Today she needed an extra dose of courage because something told her that once she started digging around in Paul’s life, which she intended to do, she’d discover something that Bree would not like. That is, if she didn’t already know about it. Either way, the place to begin was with Paul’s attorney, Mr. Bruce Dawson.

  He had expected that eventually, someone would call him. Judith’s phone call and her questions were easy to deflect, but he knew that wouldn’t be the case next time.

  The question he had been wrestling with ever since Paul had handed him the letters to mail after he died was how much he would tell. It would be a straightforward answer if Paul hadn’t waived his attorney-client privilege because then he could claim that he couldn’t tell them anything.

  But Paul had put him in the position of making a choice himself. He hadn’t liked it when Paul had done that, and he liked it even less now that Paul was gone because he couldn’t argue with him anymore. How much would he tell? How much did they need to know? He had decided to continue to claim he couldn’t tell what he knew unless someone was in danger.

  Bruce Dawson swore under his breath at Paul, hoping that Paul was somewhere he could hear him. When Paul was alive, he was just a client he barely knew. They had met in college but hadn’t hung out together for years, so it surprised him when he got the phone call.

  “Why me?” he had asked Paul.

  “Because I know you are trustworthy.”

  Bruce wasn’t sure how Paul knew that, but he knew that was his intention.

  They had greeted each other as old friends, even though they had not been that close. But it was good to see someone from his younger days. However, once they had spent a few minutes catching up, Bruce switched into an attorney mode and asked Paul only the questions he needed to know legally.

  Paul resisted. And now, after Paul’s death, he was stuck with this extra baloney Paul had asked him to do. He didn’t feel happy about it. And now he had that woman, Judith, on his case.

  His phone dinged, telling him it was time to log onto the Zoom link that Judith had sent him. He didn’t want to do a Zoom call. A phone call would be so much better.

  It was easier to dodge questions, easier to stonewall. But then this Judith person probably knew that. He had agreed because he knew that eventually, he would be swept up into Paul’s plan. He might as well get it over with.

  He swore at Paul again, muttering, “Why didn’t you just tell them, buddy?” and logged into the call.

  At first, all he saw was the back of her head, but when he said hello, she swiveled around to face him.

  “Oh,” she said.

  That was one more word than Bruce could say.

  For a fleeting second, Judith went back to the day that Bree had told them all, “That’s the man I am going to marry.”

  She had thought it was ridiculous. How could you know with one look?

  That Bree and Paul had married hadn’t changed her mind. It was random. Bree had made a simple attraction to a stranger into what she wanted it to be and then made it work.

  The two of them stared at each other before Bruce cleared his throat and asked, “You have questions?”

  All Judith could think was, do I ever, before clearing her own throat and saying the stupidest thing ever, “You are Bruce Dawson, Paul Mann’s attorney?”

  For the first time since Paul had come to see him, Bruce was happy to answer, “Yes, yes, I am.”

  Nineteen

  “This is it,” Bree said, pulling into the parking lot of the Chautauqua Lake Rest area.

  “The clue is here?” Cindy asked, wondering how that could be true.

  Bree shrugged, trying not to let her face show any emotion. It was hard to be here remembering the last time with Paul.

  Besides, she thought, I could be wrong about the whole thing. The clue might not be here at all. So she said nothing, just pointed the way to the bathrooms.

  Afterward, Bree stayed in the lobby looking at maps and information while Cindy stepped outside to see the view. Bree joined her a few minutes later, still not saying anything.

  “This is it? Really?” Cindy finally asked again. “It’s stunning, but where is the clue?”

  They had been standing near a low stone wall, looking out over the view for the last twenty minutes. Not moving, not talking.

  Finally, Bree turned to look at Cindy, and Cindy was happy to see that there was more color in Bree’s face, and although there were tears in her eyes, she seemed more at peace.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Bree asked.

  “Stunning,” Cindy answered.

  From where they were standing, they could see for miles. A large green lawn lay behind them, and Chautauqua Lake stretched out before them. The entire scene radiated peace.

  Perhaps a legacy from Indian tribes who had once lived in these spaces, Cindy thought.

  Still looking out over the lake, Bree sighed as if deciding what to say.

  “It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since we took that road trip. I have so many memories of it, but mostly I remember how happy I was that we were together.

  “Just us, looking at things we had never seen before. I would wish for an Internet connection when we camped or stayed at motels, but they weren’t always available then.

  “It was such a short time ago, and yet everything was different. We wanted to take pictures and keep them on our computer. It sounds normal now, but then it was a new idea. There were no cell phones with their fantastic cameras.

  “We’ve always been first adopters, so we bought a new-fangled camera with floppy disks. We could fit maybe five or ten pictures on each disk. I would download them off the disks and put them on my computer. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever.

  “Now, we have GPS in our phones and cars, but then we didn’t. Instead, Paul and I had this small yellow plastic box from Delorme that we stuck on the car’s front window.

