Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(36)

After wearily depositing the box on the front porch with the others, she surveys the stack. Maybe she should cover it with a tarp or something, as much to protect the cardboard from the rain as to fend off potential thieves.

Then again, the boxes are filled with things she doesn’t want in the first place—and this is Glenhaven Park. Half the people in town don’t even bother to lock their doors at night or when they’re not home.

Lauren was among them, until Nick left. Now, she locks the door at night. She’d lock it during the day, too, when the house is empty—if she could trust Lucy and Ryan not to keep losing their house keys.

As she told Ryan, bad things happen everywhere.

Inside, the phone rings once again.

Lauren sighs and goes in to see who it is. If her mother appears again on the caller ID, or even Alyssa, she’ll let it go straight into voice mail, not in the mood for any more chitchat this afternoon.

But the number belongs to Nick’s cell. Good. Maybe he’s back and wanting to see the kids tonight after all.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

The call must have been lost. He’s probably in the car and drove out of tower range, or maybe he’s still on the ferry.

Then she hears something on the other end of the line—a rustling sound.

“Hello? Nick?”

Heavy breathing—gasping, really—reaches her ears, and then a low moan. She recognizes it instantly as Nick’s voice. He used to gasp and moan like that when he was about to—

Lauren hangs up abruptly, horrified.

Obviously, Nick is in bed with his girlfriend. He must have rolled over on his phone, pocket dialing her.

Lovely. Just what she needs—an audio bite to go with the visions of Nick and Beth in each other’s arms.

Footsteps bound down the stairs. “Mom? Was that Dad?”

Uh-oh. Ryan.

“I heard it ring,” he goes on, “but I was in the bathroom.”

Maybe she should lie, say that it was a wrong number or something. But Ryan would be able to check the caller ID…or maybe he already has.

“It was Dad,” she tells him. “He just wanted to let us know that he, uh, made it home safely.”

“But I wanted to talk to him!” Ryan is already reaching for the phone.

“Wait, Ry… I could use a hand with these boxes.”

“Later.” He’s dialing. “I need to talk to Dad.”

Lauren watches helplessly as Ryan listens to Nick’s phone ringing, then going into voice mail.

“Dad, it’s me again… Mom says you’re home. I really need to talk to you, so…call me.”

He hangs up, avoiding Lauren’s gaze, and redials. Nick’s other number rings into voice mail as well. This time, Ryan doesn’t leave a message—just hangs up.

“Guess he’s busy,” he tells Lauren.

“Guess so,” she replies, hating Nick more than ever before.



Expertly knotting his black bow tie, Garvey eyes himself in the mirror. To look at him, standing here in a tuxedo, outwardly calm and collected, no one would ever imagine his inner turmoil.

By now, he expected to have received a reassuring all-clear. That has yet to come. For all he knows, the so-called human obstacle still exists and might just be preparing to get the better of him.

Satisfied that his bow tie is straight, he strides out of the bedroom and down the hall. As he passes the series of family photographs, his gaze falls on one of his paternal grandmother, and it stops him in his tracks.

What would Eleanor Harding Quinn think of his situation?

She wouldn’t have wasted time questioning how he’d managed to get himself into it, that’s for sure. She didn’t care much for details, had little patience for explanations of any sort. If she were alive, and knew what was going on, she’d advise Garvey to do whatever he can to extract himself from the situation with his reputation—and future—intact.

Don’t worry, he silently assures his grandmother. I always know what to do—thanks to you.

A sturdy, handsome woman, Garvey’s grandmother looks so like him. But where he prides himself on maintaining his cool, Eleanor Harding Quinn had a rip-roaring temper and rarely—if ever—smiled. She wears her no-nonsense expression even in photographs.

There were whispers about her within the family circle—mostly about whether she was mentally stable, as far as Garvey could tell. His father steered clear of her at all costs, but then, he was equally distant from his own children. To his credit, he never kept them from seeing his mother; in fact, he sent a willing Garvey to visit her every summer at Greymeadow, the family’s sprawling gray-shingled country house amid acres of woods and meadows in the Hudson Valley.

Grandmother Quinn was the one who believed in him, assuring him that he was destined for even greater things than his illustrious family had already achieved.

“You’re a Quinn. You can make anything happen, Garvey,” she told him when, as a child, he dared to confess that he wanted to become president one day. “Just be prepared to give it your all.”

He certainly has.

Now, with everything he’s worked for hanging in the balance, he remembers something else his grandmother once told him.

They were at the country estate one June weekend, and his grandmother was surveying a flowerbed that had been planted by the gardeners in her absence.