The next morning Kayla sat with Lauren in her office. They sipped on their takeout coffee cups from the diner down the pier where Kayla worked. That’s how they met more than a year ago. Due to proximity and over a shared love of bad horror movies.

Kayla was on a break as they both were most days at this time when Lauren wasn’t out on the boat, which was most of the time in the winter. They both kicked back, using Lauren’s desk as a footrest.

“So . . .” Kayla stared at Lauren over the top of her cup.

Lauren knew from one syllable where the conversation was headed. She’d spent a good portion of the night thinking about him, listening to him breathe from the couch on the other side of the room and wishing Jake hadn’t shown up and killed the mood. “Nope.”

“Hey!” Kayla banged her heel against the desk. “You and Garrett. Talk.”

“Still no.”

“I knew about the trips down here, but yesterday when you needed someone to handle Carl, you texted Garrett.” Lauren wiggled her eyebrows. “That seems big.”

Very, but Lauren refused to admit that.

She sat up, letting her feet fall to the floor. “We aren’t going to become those women who only talk about men, are we?”

“Couldn’t we be them just long enough for you to give me the scoop on what happened in the inn?”

The pleading in Kayla’s voice made Lauren laugh. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“I can’t believe Garrett let a solid opportunity pass him by. He seems like he’d be smooth. Good with his hands, if you know what I mean.”

Oh, she definitely did.

“His skills are fine. Trust me.” When Kayla started to say something, Lauren cut her off. “And that’s all you get for now.”

“You are so infuriating.”

“But you love me.”

Kayla drained the rest of her cup before setting it down on the edge of the desk. “Unconditionally.”

And she meant it. With so much of Lauren’s life revolving around chance and problems, Kayla was the one person she could count on. They talked. They hung out. They shared meals. They gossiped about the other people who worked on the pier and complained about the customers and the quirks that worked on their nerves.

Not that long ago one of Lauren’s big-money sailing-lesson clients had turned out to be someone other than who he pretended to be and tried to kill both Kayla and Garrett. The guilt from that day kept Lauren paralyzed for weeks. Neither of them had blamed her, so she’d decided to blame herself in their place.

“We should . . .” The rest of the sentence, whatever it was, disappeared from Lauren’s head as soon as the words trailed off. The figure in the doorway had her sputtering as she tried to remember anything other than Carl’s deceit.

“May I come in? Just for a minute.”

At the sound of the woman’s soft voice, Kayla dropped her feet to the floor and spun around to face the door.

Now they were all staring at each other. Lauren had wondered what she’d do when or if she ever met the woman Carl had run off with. Now she knew. She’d shut down, afraid that talking might lead to babbling. Her head would pound and the whole world would close in on her until every sound became muffled.

She used the silence to study the woman Carl had found so enticing. The one who helped him commit fraud and take a wrecking ball to her life. Lauren had seen photos. After all, when Carl disappeared, so did Maryanne. Her family and friends had grieved. Now she stood there, five-six or so and petite. Brown hair and brown eyes. Pretty in her oversized Nordic print sweater and down vest.

She also looked terrified. Her gaze darted around the room and wariness showed in every inch of her face. She was younger—of course. She’d been twenty-four when they’d taken off for their pretend drowning. Lauren could only hope the other woman was wiser now.

“Maryanne, this is my friend Kayla.”

Kayla’s eyes bulged as she stood up. “Whoa.”

“Wait.” Maryanne held up her hands as if in mock surrender. “I’m not here to fight. I swear.”

Lauren was pretty sure she was the one with the right to kick and scream, but okay. “Come in.”

She stood up then couldn’t remember why she’d done that and immediately sank back down in her chair again. With her fingers wrapped around the armrests, she waited for the anger to hit. Maryanne had walked away without debt. Even her college loans had been paid off by Carl.

Maryanne also got Carl . . . though Lauren wasn’t completely sure the other woman had won on that score.

“What are you doing here?” Lauren had a thousand questions but that seemed like a good place to start.

“I’m sorry,” Maryanne blurted out.

Lauren could see Maryanne drag in a long breath. Tears filled her eyes but she blinked them away. The woman rubbed her hands together until her skin turned red. Then it hit Lauren . . . Maryanne might actually have loved Carl. He’d run away with her and come back yesterday professing to be home. Lauren had no idea what happened in between but she guessed it hadn’t been great for Maryanne. It’s not as if Carl changed into a better man while he was gone. His visit to her proved that.

“For what?” Kayla asked the question with a bit of an edge.

Maryanne flinched but didn’t come out fighting or run away. Lauren reluctantly admired that sort of spirit. She’d spent a lot of time hating this woman she only knew in photos. Now that Maryanne stood there, looking like she was held together with little more than rubber bands and spit, looming on the verge of breaking down, Lauren couldn’t muster any anger.

“I didn’t know.” Maryanne swallowed, and when she spoke again her voice was louder. “He told me you were separated. When we started dating, I mean.”

“Did he also tell you he planned to fake his death or did he spring that on you once you were out on the water?” Kayla asked.

Lauren didn’t jump in and fix this for Maryanne. She’d made her decisions, including the one to walk into the office. Tears or not, she’d helped turn Lauren’s life upside down and Lauren was not ready to forgive that.

