Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(55)

He laughs again. Wow, she’s on a roll.

“So you have three kids?”

She nods and indicates Sadie. “She’s my youngest.”

“He’s my only.”

“One is good. One is outnumbered.”

“Not exactly.”

Hmm. A single dad?

“You know,” he goes on, looking around, “I kind of expected this playground and the pool to be more of a happening place.”

“It usually is, but it’s August. The town is empty right now—everyone’s on vacation. Are you new here?”

He nods. “We just moved into a house over on Castle Lane.”

“Really? That’s the next street over from me. I’m on Elm.”

“You know the three-story stone house on the corner of Castle and Second?”

She nods, impressed. “The one with the portico? That’s an amazing house.” A mansion, really. Interesting, because this guy doesn’t strike her as fabulously wealthy.

“It’s an architectural masterpiece,” he agrees. “Our place is four doors down on the opposite side.”

“Really? Then you must be right in my backyard.”

“What does your house look like?”

“A dark yellow Queen Anne.”

“I think I’ve seen it through the trees out back. I’m in the dumpy white Cape with the puke green shutters.”

She laughs.

“Ah, finally.”

“Finally what?”

“You’re laughing. You seemed so serious, like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

If only he knew.

“I was hoping to make you laugh—even if it is at my poor little house.”

“Actually, I haven’t even seen your house. I mean, I never go down that street, believe it or not.”

“Oh, come on, the neighborhood’s not that bad.”

“No, I just don’t have any reason to—it’s a dead end.”

“Cul-de-sac, the Realtor called it.”

“Yeah—I guess ‘dead end’ lacks a certain charm.”

“So does ‘rundown wreck’—that’s probably why she listed our house as a ‘fixer-upper.’”

“Hey, we have one of those, too.”

“Well, I hope your husband is handier than I am.”

Nick. The mere thought of him sucks the fun right out of the conversation.

“He’s not handy. I mean, I don’t know how handy you are, but he isn’t handy at all.”

And he isn’t my husband anymore, either.

And he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth over the weekend, and I have no idea what to do about it, or where I even fit into the picture, other than as the mother of three very upset children.

Suddenly uncomfortable, she rakes a hand through her hair, still damp and stiff as broom bristles, thanks to the chlorinated water.

“Luceeeee…look at meeee!” Sadie trills from the swing, and Lauren follows her gaze to see her older daughter racing up the hill from the pool. She’s on her phone.

No—her phone is pink.

Patting her pocket, Lauren realizes her own phone is missing. In her distraction, she must have left it up at the pool—and now Lucy has it.

Nick must have called at last.



Madison Avenue in the East Sixties is a sea of yellow taxicabs and black Town Cars. The sidewalks are crowded, and Marin and Annie have successfully lost themselves in the throng, their faces mostly concealed by oversize sunglasses. There will be no photos in tomorrow’s Post or Daily News captioned Wife and daughter of gubernatorial hopeful Garvey Quinn spotted overspending and overeating.

“Too bad Caroline has to miss out,” Annie comments, licking the double-scoop ice cream cone she’s holding in one hand and swinging a Barneys shopping bag in the other.

She means it, Marin realizes, hearing the wistful note in her younger daughter’s voice. Annie adores her big sister—and Caroline treats her like crap.

Always has.

Maybe, somewhere deep down inside, Caroline harbors resentment toward her sister based on a truth she’s never even been told. In essence, she does know what happened to her—but not the whole story. Is it possible that she senses it?

She was a toddler when Annie was born. She could very likely have picked up on the emotional roller coaster surrounding Marin’s pregnancy and her sister’s birth—the shroud of secrecy, the bitter disappointment.

She might even have some memory of her own ordeal in the months that followed—and subconsciously hold Annie to blame.

Just as Garvey does.

He’ll deny it to his dying day, but Marin doesn’t buy it for one moment.

She saw the look on his face when the lab results came back. She knew, even before he said it, that he didn’t want her to carry the pregnancy to term.

And she knew that this time, she was going to stand up to him. It was their baby, but her body. She made the final decision, without her husband’s support.

Caroline’s own resentment of her sister might very well have nothing to do with her own latent memories or instincts. Maybe she’s simply picked up on her father’s feelings and mirrors them.

She is, after all, Daddy’s girl.