Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(61)

Trust Fund: kicked in when he turned twenty-one. Check.

Loyal Woman: enter Marin. Check.

“How would you like to be first lady one day?” he asked her not long before he proposed, and she knew he was dead serious.

“I’d love it,” she told him. But she didn’t really mean it.

What she really meant was, I love you.

Nothing else mattered back then.

His parents had no choice but to go along with the engagement. It was either that or disown their only son.

Their June wedding date was set well over a year in advance, to be one of the biggest social events of the season.

Then, the September before it was to take place, Marin found herself pregnant.

She dreaded telling Garvey. She kept telling herself that he would understand and support the decision she had already made—and that everything would work out for the best.

She was dead wrong.



Running along the reservoir in the predawn gloom, Garvey is alone today. Yesterday’s meeting was a risk—slight, but a risk just the same.

Two days in a row would be foolhardy. He doesn’t even like to risk phone calls—though he received two yesterday.

Both times he saw the familiar number pop up in the caller ID, he sensed it wasn’t going to be good news—and he was right.

This is going to take more time than he expected. More time, and a helluva lot more money. But there’s no choice. Now is not the time to get sloppy.

“Tread carefully,” was his curt advice. “Do you understand me? I don’t want any red flags going up over there just now. It’s too soon after the others.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve been watching them. I already have a plan. All I need to do is borrow—”

“Don’t tell me what you need to do! Just do it.”

The less he knows, the better. That’s what he thought at the time, anyway.

Now, however, he wonders.

Borrow…

Borrow what? Borrow from whom?

“Borrow” implies that someone else will be involved. And that’s out of the question. Surely it’s a given that from here on in, it’s just the two of them.

And then, when all is said and done…

It’ll be just me.

There was a time when he’d have been pained at the prospect of losing his only true confidant: the one person who knows his darkest secret and understands why he did what he did.

Not anymore.

Now Garvey doesn’t need anyone.

No. That’s wrong. He needs his family. Marin. Caroline.

What about Annie?

How many times has his wife asked him that very question?

Always, he lies. Tells her that he needs Annie, loves Annie, too. Of course he does. Isn’t he her father?

Garvey’s eyes narrow.

She’s your child, Garvey. That’s all that matters now.

He can still hear Marin’s voice; still see her tearstained face as she held out the pink swaddled bundle.

He forced himself to take it, forced himself to glance down at the baby he wished had never been born. Unlike her big sister, Annie looked nothing like a Quinn. But he could forgive her that. He thought he could forgive her—and Marin—the rest of it, too.

Maybe he could have, if she hadn’t been such a demanding baby from the start. So different from Caroline. Annie was colicky. Annie had allergies and asthma. Annie kept the household up all night with her screaming.

“Difficult babies become easygoing kids later,” Marin liked to say. “And vice versa.”

“Where’d you hear that?” he’d ask, and Marin would shrug. She heard a lot of things.

When all was said and done, she was half right. Annie turned out to be an easygoing child. Even now, at fourteen, she tends to go with the flow.

Not Caroline. But she’s certainly not difficult. Willful, yes. But that’s a characteristic Garvey wholeheartedly admires. Caroline is a Quinn, through and through.

He can’t help the way he feels about his daughters. And it’s not as though he treats Annie any differently. Like Caroline, she has everything she needs, and pretty much everything she wants, from designer clothes to her own horse boarded up in Westchester—though both girls have lost interest, lately, in riding. They used to love to spend weekends on the trails at Greymeadow.

Ah, well. That’s how it goes. Children grow up.

If they’re lucky.

Garvey’s thoughts turn to the little girl up in Glenhaven Park—somebody else’s daughter.

No, he doesn’t need the details.

He doesn’t want to know.

He just wants—needs—it to be over, one way or another.



Yawning deeply, Lauren pads barefoot into the still-darkened kitchen and flips on the light.

She probably would have had a sleepless night even without Sadie in her bed, but it was impossible to doze off with her neck in a four-year-old’s stranglehold for much of the night. Sadie kept saying she was scared, but she refused to say why—and frankly, Lauren didn’t press her. She had other things to worry about.

Just when she thought she was starting to accept and move past the worst thing Nick could have done—having an affair and asking for a divorce—he had to go and top himself.



Lucy, honey, I got all your messages and I’m sorry I didn’t make it back yesterday. I need a few extra days off to think things through. I love you. Please tell Mom I’ll be in touch soon.