Chapter Four Stella
Chapter Four
Stella
Lukas Grange, the one person I both dreaded seeing and ached to see. He was also the first person I called after the most
unsettling morning of my life. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen we once shared. The conservative navy suit did nothing
to tame his sandy-blond hair and no-worries surfer look. Interesting for a guy born on the East Coast and raised by the staff
at a prestigious private boarding school while his parents attended to their busy business lives and overactive social calendars
overseas.
Today actually qualified as my second worst day ever. Funny how Lukas starred prominently in both.
He spent a few seconds hovering, judging, before he nodded in the direction of my hand. “How many of those have you had?”
My third glass of wine. I’d downed the first two after I stormed in the front door and dropped my coat on the hallway floor.
“One and don’t judge me.”
He made a big show of looking at his watch. “It’s a little after noon.”
Really? That sounded wrong. “It feels like hours since I left the courthouse.”
Lukas walked fully into the kitchen and stopped on the other side of the island, directly across from me. “So, Aubrey Tanner
is back.”
An interesting take. “You mean, she’s alive. That’s a surprise, remember? She’s supposed to be dead.”
“That was the town’s leading theory. Clearly, an incorrect one.” He glanced in the sink but refrained from commenting on the
stack of dirty breakfast dishes, which had to be killing him. “The news of her unexpected arrival spread around the courthouse
with lightning speed. I don’t even work in the same building, and I knew ten minutes after she left the hearing.”
Yeah, poor him. “Try to imagine the live version.”
He let out a long breath. “Did she say anything?”
“About what?” Another sip and I’d finished off this glass, too. I eyed the bottle for another round.
Lukas moved it closer to him. “Stella, come on. Just answer the question.”
“Right. Stay on task.” A sharp crack echoed through the quiet house when I set the now empty glass down a bit too hard on
the quartz countertop. “Why are you so calm?”
“How should I be?”
The way he talked, all perfect and controlled, sent my frustration into hyperdrive faster than anything else. “How about concerned?
Agitated. Scared shitless. Pick one or come up with a list of your own.”
I’d settle for a little ruffled. Some hint that the Aubrey-isn’t-dead news affected him.
But I probably expected too much. Lukas had the most even temper of anyone I’d ever met.
He rarely showed emotion. No fits of anger.
No yelling. Which also meant limited excitement and enthusiasm.
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever heard him swear, which was just unnatural.
As a husband, solid and unruffled had sounded positive. Promising. That chiseled face and stoic nature, all serious and focused, reeled me in when we were
dating. After a lifetime with a mother who bounced from numb to manic in the course of a sentence, I fell for Lukas’s drive
and charm. With him I could take my foot off the brake and coast. Let him lead and handle everything. Problem was, I ceded
control, then secretly seethed at his overbearing nature.
With some pushing and grumbling, I now could admit—not out loud—I hadn’t always been fair to him or about the position I put
him in. Being a psychologist, I should have recognized my behavior and adjusted. Didn’t happen. I went with criticism, shifting
blame, irrational levels of anger, and a heavy dose of bitterness instead. At least, that’s what he’d said during our divorce
mediation.
Our marriage lasted less than six years. Five years and 201 days, to be exact. A pile-on of mistrust and ambivalence cracked
our tenuous truce and outwardly happy facade until our marriage officially shattered into tiny, jagged pieces less than a
year after the Tanners disappeared. Never expected to be an ex-wife at thirty-one.
“Don’t borrow trouble.” He put the nearly empty wine bottle in the sink.
“Says the esteemed prosecutor.” That’s what he did. He fought to take criminals off the street. He’d been instrumental in prosecuting a local businessman who ran drugs laced with sedatives that attacked the nervous system and increased the chance of overdose.
The work, along with his calls for clear and swift justice delivered with common sense, landed him on the governor’s short
list to fill an interim vacancy on the state supreme court. A position Lukas craved and had dreamed about since before law
school, and the big, career-defining decision should come within the next two weeks. One that required Lukas’s reputation
remain pristine and unspoiled.
It was almost as if Aubrey knew that and figured it into her I’m alive timing.
Of all the pacts and unspoken agreements made that day fifteen years ago, the one with Lukas ended up being the easiest to
keep. It benefited me more than it did him. He’d lied for me. Provided an alibi when I needed it. That lie created a gulf
between us that we could never bridge, and he could never forgive.
“She’s been somewhere for all these years,” he said.
Not helpful. “Are you making a point?”
He delivered one of those sighs that signaled his irritation with the topic. That was the Lukas equivalent of an explosion
of anger. No matter how much I pushed, how much I poked and strained to drag a real reaction out of him, to make him prove
he cared, that steady level of operating never changed. It was annoying as hell.
He finally answered. “My point is, if Aubrey wanted to show up and cause trouble, she could have done that long before now.”
The tone. The careful sentence that stated the obvious but hinted at more. “Did you know she was alive?”
“Maybe stop drinking. You’re losing it.” He reached over to take the wineglass.
I snagged it back. “I see you’re in a gaslighting mood today.”
He sighed again. “I’m trying to be reasonable.”
From anyone else the response would have come off as clueless. Lukas, with his big brain and blue blood pedigree, sounded
the opposite. He didn’t miss a thing. He constantly assessed and stored information. He could fire it back at you verbatim
when he needed to win an argument, which, mostly amicable divorce or not, exhausted me.
“You’re acting as if Aubrey Tanner is just some woman, as if she was a normal girl back then.” The idea was so absurd. “We
both know that’s not true. She thrived on causing chaos. Clearly still does.”
His frown eased. “Word is she notified the judge she was alive and provided verification of her identity. A DNA test and other
paperwork, which led to the emergency hearing being scheduled, but then Aubrey’s attorney, a guy from the city, asked for
a continuance.”
“Sounds like Aubrey came back prepared to fight. But for what?” The image of her smug face under the stark courtroom lights
wouldn’t leave my head. “You should have seen her today. She strutted into that hearing. It would have been nice to have a
warning.”
Not that I could have prepared for that moment.
Lukas hummed but let the comment pass. “How did Isabel take the unexpected news about having another living relative?”
“As well as you might imagine.” Mom considered Xavier her primary bank. I was her secondary source of income. Aubrey being alive created a problem because her breathing impacted what Mom might get from Xavier’s estate going forward.
Lukas nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
A panicked scream raced up my throat and begged for release. “We need to figure out what Aubrey’s going to say about . . .
anything. Everything.”
“We need to neutralize her, I agree, but we need more information first.”
The chilly edge to his voice set off a warning bell in my head. “Be specific.”
“We survived the worst. I have no intention of letting her ruin us now.”
Part of me hoped he’d say something like that. Step in and take over. Ease my worries. The other part hesitated over the words
he didn’t say. “We could set up a meeting with her. An informal get-together. She’s family. Not that I think biology matters
to her.”
“We’ll watch and wait.”
A terrible idea. The worst. “For her to attack? For us to be arrested?”
This time his loud sigh bounced around the room. “We’re not going to be arrested.”
Tough talk from a man whose entire judicial future depended on the whims of a woman who dropped out of the sky and into the
center of town at the worst possible time. “You act like she’s in control.”
The humming sound came back. “She is. For now.”
“I refuse to accept that.” The idea made me want to yell the house down. “She needs to stay quiet and leave—fast—whatever way she came in.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I’ll handle her.”
Right answer? Wrong answer? I’d lost perspective and couldn’t tell if I had too much information about his plan or not enough.
“You mean you—”
“Stella, you know exactly what I mean.”