Chapter 1
NADIA
TEN YEARS LATER
“This is new.” Nadia Jacobs murmured to herself and picked up the framed photo she hadn’t noticed before in her best friend’s office at Aimee’s Café in downtown Los Gatos. She remembered the hot summer afternoon the picture had been taken. Had it really been almost thirty years ago?
“Sorry about that.” Aimee breezed into her office, her first break after the morning rush. Aimee had asked Nadia to stay after she finished her coffee, a honey almond milk latte that had her buzzing with energy and pacing the office while she waited.
“Why do you have a photo of Thomas?” She flipped the frame to show Aimee what she’d found on her friend’s credenza among the other photos of Aimee and her husband Ian’s family and friends.
To be fair, it wasn’t a photo of just Thomas.
They were all in the picture. Thomas, his brother James, James’s best friend, Nick, who was also Kristen’s husband, Aimee, Kristen, and her.
Sprawled on bright plastic floats in the middle of Nick’s pool they wore vibrant smiles, their wet hair plastered to their faces.
They’d been young and innocent. Neighborhood kids who thought they’d be friends forever.
Hard to fathom then the people they’d become. The things that Thomas would do.
What she’d do.
Nadia swallowed the guilt that rose whenever she was reminded of the years Aimee had believed James, her childhood sweetheart and former fiancé, had perished in a boating accident two and a half months before their wedding only to discover almost two years later he’d still been alive.
Thomas had his reasons for hiding James, claiming he’d been protecting his younger brother while he lived in a dissociative fugue state.
Aimee despised Thomas with a DEFCON 1 level hatred.
Aimee pushed out a hefty breath and closed the door, shutting out the noise of clattering dishes and the whir of a blender.
“That’s not a picture of Thomas.” She removed the café apron she was wearing over a fitted white tee and flared jeans, the rubber toes of her lime-green Chucks peeking out from under the wide-legged bottoms. “That’s you, me, and Kristen. ”
“And Nick and James and Thomas.” Nadia gave her a flat look.
“I tell myself it’s just us girls so I can stomach having it here.
” Aimee took the frame and tossed it inside the credenza, closing the drawer with a firm shove of finality.
Nadia’s eyes widened and Aimee heaved a sigh, dropping into her chair behind her desk.
“Caty framed it for my birthday for my office. I couldn’t say no. ”
Aimee wouldn’t dream of offending her eight-year-old daughter, who was just a year younger than Aimee and Nadia had been at the time of the photo.
“Where did she find it?” Nadia thought Aimee had put her photos of Thomas and James in storage. Had she been in Aimee’s situation, she would have doused them in kerosene and lit a match.
“An old photo album. We’ve been cleaning out the garage for the remodel. Do you still have yours?”
“The picture? Probably.” Nick’s mom had printed copies for each of them. “Did she ask who the boys were?”
“I told her they were the neighborhood kids I grew up with and left it at that.”
“Do you think you’ll ever tell her about what happened?
” Nadia cautiously asked as she settled in the seat opposite Aimee.
She crossed her legs and skimmed her hand along her thigh, plucked a piece of lint from her heather camel-colored ankle pants.
She was always hesitant about bringing up the subject.
What happened to James and the ensuing fallout had traumatized Aimee.
She and James had been inseparable. His “death” and eventual re-emergence forced her to grow up quick.
They’d all been affected to some degree by what Thomas had done.
Aimee shook her head with an unfocused stare. “Not if I can help it. But if she can learn from my experience and not get herself sucked into a toxic relationship, then maybe. I was naive. I’d never wish upon anyone what I went through.”
“She’s already more worldly than we both were at her age.”
“True.” Aimee smiled. Caty had joined her dad on several of his photo expeditions overseas, exposing her to different cultures and life outside of their community. Aimee and Ian also weren’t as overprotective with their two kids as Aimee’s parents had been with her.
Nadia looked down at her hands. She picked at a gel tip that was lifting off one of her fingernails. “Do you ever hear from him?”
“James? I haven’t, not for years. Thomas reach out to you anymore?”
As she always did at the sound of his name, Nadia felt a tightening in her chest. She shook her head, lips pursed, eyes downcast.
