Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(63)

“Well, if he’s not at the island house, where is he doing all this thinking?”

“Who knows? Maybe he’s holed up in his apartment down in White Plains. Maybe he got back home over the weekend, but didn’t feel like dealing with the kids, or humdrum daily routine, or real life in general.”

“Yeah, well, who does? But real men suck it up and do what has to be done.”

Lucky Alyssa, married to a real man. Ben is great with the baby and around the house. Of course, so is their live-in nanny, whose name is Maria, just like in Sound of Music. She even plays the guitar.

Alyssa really does live a charmed life.

Things were different when they were growing up, though. Lauren was one of those rare high school girls who were on top of the world, and college was even better. Then she met Nick…

Her older sister, meanwhile, was a bookworm who focused on academics throughout high school and college and rarely dated, even after she moved to New York to take a job in the finance industry. A late bloomer, Alyssa met Ben around the time Lauren got pregnant with Sadie, and embarked on a whirlwind courtship.

Lauren squeezed herself—six weeks postpartum, and nursing—into a matron of honor sheath for their wedding.

“You look gorgeous,” Nick told her, and she knew she didn’t, but she thought it was cute, the way he believed it.

That was probably a lie, like everything else.

Lauren pours a cup of coffee and sits with it at the table, brooding.

She has half a mind to get Nick’s key and drive down to his apartment to see if he’s there. If he is, she’ll ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. Remind him that the world doesn’t revolve around him. That his three children need their father…

Even if their mother has no use for you whatsoever, you SOB.



Sadie woke up when Mommy got out of bed a little while ago. It was so dark she thought it was the middle of the night. She heard Mommy go downstairs, and she waited for her to come back, but she didn’t.

Alone in the big bed, Sadie couldn’t fall back to sleep.

After a little while, through the open windows, she started to hear the birds calling to one another outside. They don’t do that in the middle of the night. She noticed that the room wasn’t quite as dark, and she realized it wasn’t the middle of the night after all. It was—is—morning.

She waits in bed until there’s more light filtering through the cracks around the closed shade. Then, carefully, quietly, she gets up out of bed and tiptoes across the floor.

Peeking out into the shadowy hallway, she sees that Ryan’s and Lucy’s doors are closed. Sadie left her own door open when she left her room last night.

As she slowly walks toward it, she can hear her mother moving around downstairs in the kitchen, and she can smell coffee. Familiar household sounds and smells make the hallway seem a little less scary.

Sadie stops in front of her bedroom door.

Last night, she rigged the fishing line again.

In this dim light, she can’t tell whether it’s still intact.

She drops to her knees and feels around in the open doorway.

There it is.

Sadie breathes a sigh of relief. Good. This time, nobody’s been in her room.

But that doesn’t mean someone wasn’t in here yesterday.

Maybe she should tell Mommy after all. She was about to run down and tell her when she first discovered the dislodged fishing line, but then Lucy came running in and made that big commotion about hearing from Daddy, and then Ryan called, and no one paid any attention to Sadie.

Or to Chauncey.

No one else seemed to care that he was still sound asleep, barely moving. He didn’t stir at all when Sadie crept over and touched his paws. She knew something was wrong. She tried to tell Mommy again, but Mommy took a quick look and said he was okay.

Sadie was mad about that. She was mad about a lot of things.

So she went back up to her room and she sat on her bed and she guarded her stuff.

Mommy had said she was going to clean out the bedrooms yesterday, but she didn’t.

Still, Sadie sat there all day. Until it got dark. Then Mommy made her come down and eat something for dinner. After that, Mommy came back up with her and tucked her into bed.

Lying there alone, Sadie started to wonder what might happen if the person who had been there came back in the night.

Frightened, she tried to stick it out, afraid that if she left, the burglar might come in and steal all of her things.

Finally, though, she was too scared to stay. She rigged the fishing line again and then she crawled into bed with Mommy.

She does that a lot, so Mommy didn’t ask her many questions about what was bothering her. If she had, Sadie might have told her.

She didn’t, and Sadie decided not to bring it up. She was afraid that if she mentioned her bedroom, Mommy would remember that she was planning to clean it out and give some of Sadie’s things away to the tag sale.

She crawls under the fishing line and walks around her room, checking to make sure that everything is right where it’s supposed to be.

Pausing at her bureau, she notes that it still looks a little empty. She moves her My Little Pony lamp to the left a bit, then moves her Tinker Bell music box to the right.

Now it’s not so obvious that the pink dog is missing.

Satisfied, Sadie turns away.