CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday, March 25
Kathryn
In just over one month, Kathryn’s life had collapsed into shambles.
And that was before she’d spun around in Starbucks and locked eyes with the man she’d been avoiding for twenty years.
“I always thought I’d feel, I don’t know, different somehow,” she said to Nick. With her back against the bedpost, she could feel his eyes on her from the other side of the bed, where he was propped against the headboard, one hand resting behind his head. In the solitary light from his nightstand, where Nick’s empty wineglass sat, his features were dramatic and defined, his skin fair. Even sitting naked in his bed, with his neat haircut and stocky frame, Nick looked as much a cop as he did in uniform, though in the moment his brown eyes were soft and showed no hint of the blaze he veiled behind them.
He arched a brow. “How do you feel?”
Kathryn stared into the dregs of her cabernet. “Guilty.”
Nick responded with a soft exhale, but Nick so often let silence speak for him Kathryn hardly noticed.
She’d always imagined that unburdening herself of her largest secret—certainly the most life-altering one—would alleviate the weight she’d carried for so long. But the memory of Andrew’s eyes boring into hers the previous morning replayed on a continuous loop, along with his desperate questions, and shame roiled inside her.
She’d let her guard down. When Max hadn’t come home the night before, Kathryn had rolled around in her bed until dawn, alternating between blinding fear— He’s dead in a ditch —and blinding rage: He’s out drinking again, ignoring my texts . Kathryn had flipped her pillow, then pressed her face to the cool side. When he has the audacity to show his face here tomorrow morning, I’m going to kill him. The last time Max hadn’t come home, thirty-seven days ago, all her maternal nightmares had nearly come to fruition. The night he’d wrapped his car around a light pole. The night she’d nearly lost him. The night she’d realized that no matter how hard she’d clung to him in his nineteen years of life, it was futile. She could lose him in a fraction of a second. The realization had shattered everything she’d ever known to be true, that her love for her son could be enough. In those thirty-seven days, Kathryn had felt like she was holding a breath so hard her chest burned, but she didn’t dare exhale.
When sunlight had peeked through the crack in the curtains, Kathryn rose, her body aching with fatigue. That morning was a perfect storm: she’d sniffed the vanilla creamer in the fridge to find it spoiled. Then a wreck on I-95 had snarled traffic and left her pressed for time. She’d finally caught a break on Worth Avenue when a black sedan pulled out into the creeping traffic in front of her and Kathryn glided into the empty space it left in front of Starbucks, twenty minutes still on the meter.
She’d scanned the crowd for anyone resembling Andrew, a practice so embedded within her it had become encoded in her DNA. At every coffee shop, every restaurant, every school event she’d attended as Max grew, she’d scanned the crowd for a tall man with blond hair, for danger. And he’d never appeared, until that morning, at Starbucks of all places, when Kathryn was sleep deprived and distracted. She hadn’t vetted the person directly behind her, and she’d spun around to meet his crystal-blue eyes, her secret already laid bare.
Kathryn tipped the last few drops of wine onto her tongue and handed Nick her glass. “I appreciate you breaking out the good stuff tonight,” she said. A half bottle of cabernet had dulled her nerves, but she was still rattled. Kathryn had navigated the raging misogyny that infected the law world and risen to the top of her firm, but Andrew’s pleading gaze had dissolved all the confidence she’d worked so hard to practice.
Nick offered a soft grunt of acknowledgment that was just so ... Nick. His apartment was sparsely furnished with black, rectangular pieces she was sure he’d put together himself, but his bedroom was cramped: three walls housed bookshelves, sorted in some way only Nick was privy to. His stiff black uniform was draped over his hamper. When he’d undressed, she’d watched him remove his firearm and place it in his nightstand drawer.
“Drew called me as soon as you left.” Nick shifted on the mattress. “I haven’t heard him that keyed up in years.” He picked his cuticle, which was already cracked and ragged. It was one of his most irritating habits, but Kathryn ignored the urge to tell him to cut it out. “Are you going to see him again?” She clocked his veiled concern.
This was why she’d dreaded recounting the encounter to Andrew’s closest friend. Some wounds gouged so deep they never healed.
“I’m not sure.” Kathryn stared at the far wall and answered just as carefully. “He asked if he could meet Max.”
“Are you going to let him?”
“Are you serious?” Kathryn turned, meeting his eyes. “Max barely talks to me as it is. His list of reasons to hate me is endless, and getting longer every day.”
