ROSALYN HEARD THE FOOTSTEPS approaching in the snow as she stared at the crash site. She did not turn around. Through the dim moonlight, she could just make out the patches of blood that appeared black against the white, frozen ground, seeping into a giant pool. The car had been towed, the mutilated bodies of the deer removed along with other traces of the accident—scraps of metal and glass. That’s what she imagined. Several yards away, the tree stood almost defiantly, without much more than a scrape against its bark, though some of the Christmas lights had broken and fallen around its trunk. But the blood—there was nothing to be done about the blood in the snow until morning, when a bulldozer could be brought in to carve it out of the otherwise pristine covering that had blanketed their property.
“Yuck.” Rosalyn heard Eva Ridley from just behind her now. Then she felt the arm around her shoulders. “Come on. It’s cold.”
But Rosalyn didn’t budge.
Eva sighed and pulled her mink coat tighter around her. “It is hunting season. Deer are being slaughtered all across the state. They’ll get this cleaned up tomorrow.”
Rosalyn nodded but said nothing. They both knew the deer were beside the point, except to stand as a symbol of the violence that had occurred in the place where they now stood.
“She fell asleep, finally. Barlow’s sitting in there with her.”
“Okay,” Rosalyn said. Her friend’s arm felt warm around her shivering body, and her voice was deeply comforting. Still, she could not take her eyes off the black pool of blood.
Eva gave her a long moment before pulling her out of her morbid indulgence. “Do you want to hear about it now?” she asked.
Rosalyn turned her head to see Eva’s face. Did she want to hear about it, the story that led to this near miss, to her daughter’s self-destruction? Was there a choice?
She looked away. “Why the hell not. No time like the present.”
“It was Kyle Conrad. Ditched her for another girl. And the boys—well, I gave them a good talking-to.”
“I know—the pot, the booze. That feels like amateur hour in light of Cait’s little adventure. Where was she trying to go? To find Kyle?” For all her wisdom and savvy when it came to teenagers, she could not put this piece into place. “I get that she was pissed. Heartbroken. Whatever. And maybe she thought getting high would make her forget. Numb her somehow. But . . .” Rosalyn broke away, turning her back to the black pool and her face to Eva. “Why didn’t she call her friends, plot revenge, obsess about other guys she could get? Isn’t that what we did?”
Eva smiled. “Is that how you remember things?”
Rosalyn looked down and kicked up a scraping of snow. “Oh, you are such a bitch.”
But Eva didn’t hesitate. “And proud of it. I am also your memory at times like this. Times when you conveniently forget.”
Rosalyn folded her arms and looked up at the night sky.
Eva watched Rosalyn. “Do you honestly not remember?”
Rosalyn looked back from the sky to her friend with a scowl. “I remember you with your perfect boyfriend who bought you diamonds and didn’t expect more than your tongue in his mouth once in a while.”
“Yeah, but then I had to marry him. You’re not getting off that easy. You can beat me up later.”
“Promise?”
Her feet were moving now, shuffling beneath her in lockstep with the discomfort that was rising to the surface.
Eva was steadfast before her, as she had always been.
“I thought I understood what she was feeling. I thought I could predict what she would do. But this . . .” Rosalyn looked back at the blood and shook her head.
Eva’s voice was firm as she took Rosalyn’s arms, forcing her to look at her again. “You do know what she’s feeling. And the fact that she drove a car into a tree instead of sleeping with that little weenie is because you know . . . because she has you for a mother and not Mrs. Eddings.”
“How can you say that?” Rosalyn looked at her with disbelief. “She could have been killed!”
“Yes, she could have been killed. But you’re missing the point. She didn’t go to her room to plot ways to get Kyle back. She ran from it, from everything she’s feeling. She ran. She’s crying out for help. Now it’s up to you to give it to her.”
