“Okay, fine.”
“Let’s talk about something else. How about your love life? Any women on the horizon?”
“Scores.” Nick was always secretive about the women in his life, past and present.
“I’ll bet that’s true.”
Nick had the Logan looks—dark hair and slate-blue eyes, classic bone structure. But whereas Nick held himself with easy grace and comfort, Dan was coiled up. Smiles came easily to Nick, while Dan was sober most of the time.
Well, he loved his brother and was grateful to have Nick back in his life. It was his father—the convicted felon—who Dan hated with a passion that wouldn’t dissipate. Regardless of how much he talked to Tessa about it.
“MOM!” Nine-year-old Molly shouted the word from across the room, then hurtled herself at her mother as if Tessa had abandoned her for weeks, not left her one day with her favorite cousins. “I missed you.” Molly’s grin was infectious, and she always made Tessa smile. Her carefree child loved life and showed it with exuberant charm.
“I missed you, too, Mol.” Tessa hugged her and glanced over at Janey, who was rolling her eyes. “Well, I did.”
“Did you and Dad have a good time on your anniversary?”
“Yeah, did you have a good time?” Janey teased.
Tessa drew back. “We did.”
“What’d ya do, Mom?”
“Oh, grown-up stuff.”
Very grown-up stuff. She shivered at the thought of how Dan had touched her last night. She loved it when he lost himself in their lovemaking. It didn’t happen every time, but she treasured those rare occasions he couldn’t even remember his name.
“Hi, Mom.” Sara stood in the doorway. At almost eight, fourteen months younger than Molly, she eyed Tessa warily. She looked like her dad with dark hair and blue eyes, whereas Molly had inherited Tessa’s hazel eyes and light brown hair. Molly’s hair fell in curls down her back, but these days Tessa blew her hair straight.
“Hey, baby. Come give me a hug.”
Sara approached her with dainty little steps. She hugged Tessa tentatively. Her younger daughter was quiet and self-contained. Again, like her dad.
“Go pack up your stuff, now. We have to do some grocery shopping before dinner.”
“Can we get ice cream?” Molly asked. “The kind Aunt Janey has, with pieces of candy bars in it?”
“I think so. Just as long as you don’t overdo it.”
When the girls were gone, Janey sat at her kitchen table and Tessa followed suit. “Sara’s too serious,” Janey said. “It would be healthy for her to overdo it once in a while.”
“Maybe.”
“You, too.”
Tessa’s sister had a strong protective streak, evident all through their youth, and when Tessa came to live with her in Orchard Place. Even now that they were adults with their own families, she played mother hen frequently.
“You know why I’m like this.”
“The accident wasn’t your fault.” Janey hesitated before she continued. “That anniversary is coming up, too.”
“Please, don’t talk about it. I can’t risk somebody finding out.”
Janey’s expression turned sad. “You should tell Dan.”
“After his father’s situation? Are you kidding? We’d never have gotten together if he’d known about me.”
“Hey, he was the one who pursued you. Relentlessly, I might add.”
That was true. Though she’d fallen hook, line and sinker for the young Orchard County assistant district attorney, it took him six months to wheedle a date out of her, a year until she slept with him. She wouldn’t have married him but she’d gotten pregnant, which a few weeks later ended in miscarriage.
“It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, Janey. With Grandma dead, you’re the only one who knows the truth. Not telling Dan is a done deal.”
“I’m not the only one who knows the truth. That lunatic—”
Tessa felt her face pale. “Janey, no. Don’t even say his name. Please. We made a pact.”
“All right, all right. I won’t even say his name. I hope he’s burning in hell, anyway.”
KANSAS FEDERAL Penitentiary had become Frankie Hamilton’s own personal hell. He stared out his cell window at the barbed wire fences and dirty, white guard tower, his hate for the place burning inside him. He’d been down for fifteen years and only the black-market buck, which got him drunk, kept him from going postal all this time.
“Hey, Hamilton, you over there?”
Coughing from the freakin’ dampness of the prison—he swore he’d had this cold for years— Frankie dragged himself to the front of the cell and plunked down on the end of his cot. The flimsy bed, a cheap steel desk and chair, a sink and a toilet furnished the concrete ten-by-ten room. It smelled like piss and cleanser. “Yeah, Shank, I’m here. Where you think I am, at a ball?”
“Just checking. I hate Sunday nights in this place.”
“Why they any worse than the rest of the week?”
“My pa never came home on Sunday nights. Me and my ma—it was the only peace we had.”
It had been rumored among the inmates that Sammy Shanker, aka Shank, had blown off the back of his father’s head one cold winter morning and splattered his old man’s brains all over his own face. He’d been seventeen at the time.
“You get any more letters from your ma?”
“Not this week. Maybe tomorrow.” Shank swore. “You heard from your girl?”
Frankie glanced to the desk and grinned. “Another letter yesterday.”
“Read me some? ’Cause it’s Sunday?”
“I dunno.”
“Not the private parts.”
Frankie rose from the cot, grabbed the sealed envelope off the desk and came back to the front of the cell. He put the letter to his nose; he knew it had a flowery scent but he couldn’t smell it because he was constantly stuffed up. “Maybe a little bit.” He tore open the envelope and smiled at the familiar handwriting.
“Dear Frankie, I miss you so much. I can’t wait till you get out on parole in a few weeks. I’m sending another picture so you don’t forget me.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.” Snaking his arm between the bars and out as far as he could, he let Shank get a peek at his girl.
“She don’t look much different than the last picture.”
Frankie snatched his hand back; his head started to hurt. “Course she does.” He rubbed his thumb and finger over his eyes, then stared at the curly, light brown hair, the wide brown eyes, the freckles on her nose.
“Frankie? Read some more?”
When the pain receded, he read parts of the three pages. The end of the letters always made him feel better. “I love you, Frankie, and can’t wait till you get out. Come back to me soon. Love, Trixie.”
Trixie, his girl. Frankie lay back on his bed, remembering her baby-soft skin and silky hair. He’d never forgive the damned prison system for splitting them up. She’d been sentenced to a different jail all those years ago and had gone back to the real world