Anne smiled. “I like Leah too. She’s a nice girl, isn’t she?”
“She’s really nice. She showed me how to braid hair. She said when she rides in a horse show she has to braid her horse’s hair a certain way, but she knows a bunch of different ways to do it. She said different kinds of horses get their hair braided all different ways. I want to learn how to do that. Can I, Mommy?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. We don’t have any horses to practice on.”
Haley was undaunted. “Leah said she would show me on her horse. Wendy wants to learn too. Maybe we could go watch Wendy ride again and then afterward Leah could teach us.”
“Maybe,” Anne said absently, distracted by her own thoughts of Leah Lawton—so quiet, so polite, but with such a tight grip on herself Anne thought she might just shatter at the slightest touch. She seemed almost to hold herself as if she was protecting a deep, raw wound—which, Anne supposed, she was. Not a physical wound, but an emotional one.
“Maybe?” Haley said with dramatic despair. She leaned against Anne and gave her most plaintive look, although there was a sparkle in her dark eyes. “Mommy, p-l-e-a-s-e.”
Anne chuckled at her daughter’s acting talents. “We’ll see.”
“Oh, n-o-o-o-o!” Haley wailed, though a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
This had been a little joke between them for a long time. When Haley had first come into her life she had told Anne that when her biological mother had said “We’ll see,” it almost always meant no.
Anne laughed, bent down, and kissed the top of her daughter’s head, breathing deep the soft scent of baby shampoo in Haley’s thick tangle of dark curls. Haley had done her hair herself that morning, catching it up in two slightly messy, uneven pigtails. She had also chosen her own outfit—a blue-and-white sundress. Always the girly girl.
“Maybe one day next week,” Anne said. “Daddy’s coming home tonight. He told me he wants to take us someplace special tomorrow.”
Haley’s face lit up with excitement. “Where? To the zoo? Are we going to the zoo?”
Anne shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a secret.”
“I want to go to the zoo!” she said, bouncing up and down on her toes. “Antony wants to go too! Are we going to the zoo?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said again. “We’ll see.”
Haley groaned and crumpled against her.
“Haley, come on!” The call came from a little redheaded girl on the swing set twenty feet away.
Anne kissed her daughter’s head again. “Go have fun, you. I have to get to work. I’ll see you at lunchtime. I love you.”
“I love you, Mommy,” Haley said with a wave as she trotted off toward her friends.
Anne watched her go, thinking—as she did every day—how lucky she was. She had looked death in the face more than once. Every day with her children was an enormous gift she never failed to appreciate.
She rested a hand on her stomach and said a little thank-you for the new life growing inside her. She was a lucky woman. She had a wonderful husband, beautiful children, a career she loved.
Then she thought of Lauren Lawton. Lauren had had a wonderful life too. She’d had a loving husband—now dead. She’d had two beautiful daughters—one gone.
She thought of Leah again, a trouble line creasing up between her brows.
Then, as if she had conjured her up, Lauren Lawton was walking toward her on the path.
“They told me at the desk you might be out here.”
She looked like hell, Anne thought. Pale and thin as a ghost, gaunt, with deep purple smudges beneath her eyes. She could have been a junkie strung out on heroin, or a cancer patient poisoned by chemotherapy.
“My morning ritual,” Anne said, showing none of the alarm that had struck her at the sight of the woman. “Haley and I have to have our little walk and talk before I can go to my office.”
Lauren looked over at the girls playing on the swings. “No one would ever guess she wasn’t your biological child. She looks just like you. Did you adopt her as a baby?”
“No,” Anne said. “Haley was four. Her mother was murdered. She was the only witness.”
Lauren looked at her, shocked, as most people were when Anne revealed her daughter’s tragic background. She had managed to shock Lauren twice now—with Haley’s story, and with her own—which she thought was a good thing.
In her experience, victims sometimes needed to be pulled out of their myopic self-absorption in their own terrible tales. Not to minimize what they had gone through, but to show them others had gone through terrible things too, and had worked their way through to move forward with their lives.
“Oh my God,” Lauren said. “Does she remember what happened ?”
“Some of it,” Anne said. “She used to wake up screaming every night. Gradually, we’ve worked through it with her. The most important thing she needed was to know that she was safe again.”
“I know the feeling,” Lauren said quietly, her eyes on Haley—laughing and happy. Anne suspected she envied the little girl that.
“When you’ve been through a nightmare, it’s hard to imagine ever feeling normal again, isn’t it?”
“Impossible,” Lauren murmured.
“Let’s go inside,” Anne suggested. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee. Have you slept in the last . . . year or two?”
“God. Do I look that bad?”
“I’m not one to pull punches,” Anne said as they started back toward the main building. “I’m sure you know the answer to your own question. I know I was well aware I looked like I’d been run over by a truck for the first few months after my ordeal. I didn’t care.
“Some women do, though,” she said. “I’ve seen people go to great lengths to pretend they’re just fine when they’re anything but. That’s a heavy lie to bear. They always crash eventually and have to start over from square one.”
“So are you saying I’m ahead of the game?” Lauren asked drily.
“I’m saying you might as well be honest. A perfect, controlled façade can be worse than a prison,” she said, thinking again of Leah, wondering what exactly the girl was trying so hard to keep locked within.
They went inside the building and down the cool, dark hall to Anne’s office.
“I just wanted to stop by to thank you again for letting Leah stay last night,” Lauren said. “Was everything all right? Leah hasn’t stayed over with a friend for a long time.”
“She did fine,” Anne said. “I checked on the girls a couple of times during the night. Once the gabfest was over, it looked like everyone slept soundly.”
“Good,” she said quietly. “She hasn’t gotten to have much of a childhood the last few years.”
Anne opened her office door and was greeted by the intoxicating aroma of coffee and fresh-baked blueberry muffins.
“Oh my God, smell that,” she said on a groan. “The kitchen staff is spoiling me into obesity.
“Leah is delightful,” she said, going to the coffee bar and pouring two cups without asking. Lauren was going to welcome the coffee, and she was going to eat a muffin if Anne had to sit on her and force-feed it to her.
“Any time Leah wants to come stay is all right by me,” she said. “Antony and Haley loved having her. If she ever wants to make a little money, she can help Wendy with the babysitting duties.”
Lauren frowned a little. Anne read her concern.
“Remember, my house is like Fort Knox. There’s always somebody watching if Vince is out. Even if it’s just date night. Nothing is left to chance.”
“That’s an interesting arrangement you have with the sheriff’s office.”
Anne pushed the cup of coffee into her hand and motioned for her to take a seat.