, too.

  But yesterday, once it sank in that his father was okay, Ryan started to get mad.

  Really mad.

  Madder, even, than he was about the divorce.

  Dad has time to go away on vacation for a whole week with his girlfriend, and he has time to sit around and think, but he doesn’t have time to take Ryan on their annual fishing trip?

  “Hey, Sadie, stay on this side,” he calls to his sister, noticing she’s drifting over to the opposite end of the steps, where a couple of other kids her age are bobbing around.

  Sadie pointedly ignores him.

  “Sadie!”

  She turns to look at him, waves.

  “Come back over here, near me.”

  “In a minute.” She turns to grab a sponge ball as it floats past, and tosses it back to the little boy who let it go.

  Hmm. Maybe he should just move over there so that she can play with the other kids. Sadie could probably stand to make a few friends. Maybe that would help her act more…normal.

  He feels bad for even thinking that, but it’s true. His little sister is downright weird lately. She’s always worrying about her stuff, and she throws tantrums and cries at the drop of a hat. What if she gets to school and none of the other kindergarteners like her? What if she goes through life as one of those pathetic kids who have no friends?

  That’ll be Dad’s fault, too, Ryan tells himself. Sadie was just fine before he left.

  We all were.

  “Is that your little sister?”

  Ryan looks up to see a lady talking to him. “Yeah,” he tells her, “that’s Sadie. I’m watching her for my mom.”

  “Aren’t you a sweet big brother.”

  “She’s paying me.”

  The woman laughs. “Sweet, and smart, too.”

  Obviously a mom, she’s in up to her knees, holding a little kid who looks petrified of the water. But of course Ryan would know she’s a mom even without the kid attached to her, because she’s wearing a one-piece black bathing suit with a little skirt. Only moms wear those—including his own.

  She lowers the baby so that the bottoms of his feet skim the water. He screams.

  “It’s okay, little guy,” his mother tells him. “See? It’s fun.”

  The baby screams harder. He obviously does not think it’s fun.

  “My sister used to do that when she was a baby,” Ryan offers, feeling sorry for the mom, who holds the baby up high above the water again.

  “Really? Do you remember how she got over it?”

  “No, but my mom probably does. She used to read all these books about stuff like that. You know—how to get kids to do stuff.”

  The woman smiles. “Where’s your mom?”

  Ryan points at the lap lanes on the far side of the pool, where his mother is gliding toward the opposite end in a rhythmic freestyle.

  “I’ll have to ask her for some tips, or at least some good book titles. What’s her name?”

  “Lauren. I’m Ryan,” he adds.

  “Good to meet you, Ryan. I’m Jessica Wolfe.”

  She’s nice. Maybe she can be friends with Mom.

  Oh geez. Why am I so worried about finding friends for other people?

  Ryan isn’t quite sure. All he knows is that his mother and sister both seem lonely, and he feels like he should probably do something about it now that…

  Now that I’m the man of the house?

  But he’s only twelve. He doesn’t want to be a man. He doesn’t want to take care of other people. Half the time, he feels like he wants someone to take care of him.

  Mom does, to be fair. Yeah. She takes good care of him.

  But Dad doesn’t. Not anymore. These days, Dad only takes care of himself.

  Again, Ryan feels a flash of anger toward his father.
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  His jaw clenches and he tries to think about something else. Something happy.

  He watches Jessica scoop some water over her baby’s feet. More screams. Okay, that’s definitely not happy.

  “Shh, sweetie, you’re not even in the water, see?” Jessica says. “I’m just splashing you. See the big girl? See how Sadie splashy-splashes over there?”

  Hearing her name, Sadie looks up with interest. Ryan notices once again that she’s drifted too far away.

  “Hey, Sades, c’mere.”

  “No! You come here!”

  Ryan sighs, hoists himself to his feet. He might as well go sit on the other side.

  “It was nice meeting you,” he tells Jessica.

  “You too, Ryan.”

  As he makes his way around the stairs, he glances over toward the lap lanes again, wishing he could introduce the nice mom to his mom. She said Trilby is coming back any day now, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need someone else to hang around with.

  His mother is no longer swimming in the lap lanes.

  Where…?

  Oh. She’s over there, out of the pool, and no wonder it took him a minute to recognize her. She’s not wearing one of those black mom bathing suits with a little skirt today, he notices. She’s wearing a red two-piece. And— Ryan’s eyes widen—she’s talking to some guy.

  His heart sinks.

  Weren’t you just thinking Mom can use some new friends? Maybe she made one.

  Yeah, but he’s a guy. And he’s not looking at Ryan’s mother like he wants her to be his friend.

  He’s looking at her like…

  Ryan sighs.

  Yeah. Life definitely sucks.

  Three hours—and well over three thousand dollars—after stepping out of the Town Car on West Broadway, Caroline is well outfitted for the fall season. In Marin’s opinion, anyway.

  In Caroline’s opinion, they’re just getting started. Funny, because she’s the one who didn’t want this shopping expedition in the first place.

  “I still need new black boots,” she declares as they walk along Prince Street, “and I want one of those long wool coats like Desdemona’s. I know where she got it, and the place is right down here.”