been deposited.
“Hang tight,” she said.
“I’ll do my best to get you out of there after the weekend.”
“Don’t be so vague. Say you’ll get me out of here on Monday.” She swiveled in her chair at the sound of her assistant coming into her office.
“Chad, will you let Tori Connelly know that her business is completed?” Chad nodded.
“Will do.”
Tori Connelly set down her phone and made her way to her Lexus. The house was locked, but not because she cared about anything inside. The contents were not important. Where she was going, she’d be starting over with the man of her dreams. The only one who understood both her beauty and her power. She carried an overnight bag with the bare essentials she needed for the trip later that night.
RUNNING LATE. CALL U WHEN I GET TO YR PLACE. MEET ME IN GARAGE.
She sent one final text message:
LOVE U. SEE U SOON.
She selected two names and pressed send. It was so easy to stay connected.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Kendall Stark stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself. She was not a woman given to overt displays of vanity, but she could not help but wonder how well she’d really held up over the past fifteen years. It was hard to know. Age was a funny thing. It seemed to work so slowly, sneakily, against the beholder. It was as if one day you look in the mirror and you see a line that surely must have been there the day before, but it had gone unnoticed. Unrecorded. Ignored. She thought she looked pretty good. Adam Canfield had reminded her that since she hadn’t been a cheerleader or a prom queen, no one would be giving her the critical and cruel eye.
“I’m not saying you don’t look great, because, honestly, Kendall, you do. But the truth is that no one cares about what the B-listers look like now. They only want to see how fat the cheerleaders are and how bald the jocks have gotten since graduation.”
“Wow, look at Mommy,” Steven said as he and Cody appeared in the doorway.
“Look, indeed,” she said, dangling the pearls.
“Will you hook the clasp?” Cody sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at his mom.
“You look pretty,” he said.
“Well, aren’t you the charmer,” she said, looking down at Cody. She held her hair above the nape of her neck while Steven fiddled with the tiny lobster-claw clasp.
“Your daddy looks pretty good, too.” Steven wore a dark gray jacket, black slacks, and an electric blue tie that was youthful and cool.
“Memorable for the right reasons, too.”
“
“That’s out of the way,” he said.
“I know, but I need you to do this for me. I need to talk to you.” He could see the anguish in her eyes.
“All right, we can do that.” It wasn’t dark yet. In fact, the sky was blue and the sun turned the tops of the enormous firs along Banner Forest into gold-tipped spears.
“Steven,” she said, “Park down by the Jump.” He didn’t like the idea, but he could plainly see that whatever it was that Kendall wanted—needed—to say was dark, deep, and difficult. He’d notice how stressed she’d been in the past few weeks and he knew her well enough to know it was more than the murder cases she was working, more than the reunion, or the last-minute forensics conference. He found a spot, pulled over, and turned off the ignition. A deer and her impossibly tiny twin fawns ambled across the roadway.
“Her babies are beautiful,” she said, as she watched the trio disappear into the blackberries and ferns off the edge of the roadway. Kendall kept her gaze toward the deer, though they were gone.
“You look like you’re going to crumble,” he said.
“I am,” she said.
“I’ve lied to you. I’ve pretty much lied to everyone.” Steven reached over and put his hand on her knee.
“What is it? It can’t be that bad,” he said, though he could easily see that it was.
“After we broke up, I saw someone.”
“You mean in high school, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s fine. I dated, too. While you were away.”
“That’s why I went away.”
“To study. Yes, I know.”
“I was in trouble. I got pregnant. I left because I had to do something about it.” Steven could feel his own eyes misting. He had no idea that was coming.
“Kendall,” he said.
“Lots of women have abortions.” She shook her head.
“I know. I understand that. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t? You had the baby?” Steven clenched his fists. Not in rage, but in an attempt to hold his emotions inside. She nodded.
“Whose baby was it?”
“Jason’s,” she said. The name didn’t surprise Steven. Nothing could surprise him after hearing that Kendall had given birth before Cody. He wondered what he missed. How he didn’t notice anything about her that might have tipped him off. After Cody’s birth, her body changed in subtle ways. Why hadn’t he noticed it? “What happened to the baby?”
“He was adopted. I don’t know by whom.”
“Who else knows? Do the Reeds know?”
“My mom. Mary Reed. I told her today. Are you disgusted with me?” Steven folded his arms; his face was red, but he wasn’t angry. Not really. He could see that his wife was in torment then. It was a huge burden.
“Not disgusted, just disappointed that you’ve lived with this and didn’t think enough of our relationship to tell me.”
“It wasn’t that. I was so ashamed. I waited so long and then it seemed like it was too late. That it didn’t need to be brought up anymore.” Steven embraced her and kissed her. It was a soft, gentle kiss. Almost the kind of kiss that a parent gives a child to make them feel better.
“I love you, Kendall. You know that. My heart aches for all you’ve gone through. You’re going to be all right. We all are. You want to bag this reunion and go home?” She shook her head.
“I can’t. Adam and Penny would kill me. And we’ve had too much of that around here lately.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The Olympic Room at the Gold Mountain Golf Club had been decorated with balloons and posters that highlighted the class theme “Fifteen Minutes of Fame.” Images of popular ’90s bands, TV and film actors, and political figures were interspersed with blowups from the yearbook. Side-by-side comparisons of celebrities and classmates made it all too clear—that Port Orchard was slightly behind the times when it came to being stylish. The South Kitsap version of “the Rachel” was a little bigger in volume, decidedly less sleek. Some of the men who rocked a ’90s goatee still wore them. Long sideburns, thankfully, had been replaced by a slightly more contemporary look. The Bremerton band Penny Salazar had fought for was playing its maudlin version of Celine Dion’s “The Power