  “There weren’t many satellites for it to see then, and sometimes it would blink out, but to us, it was magic. We had a swivel stand mounted in front of the passenger seat where we put my computer, which was attached to the yellow box with a long cord, and that’s how we saw where we were.

  “Sometimes I would write as we drove. But mostly, I watched the computer screen and told Paul where we were and what road to take.

  “Every time we’d pull into some public place, and I would slide out of the car, people would stare at the setup. We enjoyed making people wonder what it was. Sometimes they asked, usually they just stared.

  “Because there were few satellites, sometimes we got lost anyway, but that was part of the fun. Triple-A was part of that system, and we could look at what was around us using their program. Once in a while, we’d take a detour to see something, and other times, I would read the history of the town and the areas we were passing through to Paul.

  “Ever since that trip, when we saw something on a movie or TV show, we’d love to say ‘we’ve been there!’ We relived that trip repeatedly in so many ways.”

  Cindy waited for Bree to say more, but instead, she walked across the lawn to the patio and took a seat. Cindy followed, not saying anything, waiting, knowing there must be more, but when Bree stayed silent, Cindy finally asked, “What prompted you to take the trip?”

  “Me. I was stuck on a book I was writing, and I was probably not pleasant to be around. Paul asked what he could do, and I said I didn’t know. But I felt as if I was trapped.

  “The next day, Paul told me he arranged to take the entire summer off so we could go on a road trip. He said he had accumulated vacation time. I didn’t understand how he could take all that time off, but then I didn’t understand what he did at work, so I just went with it. The idea of a road trip was so appealing I only asked how soon we could leave.

  “It was the perfect solution to how I felt. I don’t know how Paul knew. He wasn’t the greatest at understanding feelings, but right then, he did. And I loved him even more for that.”

  “So you traveled all over the country that summer?”

  “We did,” Bree answered, smiling at the memory.

  “And yet, you didn’t come to see any of us. You’d been gone for years. We didn’t know where you lived or why you left. You could have at least stopped by and said hello.”

  The moments stretched out before them. Bree could imagine her past lying before them on the surface of the lake, almost within reach before it sank out of sight.

  The trouble was, she thought, the past doesn’t stay out of sight. It always floats back to the surface.

  “Couldn’t,” she finally answered.

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Cindy asked, trying not to let the hurt of feeling unwanted affect her voice. It was enough that she had cried almost every night for that first year when Bree left. That was enough crying.

  “Both,” Bree said.

  Turning to Cindy, she took both her hands before saying, “I wish I had enough courage to tell you then, and I wish I had it now. But I am here on this trip with you, hoping to find out the truth about myself and Paul, and maybe that will give me that courage to be the friend you deserve.”

  Tears gathered in Cindy’s eyes, and she nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.

  A blast of wind and rumble of thunder startled them both.

  “If I were younger, I would say ‘race you to the building!’” Cindy said, laughing as the first drops of rain began to fall.

  A few minutes later, Bree and Cindy joined the other travelers, who had also been out walking or looking at the view of the large Victorian building that was both incongruous and delightful as a rest stop.

  While they waited out the storm, they ate snacks from the vending machine and chatted about nothing.

  “It’s almost like being back in school eating out of vending machines,” Cindy said, licking the last of the salt from her bag of chips off of her fingers.

  Bree nodded, “Except for all the little kids and all the old people like us, and teenagers who look as if they would rather not be here. Yep, just like then.”

  Seeing the hurt on her friend’s face, she added, “Thank you for coming, Cindy. Not sure if I said that yet.”

  “Truthfully, I realize I need this as much as you. Where to next? Was there a clue here?”

  “I didn’t think there was until a moment ago when I remembered what Paul said while we were here. It could be nothing, and I don’t know how he could think that I would remember.

  “But then, Paul knows—knew—me well. He would have known I would wait for an idea or a memory to come back, and thanks to the storm and pausing to eat, it did.”

  Cindy made a hurry-up gesture with her hand, and Bree laughed.

  Pointing at one of the maps mounted on the wall, she said, “We were standing in front of that map, and he pointed to a place on it and said, ‘That’s where it all began.’”

  Twenty

  Cindy reached across the table and touched Bree’s hand. Looking at her friend’s face, she couldn’t tell how Bree felt. That was nothing new. She was well aware of Bree’s internal walls and how she disappeared inside her thoughts. But right now, she needed Bree to stop being such a loner and share.

  “Did you just leave it at that? You couldn’t have. I know you, Bree. You are always trying to solve things to find out the truth behind stories. What happened next?”

  This is the moment, Bree thought. Either go forward and find out what he meant, or go home. Wherever that is now.

  Looking across the table at her friend Cindy waiting patiently as she always had, she wanted to get up and run out of the rest stop. Cindy could call Judith, and she’d find a way to get her home.

  She could disappear again. Write under another name. Maybe forget spicy romance. Write detective stories, instead. It would be so easy, just as it had been thirty years before.

