Author: Amy Meyerson
Date: 2026-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Thriller; Suspense; Contemporary; Adult
Description: Internationally bestselling author Amy Meyerson takes readers on a harrowing journey where two mothers—one of a woman who drowned and the other of a toddler who might know what happened to her—are the only ones searching for the truth. Heavily pregnant with her second child, Tessa Irons has enough on her mind without her toddler throwing tantrums at the local coffee shop. The boy is inconsolable, shouting “Gigi!” to a woman Tessa’s never seen before—and never will again. The next morning, the woman’s body is dredged up from the canal outside the Ironses’ posh Venice Beach home, and Tessa’s gut
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Praise for Amy Meyerson

The Water Lies

“Fresh and atmospheric, The Water Lies takes you to the Venice Canals of Los Angeles, where a mystery unravels within that small acreage of fancy houses and putrid water. At the end of it, no one—and nothing—will be the same. With expert pacing, Meyerson pulls you deeper into the core of her story, forcing you to confront your own assumptions about friendship, motherhood, and marriage.”

—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight

“The Water Lies is an intoxicating and claustrophobic novel that expands the concept of ‘a mother’s worst fear’ in spectacular and twisted ways. Expertly combining the paranoia of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and the fast-paced family mystery of The Last Thing He Told Me, Meyerson places the maternal bond under pressure, asking not only what mothers will do to protect their children from the truth, but also, themselves. Uncanny, unexpected, and wholly original, it’s the rarest of novels that understands how the word family can be a curse and a blessing, all in the same breath.”

—Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters

“I absolutely blew through this novel. It kept me guessing until the end, and afterward it left me with that unmistakable warmth I get from a great book, the kind that delves beneath a seemingly pristine surface, the kind that bonds one unlikely heart to another. Compulsively readable, The Water Lies deftly tackles what it means to mother, the cost of creating a deceptively perfect family, and the dangerous lengths any parent will go to for the sake of a child.”

—Amy Jo Burns, author of Mercury

The Love Scribe

“Readers will adore this charming and thoroughly original novel! With wisdom and whimsy, Meyerson offers a series of heartwarming vignettes which explore love, loss, grief, and hope. This is a story for readers and writers alike, as it contemplates the courage and fortitude that true creative expression requires. I was utterly enchanted!”

—Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Matchmaker’s Gift

“Meyerson’s latest heartwarming novel explores what happens when a woman who shuns serious relationships discovers her talent for helping everyone around her find true love. In doing so, Meyerson deftly reminds us there are infinite paths to love, and they all include struggle and surprise. Packed with imagination and wisdom, The Love Scribe will make you believe in the power and magic of stories.”

—Tracey Lange, New York Times bestselling author of We Are the Brennans

“This romantic, magic-tinged tale will resonate with fans of Rebecca Serle and Jenny Colgan.”

—Booklist

“As soon as I turned the first page, I inhaled The Love Scribe in one delicious swoop. Amy Meyerson has written a clever investigation of romance that reads like a most beloved fable, and she completely charmed me with her wide-open heart. Clear-eyed and life-affirming, The Love Scribe is the perfect novel for anyone who has ever wondered if it’s worth it to fall in love.”

—Amy Jo Burns, author of Shiner

The Imperfects

“[A] cracking tale . . . Meyerson makes the family arguments deliciously realistic, and her gradual uncovering of the heirloom’s secrets will keep readers turning the pages. This well-spun tale is a charming reminder that familial reconciliation can be worth a fortune.”

—Publishers Weekly, a Summer Reads 2020 pick

“Delicious, compulsively readable . . . both a gripping mystery and a family tale of imperfect people . . . large gemstones have a certain magic of their own, and Meyerson expertly captures that fascination, in her wonderful tracing of the origin of the secret brooch. I read this book morning and night until it was done, unable to break free of its spell. A sheer delight.”

—Janet Fitch, bestselling author of White Oleander, The Revolution of Marina M., and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

“Even better than her enchanting debut, Meyerson’s sophomore novel is an exquisitely researched, propulsive tale about the resilience of a splintered family and the power of secrets through a century of lies, betrayals, and life-changing fortune. A wonderfully structured multigenerational family drama woven with international intrigue, The Imperfects is a truly beautiful and truly American story full of unspoken history, loss, and hope. Absolutely winning.”

—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Amy Meyerson has created a captivating story about a hilariously dysfunctional family that comes into a shocking inheritance—a world-famous, priceless 137-carat diamond. Part expertly plotted historical mystery, part tender family drama, and part juicy international caper, The Imperfects has it all. An absolute pleasure to read, guaranteed to have readers turning the pages late into the night.”

—Angie Kim, bestselling author of Miracle Creek

“The matriarch of a perfectly imperfect family bequeaths them the perfect diamond—but is it a family heirloom or stolen treasure? In this clever, meticulously plotted tale of secrets, family dynamics, and resilience, Amy Meyerson takes readers on a what-if journey filled with equal parts history, tenderness, and intrigue.”

—Cynthia Swanson, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller and The Glass Forest

“The Imperfects is many things, all of them wonderful: a tale of the calamity and change of the twentieth century; a finely observed character study that focuses on the deliciously memorable Miller family; and a true page-turner that enthralled me from the start. It’s also a work of grace, sensitivity, and perfectly observed attention to detail . . . certain to delight and entrance its readers.”

—Jennifer Robson, bestselling author of The Gown

“The author portrays complex relationships with insight and finesse . . . [An] entertaining multigenerational saga about sacrifice, self-reliance, and what it means to be family.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“The Imperfects by Amy Meyerson is an addictive and beautifully written novel about siblings, family secrets, and the unraveling of the real historical mystery of the Florentine Diamond. Each one of the Millers’ well-drawn stories and their search to uncover their matriarch’s past, her narrow escape from the Holocaust, and her connection to the Florentine Diamond kept me quickly turning the pages. I absolutely devoured this novel—a riveting family saga with the pace of a thriller.”

—Jillian Cantor, bestselling author of The Lost Letter and In Another Time

“Helen Auerbach must have stolen the Florentine Diamond. Why else would an ordinary woman have kept the long-lost gem, once the property of Austrian royalty, hidden for so long? When Helen dies, her family must put their differences aside if they want to have any hope of holding on to this unexpected inheritance and, more importantly, unraveling the mystery of Helen’s past and clearing the matriarch’s name. Amy Meyerson’s second novel, The Imperfects, is a book that shines as brightly as the jewel at the center of its tale and will leave readers wondering what mysteries might be hidden in their own pasts, waiting to be revealed.”

—Meghan MacLean Weir, author of The Book of Essie

“Compelling . . . readers who enjoy realistically drawn characters, family dynamics, and the power of history will appreciate this novel.”

—Library Journal

“Compassionate, thoughtful, and surprisingly moving, this dysfunctional family saga will satisfy fans of Maggie Shipstead and Celeste Ng.”

—Booklist

“In this absorbing historically based drama, an American family must prove its rightful ownership of an inherited diamond that’s been missing from the Austrian crown jewels for more than a century.”

—Shelf Awareness

The Bookshop of Yesterdays

“[A] novel . . . you can lose yourself in.”

—Bustle

“Charming.”

—HelloGiggles

“Perfect for summer vacation.”

—Southern Living

“[A] great read.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Book of Summer 2018 selection

“[In her] part mystery and part drama, Meyerson uses a complex family dynamic in The Bookshop of Yesterdays to spotlight the importance of truth and our need for forgiveness.”

—Associated Press

“[Readers] will be charmed by this tale of self-discovery and new beginnings.”

—Library Journal, Best Debut of Summer 2018 selection

“Meyerson writes beautifully . . . a lovely look at loss, family, and the comfort found in a good bookstore.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] novel with an unalloyed sweetness at its heart.”

—Toronto Star

“Heartfelt . . . Meyerson’s evocative novel is a fun homage to book lovers and the eclectic spirit of LA.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A charming family story for lovers of books and bookshops . . . [and] anyone who longs to get lost in a good book.”

—Bookreporter.com

“An incredible read . . . intimately interwoven with lessons and stories from classic and popular literature, and the bookstore setting is dreamy.”

—Manhattan Book Review

“Terrifically fun . . . part riddle, part mystery, part family drama, part a bookstore lover’s dream, and then more.”

—Aimee Bender, New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“[Meyerson’s] affection for all things literary pours forth on every page and through a cast of characters every book lover will embrace.”

—Charlie Lovett, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookman’s Tale

“This delightful, propulsive debut is part cozy literary mystery, part family drama, and 100 percent heart. [A] page-turner in the best sense.”

—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

“I was hooked from the start . . . an homage to books—to the pleasures they can bring, and the loving connections they can conjure.”

—Matthew Sullivan, author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

“Captivates with its emotional honesty, fully realized characters, and precision of detail . . . Meyerson is a writer to watch.”

—Diane McKinney-Whetstone, bestselling author of Tumbling and Lazaretto

“A heartfelt triumph! This suspenseful scavenger hunt will keep the pages turning late at night.”

—Suzanne Rindell, author of Eagle & Crane and The Other Typist

“[A] charming novel, full of passion and suspense.”

—Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved

Also by Amy Meyerson

The Love Scribe

The Imperfects

The Bookshop of Yesterdays

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2025 by Amy Meyerson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

EU product safety contact:

Amazon Media EU S. à r.l.

38, avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg
amazonpublishing-gpsr@amazon.com

ISBN-13: 9781662531972 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781662531989 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 9781662531392 (digital)

Cover design by Lisa Amoroso

Cover image: © Pedro Costa Simeao / Getty; © Lidi Dib / Shutterstock

First edition

To Wesley and Ruby. I can’t wait to see what new stories you inspire as you grow.

Contents

Chapter One: Tessa

Chapter Two: Barb

Chapter Three: Tessa

Chapter Four: Barb

Chapter Five: Tessa

Chapter Six: Barb

Chapter Seven: Tessa

Chapter Eight: Barb

Chapter Nine: Tessa

Chapter Ten: Barb

Chapter Eleven: Tessa

Chapter Twelve: Barb

Chapter Thirteen: Barb

Chapter Fourteen: Tessa

Chapter Fifteen: Barb

Chapter Sixteen: Barb

Chapter Seventeen: Tessa

Chapter Eighteen: Barb

Chapter Nineteen: Tessa

Chapter Twenty: Tessa

Chapter Twenty-One: Barb

Chapter Twenty-Two: Tessa

Chapter Twenty-Three: Barb

Chapter Twenty-Four: Tessa

Chapter Twenty-Five: Tessa

Chapter Twenty-Six: Barb

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Tessa

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Barb

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Tessa

Chapter Thirty: Barb

Chapter Thirty-One: Tessa

Chapter Thirty-Two: Barb

Chapter Thirty-Three: Tessa

Chapter Thirty-Four: Barb

Chapter Thirty-Five: Tessa

Chapter Thirty-Six: Tessa

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Barb

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Tessa

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Barb

Chapter Forty: Tessa

Chapter Forty-One: Barb

Chapter Forty-Two: Tessa

Acknowledgments

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Chapter One

Tessa

We’re waiting at Café Collage when he spots her in line. It’s hot in the coffee shop, and stuffy, despite its proximity to the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Or maybe that’s the pregnancy talking. Either way, I’m sweaty and breathless as the other customers side-eye me and my round belly, the pregnant woman waiting for her caffeine fix with her son who is practically still a baby himself. Yes, I’ll have two under two in one short month. Yes, I’m pregnant and drink coffee. The French do it all the time. I squat to wipe the crumbs from Jasper’s sugar cookie off his face, hoping my drink arrives soon. Yes, I buy my eighteen-month-old son cookies to entertain him while I wait for the coffee everyone thinks I shouldn’t be drinking.

The café isn’t particularly crowded. Three other people wait for their coffees; two more stand in line to order. A few twentysomethings are spread across the tables, their skateboards blocking the paths between metal chairs. My latte should be ready by now, but the barista froths milk like he is kneading bread, in long luxurious strokes.

From his stroller, Jasper’s legs begin to kick. He leans forward, then thrusts his torso back, a seesawing that means he’s excited. His red-sugar-stained finger points as he shouts, “Gigi!”

I follow the line of his finger to the woman ordering at the counter. She’s about my height. Narrow like I used to be, with tattoos down her arms and scraggly blond hair dipped blue at the ends and pulled away from her face by sparkly butterfly barrettes. She must be one of the nannies he sees at Linnie Canal Park, although I don’t recognize her. I don’t remember anyone named Gigi, but children have their own language at this age. They splice and weave names into a shorthand only they can understand. Lindsay into Zeze, Sarah into Sasa. This woman’s name into Gigi.

The woman taps her phone to pay, then makes her way to an empty table by the door. Jasper’s eyes trail her every move, but she hasn’t noticed him. He flails his legs as he watches her settle into a metal chair and remove a small sketch pad from her leather satchel. Prada, which I wouldn’t have expected from her ripped jeans, the steel poking through both toes of her leather boots.

“Gigi,” Jasper repeats. She’s consumed by her drawing, unaware my son is beckoning her until he shouts “Gigi!” so loudly everyone in the café turns.

The woman looks up, scans the room until her attention lands on Jasper. He giggles when she spots him. She flashes him a polite, anonymous smile, then returns to her drawing. So not one of the nannies from the park. Not anyone we know.

Jasper continues to call “Gigi” to her, his excitement morphing into frustration when she won’t engage with him further. From the way she furiously sketches, I can tell he’s making her uncomfortable. I squat down again to unbuckle Jasper and hoist him onto my side.

“Hey, buddy,” I say as I walk away from the woman’s table. “Do you like your cookie?”

I brush his sticky blond curls from his forehead. My husband’s hair is straight and dark. Mine is light, and this close to the ocean has a wave to it, a trait previously unknown on the East Coast. Still, it’s never been curly, not like Jasper’s, not even when I was his age.

I thrust my hip out as a seat for Jasper to reduce some of his weight in my arms. With my growing belly, it’s getting harder to hold him like this, but I want him to know that he will always have a place against my body, even when it hurts my lower back and flattened feet. That’s the sacrifice I’ll make as his mother. While I’ll love the child inside me as fiercely as I love Jasper, she’ll never replace him. He stares at me like he can hear my thoughts, can sense my guilt, all the ways I fear I’m betraying him by giving him a sister. I don’t need your judgment, coffee addicts. I have enough of my own.

“Cookie, yum.” Jasper offers me a bite. It’s covered in drool, the red granules of sugar melting off it like makeup off the face of a sad clown.

The barista calls a name. Not mine. Not the woman’s either. She remains at the table, focused entirely on her drawing. Jasper notices her again.

“Gigi.” He points, staring at her with the uninhibited intensity only small children display. She glances up, no longer smiling.

“Bud, let’s give the nice lady her space.” I peer over at her, expecting her to respond that it’s fine, to wave or coo or tell me how adorable Jasper is. Instead, she ignores us, and I’m starting to get offended. Gabe teases me that not everyone wants to marvel at other people’s children. But Jasper is impossibly cute. Strangers comment on it all the time. As I silently chide this woman for not acknowledging my son’s unparalleled cuteness, I realize that I’ve become one of those mothers.

Except his relentlessness isn’t cute now; it’s embarrassing. Over and over, he calls to her—“Gigi, Gigi, Gigi”—demanding a response she can’t provide. Why won’t he stop? A vertical line appears down the woman’s forehead from concentrating on ignoring him.

“Come on, bud.” I start to put him into his stroller. He wrenches and screams incoherently, arching his back and refusing to be strapped in. Everyone’s attention is on me again, even hers, even the skateboarders’, their ears cocooned in oversize headphones. I lock eyes with the woman. Her expression is indecipherable yet intense, like she’s only now realizing that Jasper is accompanied by an adult.

We hold each other’s gaze until the barista finally calls my name. I collect my coffee and push Jasper’s stroller toward the door as he continues to shout “Gigi!” only more desperately, so it comes out “Geeee-Geeee.” People step out of our way, shunning me, like if I were a better mother, I’d be able to control my son.

