26

Cormac couldn’t keep his eyes off Gia. He kept looking for some sign that she wasn’t angry since he’d cut her off, but he couldn’t tell. At least she was sitting at the table with him and his sisters were being kind. He was so proud of them for apologizing.

It was easy to see Gia didn’t feel as though she belonged in this small family celebration, and Cormac could understand. They ended up ordering some appetizers as well as drinks, and after a while, as they all told stories and began to laugh, she seemed to relax and start having fun, too. Then the waitress carried out a big cake—thanks to Louisa, who’d had the foresight to make it happen.

Eventually, Louisa asked Gia about Sheldon, and she told them what Ruth had already said—that he was becoming a persistent problem. Louisa followed up by asking if she’d heard from Margot. She insisted that she hadn’t, but Cormac wasn’t sure he believed that. He wouldn’t tell anyone whether he’d heard from Margot, either, if he were in Gia’s place.

They were all a little tipsy when they walked out, except Dan, who was the designated driver since he was raised by an alcoholic and had sworn off drinking. He took the birthday girl, Louisa and Victor home. Then he came back for Cormac, Ruth and Gia.

Cormac was hoping to sit in the back with Gia, but Ruth insisted he take the front seat since his “legs were longer.” He tried to tell her he was fine in the back, but she was so insistent that he got the impression there was more behind it than mere courtesy. She didn’t want him to sit by Gia. It didn’t ultimately matter that much, though, because Dan dropped Ruth off before driving Gia and Cormac home.

Cormac wanted to get out with Gia, so that maybe they’d have a chance to talk. But she didn’t invite him. As soon as Dan pulled into her drive, she thanked him, told them both goodbye and got out. That was it.

Cormac wished she’d been more encouraging, but when he got home, he texted her, anyway.

She answered right away: I’m not sure I want to get involved with you again.

When she didn’t text him back, he assumed the answer was no, so he was stunned when he heard a distinct knock on his back door fifteen minutes later.

Gia told herself she was being a fool. She and Cormac had already quit seeing each other. The hardest part was over. She should leave it there.

She wished she could be just that logical, knew it would be for the best, especially when it came time to leave Wakefield. But she couldn’t.

“Are we going to lay down any ground rules?” he asked hesitantly as he let her in.

She closed her eyes for a second while she tried to decide. But nothing came to mind that would help the situation. He was all she’d been able to think about since they’d first kissed, and she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to be with him again.

“We’ll play it by ear,” she said and stepped into his arms.

“I know I’ve asked you this before, but you don’t think Sheldon would ever really hurt you, do you?” Cormac asked as he got ready for work the next morning.

Gia was still in his bed and barely starting to stir, but he knew she had to get up soon to make it home before her parents started their day. “I’m not so convinced.”

He scowled at himself in the mirror while combing his wet hair. “Maybe I should have a talk with him.”

She shoved into a sitting position. “No, don’t. He’s looking for a target right now, and I don’t want you to become a focal point. This isn’t your fight.”

“But maybe it’ll take some pressure off you. I’m afraid of what he might do if he thinks he can get away with it.”

She shoved a hand through her hair. “It’d help if I could get the damn restraining order...”

“Why can’t you?”

“The police say I don’t have enough grounds. He insists he wasn’t the one who shot the garbage can to hell the other night. When I showed them the gif he sent me, he claimed it was just a Halloween joke. And they don’t give out restraining orders because he peeled out on the front lawn. The officer I spoke to chuckled and said the grass will grow back. But I think it’s that everyone in this town knows him and his family and can’t believe he’s truly dangerous.”

Cormac put his comb away and walked out of the bathroom. “So where do you see this going?”

She covered a yawn as she looked up at him. “I have no idea. If he can’t find Margot, maybe he’ll snap.”

“But you’ll protect your sister even if she comes home.”

“Of course.”

“Have you really not heard from her?” he asked with a skeptical expression.

She gave him a secretive smile but that smile quickly faded. “Nothing meaningful.”

“She can’t come back now, you realize that. I mean...not until the kids are of age. Even then... I don’t think I’d want to be in the same town as Sheldon and his folks.”

“That she felt desperate enough to do something like this is upsetting. I keep wondering what that would be like. To want to escape someone so badly you leave your family and the town you grew up in and go into hiding.”

