by Hilary Dartt
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Thank you for reading
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Title Page
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
Sharing a secret can bind people together. Keeping one can tear people apart.
Josie Garcia had kept her own secret folded into the recesses of her memory for the past six years. But things change, and recent developments had forced her to begin unwrapping it, revealing it layer by layer until it stood directly in the spotlight.
Now, she turned her secret over and over in her mind as if it were a precious gem.
Rowdy’s Saloon buzzed with activity on this Thursday night. College kids in trendy skinny jeans and beanie caps sipped beers with a practiced nonchalance while basketball games played on a half-dozen TV screens above the bar. The after-work crowd trickled in, and men and women in smart suits drank cocktails and ate pub mix, laughing loudly at jokes too inappropriate for water cooler conversation.
When Josie realized her two best friends, Summer Gray and Delaney Collins, were practically boring holes in her with their eyes from their respective spots at their usual high top table, she tucked that gem safely into the back of her mind as if she were hiding it in her bra, and smiled, first at Summer and then at Delaney.
“What?” she said, going for casual.
Delaney picked up her beer, but instead of drinking it, she pointed it at Josie.
“What’re you thinking about?”
Her offhand tone contrasted the intensity of her stare. Although Josie was tempted to look away, she gazed back at Delaney.
“Nothing,” she answered in a tone she hoped matched her friend’s.
“You’re a crappy liar, Josie,” Summer said.
This time, Josie looked down, into the depths of her vodka cranberry. The half-melted ice cubes shifted, catching the twinkling lights draped along the ceiling at Rowdy’s. They reminded her of gems, of the secret she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. She sighed.
“I was thinking about Paul,” she lied, knowing they’d believe her.
“What about him?” Summer asked.
“Oh, you know.” They didn’t, so she added, “Just hoping he stays safe tonight.”
That, at least, was the truth. As an undercover cop, Paul’s evenings often comprised drug deals and takedowns, shifty, knife-wielding felons and thousands of dollars in cash.
Summer reached across the table and put her hand on Josie’s arm.
“You know I’m kind of psychic,” she said. “My gut says he’ll be fine.”
Josie smiled at her, but it was half-hearted.
“This is our weekly Happy Hour,” she said. “We should be talking about happy things. I know you quit working here, Delaney, but do you think you could go mix me another drink?”
Delaney laughed. “I’m pretty sure it’s still against policy, but I’ll go up and order you one.”
Summer sighed with contentment as she and Josie watched Delaney approach the bar.
“She’s so much happier now,” she said. “I am so glad The Dating Intervention worked.”
“That was a stroke of genius on our part,” Josie said, nodding and raising her empty glass in a toast. “It really was.”
Summer clinked her water glass against Delaney’s. “We should have taken over her love life years ago.”
“Definitely,” Josie said. “But it’s all about timing, too. I don’t think she was quite ready for a great guy like Jake before the Intervention.”
Delaney returned, Josie’s drink in hand. She set the glass on the table and Summer pinned Josie with The Look.
“All right, sister,” she said. “You’ve got your refill. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
Josie thought of her secret. She thought of Delaney, still in that new-relationship dream state with Jake Rhoades. She thought of Summer, madly in love with her husband Derek, expecting their fifth child. How could they possibly understand?
“Okay. I’ll spill,” she said.
Instead of telling the truth, she decided, she would tell a truth. It wasn’t like she was lying. She was simply keeping a secret. Even as these thoughts rushed through her mind, she chastised herself for finding a loophole. Summer and Delaney had been her best friends for more than twenty years. Since junior high. They were fourteen then and thirty-four now. Adults. Surely she could tell them. Again, she sighed. She’d promised to keep a secret, and she always kept her promises. Well, almost always.
“It’s Paul,” she said.
The girls looked at her sympathetically. Summer, who had just popped another green olive into her mouth (she always ate them during pregnancy), nodded. Delaney’s forehead crinkled in concern.
“I think we’re on the brink of divorce.”
It was almost comical the way both of her friends’ mouths dropped open in surprise. They glanced quickly at each other, and then looked at Josie again.
“What?” Delaney said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m sure you can work it out,” Summer said. “Right? I mean, can’t you? What’s going on?”
“Wait,” Delaney said. “How did it get to this point without us knowing about it?”
“Well, admittedly, we’ve both been a bit distracted,” Summer said to Delaney. “You with Jake and the new job, and me with the band and the pregnancy. I feel terrible about this, Josie. Really bad. What’s going on?”
“The truth is,” Josie began, pausing when she felt the unfamiliar pressure of real tears in her throat and behind her eyes. “Things are really, really bad.”
When neither Summer nor Delaney spoke, Josie continued. “I never see Paul anymore. I mean, hardly ever. We’re never home at the same time, and when we are, he’s distracted. Not just watching-basketball-and-eating-chips distracted, but, like, thinking about drug deals and drug dealers and answering calls from informants distracted. And he’s so angry. He’s angry all the time.”