“Sorry,” I mutter to the woman as we pass her table and Jasper tries one last time to get her to acknowledge him. She stays focused on her drawing. It’s a sketch of the barista with dreadlocks snaking down his back.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” a woman a little older than me says as she holds the door open for us. It’s a small gesture, kind enough to make my eyes sting. “We’ve all been there.”

We haven’t all been there. This Gigi hasn’t been there, the other patrons in the coffee shop. I can tell from their chiding manner that they’ve never had to negotiate a tantrum with a toddler.

I push Jasper’s stroller down Pacific Avenue toward the canals where we live, stopping outside Hotel Erwin to throw my latte in the trash and sit down to cry. Jasper stares at me from his stroller, sucking his thumb. His legs kick, only now it’s a happy tapping, sugar fueled. Once again, he’s the sweet child I love. Sometimes, I wonder if he has the memory of a goldfish, his moods vacillate so quickly.

“What happened in there?” I ask him, knowing he can’t answer me. And that’s the problem. He can tell me when he wants food or water or a kiss. Simple words that convey his basic desires. Young as he is, Jasper isn’t simple. His needs are nuanced, multifaceted. His language is not. That disconnect is the source of all his tantrums. As much as I want to know, as much as he wants to tell me, he can’t explain why he exploded in the café, why he called Gigi to a woman we don’t know.

By the time I push Jasper’s stroller down the ramp into the canals, he’s forgotten about the incident at the coffee shop. It lingers in my nostrils like the stench of the waterways where we live, pungent and ripe. The Venice Canals were Gabe’s dream. I’d never heard of them before moving to LA, even though they date back to the early twentieth century, when Abbot Kinney hoped to bring a slice of Venice, Italy, to the shores of Southern California. Most of the canals have long since been paved over, and our neighborhood is all that’s left: two hundred houses across four canals, bounded by Eastern Canal to the east and Grand Canal to the west.

Despite the city’s best efforts, the canals often smell. Although they’re flushed out regularly according to the tides, with fresh salt water from Ballona Lagoon, they’re never able to drain completely. Even when they’re emptied, one and a half feet of sludgy water lies trapped in the basins, clotted with debris and algae blooms that flourish in the rot. We’re entering the high tourist season, so the city leaves them empty during the week and hires workmen to clean them before they’re refilled for the weekend, when the tourists descend upon the crystalline waters, none the wiser. Today, there’s no water, only that muck, a reminder of the effort it takes to maintain our picture-perfect neighborhood.

I lug Jasper’s stroller to the side of the pathway so a man with full leg tattoos and two Yorkies can scramble by. The sidewalks around the canals are barely wide enough for a stroller and make passing anyone, especially someone with two dogs, into a game of chicken. Like most of our neighbors, this man looks familiar, but I don’t know if he lives on the canals or nearby, only that he walks here each day.

As we continue down Linnie to our house, I think back to the first time Gabe brought me here, the surprise of the now-familiar colorful houses hidden along a modest grid of waterways. We held hands as we got lost in the canals’ maze, imagining what our life would be like in the wind-battered Cape Cod, the craftsman bungalow, the modern glass house. We were new to the city, freed from the containment of New York’s skyscrapers to the open spaces of Southern California, ready to fall in love with LA as much as we were with each other.

The canals were a dream then, something we could covet but never afford. Gabe had just started his practice, the reason we’d moved to LA. Between student loans and the overhead of his fledgling career, it was all we could do to pay rent on our one-bedroom apartment in West LA. No one ever expected us to live off my jewelry career. Like everything with Gabe, he knew how to plan, how to save, how to churn fantasy into reality. When we were ready to buy, the canals were the only place we considered.

I wanted an old house, something with history. Few of the original homes from the ’20s are still standing, though—all tiny bungalows. We settled on a four-bedroom Spanish revival built in the ’90s when the canals were refurbished. As a jeweler, I specialize in antique styles, everything from Byzantine to art deco. Although I’ve acquiesced to CAD and 3D printing, I do all the fabrication and stone setting myself. I like the traditional ways of crafting and incorporate as much of it into my work as possible. Our home is like my jewelry, new disguised as old. Just like that, we became one of the couples we used to watch, an assertion that it was attainable—the love, the life, the house along the canals.

Everything shifted when I got pregnant with Jasper. I felt self-conscious in my swollen body, exposed in my home. Suddenly, the tourists who paced the canals were no longer aspirational observers but voyeurs. The constant sirens that blared were no longer white noise I could ignore, the lights of the police helicopters that circled no longer fireflies pocking the sky, the private security cars that patrolled each night no longer a means of protection. I tried closing the blinds, something almost no one does along the canals, but I could still see strangers’ shadows as they walked by, could still hear the ambulance sirens. It felt like I was retreating, hiding from my own life.

Three months before Jasper was born, I asked Gabe if he thought we should move. Together we laid out the pros and cons of uprooting our life in my third trimester. The idea alone felt overwhelming. We agreed to table it for six months until we had a handle on parenthood. Now that this is Jasper’s home, the idea of moving is inconceivable. He loves spotting ducks when they land on the water, waving to tourists, knowing that a left out of our gate means a trip to the playground and a right means Café Collage. The sirens still keep me up at night. The tourists who stare at our house for too long make me uneasy. But Gabe reassures me that they’re an asset, not a threat. Potential witnesses, not perpetrators.

I open the gate to our garden and let Jasper into the yard. He bolts toward the door as I fold his stroller and haul it to the house. We can’t leave it on the patio, because despite the near-constant crowds, our neighborhood is a target for petty thievery.

Although it’s almost five, the June Gloom only burned off an hour ago, and the sky is still brightening with the last hours of day. A few tourists loiter along the canals. Two young women in floral maxi dresses stop outside our garden to snap a selfie. Jasper hardly registers them as he plays in the gated area in our living room while I monitor him from the stove in the kitchen space of our open floor plan, browning chicken for dinner. I’m a little over thirty-six weeks pregnant, and despite how uncomfortable I may look, I feel great. Sure, my tailbone throbs and my ankles have ballooned, but I still have energy and am eager to use it, particularly since I’m not working. I can’t be around the chemicals necessary for fabricating and don’t trust anyone else to make my pieces. The custom projects that constitute the bulk of my work have dried up. Engagements wait for no jeweler. Birthdays and anniversaries don’t either. Sketches for earrings and necklaces I may someday craft have piled up, tempering any impulse to design more consistently. This leaves me idle. I’m not good at being idle—it’s why I work with my hands—so I focus my energies on cooking dinner each night.

I don’t realize Gabe’s home until he slips his arm around my waist.

“Is that coq au vin?” he whispers into my ear.

I spin to kiss him more urgently than the moment calls for. For the first seventeen weeks of this pregnancy, I was too nauseated to believe I’d ever, in my entire life, want to have sex again. Recently, I find myself wanting it, wanting him. I can sense him wanting me too. Then the baby will roll or kick or hiccup, causing us both to giggle and diffusing the momentary lust. Our connection has already shifted with Jasper, less about us as a couple and more about us as a family. As we make room for this girl, I worry we’ll lose even more of the space we’ve reserved for us as lovers. Neither of us has a template of how to do this, the committed relationship or the involved parenthood, let alone both at once.

Gabe kisses me back, his mouth half open, the tip of his tongue probing mine. Suddenly, Jasper laughs. My eyes flit sideways to find our son standing at the gate, eager to be let out.

“Hey, buddy.” Gabe pecks me on the nose before scooting around to release our son. Outside, the sky is darkening, and a man walking a bike with an orange child seat fastened to the front glances into our living room before scuttling by. The near-constant construction has quieted. It’s just the ducks and the sirens greeting the night.

“How was your day?” I ask Gabe once we’re seated at the table and Jasper’s momentarily invested in his dinner. Gabe never divulges much about his work. His patients are famous or wealthy enough to seem famous, or otherwise private people. Mine are, too, though no one makes you sign an NDA to design an engagement ring. Instead, they flaunt it, which attracts me more clients. In fertility, everything is shrouded in secrecy. There’s nothing shameful about fertility problems. I had my own challenges with Jasper. Yet we’re taught to view it as a personal failure when we can’t get pregnant or can’t stay pregnant, a shortcoming that creates more silence. More shame. This stigma frustrates Gabe, but he honors his clients’ choices.

“Best part of my day’s just starting.” He reaches for my hand and brings it to his lips.

Gabe’s phone vibrates on the kitchen peninsula. He glances at it without moving to answer.

Since Gabe can’t tell me about his patients, he offers granular details on the soap opera unfolding with his staff. Cynthia, his head nurse, is constantly having problems with Stacey and Michelle, the receptionists: disorganized records, rotten food in the communal fridge, longer breaks than sanctioned. When he decided to open his own clinic, Gabe didn’t anticipate having to manage a team. This has always struck me as naive, part of why I’m a one-woman shop. Gabe gets tunnel vision when he sets his mind on a goal.

As he begins today’s installment of the Cynthia show, his phone continues to buzz.

“Maybe you should get that,” I suggest.

Gabe cuts a bite of chicken. “Whoever it is can wait.”

It’s sweet that Gabe tries to preserve this time. We both know, though, if someone’s calling so insistently, it can’t wait.

His phone buzzes again, and I nod to him to get it. He mouths “Sorry” and trots upstairs to answer the call.

“Aram, slow down.” Above us, the door to our office taps shut.

Aram is Gabe’s embryologist. The qualities that make him unparalleled at his job—diligence, fastidiousness, attention to detail—make him a headache to work with. One-person shop. It’s really the only way to go, although it’s impossible in Gabe’s world. You need multiple people to harvest and implant eggs, which means multiple headaches, too many nighttime calls. I play peekaboo with Jasper as we wait for Gabe to return, hiding my face behind my linen napkin, then fanning it away. He guffaws over a mouthful of broccoli before waving exaggeratedly at one of the guys who lives next door to us in the prayer-flag-adorned compound, walking with his surfboard tucked under his arm. The neighbor nods back. I smile even though we’ll never engage with him beyond these small moments. Still, we’re bonded in this strange life.

“Sorry,” Gabe says as he slips back into his chair.

“Everything all right?” I don’t expect an answer.

“Aram’s still on edge about the break-in.” Gabe digs into his food, immune to his embryologist’s nerves. “He’s overreacting.”

The break-in happened last week, when a drill to the dead bolt burst open the front door to his clinic. While that was the first time his office had been broken into, it’s been vandalized before, with anti-IVF messages graffitied across the door. This time, Gabe thinks it was paparazzi, not pro-lifers, seeking dirt on one of his clients. They didn’t find what they were searching for before the police arrived. For Gabe, it’s comforting to know how quickly the security system worked.

“Tell me about your day,” Gabe says instead.

“Let’s see, we stopped at Busy Bee for a class with Claire and Summer. Jasper’s really mastered his beep-beep-beep rendition in ‘Wheels on the Bus.’”

“Beep, beep, beep,” Jasper shouts. Gabe laughs. It’s genuine if overgenerous.

As I continue to chronicle our day, I realize how vapid it sounds. And indulgent. It’s not that I don’t like mommy-and-me classes or the way Jasper responds to any and all music. I’ll simply never get used to dropping forty dollars for a single session, then another sixty for breakfast with our neighbor Claire and her daughter, Summer, at Great White. Even though we can afford it, when you’ve spent your life counting every dollar, frugality is instilled in you like a sixth sense.

Gabe eats greedily, waiting for me to detail more about our unremarkable day. Jasper’s outburst at the coffee shop and the mysterious Gigi are the most noteworthy things that happened, but Gabe doesn’t need to hear about Jasper’s lowest moment. Before Jasper, Gabe hadn’t spent much time with children. Ironic, given he works in fertility. Although we’re in our thirties—me, mid; him, late—most of our friends are childless. While his sister has three kids, they live in the Bay Area, and we haven’t seen them since we first moved to California, before we had Jasper. We don’t have anyone to ask for advice, anyone to tell us that explosive tantrums are cognitively appropriate for toddlers. Gabe reads too much into Jasper’s mood swings, searching for signs of oversensitivity or behavioral issues, as though an eighteen-month-old should be in control of his emotions. I don’t want Gabe to fret, and in retrospect, today’s episode barely measures on the scale of tantrums. Plus, I’m embarrassed by my response, how quickly I’m prone to tears these days too. I don’t want Gabe to have to worry about me either.

Jasper’s naughty cackle saves me from having to continue the tale of our banal day. A few chunks of chicken litter the floor beside his high chair. He’s got another piece in his outstretched hand, daring us to react.

“All right, you,” I say when it slips from his fingers. I lug myself from the chair, my uterus thudding against my pelvis as I stand. Gabe bounds up to help me and carries Jasper upstairs for a bath. I follow, watching from the doorway as Gabe starts the water, strips Jasper, and places him in a sea of bubbles and toys. After that, it’s all hands on deck to get our son dried, slathered with lotion, into pj’s and off to bed. Once we’ve cleaned the kitchen, Gabe shoveling the rest of his dinner into his mouth as he loads the dishwasher, I’m too tired for even a thirty-minute show. That’s the deal with my energy these days. It’s potent and then totally depleted. A battery drained.

Gabe tucks me into bed like he did Jasper. He lies beside me and spreads his fingers across my stomach, prompting our daughter’s in utero dance. She’s most active when I’m least. I lace my fingers through his, feeling the vigor of our child.

“I love you,” he says, curling into me.

“I love you too,” I tell him, pulling him closer. As we snuggle, the day’s tedium drains away, Jasper’s tantrum, the lingering unease of it all. I drift to sleep, the incident at the coffee shop, Gigi, long forgotten.

Chapter Two

Barb

These days, my life is filled with silence, the silence of retirement, of living alone, of crosswords and mystery novels. Those silences feel nothing like the silence today as I wait for my daughter to call. Most days, I don’t expect to hear from her. She’s busy with her life on the left coast. I don’t begrudge her this. For years, our relationship was so strained, I wouldn’t have expected a call from her even on my birthday. That was my fault. I can follow the trail of choices I made that led to our distance until—at the height of the pandemic, when we were all so disconnected, especially those of us like me and my daughter, who both lived alone—she did something unexpected. She reached out. A call became a FaceTime became regular cups of coffee shared from 2,400 miles apart. Unexpectedly, we became close. Or closer, anyway. Close enough that she couldn’t have forgotten my seventieth birthday. Yet there is no call.

At the moment, I’m not too worried. She lives in Los Angeles, in the godforsaken dregs of Venice Beach, where Arnold Schwarzenegger once lifted weights and marijuana smoke thickens the air. When I wake up at seven in New Jersey, it’s only four in LA, too early for her to call. As the morning drags on, I tell myself she’ll phone on the way to the coffee shop where she writes each day. She’s vague about what she’s working on—a screenplay, I assume, given her film degree from UCLA and proximity to Hollywood. She tutors part time, but I worry about her financial stability. Since she’s never asked me for a dime, I don’t press her about her employment. Our relationship is still finding its footing. Unwanted motherly inquiries could quickly set it off balance. You have to trust her, my therapist Christine says, even when you know she’s wrong. Let her make her own mistakes. I didn’t start seeing a therapist until I retired. In retirement, I do all sorts of things I never thought I’d do, retiring being chief among them.

The other being a book club. My friend Linda was persistent. When I was working sixty-hour weeks, it was easy to blow her off. Since retiring, I’ve run out of excuses. Linda, it turns out, is more relentless than the analysts at the investment firm where I worked for nearly half a century. I love her for it, not just because book club has been all the things she promised—new friends, good books, better wine—but because today, on my birthday, it provides a distraction from worrying that my daughter won’t call.

