Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(11)

“You mean the cleaning service?” Marin knows very well that’s not what this is about, but she isn’t in the mood for another head-spinning ride on the I-told-you-so carousel.

“Not the cleaning service—but how are they doing?”

“So far, so good.”

Actually, beyond the cursory apartment tour and going over the daily chore list, Marin has had very little interaction with the two women, which is fine with her, and also seemed fine with them. They rolled up their sleeves and got right to work. At the moment, they’re behind the closed French doors of the living room, vacuuming and moving furniture around.

“What about your summer plan?” Heather asks, and adds, “Or should I say, nonplan?”

“Actually, that’s going pretty well, too.”

“Mom!” Annie shrieks from down the hall. “She—”

“Oh my God, you are such a nosy little brat!” Caroline bellows.

“Stop it! Who do you think you—”

“Owwwww! Get off me! Mom!”

“Yeah,” Heather says dryly on the other end of the phone, “sounds great. There’s still time to reconsider, you know.”

Slipping into the half bath off the kitchen and closing the door, Marin sighs. “No, there isn’t. Registration was months ago for all the decent sleepaway camps.”

“Which is why I was trying to get you to do it back then. Do you want me to see if I can pull some strings with Chelsea’s camp, or Jack’s?”

Heather’s youngest child, as horse-crazy as Marin’s daughters once were, is attending camp in Wyoming; her big brother will be a CIT in Maine. Their middle sibling, Spencer, is bound for a summer-long academic program in South America.

Naturally, the uber-efficient Heather made all the arrangements before Christmas. In the past, Marin would have been just as proactive; this time, she was just trying to survive the season at hand. Forget summer; she could barely think ahead to New Year’s Eve—which she wasn’t sure whether to dread spending alone, or look forward to because the horrific year would finally be over.

As it turned out, holiday salvation came unexpectedly, from the last person Marin would ever have expected. Now, six months later, a bond that began with a stranger’s New Year’s resolution has become Marin’s sole source of support—from someone other than Heather, anyway. Someone who understands what it’s like to be betrayed by a husband, shunned by a community, left alone with devastated children…

Lauren Walsh—the suburban widow whose three children had been kidnapped and whose husband had been murdered, if not by Garvey’s own hand, then on his command—had shockingly reached out to Marin as a step along her own healing path. But Marin had needed the contact—and the forgiveness—just as much as, if not more than, Lauren herself.

“You know I wouldn’t mind making a couple of calls to see if your girls could—”

“No, it’s okay,” she assures Heather. “They can’t do camp this year, not with the move and everything.”

Perched uncomfortably on the closed toilet seat, Marin pictures Heather lounging on her silk sofa, lazily twisting a strand of long blond hair around a jeweled finger.

“Why don’t you at least get out of the city for a while?” Heather suggests. “Spend some time on the beach, clear your head…”

“You know there’s no way I’m going to Nantucket.”

“Of course I know that.”

It’s no secret that Marin has never liked to spend much time with her blue-blooded Massachusetts in-laws; this year, especially, visiting their rambling island summer home is out of the question. The place has been in the family for generations, shared by the clannish Quinn siblings and their families. Their few obligatory efforts to connect with Garvey since his ordeal seem to have been carefully orchestrated by lawyers and, Marin suspects, by publicists hired to refurbish the tarnished family name.

Having distanced themselves from their disgraced brother, the Quinns wouldn’t exactly welcome Marin and the kids to the rambling seaside home—if she were willing to visit.

Garvey’s defense is working on the theory that he has a sociopathic disorder—which is, in all likelihood, genetically inherited. No one would dispute, in retrospect, that his grandmother Eleanor fit the bill. Who knows what other branches of the family tree are affected? Marin intends to keep her distance from the Quinns, at least for the time being.

As for her own side of the family—she’s an only child, and her mother passed away years ago, when the kids were little. Her father, diagnosed with dementia, is in a Brighton nursing home.

And now you’re feeling even sorrier for yourself. With good reason, but still…

“I didn’t mean you should go to Nantucket,” Heather is saying. “Ron and I are headed to St. Tropez on Saturday, so our cottage will be empty for another couple of weeks.”

Cottage—Marin’s lips twitch at that description. The Cottingtons’ summer house in the Hamptons is an imposing three-story architectural masterpiece perched in the dunes. Last summer, Marin and the girls spent quite a bit of time out there.

Her smile fades as she remembers that Garvey even paid an unexpected visit once, just before all hell broke loose. She was so shocked and happy to see him, so touched that he’d driven all that way in the midst of his hectic campaign. Little did she know…