But she wasn’t worried about her mother and brother, even though she knew little Jonathan was very sick with some kind of degenerative disease. That was nothing new; he had been ailing since birth. Her mother took him to specialists all over the country; they were on their way to Johns Hopkins on that particular trip.

  Tildy won Old Maid. She always did. She didn’t realize back then that Lena always let her win.

  But Daddy never made it home to tuck her in.

  She woke, late, to find him sitting on her bed in her darkened room, sobbing. He held her close and he told her that Mother and Jonathan were gone. He promised her that he would always take care of her.

  “But you’re never home, Daddy,” Tildy cried.

  “That will change now, baby. You’ll see.”

  And it did.

  Daddy’s Girl. That’s Matilda Harrington, to this day.

  The heels of her Dior pumps click across the hardwood floor of the hall and into the dining room, where they encounter the antique area rug that once belonged to French royalty, and then to American royalty. It had been passed down through the Kennedy family, and one of the cousins gave it to Daddy, who later agreed that it would look beautiful in Tildy’s dining room.

  The swinging door to the kitchen is propped open, as always, with a cast iron pineapple-shaped doorstop, also antique. Troy bought it at auction and gave it to her as a housewarming gift.

  “A pineapple?” she asked dubiously.

  Troy told her that in Colonial times, wealthy hostesses kept their dining room doors closed so their guests could only anticipate the luscious food being prepared in the kitchen. When the elaborate, sumptuous platters were ceremoniously presented—topped with precious, expensive pineapples—the guests were duly impressed.

  Now, according to Troy, the fruit symbolizes elegant hospitality.

  Tildy decided it would be ironically fitting to use the doorstop in her own dining room—where, incidentally, the door to the kitchen is always kept open. She doesn’t cook, though she did just install professional-grade chef’s appliances.

  A few more tapping footsteps across the newly lain stone floor of the just renovated—and yet-to-be-used—kitchen, and Tildy reaches the rear French door.

  As she emerges into the twilight, she notes that the night is warm, much too warm to light the living room fireplace.

  She hesitates on the brick patio, gazing across the small, stockade-fenced yard toward the woodpile in the far corner neatly covered by a blue tarp. She could lay a small fire—just a couple of logs and some kindling.

  But what if one of her Back Bay neighbors smells the wood smoke and asks her about it?

  So what? That’s not going to prove anything.

  Still…better to avoid the slightest chance of arousing suspicion.

  Tildy returns to the kitchen. This is her favorite room in the Victorian-era Commonwealth Avenue town house, which she’s spent three years renovating from top to bottom. She spared no expense, and barely put a dent in her trust fund, as she pointed out to Daddy when he mentioned that she’ll never get back out of the house what she’s put into it.

  “Who says I’m selling it?” she retorted.

  “You will when you meet someone and settle down.”

  “I am settled,” she informed him, neglecting to add that she’s already metsomeone .

  Pacing, she considers her next move—even as she appreciates the aesthetics of the recently completed room.

  The stunning floor is made of flat stone imported from Provence; the countertops are gray granite, the sleek new appliances stainless and black. The only splash of color in the monochromatic room is the bouquet of red tulips in a vase beside the stainless steel double sink.

  Tulips. Out of season, and as out of place in her cool modern decor as that loser Ray Wilmington is in her life. But he can’t seem to take a hint.

  “Did you get my flowers?” he asked this morning, showing up beside her desk at the nonprofit organization where they both work—Tildy, because it’s something to do and the minuscule salary is inconsequential; Ray, because he fervently believes in the cause.

  “Yes, I got them, thank you.” She offered a brief, closed-lip smile.

  “I saw those red tulips and of course I thought of you.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder why. She’s not Dutch, she never wears red, and, anyway, what business does he have thinking of her?

  Shenever thinks of him.

  That is, she neverthought of him until the flowers arrived.

  Well, she can fix that.

  With a haughty toss of her flaxen hair, she marches over to the counter, wraps a fist around the red petals, and pulls the flowers from their vase. Turning on the faucet and the garbage disposal, she feeds the tulips down the sink drain stem by stem, satisfied by the subterranean rumbling as they’re devoured.