Hiding her son from Andrew had been Kathryn’s sole focus since Max was forming inside her, when she could shield him from the consequences of her decisions; it had become a natural appendage to her parenting. She regretted not pushing Max harder to apply to college. He’d be safely tucked away at a tree-lined campus somewhere, instead of zipping around Delray, where Andrew now lived, leaving the potential for her secrets to be exposed, laid out like a live wire. Telling Andrew about Max was one thing, but telling Max about Andrew ... it wasn’t possible.
Nick slid his hand across the sheet and laced his fingers with hers, then leaned in to press his mouth to her collarbone. It was so easy for him to lose himself in her, placing light kisses up her neck. But she couldn’t lose herself in him. Not this time.
Andrew’s face flashed in her mind, along with pulsing guilt. Over the years, when she’d idly pictured what Andrew might look like, how he’d aged, it was easy to tell herself he no longer resembled the man she’d loved with a life depth all those years ago. But when he’d turned to look at the Worth Avenue clock tower, alarm ringing on his face, this was the Andrew she remembered, and her mind had flashed to the morning twenty years ago when she’d stuffed her belongings into a bag and fled the apartment she’d shared with him and Nick. The day she’d derailed their lives, all their carefully laid plans.
After that morning, she hadn’t seen Nick or Andrew for nearly eighteen years, had begun to let herself believe she never would again. Nick was the first to resurface, when Max had just started his junior year of high school and was still a model student, still a source of pride, and each of Kathryn’s days were indistinguishable from one another: coffee, work, motherhood. She was sitting at a small table at a bustling deli during the throes of lunch hour, had speared a fork into her kale salad when she looked at the dark-haired man two tables over. Nick’s deep eyes were familiar, and a wave of recognition stole her breath. He waved her over with a warm smile. She rose, an inferno raging in her as she approached. “What are you doing here, Nick?”
Nick had dabbed his lips with a napkin, then balled it and discarded it on his plate atop a sandwich crust. “Well, it’s good to see you, too, Kat.” A smirk. “I took a job with the Delray PD.”
“You’re a cop?” She’d never pictured the Nick she’d known all those years ago working a government job. He was a painter. A poet. She’d imagined him in a far-off European town, imprinting his mark where eons’ worth of other artists had before him. And, of all the towns in the world, in Florida, even, why Delray? “In the town where I live? Where my son lives?”
Nick’s jaw had dropped open, and he looked like he was about to speak, but instead he closed it and nodded.
“Did you tell Andrew?” Kathryn had demanded.
His expression fell, serious now, and he answered, “I told you I never would.”
The words washed over Kathryn, a puzzle piece snapping into place, answering the one question that had haunted her for decades, and a hint of a reprieve from her ever-present guilt. Andrew never found out about our son. For years she’d lived in two alternating realities: either she’d been successful in keeping Max a secret from Andrew, or Andrew had learned about their son but hated her—which was understandable—too much to reach out. So when Nick’s words confirmed the former scenario, she’d taken a few beats to reframe her reality. Kathryn dropped into the chair across from Nick. “Are you and Andrew still in touch?”
“Of course,” Nick said with a hint of force. “We shared an apartment in downtown West Palm for the last few years, until his fiancée moved in.”
A lightning bolt of fear. “He’s been in Florida this whole time?” The last time she’d gotten close to contacting Andrew—a call so disastrous it had sent a shudder through her when she recalled it—she’d learned he had returned to his hometown in South Carolina, and as the years had passed, she’d imagined he’d stayed, planted roots near his family, that a safe buffer of time and distance sat between him and Max. But Andrew lived just twenty minutes away from where she did. She’d told herself she was being paranoid every time she scanned a location, but she’d been justified all this time. The thought did not bring comfort.
“He has, mostly. We both have.” Nick’s forehead crinkled. “You seem surprised that we’re still friends.”
She was, though she felt a tug of guilt admitting it.
A fuzzy voice blared from Nick’s radio, and he cocked an ear, then gathered his empty plate and rose. “I gotta go. But listen, are you busy tomorrow? We could grab a drink, catch up?”
“Of course, yes.” Her pulse ticked.
Kathryn had rushed from the deli back to her office, where she shut her door and tapped Andrew’s name into Google. Of the twenty-four matches in Palm Beach County, only two corresponded in age, and one worked for Goldman Investments on Worth Avenue. And there was his photo on their website, with his brilliant white teeth and his trust me with your money smile. Bile rose in her throat; his face was strikingly similar to her son’s.
They’d cross paths eventually; she’d felt it in her core.
