Chapter 40
Tessa leaned her head against the back seat of her Uber and stared out the sunroof at the Denver dawn.
The moon hung like a lingering guest, its time expired, but refusing to leave.
The highway to the airport, featureless and flat, tempted her to sleep, but she had to stay awake.
She had to power through security and onto a train and find her gate and get on that plane before she could fall asleep.
It would take all of her willpower and determination to do it.
In the far distance, the mountains she had not had time to see, in another city she had not had time to see. She sighed, out loud. Those chocolates. She’d left them on the counter, and felt guilty about the mess. And terrified of their message.
Everything happens because of something.
Was it the bad thing? Pre-teen Tessa was vilified for opening the door to a stranger.
Annabelle’s powerful father heartbroken.
Her own mother humiliated. The town had simmered with animosity and accusations.
And now, twenty-five years later, people in bookstores were asking about her hometown.
She had to talk to Henry. She kept meaning to, but she’d never told him about the bad thing.
Or much about her childhood at all. Never ever tell, she could still hear her mother’s brittle voice.
It will ruin you. Now it might be too late.
Would a decision she made when she was ten brand her forever?
She’d told Emily, and look what happened then.
It wouldn’t be easy to connect Tessa with that tragedy—she’d googled her Tessa Calloway self, too, when the book sold, apprehensive and terrified, but infinitely relieved when the search engine also discovered no matches between Tessa Danforth or Theresa Mattigan and Mayor Browning’s murdered daughter, Annabelle.
But a determined investigator who knew their stuff…
She winced, playing it out.
“Moral turpitude,” the phrase Sadie Bailey had used. The phrase Tessa had blithely dismissed.
It didn’t take a fiction writer to know that unmasking her as what one scathing, decades-old headline labeled “The Bad Friend” would reveal the truth about Annabelle’s origin. And might ruin Tessa’s career.
More than “might.” Would definitely ruin her career. Her marriage. Her life.
That can’t be what’s behind this, Annabelle said. You were a child.
She dialed, and Henry’s cell rang, then rang again, and again, Tessa so tangled in thought that she almost didn’t calculate the delay. He might be taking a shower. Shower . The chocolates. She could smell those chocolates now, cloying and sweet and horrible and weaponized.
“It’s early where you are,” said Henry’s voice, finally. “Happy Saturday.”
“Is that what day it is?” Tessa was instantly comforted by the voice from home. Sort of home. “I have no idea. It’s just the next day and the next day and the next day.”
“You sound funny, Tesser. Tired.”
Tessa heard a commotion on the other end of the line. Raised voices. The kids fighting?
“Hen? What’s going on?”
“Hang on,” Henry said. “Linny, what? The what ?”
The rolling landscape outside her Uber window was invaded by aggressive signs for new homes in fancy developments, tempting buyers with drawings of ultramodern homes.
Last Chance to Buy Under $399,000, one sign warned.
That was less than half of what their Rockport home had cost, and then only because it had an outdated kitchen.
Which was now a yellow kitchen, Tessa remembered.
The mortgage , she thought. “ You’ll pay,” her agent had warned.
“Henry, are you with me here?” Tessa heard the bitterness in her voice, and tried to remember that Henry was doing exactly what she was doing, spinning plates, and his entire life could not stop because she called.
“Were you in a fire?” Henry was saying.
“No—I—wait. How do you know? It was a false alarm, anyway, so how could you possibly know that?”
“I have alerts for your name, don’t you?
” Henry asked. “Whenever your name is on the internet my phone gets pinged. Linny has it, too, on her computer, because she misses you so much. Don’t tell her I told you.
Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker. Anyway, apparently, you were the star of a story called Ten Floors of Fear. On some TV news in Denver?”
“Hi, Mommy.” Linny’s voice came over the tinny speaker. “I saw you. Was it scary?”
“Hi, sweetie. Not one bit.”
“But Momma, it was a fire. And…”
Momma . Linny must be distressed by this, using her now-discarded nickname.
“You have fire drills in school, honey. It was like that. No biggie.”
If her family had seen the story, who knows how many other people knew she was at that Denver hotel.
And that she wasn’t in her room. The Denver airport drew closer, its quirky roof like a caravan of white tents.
She told Hen and Linny the fire alarm story as quickly as she could, portraying it as an everyday exercise in safety.
“Don’t believe everything on TV, sweetheart,” she went on. “Haven’t your father and I told you that?”
“I guess.” Linny still sounded unconvinced.
“So you didn’t get any sleep,” Henry was saying. “And that’s why you’re—whatever.”
The Uber eased onto the departures ramp. Tessa yearned to tell her husband about the chocolates and the note and even the bad thing. And how yes, she was afraid. More than afraid. But there was no time, and certainly, devastatingly, the Uber driver would overhear her.
Linny was listening, too, and she refused to reveal her anxiety with her daughter there. Zack wasn’t home, she remembered again.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to sound convincingly perky. “Have you heard from Zack?”
“Did you find out about Locket Mom?” Linny’s voice interrupted. “Or those earrings?”
“You know about that ?” Tessa knew she hadn’t mentioned it.
“Mom.” Linny was using her wannabe teenage voice, making the one word “Mom” into at least two syllables. “It’s all over social. That guy in the locket picture looks like he’s from another planet.”
“Another planet?” Tessa envisioned the photograph through Linny’s eyes. “Because?”
“Be cause no one dresses like that now. Zack says he’s gonna do a search. If he ever decides to come home.”
“Your mother has to go,” Henry interrupted. “Was there a special reason you called me, sweetheart?”
“Just to say I love you,” Tessa said, the song going through her mind. And lying at the same time. Her Uber pulled to the curb, stopped. “And tell Zack I already did Google Images. But I love him so much for trying. But quickly, how is he? What do you mean ‘if he ever decides to come home’?”
“We’re here, ma’am.” The Uber driver twisted his head over his shoulder to look back at her. “You set?”