“I’m so sorry, Emmie,” he said.

 “I haven’t really talked about this. I can trust Lyle and I dumped on him a little bit while I was going through it, but I didn’t want to make his relationship with Ethan tense—Ethan thinks very little of me as it is.”

 “But Lyle...”

 “The best,” she said immediately. “So loyal, so wonderful and always there for me. And believe me, I put him through some drama.” She sipped her tea. “I’m so grateful for Lucinda Lopez, who I’ve seen twice now. She’s perfect. She makes telling it all so easy, and every once in a while she leads me to a perfect conclusion that explains everything, that makes me understand. Men like Richard Compton have a gift for finding the right sucker. He needed a girl who’d lost her parents, who had nowhere to go, who wanted someone who could make her think she was a fairy princess. Someone who wouldn’t question his motives. And that was me to the core. Adam, I want you to know who you’ve gotten yourself mixed up with.”

 He frowned. “You think I didn’t know most of that? I didn’t know how you coped but I found out all that stuff—his scheme, his mistress, his lack of conscience, all the speculation from old acquaintances that he’d always been sociopathic. He was so narcissistic it’s odd he killed himself.”

 “People think there’s money hidden somewhere,” she said. “I certainly don’t know of any and I don’t have any, but I think his suicide was part revenge and part gotcha. He didn’t have much value for life, now did he? Not even his own.”

 “In the end, you were sure your conclusions about him were right?” Adam asked.

 “Oh, yes,” she said. “During our marriage, through the investigation, through all the depositions, he was one cool dude and we didn’t discuss any of it. But in the end, when he’d been warned he was looking at anywhere from forty to seventy-five years in prison, he let the floodgates open and did some incredible lashing out. He proved to me and anyone within earshot that he was a beast with no remorse.” She sighed. “There are things I just can’t repeat, they’re so vulgar.”

 They were quiet. She sipped her tea and he drank his coffee. The waitress silently refilled his cup and brought her more hot water, along with the check.

 “It’s okay, Emmie,” he said.

 “It’s really not, Adam. You almost kissed me. You shouldn’t do that. I’m damaged. I still can’t believe what I allowed myself to be sucked into.”

 “You were twenty-four. And you were a great deal wiser by the time you were thirty. Give yourself a break.”

 “Rosemary always said, ‘It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man.’ She was full of sayings. After Richard’s death, leaving me holding the mess of his crimes, leaving me the suspect, you know what my darling stepmother said? ‘If you marry for money, you’ll earn every cent.’”

 “I never liked her,” Adam said.

 “She’s got some great sayings, though.”

 “We’re going to get through this, Emma,” he said.

 “I wanted you to kiss me,” she said.

 He had to work at keeping his heart from exploding.

 “I wanted to be kissed and the only person in the world I wanted to kiss me was you,” she said. “But, Adam, you shouldn’t because I’m broken. I don’t want to hurt anyone who gets close to me. We have to keep it friends. And Riley... Listen, she was totally professional, but she made it pretty clear... She wouldn’t like the idea of us being close.”

 “You think I give a shit what Riley wants?” he asked.

 “Well, I do. And you should. She’s your family. I’m going to keep seeing the counselor for a little while. Maybe she’s got a shortcut or two. I’ve got a few good years left and I’d like to live them happily.”

 He smiled. A few good years? She was all of thirty-four. She probably felt like she’d wasted a lifetime already. “We’ll get through this, Em. You’re starting a whole new life on Monday. Cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Wowser.”

 “I’m going to make Riley proud of me,” she said. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

 “I don’t tell anyone anything.”

 * * *

 Emma didn’t necessarily feel better about laying all that on Adam, but she felt cleaner. More honest. He should know—she might not have been complicit in Richard’s crimes but she was certainly a participant in ending up right where she was. She fell for every little trick he had. And before it was all over, he made sure she knew it. Snatches of their dialogue in the final weeks might echo forever, never leave her, might never give her peace.

 Adam reached across the small table and held her hand. “One thing you’re not going to do—you’re not going to worry about taking care of me. I don’t need you to protect me. All right?”

 She knew he was strong. She knew he was smart. But was he wise to what association with a man like Richard had done to her? “I’m not innocent anymore, Adam.”

 “Not guilty, either. And you’re a survivor. I know you are.”

 “Really?” she asked. “Is that so?”

 He chuckled but not with humor. “Your father’s death? Rosemary? God, a few years of her would damage anyone! You pulled yourself together after Jock. Picked up what you could carry and went to New York—one of the biggest, scariest cities in the country.” He drank the last of his coffee. “I guess now I’ll never see it.”

 “Why is that?”

 “No way you’re going back there,” he said. “And I’m not going back there without you.” He briefly looked at their check.