  Then she grabs the vase—stock florist-shop glass, not even crystal—and deposits it into the empty rolling garbage bin concealed behind a white cabinet door. It makes a satisfying shattering sound as it smashes against the bottom.

  Perfect.

  Now that all reminders of Ray Wilmington have been obliterated from her house, she can focus again on the matter at hand.

  She turns the front burner of the gas stove onHIGH , producing a satisfying orange-blue flame. Then she takes wood-handled barbecue tongs from a drawer.

  She reaches into the pocket of her navy blazer, which, according to dorky Ray, exactly matches her eyes. Can’t argue with that.

  And she didn’t.

  Compliments, she’ll accept.

  She removes from her pocket the envelope she took out of her mailbox when she got home, and, after a moment’s thought, opens the flap. She wants to give the card a final once-over.

  It’s as generic as a greeting card can get: a cluster of primary-colored balloons against a white background beneath the words “Happy Birthday” in gold script.

  Inside, letters clipped from newspaper headlines spell out the words “TO ME,” and beneath that, “XOXOXOXO, R.”

  She signed everything that way.

  It stood for“Hugs and Kisses, Rachel.”

  Oh, hell…

  Tildy might have known this could happen—that the dark secret from her past could resurface someday.

  But when year after year went by, the memory of that night fading like a photo left out in the sun, she pushed the possibility from her mind with increasing ease.

  Okay, Rachel…So you’ve come back to haunt me.

  Well, guess what? I don’t get spooked that easily.

  The tongs steady in her hand, Tildy extends the card over the open flame and thoughtfully watches it burn.

  CHAPTER 2

  Just minutes ago, Brynn was lamenting the fact that Thursday is Garth’s late night on campus; he has a class until nine o’clock and often stays on campus for hours afterward, doing research in the library and his office there.

  A sociology professor whose concentration is the study of death and dying, he’s been working for a few years on a book. The den at home was littered with macabre research materials until recently. Brynn asked him to move it all to his campus office after she caught Caleb browsing through a gruesome book on the forensics of death.

  The downside of having Garth move most of his research away from home is that it takes him away, too.

  Too bad, Brynn was thinking just now, that her husband couldn’t be here to hear Caleb’s happy kindergarten chatter. As he plowed through his favorite meal of macaroni and cheese with ketchup, her older son regaled her with breathless details about snack time, potty time, lunchtime, nap time, construction-paper art time…

  Waiting to share a more adult meal with her husband later, Brynn sat with her children at the table in her pretty blue and yellow kitchen. She was multitasking as usual: listening to Caleb’s ongoing account of his first day, overseeing Jeremy in his booster seat, and opening the day’s mail.

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY…TO ME.

  XOXOXOXO, R

  She actually gasped aloud when she read it, dropping the card on the table like a red-hot coal. Then she snatched it up again…as if it mattered. Even if the boys could read cursive, they wouldn’t understand the seemingly innocuous message.

  Nor would Garth, if he stumbles across the card—which he won’t, because she plans to hide it, just as she’s hidden the dark truth about Rachel all these years.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Caleb asks as she reaches for the phone.

  She stammers some kind of reply, her thoughts reeling.

  Her hands shaking so badly she can barely hit the right buttons on the dial, she can only thinkthank God, thank God, thank God Garth isn’t here.

  Her husband doesn’t know what happened that night.

  Nobody knows.

  Nobody but her three sorority sisters who were there.

  Or so Brynn always tried to convince herself, despite the nagging memory of that twig snapping in the forest.

  Was somebody really spying on them?

  Did—does—somebody know?

  As Alec pulls into the parking lot of her condo complex after a quick dinner at Mama Rossi’s, Cassie cradles on her lap the still-warm foil-wrapped package that contains her barely touched lasagna.

  She’d have been content to leave it behind on the plate, but Alec insisted that she bring it back.

  “I’ll eat it later, baby,” he told her, “as a midnight snack.”

  Now she debates whether or not to tell him she’d rather be alone tonight. She could just come right out and say it—that she’s tired, and she has to be up early, and she’d rather he didn’t stay over.

