Monday, July 26. 11:51 a.m. Kelburn, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

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“I wonder how Joel and Maggie are doing today.”

Ana had run out of conversation topics, as each one she tried since they’d started out on the road that morning had fizzled within a few exchanges. The openness in Daniel’s face had closed into a bland expression of genial disinterest and the gulf between them widened with every step.

But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? She didn’t want to hurt him, but she certainly didn’t want to encourage him. Like having outrageously good sex all night hadn’t already encouraged the hell out of him.

“I’m sure they’re doing okay.”

Since the initial flurry of texts, cell phone coverage was spotty at best. Ana had been turning her phone on and off to check for messages. She’d found a couple more from Nadia reassuring her they were okay, but radio silence from Theo. Knowing her son, he’d forgotten to charge up his phone before he went to school and it was subsequently dead as a dodo. She tried—tried—not to worry about it.

The silence stretched between them like strands of toffee, hot and sticky, burning as it touched them both.

Daniel shoved his fists deep into his jean pockets. “Joel’s a character.”

Ana was absurdly grateful for his effort in keeping their stilted conversation going.

“He’s a hard case and a really good guy. He and Lucy helped me through a rough patch after Neil died. Theo hasn’t had many male role models in his life, so I’m so grateful to Joel for taking him under his wing. My dad’s been wonderful, too, though he’s been so distracted lately he hasn’t spent as much time with Theo.” Her voice drifted away as she became aware she was babbling like a fool. Again.

“Distracted? How’s he been distracted?”

She detected a note of tension in his voice.

“I think he’s infatuated with a lovely widow that’s joined his bridge club. It’s all he talks about.”

“Mmm. Yeah, that would be distracting.”

“That’s not what your tone inferred. What’re you getting at?”

“Something Mrs. Wilcox told me the other night.”

Her footsteps, which only a moment ago had created harmonizing slaps with his as they strode side by side, stuttered out of time. Great. What stories had the old lady been spinning?

“Oh?”

“She said that your dad was worried and upset the last time she spoke to him. He thought someone had been spying on him, and he was afraid that this someone might go on to harm you.”

They stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the road, avoiding a shallow zigzagging trench that split through the center of the street.

Her lips arced down. “He never mentioned anything. It’s been all Gladys this, and Gladys said that.”

“But could your dad be right? Is there anyone who’d have a grudge against him?”

“My dad? No. He’s sixty-five and lives alone. He plays indoor bowls with other old guys at the club twice a week and hosts a monthly game of bridge. He’s a complete teddy bear of a man.”

“That’s not answering my question.”

“I know. Lawyers are taught answer-evasion skills.”

He flashed her that dimple-bracketed smile. “I gathered that. Another thing we’ll have to work on.”

The temptation was to correct him, to tell him loud and clear that there was no we, but something stilled her tongue. She just wanted to enjoy the brief moment of his smile lighting up his summer-sky eyes, and couldn’t stand to be the one to turn them chilly and dull again.

“So you can’t think of anyone who’d be watching your dad?” he said. “No unpaid fines or gambling debts? Money owed to a loan shark? Nothing he’s ever done to make someone hate him?”

She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. And out of the two of us, I’m more likely to have a stalker than dad. My former life as a defense lawyer didn’t endear me to clients who lost their cases or the families of some of the victims.” She walked a little faster, trying to outrun the heavy pit sinking in her stomach. “But that’s preposterous, too. People hating me was par for the course. It wasn’t a personal kind of hate, not like…”

Not like with Dad and that woman. The words bounced around her skull like ball bearings, knocking her back in time to her childhood when two police officers had arrived on the doorstep of her family home. Shame and hurt blistered through the memory, and the distress must have been apparent on her face, as Daniel guided her to a nearby bus stop bench.

She shucked off her bag, sighing as the dragging weight lifted from her shoulders. “I’ve never told anyone this, not even Neil. I haven’t even thought of it for years, but I want to tell you.”

So you’ll understand, she thought, worrying a hangnail on her thumb. So you’ll understand why there can never be a ‘we.’

It’d carve a chunk out of her heart now to see him walk away. She only hoped he’d walk away without despising her for allowing them both to believe for a moment that there was a chance. When really, there was no chance for them at all.

They sat together, his long thigh pressed against hers, the warmth and pressure encouraging her without words. Her feet didn’t reach the concrete below, and she crossed her ankles, feeling child sized, but not at all like the confident, carefree child she’d once been.