My book club is taking me to lunch at noon. The restaurant is a fifteen-minute drive from my home, so I leave at 11:50, which is 8:50 in Venice Beach. This guarantees I’ll be a few minutes late. There’s nothing more depressing than being the first to arrive for your own birthday lunch. As I drive along Route 4, I think about the last time I saw my daughter, the only time since we reconciled. It was three months ago, right after I was forced to retire. A retirement on paper. The act itself was a firing, plain and simple. Though I sound bitter, I’m not. I’m devastated. I was devastated. My therapist encourages me to keep the past in the rearview. It rushes up when I least expect it. That’s betrayal for you. Romantic, professional, familial—you forget, then bam, it sidelines you with its impossible cruelty. The silver lining about my forced retirement was that it gave me the courage to visit my daughter. Ever since we’d been back in touch, I’d wanted to see her, but I was scared. We had more experience fighting than getting along. Any misstep could have reverted us to the days before we were sequestered in our homes, when her life was full and complete without me. You’re still afraid of rejection, my therapist reminds me, something so obvious I wonder if she’s been listening to me at all.

Instead of telling my daughter that I wanted to visit her, I invented a conference and reserved a two-bedroom suite at Shutters, inviting her to spend a week in divine comfort with me. If she’d researched it, she would have discovered no such event existed. When she arrived at the hotel, she didn’t even ask how the conference was. We went for walks along the beach and massages at the spa. We had dinner anywhere she wanted and breakfast each morning on our waterfront balcony. I asked few questions about her life, and she offered little beyond her preferences for restaurants each evening. I didn’t mind. We were building a relationship. That takes time. I was willing to be patient.

On the last night of the trip, she took me to an Italian restaurant off the Venice boardwalk that was surprisingly quiet and surprisingly good. A date had taken her there. I didn’t ask anything about the date, whether he’d become a boyfriend, if she had a boyfriend at all. Instead, I asked her what was good, then ordered exactly as she advised even though the tomato sauce gave me heartburn that kept me up for the entire red-eye home.

Big birthday coming up, she said when she hugged me goodbye. Any plans?

Want to go to Europe with me? I almost asked her. There was no rush. We have years ahead for new adventures together.

Probably just lunch with friends.

Remember to have fun, she advised.

I peer at the clock on my dashboard as I pull into the parking lot. 12:03. A little after 9:00 a.m. in Venice. Still no call.

Inside, my book club is waiting at a round table, menus folded, napkins in their laps. They clap. “There’s the birthday girl!”

I give each of the ladies a hug. Linda, Delia, Gloria, and Susanna. Normally I go by Barb. At book club, I’m Barbara. The five As. Linda teases that she wouldn’t have invited me if my name ended with a y or an e—or, god forbid, a consonant.

Other than our names and the fact that we’re all Jewish, we couldn’t be more different. Linda is a retired reading specialist, Delia never worked, Gloria never married, and Susanna still runs a chain of local bakeries. Delia is tall and lean, with dyed black hair and one too many facelifts. The rest of us are in various stages of aging, Susanna being the only one who has fully embraced her gray hair and wrinkles, her pear shape. During the pandemic, I stopped dyeing my hair, which is still mostly dark. I’m just plump enough to keep the deep wrinkles at bay, though I get my sunspots removed religiously. Sometimes I wonder if I’d gone under the knife, like Delia, hired a trainer when my midsection began to thicken, like Gloria, done chemical peels and Botox, like Linda, whether the male partners at the firm would have discarded me so swiftly. When they offered me an exceedingly generous retirement package, I went to see a lawyer—a woman—who told me I could sue for ageism. I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing.

Although the book club ladies and I have little in common, we’re never short of conversation. My birthday’s no exception. I nod along as Susanna and Linda swap stories of their grandchildren, as Delia laments the singledom of her three children, as Gloria jokes that all the men she dates are still children themselves. I don’t realize I’m checking my phone until Linda asks, “Got a hot date later?”

I look at her, confused.

“You keep staring at your phone.”

It’s 12:47—9:47 in LA.

“I haven’t heard from Regina.” I put the phone in my purse, then place my purse under my chair. “It’s probably nothing.”

“She’ll call.” Linda squeezes my hand.

After I’ve eaten the last of my chocolate cake, the women shoo away my credit card. This is part of our tradition, too, the song and dance of pretending that we don’t know the others will pay on our birthday. Normally this kind of charade would annoy me, but it has the distinct giddiness of a first date. I used to date a lot. Lately, it hasn’t held the same appeal. Most eligible men my age are widowed, recently single. Isaac and I divorced when Regina was thirteen. I’ve been single so long, it’s hard to remember I was ever married. While my life has had its fair share of grief, I’m not in that stage now and don’t want to usher someone I don’t know through their loss.

Outside, the afternoon is bright and sticky. I wave goodbye to my friends and thank them for the meal, saying I’ll see them at book club next week. It’s 2:08, after 11:00 in LA. Even if Regina was up all night, she’s awake now, caffeinated and cogent enough to call her mother on her birthday.

“She’ll call,” Linda assures me as she hugs me goodbye. We’ve been friends since her husband started at my firm. He’s seventy-four and still working. No one summoned him in to human resources to encourage him to embrace retirement in this stage of life and all the freedom that could come with it.

I first met Linda at our annual holiday party, when Regina was seven and Isaac and I were in the early stages of discord, before I started working longer hours and he started sleeping with Anna. Anna. She could have been the sixth A in our book club, if she hadn’t shacked up with my husband. I was less upset that he’d cheated than I was that it had been with my friend. To be honest, I felt more grief over the loss of Anna than of Isaac. Linda knows all about the divorce, the ways it affected Regina.

In my car, I run my hands along the steering wheel, trying to determine why Regina hasn’t called. Doesn’t she know I’m waiting for her? My therapist would tell me that games don’t help relationships. If I want to talk to my daughter, I should call her. If I’m upset she forgot my birthday, I should say so.

I hold my phone and stare at Regina’s name. My heart races. This is silly. I’m being silly. It’s my daughter, not some date, some new friend. I hit Send before I lose my nerve.

The blood rushes to my ears, and I can hardly hear the ringing as I wait for her to pick up. This is foolish. Why did I call? I’m about to hang up without leaving a message when she answers.

“Hey, Mom,” she says. I hear her give someone her name after they ask for ID. Then her voice grows clearer on the line. “Listen, I can’t talk right now.”

“Where are you?”

She hesitates. “A meeting. I’ll call you later, all right?”

I stare at her name on my phone as it blinks the eleven seconds we spoke. Clearly she’s forgotten my birthday, but she isn’t avoiding me. She’s just busy. And she’s going to her meetings. That’s good. That has to be her first priority. Later, when she realizes the date, that she rushed me off the phone on my seventieth birthday, she’ll be apologetic. I’ll get to tell her it’s no big deal. It won’t have to be a big deal because she will have remembered, if a bit late.

Once I’m home, I can’t fight a nap. I plug in my white noise machine, drape a silk mask over my eyes, and fall into a deep slumber. When I wake up, the sun is still high in the sky. It’s later than I expect, though: 5:32. 2:32 in LA. Her meeting must be over by now. Regina hasn’t called back.

For the rest of the evening, I play the tricks of young lovers. I leave my phone at home when I go for a sunset stroll with my next-door neighbor. I linger in the shower, knowing I won’t hear the phone if it rings. It doesn’t ring when I’m in the shower. It doesn’t ring as I watch Jeopardy!, when I cook dinner for one, when I decide to start in on our book club selection. By the time the words on the page blur, the phone still hasn’t rung. I call her again and get her voicemail. I start to text her instead. Everything I write sounds hurt or resentful. I’m both those things, but I don’t want her to know.

As I start my nighttime skin-care routine, I remind myself that Regina’s never been a good multitasker. If her attention is elsewhere, it won’t return to me until she’s completed whatever is consuming her. You have to accept people on their terms, my therapist tells me whenever Regina disappoints me. These are her terms. While it may be my birthday, it’s her busy day. I can be disappointed. Feeding that emotion, however, only hurts me.

“Let it go,” I say to my reflection, shiny with layers of cream. “Just let it go.”

As soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind starts spinning tales of what I might have done to make her mad at me. My knees crack as I get out of bed and shuffle over to the dresser to check my phone—no message—then back to bed, chiding myself for getting so worked up. Finally, I pop an Ambien, because despite being so tired I feel it in the bones of my feet, I will never fall asleep, not when I’m waiting for the phone to ring. It’s 12:32 a.m. in New Jersey. 9:32 p.m. in LA. I try her one last time. That familiar message picks up. The pill starts to set in, leaving my eyelids heavy, my brain quiet. The last thought I piece together is an assurance that I will have a remorseful message in the morning.

At 5:45, I startle awake, gasping for breath. The Ambien should have kept me asleep for another hour, but the pain is overwhelming. It isn’t the aches of old age. No, this pressure is panic. I’m not an anxious person. Through my divorce, the estrangement, the forced retirement, I never had anxiety. That’s why I know to trust the worry my body senses now. I check my phone. No calls. No text messages. I lean against the dresser, barely able to stand. Call it instinct, intuition, survival skills. I feel it everywhere. My daughter isn’t busy. She hasn’t lost track of time. Something terrible has happened to her.

Chapter Three

Tessa

Light bleeds through the curtains. I reach over to Gabe’s empty side of the bed. He’s already left for his morning surf. Last night was an unprecedentedly good night of sleep, free from the early-morning wake-ups that have plagued my third trimester. Somehow, it makes me even more exhausted. I roll onto my side, trying to squeeze in a little more rest. Immediately, a whine echoes down the hall. I ignore it, hoping Jasper will fall back to sleep. He starts screaming, and I groan exaggeratedly, even though Gabe isn’t home to hear it. It’s my gift to him, these mornings. Once the baby’s here, Gabe won’t get to surf each day.

In his crib, Jasper stands in a sleep sack, bouncing his knees, eager for an escape. He casts me one of his toothy grins.

“Mama.” He reaches for me, and the frustration dissipates.

We head downstairs for breakfast. Outside, a crowd has gathered on the walkway beyond our garden. Normally, the canals are empty this time of morning. More surprising, Gabe’s still here, the top half of his wet suit unzipped and hanging from his waist, his hair and smooth back dry. He faces away from us, along with everyone else on the path, monitoring the canal. Right away, I feel dread. Something’s happened.

I carry Jasper, still in his sleep sack, outside and stand behind Gabe. There are too many people gathered to see the canal’s basin.

“What’s going on?” I ask him.

“They found something in the canal.” He snaps out of his trance. “What time is it?”

I squint to read the clock in our kitchen. “Six forty-five.”

“Too late for a surf now.” Gabe locks his surfboard in the storage shed, kisses my forehead, then Jasper’s, then mine again, a back-and-forth that makes Jasper giggle.

After Gabe bounds into the house, I carry Jasper through our gate onto the walkway, where the surfers who live in the wannabe frat house next door huddle together beside the always-shorts guy with his Yorkies, the wispy-haired woman who paints the waterways most days, her easel propped under her arm, and others I don’t recognize. Across the canal, our neighbors on the next island have collected too. I don’t know any of them other than Claire, who holds Summer, and her husband, Dan, standing possessively at her side. He always hovers over her. It bothers Gabe—part of why, as close as Claire and I are and despite Jasper and Summer sharing a part-time nanny, we aren’t family friends. I shrug my shoulders at Claire, and she shrugs back, equally unsure what’s happened. The police have laid yellow tape along the saltbushes.

Half a block up, two cop cars obstruct both sides of the bridge over Linnie Canal, forcing commuters to reverse and retreat. The sirens on the cruisers are off. The lights are blazing. The three men who clean the canals stand in the flashing lights, talking with a police officer.

“Mama, luz. Luz.” Jasper points at the police cars. Jasper’s nanny, Marisol, speaks to him in Spanish. He’s latched on to the words that are easier in the Romance language than they are in English. Luz. Agua. Más, más, más.

“The lights are pretty, aren’t they?” My tone is upbeat as I try to hide my worry. There’s no broken glass, no signs of a robbery at any of the houses. The cops wouldn’t show up if a dolphin got caught in the basin. They wouldn’t block off the bridge if someone’s boat was stolen or their dock was vandalized. There are police officers guiding traffic, police officers monitoring the crowds, police officers wading knee-deep in the drained but not fully empty canal. A man in white disposable coveralls stands at the center of the basin. He bends down to inspect something at his feet.

On the periphery of the crowd, our next-door neighbor Judy leans against her dilapidated gate. Judy’s been here since the ’90s and hasn’t done a thing to her house other than let the paint peel, and has instead devoted her days to pacing the walkways from Carroll to Sherman. Every island along the canals has one: a local busybody. But Judy is in a league of her own. If anyone knows what’s going on, it’s Judy.

I wind my way through the crowd, headed in her direction. A pregnant stomach and a toddler in my arms help with this. One man lifts his surfboard above his head so I can scoot by. Another angles his bike for me to step over, the child seat mounted to the front making it unwieldy. It clangs against the ground, and he curses under his breath. I hate when people bring bikes onto the narrow sidewalks of the canals.

“Dede,” Jasper shouts as we approach. Judy perks up when she spots him. Her posture, like everything else about her, is too eager. It hits me with a pang of guilt how mismatched our interactions are. Gabe and Claire think she’s a troublemaker. They blame any dock violation reports, every noise complaint, on her, even though they’re grateful when the beach bros’ parties are broken up. Her nosiness reads more pathological to me, so I generally keep my distance—except now, evidently, as we make our way toward her.

Jasper’s legs kick against me as he tries to break free and run to Judy, the limitations of his sleep sack notwithstanding. She pokes her tongue through a gap where she’s missing two side teeth and crosses her eyes, causing Jasper to roar with laughter. He’s always gravitated to Judy. It should make me more charitable toward her, but I can never shake the suspicion that she knows too much. About us. About everyone who lives along the canals.

When we reach Judy, she holds her hand out for a high five, which Jasper takes as an invitation to keep slapping.

“What’s going on?” I ask over the whacking of Jasper’s small hand against hers.

“A body,” she whispers.

“Of a person?”

Judy raises an eyebrow. When else do you call it a body?

One of the police officers passes a body bag to the medical examiner standing in Linnie Canal. I pull Jasper away from Judy, disrupting their game, and thank Judy before rushing home. Even if he won’t understand, today will not be the day my son sees a dead body. I can’t protect him from everything, but I can shield him from this.

Inside, I shout for Gabe. The house is quiet. His keys aren’t in the bowl by the door. My phone buzzes from the kitchen peninsula.

Had to run! Early consult. I’ll pick up dinner tonight. .

It’s forty-five minutes before he normally leaves, but some of his patients are so famous, they won’t visit during regular office hours. I observe the crowd outside, trying to decide how I feel about the fact that he’s unfazed by the morning’s events, and realize he didn’t see the body bag.

When I call him, he picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, T. Sorry, one of those patients I can’t tell you about is having—”

“They found a body,” I interrupt. “In the canal.”

“That can’t be right,” Gabe says, so certainly that I momentarily believe him. But I saw the body bag. I saw the police, the medical examiner.

“Gabe, it was right outside our house.” I shiver. Right outside our house. Whatever happened, however they died, it occurred while we were asleep upstairs.

Gabe doesn’t say anything for a few moments. “I’ll be home in fifteen.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“Of course I do. I’ll just—” He pauses. If it’s an egg retrieval or an implantation, it can’t be rescheduled.

“Seriously, we’re fine. I’m sure it’s some drunk guy who decided to take a nap in the canal.” I do a physical scan, hunting for fear. It probably was some guy who wandered down from the bars on Abbot Kinney Boulevard or the tents that line Pacific Avenue. This doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels tragic. Preventable. Another mother’s heartbreak.

“If you change your mind, call and I’m there. Even if it seems silly, you and Jasp are priority number one.” Lately, Gabe has been responding to me with pregnant-lady gloves on, where he’s trying to anticipate my needs rather than listen to what I’m saying. Though it comes from a good place, I hate how, when you’re pregnant, people try to interpret rather than hear you.

“We’ll be fine.”

“I just pulled up to the clinic. I’ll call you at lunch? Maybe take Jasper to the skate park, get your mind off all this?”

The mere thought of walking to the skate park fatigues me. I settle for the playground instead. We head out the front door to the alley rather than through the French doors to the canals so I can keep Jasper from the crowd that lingers. The police lights are still blazing.

When we arrive at the playground, Claire and the other mothers are huddled by the swings.

