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“I know the code. Leave me cash, Mrs.Nelson. Three hundred dollars.”
Sonja is so demanding. So untrusting, too. “Fine. Make sure the sheets are pressed.”
Nothing on the other end. Silence.
“Sonja?” I sound like I’m yelling. Of course I’m not. “Gracias!”
She hung up on me. She has some kind of nerve.
No one treats me that way and gets away with it.
CHAPTER 23
ASHLYN
I wave goodbye to Jennifer and walk to my car. None of this makes sense. My dad was healthy, happy the last time I saw him. Proud of EventCo, proud of my mom. He didn’t want to go on a trip with Tish. He didn’t want to go anywhere at all with her.
I slip into the car and lock the door. I toss my purse on the passenger’s seat and rummage inside until I find it.
My dad’s phone. I saw it in Tish’s purse as we stood together in that terrible line of sorrow. She doesn’t need his phone anymore. I do. I unlock it and see all his apps, everything he used to run his life. I open Find My Friends and watch as Tish’s dot speeds through her neighborhood and pulls up to her house. She’s home already, likely counting all her money. She thinks she knows everything, thinks she’s in charge of everything when it comes to my dad. But she’s wrong. He and I had our secrets, too.
“Oh, Daddy,” I cry as I hold his phone close to my heart and the tears come again.
I jump as someone knocks on my car window. It’s Seth.
I roll the window down.
“You OK?” he asks. What a friend.
“I’m fine, sort of. I just need a little space,” I say. What I need is a little time to investigate some things.
“I get it. Call me. Or come over. Anytime. I’m here, whatever you need,” he says. He squeezes my hand before he walks away.
I wonder if my mom felt like this about my dad in the early days, and vice versa. They had to. How did they let it slip away?
Or maybe it didn’t slip at all. Maybe it was destroyed by a hurricane named Tish. Did she target my dad, is that why she ended up as his assistant? How did she find him, anyway? It seems like such an unlikely coincidence that she would apply for a job at EventCo. Her previous job experience, she says, was in real estate.
Maybe Tish had a plan from the minute she drove into town. And maybe that plan was to marry John Nelson, no matter that he was married, no matter who got hurt along the way. That sounds like Tish.
I decide that I need answers, and I’m going to get them.
CHAPTER 24
KATE
The sun has set, and I’m alone on the couch in the family room. I can hear the neighborhood kids outside, riding bikes, playing hide and seek, jumping on trampolines, their sweaty summer faces tanned and so joyful.
Meanwhile, my house is silent and dark. I still cannot quite believe the way all of this has unfolded, all that has happened. I tried to pretend my life with John was perfect. But sure, there were issues. I never did anything to him like he did to me. I never pushed him aside for a younger model, never flaunted a new version of him in front of the company.
I stand up and shake myself out of the past. I tried to do some Pilates this evening, my home reformer usually provides stress release. But tonight, I didn’t have the heart. I touch the top of a silver picture frame. I know the photo all too well: John, Ashlyn, and me at Disneyland, smiling, holding hands. Ashlyn’s grin is as large as the lollipop in her hand. We did have fun together. It wasn’t all business.
I hear Ashlyn walk into the family room. She’s dressed in a tie-dye T-shirt and jean shorts, her long blonde hair spilling over her shoulder in waves.
“Mom, what are you doing in here in the dark?” Ashlyn pushes a button on her phone and the room is alight—the oversize chandelier, the sconces, the table lamps, and the ceiling track lights, all at the perfect evening brightness.
The light hurts. Everything about the past week haunts me when I am alone. The regrets, the decisions we are forced to make. It was all so simple before that woman tore us apart.
Her hand touches my shoulder. “I’m sorry Dad left you for that ... that woman. Left both of us. I understand now how hard it must have been for you.” Ashlyn is being kind. Maybe she’s beginning to understand the truth.