“You can tell me anything.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence, a more comfortable silence than before, while she gathered her scattered thoughts. Across the road in a front yard encircled by a wild hedge of roses, a large group of people lounged on mismatched deck chairs. Someone had fired up a barbecue and the tempting savory aroma of sausages drifted in the breeze.

The indomitable Kiwi spirit in action, she thought, attempting to distract from the pain she knew would come with dredging up old memories.

Finally she spoke. “You asked me earlier why I gave up criminal law, but not why I chose it in the first place.”

He nodded.

So she told him how, when she was eleven, she’d been home sick from school one day. The doorbell had rung at around eleven in the morning and the stern, serious voices of the visitors had drawn her out of her bed. She’d peeped around the hallway corner and seen two uniformed policemen, and listened as one asked her mother, Lily, if she knew the whereabouts of her husband. It was then her mother spotted her and ordered her back to her bedroom, but Ana had dragged her feet hesitantly up the stairs, desperate to know why two policemen were asking after her dad.

“Mum came up after they’d gone and told me not to worry. She said it was probably a speeding ticket and I believed her. Why wouldn’t I? My dad was perfect. A couple of hours later the phone rang and I heard her answer it in her bedroom next door.”

Ana reached for Daniel’s hand, anchoring herself to something solid while pain exploded to the surface. She would never forget the sound of her mum’s one heart-rending sob and the choked words Ana could hear even through the walls.

“What do you mean they’ve arrested you? For what?”

Then her fateful decision to pick up the phone on her nightstand and eavesdrop on a conversation she was never meant to overhear.

“I never meant for you to find out this way.” Dad’s voice seemed to be coming from far away, as if he spoke from the end of a long, dark tunnel. She listened, one hand clamped over her mouth to keep silent, as her father croaked out his confession.

He’d flown to a conference in Auckland the previous week, but he hadn’t gone alone. An office flirtation had transformed into something more when a woman he worked with had accompanied him on the trip and they’d ended up sharing a bed. The crippling guilt the day after had him telling the woman it could never happen again. Days after he’d returned home to his wife and family, the woman had gone to the police and claimed John Grace had raped her that night.

Daniel squeezed her hand with gentle firmness. He seemed to know she couldn’t accept any more comfort from him than that.

“Dad kept telling Mum over and over that it was consensual, not rape. At the time I didn’t know what either of those descriptions meant, but I guessed it was something terrible, as I’d never heard my mother cry like that—before or since.”

“Shit, Ana. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

She laughed, but in her ears it was a bitter, angry sound, more a snarl from a wounded animal than an expression of humor.

“Oh, it got a lot worse than that, believe me. I soon found out what the words meant, thanks to the other kids in the playground and the not-so-quiet whispers of other adults.”

“That’s harsh.”

The hangnail began to bleed and she pressed the pad of her other thumb over it, feeling it throb dully.

“The next year of my life was a living hell. I won’t bore you with all the details, but meeting my dad’s lawyer and having her explain what was going on in terms that an eleven- year-old could deal with stuck in my mind. I believed then that my dad didn’t do what he was accused of, and I was so blown away that this woman would stand up in front of a courtroom and tell everyone that. I wanted to be like her.”

“The case went to trial, then?”

“Yes. Mrs. Wilcox stayed with me during the whole week of it. Mum rang me after the jury made their decision. She said, ‘Baby, it’s all over. Daddy’s innocent. We’re coming home.’”

“She stuck by him?”

Ana sighed. “She was the original Tammy Wynette standing by her man.”

She looked up, seeing his blue eyes focused intently on her. “They had what your parents had and my dad threw it all away on one sleazy night. Nothing was the same between him and Mum after that. They were still married, but the trust had gone.”

She fully expected Daniel to object to being tarred with the same brush as her father. She could see understanding in his eyes—he knew the point she made by telling him her deepest and most hurtful secret.

But he said nothing, only raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“I doubt the story’s got much relevance to what you originally asked. She’s the only one I could think of who hated my dad.”

Daniel stood and hefted her backpack up off the ground then helped her into it. “It doesn’t seem likely she’d come after your dad after all these years.”

Ana shifted the straps of the backpack into a more comfortable position. “It’s not likely at all unless you bring the supernatural into it.” At his questioning frown, she added, “Oh—I forgot to mention I looked her up after I finished law school. She died two years before I graduated.”