“Tessa.” Claire waves. The other mothers smile politely, eager to return to their gossip. Although we meet regularly at the playground and Busy Bee classes, happy hour in each other’s gardens, Claire’s the only one of the mothers I was friends with before we had children. We live directly across Linnie Canal, with a constant view into each other’s homes. Before we met, I knew what time she woke up, the cut of the silk caftan she wore as she made breakfast. And she knew the same of me. Up and down the canals, people know the habits of those who live across from them. Unless, of course, you keep your blinds and shutters closed, which almost no one besides Judy does. By some unspoken code, we offer our lives to the tourists who ogle and the neighbors across the canal who pretend not to look, neighbors who go out of their way to stay strangers. Except Claire. A few weeks after we moved in, she knocked on my door, holding two cups of coffee. If I’m going to know how you take your coffee, we may as well share in a cup, she said, handing one to me. We’ve been friends ever since.

Claire’s a muralist. It sounds like one of the made-up jobs many people along the canals have—spiritual coach, water sommelier, astrologer. Jewelry designer, even. I hate that our neighbors think my art is little more than a hobby. My company is profitable; it’s just not Venice Canals profitable. But Claire has painted the sides of corporate buildings from Santa Monica to Silicon Valley, strategically choosing stock over cash payments. Her husband, Dan the hoverer, is a producer, which in LA can mean anything. In Dan’s case, it means indie movies funded by his wife’s fake-sounding job and a glass house that he lords over, despite said wife paying the mortgage. I hope my dislike of Dan isn’t as transparent to Claire as it seems to me. It must not be, if she’s still my friend. Or maybe she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of their arrangement.

Claire abandons the herd and kisses me on both cheeks. She bends down to unbuckle Jasper from his stroller straps, saving me the indignity of having to squat. The second Claire lifts him out of his seat, he takes off for the slide, his favorite activity at the park.

She weaves her arm through mine, and we make our way to the mothers. “Can you believe this morning?”

“It’s terrible,” Ines chimes in, her tone suggesting that it isn’t terrible so much as titillating. Ines was a studio exec before she had twin boys, now in kindergarten. Followed by another boy, Javier, when they tried for a girl. If they’d come to me, Gabe says every time we see her wrangling three rambunctious boys, I would have made sure it was a girl. Ines was thirty-eight when she had the twins, so Gabe assumes she must have gone to someone. His clinic, Longevity Fertility, specializes in women of advanced maternal age and has the highest successful birth rate on the West Coast. There are some thirty-eight-year-old women who can conceive on their own, I often remind him. When all you see is couples struggling with fertility, particularly older women, you forget that the human species has existed this long because it’s capable of reproducing on its own.

“Terrible,” Erin chimes in. Erin’s the youngest of us mothers, though still over thirty. How she and her musician husband afford the canals remains a mystery. I’m not sure she ever worked, even before she had her daughter, Freddie.

“I saw the medical examiner collecting evidence from her body,” Erin continues, glancing over at Freddie, who’s strapped into the baby swing beside Summer’s. “I’m pretty sure that means something.”

Her? I thought it was a man, although I have no idea why. Maybe it felt better to assume a person drunk or high enough to stumble into the canals was a man.

“You think she was murdered?” Ines asks loudly, then clamps her hand over her mouth.

Murdered? Reflexively, I search for Jasper. He’s too far away to hear us. He’s on a loop: toddle up the stairs, down the slide, up the stairs again. My head spins in the way I’ve come to identify as low blood pressure. Although pregnancy typically raises your blood pressure, mine is naturally low, and the drop now makes me dizzy.

“They always send a medical examiner when someone dies.” Claire walks over to the swings to give Summer and Freddie a push. When she returns to our huddle, Claire nudges Erin. “You watch too much CSI.”

Claire’s words do little to reassure me. Could someone—a woman—really have been murdered right outside my home? I lean against the fence, steadying my breath.

“T., you okay?” Claire asks. I’m bent over, doing yogic breaths. The mothers swivel in unison.

“Are you having contractions?” The uptick in Ines’s voice betrays her excitement. First a murder, now a labor at the playground? It’s turning out to be an exciting Wednesday.

I rub the straining ligaments beneath my belly, the sharp cramps not entirely unlike contractions. “Just low blood pressure.”

“Come. Sit.” Claire guides me to the curb beneath the ficus tree. It wasn’t until I was pregnant and needed a seat that I realized the park doesn’t have a bench. Nothing on the canals is designed for families, not even the playground.

I remain seated after my blood pressure has stabilized, distancing myself from my friends’ conversation, which they manage to sustain despite having no concrete information, just conjectures about who she was, who was after her, how she might have been killed. Claire occasionally tells them to settle down, clearly more amused than troubled by their wild speculations. This woman, whoever she was, isn’t real to them. She isn’t real to me either. She can’t be. If I begin to think of her as a daughter or a mother or both, I’ll grow breathless and dizzy again. It’s too much. Maybe it’s too much for the other mothers too. Maybe their gossip isn’t insensitive. Maybe it’s self-protective.

We stay at the playground until Jasper starts rubbing his eyes, involuntarily admitting that he’s ready for his morning nap. Surely the police are gone by now. Surely it’s safe to go home. Safe. My choice of word startles me.

Although the park is only two blocks from our house, it’s long enough for Jasper to fall asleep and ruin his nap. I push him quickly, prompting shooting twinges along my left side, and quiz him on the colors of the clouds, the flowers, the houses. Anything to keep him awake. The walkways are as empty as usual on a gray Wednesday morning in early June. I don’t have to play chicken with anyone.

Up ahead, two cops guide traffic along the bridge. The crowd has vanished. A single officer guards the police tape along the saltbushes, the empty canal below.

I walk up to the officer and ask him what happened. He sees my stomach, then glances quickly at Jasper, trying to gauge my level of interest.

“We live here.” I point to our home. This gets his attention.

“Has my partner spoken to you?” His name tag reads S. Gonzales, and his badge lists him as an LAPD officer but not a detective. That must be a good sign, right? He’d be a detective if it was a murder. For the first time, I wish I watched more cop shows.

“About what?”

“Just a routine investigation. We’re determining whether anyone in the area saw anything.”

Jasper points at the officer’s badge. “Shine. Shine.”

The cop nods to my son before he reaches into his pocket for a notepad. “Can you tell me your name and address?”

“Sure. It’s Tessa Irons. We live here at 225 Linnie Canal.”

Officer Gonzales asks me about the last twenty-four hours, if we saw or heard anything unusual. As I repeat my day back to him, I can hear how incredibly dull my life sounds. When it’s clear to him we don’t know anything, he asks if we have cameras on our property.

“Just a Ring on the front door.” I point toward the alley on the opposite side of our house. While our mailing address is along the canal, the front door faces the alley, Court D. Amazon drivers get confused all the time. Half the reason we know our neighbors is because we’re constantly trading packages.

“What about there?” He points to the camera above our French doors.

“It isn’t connected.”

During the pandemic, many of the houses along the canals were empty as people retreated to their second homes. The tourists were few, and break-ins were at an all-time high. In an anxious moment, I bought a camera for our patio. Gabe got as far as putting it up but never linked it to the internet. Then, as the break-ins declined and the tourists returned, it never became a priority. The presence of the camera seemed deterrent enough.

“We’ll need a copy of the footage from your Ring camera. You can email it to me.” He reaches into his pocket, then hands me his card.

“Was she murdered?” I peer down at Jasper, expecting a worried expression. But he doesn’t know that word. Besides, he’s more interested in his big toe, which he’s managed to unearth from his shoe and sock. His sock rests on the path beside the stroller. I’m not about to squat in front of Officer Gonzales to retrieve it. I have no idea where his shoe is.

Officer Gonzales bends down to collect the sock and hands it to me. “I see the rumor mill has started.”

“A few moms at the playground think it’s more than a rumor.”

He sighs. “Leave it to the PTA to get everyone hysterical.”

Immediately he flinches, realizing that he’s called a bunch of mothers hysterical. To a pregnant woman, no less. “Sorry. My wife would slap me for saying that.”

He shoots me a simper. A violent woman isn’t any funnier than a hysterical one. He becomes sheepish. I have to resist the urge to comfort him, to discount my irritation as an overreaction.

“Our presence here can make this seem suspicious, but nothing indicates this was anything other than an accident.” He shakes his head, and the gesture, the evenness of his tone, appears rehearsed. I know nothing about Officer Gonzales, how much death and violence he sees as a police officer in Venice Beach. Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with empathy for this man who’s ready to put this incident behind him.

“Don’t forget to send the footage,” he says as he waves goodbye to Jasper.

Once he’s out of sight, Jasper starts frantically barking, “Bye. Bye.”

We head inside for Jasper’s morning nap. After I get him down, I call Gabe. It’s not his lunch break, so I don’t expect him to pick up. I leave a message. “I talked to a police officer. It was a woman who drowned. Seems like an accident, but I’m pretty freaked out. Call me back?” I hang up, annoyed, even though I shouldn’t be. Feeling annoyed is easier than feeling afraid. If an adult could drown in that small amount of water, the same could happen to a child.

The hum of Jasper’s sound machine bleeds downstairs. I consider working. There’s an image of an emerald art deco bow ring that’s been needling me. As soon as I plop onto the couch, I’m so tired I can’t find the energy to collect my sketch pad off the bookshelf, let alone summon the concentration to render the piece. Instead, I check the Ring app on my phone and find the video from last night, fast-forwarding to see if it picked up anything. In the video, Gabe’s car pulls into the garage. A few of our neighbors’ cars pass by. Then, hours later, the patrol car that the association pays to monitor the canals drives down our alley three times. After that, there’s no more activity until the two cop cars park outside our home in the morning.

I text our mom-group message chain to see if anyone else has sent their footage to the police, if their cameras saw something mine didn’t. They send videos back and forth, of the quiet, dark walkways as still and empty as any other night.

Outside, two men stroll by, the leash on a German shepherd dangling from one man’s hand. A family wearing Venice Beach T-shirts twists past them. So quickly, everything has returned to normal. It makes me wonder how often we come this close to tragedy without realizing it, how easily the traces of a woman’s death can be erased. The traces of her life too.

I send the footage to Officer Gonzales, determined to put this event behind me.

Gabe never calls me back, which is unsurprising. Most days he can’t even find a few minutes for lunch, just pounds energy bars when his growling stomach becomes distracting. Yet another reason I like to cook him a real meal at dinner. At three, he texts to tell me he’s too busy to call but wants to make sure we’re okay. This is meant to reassure me. While it’s better than if he’d forgotten about the police outside our house, the too-close tragedy, I don’t like him thinking of me just fretting at home, overly worried—his fragile pregnant wife.

At six, the door from the garage creaks open, and Gabe’s footsteps echo down the short front hall before he appears at the threshold of the kitchen with two bags of takeout and a big smile for Jasper, who runs to him from the living room area. Gabe leans the bags against the wall and swings Jasper into the air. As I watch them twirl, the strain of the day drains away, replaced by the warm flood of gratitude, equally overwhelming. This is a life I never expected to have: a husband, a son, a daughter on the way. This is a tranquil life, a security I’ll never quite trust.

“Hey,” Gabe says when he notices me tearing up. “Today must have been really scary. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

He carries Jasper over, and the two men in my life embrace me.

When Jasper gets antsy, Gabe lets him down but continues to hold me.

“It’s over now,” Gabe promises. I press my head against his chest and listen to the steady thump of his heart as our daughter sits heavily between us. Jasper attempts to throw a ball across the room. It slips out of his hands each time he launches it. I try to embrace this calm, but I can’t. I don’t want a woman to be forgotten that easily.

Dan’s voice pierces the moment. Gabe loosens his hold on me as our attention drifts to the Huntsmans’. The canals carry sound in unpredictable ways, particularly when they’re empty. What you think is right next door is actually several doors down, while the conversation next door is lost to distant neighbors. Meanwhile, the shouting match that is so loud it sounds like it’s happening inside your house is really transpiring across the waterway in your best friend’s living room. Dan undoes his tie as he screams at Claire, who clutches Summer.

“Asshole,” Gabe mutters, heading toward the kitchen area, where he’s left the take-out bags resting against the wall. Before I can ask if we should do something, he adds, “Leave it alone.”

Maybe it’s the nature of his work, the air of privacy around his clients. Or maybe it’s his parents, the way they never talked about the dysfunction in their marriage. Gabe’s a firm believer in keeping out of other people’s business. Claire’s never spoken ill of her husband, never expressed fear of his anger, never complained about silently supporting him while he pretends that his career as a producer funds their life. As Gabe unpacks our dinner, I continue to watch them fight, lamenting everything Claire has normalized. As Dan’s body shifts in my direction, I quickly sidle to the floor to play with Jasper, pain rippling up my spine. I can sense Dan’s seething anger directed at me for spying, for witnessing aspects of their relationship neither of them wants me to know about, even though they do nothing to hide it.

After dinner, while Gabe gives Jasper a bath upstairs, I turn on the TV in the living room, hoping to find a rerun of Friends or Seinfeld, something to zone out to until I’m tired enough to collapse into bed and let everything about this day retreat to the past: the police tape, the conspiracies at the park, Dan’s anger, the woman who drowned. When the local news starts, I hesitate, then leave it on. The anchor highlights the tragedies of the day: a hit-and-run, fortunately not a child but an adult who’s still alive; a spate of carjackings. Then a newscaster paces the canals. The camera is careful not to capture the empty basins, the boats capsized against the sides, the sludge that lies at the bottom. The pretty broadcaster relays the facts I already know: The body of a woman was found in Linnie Canal.

“The police have declared it an accidental drowning, something that hasn’t happened in over a decade.” She describes the last time a body surfaced in Grand Canal in 2010: a man’s, after a night at the bars nearby. That was before our time. The woman touches her ear with her index finger, the universal sign for breaking news. “The police have officially identified the woman who died early this morning in the canals.” She pauses, waiting for the name, which sends my pulse racing. “A Regina Geller of Venice Beach.”

Something sour settles in my stomach as I remain glued to the TV screen.

The pretty broadcaster continues, “A part-time tutor and freelance writer, Regina was a quiet and serious woman by all accounts. The community of Venice will mourn the loss of one of its own.”

There’s a ringing in my ears that makes it hard to concentrate. I know, before her picture flashes on the screen and I see her face, her stringy blond hair. It’s the woman Jasper recognized in Café Collage. The one he called Gigi. She drowned outside our home.

Chapter Four

Barb

My instincts were right. Something has happened to my daughter.

Through the peephole, I spot Isaac standing on my porch, eyes bloodshot. I try to convince myself that it’s minor, a benign lump in her breast or a ruptured spleen, a car accident that gave her a concussion, possibly a broken leg, knowing that none of these small tragedies would bring my ex-husband to my front door.

Any momentary disbelief is sucked from my body as Isaac reports what happened. He keeps his distance across my porch, detailing the impossible story to my slippered feet. I lean against my house, certain I can feel the world spinning. How is the world still spinning when Regina is dead? Why did the police call Isaac instead of me, her mother?

“What do you mean, she drowned?” I cut Isaac off. In high school, Regina was on the swim team. She lifeguarded in the summers. She knew CPR. How could she have drowned?

“The officer said it will take weeks for the toxicology report to come back. They think she must have been pretty out of it.”

“Out of it?”

Isaac’s expression implores me not to make him elaborate. I’m genuinely confused. During our stay at Shutters, Regina opened up to me about her journey to sobriety. She told me about twelfth grade, when she would bring a water bottle of vodka to class. College, when she took a semester off for her first try at rehab, then another failed attempt when she was twenty-five. And the last time at twenty-eight, a final chance that would either save or kill her. She chose life. It wasn’t easy, but over the last seven years, abstaining from alcohol had become second nature. Her sobriety was her identity. I know, as much as I know anything, that she would never have endangered that.

I start pacing, collecting my thoughts. “We spoke yesterday. She seemed fine. Busy, but fine. She was headed to a meeting. There’s no way Regina would—” I can’t give the thought the weight of spoken words. I can’t make this a possibility. “They must have made a mistake, overlooked something.”