Summer put her hand on Josie’s arm again. The gesture was supposed to be soothing, but Josie didn’t miss the quick look Summer and Delaney exchanged—again.
Delaney licked her lips in that way she always did when she was nervous. She inhaled quickly, as if she wanted to say something, and then she pressed her lips together as if to hold the words in.
“Spill it, Collins,” Josie said, knowing Delaney would cave if she put her on t
he spot.
Summer’s hand slinked back to its own side of the table. She entwined it with the other hand. Josie had no idea what she was looking at. A spot on the table, maybe? A water droplet on her napkin?
“Well?” Josie said to Delaney.
“It’s just that, well, you know, Josie, you’ve been kind of, um, a bit, you know … a little help, here, Summer?”
Summer’s eyes met Josie’s. “I’ll give it to you straight, my sister. You’ve been pretty angry lately, too.”
Well, that was definitely a truth.
***
Thursday night Happy Hour with Summer and Delaney ended just moments later. Summer’s husband called to say one of the kids had stuck a pencil eraser up his nose and couldn’t get it out, so the girls quickly packed up their purses.
“This will all turn out fine,” Summer whispered to Josie as she wrapped her in a tight hug. Then, still gripping Josie’s shoulders, she looked into her eyes with a thoughtful expression. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t you try really laying on the romance? I mean, how long has it been since you and Paul had sex?”
Josie opened her mouth, then closed it again. How long had it been?
“I honestly couldn’t say,” Josie said.
“Well, if you couldn’t say, then that means it’s been way too long. Go home and set the scene. When Paul comes home, ravish him like he’s never been ravished before. It’ll be fun. And sex always relieves the tension. Opens the doorway for conversation.”
“Now we know the secret to Summer’s ever-growing family,” Delaney said.
Summer pressed a hand to her belly. “True. But everything I just said is true, too. Try it. Gotta go. As you know, Luke is my difficult child, and you know he won’t let his dad get near him with a pair of tweezers.”
It was good advice, Josie thought as she perused the meat section at the grocery store a few minutes later. She’d feed Paul a fat steak, a baked potato, and some salad. Add a little wine and music, maybe some candles.
Did they even own candles? Josie checked her watch. It was five-thirty. Paul had gone into work at nine that morning, which meant she had about an hour and a half until he got home. Presumably. Unless something came up, which seemed to happen a lot lately.
“Stay positive,” she said to a potato she picked up to examine. “Negativity kills a relationship.”
At least, that’s what all the “experts” said. If you considered authors of online articles experts. Yes, she’d done a quick Google search in the store parking lot: how to fix my marriage.
Was she negative? As she pushed her cart through the store, she thought about some of her recent interactions with Paul. Shame crept in like a spider under a closed door, fast-moving and sneaky.
Just last week, she came home complaining about how the new teachers at her school would be starting at a higher salary than she had during her first year of teaching. The next day when Paul got home, she complained about the terrible driver she got stuck behind on her way to the district office. To her credit, the middle-aged, pot-bellied, mustached woman driver couldn’t use a turn signal or go even remotely close to the speed limit to save her life. The next day (the very next day, she thought, wanting to kick herself) she spent some time—a long time, really—complaining about how the school parking lot was closed for resurfacing.
“It’s so inconvenient,” she said as he took off his gun holster and the bullet proof vest he wore under his T-shirt. “It’s like they expect us be sherpas or something! We have to park on the street and carry our supplies all the way to the building!”
Never mind that parking on the street meant walking only a few extra yards.
Yikes. No wonder he wants to work all the time.
Now she was on a roll. She searched the internet for relationship mistakes, and found that she was committing quite a few of the “7 Most Common Relationship Mistakes” and “12 Mistakes Couples Make Without Realizing It”: taking her partner for granted, complaining about her partner, being passive-aggressive (how many times was she going to “forget” to pick his uniform shirts up from the dry cleaners?), believing her partner should be able to read her mind.
She found some scented candles in the grocery store’s home section. Another quick search on her phone turned up an article about the seven best scents to enhance your love life. The top two were cinnamon and vanilla, so she set one of each in her cart.
At home in her kitchen, she laid her purchases out on the counter. To give the candles time to work their magic, she set them on the dining room table and lit them right away. She popped the potatoes in the oven and went to work on the steaks, rubbing them with olive oil and steak seasoning so they could marinate. As she began chopping vegetables for the salad, inspiration hit and she dug out a love songs CD someone had given to her and Paul for their wedding.
Although she still had another forty minutes before Paul came home, she turned the music on as she finished chopping, just to get her in the mood. By six-thirty, everything was ready, and she figured she had time to take a quick shower.
