by Brenda Novak
Lorelei was standing over her. “Someone’s at the door asking to borrow a shovel.”
“Who?”
“Says he’s your neighbor.”
“My neighbor?” She struggled to clear the cobwebs from her mind. “There’s only one other cabin near this one, and the owners are in Europe.”
“Maybe they rented the place out while they were gone.”
Serenity supposed that was possible. No one had been there last weekend, but someone could’ve come since. A lot of cabin owners used Airbnb and other services if they weren’t going to be in town. “Okay.” She covered a yawn. “Tell him I’m coming.”
After Lorelei left and Serenity heard her say, “It’ll be just a minute,” she rolled out of bed and pulled on some yoga pants, a Berkeley Cheeseboard sweatshirt and her favorite fleece-lined slippers.
She didn’t take time to brush her teeth or comb her hair. She planned to find the shovel, hand it over and be done.
But once she finally located the thing—in the garage, where it had fallen down behind her ski equipment—and brought it to the door, she wished she’d taken a little more care with her appearance.
At first glance, she thought the man at the door might be Kevin Love.
Celebrities did appear in Tahoe quite often, so it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility. The cabin next door had cost a fortune and would rent for one, as well.
Then he smiled and she realized he wasn’t the famous basketball player. It was only his overall body type and the shape of his face and nose that reminded her of him. But he wasn’t quite as tall as Kevin Love, and he had light brown hair with amber-colored eyes.
“Sorry if I woke you.” There was a hint of chagrin in his expression.
Afraid she had a waffle-like pattern on her cheek from the blankets on her bed, she raked the fingers of her free hand through her tangled hair. “No problem. Anything for a neighbor. You’re staying next door, then? Are you related to the owners?”
“Just renting for the summer.”
She hadn’t realized the McClouds would be gone that long. But she’d been walking around in a fog for months. Maybe they’d told her and she didn’t remember. “I doubt the snow we got yesterday will stick, so you’ve all but missed ski season. Are you a backpacker or...”
“I mountain bike now and then, but that’s not why I’m here.”
He didn’t explain any further, and although she wondered why he’d come to Tahoe, she felt it would be too nosy to ask. “Well, there are a lot of great trails in these mountains, if you get the time.” She handed him the shovel. “Here you go.”
“Thank you. I’ll bring it back as soon as I’m done.”
She peered out at the snow covering the walkways, the cars and much of the street. She and her new sisters had their share of shoveling to do, too, or they wouldn’t be able to get out. “No rush. We aren’t going anywhere today.”
A sexy grin curved his lips—or maybe she only thought it was sexy because it had been eighteen months since she’d made love, and her body was beginning to notify her of the neglect.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’d think there’d be a shovel where I’m staying.”
“I’m sure there was one,” she said. “Somebody probably left it out and now it’s buried under the snow. That’s happened to me. Start digging around the back door—or near the woodpile if you’re hoping to find it.”
“Good advice. I’ll give that a try.”
When he turned to go, she shut the door instead of watching him walk away like she wanted to.
“Nice-looking neighbor.” Lorelei spoke from the stairs behind her. She’d followed her back down to the front door. “I wonder if he’s married.”
“I didn’t see a ring.”
“You noticed?”
“Didn’t you?”
They exchanged a sly smile. “A woman would have to be dead not to notice.”
When Lorelei laughed, Serenity was impressed by the way it transformed her face. She’d thought Lorelei was pretty from the first moment she met her, but her new sister seemed a lot less tired and stressed today, which made her even prettier.
They climbed to the second floor together, after which Lorelei went to the kitchen.
Serenity was planning to go back to bed, but when she smelled coffee and saw that Lucy was up, she followed Lorelei.
Lucy sat at the table with a bowl of oatmeal.
“Good morning,” Serenity said.
Lucy gave her a sweet smile. “Good morning.”
“How old do you think that guy is—the one staying next door?” Lorelei asked as Serenity poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Younger than we are.”
Lorelei had just opened the fridge. At Serenity’s response, she twisted around, a skeptical expression on her face. “Really? I didn’t get that impression.”
“Maybe it only feels that way. After what I’ve been through in the past eighteen months, I feel ancient.”
“You mean the trial?”
Serenity immediately regretted bringing that up. She’d told her sisters that she’d found something that shouldn’t have been on her husband’s computer and, as a result, she’d reported him. But that was all she’d said. Although she knew they wondered about the specifics, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t tell anyone she didn’t absolutely have to, wouldn’t force herself to hash and rehash the terrible details. When she was ready, she’d put it in her blog, let everyone read what would constitute her official statement on the ordeal and be done with it. That blog would be the period—or the exclamation point—at the end of the nightmare. “All of it,” she said simply.
Fortunately, Lorelei didn’t press her. “Want some oatmeal?” she asked as she put a glass of milk on the table for Lucy.
“Not right now. Coffee’s enough for me. But...” She sent Lorelei a teasing glance. “You seem pretty interested in the man who borrowed my shovel.”
