Off in the distance, she heard laughter and she debated whether or not it was appropriate to go and find them. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere else she needed to be, but sitting on the sidelines and overhearing them made her feel like she was eavesdropping.

She waited for a while. Texted. Didn’t get a response.

Shoring up her courage, she walked across the lawn, looking up at the manor house as she went along. She had spent so many years going in and out of the gracious old house, free to come and go as she pleased. Now those liberties would have been inappropriate.

As she came around the corner, she stopped.

Samuel T. and Amelia were playing badminton on the grass, the pair of them wielding the long-handled, tiny-headed racquets with competence.

Amelia saw her and waved. “Hello, Mother!”

Samuel T. turned around and missed a return, the birdie landing at his feet. “Oh, hey.”

“I’m sorry.” She pointed over her shoulder. “I was out front. I wasn’t sure either of you knew? No worries, though. I can keep waiting.”

“It’s okay.” Samuel T. nodded at Amelia. “She was beating the crap out of me.”

“You were winning!”

“She lies. What can I say?” Samuel T. indicated the house. “Actually, Gin, I have some paperwork for you about the annulment. Everything’s filed and set.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Come on up, the stuff’s in my study. Amelia, we’ll be right back?”

“Okay, Dad, I wanted to go do a fish check on the pond anyway. We on for the day after tomorrow?”

“You got it. I’m not seeing Deadpool II with anyone else.”

Dad. Wow, Gin thought.

As they headed up to the porch, she said, “So I guess you got the DNA results back.”

“Yes, we did.”

Gin took a deep breath. “Good, I’m glad it’s settled.”

“Me, too.”

Samuel T. went ahead and held the door open for her, and as she passed by him, she could smell his cologne, and it made her heart ache.

His study was the same as it had always been, lined by leather volumes that he’d inherited, the hearth set for fall’s far-off chill with hardwood logs, the mellow oxblood leather sofa and chairs making the room seem like it was in England rather than Kentucky. Then again, the Lodges had always done things with old-school class—which was what happened when you had generations and generations of people shepherding assets carefully onto their children.

Samuel T. opened his great-uncle’s leather briefcase, and as he riffled through whatever was in there, she studied the lines of his face, the strength of his shoulders, the elegance he wore with unconscious grace.

“Okay, so here is a copy of the court-stamped papers. I put a rush on them. The judge wants to go quail hunting with me on my preserve in South Carolina, so he was happy to oblige.”

“Is that how you got the DNA results so quickly, too?”

“No, but the lab tech does want to be set up with my intern. So I made that happen and she stayed a little late for me one night in return.”

“You are good at getting things done.”

“I do all right.” He gave her another set of papers. “Also, because of the high value of the engagement ring, I had Pford execute a title for it, granting the thing to you free and clear. Probably overkill, but that way, you don’t have to worry about him bugging you about it later.”

“Oh, thank you.” She looked the documents over. “This is great.”

“I know you really wanted that diamond,” he said dryly.

“Well, yes, I’d taken the stone out and replaced it with a fake one. It would have been awkward to give him back a cubic zirconia.”

Gin was vaguely aware of Samuel T. going still as he stared at her, but she didn’t dwell on it.

Time to go.

“Thank you again,” she said, “and I assume you’ll be picking up Amelia for the movie. If you’d like me to bring her out here, though, I’m happy to. Just text me.”

Gin started to walk out, but Samuel T. took her arm. “What did you say?”

“I’ll bring Amelia to you—”

“No, about the ring.”

“Oh. I sold the stone. For Amelia. Don’t tell anyone this, please—although as my attorney, I don’t think you can, can you? Anyway, if I’d had to give the ring back, Richard would have found that out and demanded the money. Which I don’t have.” She shrugged. “I just decided it was about time I started assuming the care of my daughter—our daughter.”

She waited a moment for him to respond. When he just looked at her, she gave him a wave and took her leave.

Out on the porch, she called Amelia over, and as the girl came loping up the lawn from the pond, Gin was glad for the way things had ended.

Not between her and Samuel T., of course. But really, how else were things going to go between them?

No, Gin was glad that the girl knew her father and that from now on Amelia was going to have a mother who did her best to show up. At the close of the day, that was not a bad setup, at all.

And she could certainly learn to exist without the love of her life. People did that all the time, in one form or another.

Besides, she needed to pay a penance—and losing Samuel T. was probably the only thing that could come close to be being painful enough.

FORTY

Something woke Lane up out of a deep sleep, his lids flipping open, his body on instant-alert. Without moving, he glanced at the clock on the bedside table. Just after two a.m.

What had disturbed him?

He listened for a minute and heard nothing but Lizzie’s even breathing: no sounds of anyone moving around Easterly’s second floor, no creaking of doors opening or closing, nothing out in the hall.

There was a temptation to roll over and resume the work of being asleep, but nope. He had to get up and go to the window.

Sonofabitch, he thought as he looked down below.

There was someone in the garden again: In the darkness, in between the fruit trees, a person was crouched and coming at the house. At two in the goddamn morning.

For the love, Lane thought as he pulled on boxer shorts and got his gun from that drawer. Someone was definitely inside the walls and moving around—and he knew it wasn’t Gary McAdams this time.

None of the gas lanterns were off in the back of the house, and Lane and Lizzie had been in the pool before bed. Those mechanicals were working just fine now.

“Lane? Where are you going?”

He hid the gun by his thigh. “Somebody’s in the garden. It’s probably—I don’t know, maybe it’s Jeff.”

Lizzie started to get out of bed.

“No, you stay here.”

“Should I call Deputy Ramsey?”

“I don’t want to disturb him and his wife. Maybe it’s . . . I don’t know. But I’ll handle it.”

Lizzie got up and went to the window as he headed out into the hall. And in a replay of however many nights before, he didn’t hear any alarm going off—because he hadn’t set the damn thing, again—and as he descended the grand stairs, the mansion likewise seemed silent.

When he got down to the foyer, he stopped. Frowned. And went into the parlor, following the scent of fresh air.

The French doors way at the back of the downstairs room were wide open, a lovely night breeze curling into the house, carrying the scents of the sleeping garden.

Check the house? Or check the outside, he wondered.

Would a thief really leave his ingress so obvious?

Shit, he should have told Lizzie to lock herself in.

Lane moved quickly through the downstairs rooms, looking for someone trying to steal silver or portable electronics or . . .

When he got to the rear of the dining room, he slowed . . . and stopped. Through the glass panes, he stared, transfixed, at a scene he could not comprehend.

But instantly understood.

It was his mother, in one of her diaphanous white nightgowns, out once more on the terrace at night, the gas lanterns down the back of the mansion illuminating her ethereal beauty and turning her into an apparition of loveliness.

She was not alone.

A man was coming up the stone steps, a man with broad shoulders and common work clothes, a man who took a cap off his head in deference to her presence.