Her Secret Life

He’d needed to hear hers, too.

Not sure where that left him, he hung up and went to work.

* * *

THE WEEK PASSED in a near blur for Kacey. Without the inducement of alcohol. She hadn’t touched so much as a glass of wine or a sleeping pill. She needed her mind clear. Aware. Mistrusting everyone around her was not her nature.

&

nbsp; It wasn’t that she normally thought everyone had her back. That wasn’t the case at all. But she took most people for good and figured they were all on the crazy ride of life together. Just sitting in different cars.

Work saved her, as she’d known it would.

And talking to her family and Michael every night.

She’d met with a Beverly Hills detective. He’d assured her that there was nothing they could see that should make her afraid to live her normal life. They didn’t yet have a connection between the attack on the beach and whoever was posting pictures of her, but they were working with the FBI and Santa Raquel police to get more extensive warrants for Michael and to ensure a thorough exchange of information between departments would continue—at least until her attackers were caught.

Their canvass of the high school didn’t yield results. No one recognized the kids from her descriptions. She wasn’t even sure when she got to town Thursday night and saw a poster that she recognized them. It had been dark on the beach. She’d been frantic at the time and clearly distraught when she talked to the police at the hospital.

There’d been no semen. They’d taken a swab from her breast where the one kid had had his mouth, but, again, there’d been no match.

No beach parking lot surveillance cameras showed anything.

The teens had mysteriously appeared on the beach, and just as inexplicably disappeared.

Though she’d been told she could take as much time off from the Lemonade Stand as she needed, by Thursday, when Steve called “Cut” for the last time that week, she knew that she was going back to Santa Raquel. She’d already packed the Mustang with the things she needed for the weekend.

Her meeting with Bloom Freelander had opened that door. When she’d heard about Bloom’s own fight to not give up on the peace and love that Santa Raquel offered, just because a jerk (or in Kacey’s case, three) lived there, she’d known that her vow not to return was not healthy.

They touched you, Kacey. They saw your breasts. They held you down and took intimacies. But they didn’t take you. Unless you let them. Are you going to give them your joy? Your love for the beach? Do you want their violation to color the memories you’ve made with your nephew in the sand? To steal any future family times in your sister’s home?

There’d been more. And would be more.

She was meeting with Dr. Freelander again on Saturday morning while Lacey and Jem took Levi to T-ball practice.

But first, the real test. She had to get in her car, drive it to the freeway and take the road to Santa Raquel. To take herself back and not let everything she saw, felt, did, remembered be colored by a few horrible, violent moments on the beach.

Calling Lacey to let her sister know she was on her way, she pulled out of the parking lot. They chatted for a while, mostly about a job Jem was working on and the alphabet writing exercise Levi had brought home from school. Lacey had talked to their mom earlier in the day and told Kacey that their folks had wanted to come up again, but that she’d convinced her mom that the houseboat party they’d been invited to was a once-in-a-lifetime thing and they should go.

She described their father’s attempt to fix the back railing on their porch—and how their mother had arranged to have someone come in and take care of it while they were away. By the time Kacey was on the highway to Santa Raquel, she’d actually smiled twice. For real.

And understood that her sister was going to talk her home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MIKE WAS HOME with Willie when Kacey texted.

He almost didn’t recognize his brother with his hair cut short and back to its natural blond. He’d just brought pizza home to celebrate Willie’s second successful week of probationary school and straight A’s.

He glanced at his phone.

I’m in town. Can I see you tonight?

He had to go. Knew he should tell her no but couldn’t.

“Hey, bud, that was...a situation. I have to go out for a bit. You going to be okay here?”

Willie stared in the direction of Michael’s hands, which were resting on the table. “You mean, can you trust me not to do something stupid?”