Maryanne nodded. “I thought we were running away together. Then, once we were out on the water, he talked about the money and how he wanted out from under the debt. He said . . .”

“What?” Lauren hated to ask but the not knowing would kill her.

“He said you ran up bills he had no ability to pay and . . . honestly, he never said a good thing about you.”

“To his mistress?” Kayla snorted. “Go figure.”

“I didn’t know he was lying.”

Lauren decided not to remind Maryanne about his big lie, the one about dying. She leaned forward with her elbows on the desk and silently begged the wrenching in her stomach to stop. “What happened once you were away from here, Maryanne?”

“At first it was great.” She blew out a shaky breath. “Then he got . . . weird. Mean.”

Lauren knew the real answer. “When the money ran out.”

She knew how his mind worked. Money translated to calm for him. When the amount he stole from the business and their accounts was gone, he would have become accusatory and shitty. That described most of her life with him during the last few years of their marriage.

Kayla’s eyes narrowed. “You came back with him. So did you think you were going to tell some wild story about being lost and then start over here?”

Maryanne winced. “He disappeared three weeks ago.”

“Weeks?” Kayla looked at Lauren. “Where has he been for all that time?”

“In hiding? I don’t know but it’s a good question.”

Maryanne’s words came rushing back to Lauren. “You said ‘disappeared.’ You mean he left you behind?”

“In the Bahamas. Without a penny.” Maryanne glanced down before facing Lauren again. “It took me some time to figure out . . . you know. That he wasn’t coming back. Then I had to get the money together . . . He took the bit I had saved while waitressing there.”

Kayla whistled. “Man, he was a jackass.”

“What happened to him once he got back here? I read this morning . . . Then the police came to see me . . .”

The woman liked to talk in sentence fragments. Lauren chalked it up to Maryanne’s strained emotional state. She got it. She had been the same way when Carl first left. Seeing his body on the floor yesterday had sent a renewed shot of anguish through her but it vanished as soon as it came.

The guilt, the confusion—they would always be with her. The love died long ago, along with the trust.

“Someone killed him.” Despite everything, it still hurt Lauren to say the words.

Maryanne continued to hover by the door. She’d stepped inside but not far. “He died in your house.”

Kayla shook her head. “It wasn’t her, if that’s what you’re trying not to ask.”

“It really wasn’t.” Lauren’s heart raced. It was as if the anxiety built up inside her whenever she thought about Carl and what happened and their messed-up life together. Then it spilled out over everything.

“What about Bob?” Maryanne didn’t clarify the question.

Bob Andrews, Carl’s silent business partner. Silent even to her when they first launched the business. Another one of Carl’s secrets that he’d justified as a necessary business decision. Despite her protests, Bob also acted as their financial planner. He was the one who was supposed to be watching over the business and family investments and debts. The first one who showed up on Lauren’s doorstep with his hand out, asking for a loan repayment after Carl disappeared.

Lauren couldn’t think about Bob, one of Carl’s oldest friends, without getting hit with a rage-induced headache. She’d never liked him. He was too slick. Talked too big. He’d always struck her as a blowhard. She and Carl had so many fights over Bob. “What about him?”

“Bob knew.” Maryanne looked from Kayla to Lauren. “About Carl’s plans to leave. At least that’s what Carl said. He owed Bob and Jake money because of . . . you. Well, that’s what he said. With him dead, they were supposed to be able to collect on a separate business insurance policy Bob took out on Carl as part of them being partners or something.”

A wave of dizziness hit Lauren. She was grateful she was sitting down. It was also a good thing she hadn’t eaten anything today because if she had she might just lose it.

So much deception. So many lies. It was as if every man she knew thrived on messing with her. All but Garrett.

She ran through the other information Maryanne had dropped. Bob was Carl’s original silent business partner. The same guy who tried to collect on an insurance policy and called in the loans on the business, plunging her deeper into debt after Carl first left. Lauren hadn’t seen him or heard anything about him in more than a year. That wasn’t nearly long enough for her taste. He was smarmy and a liar . . . and apparently so was Jake.

“Why are you really here, Maryanne?” Lauren still didn’t get that part. If the plan was to hurt her, it wasn’t working. She just didn’t feel enough for Carl for that to happen. That lingering sense of nostalgia for the past and sadness for what happened to him was all she could muster. Those were enough to push her to want to solve his murder, but that’s all she owed him now.

“I just needed . . .” Maryanne inhaled again, looking paler by the second. “I think I needed to see you. To take some sort of responsibility for hurting you.”

Kayla frowned. “Have you done that yet?”

“Kayla.” Lauren sent her friend the warning before looking at the younger woman again. They both knew what it was like to be screwed by Carl, though she doubted Maryanne understood the depth of the deception and how much Carl had used her when he swept her away on that boat and pretended to disappear. “Have you talked with the police about Bob?”

Maryanne shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Do it.” Lauren swallowed back the hard lump clogging her throat. “If you really want to do something for me, do that.”

Maryanne hesitated a few seconds then practically ran out of the office. The second the younger woman left, all of the energy ran out of Lauren. She slumped back in her chair as her muscles shook.

Concern filled Kayla’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

“You don’t feel sorry for her, do you?”

Damn but she did. A little anyway. “Don’t you?”