Maureen lit up, drawing the smoke in deeply as she waved out the match. “Where was Robert?”
“I don’t know.”
“With that Tallericco woman? Your lawyer?”
“She wasn’t my lawyer, she just helped me with the adoption,” Shannon said and experienced a small shock as she connected the dots. She’d used the San Francisco law firm of Black, Rosen and Tallericco when giving her baby up for adoption and Cynthia Tallericco, a full partner at the time, had taken an interest in her case. Though an associate had helped her through most of the paperwork Cynthia had consulted and consoled her.
Now, twice divorced, and no longer with the firm, Cynthia had moved to Santa Lucia and somehow connected with Robert. Their affair had been running white-hot for three or four months, and Robert had moved out of the home he’d shared with Mary Beth and the kids less than six weeks earlier.
And now Robert’s wife was dead, killed in a fire, and the daughter Shannon had given up—through the law offices that Cynthia Tallericco had worked for—was missing. What were the chances of that being a coincidence?
The doorbell rang and Maureen visibly started. “More good news?” She took a final puff, turned on the tap to douse her cigarette, then tossed the wet butt into the trash under the sink. As the bell pealed again, she maneuvered spryly through the long hallway, where the walls were covered with framed pictures of her children, to the front foyer.
Shannon expected to find Travis on the other side of the wooden panels, but instead her brother Oliver’s face peered through one of the three small panes of glass that ran across the top of the door.
“Thank goodness,” Maureen declared as she unlocked the door again. As soon as Oliver was inside, she fell to pieces. “You heard?” Maureen asked, tears raining from her eyes. “About the fire and Mary Beth?”
“Aaron called and left a message.” Oliver managed a thin, patient smile without a trace of warmth. He glanced at his sister and something odd danced in his eyes for just a second, something out of place. He wrapped a comforting arm around his mother’s slim, now shaking shoulders. “I came as soon as I could.”
“Thank you.”
“Why don’t we pray together?”
“Yes.”
“Shannon?” He looked at her expectantly.
Shannon couldn’t imagine kneeling on the old carpet in the living room while Oliver stood over them and prayed. It felt wrong, just as his embrace of the church had. He’d always had a religious bent—she’d known that—but after the fire that had taken Ryan’s life, and after losing his twin, Oliver had been sent to a psychiatric hospital, a broken man. He’d come out quoting scripture and talking about his calling, and even suggesting that he communed with God. Shannon had never gotten used to it. While everyone else in the family seemed to go along with Oliver’s new religious intensity, she’d thought it was just plain weird.
Her brother Aaron’s assertion that Oliver’s fervor was “because of Neville—he misses his twin,” hadn’t offered a complete explanation, in Shannon’s opinion. “Those two, they were like half of a whole,” Aaron reminded her. “Then Neville disappears and Ollie, he can’t function, at least not right.”
“Do you think he knows what happened to Neville?” Shannon had asked.
Aaron just shrugged. “Doubt it.” He’d shaken his head. “It’s the damnedest thing.”
On that, Shannon had agreed. She’d wondered if Neville had run off, like Brendan, or had an accident while out hunting or had been killed. It was so weird. Neville was just…gone. The press and the DA had been convinced that Neville had helped Shannon plot her husband’s murder. That together they’d found a way to drug Ryan, haul him out to the woods and set the fire that was supposed to cremate him and destroy all evidence of murder. But they’d been sloppy, hadn’t understood about modern forensics, had screwed up.
Neville, the theory continued, disappeared so that he wouldn’t have to testify against his sister, nor incriminate himself.
But it was all conjecture.
Never proven.
And a pile of garbage.
But something had happened. Something Shannon didn’t understand. And whatever it was had eaten at Oliver until he’d snapped and somehow started conversations with God.
“I’d better go,” she said now to her mother, wondering at the stranger her younger brother had become.
“Is the man outside waiting for you?” Oliver asked.
“What man?” Maureen turned to Shannon, who sent Oliver a look guaranteed to crucify him.
“I had to get a ride over here. I was at the fire and my truck got blocked in.”
“So why didn’t you invite him in? Who is he?” Maureen wanted to know.
“His name is Travis Settler. It’s complicated and really, really late.”