“That’s the thing. She would know whether Sheldon was dangerous more than anyone else.”

“I know. I think about that, too,” she said.

When he bent to kiss her, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, which made him slightly uneasy. A voice in the back of his head said, You can’t get used to this. But how could he unravel what had already transpired?

He couldn’t. Neither would he back out on her again.

“I’ll call you later,” he said and left.

Gia came home at least thirty minutes before her parents typically got up. She thought she’d have no trouble slipping into her room unnoticed. And yet she found both Ida and Leo sitting in the kitchen when she came through the back door—her mother still in her nightgown, which she never wore out of the bedroom.

“Oh, my God!” Ida exclaimed and burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” Gia glanced from her father to her mother and back again.

Her father motioned her to the living room, where she could see what was wrong. The picture windows had been shot out. Glass glittered like crushed diamonds all over the furniture and carpet. “When we heard the gunfire in the middle of the night, we were terrified. We didn’t know what was happening. And it wasn’t just a few shots, like with the garbage can. Whoever did this fired again and again—must’ve used more than one gun because he didn’t take time to reload.”

“Whoever did this?” she echoed. They knew who it had to be.

“It was terrifying to be awakened like that,” her mother said from behind her. “And then...when you were gone...we thought...”

Gia looked back to see Ida bury her face in her hands. “You thought I’d been kidnapped or something?”

“Or worse,” her father said. “Come here.” He guided her through the family room slider to the front yard where she could see that someone had spray-painted “Fuck you, Gia!” on the front of the house in bright red paint.

“That son of a bitch!” she muttered. “If I can’t get a restraining order, why aren’t the police at least keeping an eye on our house?”

“I don’t know,” her father said. “I’ve called them. They’re on their way.”

She glanced up at the eaves. “We need to get some cameras up so we can at least document anything in the future.”

“Who would have thought we’d need that in a town like this?” He shook his head. “We’ve lived here all our lives.”

He looked tired, with the lines in his face more pronounced than usual and his hair standing up on one side. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “We’ll get through this.”

“It’s not right,” he murmured. “Your mother’s suffered enough.”

“Maybe we should take her to my place in Coeur d’Alene for a while,” Gia said. “Get away and give her a chance to unwind.”

“She wouldn’t want to die there,” he said.

He never said the D word. Neither did she. Hearing it reminded her of the inevitability of what they were facing and made her that much angrier at Sheldon for creating so much fear and upset in her mother’s last days. If he was mad at Margot, that was one thing. He didn’t have to take it out on them. They’d just become a handy stand-in, a target for his rage. “I’ll order a surveillance system right away.”

“How much will that cost?” he asked wearily.

“Not much. I’ll take care of it.”

They walked back inside to find that Ida had dried her cheeks and composed herself. “Where were you last night?” she asked Gia. “When we looked in your room, your bed was untouched.” She gestured at the clothes Gia was wearing. “And didn’t you go out in that last night?”

Gia was tempted to tell her she’d slept in the chaise by the pool, but with everything that had just happened that wasn’t believable. She would’ve heard the gunfire. And with the way gossip circulated around town, anyway... “I was with Cormac,” she admitted.

Her mother’s jaw dropped. “Mr. Hart’s son?”

She winced at Ida’s reaction. “Yes.”

“You’re seeing him?” her mother pressed.

Was she seeing him? There was nothing official between them. They were just going day by day with what they felt at the moment. At the same time, she was sleeping with him, so...that was definitely something. “Sort of.”

“What does that mean?” her father asked. “Do you care about him?”

That was a much easier question to answer. She did care about him, or she wouldn’t have been drawn back to his house. But having feelings for him would only make it harder when it came time to leave, so she wasn’t particularly happy about it. “I do.”

Her father gaped at her. “Since when?”

“Since I’ve been home.”

He scratched his neck. “Who would ever have thought Margot would disappear with our grandchildren, and you’d come back to Wakefield and fall in love, especially with Cormac Hart.”

She opened her mouth to say she wasn’t in love with Cormac. She’d never been in love before, couldn’t believe it would happen now, of all times. But as she pictured him—his smile, his touch, the way he laughed—she knew she was in far deeper than she felt comfortable with. “We aren’t putting a label on it,” she said.