“Barb, I know this is hard—”

“You said the LAPD called?” I cut him off again. “Why would the LAPD call if she died in Venice? Isn’t it its own city?”

I’m determined to disprove her death with a loophole, a technicality. If I can find the fault lines in his story, I can crack it apart, fracture his account until it can’t be put whole again.

“Anna asked the same thing.” Isaac pronounces her name like she was born in Hungary instead of New Jersey, like she’s worldly instead of regional. Anna. She knew about my daughter before I did. “It’s part of LA, at least as far as police jurisdictions are concerned.”

“Who called the police? Who found her?”

“Barb,” he pleads. I can’t remember the last time he’s engaged me like this, wanting so much from me—only his need is the most devastating kind. “We’ll know for certain after the toxicology report, but she’s gone. Our Regina—” His voice cracks and then he starts to sob. I’ve seen Isaac mean. I’ve seen him angry, disappointed, frustrated, road raging. I’ve never seen him broken before. He puts his face in his hands, his shoulders and upper back convulsing. I envelop his body in mine. His grief is physical. It enters me, suffocating my confusion and denial until I surrender to it, until I am as distraught as he is.

We stand on the porch, holding each other until we run out of tears. I still can’t fathom what’s happened. I know Regina is gone. A mother can always feel her child. At least I could always feel Regina. Even when she wasn’t speaking to me, I always sensed she was okay. Four years ago, before she emailed to make sure I was wearing a mask and staying home, I felt a buzzing through me. This morning, when I woke in a panic, my entire being was empty.

My stomach grumbles. I don’t want to be hungry when Regina can never eat again. Isaac hears it rumble and pulls away.

“Do you want to come stay with us? You don’t have to go through this alone.”

He assumes because I don’t have an Anna, I’m alone.

“I’ll be fine.”

He nods, relieved that I didn’t take him up on this offer. “We’ll see you for the shiva?”

The shiva? That’s what he’s thinking about right now?

Once, when Regina lamented the bleak dating prospects in LA, I suggested she join a singles group at a synagogue. Linda’s daughter and Susanna’s son both met their future spouses through Shabbat meetups. I don’t think I’ll meet the kind of person I want to be with at temple, she teased. I took this to be less about the kind of person she was attracted to and more about her thoughts on religion. Regina wouldn’t have wanted us to sit shiva for her. This shiva isn’t for her, though. It’s for Isaac.

“There was no fighting them on the autopsy,” Isaac adds. My surprise morphs into disbelief. He would risk not finding out what happened to our daughter for the sake of tradition, of keeping her body sacred? I stop myself. It’s not Isaac I’m mad at. “The officer seems like a good guy, though. He’s doing everything he can to get her back to us quickly.”

“Do you have the police officer’s number?” I ask.

“Barb.” It’s too much, hearing him say my name like this again. I lean against my house, trying to steady my breath, to cocoon myself from my ex-husband, who’s studying me, deciding whether to oblige my request.

“Please. I need to talk to him myself.”

We stare at each other, near strangers who have shared so much of this life even after we were done with each other, who can finally have the full separation we craved decades ago, now that our Regina is gone. Isaac reaches into his back pocket for his phone. He finds the number for Steve Gonzales at the Pacific Community station. I’ll call this Steve Gonzales. I’ll make him realize he’s wrong. Regina’s death was not a drunken accident.

Isaac hugs me again. “I’ll call you the minute I hear anything.”

I have the officer’s name and number. I don’t need to wait for Isaac to tell me anything.

He waves as he pulls out of my driveway, and I’m alone again. Only it isn’t the same. It will never be the same, because Regina is dead.

Somehow, everyone knows. I’m in the kitchen, googling Regina’s death, when my doorbell rings. My book club is waiting on the porch with casseroles, coffee cake, and deli.

“What can we do?”

“What do you need from us?”

“Is there anyone you want us to call?”

They usher me into the kitchen and make me a plate of food. Linda spots an article about Regina open on my laptop and shuts the lid. “You don’t need to be seeing that.”

“Don’t.” I lunge toward it. They all jump back, and I lift the computer off the table, hugging it to my chest.

“Sorry,” she says. “I just don’t want all that getting in your head.” She’s already read the articles. She knows more about Regina’s death than I do.

“Regina was sober,” I tell them. “She was a strong swimmer. This makes no sense.”

“Of course it doesn’t make sense,” Delia stupidly replies.

“It’s senseless,” Susanna agrees. Because it is. It leaves me senseless, numb.

My book club takes a seat around my living room, and we start our own impromptu shiva, one that isn’t for Isaac and Anna but for me. They stay until sunset, knitting, completing crosswords and sudoku, Wordle. We hardly speak, taking the act of mourning seriously. We’re all too old not to have experienced grief. The death of a child is not like other losses. As I begin to feel that none of them can relate to what I’m going through, I remember that Gloria had a stillbirth. Delia’s daughter has Huntington’s disease, and Linda’s granddaughter was hit by a drunk driver. They’ve all been through something unimaginable. We’re as united in our loss as we are in our friendship.

When my friends pack up and promise they’ll be by again tomorrow, Linda offers to spend the night.

“I’m fine,” I insist. I want to be alone. I want to return to my computer and search for answers that will never satisfy me. I want to call that police officer, Gonzales, and make him tell me, her mother, that my only daughter is dead.

Before she leaves, Linda says, “Any hour. Call and I’m here.”

Along my cul-de-sac, four car engines turn over. Their taillights fade as they drive into the distance. Once they’re gone, it’s dark outside except for my neighbors’ porch lights. When Regina was young, I called the neighbors friends. We all had children around the same age. But I’m the only one from the old guard who hasn’t sold my house to live in a fifty-five-plus community or an in-law suite. I have no need for a house as large as mine. I wasn’t saving it for grandchildren, but as long as I remained in her childhood home, I knew Regina would come back to me. Now, not even her body is returning to me. Her mourning will take residence at her father’s house.

In the kitchen, I open my laptop to the article I was reading. It offers no new insights. Given how they found her, the police assume she wandered into the canals and fell. I keep rereading that word, accident, which I realize is meant as a counterpoint to suicide. I storm away from my computer, do circles around my kitchen island. How could anyone suggest that about my daughter?

I can’t read the article anymore, or the others that deliver the same news. Instead of searching for Regina’s death, I search for her life. She wasn’t on Facebook. Her Instagram account is private, her X account inactive for months. It’s all retweeted articles about films or contentious political topics I’d advised the employees at my firm to avoid publicly commenting on, even if, like Regina, they were on the side of those mistreated and disenfranchised. I find a few bylines, articles about film premieres and real estate development. I keep searching until I locate an essay she wrote five years ago called “My Mother’s Daughter.” Five years ago, we weren’t in touch. Whatever’s in this article, it’s not our relationship now but a past, worse version. Still I click on it, wanting to be hurt by all the ways I failed her. When I read it, I discover that it isn’t angry. It’s regretful. She’d just started a new job. Tutoring, I assume. It forced her to reconsider motherhood—something she didn’t want for herself—and all the things mothers do that their children never appreciate, all the things I did that she took for granted and resented. She understood her role in our estrangement, that it wasn’t my fault alone. Too much swirls in my head: everything we didn’t say to each other, everything we still needed to say, everything we could have said if we’d had more time. These regrets orbit around one certainty. Regina didn’t get intoxicated and drown. That’s not who she was. That’s not how her life ends.

Before I can second-guess myself, I open a travel website and purchase a ticket on the earliest flight out of Newark for tomorrow morning. My therapist would recommend more rational first steps—speaking to Officer Gonzales, contacting Regina’s friends, if I knew who they were. Contacting my therapist, even. Intellectually, I recognize what reasonable behavior looks like. But these options are passive, and right now, I need to act. I can’t sit back in Tenafly, New Jersey, and wait for an autopsy, for my daughter’s body to be delivered to her father. I need to go to Los Angeles and make the police realize that there’s more to the story. I owe my daughter this much. I owe it to the relationship we were building to find out what happened to her.

Chapter Five

Tessa

When Gabe returns downstairs after putting Jasper to bed, I’m pacing the living room, hand on my lower back, breathing to calm my racing heart. Each step sends a sharp twinge through my pelvis, reminding me I’ll soon have another person to keep safe, that I’m doing a terrible job of protecting the child I already have if he’s identifying women later found dead outside our house. Regina. Gigi. It’s the kind of truncating and reframing Jasper does with names. We saw her yesterday, and today she drowned in front of our home? That can’t be a coincidence.

“T.?” Gabe races over, catching me in the middle of the room. “You okay?”

I’m about to say Of course I’m not okay. Our son knew the woman who drowned in our canal. He’s rubbing my stomach. He means the baby. He thinks, from the way I pace and breathe, I’ve gone into premature labor.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, then point to the TV. “Gigi?” He’s confused. “The woman in the canal? Jasper called her Gigi.”

I haven’t given him enough information to follow, but I expect him to intrinsically grasp that our child might be in danger. A father’s instinct isn’t the same as a mother’s, though. It doesn’t course through fathers like blood, doesn’t keep them up at night with its gentle humming.

“The woman they found in the canal.” I show Gabe the article on Regina Geller with a picture of her on the beach, kicking up one bare foot, laughing. As Gabe reads about her death, the crease between his eyebrows deepens. “Jasp and I saw her yesterday. He knew who she was.”

Gabe startles, the fear settling into him too.

“Yesterday, we stopped at Café Collage.” I hesitate, guilt ridden over that latte, even though Gabe’s fine with the occasional coffee, a few sips of wine. I’m the one who judges, the one who forgoes sushi and processed sugar, even though Gabe tells me if I want a piece of cake, I should have a piece of cake. It was so hard to get pregnant with Jasper. Six months of trying without even a miscarriage, then three failed IUIs, then at last, IVF. It took almost a year. This time was so unbelievably easy. We weren’t even trying. I still don’t trust it, this close to the end. I’ve been waiting for something to go wrong, and each week it doesn’t, it seems more inevitable that she’ll never be ours.

Gabe says nothing, only nods, encouraging me to continue.

“The woman, Regina, who they found—” I point toward our patio doors, expecting the paths to be empty. Outside, someone is lurking. It startles me until I realize it’s Judy.

She stands in her usual posture, arms behind her back, unapologetically observing us. I’m tempted to ask her about Regina until Gabe waltzes past me, a grin plastered onto his face as he waves to Judy before pressing the button for the shades on the French doors. Our Roman shades are electric, one of the many upsells we didn’t need. Gabe wanted the best, even if it means Judy now disappears in slow motion.

At first, her crush on Gabe was cute. Innocent until every time we turned around, she was pacing outside our garden, pausing if Gabe was taking off his wet suit, spying when Gabe and I embraced, chuckling when Jasper did something naughty. It’s not dangerous or threatening, just intrusive. Even here, along the canals, where people are always watching.

The shades click once they’re rolled down. We can’t see Judy anymore, but I can still feel her lingering. On the coffee table, Regina Geller’s pretty face beams at me from my phone. I hold it out to Gabe, who appears to have forgotten the story I was telling him, like this isn’t the way we have all conversations as parents. Fragmented, interrupted. “When we saw her yesterday, Jasper was pointing and calling her Gigi. Is she—have you ever seen her before? Is she someone we know?”

Gabe studies her picture. “I don’t think so.”

He sits on the couch, brushing his hand through his hair as he collects his thoughts.

“T., I know this is really disturbing. Accidents like this don’t happen here.” He motions me to sit beside him, and when I do, he massages my shoulder, his hand warm and stabilizing. “It’s completely normal to want to make this horrible, random death make sense.”

Gabe’s quick to tell me how normal my worries are. When the baby doesn’t kick for too long, when she won’t stop hiccuping, when Jasper failed his iron test—these are all normal worries. It reassures him to know these are typical concerns, that we have nothing atypical to worry about. No matter how common my fears are, their mundanity does little to quell their persistence, the way they keep my limbs rigid, my mind spiraling. It’s a visceral response, one that makes me feel dramatic. Emotional. Pregnant.

“I’m sure Jasper called to someone, but—” Gabe takes my phone from my hand and angles it toward me, so I can’t avoid Regina’s innocent, joyful expression. “You’re sure this is the woman you saw? There are a thousand girls who look like this in Venice.”

He raises an eyebrow to indicate You look like this. Given my sandy hair and blue eyes, most people assume I was born with Hollywood in my veins and surfing in my soul. With his brooding Italian good looks, people assume Gabe’s the transplant, when he’s the native to the bay, the one who couldn’t imagine living more than a stone’s throw from the ocean. I’m the small-town girl from Vermont who never had persimmons or Korean food before I moved to LA as an adult.

My resolve weakens. The fist of apprehension unfurls in my gut. The woman in the photograph, her hair is lighter than the hair of the woman we saw in Café Collage, not dyed blue at the tips, no visible tattoos beneath her long-sleeved shirt. She has only a general resemblance to the woman at the café. Still, there’s something about her that nags at me, something I can’t quite shake.

“You’re sure she isn’t familiar?” I ask Gabe.

He takes a minute to study the photograph, really considering it.

“No.” He puts the phone screen-down on the table. “I’m sure Jasper was calling to someone. He probably wanted her cookie or liked her T-shirt. Maybe it was his way of saying girl. Gee-gee. Maybe it’s a new word.”

I relax even more as I picture Jasper waving to tourists along the canals, shouting for their chips or lemonade, babbling in his secret language. Gabe reaches down and pulls my feet into his lap. His fingers dig into my arch, radiating pleasure through me, so much so that I have a contraction. Gabe feels it, too, and we both laugh, the lust fizzling before it’s even started.

He spreads his fingers across my stomach, beckoning to our girl. “Do you think you’re nervous about the baby?”

My eyes sting, and I will myself not to let that sensation erupt into tears. At some level, everything is about the baby. She’s still breech, and if she doesn’t turn by my next appointment, I’ll have to decide whether I want to schedule a C-section or get an ECV to shift her so she’s head down. I only have three weeks left, two if I need surgery. It’s too soon. I don’t want another C-section. I’m still recovering from the last one.

With Jasper, the only easy part of pregnancy was the gestation itself. It was so easy that he didn’t want to leave the womb. Ten days after my due date, I was finally induced. Even after they pumped me full of Pitocin and broke my water, he still didn’t want to come out. Each time I had a contraction, his heart rate dropped to dangerous levels. They gave me something else to stop the labor until, hours later, they decided he had to come out. As they raced me into an operating room, the head nurse shouted in a voice that was too loud, too insistent. When they cut me open, they found the cord was wrapped twice around his neck. I’ll never forget the gesture Gabe made as he described how the doctor unwound the cord, circling his arm like he was untangling a scarf.

When we brought Jasper home, I was terrified that he’d suffered brain damage during labor. I searched for signs in every cry. And he cried a lot. When he slept, I continually checked his breath. At first I was so determined to keep him alive that I forgot to love him. The nerves rise up now as I think of going through it all again with this one.

Gabe’s right. I am anxious. Work’s always proved a useful distraction. The physical act of constructing jewelry is fully consuming. A flame too long over metal and you’ve scorched an earring. A heat too high and a ring collapses into a pile of gold. An extra strike with the file and you’re uneven again. The craft requires your undivided focus. Without it, my anxiety has vast swaths to expand in.

“It’s been a long day.” I hold out my hand so he can help me up. “Let’s go to bed.”

As so often happens during my pregnancy, I’m asleep within minutes. A sleep deep enough that I can’t dream, can’t worry, can only let my body rest.

In the middle of the night, I wake up sweat-drenched, the baby tap-dancing on my bladder. I get up to pee, and it all comes back to me: the police lights along the bridge, the tape across the saltbushes, Regina Geller. Gigi.

Gabe snores softly from the other side of the bed. I tiptoe to the window, press the shade half up. Outside, the canal is as dark and quiet as it should be at two in the morning. Despite the calm, my heart races. I wonder if it makes my daughter’s heart race, too, if she knows my panic as well as she knows my voice, my diet, my laughter. If I’d woken last night, I might have seen Regina Geller. I might have been able to save her.

