“How’s she doing?”

“Seems good.” They dried their hands on the towel hung for that purpose and changed daily. “Looks damn good.”

Red’s lips curved. “Is that so?”

“It’s definitely so.”

They rounded to the back, scraped boots, went in through the mudroom. Hung jackets on pegs. Removed hats.

Nobody sat at Maggie Hudson’s table wearing headgear or with dirt under their fingernails.

In the main kitchen the smell of curds and whey fell under the aroma of soup on the simmer.

“Did you wash your hands?” Maggie demanded.

Both men held up their hands.

“Then you can have a seat at the big table. Soup’s almost on.”

Red snuck in a kiss to the side of Maggie’s neck under her burnt-orange braid.

“Take that bread on the board in with you. We’ll see how Cate’s baking holds up to Julia’s kitchen sink soup.”

“She baked bread?” Obediently, Red picked up the breadboard.

“Says she learned how when she lived in Ireland, and how she can work on voices while she’s making it.”

The “big table” meant the adjoining dining room with its big walnut buffet that Dillon had helped his mother refinish when he’d been a teenager, and its view of the woods where Cate had run as a child.

Curious and damn hungry, Dillon cut a slice, sampled the heel. “It’s good. Anyway, I didn’t see Lily when I dropped off the fingerlings, so I went over to check on Hugh. He’s looking good. Cate was sitting out with him.”

“Dil says she looks good, too.”

“And then some,” Dillon added over another bite. “You guys should go over and see what they’ve done to that guesthouse for her. Really changed it up. And put in this whole studio deal.”

“So she can work right there?” Julia brought in the pot of soup, set it on the big trivet.

“Yeah. She said she started doing all this in a closet. Well, this ain’t no closet.” Since his mother put out the crock of butter—made fresh at Horizon Ranch—he smeared some on the bite of bread he had left.

Even better.

Maggie brought in the bowls, began to ladle them up. “I feel good knowing she found her way, and found her way back. She needs to come see us.”

“She’s planning to.”

“When I think about that mother of hers.”

Red rubbed Maggie’s shoulder, but it didn’t calm her down.

“It just fires me up.” She sat down to her own soup, wagged her spoon in the air. “That woman living like some queen after what she did. Even that rich asshole can’t buy her into a hit movie, but doesn’t she still swan around in them? Straight-to-video, made-for-TV, but she’s still doing them, with a face so full of plastic she can barely blink her eyes.”

“Rich doesn’t mean happy, Mom.”

Maggie spooned up soup. “It’s a lot easier to be unhappy sleeping on silk sheets than it is sleeping in a cardboard box—which is what she deserves.” She took the bread Julia sliced for her. “Don’t worry, I won’t say all this to that girl. I’m getting it out of my system.”

She tried the bread. Chewed, considered. “Good consistency, nice flavor and texture. Damn it, this may be better than mine.”

Holding back a smile, she pointed at Dillon when he just ducked his head. “It’s a smart man who knows better than to agree with me.”

“Here’s what I have to say. Not about the bread,” Red added. “Charlotte Dupont looks like what she is. A fake and a fraud. I know, because I’ve heard from Hugh, and Aidan when he comes around, that she pays to plant stories that take a poke at them, Cate especially. Still, after all these years, she can’t stop taking those shots at them. She can sleep on silk in a bed of diamonds, she’s never going to be anything but what she is. She’s never going to have what she wants. She’s never going to be happy.”

He shrugged, ate more soup. “She paid her debt to society.” Ignoring Maggie’s hiss, he plowed on. “But if you ask me, she’s still in prison. Her own making, and I get some satisfaction from that.”

“What about the other two, Sparks and Denby? You keep your ear to the ground,” Dillon added.

“All right, to clear all this out. Because he had the firearm, Denby’s got another five years before any chance of parole, and his chances are slim there. Sparks? He’s made himself a model prisoner from what my ear to the ground hears. He may get early release. That’s a solid year off,” he added as Maggie hissed again. “Prisons are crowded, and he’s nearly served his minimum. It’s possible they’ll spring him in another year. Eighteen in so far, and that’s a long stretch.”

“It’s hard to believe so much time’s passed.” Julia looked back toward the kitchen. “Sometimes it seems like yesterday Dillon brought me downstairs, and that little girl sat there.”

“There’s one more thing, because it might just happen. There’s a true crime writer who’s been interviewing him for months now. I don’t know who else she’s talked to—my ear doesn’t reach that far—but I know she’s talked to Denby. But she’s spending a lot of time talking to Sparks. Since she’s got a law degree and he’s listed her as his attorney, I can’t tell you what they talk about.”

“Another bloodsucker,” Maggie decided. “Who is she? I want to Google her.”

“Jessica A. Rowe.”

Sparks groomed himself for his visit with his lawyer/biographer. He worked some product into his hair, still thick, to add a sheen (subtle) of silver to the gray. He practiced his sad but adoring looks in the mirror.

He still had it.

Then again, Jessica proved to be one of the easiest marks in his long career. At forty-six, stout, saggy, plain as a plank of wood, she’d been ripe for a little illicit romance. Desperate for love.

He’d started her out with the repentant routine, shared details—some real, some fabricated—that hadn’t gotten into the public trough as yet. Shyly, he’d confessed he’d tried to write his story himself, as a kind of penance, but he couldn’t find the words to express himself.

He expressed himself with her, maneuvered her into using her very rusty law degree to represent him so they could talk confidentially.

Over weeks, then months, he’d primed her, reeled her in, wooed her.

Through the years, he’d had letters from, visits from, women drawn to men in prison. He’d considered many as liaisons to the outside. Rejected many as either straight-out crazy or simply unreliable.

But Jessie, oh, Jessie was another type altogether.

The rule follower fascinated with rule breakers. Because, his instincts told him, she wanted to be one.

The lonely middle-aged woman who believed herself—rightfully, in his opinion—unattractive, undesirable. The naive-to-the-point-of-stupid mark who thought of herself as insightful.

The first time he’d taken her hand, held it, looked into her eyes as he kissed her fingers in gratitude, he knew he could, and would, play her like a violin.

Now, after months of preparation, after stolen kisses, fraught embraces, after promises and plans to marry upon his release, came the true test.