Mother May I(92)

Marshall shook his head. “We don’t know how deeply Lexie was embroiled in her mother’s plan. She could very well be a threat.”

Bree nodded. “We won’t know until we find her.” She paused, sucked in a breath. “If Lexie helped with Geoff—I don’t know. We can’t know until you track her down.”

“I’m working on it,” Marshall said. His whole team was. Gabrielle was on it, too, and cops in two states.

She smiled, though her mouth trembled. “All I know for sure now is what Trey did. That’s what he has to fix. What do you tell Cara? Same as Trey and I tell our girls. If you do a bad thing, you don’t say, ‘Oh, but she did something worse.’ You aren’t in control of that. You aren’t responsible for that. If you do it, it’s yours. You apologize. You make amends. Maybe if Trey steps up, Lexie will realize she has to take responsibility, too. For whatever her part was in her mother’s plan. It’s the only way to fix this.”

By “fix this,” Marshall understood, Bree meant much more than the moment of Trey’s history that the old Nikon camera had captured. She meant her marriage. She meant the world.

The world that he knew was huge and broken in a million unfixable ways, but in spite of all that had happened in the last few days, she still saw brightness, found a way to hope. He loved that she was going to try. It was . . . the word was “valiant.” She was going to grab a lance and run at a windmill. Fine. But he was going to have her back. In case the windmill was a monster after all.

He sorted the pictures again, leaving one copy of each on the desk. The rest he packed up with the letter in the envelope; he could not risk Trey destroying them. If this did go sour, get ugly, the other copies and the letter were the only decent card they had. The letter especially. It linked Trey to the photos.

“I’ll keep these,” he said. “Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” she said, but it was a distracted question. She was pacing, thinking, hoping, her essential optimism shining. She’d always been like this, the deliberate opposite of her mother. Shelly Ann saw danger in every dark spot. Bree saw restful shade. Marshall thought that they were both wrong to a degree. But if he was being honest, he believed that Bree was wronger.

Or maybe he was cynical. He could not have her faith in Trey. But if it were Betsy? Impossible to imagine Betsy in this position. But if it were? Yes. He’d have faith that his wife, the mother of his child, would do what was right. Even if it was hard.

Bree was set on this path, and if she was correct, if people were essentially good and love could win and hope was blah-blah-blah, she might save her marriage. Hell, she might save her husband. She might be the making of him. Marshall had to hope that it could happen, for her sake. For the sake of her kids.

He said the only thing he could say and still be completely honest with her.

“I’m right here if you need me.”





25




After Marshall left, I ground out the hours by tidying every bit of flotsam I could find, keeping Robert with me in his sling. When the house looked ready for a photo shoot, I started in on the closets. Mills stayed on the same floor as me, amiably toting his novel and his giant bag of high-protein snacks. Around five-thirty his partner brought the girls home from rehearsal and quiz-bowl practice, then headed back out to escort Trey home from work.

I told the girls to heat up frozen pizza in the rec-room kitchenette, and there was a salad to go with it in the fridge.

“Head downstairs and do your homework. Then you can stream a movie, if you like. Trade off the babysitting. You are in complete charge of your brother,” I told them. “Your dad and I need a little privacy.”

“Gross,” Anna-Claire said.

I handed her Robert, who was cheery but peckish, then gave Peyton his diaper bag, freshly restocked with everything he’d need. “Stay downstairs unless it’s an emergency. Make it a double feature.”

“Super gross,” Peyton echoed, slinging the bag over her shoulder.

“Mills, can you go with them?” I asked.

“Yeah, Mills!” Anna-Claire said, visibly brightening. “Come watch a movie with us.”

Mills looked so alarmed that I had mercy on him. “Homework first, and, Anna-Claire, Mills is in the middle of a book.”

“I’ll sit on the stairs and read so I won’t disturb you,” Mills said.

“You won’t bother me!” Anna-Claire said, starting down.

Peyton had been visibly antsy all week, but none of this seemed to be touching my eldest. “Seemed” was the operative word. She was an actor, like me, with a talent for appearing Instagram-perfect even in the worst of storms. But I could see the pale lavender circles under her luminous eyes. Her friends pinged her phone relentlessly, caught up in the adolescent drama of being tragedy-adjacent. Outwardly she lapped up the attention, but her old stuffed dog, Bendo, long banished to the bookshelf, was back in her bed.

Peyton lingered until Mills went down, picking at her cuticles. “Mom. How much longer are the bodyguards going to be here?”

I wanted these nice, quiet professionals out of my house, too. They were here until Lexie Pine was found, though. She might be as dangerous as her mother, but I hoped Coral had acted, at least in the worst parts, truly on her own. Maybe, if this were so, she would be open to Trey’s attempt to make amends. My secret, sweetest prayer was that there was a way for all of us to find a little peace.