I head downstairs for a glass of water and chug it, relishing in the cool liquid as it slips down my throat, then regretting it because, after I fall back to sleep, I’ll have to pee again in no time. I spot my phone on the coffee table. Earlier, I’d been so distracted by thoughts of the baby and whether Jasper could actually have known this woman that I forgot to plug it in. I assume it’ll be dead. When I tap it, Jasper’s smiling face, covered in cake from his first birthday, peers back at me. The screen unlocks because I’m staring at it, so I swipe to open my phone, and a different face fills my screen, one that will never smile again.

I stare at Regina’s photograph, those piercing blue eyes glancing sideways at the camera. Something in her hair catches my attention. I use my thumb and pointer finger to zoom in on it. It’s a butterfly barrette with little red wings dusted in gold. The woman at the coffee shop was wearing the same one. It was Regina. My son called to her. Not to her pen or her tattoos but to her. Gigi. He knew her, and I have no idea how.

Chapter Six

Barb

LA is gray and overcast, the entire city mourning my daughter. I drop my bag at the Marriott in Santa Monica. It’s too early to check in, so I do my best to distract myself with the mystery for book club until the city wakes for the day. If I were the mother in one of my books, I’d be here, too, the amateur sleuth, the only one desperate for the truth. It’s impossible that I’m here, in LA, reading a book where I could be a character. Waiting, but not for Regina. I can tell I’m grieving, though it’s different from when my parents, various friends died. I’m cocooned in disbelief. I don’t even realize I’m still reading until I land on a word that makes me dizzy. Murder.

On the page, I underline the details that signify to the police a murder has been committed—forced entry, abrasions on the skin, a missing knife in the butcher block, the angle of the stab wound. I know nothing about the scene of Regina’s death, whether the police were as conscientious as they are in this novel. While I shouldn’t be taking notes from fiction . . . if her death wasn’t an accident, surely there were signs. What if the police overlooked evidence, grasping for a conclusion that created the least amount of work for them? After all, this is Venice Beach. The police have plenty of crime to deal with, without adding a death that could easily be written off as an accident. Oh, Regina, why did you have to live in a place like this? Why did you have to die in a place like this too?

My plan is to go see Officer Gonzales and demand answers. There’s something I have to do first, though. I need to force my brain to accept what my heart cannot. Regina is gone. I’m in her city, but I will not see her. I will never see her again.

The canals are a short drive from my hotel. I park along their edges and find a walkway in. Before yesterday, I’d never heard of the Venice Canals. Regina didn’t take me to see them when I visited. From Google, I learn that they are a popular tourist destination, modeled after their Italian namesake. These canals are nothing like the original Venice, though. There are no stores or restaurants, no winding cobblestone streets to get lost in. It’s just a grid of fancy houses, divided by waterways with bridges and sidewalks, lush flowering bushes that make the gray morning too sweet.

From the internet, I have the name of the canal, Linnie, which is two blocks long. I walk up one side, down the other, waiting to sense the spot where they found her. It’s all so cold and foreign. I keep searching, fearful that if I can’t locate the exact place where she died, then she will have died everywhere—not just here in the canals but anywhere I go.

At ten in the morning, I pass only a few pedestrians. A man in shorts walks two Yorkies, shouting into his Bluetooth such that he appears to be berating the wind. A few others carry surfboards. The playground is more active, with three toddlers exploring the underside of the slide, their mothers clustered under a tree. The shades of most houses are up, the living rooms dark inside. I walk up and down the other canals, seeing if somewhere else tugs at me. It’s all so empty. When I recognize a house shaped like a castle, I realize I’m walking in circles. Three men with pitchforks stand in a canal, digging up piles of algae. They work deliberately. I wonder if these were the men who found her.

I approach them cautiously, and they nod without losing focus on their work. As I continue to watch them, they grow wary, assuming I’m going to make trouble.

“Do you need something?” the older one asks. Older is relative. To me, they are all young. He just seems the most worn down by life.

“Were you—did you find—in the canal yesterday—” I start and stop, trying to form an impossible sentence. Their postures stiffen, hands gripped tighter around the handles of their pitchforks. “The woman you found in the canal, Regina Geller? She’s my daughter.”

The man speaks to the others in Spanish. They stare at me, their faces lined with sympathy.

“I’m sorry to disrupt you. I need to see . . . I need to know where . . .” My voice trails off.

The man I have come to think of as the boss puts down his pitchfork and climbs up the side of the canal.

“I can show you,” he says somberly.

I follow him down one block before we turn and stop a few feet farther. He peers down at the shallow water at the center of the canal, dark enough to reflect the palm and magnolia trees from the nearby backyards. I scan the oily surface for signs of Regina—one of her stacked rings, a colorful sneaker, a strand of her dyed hair, sometimes blue, other weeks purple. The muddy water would come up to my knee. It strikes me how unlikely it is that anyone could drown in so little water, especially Regina.

The man nods to me, then walks away, leaving me alone. Across the canal, someone coughs. I glance over at a young woman situated behind an easel. I wonder if she has any idea what transpired here barely twenty-four hours ago. A man bikes past her, clipping one of the feet on her easel. It collapses, and she shouts at him to be more careful as she bends down to retrieve her canvas. The man waves in apology. I spin around, taking in the full circumference of Regina’s last moments alive. Why was she here? What connection did she have to this strange place?

My knees ache from walking on hard cement. I’ve had two cortisone shots and will need a knee replacement soon. I’m fighting it, even though everyone who’s had their knee or hip replaced tells me it’s infinitely better once you’ve healed. It’s the healing process that scares me, especially now that, when the doctor asks who will help me recuperate, I have no one. Each thought of Regina bleeds fresh. How many more ways can I lose her?

Behind me, a woman my age steps out of a weathered house into a ramshackle backyard, unfazed by the dead plants she weaves between. While there are a few other houses like hers, blights on the otherwise pristine community, hers is the most neglected—a tarp across part of the roof, those dead plants, siding that once may have been blue. Even though I can’t see through the navy curtains across her windows, I can easily imagine the stained furniture inside, the piles of old magazines and dusty carpeting beneath. I don’t want to think of her this way, the way everyone likely sees her. I can’t help it. Her house really is that derelict. She creaks open the gate and nods as she passes me, tucking her arms behind her back to walk like a soldier on patrol.

As her figure disappears around a corner, my phone rings. It’s Isaac.

“Hey, Barb. You doing okay?”

“Good as can be expected.” I face the dark, shallow water that lies stagnant in the basin.

“Same,” he says, then we’re both quiet. “The police called. They finished the autopsy, so they’re sending her to us tomorrow. Since that’s just before the Sabbath, we should be able to do the l’vayah on Sunday. We hope you’ll sit with us for the full seven days.”

I’m about to argue that I’m her mother—of course I’ll sit for the entire shiva. But I just got here. I can’t leave until I figure out what happened to Regina.

“I’m in LA.” I hold my breath, girding myself for his disapproval.

“Barb, don’t put yourself through this.” Every time he says my name, I wish he’d call me something else, something no one else does, something I don’t have to hear from my friends, cashiers at coffee shops. Because from now on, every time I hear my name, I will hear it in his voice: the pity, the sympathy I don’t want.

“Things don’t add up, Isaac. Regina was sober. She was a lifeguard. A varsity swimmer. She wouldn’t get so messed up that she’d drown in less than two feet of water.”

“Regina was an alcoholic.” His voice is deliberate, practiced. “That never goes away.”

“It was different this time. I know it. She didn’t slip.” When he doesn’t say anything, I add, “I need to do this.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

After we hang up, I stare at the opaque water until my vision goes blurry. Isaac’s words reverberate through my limbs. That never goes away. Regina was a recovered alcoholic, an addict. Those labels followed her, stalked her, but she knew how to keep them at bay. Isaac thinks my grief is blinding me. He wasn’t on the balcony at Shutters when she detailed her recovery, the checks she had in place to never relapse again, for us never to return to that time when she couldn’t have me in her life.

I remember the exact conversation seven years ago, down to the word, that forever changed our relationship. Regina was home for a visit. Isaac had paid for her ticket, which meant she was staying with him. Of course it hurt. But she was home, at least. I forced myself to focus on that fact.

I agreed to have Shabbat dinner with them. It was so bizarre, Isaac lighting the candles, blessing the challah. Isaac was raised agnostic. No bar mitzvah. No temple. When we got engaged, my mother complained that he wasn’t really Jewish. Both his parents were Ashkenazi, immigrants from Hungary. The blood was real. The rest could be learned. I was the one who insisted on a rabbi at our wedding, Hebrew school, and then a bat mitzvah for Regina. That was tradition, though, to keep our culture alive. I’ll go to Linda’s for the first night of Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. But I never fast, never keep kosher for Passover, never wash away my sins. I can’t remember the last time I lit a menorah. Isaac, though—when he married Anna, he found his faith. Shabbat dinners, abstention from shellfish and pork, no milk with meat—although he didn’t go as far as having separate dishes—temple on the High Holidays, and even on minor ones I was unfamiliar with. Anna wasn’t particularly religious before they got married either. Their religion atoned them.

I’d like to believe that Anna wasn’t meddling, that after twenty-plus years of marriage to Isaac, she was secure enough in her relationship not to start trouble. Maybe it had nothing to do with Isaac. Maybe it was her relationship with Regina that made her insecure. I don’t know. I can’t devote energy to trying to understand Anna.

That evening started off pleasant enough. Isaac had a nice singing voice, emanating calm as he intoned the prayers, a calm I believed would last the night. It didn’t even last through the blessings. After Isaac sang to Anna, the woman of the house, and it was time for the kiddush, Anna made a point of telling Regina that it was grape juice.

We want you to feel safe, Anna said. There’s no alcohol in the house.

Regina glanced quickly at me before telling Anna, You didn’t have to do that.

I’d rather have grape juice anyway, Anna continued, oblivious, though not as oblivious as I was. Wine gives me terrible headaches.

Regina hugged herself, mined her fingernails. She wouldn’t face me. Meanwhile, Isaac quietly admonished his wife, eyes so wide they were practically bulging out of his head. It wasn’t until Anna clamped her hand over her mouth that I knew something was amiss.

What’s going on? My gaze darted between them as they avoided my question. Regina had been sober for three years. Whenever I took her out to dinner, she insisted I have a glass of wine, a cocktail. It made her stronger in her sobriety, watching other people drink, knowing she could withstand the temptation. It didn’t make sense that Anna would be so worried about drinking in front of her now. Unless she’d relapsed.

Did something happen? I tried again.

The grape juice never did get blessed. The challah never torn. Isaac jumped in to tell me a truncated version of what had happened, never once saying relapse. He told me about the center he’d paid for, the detox, how Regina was starting her sobriety journey anew.

You went to rehab again? I spoke directly to my daughter.

Let’s talk about this later, Regina whispered to me.

The anger was rising in me. It only had one way out. I lashed out at Isaac, Anna even. Never Regina. With Regina I pleaded. Didn’t she know she could always talk to me? I would have flown out. I would have brought her to rehab, visited her each day. I would have made sure she was cared for, loved.

Don’t you see? Regina said. You always make it your problem to fix. It’s not helpful. It just makes everything worse.

The next morning, I found a letter in my mailbox. In Regina’s crooked handwriting, she wrote that she loved me, but I wasn’t safe for her. I can’t be around you right now, she wrote. Please respect my boundaries. Please give me space.

I honored her wishes. I gave her space. At the time, it felt like mourning. It didn’t prepare me for the loss I’m experiencing now, massive and hollow at once.

Would Regina want me here? Am I making this worse? I turn away from the putrid water. The smell is beginning to repulse me.

A bright flash of color catches my attention as a striking woman in a tank top, clearly braless, carries two mugs across the bridge. Her magenta robe billows behind her. She brushes past me, the soft silk grazing my arm as she willfully ignores me and waltzes into the garden of the Spanish-style house beside the dilapidated one. The women in my book club complain about being infantilized, treated as feeble and dim witted. They lament the knowledge people miss by ignoring us. The thing that gets me is the invisibility. This woman didn’t even register my existence as she traipsed by.

My phone buzzes, and I assume it’s Isaac again. Instead, it’s Linda. She’s with our book club. They’ve sent a video text.

“We want you to know we’re thinking about you,” Linda says as Gloria shouts in the background, “We miss you,” and Delia promises they’ll wait to discuss our next book until I’m back. “We’re here if you need us,” Linda reminds me as the other ladies unanimously agree.

My chest flutters. My book club. I have them, even when it seems like I’ve lost everything.

By the time I close the video, I’ve received three more texts in our group chain, one with an address link to the canals where I stand, another to the LAPD office in Venice Beach, where I plan to go when I leave here, and one to Bagel Nosh, which Susanna insists is the only place in LA to get a real bagel.

The woman in the silk robe knocks on the back door of the Spanish-style house, and an extremely pregnant woman steps out, taking one of the mugs from her friend. They settle into the outdoor living room, the pregnant woman surrendering to a position that can’t be comfortable. A couple swooshes past me, tucked into each other. The canals are starting to get more crowded, yet these women, these locals, they drink their coffee as though on a private veranda. What’s it like, living here, with people constantly watching? What’s it like being pregnant here, raising children along waterways where strangers have drowned? When I was a new mom, I thought about death constantly. It became my companion, a tortured form of love, a preoccupation that kept real loss at bay. Now I have failed at my most basic job. I didn’t protect my daughter. I didn’t teach her to protect herself. I stare at the pregnant woman, momentarily hating her for all the life she carries, for her ability to ignore me, until she glances over and meets my eye. My legs wobble. My breath leaves me. She looks like Regina. Regina, if she didn’t dye her hair. Regina, if she didn’t have tattoos. Regina, if she were pregnant.

I don’t feel my knees buckle, but the burn radiates through my right leg, my bad knee, as I hit the cement walkway. I put my hands on my thighs, lean in to the pain, and breathe.

Vaguely, I hear someone ask if I’m okay. A hand rests softly on my shoulder. I see the pregnant woman standing above me, her friend a few feet behind her, equally concerned. Now that she’s closer, she has only a passing resemblance to Regina. They look no more like each other than any two short blond women, which LA has in spades.

“Let me get you some ice,” the pregnant woman says. She motions to her friend, who says “I’ve got it” and disappears into the pregnant woman’s house.

“Here.” The pregnant woman holds out her hand. Her nails are trimmed and buffed, painted cream, when Regina’s were always sparkly black or blue. She’s prettier than my Regina, or maybe just posher, even with limp hair and eyes engulfed in dark circles. I let her help me up.

Upright, I wave and scurry away, embarrassed that I’ve caused a scene. My knee throbs with every step.

“What about the ice?” she shouts once I’m halfway down the block.

“Thank you.” I wave behind me, focusing on the pathway ahead. Every nerve is telling me to run away from this woman.

Chapter Seven

Tessa

As the older woman limps away, I feel a rope tethering us, its tension slackening as she disappears. She wasn’t emotionally unstable or delusional, only unsteady on her feet. Although it isn’t the same as being pregnant, I understood her—how your body betrays you, makes you vulnerable to strangers in ways you don’t want to be.

“Never a dull moment,” Claire says once we’re resettled on my patio. She studies her phone, checking the app for her baby cam. “Still sleeping.” She rests the phone back on the table.

Our nanny, Marisol, doesn’t arrive until one. Claire hates paying for her daughter’s nap and has trained Summer to faithfully sleep from 11:00–12:30 each day, during which she can paint. Instead, she has coffee with me while my son not-so-faithfully sleeps upstairs. Since his schedule is less consistent than Summer’s, Claire always comes to me, judiciously monitoring Summer through her app, asleep in a crib she can’t climb out of, in a bedroom we can see while we drink our coffee.

As Claire leans over to retrieve her mug, her tank top falls forward, exposing her small breasts beneath. Claire never wears a bra. Her nipples, made forever erect from nursing, are always on display. Although it makes Gabe uncomfortable, I love how free she is with her body. It’s easier when you have a body like Claire’s, seemingly untouched by pregnancy, except for those nipples. I wish I were this physically at ease. I’m not that brave. It shouldn’t be about bravery, but it is for me. Then again, Claire doesn’t plan to have a second baby because she fears what it will do not only to her career but to her figure. Maybe it isn’t about bravery for her either.

