I shook my head. “I’m not playing at all. I’m out,” I said. I meant it. “I found a lot of things. Your money, what’s left of it. Your fake IDs. Your pot. Your search history; I know you’re taking Luca to the Maldives. No extradition there, but I don’t think this is about avoiding a warrant. This is about custody. You’re going to the Maldives to keep your kid.” I was guessing, but I’d guessed right. She blinked in spite of herself, and I knew I’d scored a direct hit. “I could find the man that did this, Roux. Blackmail you back. If you told my secrets, I could tell him where to find you.” I touched the picture.

Roux’s gaze dropped to her hands, and that perfect stillness came into her body. She was utterly unreadable, but I knew she was afraid. I could practically smell it, a whiff of something acrid coming off her body. “I decided not to do that. I’m not even looking for him.”

She breathed out, like I’d tapped her hard in the stomach.

“I keep underestimating you.” Her voice was shaking with some emotion I couldn’t read on her carefully blank face.

“Thank Luca. I won’t put him in the path of the man who did this to you. And I didn’t loiter around waiting for you to die inside that wreck. I could have. I have it in me. You’re the one who taught me that. But I decided not to. I chose not to. I stand by that choice, no matter how hard it bounces back on me.” I paused, and Roux picked up my drink again. She drained what was left in two long swallows. I went on, “I also can’t give you the money. It’s not mine. You know that. Charlotte’s going to lose something here if you go forward. The money or my friendship. I’m not egotistical enough to think my friendship’s worth a quarter of a million. Especially since it is so weighted down with lies on my side. But the money . . . If, God forbid, there’s complications with the baby, or if her brother gets sick or in some trouble, the money has to be there.”

She started to speak, but I overrode her.

“Plus, Char is sweet, Roux. Sweeter than all the sugar that could be squeezed out of both of us. Even if you tell her the truth, we could end up friends. One day. Eventually. That will be up to her. She would get to decide, and that seems fair. As for Davis, we’re strong. I hope we can weather it.” I was all in for my marriage. I’d made that decision when I’d blocked Tig. It would be very hard on Davis, and if I had an escape route, our odds of us surviving when the truth came out went down.

She was watching me so closely, waiting now for me to finish before she spoke. Her voice was calm, deliberate.

“Do you understand what it’s going to be like? Once everyone knows?”

I swallowed. Of course I did. The idea of it—it felt like getting skinned alive. Every time any of my friends or neighbors looked at me, they would be thinking of it. This thing I did. Not just the accident, the death of Mrs. Shipley, but everything I’d done to Charlotte. I’d killed her mother, and then I’d worked myself so deep into her life that she called me her mom-friend. Leaving the neighborhood wouldn’t get me far enough away. The story would follow me as long as I was within a hundred miles of Pensacola. I’d have to move.

Davis loved his job, and he had a teenager who had lived in this town her whole life. No guarantee he would go with me, and if he did, it would mean uprooting his child and losing his tenured position. Davis loved me, but I knew his darkest secret, and it was this: He’d been relieved when Laura left him. If I brought him enough shame and trouble, he might be relieved to lose me, too.

If they did come with me, I would forever be the woman who killed Dana Shipley and stalked her daughter for years. It would be in Davis’s eyes, and Maddy’s, for the rest of my life. But I had actually done those things. Maybe Roux was right about karma. Maybe I deserved to pay in ways I had not chosen. I just wasn’t going to pay her.

“I do understand. But I’m not going to give you Char’s money. I also decided, I’m not going to tell her the truth. I’m not telling anyone. If you want it done, you’ll have to do it, knowing that I saved your life. Knowing that you owe me. We’ll see what your universe makes of you then. I hope, come Monday, you will choose to move along and leave me and my family in peace.” I put one deliberate finger on the picture of her battered face. I pushed it toward her. “The way I’m going to leave yours.”

Roux started to speak, then stopped. The photo was bothering her. I could see it. After a moment she put a palm over it, covering the gleam of her swollen-almost-shut eyes.

“This is another move,” she said at last. “It’s called High Road, and it doesn’t work on me.”

“Okay,” I said. I held my hand out. “Can I have my phone back, please?”