Her father’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything else. The police had arrived.

It’d been three weeks since she ran away. That wasn’t very long, and yet Margot had accomplished so much. After Sheldon had called her stupid for years and treated her with disdain, as though she couldn’t get anything right, she was proud of herself. It felt wonderful to have put so many important pieces in place for her future and that of her children. Not only had she driven all the way to California on her own, she’d gotten an apartment in Burbank and enrolled her boys in school, so now she had more time to focus on getting a job. She hadn’t secured one yet, but she had several interviews this week—one with Starbucks, which was in a couple of hours, one as an office manager for a small accounting firm and one at an independent bookstore. They weren’t prestigious positions. She could hear Sheldon in her mind, mocking her for not being able to do better. But she had to start someplace, needed to get a stream of money coming in so she could save as much of her nest egg as possible.

She missed her parents, worried about her mother constantly and pored over her sister’s social media posts for Backcountry Adventures as a way to feel like a part of them. She was curious what Sheldon and his family were doing. He had an Instagram account, but he didn’t post very often—unless he wanted to show off a picture of a buck he’d killed or something like that. He had taken the time to put up her picture—and so had Wakefield Trucking, on their Facebook page—asking anyone with information as to her whereabouts to contact him or his parents.

That had made her paranoid at first, but there were so many people in LA. She couldn’t imagine those posts had enough reach to endanger her in any way.

As she put her makeup in the drawer, she realized she was as happy to be in Los Angeles now as the first day they’d arrived. Moving to a place like this was something Sheldon would never have been willing to consider. To be fair, he couldn’t have left the business. But the story would’ve been the same even without the business. He blamed Californians for ruining the country, complained about it all the time. So it was nice to finally have the freedom to choose where she wanted to be. Living in such a warm, gorgeous place, with so much to do and see, was the perfect antidote to the miserable years she’d spent trying to make Sheldon happy—and losing her own happiness in the process.

“I’m me again,” she said to herself in the mirror. She was scared she’d live to regret what she’d done, was afraid she wouldn’t be able to provide a life as good as the one her boys would’ve known in Wakefield. But she’d been so desperate, she hadn’t seen any other way. And she couldn’t go back. All she could do now was put the past behind her and give it her best shot.

She put on the taupe dress she’d bought yesterday at a discount store with a pair of low heels and turned to the side to examine the fit. It wasn’t too dressy or too casual. It didn’t scream “discount store,” either. Hopefully, whoever handled the interview this morning would think it was just right.

The color was back in her cheeks, she noticed before she turned away from the mirror. Even though she was nervous about whether she’d get the job—was afraid she’d be turned down across the board—she’d felt so hopeful these days and that wasn’t something she was used to experiencing.

“You can do it,” she told herself and grabbed her keys.

Something had to be done; this couldn’t go on.

As Gia listened to her parents talk to the officer who’d come out to take the police report, she realized nothing was going to change. The officer didn’t show much alarm. He shrugged it off by saying someone was probably just drunk and acting out. He didn’t feel the malevolence behind Sheldon’s actions like Gia did. After all, the town was generally safe, and they were talking about the son of one of Wakefield’s most prominent families, a hardworking business owner they’d never had any problem with before.

Even the words that’d been spray-painted on the house didn’t seem to rattle him—and that afternoon around three, Gia understood why when Cormac called to see how her day was going. She was sitting on her bed with her computer in her lap, commenting on responses to her posts on behalf of Backcountry Adventures while she told him about the windows, the graffiti and the lack of any real response from the police.

“What was the officer’s name?” he asked.

“Pratt.”

“Waylan?”

She “liked” a comment about how fair their prices were given the value of the experience. “I don’t know. His first name wasn’t on his badge, and I’d never met him before.”

“Has to be,” Cormac said. “He’s a good friend of Sheldon’s. I see them at the bar together all the time.”

She rolled her eyes. “No wonder, then. Sheldon’s family is too well-connected. I doubt we’ll be able to get the help we need. And that is so unfair to my parents. They haven’t done anything wrong. They don’t know where Margot is. Neither do I, for that matter. But at least I made it clear from the beginning that I don’t like Sheldon. That gives him a reason to hate me. They welcomed him into the family with open arms.”

