My sister’s eyes met mine, and there was a shadow in them.

A shadow that made my stomach drop.

“You know something,” I said and, yes, there was accusation in my tone, but she was my sister. And if she knew something but hadn’t said—

“I don’t know anything.” Kelly winced. “Okay, there was a rumor, but that was it. I heard it once and never again.” She shrugged, bit her lip. “I just assumed it was small-town gossip at its best.”

Damn.

I slumped back against the console table in the hall, the one that Rocco always managed to knock over. Probably because two of the legs were wobbly, I remembered . . . right before I almost went ass over teakettle two feet from the front door.

“Easy,” Kel said, in that calming voice of hers. The one that made even the most rambunctious of horses settle. “Everything is—”

“It’s not small-town life. Not—” I broke off. “Not after everything I’ve heard and seen.”

Red lipstick on his collar.

She’s not important.

My kids are.

“What did you hear? What have you seen?” Steel in that tone now, and while I appreciated the layer of I’m-gonna-cut-a-bitch, there I was again, sharing too much information. Unfairly influencing.

“Anyway,” I said. “He hasn’t come out explicitly and confirmed anything, but he’s not here. He says he’s on a case, but he doesn’t respond to my messages, doesn’t pick up when I call.” I sighed, deciding to just let it all come out. The damage was already done. “He has another phone with text messages from a woman named Celeste. Add in bright red lipstick on his collar . . .”

A bright red that didn’t match my skin tone, but that wasn’t exactly the point now, was it?

“Celeste McDermot?”

My eyes flashed up. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

“Because last I heard there was a Celeste at the station. A transfer from Denver who was looking to get her teeth into some real case work.”

I frowned. “What kind of case work is there in Darlington? Stolen cows? A run-over mailbox?”

Kel shrugged. “I haven’t heard anything else. Maybe she was on desk duty or something in Denver and wanted to actually patrol, or something.”

“Well, I don’t think patrolling involves calling my husband baby, do you?”

“No,” Kel said. “It doesn’t.”

We fell silent.

I opened my mouth, to say what, I really had no idea. I’d felt this way since I saw the first text, as though the foundation of my life had been shaken off its piers.

And I guess that wasn’t surprising.

My life and Rob’s had been intertwined forever . . . or, well, since grade school.

He’d been there through my mother’s various abandonments—when she would take our money and disappear to gamble it away. I’d gotten smarter as time went on, trying to hide the cash I’d earned from odd jobs, from my shifts at the diner in little caches throughout the house.

But she’d always found them.

And when nineteen-year-old Rob had let me hide it at his apartment, tucked in a shoebox under his bed, my mother had cleaned out Kelly’s bank account.

Classy, she was.

It had been a while now, thankfully, since I had seen or heard from her. My mother may be dead, for all I knew.

How horrible of a person did that make me for not caring what had happened to her?

I should have compassion for a troubled woman, abandoned by a deadbeat husband, two mouths to feed, and no money.

Except, I remembered.

I remembered her turning the donations away, not caring to accept food for us and only wanting cash. I remembered coming home to find the house torn to shreds because she’d been searching for more money.

I remembered my stomach growling and trying to stretch food so that Kel wouldn’t be hungry.

I remembered having to figure out how to pay bills, taking cash directly to the power company and the city offices just so we’d have electricity and water.

I remembered mowing every lawn in our neighborhood, delivering the paper, babysitting, working at the diner.

I remembered it all.

But most of all, the hardest, most piercing memory of that time is me trying every single damned thing I could do to make her love us.

It hadn’t worked.

And now, I guess, I had a husband who felt the same way.

Kel hugged me tight. “I love you, you know that, right?”

I sniffed, nodded. “Yup.” I forced a laugh. “And you’re not so bad yourself.”

She pulled back, cupped my cheek. “I need to get out there.”

“Go,” I said and opened the door. “Take care of them. Don’t worry about me.”

Kel squeezed my hand as she passed. “Someone has to.”