  Then again, maybe she shouldn’t be alone. Maybe she’s too spooked by that card she got in the mail. Maybe she’d feel more comfortable with Alec there, just in case…

  Well, in case the bogeyman shows up.

  She smiles faintly, remembering how Marcus used to torment her with bogeyman tales when they were kids, still living at home.

  That was before they were both enrolled in fancy Connecticut boarding schools located well over an hour from their home in the city, and more than two hours from each other.

  She was eleven when her parents sent her away. After that, she saw them and her beloved big brother only on holiday breaks and the occasional long weekend.

  Summers were spent at sleepaway camp, which was fine with Cassie, actually. There were lots of horses at camp, and she would always rather ride than do anything else in the world.

  She still feels that way.

  “Alec,” she says abruptly, “I think you should sleep at your place tonight. I’ve got an early day tomorrow and…I’m just beat.”

  He’s silent for a moment, busy steering into a spot in front of her building. Then he says, “Okay, baby, no problem.”

  Her momentary relief that he didn’t argue is followed quickly by regret that he didn’t argue.

  If he did, she would relent.

  Because, looking up at the dark windows of her condo—she didn’t leave lights on; why didn’t she leave lights on?—she doesn’t want to venture inside alone.

  Just in case she finds that she isn’t. Alone, that is.

  “Do you want me to walk you in?” Alec asks, but he doesn’t shift the car intoPARK .

  He thinks I’m going to say no. He probably senses that I just need some solitude.

  Her fiancé likes to brag that he’s getting pretty good at reading her moods. “By the time we walk down the aisle, I’ll be able to read your mind,” he often says lately.

  But he isn’t reading it right now.

  If he was, he’d come inside with her, and he’d turn on all the lights and look under the bed and inside all the closets.

  Well, I don’t need him for that. I can take care of myself.

  “No, you can go,” Cassie tells him. “Thanks for dinner.”

  “See you tomorrow?”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “Friday,” he says, as if that’s all the answer she had in mind.

  Oh. Right. He said “see you tomorrow” not because it’s any special occasion, but because they see each other every day now.

  That’s what people do when they’re getting married. And after they’re married.

  They see each other every day for the rest of their lives.

  Till death do us part,Cassandra thinks, and suppresses an involuntary shudder as she plants a light kiss on her fiancé’s cheek and walks slowly up the path toward her darkened condo.

  And so it’s begun.

  I only wish I could be in four places at once tonight.

  Yes, it would be a pleasure to personally witness their reactions to the day’s mail—to see the looks on their faces now that they know the secret isn’t theirs alone.

  Listening to them is the next best thing.

  The bugs have been in place for a long time now, in anticipation of today.

  At first it was titillating to eavesdrop on even the most inane conversations: Fiona barking orders, Brynn reading to her children, Cassandra unenthusiastically planning her wedding, and Tildy…

  Ah, Tildy’s private life yielded the most interesting gem of all.

  Still, even that became tiresome after awhile.

  It was all just mind-numbing chatter.

  But not anymore.

  “Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations.”

  Brynn is momentarily caught off guard by the unfamiliar voice. She was expecting Fee’s longtime office manager. Then she remembers that Sharon moved away last week—thus “abandoning” Fiona, as Fee so dramatically put it.

  “Is…Is Fiona there?” she manages to get out to whoever just answered the phone.

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  She clears her throat, but her voice still comes out sounding strangled. “Tell her it’s Brynn.”

  “Brenda?”

  “Brynn!”

  “One moment.”

  She flashes a reassuring smile at her sons, both of whom have stopped eating and are watching her worriedly.

  “It’s okay, guys…Mommy just has to make a quick call, that’s all. I’ll be right with you.”

  “Ketchup!” Jeremy bangs the table with his fists.

  She is hurriedly squirting another dollop on his already oozing-red macaroni when the voice comes back on the line. “Ms. Fitzgerald said to take a message and she’ll call you back.”

  “The message is pick up the Godda—the gosh-darned phone right now!” Brynn says through clenched teeth.