“Did Shelly seem like a raging psycho when you fucked her?” I asked Malcolm, watching him closely over the rim of my beer mug.

He stared down at the table for a second, his hands braced against it as his brow furrowed. Then he let out a long breath. “Shelly is a raging psycho, man. This much you already know.”

I did know. I just wanted to know more. “But when you fucked her, what was that like?” I’d always wanted to know, ever since the day I walked in on them.

“I know they look alike, man,” Malcolm started, “but they’re not.”

“I know they’re not.” I did know, although looking at Shelly was like looking into a mirror with Lynn standing on the other side.

“You thought it was Lynn that day, when we walked out of my room,” he said quietly.

“Only for a minute. Then I realized.”

“Man, I never felt so guilty in my life,” he admitted. He scrubbed his hand across his forehead. “At first, I thought Lynn was playing a trick on me. Then Shelly started to talk, and I knew she wasn’t Lynn. Those two are nothing alike.”

“What happened?” I asked. “You never really said.”

“I felt too fucking guilty. I should have stayed out of your shit.”

“So, you were at that party…” I began. I rolled my hand, prompting him to continue.

“Yeah.” He coughed into his fist. “We were all at the party, and I had just seen you and Lynn out in the living room. I went to the bathroom, and suddenly the door opened and Shelly slipped in with me. I put my junk away fast and tried to laugh it off, but she didn’t seem to care.”

“Did she say anything?”

He looked uncomfortable. “No.”

“But…” I raised my brows at him.

“She just jumped on me, man. She climbed me like I was a tree, her tongue in my mouth and—”

“And you still thought she was Lynn.”

He nodded. “For a second, I did. But it was weird. They looked so much alike. But I had just seen Lynn in the living room and she was wearing a red turtleneck. Shelly had on a pink sweater with white lace at the neck. I remember because it scratched my skin.”

“What happened next?”

“I shoved her away from me, and asked her what she was doing. I said, ‘God, Lynn, what the fuck?’ but she laughed. When Shelly spoke, she had a Southern accent, and I knew Lynn didn’t have one. It was bizarre.”

I said nothing.

“She told me she wasn’t Lynn and I said, ‘Yeah, right,’ and I tried to laugh it off, but she laughed louder. She nodded toward the living room. ‘Go look,’ she said. ‘Go talk to Lynn. Ask her about me. She’ll tell you. Then I want to fuck you.’ Dude, I had to go look. But you weren’t in the living room. I walked around the house trying to find you and Lynn, and then I found you on the sun deck. Lynn was wearing red, just like I remembered, and she was sitting in your lap and you were snuggled all up with her and everything. I called her name, and when Lynn looked up, in Lynn’s eyes I didn’t see any of the darkness I’d seen in Shelly’s. That right there should have been enough to make me stay away from her.” He snorted. “But it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough.”

“Then you went back to the bathroom?”

He nodded. “She was gone, though. I should have been glad. I was so weirded out by it that I went to my room. When I got there, Shelly was naked in my bed.”

“How did that make you feel?” I was a psychiatrist. I couldn’t help it.

“It was like looking at Lynn, but then it wasn’t, at the same time.” He heaved out a breath. “Regardless, it was a mistake. I should have walked right back out.”

“What happened?”

“She fucked the hell out of me. Best sex of my fucking life, man.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But after… You know those spiders that devour their mates after sex? I felt like that.”

“Like she was going to eat you?”

He snorted. “Like she was done with me and had no more need for me to exist. At. All. Like, ever.”

“Did it happen again after that time?”

He stared into his beer.

“It did, didn’t it?” I let out a noise that was somewhere between a bark and a grunt.

“I went back for seconds. And thirds. And a few more times when she needed something.”

“Like what? What did she need?”

“A way to get close to you,” he admitted.

I sat up straight.

“Right after that, I don’t know what happened but Lynn refused to talk to her anymore. So Shelly wanted to put herself in Lynn’s path—and yours, for that matter. So she would call me up when she wanted to go to a party or something. Sex was my payment.”

“Was it worth it?”

He knocked his knuckles on the table. “Man, if I had it to do all over again, I would have stayed far away from that pussy.”

I shook my head. “It’s all right. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“It’s not all right. Because that pussy is crazy.” His eyes suddenly grew wide as he stared over my shoulder. “Fuck,” he swore under his breath and closed his eyes. He squeezed them shut tightly, and then opened them and looked beyond me again. I refused to turn around, because I already knew who was there. “Shelly,” Malcolm said, just as a cloud of sweet-smelling perfume enveloped me. Then a pair of arms did the same.

“Hey, handsome,” Shelly said, her lips close to my ear. Her breath smelled like spearmint.

Shelly’s arms twined around my neck as her breasts pressed against my back. I grabbed her wrists and lifted her arms over my head, turning to face her. She pursed her lips and tilted her head at me. “Someone’s in a bad mood.” She pretended to pout.

Shelly was still wearing the brightly colored scarf and tan raincoat I’d seen earlier. She unwound the scarf from around her neck, then laid it on the table. “This is Lynn’s,” I said. I picked it up and ran the silky fabric through my fingers. I’d bought it for Lynn last Christmas.

“Yep,” she said, popping her lips on the end of the word. “Aren’t you going to invite me to join you?”

“No,” Malcolm muttered.