She passed it over, and I stood up, reaching for my handbag.

“You’re playing chicken,” she said. “But you’ll blink. I’ll see you Monday, noon, and you will do the transfer.”

I put my phone away and dug a twenty out of my purse. I set it on the table. “Drinks are on me. Come Monday I hope you walk away. I’m walking away now.”

“It’s a bluff,” she called after me. I wasn’t sure if it was a threat or just bravado, but either way I didn’t look back. “I’ll see you Monday.”

She wouldn’t, though, and then whatever she decided, I would live with it. Right now I was going to go home and sit down for a celebration dinner with my family. I would eat four ounces of steak and six shrimp and a skewer of grilled vegetables. A sane, regular meal. Maybe afterward I would have a G&T made exactly how I liked it, with Hendrick’s and fresh lime. I would tickle the baby, laugh with Maddy and Davis, be happy to be alive. Later I would take my husband up to bed and hope to God that Oliver stayed asleep for half an hour. I’d kiss Davis in a way that let him know I meant business. Whatever happened Monday would happen, but I was done. Roux had an odd sense of right and wrong, but she still had one. She wanted to believe that she was karma’s agent, restoring balance to the universe. I thought there was a chance, small but real, that she might simply ghost.

18

At home Oliver was in his bouncy chair, working over a soft teether while Davis loaded cut vegetables and shrimp onto the skewers. The steak was resting on a plate, seasoned, ready for the grill.

I came behind him, tucked my front into his back, and wrapped my arms around him. He leaned into me.

“Are you okay?” He’d asked it fifty times today already.

“Yes, and yes, and yes,” I said, but lightly.

He chuckled. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s more than the accident. You’ve had a tough time lately. The Charlotte thing, I guess?”

“I am fine. Davis. We all are. I promise.” I spoke into his shirt, my eyes pricking with grateful tears. I was a damn good liar, but he’d still sensed something bubbling around under my surface. His sweetness made me squeeze him tighter, drop a kiss between his shoulder blades. “Where’s Mads?”

“Not in the basement, I can tell you that,” Davis said, so wry that I knew Luca must be over. “She’s there. Where I can see her.” He pointed out the window.

I leaned around so I could see. The two of them were sitting in the big hanging swing on the patio, deep in solemn conversation. Luca still looked shaken. His mother really had had a close call today.

I realized I wasn’t finished with my reparations tour. I’d put up a wall to block the little line of feeling snaking west toward Tig. I’d opted out of Roux’s game. Davis and I might be pointed into a storm, but he loved me. I had never been more sure of that than I was now, listening to him ask if I was all right, telling me he’d somehow seen through me. If the storm came, I had real hope that he’d be willing to weather it with me.

I hadn’t yet squared things up with Maddy, though. I’d planned to turn her inside out, make her betray Luca, spill her secrets. I’d been so intent on using what I knew that I hadn’t talked to her about what I’d seen, down in the basement. That had not been a healthy, normal teenage make-out thing. I needed to talk to her about her body and her choices. I’d promised Davis that I would.

I let Davis go and went out the back door. Luca started and then stood up when he saw me coming. His eyes were very red around the rims.

“Hey, you’re home. I guess I better get going, too.” I thought that was probably best. He turned to the door, then paused. “I wanted to say, thank you. I just—” He wiped at his eyes.

“It’s okay,” I said, and quoted Roux at him. “All I did was my job.”

“Well, you’re really good at it,” he said.

He went out the back gate instead of through the house, heading for home. The grill was on the other side of the long patio, so even if Davis came out, we would still have privacy. I took Luca’s place on the other end of the swing.

“Is he your boyfriend?” She flushed pink, shaking her head. “But he’s more than just a friend,” I said, careful to make it flat. A statement, not a question. I’d learned long ago not to trap Maddy by asking her if she’d done something I already knew about. She would panic, and lie, and then we’d have dishonesty to deal with on top of the trouble that she was already in.

Her thick, straight brows puzzled up.

“No he’s not,” she said. I gave her my best skeptical face, and she straightened up, defensive. “I swear we’re not. He has a girlfriend.”

“Here?” I said. I’d never seen Luca with anyone but Maddy.