One Perfect Morning

by Pamela Crane

  ONE PERFECT MORNING

  Pamela Crane

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Copyright © Pamela Crane 2020

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover photographs © Plain picture/BY (picket fence). All other images Shutterstock.com

  Pamela Crane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008378363

  Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008378370

  Version: 2020-06-02

  Dedication

  To the friends who have stood beside me, you are the light to my darkness. Keep shining.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3: Mackenzie

  Chapter 4: Robin

  Chapter 5: Lily

  Chapter 6: Mackenzie

  Chapter 7: Lily

  Chapter 8: Aria

  Chapter 9: Mackenzie

  Chapter 10: Lily

  Chapter 11: Mackenzie

  Chapter 12: Robin

  Chapter 13: Lily

  Chapter 14: Mackenzie

  Chapter 15: Robin

  Chapter 16: Robin

  Chapter 17: Mackenzie

  Chapter 18: Robin

  Chapter 19: Willow

  Chapter 20: Lily

  Chapter 21: Robin

  Chapter 22: Lily

  Chapter 23: Robin

  Chapter 24: Robin

  Chapter 25: Lily

  Chapter 26: Mackenzie

  Chapter 27: Mackenzie

  Chapter 28: Robin

  Chapter 29: Lily

  Chapter 30: Mackenzie

  Chapter 31: Robin

  Chapter 32: Lily

  Chapter 33: Mackenzie

  Chapter 34: Mackenzie

  Chapter 35: Robin

  Chapter 36: Mackenzie

  Chapter 37: Lily

  Chapter 38: Owen

  Chapter 39: Mackenzie

  Chapter 40: Robin

  Chapter 41: Mackenzie

  Chapter 42: Mackenzie

  Chapter 43: Aria

  Chapter 44: Mackenzie

  Epilogue: One year later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  SUNDAY MORNING

  It was a strange, unexpected thought as I glanced over at the man I had married, wondering how the ugliest of hearts could be wrapped in the most beautiful skin. The down comforter was tucked up under his chin, hiding his lithe body that required no effort whatsoever to maintain. Sometimes I joked that I despised him for it – eating anything he wanted without gaining an inch on his waistline. If I even looked at dessert, I gained two pounds. Sometimes I wasn’t joking when I said I hated him.

  It wasn’t that I hated him, not exactly. Years of togetherness had given me so much, but now he had taken too much. For so long I had just followed him blindly, until he led us both off the ledge. I needed to find my way back, and I couldn’t do that with him anymore.

  For years he had been my rock … tied to my ankles.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, and I meant it.

  Once upon a time we had loved each other deeply. It showed in the way he carried me over the threshold when we had first bought this house. Or when we took our first vacation together to Asheville, North Carolina, where we toured the Biltmore House and oohed and aahed over the thousands of tulips blooming in the gardens. Or the first time we made love, on a bed of rose petals as he sucked the tender spot on my neck and caressed my thigh longingly. Those memories had been so pure and good. But now only painful memories remained. Like chess pieces, the bad had knocked all the good off the board.

  All I could remember right now was the way he hurt me. The way he betrayed me. The way he lied.

  A moonbeam cast a silvery stripe across the bed. He slept soundly beneath covers that were charcoal like the sky, unaware of me standing over him, and I regretted what I was about to do. I wondered if he had any unspoken regrets. I had a mouthful of them. I had spent the best years of my life loving this human being more than anything else, deeply and passionately with a forbidden desire I couldn’t quench. Only now did I realize it had never been love, but obsession – an obsession with stability, with security. I needed him, but he had never needed me back.

  We had been wrong from the beginning, I knew this, but I let him consume me regardless. Nothing could stop me, not even myself. Not even all the red flags.

  The mystery of love – yes, it had enthralled me, and now here we were, lost in its unanswerable riddle. I still couldn’t figure it out, why I had ever loved a monster. Some days he felt like a warm rain, but recently he had become a torrent sweeping me out to a stormy sea, drowning me.

  Now here I stood over him, wrapped in Sunday morning nostalgia, watching him sleeping in the Ethan Allen four-poster bed we shared, controlling my breath as I whispered my goodbyes. I reminisced about the idyllic weekends of long ago. Pure heaven – the scent of French roast coffee wafting to our bedroom, the humming stillness of the house, two lovers pretzeled together beneath mulberry silk sheets, our bodies sweat-glazed from creative and energetic sex.

  Now that was laughable, really. His touch burned me, his lips disgusted me. Not because of time’s toll on our bodies – gravity works extra hard after age forty, you know. It wasn’t that. It was the slow rot of who he used to be. Once upon a time we cuddled like two toothbrushes in a cup, the length of our bodies resting on one another. I wished I could reach that man today, right now, but I knew he was long gone.