“Sure,” I said a little louder than Malcolm. I kicked a chair away from me, so Shelly could sit in it.

She covered my hand with hers and gave it a squeeze. “How have you been?”

“Fine.” I gently but forcefully pulled my hand back. If I showed any weakness around Shelly, she would pounce on me like that spider Malcolm had just mentioned. “You?”

“If I was any better, I’d have to be twins,” she said. “Wouldn’t be able to stand it, otherwise.” She turned to face Malcolm. “It’s been a long time,” she said. Then she took his beer and drank a sip of it.

“Not long enough,” Malcolm said calmly. He motioned to the waitress for another drink.

“So, what’s new?” Shelly asked. She kicked her feet like a happy kid at a party.

“Where is she?” I asked calmly, modulating my voice, although inside I felt like I was about to blow apart.

“Who?” She lifted Malcolm’s beer to her lips again.

“You’re such a fucking cu—” Malcolm began, but I kicked his shin. He bit back the rest of it.

She turned her gaze on him. “How have you been, Malcolm?” she asked. Her eyes roamed up and down his body as she licked her lips. Even I felt violated. He ground his teeth and said nothing.

“What do you want, Shelly?” I drummed my thumb on the table, my hand flat. It was a technique I often used with patients, so I could knock them off center. If they were concentrating on my hands, they sometimes couldn’t concentrate enough to lie effectively.

She rested her elbow on the table, set her chin on it, and blinked her blue eyes at me. “What makes you think I want anything?”

“Because you always want something,” Malcolm murmured.

“At one point, I wanted you,” she said, giving him the brilliance of her silky smile. “And yet you still have such animosity toward me. I just don’t understand it.”

“Said the spider,” Malcolm replied.

“Where is she?” I asked again. I tried to remain calm and keep the desperation out of my voice.

She gave a single bob of her head. “She’s safe.” A single nod. That’s all I got.

“Where?” I continued to drum my thumb on the table.

She rolled her eyes. “At my apartment. Where else?”

I knew Lynn’s friends often went to Shelly’s apartment. Ash stored her bag there when she didn’t want to carry it around. And they all stored their credit cards, provided by Shelly, of course, and their personal stuff. Jamie would leave her tool belt there. And Charlie would leave her combat boots, when she wasn’t wearing them. It was kind of their hub. But Shelly’s apartment changed locations like I changed my underwear. I never knew where it was. No one ever told me, under strict orders from Shelly.

“Is she all right?”

“Define all right.” She narrowed her eyes at me, her chin still resting in her upturned palm.

I was getting nowhere with her quantifying every question. “When is she coming home?”

“She’s sorting through some things in her head.” She shrugged.

“What kinds of things?”

“Not my story to tell,” she sang out. She lifted her hand to roll her pearls between her fingers. It was a habit of hers.

“Where did you get those pearls?” I asked, out of the blue. I don’t know why I’d never thought to ask before. I’d never seen Shelly without them.

“From our grandmother. The woman who raised me.”

“The one in Georgia.”

“The one and the same.” She sat back, letting her hand fall to the table.

“What was she like?” Lynn hadn’t ever gone to see her, or at least not that I knew of, so I didn’t know anything about her.

“Well, she raised a psychopath,” Shelly said.

“Takes one to know one,” Malcolm replied.

Shelly narrowed her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. If I didn’t know her better, I’d have said it was adorable. That was mainly because she looked so much like Lynn when she did it. But she wasn’t Lynn. She was Shelly. She was not my wife.

“You’re referring to your father,” I said.

“Yes.” A shade fell across her eyes, and I was almost immediately blinded by the truth. She’d been hurt by him too.

“In what ways is he a psychopath?”

She tsked. “You’ve seen the scars, Mason. You know what he’s capable of.”

“I’ve seen Lynn’s scars. I’ve never seen yours.” I leaned toward her. “Where are they?”

“On my soul,” she whispered dramatically.

Her phone chimed in her pocket and she pulled it out, frowning as she responded. “Got to go,” she sang out.

“Wait.” I sat forward. She couldn’t leave yet.

She heaved another sigh. “What, Mason? Hurry up. I’m needed elsewhere.”

“Is she all right?”

She bobbed her head from side to side, pretending to think about it. “Yes and no.”

“What’s wrong? Does she need me?”

“Mason,” she tsked again, “if you were what she needed, she’d be with you right now.”

“She’s not hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Did I do something?”

She stared hard at me. “Yes.”

“What was it?”

“Think hard, Mason. It’ll come to you.” Her phone chimed again. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered as she responded to someone. She finally looked up. “I can’t leave Ash alone for a second. Always getting into one scrape or another.”

Alarm shot through me. “What has she done?”

“She’s about to be locked up.” She put her coat on and wound Lynn’s scarf around her neck.

“Why?”

“Who knows?” She turned to leave, tossing the words “Ta-ta” over her shoulder like confetti.

“It’s going to be all right,” Malcom said, trying to placate me.

I jerked my thumb toward the door where Shelly had just left. “With that bitch in charge?” I asked. “Nothing is all right. I need my wife back. Now.”

“Dude,” Malcolm said, “the first time you ever saw Ash, what did you think of her?”

I’d met Ash right after I met Jamie. She blasted into my life like a bomb going off. And that bomb was still going off, every time she stepped back into my life.