“I guess the one thing I haven’t considered in everything I’m going through is...what else is out there, you know? My heart was sealed off. I thought I’d never have any reason to look at another man.”
“And now...”
“That hasn’t officially changed.”
Serenity arched her eyebrows. “Interesting.”
Lorelei blushed. “Stop. You’re the one who’s available. I thought he was cute. That’s all.”
“He was cute,” Serenity admitted. “But I’m not ready to start dating.”
“I don’t want to bring up a touchy subject or anything, but do you ever hear from Sean?”
Obviously, Lorelei was still thinking of Serenity’s offhand comment about the past eighteen months having aged her. She’d already brought the conversation back to Sean. “I’ve received a few letters.”
“Letters or email?”
“Letters.”
“And? What do they say? Does he apologize? Try to convince you that he’s innocent? Blame you for turning him in? What?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thrown most of them away without reading them.” She saw Lucy sneak more brown sugar into her hot cereal and grinned despite the topic of conversation.
“You have?” Lorelei persisted. “You’re not curious enough to open them?”
After adding a dash of cream to her coffee, Serenity took a tentative sip. “I’d rather forget him. I definitely don’t want to become pen pals.”
“I know but—”
“He’s probably just asking for money,” Serenity explained. “During the trial, he yelled out that he got ripped off in the divorce, since I got the house. But he spent everything in our retirement accounts on his legal defense, and that amount was equal to the equity in the house. So he got a fair deal.”
Lorelei wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I’m sorry.”
�
�Thanks.” Serenity jerked her head toward Lucy. “Let’s not discuss it right now.” She took another sip of coffee. “Where’s Reagan? Any word from her this morning?”
Before Lorelei could respond, Serenity heard her other sister say, “Right here.”
Reagan was just coming down the stairs.
“You sleep okay?” Serenity raised her voice so it would carry. The kitchen was open to the living room; she could see Reagan but received no response.
Reagan had paused before the wall of windows that looked out on the deck and the snow-covered landscape and trees beyond the deck to the lake.
“Reagan?” Serenity prompted.
Pulling her gaze away from the view, she finished crossing the living room to reach the kitchen. She was wearing sweats, her face was freshly scrubbed, and she’d taken the time to put some product in her hair, but she wasn’t wearing any makeup. “What?”
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah.” The dark circles under her eyes contradicted her, but Serenity chose not to mention it.
“Would you like some breakfast?” Lorelei asked. “I made oatmeal.”
Reagan seemed vaguely surprised that Lorelei would be the one to offer her something to eat. “No, thanks. I’m just going to have a cup of coffee.”
“Any word from Drew?” Serenity asked.
After a slight hesitation, Reagan poured herself some coffee and carried her mug to the table. “He tried to call again last night.”
Serenity slid the cream and sugar in her direction. “Did you take it?”
When Reagan didn’t answer right away, Serenity sensed Lorelei going rigid at the sink behind them and wondered if Reagan was aware of the tension in her, too.
“What’d he say?” she asked, assuming the answer was yes or Reagan would’ve said no.
“I didn’t give him the chance to say anything. I answered, but then I panicked and hung up.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid,” Reagan admitted.
Serenity scooted her chair closer to the table. “That he’s going to stick with his wife?”
After testing her coffee, Reagan glanced over. “No, that he’ll offer to leave her. I don’t want to be responsible for breaking up the family.”
Serenity let her breath seep slowly out. She liked Reagan, in spite of what she’d done. Reagan had made a big mistake, but she obviously regretted getting involved with Drew and wasn’t using their attraction to her advantage—wasn’t out to steal Drew from his wife or get a leg up at the agency, even though her career was clearly very important to her. “What are you going to do?”
“I told you. I have to quit. I can’t be trusted around him.” She rubbed her temples. “Do you have any painkillers? I have a terrible headache.”
Serenity got up to get some for her.
“I’ll look for another job online while we’re here.” She swallowed the two tablets Serenity handed her. “I doubt I’ll be able to get anything that pays what I’m making now. Along with a pay cut, I’ll have to start over and work my way back up. But...”
“But...” Serenity echoed, sitting down again.
“Those are the consequences of my actions, right? If I cut it off with Drew and leave Edison & Curry, at least I’ll be able to look myself in the face again.”
Lorelei put a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. “Just in case you can take a few bites,” she said softly.
8
serenity
AFTER BREAKFAST, REAGAN went to her room to answer a few work emails. She said too many people—both coworkers and clients—were waiting for something from her, and she had to take care of those responsibilities.
Serenity felt bad for her. Reagan had said that ever since she’d slunk away from the office a week ago, disheveled and ashamed, she’d been too upset to interact with anyone connected with the agency. She was afraid her coworkers would somehow guess, and she was embarrassed as well as humiliated. But Serenity had encouraged her to keep her head up and finish strong. All Reagan could do at this point was show her contrition by taking steps to get out of Drew’s life.
