Haley’s face lit up with excitement. “Where? To the zoo? Are we going to the zoo?”
Anne shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a secret.”
“I want to go to the zoo!” she said, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Antony wants to go too! Are we going to the zoo?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said again. “We’ll see.”
Haley groaned and crumpled against her.
“Haley, come on!” The call came from a little redheaded girl on the swing set twenty feet away.
Anne kissed her daughter’s head again. “Go have fun, you. I have to get to work. I’ll see you at lunchtime. I love you.”
“I love you, Mommy,” Haley said with a wave as she trotted off toward her friends.
Anne watched her go, thinking—as she did every day—how lucky she was. She had looked death in the face more than once. Every day with her children was an enormous gift she never failed to appreciate.
She rested a hand on her stomach and said a little thank-you for the new life growing inside her. She was a lucky woman. She had a wonderful husband, beautiful children, a career she loved.
Then she thought of Lauren Lawton. Lauren had had a wonderful life too. She’d had a loving husband—now dead. She’d had two beautiful daughters—one gone.
She thought of Leah again, a trouble line creasing up between her brows.
Then, as if she had conjured her up, Lauren Lawton was walking toward her on the path.
“They told me at the desk you might be out here.”
She looked like hell, Anne thought. Pale and thin as a ghost, gaunt, with deep purple smudges beneath her eyes. She could have been a junkie strung out on heroin, or a cancer patient poisoned by chemotherapy.
“My morning ritual,” Anne said, showing none of the alarm that had struck her at the sight of the woman. “Haley and I have to have our little walk and talk before I can go to my office.”
Lauren looked over at the girls playing on the swings. “No one would ever guess she wasn’t your biological child. She looks just like you. Did you adopt her as a baby?”
“No,” Anne said. “Haley was four. Her mother was murdered. She was the only witness.”
Lauren looked at her, shocked, as most people were when Anne revealed her daughter’s tragic background. She had managed to shock Lauren twice now—with Haley’s story, and with her own—which she thought was a good thing.
In her experience, victims sometimes needed to be pulled out of their myopic self-absorption in their own terrible tales. Not to minimize what they had gone through, but to show them others had gone through terrible things too, and had worked their way through to move forward with their lives.
“Oh my God,” Lauren said. “Does she remember what happened ?”
“Some of it,” Anne said. “She used to wake up screaming every night. Gradually, we’ve worked through it with her. The most important thing she needed was to know that she was safe again.”
“I know the feeling,” Lauren said quietly, her eyes on Haley—laughing and happy. Anne suspected she envied the little girl that.
“When you’ve been through a nightmare, it’s hard to imagine ever feeling normal again, isn’t it?”
“Impossible,” Lauren murmured.
“Let’s go inside,” Anne suggested. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee. Have you slept in the last . . . year or two?”
“God. Do I look that bad?”
“I’m not one to pull punches,” Anne said as they started back toward the main building. “I’m sure you know the answer to your own question. I know I was well aware I looked like I’d been run over by a truck for the first few months after my ordeal. I didn’t care.
“Some women do, though,” she said. “I’ve seen people go to great lengths to pretend they’re just fine when they’re anything but. That’s a heavy lie to bear. They always crash eventually and have to start over from square one.”
“So are you saying I’m ahead of the game?” Lauren asked drily.
“I’m saying you might as well be honest. A perfect, controlled facade can be worse than a prison,” she said, thinking again of Leah, wondering what exactly the girl was trying so hard to keep locked within.
They went inside the building and down the cool, dark hall to Anne’s office.
“I just wanted to stop by to thank you again for letting Leah stay last night,” Lauren said. “Was everything all right? Leah hasn’t stayed over with a friend for a long time.”
“She did fine,” Anne said. “I checked on the girls a couple of times during the night. Once the gabfest was over, it looked like everyone slept soundly.”
“Good,” she said quietly. “She hasn’t gotten to have much of a childhood the last few years.”
Anne opened her office door and was greeted by the intoxicating aroma of coffee and fresh-baked blueberry muffins.
“Oh my God, smell that,” she said on a groan. “The kitchen staff is spoiling me into obesity.
“Leah is delightful,” she said, going to the coffee bar and pouring two cups without asking. Lauren was going to welcome the coffee, and she was going to eat a muffin if Anne had to sit on her and force-feed it to her.
“Any time Leah wants to come stay is all right by me,” she said. “Antony and Haley loved having her. If she ever wants to make a little money, she can help Wendy with the babysitting duties.”
Lauren frowned a little. Anne read her concern.
“Remember, my house is like Fort Knox. There’s always somebody watching if Vince is out. Even if it’s just date night. Nothing is left to chance.”
“That’s an interesting arrangement you have with the sheriff’s office.”
Anne pushed the cup of coffee into her hand and motioned for her to take a seat.
“They’re like family,” she explained, bringing the basket of muffins to the coffee table. She kicked her shoes off and curled herself into a chair. “Vince has done a lot of work with Sheriff Dixon and his detectives, but he won’t take their money, so they give back in kind.”
“Do you know a Detective Mendez?” Lauren asked cautiously. Unable to resist, she sipped at the coffee. The steam rising from it put a hint of color into her cheeks at least.
“Tony?” Anne said, surprised. “Absolutely. He’s my son’s godfather—and namesake, sort of. It’s a long story. Anyway . . . Do you know Tony?”
“We’ve met,” she said, carefully neutral. “He’s a good detective ?”
“He’s excellent. Vince wanted to recruit him to the Bureau back when, then life took some crazy turns for all of us, and here we all are still in Oak Knoll. Why do you ask? Is everything all right?”
Lauren looked down at the arm of the chair with the expression of someone tempted to burst into hysterical laughter. Clearly, everything was not all right.
Before she could peddle a lie or a platitude, Anne leaned forward and forced eye contact.
“Lauren, I know we’ve just met, and I’m sure you don’t trust people any easier than I do,” she said. “But when I tell you that you can tell me anything, I mean it. You don’t have to be a client. I feel connected to you through Wendy and Leah, and the fact that we’ve both had to deal with some rotten shit in our lives.
“I will never judge you,” she said. “I will never tell you you should or shouldn’t feel one way or another. And if there’s any way I can help you, I will.”
Lauren still wouldn’t really look at her. Tears rose in her cool blue eyes. Anne had never seen anyone more in need of a hug in her life, but she also knew better than to offer it. She suspected it would not be well received.
Lauren had spent the last four years fighting for her daughter, fighting to keep herself together, fighting the dark energy that stalked every victim of violence. She had taken on a warrior persona that would never allow vulnerability.
Anne knew at the heart of that lay fear—the fear that if she allowed a chink in her armor, that would be the end of her. She would crumble. The strength that had gotten her through every day of her personal hell would dissolve, and then where would she be? Who would she be? How would she get from one day to the next? How could she be a mother for her remaining daughter?
“No matter what it is,” Anne said, “you need friends to help you get through it. You will never find anyone more qualified for that job than me.”
Lauren tried to force a smile. She managed to nod, but she still looked away. In the smallest, tightest