It had been so long since she prepared for romance that she was giddy with excitement as she soaped up, shaved, and scrubbed her skin to unprecedented levels of softness.
She even found some vanilla-scented lotion in the cabinet under the sink, and rubbed it on, letting the anticipation build. Why had she let so much time pass since they were last intimate? This was going to be fun. And Summer was right. It would give them time to talk when they both had their guards down.
All of her sexy underwear was crammed into the farthest recesses of her underwear drawer. She dug out Paul’s favorite pair, lacy white boy shorts he said showed off her perfectly shaped rear end, and slipped into them before pulling on a silky nightgown. The sexual energy could build over dinner, she thought with a little shiver.
She heard it while she was looking in the mirror, smoothing her hair: the sound of a text message coming in.
Paul: I’ll be late. Just got a tip on a meth dealer coming back from Phoenix with at least an ounce. We’re hoping to knock him off at Sunset Point. I’ll call you when we’re done.
For the second time in as many days, Josie felt like crying. Then she felt like kicking herself for feeling like crying. So she reacted like she usually did when she felt sad or disappointed: with anger.
She responded to Paul’s text: Fine.
And then she sent a text to Summer and Delaney: I can’t believe I was stupid enough to follow your stupid advice. Stupid Paul is running late. Again. It’ll be at least a couple of hours.
This is why I’ve been pushing him away, she thought. This. Right here. Why do I even try?
Josie resolved to stop trying.
She turned off her phone and changed out of her lacy white boy shorts and silky nightie into granny panties and an old t-shirt Paul brought home from one of his innumerable trainings. Then she downed a bottle of wine while listening to the romantic music and went to bed, the steaks still marinating on the counter.
***
Laying in bed, blinking into the dark, Josie Garcia reminded herself that she didn’t believe in romance. For a few minutes, she tried staring at the ceiling, but it spun so quickly she had to shut her eyes. This proved equally dangerous. A kaleidoscope of color swirled behind her eyelids.
Her mother, a stern Mexican immigrant who taught herself English and put herself through accounting school, hammered practicality into Josie’s head from the time she was an infant clutching a homemade rattle in her fist. Yes, even her first toy, a rattle made from a baby food jar filled with dried pinto beans, had been practical.
“Don’t look for a man who speaks in poetry and brings you flowers, mija,” Carla Garcia said. “Look for a man who gives you a good life. Stability. Poetry and roses don’t put tortillas on the table. They’re false currency.”
But Josie’s mother was gone. She’d died seven years ago of a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Almost in a dreamlike state, Josie let her m
ind rewind to that moment three days after Mama died … the moment when she met Scott Smith and the universe put her mother’s theory to the test.
It made absolutely no sense that Scott’s lyrical language and haphazard bouquets of wildflowers had her quivering in her three-inch heels. But they did.
Josie, an orphan at age twenty-seven, sat on a bench downtown, the scorching summer sun making her scalp prickle with sweat.
Standing steadfast in the denial stage, Josie expected her mother to walk around the corner any minute, making tsk noises about Josie wearing shorts to work.
“It’s summer, Mama,” Josie whispered. “I’m just setting up my classroom.”
Tears made the scene before her shimmer. The glittering white courthouse, the leaves dancing in the breeze.
It seemed so unfair. Mama dropped dead at her kitchen counter. Why her? She was a good woman. A hard-working woman who raised two children into productive adults, one a teacher and the other a soldier.
She didn’t even get to see her grandchildren (not that they were imminent or anything).
There must be some mistake, Josie found herself thinking over and over again when it first happened. Some other woman must have been standing in Mama’s kitchen, helping her make tamales or brewing a pot of coffee. Some other woman wearing her ruffled apron, turquoise like the blue bowl she’d brought from Mexico to sit on the kitchen table, full of oranges.
Josie found her lying on the floor, hands covered in masa and a streak of it on her cheek. Her hair was wound in a tight, low bun. Her eyes were open, but Josie could tell she was already gone. A sense of calm came over Josie then, and she remembered the ABCs from her CPR class. Airway, breathing, circulation. Mama didn’t seem to have anything in her mouth, and she wasn’t breathing. Her skin was cold. She didn’t have a pulse.
Still, Josie refused to believe this was permanent. Even when the ambulance came screeching into the driveway, when the paramedics loaded her mother onto a stretcher after performing CPR, or when they told her there was nothing she could have done.
Mama had to be coming back. This was all a terrible nightmare.
She kept picturing herself sitting at her mom’s table drinking coffee, tying the tamales after Mama formed them with her strong hands. Three days had passed, and Josie found herself sitting on that bench at the courthouse square, reliving the scene yet again. They were wrong. Her mother wasn’t dead. It wasn’t true that a blood vessel in Carla Garcia’s brain had weakened, widened and then ruptured. Carla Garcia had veins of steel. She was tough.