Chapter Fifty-four

The cards were dealt. The bridge table was set up in Jane’s living room, the game about to begin. It was a gray November day. Outside the wind pushed desiccated leaves across the sidewalk and swung the FOR SALE sign in front of Megan’s house like a pendulum.

Helen turned from looking out the window. “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

“Honestly,” Irma asked, “could you stay in a house after you’d been held prisoner there?”

“No.” Helen shook her head. “I guess I couldn’t.”

“Still, she’s given it all up. Her career, her friends. I hear she’s gone off to somewhere in the Caribbean,” Phyllis said.

“She’ll have to come back for the trial,” Helen pointed out.

“For both trials,” Jane said. “Assuming neither Justin Vreeland nor her father reach a plea deal.”

“No wonder she’s fallen apart,” Phyllis said. “Poor thing.”

It was awful to be victimized as Megan had been. Financially and psychologically by a parent who should have loved and protected her, and physically and emotionally by a stranger. Most people would have been curled up in a corner.

Jane didn’t believe Megan had fallen apart. The last time she’d seen her, Megan had been propped up on the couch in Andy Bromfield’s condo, where her mother and Andy fussed over her. There was no doubt Megan had been through an experience no human being should have to endure. When Jane was leaving, she’d leaned in to give Megan a hug good-bye.

“I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” Megan had whispered. “I’m going to be all right. I know what I have to do.”

Megan must have been traumatized by her ordeal, certainly, but she’d not only survived but thrived through a terrible childhood with one evil and one dysfunctional parent. She might well triumph again.

Laura Reeve had taken to calling Jane a couple of times a month. Her ostensible reason was to report on the welfare of Wembly, who now lived with her in the Berkshires. But they always ended up talking about Megan. Laura and her daughter had stayed in close touch. Andy Bromfield had declined the partnership he’d been offered at Bookerman, Digby, and Eade, the partnership that could have been Megan’s. He’d sold his condo and moved what few sticks of furniture and personal items he’d kept into storage. He was in the Caribbean, too, traveling with Megan.

Jane remembered Megan’s vision board. Tropical places, cats, and babies. Not one image of a fancy law office, a beautiful renovated home, a woman in a smart business outfit. Jane fervently hoped that Megan’s trauma had propelled her not only away from something but toward something—the life she had wanted all along.