  I thought about the apology flowers he had just bought me, how his face lit up as he handed them to me. How I tenderly placed them in a vase, admiring his thoughtfulness for a moment. That moment had dried up with the crisp petals currently scattered along the coffee table. Wilted, dead flowers – they were my marriage’s final curtain call, but they weren’t enough. Not to save us. Not to save him.

  ‘Remember when we first got married and lived in that tiny apartment in the basement of Cat Lady’s house?’ The whispered question was more for myself than for him. I didn’t want to risk waking him. I shook the memory loose.

  Cat Lady was the nickname we gave the white-haired woman who rented out her basement to us. We could never remember her actual name – it was Slavic, with too many syllables for our all-American tongues to pronounce – but she had at least a dozen cats that we counted the only time she let us into the first floor of the house. The ammonia stench took our breath away;
it was a wonder the waterfalls of cat piss didn’t leak through the floorboards into the ceiling of our apartment below. Life had been so full of adventure and hope back then.

  ‘We used to snuggle up on that ratty old sofa we found on the curb, talking about our plans for the future.’ I smiled at the memory. Reaching out a finger, I touched his stubbly cheek and recoiled in distaste.

  I would never forget when the mouse came crawling out of the sofa cushion and darted across my leg. I was pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard me scream. The most baffling part about it was how the mouse had managed to slip by a dozen cats. I chuckled softly, then wiped a tear that dripped down my cheek.

  The Simple Days, I called them. Back then, when life made sense and I knew who I was, where I was going. These days I aimlessly trudged through the mire of one moment to the next.

  I couldn’t resurrect The Simple Days, though, could I? They were too far gone. Some things just aren’t meant to last, no matter how many stars we naïvely wish upon.

  My eyes traveled down his sleeping body – his brawny arms hugging his pillow like it was an illicit lover, his long legs sprawling under the covers. Asleep, his face looked so sweet and boyish, incapable of uttering a harsh word or criticism. Of course, I knew that was only an illusion. In the mad rush of days filled with housekeeping and packing school lunches and folding laundry and prepping dinner, I rarely saw the softer side of him anymore. We rarely saw each other at all.

  The barking of the next-door neighbor’s dog prodded me with sudden urgency. Before long the street would erupt in the commotion of families rushing off to church or Sunday breakfast. I needed to make this quick, get it over with before I talked myself out of it. Or before he woke up. It was time.

  There’s no better time than the present, my mother often said. Even when it didn’t relate to anything pertinent, she loved using that tired old cliché. I was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, hadn’t bothered to slip into pajamas when I snuck back in this morning. Pajamas wouldn’t fit with the story I had already planned out. I could feel daybreak approaching. While early risers all across my suburban neighborhood held steaming mugs of coffee, I held the knife I’d slid out of the butcher block minutes ago. My hand trembled as I lifted the blade and sucked in a steadying breath.

  Lightly moving the covers aside, I took one last long, lingering look at the man I was about to kill. The man I had sworn to love and cherish until death do us part. And yet I had kept my vow, hadn’t I? On the count of three I would forever alter my future – giving myself the freedom I needed, the sole choice I had never been given to control my own life.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  I pressed the blade lengthways against his throat. I closed my eyes and turned my head. His flesh resisted. But not for long. While across the neighborhood wives kissed their husbands good morning, I planted Death’s kiss on mine.

  Chapter 2

  NINE DAYS AGO

  When you put three best friends from college in a room together, you’re asking for trouble. And trouble was exactly what Robin Thompson, Mackenzie Fischer, and Lily Santoro had found.

  The rain hadn’t stopped since last night, spreading a dreary gray haze across the morning sky. It was typical Western Pennsylvania spring weather, making sunshine and blue skies a rare event. Robin, Mackenzie and Lily sat thigh to thigh in the living room where tiny smudged handprints ‘decorated’ the antique white walls. Lily, who had no fondness for children, often sardonically compared them to the ones on the walls of the creepy abandoned house in the climax of The Blair Witch Project. That flick had freaked them all out when they’d gone to see it together back in 1999. It had cured them of the desire to ever go on a camping trip together.

  Robin reached for her favorite teal mug, grabbing empty space instead. ‘Has anyone seen my coffee?’

  It wasn’t her fault she was so forgetful. It came hand in hand with having young kids. Like forgetting the load of wet laundry still in the washing machine, now turning mildewy. Or the milk you accidentally placed in the cupboard and the cereal box you put in the fridge. Or the cup of lukewarm coffee you never got around to drinking after you misplaced it for the umpteenth time.

  Lily laughed while Mackenzie empathized.

  ‘It’s probably in your bathroom,’ Mackenzie said. ‘That’s always where I find mine.’

  Lily shook her head. ‘Allora, when you have kids do they suck your brains out? You both are perpetually losing shit … mostly your minds.’

  ‘It’s true. Kids do that to you. But they’re worth it.’ Robin kissed the sleeping baby she held against her breast. Nestled in Robin’s arms was her youngest, Collette, an eight-month-old bundle of cuteness and colic. Robin couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed a full night’s sleep.

