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“It wasn’t what he said. Not really. More likehowhe said it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. And maybe it’s just me being silly, but…” Grace checked on the pancakes. Seeing they were done, she added them to the stack, then turned the knob on the gas stove off. “Sometimes when I talk to Lucas, he reminds me of Tommy. Not in a bad way,” she added hurriedly, carrying the plate of pancakes over to the table, “but he’s just so…”
“Dominant?” suggested Tess.
“Something like that. Like I said, I’m being silly.”
Yes, thought Tess. She was grateful for the other woman’s concern, but Grace was better served worrying over Maria’s fate than her relationship with Lucas.
Besides, Lucas being so forceful and dominant was one of the things she liked about him best. And because she knew her husband as well as she did, she watched as Grace doled out the pancakes—four for Tess, four for Grace, and one torn into bite-sized pieces for Susannah—before she guessed, “Lucas told you to keep me here with you.”
Still a little uneasy thought trying to hide it, Grace chuckled under her breath. “Commanded is more like it, but I don’t mind. The company might keep me from losing my mind, wondering where Maria is right now… and what could be happening to her.”
Tess glanced down at her plate of pancakes. Her appetite had been scarce since hearing the news that Maria was missing and, despite the delicious aroma wafting off of the pile, she couldn’t bring herself to reach for the syrup.
Neither, it seemed, could Grace.
Instead, she busied herself with offering the bite-sized pieces to her daughter.
Su was quickly approaching her first birthday. A month shy, the bubbly baby had a few more strands of dark hair than she had when Tess saw her briefly last spring during her and Lucas’s last trip to Hamlet.
“The baby seems happy,” Tess observed, more because she felt like she should say something, and not so sure what after Grace’s minor interrogation.
“She is.” The other woman’s smile dipped just enough to be noticeable. “At least one us can be.”
Pushing her plate away from her for the moment, she caught Grace’s eye. “Hey. How about you? You and Rick, I mean? I thought you were happy.”
“I am. It’s just…” Grace sighed. “Why can’t any of us catch a break?”
Grace wasn’t wrong. Tess knew that. In fact, if it wasn’t for Tess suggesting that Grace flee to Hamlet to escape her obsessed ex in the first place, the former ballerina wouldn’t even be here.
Of course, Thomas Mathers found her, just like he promised he would. He found her, he drugged her, hechanged her into a wedding dress to marry her, and eventually drove his Jaguar into the gulley when it became obvious that Grace didn’t want him.
That was only the beginning of her troubles in the small town, Tess knew. There was the private investigator who came to dig into Mathers’s death, and another who got himself killed by the first one when he took another HSD deputy hostage.
Then there was Grace’s wedding and the way it seemed to be sabotaged leading up to it. From her veil being destroyed to her shoes being stolen and her vendors being canceled… then the arson attacks and the pastor being clobbered by a hammer before Grace discovered that Dorian Reid had “fallen in love with her”... only for her wedding ceremony to be disrupted when that Boone guy showed up to challenge Rick.
And now, when things finally seemed to calm down, Maria was gone…
She wasn’twrong.They deserved to be happy, but before Tess could murmur her sympathies all over again, Grace stunned her by saying, “If you think about it, it all started with you, Tess. Finding this place by accident and having one of the deputies kill your husband for no reason except he could… is this place cursed or what?”
Tess swallowed the lump that suddenly lodged in her throat. “Or whatis right.”
* * *
Apart from his love—hisobsession—for Tessa, Lucas believed he could solely survive on a combination of rage and caffeine.
That morning was a testament to his belief.
After Rick scarfed down a breakfast that Lucas refused, the two men climbed into the HSD cruiser.
They stopped at the coffeehouse, grabbing a large black coffee for Lucas and a pumpkin scone fresh-baked by Hamlet’s premier baker, Adrianna, that Rick nibbled on as he turned back around, heading toward the mountainside of the village.
Sly was fruitlessly combing the gulleyside of Hamlet again. Though it had bothered Lucas to have to ask, the sheriff already assured him that they’d done a thorough search of the gulley itself; a fair assumption, given its history and the spot where Maria’s vehicle was found. Still, because the crushed cones on the far outskirts of Hamlet were out of the ordinary, and Maria’s car was abandoned near the entrance, Sly wanted to believe there was another clue nearby.
That left Rick and Lucas to take a ride around the mountainside.
