“Did you get the kind of flu that comes in waves?”

Again he was razzing her, but she wheeled instantly to face him. She put both hands on his chest, and then she shoved him. Hard. It rocked him back a step.

Marshall wasn’t sure what shocked him more, the underlying unkindness of the jokes he’d made or that she’d laid such furious hands on him. He rubbed at his mouth, as if his words had galloped out without permission and now he didn’t want to let out more.

“That was offsides,” he said. And stupid, because he hadn’t minded driving her girls at all.

Bree glared at him like she wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. “Yes, it was.” He started to apologize, but angry words came pouring out of her, unstoppable. “Why are you being such a shit to me?” Her voice was raw, a forced, furious whisper. “For weeks now you’ve cold-shouldered me, and you have no idea the unending hell this day has been. When I called you this afternoon, I treated you badly, I know, but God . . . I’m . . . I . . . I feel so fucking terrible.” He felt the curse words like more shoves. Betsy had had a filthy mouth and a wonderfully filthy mind to match, but even in high school Bree only cussed in extremis. She stepped in so close that her earthy rose smell enveloped him again. “I’m a person, Marshall. Full of blood and organs and feelings, and I don’t live my whole life trying to make yours suck more. You think I want to be here? I want to be home, with my kids. All three of them. That’s all I want. That’s all I want.”

She stopped abruptly and turned away, shoving open the exit door. There was a moment of discordance, the cello moaning behind them and the torchy singer crooning along with the piano on the lawn ahead. The warm spring air felt cold as he followed her out of the humid orchid house.

He was thinking about Cara now, at the start of third grade. She’d been cute as a Muppet, all snappy brown eyes and skinny legs and corkscrew hair. A boy who sat behind her kept pinching her arm when she wouldn’t talk to him in class.

“He probably likes you,” Marshall said, and Bets had surreptitiously pinched the back of his arm, her face gone fierce.

She told their daughter, “If that’s how he shows he likes you, Cara, then that right there is a little turd boy who thinks the world owes him a girl who likes him back.” Cara wanted to move seats, and Betsy had shut that down, too. “You don’t move. He moves. I’ll go with you, but you have to talk to your teacher. We will sit down with her, and you will tell her what is happening. That boy has to learn that if he lays hands on a girl, there are consequences.”

Then she’d stopped talking, her eyes so angry. Not with him. With the world. She was mad that she’d lied to their daughter. They were both cops. They knew how often boys laid hands on girls, consequence-free. Only a few months later, a man who believed he had the right to beat his wife to death had taken Betsy from them.

He still thought she’d been right to say it. He never wanted his daughter to think love excused poor treatment. Worse, he was letting his lonely, bitter heart turn him into that kind of man. He didn’t want to be the guy who said bitchy things to a woman he was attracted to because he couldn’t have her. Not even a little.

His silly crush wasn’t Bree’s fault, or her problem. It was not her fault he was lurking around in the orchid house to escape party small talk. Not her fault she’d accidentally rammed into him.

“I really am sorry,” he said quietly.

“Fine.” She kept walking, fast, zooming across the green, weaving through the crowd.

He stuck with her. “No, really. I’ve had a couple, not that that’s a good excuse.” He’d never thought about how the ways he tried to keep his distance might read to her. “I’ve been shitty to you for a while, huh? Believe me, it’s not about you. I have some stuff to work out.” That was true enough.

Her anger seemed to be receding. She paused and put a hand on his arm to pause him and looked up into his face, serious.

“Forget about it. Okay? It’s fine. We’re fine.” She turned and hurried off again, clearly finished with the conversation.

Except . . .

She was drowning. He hadn’t seen it when she was cursing at him, angry. But in that single, soft forgiving glance, he knew. Even buzzed, he could feel his old invisible cop antennae quivering.

He’d seen drowning eyes like Bree’s before. A dozen-plus years back, when he was still in uniform and he and his partner took a routine noise-disturbance call. Someone had heard a scream inside a ground-floor apartment in a nice working-class neighborhood. He knocked, and a girl came to the door.

She was a cute little thing, fourteen tops, her hair in braids. She told them that everything was fine, smiling as wide as the Minnie Mouse on her T-shirt. But her eyes were deep, dark wells. She’d seen a spider, she said. She was sorry, she said. She promised to keep it down.

The second the door closed, he called for backup, and then he kicked open the door and he and his partner busted a serial who had raped eleven girls and women in their own homes. That asshole had been right behind the door with his knife pressing into the girl’s spine the whole time she was smiling and saying how afraid she was of spiders.

That was the bust that had taught him to follow his instincts. It had also gotten him his detective’s shield.

Bree’s eyes over her smile had been as shadowed as that little girl’s. Still, he hesitated. Maybe he wanted her to be in distress, damsel style, so he could save her. She’d made it pretty clear that she was finished with the conversation.

She was passing Trey’s secretary now, Janice, who reached out to take her arm. Bree shrugged her off, pressing onward, and in the bright, apologetic smile she gave Janice, Marshall saw something purely ghastly.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and he hurried after her.

8

I went back to the same shaded path I had taken in. It was narrow and secluded, hemmed by arches of hanging vines. I hadn’t called for my Lyft yet, though my phone was in my hand. Marshall had distracted me. I hurried forward a few feet, letting the darkness swallow me. If the daughter was watching me, she would think I was leaving the party, obedient. Then I paused to work the app.

“You’re calling a car service?” Marshall asked behind me in the darkness. I almost jumped out of my skin. “I’d offer you a ride, but I’ve got no business driving. Cara is at her friend’s lake house all weekend, and I’ve kinda tied one on.”