“Good. I don’t trust him.” It was something Aimee said whenever Thomas came up in conversation, which he rarely did anymore.
Time to change the subject.
“So…” Nadia threaded her fingers. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I’m officially ready to expand.”
“Really?” Nadia leaned forward, intrigued. “You’re opening a new store?”
“Yes. This time for real.” Aimee had attempted to open a second café four years ago, but with a toddler and a baby on the way, she felt overwhelmed and killed the project.
“How exciting! You’ll let me design the site, of course.”
“Of course. As if I’d hire anyone else. And I’m paying your fee this time. I insist, or I’ll find another designer.”
“Do I still get free coffee for life?”
“That’s up for negotiation.” Aimee clicked her tongue, pointing a finger at her, and Nadia laughed. She had designed the original Aimee’s Café pro bono, with the caveat she was entitled to one specialty coffee daily free of charge.
“Tell me what you have in mind.”
“All right.” Aimee pressed her palms on the desk and launched into her spiel.
For the next hour they discussed Aimee’s vision for the café’s expansion.
She had several sites in mind she wanted Nadia’s opinion on.
They made plans to tour the locations early the following week, and before Nadia left for her office, they discussed what dishes they planned to bring to Kristen and Nick’s potluck barbecue that Saturday.
Aimee was making her insanely delectable version of Mexican street corn.
Nadia would probably pick up a potato salad from the grocery store. They hugged and Nadia left for work.
As she walked to her car, Nadia checked her phone.
Several calls and texts had come in while she’d been with Aimee.
A couple were time sensitive, projects with deadlines and clients requesting updates.
But she ignored those, drawn to one particular message, as she had been since it arrived yesterday afternoon.
She reread the text from Thomas.
Need your expertise. Can we meet?
Her thumb hovered over the screen, her heart doing the familiar skip-and-stumble it always did when his name appeared.
Four years ago, Thomas had hired her for a job, a kitchen remodel at his weekend home in Carmel Valley.
She’d designed that space knowing his hands would touch those surfaces, his mornings would unfold in the light-filled room, as the thought she’d been designing a life she couldn’t admit she wanted to share with him hovered in the recesses of her mind.
He’d planned to eventually move into the house full time. She suspected he was living there now.
Nadia had tried to keep her involvement in the project from Aimee, knowing how she felt about Thomas.
Her relationship with him had been turbulent after James’s disappearance.
At one point, she filed a restraining order against him.
But Aimee caught Nadia messaging Thomas, and while Aimee conceded she had no say over Nadia’s social life and career, Nadia felt that Aimee had seen her contact with Thomas as a betrayal of their friendship.
Nadia still felt that way because she had been betraying Aimee.
Not just with the project, but the longing for Thomas she’d never confessed.
With the truth that every time she’d encouraged Aimee to move on from James, part of her had been thinking of Thomas, wondering if there could ever be a world where loving him didn’t mean losing everything else.
And the secret she’d sworn never to breathe a word of.
But if she hadn’t betrayed Aimee, she could have been killed and Nadia had refused to risk the life of her closest and dearest friend. Someone she considered family.
After her father, a man she’d adored and looked up to, walked out on her and her mom, Nadia had a difficult time trusting anyone would stick around for her.
While every romantic relationship she’d had was fragile territory that usually ended with her abruptly terminating the relationship before she got too close, the thought of losing Aimee triggered a panic that felt almost physical.
She couldn’t bear the thought of Aimee abandoning their friendship.
But if Aimee ever discovered how deep Nadia’s betrayal ran, Nadia would lose her.
She read Thomas’s text again.
There was so much Aimee didn’t know about her history with Thomas.
There was a lot that their inner circle didn’t know about what had happened between them. If there was anything she and Thomas had in common, it was how closely guarded they kept their secrets.
Nadia typed a short reply and sent it off. She put her phone away and went to work, her mind brimming with colors and patterns and textures, her head packed with an overabundance of ideas her conversation with Aimee had sparked. Which wasn’t unusual for her.
Nadia always had to be thinking, doing, creating, or brainstorming. Downtime scared her, so she kept herself busy and her mind occupied. It was the only way she could suppress the nagging compulsion to confess everything to Aimee, a secret that had been haunting her for a decade.