engaged to your sister.”
The soft punch of his words knocked her breathless. “Now I know you’re lying. My sister isn’t seeing anyone.”
Then Luci remembered Jill’s bubblier-than-usual voice this morning as she’d issued a dinner invitation for Saturday and added she had a surprise. Luci had assumed Jill had scraped up another blind date to force on her. Jilly, what have you done? “I’m leaving now. And when I get back, I don’t want to see you or your truck in my driveway. Is that understood?”
Another nod. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t leaving. His big body became an iceberg she feared wouldn’t melt away until he’d done what he’d set out to accomplish. “Thing is, Luce, whether you want it or not, trouble’s here and it’s not me. The last woman this con man married died. You don’t want that for Jill. As much as you two rub each other raw, you love her.”
He shrugged as if he weren’t ripping the world she’d worked so hard to create to shreds, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. But he did. Dom had always cared too much. That’s why she couldn’t bear the sight of him. “You want to see trouble go away, Luce. You want your neat little life to go on. Then you need my help.”
Shaking her head, she snorted. That was just like him, turning this whole thing on her, making it her fault, her failure. She didn’t need this. She was already serving her time in hell. She was doing her penance. She deserved her small corner of peace and security. And even if she didn’t, Brendan did.
“I’ll take care of Jill myself. Goodbye.” Heart pounding, tears clawing up her throat, she slammed the door in Dom’s face and ran out the back door to the minivan where her son waited unaware that a monster worse than any video game’s had just invaded their bright little world.
Chapter Two
The horror Dom had resurrected by his presence clung to Luci’s skin like a disease and had her even more distracted than usual. At every stop sign, at every red light, her mind conjured up images that flowed and mutated in nightmarelike exaggeration from Cole’s dead body, lying in that forsaken shack in Texas seven years ago, to the possibility of Jill’s body, lying in a pool of blood in her own home. How could Dom do this to her? He knew her secret, had to know it still ate at her and always would, no matter how far she’d run from it.
Her family was all she had. She couldn’t let anything happen to them. And the last thing she needed was Dom there in Marston reminding her of her guilt.
By the time Luci reached the recreation fields on Depot Road, the lot was filled and she had to squeeze her minivan in a slot that was too small. To make things even more stressful, practice turned out to be a game and Howie Dunlap, the coach, wasn’t too happy that Brendan, his star player, was late. Luci refrained from pointing out he was lucky they’d showed up in the right place.
Entreating Jeff to come out of the van and put on his cleats took another ten minutes of trying patience. The boy wasn’t an athlete and knew it. He played soccer only to please his mother and spend time with Brendan, whom he adored. And although Brendan often complained about his cousin’s klutziness, he always included him in whatever game they played and bopped anyone who tried to make fun of him. Not Luci’s favorite manner of conflict resolution, but explaining why this method was the last resort fell short of logical to Brendan when it solved his problem so neatly.
The moms were already gathered along the sideline, the brisk breeze barely moving their styled locks. They sat in a row, roosting and clucking, on their folding red canvas chairs like brooding hens. Only Luci’s blue chair stood out. She didn’t see the point of buying a new color chair every time Brendan graduated teams.
“Late again, Luci.” Sally Kennison, in her perfectly pleated trousers and polished loafers, looked down her long nose as Luci struggled to free the chair from its carrying case. “You really ought to treat yourself to a watch.”
“Goats don’t run by a clock.” Luci had to let pop out the one wrong thing to remind the country club set that she was an outsider who worked a lowly farm for a living. Hard to believe she’d once had iron control over every cell of her body. But August always shook her up and shredded her focus. Getting back in sync took more time every year.
Sally’s perfectly manicured nails waived down the sideline. “Yes, well, you obviously aren’t late because you took the time to clean up. Sit downwind, please.” A few of the other moms sniggered and the gossip turned back to who was doing what to whom. Luci tuned them out and focused on the kids.
On the field, two teams of six- and seven-year-olds mobbed the ball and somehow moved it up and down the field. Pacing each of the sidelines, the two coaches barked suggestions that were mostly ignored as the kids concentrated on kicking the black-and-white ball toward the goal.
At halftime, Luci distributed the orange slices and the kids turned them into orange-peel smiles.
That’s when Jill showed up, hurrying in high-heel-induced ministeps toward the field. As Luci watched her baby sister, Dom’s voice came back to haunt her.
There’s a con man in town. He marries divorcées and bleeds them dry.
The last woman this con man married died.
He’s engaged to your sister.
Jill couldn’t take another heartache. Not after the way John Jeffery Courville the Second had left her for an older woman. She was just now rebounding from the messy divorce.
Jill had the pert and sassy disposition of someone who would appear young even when she was gray and wrinkled. Her hazel eyes tilted up and crinkled at the corners as if she were always smiling—even when she cried. Her blond-highlighted brown hair was cut in a bob she styled up or down, depending on her mood. Today, she’d had the carnival committee meeting, so she’d gone for the messy bun look—half intellectual, but still showing she could have fun. Her beige linen pants were too light, her strappy heels too high for soccer field sidelines, yet somehow, Jill pulled off the look and fit in more with the Marston mommy-crowd than Luci did with her jeans and sweatshirt.
One of life’s little jokes.
Jill fit in without trying; Luci never could, no matter how hard she tried. She should just stop caring, but somehow she couldn’t.
She’d robbed Brendan of his father. She’d do everything she could so Brendan could have as normal a childhood as possible. She’d come back to Marston because her sister and her parents lived there. She’d grown up there. She felt safe there, even living on the periphery. And she wanted this safe, secure, small-town life with roots and family and community for Brendan. She wanted to raise her son out of the shadow of violence that tainted her past and had stolen part of his future.
“Who’s winning?” Jill asked, plopping down her red chair, which opened for her as easily as an umbrella.
“It’s a tie. One each.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“How was the carnival committee meeting?”
Jill cringed and shook her head. “Who would have thought that putting on a one-day fund-raising event at an elementary school would take such sharp negotiating skills? If we pull this off by next weekend, we’ll be lucky.”
Luci hooked an ankle over a knee, going for the relaxed look. “Hey, so