“Maybe I should spend the night on your couch tonight so I can keep an eye on things.”

“And get shot because Sheldon doesn’t expect anyone to be there? No way.” And she couldn’t go back to his place, either. She wouldn’t leave her parents again.

“Then I’m going to call him and ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing.”

“That’ll only make him mad at you!”

“If it’ll get him to leave you and your parents alone—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I ordered some security cameras. That should help.”

“When will they come?”

“Email confirmation says tomorrow. He’d be stupid to come back tonight, anyway. He has to know after what he did to the windows we’ll be on pins and needles, so he’ll be much more likely to get caught.”

“This has gotten way out of hand,” Cormac said.

She “hearted” a comment from a customer who’d posted a picture of a mountain lion taken while on one of her tours. “Because Sheldon is used to getting his way,” she explained, agreeing with Cormac. “He’s never had anyone stand up to him, and he didn’t think Margot had the nerve to be the first. If I’m being honest, neither did I. She’s never done anything this gutsy before.”

“What if we approach his folks? Ask them to see if they can get him to calm down? It’s in their best interest, too. He could wind up in jail if he doesn’t.”

She remembered their behavior the night they came over and knew they were probably helping to fuel their son’s anger—not mitigate it. “I might have to try that approach—get them to see reason since I know he won’t. But I don’t have a high degree of confidence it will work. Where he’s concerned, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I take care of Johnny Maine’s bulldog. He’s on the force. I’ll call him and see if he can do something to help.”

Gia didn’t answer. She hadn’t even comprehended what she’d heard. His words had merely turned into a background rumble as her eyes zeroed in on a comment she’d just found on a post. It was from someone named M. Lane, and it was simply a heart.

She wouldn’t have thought anything about it. The pictures she’d posted were gorgeous, meant to entice more bookings. This person could simply be showing some love for the beauty of Mother Nature. But something about it was familiar; the same person had put a heart on all her recent posts.

“Gia?”

She drew her attention back to their conversation. “What?”

“Did you hear me?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just... Give me a minute.” She scrolled back through the last several posts and searched the comments. Sure enough, M. Lane was putting a heart on everything. And on the most recent post? He or she had gone a bit further and written: I’m so excited! I think I just got a job!

Why would a stranger want to tell her that?

And then it occurred to her. When they used to play together as children, Margot’s doll was always named Margaret Love, which morphed into Margaret Lane after she saw Superman.

M. Lane. Margaret Lane. That had to be Margot.

“Cormac, can I call you back?” she asked.

“Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” she replied. “It’ll just be a minute.”

She disconnected so she could concentrate on what she was doing as she navigated to Messages. She had to “like” M. Lane’s account in order to be able to DM her, but she was accepted almost immediately.

She didn’t get an immediate response. Just when she was starting to wonder if she’d made a mistake, and M. Lane was Mason Lane or something like that, an answer appeared—simply another heart.

It was Margot. It had to be.

Gia called Cormac back right away.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I think Margot’s been following the Instagram account for Backcountry Adventures.”

“What makes you think so?”

“She’s commented quite a bit lately under a name she used when we were children. Only I would recognize it.”

“She must be okay, then.”

“Must be. Sounds like she just found a job.”

“You’ll have to tell your mother.”

Ida was under too much strain. Gia was afraid she’d break down and tell the wrong person—a cop or a friend of Sheldon’s or his family—in some misguided attempt to justify Margot’s actions. “Not yet.”

“Why not? She’s worried.”

“Because I don’t want her saying anything to someone she thinks she can trust—but who ultimately tells the wrong person. No one else is going to fix this for us.”

“What does that mean?”

Gia set her laptop aside and slid down in the bed, so she was staring at the ceiling. “It means that I’m going to have to be the one.”

“To...” he prompted, sounding concerned.

“Put a stop to it.”

“How?”

“The only solution I can come up with is to push Sheldon just a little further...”

“What?”

“I need to bring him out in the open, make sure other people know how dangerous he is. Then Margot would be safe to come home, or at least visit. I want my mother to be able to see her again before she dies.”

“What will you do?”

“What I’d do with any other bully.”

“Now I’m really scared,” Cormac said. “What’s that?”

“Stand up to him.”

“Gia, no! This guy’s liable to come after you.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Let him try.”