After Reagan went upstairs, Serenity helped Lorelei clean the kitchen and then Lorelei sent Lucy to put on her boots and coat. Lucy wanted to go outside to play in the snow. Later, when she was having a nap and Reagan was finished taking care of her business, they’d sit down together and begin to hash out possible scenarios for how they could be related.
They were all supposed to bring pictures of their parents and other close relatives, as well as anything else that might be pertinent—although Serenity didn’t expect Lorelei to have anything. Lorelei had grown up in the foster care system. She didn’t know who her parents were.
“Found my coat, Mommy!” Lucy called down.
Lorelei was standing in the living room, examining the pictures on the wall while Serenity sat on the couch, using her phone to respond to an email from her editor. Serenity had been working with a woman named Nikkita Woods for about two years, ever since her first editor resigned and moved to a different publisher. But despite the number of business emails they’d exchanged, they didn’t know each other all that well. That was partly why Serenity was pretending to be further along in her current work-in-progress than she really was. She wasn’t sure her editor would stand by her, couldn’t risk spooking her by admitting the truth—that she was still struggling to become productive again. If she didn’t get going soon and send in some sample chapters, she was afraid her publisher would contract someone else to write about the Maynard Murders.
“Good job, honey,” Lorelei called back. “Don’t forget your boots.”
“Boots?” Lucy echoed as if the word was foreign to her.
“What we bought right before we left home—with Elsa on them.”
“Oh! My Elsa shoes.”
As Serenity hit Send, she was amused by the fact that Lucy had very likely never owned a pair of boots. Watching Lorelei with her little girl made Serenity a trifle envious. She’d expected to have a child this year. She and Sean had just decided to go off birth control so they could start a family when she found those files. And now that she was thirty-five, divorced and disillusioned, who could say if she’d ever become a mother?
“This is a great picture,” Lorelei said.
Serenity put down her phone and walked over to gaze at the painting of the lake that had captured her own attention yesterday, right before Lorelei and Reagan arrived. “That’s Emerald Bay.”
“Is the water really that blue?”
“It is. The lake is nicknamed Big Blue. I can’t wait to take you down there, but we’ll wait for Reagan to join us, if that’s okay.”
“Of course we can wait. Lucy will have a blast just playing outside. Yesterday was the first time she’d ever seen snow.” She pointed to the photograph of Serenity’s parents at the casino. “These are your parents?”
“Yes. Meet Chuck and Charlotte Currington.”
“They’re a handsome couple.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“And these are your siblings?” She pointed to a different picture now, the one with the Christmas tree.
“Yes. That’s Beau, my brother, who’s getting his master’s in aerospace engineering at UCLA. And these are the twins, Tara and Tia.”
“They’re all younger than you. I remember you telling us that.”
“Yeah—Beau’s twenty-four and the twins are twenty-eight.”
“So you were seven when the twins were born.”
“Yes.” She’d been old enough that she could remember her father taking her to the hospital to meet them and how excited she’d been to have not one but two baby sisters.
Serenity hadn’t thought much about the age gap while she was growing up. She’d figured her parents had simply decided to wait. Or Mother Nature hadn’t, at first
, cooperated. Charlotte had always said Serenity was her “right hand,” as if she felt lucky to have had so much time alone with her oldest daughter.
But knowing what she knew now, the fact that she was seven years older than her twin sisters seemed a little suspect. Was there a bigger reason than she’d supposed?
Lorelei didn’t say anything for several seconds, but she studied that Christmas picture as though she wished she could climb inside it.
Finally, she moved on to another one. “Is this you?”
“Yes—sledding with my dad.”
She indicated the beach shot. “At this elevation, it’s hard to imagine it gets warm enough to swim. But it must. Look at all those people in the water behind you.”
“The air warms up in the summer, but the water stays cold because the lake is so deep.” Feeling a bit nostalgic, Serenity touched the photo. “That’s Sand Harbor, one of the most popular beaches in Tahoe.”
“Was your dad taking the picture?”
“No, I’m sure that was my uncle Vance or his girlfriend. They were visiting.”
“Where was your dad?”
“That particular day?” Serenity shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Did he usually come up with you?”
“If it was on a weekend. Maybe he had to meet a client in San Francisco, where he worked at the time.”
Lorelei studied the photo more closely. “Where is Sand Harbor? Will I be able to see it while I’m in town?”
“Sure. It’s right here at Incline Village. You can even walk to it.”
“And the casinos?”
“Those are at South Shore, about a thirty-minute drive. Emerald Bay’s over there, too. South Shore has more of a party vibe. North Shore, where we are now, is made up mostly of nature lovers. There’s a very different feel.”
“I see.” Lorelei examined yet another picture, one in which Serenity’s father was lounging on the boat they’d owned back then. “Did you do a lot of boating growing up?”
“A decent amount. My dad loves both types of skiing.”