The evening after she’d run into Nick, the two had settled into an isolated booth at the back of a moody wine bar, where he said, “You look great, Kat. And you did it, you finished law school. You seem like you’re doing well.” Nick’s black T-shirt hugged his arms. Her fear ebbed, and a tickle of warmth crept in.
“You look good, too.” And she’d meant it. The years had matured Nick, providing a confidence he hadn’t had in college. He was more focused, it seemed, though his deep eyes still held mysteries from the world.
He gazed at her. “And you’re—forgive me for saying this—more beautiful than you were in college.” They sat on the same side of the booth, leaning against the Naugahyde, their bodies angled toward each other.
She was used to men complimenting her. But this time, a ripple ran through her. “Thank you.”
Each time she’d inquired about Andrew, Nick had nudged the conversation back to Kathryn, but Kathryn managed to extract answers to some of the millions of questions that zoomed through her mind. Andrew had recently married, Nick revealed, and didn’t have any children. Though it was absurd, the word married —the permanence of it—stung like a barb. But the news Andrew remained childless brought a measure of relief. It had been far too long to justify these feelings, she thought, and pushed them aside as she sipped her wine.
“I’m glad we ran into each other,” Nick said. The candle flickered between them, and his lower lip was stained purple from the wine.
“Don’t tell Andrew we saw each other,” she pleaded. “Don’t tell him anything, please.”
“You know me, Kat. You know I won’t.” Nick set his hand on hers.
Maybe she hadn’t ruined all their lives with her decisions after all. She’d inched closer to him in the small space.
The following morning, Kathryn had awoken to the pale light of Nick’s bedroom, a pinging headache, and a swell of regret. She’d untangled herself from Nick’s arms and fled.
After their date at the wine bar, Kathryn had avoided Nick and the ghosts he’d brought back into her life. They’d coexisted in Delray for a year without friction, nodding hello when she passed his Delray Beach Police SUV on the street. One morning, while she waited for her vanilla latte at Deja Brew, she glanced up to see Nick leaning against the counter, his eyes on her. He was in uniform, Officer Nick Keegan embroidered on a strip of Velcro on his chest. He narrowed his focus onto his phone, a tickle of a smile on the corner of his mouth. Kathryn took him in; his uniform suited him, she realized with a tug deep inside.
A gaggle of stroller moms buzzing around a table eyed Nick, too. Hot Cop, one mouthed to another, fanning her face, and they stifled giggles. Kathryn peeked at Nick again, with a flash of a memory, his strong chest rising above her, her fingers twisted in his hair, his mouth open, hungry, on the valley between her breasts. That familiar shudder.
Walk away, she told herself. It was against the rules she’d constructed: never date anyone with strings attached. If Nick gave her all of himself, she could never give him what he wanted in return. Nick had guarded her secrets—and Andrew’s, she was certain—for two decades. He had found a way to love them both, despite the unfair dichotomy that was his life.
Nick collected his coffee, gave Kathryn a nod, and left the café, the bell above the door chiming, the sunshine making his hair glisten as he crossed the parking lot.
Learning Andrew lived nearby, and the search that led to his photo on his company’s website, had sparked Kathryn’s curiosity. She dug deeper. Andrew had only a sparse Instagram, just a photo with his family at Thanksgiving, and another, Andrew’s arm around Nick at a police department fundraiser at the Breakers, the two of them on a terrace, a brilliant sunset over their shoulders, cherry red grading into cobalt. But a tag led Kathryn to a page, a few glossy tiles laid out by his wife, Amy. And, occasionally, in moments fueled by chardonnay and regret, Kathryn scoured Amy’s photos. Of course Andrew’s wife was gorgeous; of course she spearheaded fundraisers for her hospital. Of course her fitted strapless wedding gown fit her like a dream, and she beamed at her new husband. Kathryn zoomed onto Andrew’s face. His eyes crinkled in the corners, but there was something there. Something darker. Whatever it was, Andrew concealed it carefully. Kathryn was certain Nick knew exactly what Andrew hid behind his smile, but he’d never share.
Kathryn maintained her self-control, avoiding Nick until that February night, thirty-seven days ago, the night Max had downed a frat party’s worth of liquor, then skidded his car off the curve on Ocean Avenue. The chime of her phone had sliced through a dreamless sleep, and when she’d answered, the voice at the other end was unrecognizable, and the only words she gathered through the beating in her chest were car crash . It wasn’t until Max’s strained, raspy voice choked out the words Mom and help that she gathered what had happened.
She’d dialed Nick’s number without a second thought. He’d instructed her to stay away from the scene, to avoid attracting attention, and had delivered Max to her door, surly and intoxicated, but alive and whole.
