Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(71)

“Interesting” might be a better word. “Unsettling” would be even more accurate.

“You too, Lauren.”

She definitely told him her own name. Yet there’s something about hearing him say it that makes her vaguely… Once again, “unsettled” is the right word.

Most people don’t address others by name in conversation unless they know each other quite well. She doesn’t know Sam Henning at all.

But maybe I’d like to, she admits to herself as she walks away.

That, perhaps, is the most unsettling thought of all.



Was Mike Fantoni always this good-looking? Elsa wonders, sitting across the round café table from him, nursing a cup of tea.

Probably. She just never noticed before, too devastated by her loss to pay attention.

Today, despite her coffee-fueled jitters, she can’t help but admire his square jaw peppered with a manly five o’clock shadow; his muscular build; his full head of dark, wavy hair worn a little longer than she recalls.

She can’t help but note that he isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Did he ever?

I don’t remember. It’s all a blur. It didn’t matter then.

It doesn’t matter now, either, she reminds herself.

But it’s strange that the details of their meetings in the past are all so fuzzy. For all she knows, this little Italian café was once an upscale trattoria. Maybe she and Mike sat here rubbing shoulders with Boston’s elite, sipping lattes and eating cannoli on china plates.

Not likely, though. She suspects the place always appeared just as it is now. These booths, with white cotton batting peering through cracked red vinyl seats, couldn’t possibly have been installed in this century. The same goes for the individual jukeboxes that haven’t been updated since the soundtrack from Footloose—the original movie—was on top of the charts. And the thick cups faintly stained with lipstick in shades Elsa would never wear, and glass cases with congealed, rotating wedges of pie…

“So what brings you into Boston?” Mike stirs a third packet of sugar into his second cup of black coffee—having ordered two at once, downing the first in the amount of time it took him and Elsa to exchange perfunctory pleasantries.

“I wanted to see you,” she says simply.

Mike raises an eyebrow, and she realizes he might have the wrong idea.

“About Jeremy,” she clarifies. “I wanted to see you about Jeremy.”

Is that a flicker of disappointment in his dark eyes?

It’s gone before she can be sure.

“And I wanted to ask you,” she goes on, “whether you’d found a way past those sealed records yet.”

“I’m working on it.” He looks down at his coffee, stirring it even though the sugar has long dissolved.

Elsa’s heart pounds.

Pointedly, she asks, “Do you have new information, Mike?”

“I wish I did.” He sets down the spoon and meets her gaze head-on. Now there’s no sign of the look that made her wonder if he’d been withholding something from her.

She must have imagined it.



“But I don’t want to go!” Sadie complains, bobbing in the pool on a purple foam noodle as Lauren, standing above her on the concrete deck, holds out a dry towel.

“We can come back tomorrow.”

Sadie shakes her head and leans over to examine a waterlogged dead bug in the slotted drain that runs along the pool’s edge.

Lauren sighs and darts yet another glance toward the lap lanes, where Sam Henning is still swimming back and forth. No wonder he’s so muscular. He’s been at it for almost an hour.

Yes, she’s been keeping track.

No, she can’t figure out why on earth he seems interested in her, but he does. Every once in a while, he takes a short break at the end of the pool to adjust his goggles, and she’s caught him looking at her.

She turns her attention back to her daughter. “Sades, we have to be somewhere in twenty minutes.”

“Where?”

Conscious of a cluster of moms—and their perfect, obedient children—observing the exchange from their usual encampment by the stairs, Lauren keeps her voice at a reasonable level. “Just come on.”

“Where do we have to be?”

Lauren lowers her voice even more. “You have…an appointment.”

“What?”

“An appointment. You have an appointment.”

“Where?”

“At the doctor.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Just… come on!”

“Not yet.”

Lauren sighs and shakes her head in exasperation.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

She turns to see a woman in sunglasses and a black bathing suit sitting at the edge of the pool, dunking her feet into the water.

“You’re thinking, ‘What did I ever do to deserve this,’ right?”

Lauren laughs. “How’d you guess?”

“Because I was thinking the same thing myself a little while ago, before he fell asleep.” She indicates the sleeping baby on her lap. “I’m sure you heard him screaming at the top of his lungs. He hates the water.”

“Right now I wish my daughter did.” Lauren watches Sadie splash her way along the edge.