By the time the conversation got around to Emma possibly dating Riley’s brother, she was shutting down, moving away. Riley didn’t seem to mind talking about the fact that Emma was pretty, that she’d had a bad marriage, but she didn’t want to talk about Emma and her relationships with men.

 After dinner he managed to persuade her to do a little kissing beside her car. He even talked her into getting in the car for a little more. But when he asked her to come to his place for an hour or so, she was too smart for him. “I’m afraid not, Logan,” she had said. “I’m not ready for that next step.” And he said he was ready whenever she was and she replied, “I know. I can tell. I’m so smart that way.”

 So now they were driving home to their own houses in their separate cars and he had the feeling something had changed. Instead of going forward, they were moving back. And this had something to do with Emma even though Riley had no idea of his interest in Emma.

 His cell rang and the number popped up on the dash screen in the car. Georgianna. He pressed the connection for the hands-free. “What?” he said.

 “Hello, dear,” she said. “You’re late for dinner again.”

 “What do you want? What if she’d been in my car?”

 “Didn’t you say you’d be meeting for dinner? Why would she be in your car?”

 “Because she drank too much wine and I had to drive her to my house, which I very much tried to do. But she left most of her second glass and declined my invitation. And I’m a little unhappy so why don’t you just leave me alone.”

 “Did you learn anything?”

 “No. Not anything useful.”

 “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me, huh? I’m much more objective than you are.”

 He took a breath. She was right. “There’s some significant history between the girls but it’s obviously complicated. When I started to ask about their history, using all of my brilliant detective skills, she mentally moved away from me. That’s when I lost her. She was fine talking about Emma coming back here, needing a job, getting over a bad marriage—generic on the bad, no details—but when I asked what their relationship was like when they were young, she shut down. Oh—and she thinks Emma might be seeing her brother.”

 “She doesn’t know?” George asked.

 “Not for sure, I guess. How firm is that?”

 “Every night.”

 “How do you know?” he asked.

 “The only conversations they have are about what’s for dinner and when will you be here.”

 Logan thought Adam Kerrigan was getting a lot luckier than he was. “I don’t get it,” he said. “They’re one nice big happy family. I saw Riley and Emma today, working through a tense situation, supportive of each other, friendly. The brother and the mother obviously like her. But Riley’s smart. She’s scary smart. You think she knows something and doesn’t want her family mixed up in it?”

 “Possible,” George said. “If you don’t have anything interesting to tell me, I’m going to kiss the kids and hit the sack. Bruno’s on shift.”

 Bruno was not his real name. Mr. Universe’s real name was John.

 “Good. Don’t call me anymore.”

 “You know it’s probably a good thing you didn’t get laid...”

 “Shows what you know. That’s almost never a good thing.”

 “Oh, I can think of a ton of circumstances when getting laid would be a really bad—”

 He hung up on her.

    Chapter Sixteen

 Emma received her second phone call from Bethany two days after the first, again while she was driving home from work. She learned that Bethany’s mother had died from a freakishly terrible case of the flu almost two years ago. She got sick, then got sicker, was admitted to the hospital then to the ICU. It was the kind of thing that usually happened to the extremely frail, chronically ill or elderly, but it got Danielle Christensen, taking her life in a week. The family was, understandably, wrecked by it.

 Then Olaf Christensen brought home a woman he had worked with for a long time, a CPA in his import-export company. There were many such businesses in the port city, the Bay Area, and the Christensens’ was successful. Danielle had only been gone a couple of months, but it seemed to help him a great deal to be seeing this woman. Liz was forty and had never married, had no children and before six months had passed, they were married. Everyone loved her—she was good at her job, active in her church, popular at work, laughed a lot and showered attention on Bethany’s father. But she never laughed with Bethany, only with Bethany’s father and other adults.

 Before they even married, Bethany’s stepmother was taking over the house. She fired the cleaning lady who’d been with them for years and hired Riley’s company. She made every meal or ordered something she could pick up on the way home or booked reservations. The once comfortably lived-in house became spotless and sterile. Danielle’s clothes were moved to a guest room closet and chest of drawers, then little by little they moved back to the master bedroom. The family pictures were removed. Liz said, “They’re certainly not helping our situation, these constant reminders.” Bethany was told to clean her room to Liz’s specifications and if she didn’t, Liz went in her room, put things away and tidied up. In order to keep Liz out of her room, Bethany followed the instructions. When Bethany just wouldn’t stop acting depressed, Liz found her a therapist.

 “I heard her saying I should be put in a hospital or boarding school but my dad didn’t agree. Maybe I should. I would be away from them.”