“To the canals in algae season,” she says, clinking her mug against mine. The stench is particularly potent this morning, so much so that I can still smell it even though we’ve been out here long enough to acclimate.

“How’s my little girl?” Claire reaches out to give my stomach a light rub. She’s the only person I let touch my stomach besides Gabe and my doctors. It’s amazing how often strangers think they can touch you. The other day, a woman at the grocery store patted my stomach and said, You must be close now. I smiled politely because I always opt for the nonconfrontational response, even when I want to snap. Snapping makes me unreasonable, and in my state unreasonable quickly becomes irrational. There’s no way to have a big emotional response when you’re pregnant, not if you want to be taken seriously.

I can still feel the unease of the older woman who fell. Tourists often do strange, intrusive things. This was different. Unsettling.

Claire and I sip our coffee, staring at the saltbushes that line the empty canal. When the canals were refurbished in the ’90s, the city made the residents add the shrubbery as a barrier to keep people from falling in. Now the saltbushes are so overgrown they themselves are falling into the canals, dying from the toxicity of the water, leaving holes between the bushes.

The voices of two women waft from a distance, chatting loudly about a job interview. When they materialize outside my yard, they’re younger than I expect, dressed in fashionable spandex sets. I gaze longingly at their narrow waists, yearning for a tautness I will never have again. They see me watching them, so I wave. Everyone has their own approach to the tourists. Most residents pretend not to see them, a false sense of privacy when we live in a fishbowl. I go the opposite way, saying hello to everyone who makes eye contact with me. It’s what Jasper does, and it generally makes for a more pleasant interaction.

“What happened to the water?” one of the women asks us.

“The canals are empty on weekdays this time of year,” I reply.

“It’s so stinky,” the other says, plugging her nose. “Is it always like this?”

“After it rains,” I say coolly, defensively.

“It’s the price we pay to live here,” Claire says, equally protective.

They nod as they continue their walk. I stare at the saltbushes, the cavities between, holes large enough that a baby, not an adult, could crawl through.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” I ask Claire. “If she tripped, wouldn’t she have gotten caught in the bushes? It just seems unlikely that she could have fallen in, let alone drowned in so little water.”

Claire considers this, knowing exactly who I mean. “Jimi Hendrix drowned in his own vomit.” She takes a sip of her coffee, still pensive, a touch conflicted. “I didn’t mention it to the others. You know how they get. But I swear I saw her.”

“Oh?” I say, disappointed, as though Claire’s claim to Regina makes mine less legitimate.

“Last week. She walked by like five times.” Tourists often get lost among the canals. It’s a simple grid on the map. On foot, it’s easy to think you’re headed in one direction, only to find yourself in front of a house you just walked by. It’s common to see the same person multiple times. “It wasn’t like normal. She stopped on the bridge, and I swear she was staring at my house. Gave me the creeps.”

Our canal is Claire’s canal as well. Outside our house is outside hers too. Maybe Gabe’s right. Maybe this has nothing to do with us.

The monitor lights up, sensing Jasper’s movement. I motion to Claire that we’ll be right back.

When we return, I let Jasper lie against me, not fully committed to being awake. His body is warm and heavy against mine.

“We saw her too. Yesterday, at Café Collage.” I tell Claire about Jasper shouting Gigi, the butterfly hair clip.

“Gabe thinks I’m scared about the baby, redirecting my fears.”

“Are you?”

With anyone else, I’d be offended by her doubt, the constant assumption that everything’s really about the baby. “Maybe? I’m capable of multiple worries at the same time.”

Claire smirks, appreciating this response. This gives me an idea.

I find my phone and pull up the photograph of Regina that all the news outlets are using. I’ve tried to find other pictures of her, to confirm that she was indeed the woman we saw. Her social media is set to private. The articles she wrote all used this photo too.

“Jasp.” I point the phone toward him. “Do you know who this is?”

He studies the picture, then me, then the picture again.

“Foo. Foo.” He makes the sign for food, pinching his fingertips together and bringing them to his lips.

“One second, sweetie. First, can you tell me who this is?”

“Gigi,” he says, then continues to ask for a snack.

I glance over at Claire, who has the terrified expression I expected from Gabe at this revelation. “You heard that, right?”

“You need to tell the police,” Claire says.

“Tell them what? ‘This might sound crazy, but I’m pretty sure my preverbal son knew the woman who died. You’ll have to take my word for it, though, since he can’t tell you himself.’”

“Don’t do that,” Claire chides. “If you show the police what you just showed me, they’ll hear it. They’ll understand.”

“Did you tell the police that you saw her?”

“I did.” She takes a well-timed sip of coffee. “They wrote it down. Who knows if it’ll make a difference, but it’s on file. This is bigger, though. Jasp recognized her.”

Claire’s phone lights up with an image of Summer stirring in her crib. She stands and reaches for my mug. “See you at one?”

We don’t have a set schedule for when Marisol is at each of our houses, instead trading off as needed. Now that I’m home, avoiding my workshop and all the equipment I can’t use, the kids are usually at the Huntsmans’, where Claire can remain hidden in her studio behind the main house. In our home, there’s no place for me to retreat where Jasper can’t find me. These days, while Marisol tends to my child across the canal, I’m usually watching TV or scrolling through Instagram, hoping she can’t see me. It feels decadent to have a nanny when I’m not working, irresponsible both fiscally and maternally. I remind myself that rest is work. Once this baby is out and my body is healed, I will begin the upward battle of reclaiming my career, the identity I wore most prominently before I had children.

Claire looms above me, waiting for me to look up at her.

“You should go to the police.” She stares at me until I nod in agreement, but I’m still unsure if I’ll actually follow through with her advice.

Claire unlatches the gate and steps through. “Trust your instincts.”

Chapter Eight

Barb

I stare at the brick facade of the Pacific Community Police Station, gathering the strength to walk inside. I thought the canals, the site of her death, would embolden me. Instead, I’m left feeling more alone in this ugly city. The only thing that scares me more than walking through these doors is never learning what happened to my daughter. I take a deep breath, give myself a pep talk, and press the buzzer to be let inside.

Behind bulletproof glass, the receptionist picks her teeth as she completes a crossword. When I approach, she holds up a hand, signaling for me to wait.

“Etui.” She scribbles the letters onto the grid. “Yes?” Her voice is indifferent, her attention wavering as I fumble through an explanation for why I’m here.

Once I’ve managed to communicate who I am, her demeanor changes. She flips closed her crossword book and inches her hands toward mine, thwarted by the glass.

“Let me find out who the first responder was.” She types, scans the monitor, then picks up the phone and dials. “I have a Mrs. Geller. Her daughter was—” The person on the line must recognize my name, because the receptionist doesn’t finish her sentence. She hangs up and tells me that Officer Gonzales will be out, then apologizes as she asks me for my ID.

I wait on the plasticky faux-leather couch in the lobby, unable to get comfortable. It’s a few minutes before a capable-looking Hispanic man enters the waiting room.

“Mrs. Geller,” he says, “I’m Officer Gonzales. I’m so sorry about your daughter.” From his tone, I believe him. “Do you want to come back? My partner’s waiting in the conference room.”

He leads me through the locked door into a large room with several desks, some occupied, others not. He offers me coffee, which I decline. Water, which I also decline. I follow him into an understated conference room, where a young man is waiting for us. From his freckles and red hair, he appears Irish, a nationality confirmed when he introduces himself as Officer Mahoney.

“I’m glad you came to see us,” Officer Gonzales says as he holds out a chair for me. “I’m sure you have lots of questions. We’ll do our best to answer them. Sometimes, though, we think we want more information than we really do.”

It takes me a moment to decipher what he’s really saying. I can’t unlearn details. Anything he tells me, I’ll never forget.

“I’m having trouble believing Regina accidentally drowned.” The words catch in my throat. I wish I’d accepted the water. It feels too late to ask for it now. “I know how this sounds, but I also know my Regina. She was a lifeguard. And sober for seven years.”

“We won’t know what was in her system until the toxicology report comes back,” Officer Mahoney says.

“And how long will that take?”

Mahoney frowns, clearly not wanting to tell me that it will take longer than I’d like. Before he has a chance to speak, Officer Gonzales interjects, “About four to six weeks. I don’t want you holding out for that. The medical examiner has already ruled it an accidental drowning.”

“Is it possible someone hurt her? Held her down?” I can barely get the words out.

“Do you have reason to believe anyone would have wanted to harm your daughter?” Officer Gonzales takes out a notepad, ready to transcribe my answers.

I shake my head no.

He keeps the notepad open, but he puts his pen down. “We’ve interviewed her neighbors, friends, her girlfriend. They all had alibis for that night.”

“Girlfriend,” I whisper, stunned at the word. He doesn’t mean it the way my book club uses it. He means girlfriend the way everyone under sixty-five means girlfriend. Regina had a girlfriend? Why didn’t she tell me? Did she think I would judge? Did I somehow convey that I wouldn’t be accepting?

“Maisy Rosenthal. She lived upstairs from Regina. She was out with friends that night. We’ve confirmed her story. No one else in Regina’s life came up as suspicious. We spoke to her employers at A-Plus Tutoring, the families she worked with—she was on a hiatus from tutoring. And the outlets she freelanced for hadn’t heard from her in a while. It seems she’d been retreating.” I hear what he’s intimating, a cheap euphemism for relapse.

“Isn’t there a lot of crime in Venice? It could have been random.”

“Ma’am—” Officer Mahoney cuts in. In my thirties, I hated it when men called me ma’am. At seventy, it is downright offensive. “There’s no evidence to suggest anyone else was present when she died.”

“Given her body was submerged in water,” Officer Gonzales intervenes, “evidence could have been washed away, but there were no signs of struggle. Her wallet still had money and credit cards in it. There was no indication of attempted robbery or assault.”

“How do you even know it’s Regina? Who identified her?”

“Ma’am—” Officer Mahoney says again.

“Please stop calling me ma’am.”

Officer Mahoney startles. His partner motions for him to sit back and addresses me instead.

“Regina’s license was in her wallet. Her phone was in her pocket.”

“I want to see her. I want to know for certain it’s my daughter.”

“I’d strongly advise against that,” Officer Gonzales says. “She’d been in the water for several hours when she was discovered.”

What happens to a body after several hours in water? Is it bloated? Decomposing? I always skim through the gorier parts of thrillers, not wanting the death on the page to become real. I don’t want it to become vivid now, in the distorted shape of my daughter.

“We’re confident it was your daughter,” Officer Gonzales says again, then hesitates, picking at his cuticles. My stomach sinks. He’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear. “We found her Vespa parked outside the Brig on Abbot Kinney, where—”

“A motorcycle?” How many times did I make her promise me she would never ride on the back of one? I hate motorcycles. It’s difficult not to take this news personally.

“A scooter, technically. We have her credit card receipt from the Brig, which is a popular drinking establishment. We spoke with the bartender who served her several shots of tequila.”

I want to fight him, to say that Regina hated tequila, but it was her preferred liquor. I scan myself for the seed of doubt this news should germinate. Instead, I’m resolute. Regina wouldn’t slip.

“I know this isn’t what you want to hear.” Officer Gonzales frowns as his partner stares at me with all his wide-eyed inexperience. “And believe me, I wish I could tell you something different. I was the first officer on the scene, so when I say we were thorough, I mean it. There’s no evidence to support anything but a terrible accident.”

“What about—” I try to find another question, something to catch him off guard. “Why isn’t there a detective on her case?”

“There isn’t evidence of a crime, so there’s nothing for a detective to investigate.” There’s a tinge of annoyance in Officer Mahoney’s voice, and I cast him my human resources glare, forcing him to cower.

“Mrs. Geller,” Officer Gonzales intervenes again, “this is hands down my least favorite part of the job. I want to understand what happened to your daughter too. We don’t have any evidence to suggest a crime. I’ll tell you what.” He knocks his knuckles against the table as though he’s just come up with something. “Why don’t I put some pressure on the medical examiner to get the toxicology report back ASAP. Now, that will still take about a month, but leave your number, and I’ll give you a call as soon as we know more.” He rips a sheet of paper from his notepad and slides it toward me with his pen.

I hear what he’s really saying. Go home. Stop this fruitless quest.

After I write down my number, he trades the pad for one of his business cards. “In the meantime, if you think of anything that might be useful, if you have any questions, this is my direct line.”

Officer Mahoney starts to get his card out. Officer Gonzales subtly shakes his head no and escorts me out alone.

Officer Gonzales holds the front door open for me. “It’s good you’re here. I want you to trust we’re taking this seriously.”

I head toward my car, defeated. There’s got to be more to this. Evidence they overlooked. Details I’ll pursue, even if I have little to go on. Officer Gonzales did offer me one clue to follow—a bar. The Brig. Two clues, actually—a bar and a girlfriend.

In the distance, a woman and small child approach the building. With her figure cloaked in a loose linen dress, it takes me a moment to tell she’s pregnant. There must be something in the air. Two pregnant women in one day. Perhaps it’s a sign, of what I’m not exactly sure. Motherhood persists. Despite all the heartache it promises, we persevere.

But as she approaches, I realize it’s the same woman from the canals this morning. She wrangles her son into a horizontal position as she lumbers toward the door. Everyone says parenthood gets easier as your children get older. Those early days are the easy ones. The days where love comes naturally and willingly, where you’re the center of their world. The days where it seems possible to keep them safe.

As if she can hear my thoughts, she glances my way. Through the fatigue, the struggle, I see a flash of recognition across her face. Is she here because of Regina? Does she know something?

Chapter Nine

Tessa

I wasn’t planning on taking Claire’s advice about going to the police. It felt reactionary, dramatic. I could imagine how I’d seem to a couple of overworked officers, barreling in with my water about to break, insistent that my child who cannot speak has something vital to contribute to their investigation.

As I prepped lunch for Jasper, as I watched his tickled expression at the leftover buttered carrots and noodles, her words drummed in my head. Trust your instincts.

When Jasper was born, Gabe and I had no idea what we were doing, no family to guide us, no models from our youths on how to be responsible, loving parents. Sure, I’d read books and blogs, suffered through well-intentioned lectures of unsolicited counsel. At the end of the day, though, our instincts drove our choices. When we decided to move him into his own room. When we introduced him to his first food—bananas, despite the advice that we should start with something savory. My instincts wake me a moment before Jasper cries. They make my arms reach for him as he falls. Now, they tell me that he knew the woman who drowned outside our home. And this is when I would opt to ignore my instincts?

I texted Marisol that I’d be keeping Jasper with me this afternoon and grabbed my keys from the bowl by the door. When she texted back a thumbs-up sign, I had an inkling. I sent her a picture of Regina.

Do you know her? Is she another nanny? I wrote, hoping more than expecting Marisol to say she and the kids saw her on their afternoon trips to the park, that this could be over that quickly.

I don’t think so. I’ve never seen her before. I waited for her to ask why.

See you tomorrow, Miss Tessa, she added instead. I grabbed my keys and followed my gut out the door.

I just wish, now that I’ve followed my instincts and am at the police station, my key witness weren’t screaming, flailing as I clutch him against my side and plow toward the door. On the short drive to Culver Boulevard, I’d loaded Jasper with enough dried fruit and puffs to last the week, but it was no match for the lull of the car. He was asleep for all of five minutes. Now he’s furious at being woken, prepared to show me just how difficult he can be.

I haven’t been to a police station since I was a teenager, to collect my mother after one of her benders had gotten her into trouble with a guy, or a bartender, or the hood of a stranger’s car. Back in Burlington, those stations were suburban, idyllic, clean. Then, it was police officers who knew my name, knew I was a good kid. This building has the ’70s brick-and-stucco exterior of a DMV, sadness emanating from it like steam off a sidewalk.

“Jasper, come on.” I struggle to keep hold of him.