For a week following Max’s accident, Kathryn had managed to doze only in sweaty fits after finishing a bottle of wine or popping a sleeping pill, sometimes both. She woke, her chest aching from her racking sobs, and sneaked to Max’s room to peek in, to make sure he was there, alive. Nick’s actions had spared Max the consequences of his behavior. And they’d spared Kathryn the public embarrassment, kept Max’s name out of the news. And for all of it, she owed Nick everything. On her eighth sleepless night, she had dialed Nick’s number. He asked her to meet him for a drink, and she showered and coaxed her hair into long, glossy waves. She swiped on crimson lipstick and drove off into the night to meet him, to thank him for saving her son the only way she knew how.
A week later, Nick had invited Kathryn for hibachi to celebrate her forty-third birthday, an event that left their clothes smelling of grease and onion. That night, Nick announced Andrew and his wife had bought a house in their suburb of Delray Beach. Nick broke the news casually, though there was a subtle quaver to his practiced, police-officer tone.
The news had sucked the air from her. “I can’t have him and Max living in the same town. I need to tell Drew,” Kathryn told Nick, and she’d practiced the conversation in the lost hours of the night, how she’d finally tell Andrew about Max. But she’d never let him uncover the reason she hid her son.
Never.
It was ridiculous, but Andrew’s move felt like he was encroaching on her territory. Logically, Delray Beach was a natural choice. Kathryn could picture Andrew and his wife cruising down Atlantic Avenue, taking in the canary-yellow facade of the Colony Hotel, the charming boutiques and sparkling nightlife, all within walking distance of the cozy suburbs. The beach was pristine, the neighborhoods zoned for the best schools in Palm Beach County. I-95 provided a twenty-minute jaunt north to the city of West Palm Beach, and fifteen minutes south to Boca Raton. It was a gem, sure, but sharing it with her ex made Kathryn feel as if the walls of her secrets were closing in on her.
Then fate had intervened in the form of an empty parking spot in front of Starbucks. She’d answered Andrew’s questions, carefully concealing how completely she’d failed their son. Beneath that palm tree, with Andrew inches from her face, her mind had swirled with a thousand thoughts, but one struck her: if Max had died that night on the side of the road, Andrew would never have known of his existence. Her beautiful, brilliant child. Of all the guilt she’d shouldered over the years, this was the heaviest.
In Nick’s bedroom, a long sigh drained from her, and she turned to him. “Tell me about his wife.”
Nick groaned. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Kat?”
“Sick curiosity, Nick. Humor me.”
He exhaled. “She’s a surgeon. That’s why they moved here; she took a position at Boca General.”
Andrew’s wife was a surgeon at the very hospital where Max was born. Kathryn didn’t know why, but the thought stirred unease inside her. Life certainly had a twisted sense of humor.
Nick adjusted his shoulders against the headboard. She’d taken all he was willing to give that night.
Kathryn plucked her dress from the chair and tugged it over her head. “I couldn’t avoid him forever, though God knows I tried.” She spoke as much to Nick as to herself, then perched on the edge of the mattress, giving him her back. “Zip me?”
Nick’s fingers worked her zipper. “Twenty years later and we all find ourselves living a few miles apart.” He grunted. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Kathryn didn’t answer, just stared at the rug beneath her feet.
“I have a barbecue to go to tomorrow afternoon,” Nick said. “But I’m around at night if you want to swing by.”
“I shouldn’t.” Kathryn turned back to him. “Last night, a friend’s daughter called me. She’s having trouble with her mom, so she’s staying with me for a while.”
Nick’s eyes lifted, giving her his full attention. “Who is this friend?”
Kathryn stifled a groan. In his time in town, Nick had learned the who’s who of Delray Beach, was privy to the darker sides of everyone’s personal lives. “Harper Silva.”
Nick’s brows arched. “Damn, Kat. I didn’t know you cozied up to the Palm Beach elite .”
“Yes, well ...” Kathryn didn’t take the bait, didn’t elaborate. “I hope Emmy’s less of a hellion than my foulmouthed son. If I have two of those in my house, it might kill me.” She sighed. “Anyway, I should stick around in case she needs me. And I’m going to take the longest bubble bath of my whole goddamn life.”
The corner of Nick’s fingernail was now raw, a red drop of blood pooling on his skin. “Why would you let a random kid stay at your house?”
“Stop that.” Kathryn reached out, grabbed Nick’s hand, stopped the incessant picking. He met her eyes. “Emmy’s not a random kid. Harper’s ... well, ultimately, she’s the reason I kept Max from Andrew.”