  ‘Did you know that the average mother doesn’t sleep soundly for the first six years of her child’s life?’ Robin pondered aloud.

  ‘That means you haven’t slept in’ – Mackenzie paused, mentally calculating the math – ‘eighteen years, Robin. And you still have six years to go. Girl, you’re overdue for a nap!’

  ‘And that is why I’ll never have kids. Too much work and not enough sleep makes Lily a dull girl.’ Lily stood up from the soft leather sofa stained with breast milk and an unknown sticky substance. She hoped it was just juice. A pile of Cheerios had collected where she had been sitting. As she shuffled past Robin, their knees bumped and Lily gripped the coffee table with one hand to steady herself. ‘Che schifo, Robin! Don’t you ever clean? Puah!’ Lily squinted with disgust as she examined something gooey on her fingers.

  ‘Is that Italian for you offering to do it?’ Robin lobbed the question back at her.

  ‘If I knew it’d stay clean, I would.’

  But that was the nature of motherhood. Dirty and selfless. Unsung heroism as they tended to real life in the background while their husbands wore scrubs and suits to work, building their careers while the mothers built their homes.

  The women wore fake smiles, hiding their secrets like they did every day. On their own they were bitterness, submission, and obsession. Together they were loyal, inspired, and fierce. But there were some things out there that could break the strongest of bonds. And that something had found them today.

  ‘Are we still on for dinner Sunday night?’ Mackenzie asked. ‘The kids always have a blast at your dinner parties.’

  Robin nodded, rocking back and forth in her seat as Collette fussed herself awake. ‘Of course. Grant’s even cooking on the grill. He told me it’s a meal that will change our lives, whatever that means.’

  The three women laughed at the great pride Grant took in his grilling techniques, unaware of just how right he was. That night would forever change their lives, splitting their world open and letting the ruthless reality pour out.

  1999, PIZZA JOE’S, BEAVER FALLS, PENNSYLVANIA

  If you were a teenage girl in the 1990s, you couldn’t escape the girl band sensation the Spice Girls. Maybe you even danced to their pop music, emulated their glam fashion, or fantasized about being them. The Spice Girls had distinct personas; it goes without saying every girl had her favorite. The year was 1999, in a small Western Pennsylvania town hugging the outskirts of Pittsburgh, where three best friends in college formed their own girl group, the Spicier Girls. Except they weren’t exceptionally musical or gifted at synchronized dancing.

  Lily was the natural-born leader, the hand-talking Italian, the rebel, the creator. She spoke life into action, and it obeyed. Everyone submitted to Lily because she was a power you didn’t question, and a force you trusted.

  Robin was the planner, the organized one, the goody-goody, the glue. Her brilliance was not just in her sharp mind, but in the way she dotingly tended to people like flowers. Gently, lovingly, as if each one would wither and die without her magic touch. And in some cases they did.

  And then there was Mackenzie, the sheltered Southern belle of the ball, except she had forgotte
n her worth long ago. She was the victim who didn’t know she could be the victor. She was always there, the supporting actress in her own life, applauding everyone’s achievements but her own.

  They were simply three friends brought together by fate, who lived to be loved by one another, sealed with a pact to stay friends for life … a pact that would test their bond for decades to come. They were there for each other through the laughter and tears, and they were there when everything shattered.

  ‘What do you think life will be like after we graduate college?’ Robin’s gaze trailed from Lily to Mackenzie, then to the cute server she’d been flirting with for the past twenty minutes while they waited for their large pizza, extra cheese. Mackenzie claimed that pepperoni would make her nauseous; Lily thought she was a hypochondriac.

  ‘Well, if you’re Mac, you’ll marry the first guy who asks you.’ Lily coughed the name Owen. ‘Then pop out two-point-four kids, overextend yourself in a mortgage you can’t afford, and live blissfully ignorant in your suburban soccer-mom existence.’ Lily nudged Mackenzie’s side, her lips lifted in a playful smile.

  ‘Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?’ Mackenzie whined, propping her elbows on the black-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Her ponytail swung back and forth, brushing her narrow shoulders. With her blond hair and blue eyes people often mistook her for a cheerleader, and Mackenzie always huffily corrected them that she was a book nerd. ‘Don’t be a hater just because I know who I am and what I want, and Owen happens to be the perfect guy for me.’

  ‘Per favore, perfectly narcissistic and controlling, you mean,’ Lily scoffed. ‘You’ve known him for like a minute and you’re already planning a future with him.’

  ‘Whatever. It’s not like I’m marrying him. We’re just seeing where things go.’

  ‘Lily’s right, Mac,’ Robin interjected. ‘We’re only sophomores in college – take a few different guys out for a test run before you settle down.’

  Mackenzie rolled her eyes, then followed Robin’s stare. ‘Speaking of cruising for guys, you gonna ask Cute Waiter Guy out, Robin?’