Rosalyn shook her head. She felt too damned tired to help anyone, to do anything at all but stare at the blackened snow. Her thoughts were spinning, the sense she had made of her daughter and Kyle Conrad was all but gone. Eva was wrong. She remembered everything. Jeb Ashton had been her Kyle Conrad twenty-five years before, and she would never forget the things she did whenever he asked, the price she paid to be with him and how happy it made her mother. But it was not Jeb Ashton who filled her thoughts every day.
“I still think about him, you know.”
Eva nodded. “I know.”
“Every day. Every goddamned day.”
“Be honest. Not every day. You probably didn’t think about him the days you gave birth. All that yelling. All those drugs.”
“Okay, every day but five. And I Google him once in a while.”
“Ever find anything?”
Rosalyn shook her head. “He wasn’t the Google type. Probably has a little farm somewhere. A perfect wife, three lovely kids.”
Eva looked at her with empathy. “You were seventeen. It was one summer in Paris. It was doomed from the start.”
Rosalyn’s expression grew solemn, as though she were remembering the dead. “I wonder about that all the time. What if I had fought harder? What if I hadn’t caved in to my mother? I’ve never loved anyone like that again. Not ever. And now look at the life I have instead.”
“Rosalyn Barlow! Is that a tear I see? Christ, woman, get ahold of yourself.” Eva pulled her in and held her while she cried. It lasted a mere moment.
“This is the second time tonight,” Rosalyn said, stepping away to wipe her eyes.
“That’s a record, I think.”
The two women smiled at each other.
“Can I ask you one more thing without having you fall to pieces?”
“Like it would matter anyway.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Okay. You can ask one more question.”
“Would you really have done anything differently if you’d had the choice?”
Rosalyn was taken by surprise. It had always been the story, the one they’d shared all these years, and the facts had never been disputed. Rosalyn had fallen in love in Paris, and her mother had forced her to return home to finish school, forced her to make amends with Jeb Ashton, to sell her soul for the good of the Eddings family reputation. They had threatened to disown her. She had been a victim, and later a survivor by moving away to college, dumping Jeb, and choosing Ernest Barlow. And as much as her love for Barlow had been real, her true love had been a casualty of her evil mother. Now Eva was questioning the bedrock of this history—a history that had become the core of her very being.
Had there been a choice? Not really. What could she have done at seventeen with no degree, no money? Still, to think she would have taken the same course of action on her own would change everything. She would no longer be a victim of her mother. She would be a product of her own making. Maybe she knew she could never live on a farm.
The answer was there, and despite its murky disposition, it was profoundly unsettling.
Rosalyn looked at Eva one last time before heading for the house. “I don’t know,” she said. And that was the truth.
They walked across the snow in silence, their thoughts lost in years long gone. Rosalyn hugged Eva, then watched her drive off. Inside, the house was quiet. Hoping to escape another lecture, the boys had gone to bed. Cait was in her room, the light was dim.
And Barlow was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of scotch. “Are you all right?” he asked of his wife as she walked in the room.
They hadn’t spoken since the plane ride, since making love for the first time in nearly six months. Still, they had been gentle with each other, kind and soft with their words.
“I’m fine. You?” Rosalyn did not stop walking until she was settled in at her desk.
Barlow followed with his drink. “What are you doing?” he asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
But she did not feel the same beneath his touch as she had for that brief moment on the plane. Instead, she felt entirely too much like herself. “Just looking over the schedule.”
She turned and smiled at him, though her hand reached for his and slowly removed it from her body. It was gone now, the need she’d felt on that plane that had been strong enough to overcome everything else that was still between them. His affair, the things he’d said to her, the worry for Cait and how to make this go away before the town returned from its vacation. She had things to do. Keep the Conrads out of the club, deal with her teenage son, and now rethink how to save her daughter. The wall was still there, and now the small window they had climbed through to reach each other had been closed.
Rosalyn looked at her screen, feeling Barlow beside her as he let the realization sink in. And when he did, he said nothing but instead retreated alone to their bedroom upstairs.