  The problem is, Bree thought, I’m awake now. And mad, she realized. Mad at herself, mad at Paul and his stupid secrets. Mad because she had thought love would be enough. Well, it wasn’t. Paul left her.

  It’s time to get my life back, Bree said to herself. I’ve run away for too long.

  Taking a deep breath and slowly releasing it, Bree smiled at her friend and said, “I asked him, What began? But he refused to say more. So what, I thought. Paul has secrets. I told myself that I didn’t mind as long as we were together.

  “But now, I realize I should have asked more questions. I think I was afraid it would break our life open, and awful things would spill out. Things we had put in there together, and things we had packed away from each other. Maybe he wanted to tell me then and would have told me if I had asked what he meant.”

  “That’s on him, Bree, not you. But if you’re right, he must have wanted you to know now. In this strangely weird way, he is giving you the answers he couldn’t give you then. Otherwise, why write the letters? Why send us on this trip? No matter what happens, our pact will be by your side through this whole thing.”

  When Bree turned away, her face flushed, Cindy guessed what she was thinking, “And yes, even after we find out why you left, we’ll be here.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Bree whispered. How would they forgive her for what she had done?

  “Positive! So what, or where, did he point to?”

  Bree took another deep breath before answering, knowing it was the beginning of the end, and once she started, there would be no stopping.

  “I only remember where he pointed because I asked him what he meant. He said it was nothing, just that his life had been the pits since his parents died, just like the town. His face turned hard, and I was scared for a minute. I had never seen him that upset. He wasn’t one to show his emotions, so I wasn’t sure what he was feeling, just that it wasn’t a good thing.

  “I stayed silent, afraid he’d erupt into some emotion I couldn’t handle. When I said nothing, he gave me a tiny smile and said, ‘give me a minute’ and then went outside to the stone wall.

  “After he stepped away, I looked at the map, and where I thought he had pointed, I saw there was a town called Pittsfield in Massachusetts.”

  “That’s a stretch, isn’t it? Besides, you said he mumbled. And you don’t know for sure that he pointed to the town called Pittsfield at all.”

  “No, I don’t, but I am sure enough to try it. Besides, it’s in the Berkshires, and if you’ve never been there, it’s worth the trip.”

  “Even if we don’t find anything?”

  “Even if, but I think we will. I need to find out what Paul meant when he said it all began there. What began there? Paul never told me anything about his past life. At least not enough to piece anything together.”

  “So, leaving places and people was something Paul was doing before you met him?”

  “Appears that way,” Bree answered, standing up and rattling her keys.

  “So this is not connected to why you left us?”

  Bree gave Cindy a long look, slung her purse over her shoulder, squared her shoulders, and turned away.

  Just when Cindy thought she would say nothing more, Bree turned back and said, “I don’t know. Let’s find out, shall we?”

  Twenty-One

  Marsha read Cindy’s text and slapped the wheel of her car in astonishment. How likely was it that the three of them were moving in the same direction? Well, not moving in the same direction. Headed in the same direction.

  She was traveling north, and they were coming from the west. She hadn’t intended to go to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Why would she? Instead, she had driven up the Taconic State Parkway to see the sculpture gardens.

  Long ago, she had driven this road and seen the huge concrete head above the ridge overlooking the parkway and wondered what it was. When she decided to take a brief road trip to clear her head first before returning to Spring Falls she thought of that head and decided it was time to find out what it was and then see it for herself.

  Marsha discovered that the sculpted head was completed in 1996 by self-taught sculptor Roy Kanwit. She learned that the head represents Gaea, the Greek Mother Earth, and because it’s hollow, people can climb through a hole in the top of it and take in her stunning view of the surrounding Hudson River Valley, mountains, and river.

  When Marsha learned that there were thirty more massive statues, all inspired by various mythologies—including Egyptian, Native American, Greek, and Roman—in that sculpture garden, it cemented her determination to go.

  She needed to move out into the world. She had fallen into a rut in life. It was time to get out. Perhaps the massive statues would help release her from the small safe place she had built within herself.

  And when she read that the sculptor was self-taught, she hoped that seeing his work might help dissolve some of her beliefs that she had to know how to do things before actually doing them. Instead, maybe she could begin and let that tell her what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. What that was, she didn’t know yet. She hoped the trip would reveal it to her.

  Marsha knew that Cindy and Bree were further away from Pittsfield than she was, so she had time to stop and see the park first. Besides, the parkway was beautiful, and because it was only open to passenger vehicles, there was no driving with trucks, which would have spoiled the experience. The parkway was designed so a driver could take in the beauty of its surroundings. That’s what she wanted in her life—beauty. That’s what she thought dance would bring her. And it did. Briefly. And then it didn’t.

  She thought it ironic that they were heading to a town called Pittsfield. Pits Ville was the space in her head where she had been living so long she almost forgot there was someplace else. Marsha was sure that the town wasn’t called Pittsfield because it was the pits. Even so, that’s where the name took her.