An older woman is stopped on the walkway ahead, trying to get my attention. I don’t want to hear from another stranger that these days go by too fast. That hindsight must be nice. Anyone who gazes longingly at a mom struggling to contain her toddler is completely full of shit. These moments can’t be over fast enough.

She asks me something about where I live, but Jasper has managed to extricate himself from my grip and is scampering toward the door. I chase after him, my uterus pounding with every step.

“Wait—” she calls, and I wave to appease her.

Jasper tugs at the door handle, trying to break in. When a police officer walks out, he darts inside. I race after him.

I let Jasper watch CoComelon until Officer Gonzales appears from the back. His expression reveals just how enthusiastic he is to have us here. He leads us into a sterile white room that makes me feel like a criminal. We wait as Officer Gonzales gets me a glass of water and collects his partner. Jasper wanders around the room, tracing the mortar between the bricks on the wall, tear streaks drying down his cheeks.

Officer Gonzales returns with a Styrofoam cup for me, some computer paper and pens for Jasper. His partner files in behind him, a pale, freckled man who barely seems old enough to grow facial hair, let alone solve crimes.

“Couldn’t find any crayons,” Gonzales says as he lays out the paper and pens for Jasper.

“Oh, these are more dangerous, so he’ll like them better,” I tease.

Gonzales stiffens, misinterpreting my joke as a reprimand. We’re starting off on the wrong foot, like last time.

“What can we do for you, Mrs. Irons?” he asks too formally.

Trust your instincts.

I scoop Jasper into my lap, and he dives for the pen.

“You said to reach out if there was anything I thought might be important.” He nods, waiting for me to continue. “I didn’t realize until we saw her picture on the news. My son knew Regina Geller.”

Officer Gonzales remains neutral, while his partner sits a little taller. I wish he were my contact, not Gonzales. I talk to the partner, who nods along as I detail my brief story about Café Collage, about Gigi, even though it’s Gonzales who takes notes and asks, “Gigi? Is that some sort of nickname?”

And there it is, the first kernel of doubt. I keep my gaze fixed on his partner, who appears conflicted about my story. He’s second chair. This isn’t his case. It’s not even a case.

“Look.” I take out my phone, and suddenly the pen Jasper is jabbing into the paper becomes a distant memory. He lunges for my phone. I hold it away as I open a picture of Regina. “I’ll give it to you in a sec, buddy. First, I want you to tell the officers what you told me.” I hold out the picture of Regina the articles use, and ask Jasper, “Who’s this?”

Jasper studies the photo and says nothing. His attention shifts between it and me. He’s stone faced until he notices the pens again.

“Pen,” he says.

Officer Gonzales’s eyes widen, waiting for my big reveal. His partner frowns, ashamed at getting his hopes up.

“Jasp, I need you to focus,” I say with more curtness than I intend. It shocks him, and he starts to cry. To wail. I hug my sobbing son, feeling like a terrible mother and, worse, a reactive one.

“He’s not doing it now. But earlier, and at the Café Collage, he pointed and called her Gigi,” I tell the officers, who are both staring at me, pityingly so. I squirm, trying to get comfortable. The plastic chair hurts my tailbone, and Jasper digs his elbow into me, causing the baby to roll uncomfortably. It’s hot in this windowless room, and there’s a stale smell that sours my stomach. “We saw her Tuesday. Jasper knew who she was. Then she dies outside our house? That can’t be a coincidence.”

Officer Gonzales closes his notepad. I don’t like that he’s closed his notepad. I don’t like his tone as he asks, “Mrs. Irons, how long have you lived in Venice?” I don’t like that he keeps referring to me as Mrs. Irons. It’s patriarchal, even though Irons wasn’t Gabe’s last name before we were married either.

After he proposed, Gabe said he didn’t want our children to bear his father’s name, a name that symbolized cruelty and violence and everything Gabe would never be as a father or husband. I certainly didn’t want to give them my father’s last name, the name of a man I hardly knew. We decided to start anew, not just for the children we hoped to have but for us. I picked Irons. It was a nod to my profession without being too on the nose. A metal that’s malleable yet strong when mixed with other components, a metal that has been worn throughout history to defend and heal. Gabe liked how it would read on his clinic’s door.

Gabe. He’d be hurt if he knew I was at the police station, making our son my coconspirator without conferring with him first.

“We’ve lived here six years,” I tell Officer Gonzales.

“Then you know it’s a small community. Surely there are strangers you see at coffee shops and restaurants that you don’t know but recognize?”

“What are you saying?” I know exactly what he’s saying. Still, I need to hear it, the totality of his doubt.

“Regina Geller lived in the area. It’s entirely possible you saw her on Tuesday, that you’ve seen her before. Maybe she was nice to him once and he remembered.”

Eighteen-month-olds aren’t exactly known for their long-term memory. Jasper recognizes Claire, the other mothers, because we see them regularly. If one of them goes on vacation and we don’t see them for two weeks, they become strangers again. He wouldn’t have recognized Regina Geller because she was nice to him once. He recognized her because he knew her.

“Mrs. Irons.” I wince each time, not so much at the name as the thought of Gabe learning about our visit to the police station. “We appreciate you coming down. I’m noting the connection to your son in her file. If we have follow-up questions, I’ll be in touch.”

I’m not ready to accept his dismissal.

“Do you know how hard it is to fall into the canals?” I explain the saltbushes, planted to keep people out, the slope of the basins, designed to prevent drowning.

He shrugs. “We’ve gone through your neighbors’ footage—thanks for sending yours in, by the way—and none of the cameras showed anything suspicious. No perps chasing her. No one running out of the canal where we found her. Regina didn’t even show up in any recordings. Our informants in the encampment on Pacific saw her wandering around. And we know she’d been drinking. Our guess is she hopped in off Pacific, walked until she eventually fell.”

“And you think she was so drunk, she passed out in the water, no struggle at all?”

He nods regretfully, then motions to my belly. “As a mother, I’m sure this is scary. You and your family are safe. I promise you.”

Not as a human, a concerned citizen, a rational person. Motherhood is a weapon, one that can be used against you.

Gonzales stands, and his partner, that impotent, feckless shadow, rushes to hold the door open for me. I follow them through the station, Jasper leaning against me, sucking his thumb, as perplexed by the last ten minutes as I am. At the door, Gonzales offers me a nod of encouragement that makes me feel foolish for trusting my instincts.

“We really do appreciate you coming. I hope it makes you less worried.”

I stare at the door after it’s shut. Does he think I enjoy being worried? That I have nothing better to do? Sure, I worry Jasper isn’t getting enough iron—though he’s an Irons—that he’s a picky eater. I worry that he’s too sensitive. That he will hate being a brother, will resent his sister. In motherhood, worry is a form of love. I have plenty to worry about without Regina Geller, a woman I don’t know. I want to forget her death as much as anyone else, to cast it off as a random tragedy. But I can’t. This involves my son. As long as I can’t explain how he knew her, why she died right outside our home, I can’t trust he’s safe. That’s what Officer Gonzales gets wrong about me. Gabe too. I don’t want this. As a mother, I can’t run from it.

“Excuse me?” I hear someone call. The woman we passed on our way into the station waves as she approaches us. Once she’s a few paces closer, I realize she’s the same woman I saw hurt her knee that morning.

I’ve studied Regina’s picture enough to have her image seared into my memory—all the ways she looks like me, all the ways she doesn’t. This woman’s skin is more olive than Regina’s. The hair that isn’t white is much darker. She has different features, a different energy. But right away, I know. She’s her mother.

“Are you—” She stops a few feet from us. Jasper hides behind my leg. “Here about my daughter? Did you know Regina?”

I’m unsure how to explain who I am to this grieving mother, so I tell her the truth. “I think my son may have known her.”

I wait for her to ask how. If she does, I’ll tell her about the incident at the coffee shop.

She doesn’t ask me this obvious question. Instead, she envelops me. It’s so unexpected, I don’t hug her back right away. Her body curves around my baby, radiating a protective maternal energy, a kind like I’ve never received before.

“Sorry.” She pulls away. “I don’t usually go around hugging strangers.”

“I’m Tessa.” I hold out my hand.

“Barb,” she says, taking it.

“Now we’re not strangers.”

“I guess not. And this is?” She waves at Jasper, who shuffles farther behind my leg.

“Jasper.”

“Hi, Jasper. I’m Regina’s mom.” I expect him to say Gigi, but he’s curled up, performing shyness. “It’s all right. I’m not so good with new people either.”

I’m overwhelmed by how nice this woman is being to us, when we’re intruding on her tragedy, vultures to her grief.

“Can I buy you a coffee? Or maybe a smoothie?” I add before I can consider what I’m really asking her. “There’s this place, Café Collage. It’s a few blocks from here.”

We walk toward the parking lot, and I give her directions to the Venice Beach sign across from the café. She climbs into her car, waving to us before backing out. My instincts were right. I needed to come here, but not to talk to the police. I was meant to find her, the mother.

Chapter Ten

Barb

I arrive at Café Collage before Tessa and her son, so I locate an empty table in the far corner, conveniently the most private, and settle into an uncomfortable metal chair. Other than the hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco adorning one wall, this place is short on decor. It’s a commodity coffee shop, meant for a quick cup of joe. I have no idea why Tessa wanted to meet here.

My phone rings. It’s Linda. I debate picking up. I know she’ll think Tessa is a bored housewife eager for a little drama to fill her empty days.

“Hey, you,” Linda says when I answer. She doesn’t ask me how I am. She doesn’t need to. Instead, she lets me talk. I tell her about that smug Officer Gonzales, the tequila, Regina’s girlfriend. Hesitantly, I tell her about Tessa.

“Well.” Linda drags out the word as she decides how best to advise me not to be lured in. “Maybe she saw something. Or her son did. What’ve you got to lose by hearing her out?”

And this is why I adore Linda. I chide myself for assuming she would ever doubt me.

I sense Tessa before I see her, the rush of the door thrown open, the hurricane of her entrance. Her hair is falling out of her bun, and her son leans so far over in his stroller, he’d tumble out if not for the safety belt. The cashier glances up at them, nostrils flared. I can’t tell if he recognizes them or if the presence of children generally irks him.

“She’s here,” I whisper to Linda as Tessa wheels Jasper to the counter. Before Linda hangs up, she makes me promise to call her every morning to let her know I’m okay. “Sure, Mom,” I tease, secretly grateful.

Tessa surveys the café, relief washing over her face as her eyes land on me. She motions to the menu, asking if I want a smoothie, and I mouth that I’d like strawberry. I covertly watch as she interacts with the surly barista, rocking the stroller back and forth to occupy her son. She’s blond and slim, like Regina, but everything else about her, from her sleek maternity clothes to her diamond studs to her good posture and her motherhood, is different. They wouldn’t have been friends. Not because they were in such opposing stages of life. This woman doesn’t have the scrappy fight my daughter had, the spirit that tells me Regina couldn’t have died without a struggle. Yet she’s the only one searching for my daughter.

Once Tessa’s seated across from me, she bites at the corner of her mouth, her eye contact fleeting. Her foot taps beneath the table, and I resist the impulse to put my hand on her knee, silencing it. As Tessa decides what to say to me, I bend over and bop her son on the nose, pretending it’s a horn. He echoes each of my beeps. I laugh, then catch myself before it becomes a cry. I never thought Regina would have children. The impossibility of being a grandmother now forces me to acknowledge that a small part of me, however naive, was waiting, hoping.

“He doesn’t usually take to people so quickly.” Tessa ruffles his hair. “The day your daughter died, we saw her here. Jasper . . . it’s easier if I just show you.” Tessa unbuckles her son and pulls him onto her lap. He immediately lunges for her phone as she holds it out and scrolls to something.

“Jasper, who’s this?” She shows him the picture of Regina all the news outlets are using, the one that makes her look like a different sort of woman, as if it’s only a tragedy when the deceased is prim, hair free of dye, arms unadorned by ink.

He grabs the phone from her hands. “Gigi.”

A spark zips up my spine, an electric current down my limbs. No one has ever called Regina Gigi. Still, my entire being understands. This boy, Tessa’s son, he knew my daughter.

“My husband keeps saying I’m making something out of nothing. The way he was calling to her, and then when she was outside our home. It can’t be a coincidence, right?” She peers up, not hopeful but hoping.

“It’s not a coincidence,” I say coolly, even as my mind rages. It’s not a coincidence.

“I’m sorry.” She tears up. “It’s not my place to react like this.”

“Let’s not worry about whose place it is. If my baby knew her, I’d be terrified too.”

The barista calls Tessa’s name, and I pop up to grab our drinks, thankful for a moment to collect myself. After a career in human resources, I’m a good judge of character. I like Tessa. She’s warm and genuine. Confused and scared. I feel that familiar maternal pull, the one I developed with Jessica at the firm, the one I had to resist with Regina: the urge to help when no one has asked.

I bring our smoothies back to the table, where Tessa resumes her power struggle with Jasper, now over the pink drink instead of the phone. He wins, and she lets him hold it while he sips greedily from the straw. Or maybe she wins because he’s entertaining himself.

“Regina was sober. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in seven years,” I tell Tessa. “She’d never jeopardize that.”

“So you think someone . . . that she was . . .” Tessa hesitates, unable to vocalize the word. Murdered.

“There’s no way she got drunk and drowned. I can’t go home until I find out what happened to her.”

Suddenly, something cold and wet dribbles down my leg. I see Jasper giggling, his hand flapping as he splatters smoothie across the table. I jump up, my kneecap burning in protest. It’s too late. A line of pink trickles down my white pant leg.

“Jasper, no!” Tessa pulls her son away more forcefully than she intended. It surprises him, and he starts to cry. Tessa hugs him, kissing his forehead. “It’s okay, sweetie. It was an accident. No one’s mad at you.”

She scans the café to see if anyone is watching. Besides the two bored workers, there’s no one here. I’d forgotten this part of early motherhood, how you constantly feel judged, how society tells you you’re going to screw them up—and you will, but not because you lost your temper at a coffee shop. It’s internalized, this maternal guilt, and it never goes away.

I inhale deeply. I’m doing it again. Taking on her injustice as my own. I do the breathing exercises my therapist taught me, the mantras that remind me I don’t have to fix the world. I’ve never fixed anything. I got fired for trying. Excommunicated by my daughter.

“I’m sorry,” Tessa says to me, rocking her boy. She holds out a container of wet wipes, and I take one to be polite, even though dabbing will further set the stain.

“You like to make a mess, don’t you?” I tickle Jasper’s belly, then remember that you aren’t supposed to touch children anymore without first asking permission. To our surprise, Jasper laughs. He pokes me back, roughly, and I pretend it tickles, causing him to cackle in delight. Tessa still seems worried, so I tell her, “Really, there will always be more pants.” This sounds like a motto.

“You were saying that you can’t go home yet?” Tessa asks, still rocking Jasper.

I’d forgotten what I was saying before the smoothie incident. This is how conversations unfold for her. You have to be able to hold the thread through distractions.

“I live in New Jersey. As soon as I heard, I took the first flight out.”

“I would have done the same thing.” Of course she would. Any mother would.

“The police mentioned a girlfriend. Do you think . . . Would it be intrusive if I tried to talk to her?”

“She would know, right? If someone was after Regina, her girlfriend would know.”

Every muscle in my body unclenches. She believes me.

“Do you know this place? The Brig?”

Tessa nods. “It’s a bar on Abbot Kinney. Is that where she’d been drinking? Allegedly, I mean. The police said . . . Was she at the Brig?”

“I know how it sounds. I get why they’d think she relapsed.” That’s all they see in my daughter. An alcoholic, and addict, who slipped. That’s all they can see because they don’t know her, the stubborn, determined woman who never would have welcomed me back into her life if she hadn’t been steadfast in her sobriety, bulletproof against me, her greatest trigger. “The bartender must have gotten it wrong.”

“Would it help if I—” And there she goes again with the fidgeting, passing her son from hip to hip. “You shouldn’t have to do that yourself. I can go see the bartender?”

I hear what Tessa is really asking, the question she can’t articulate for fear of rejection. In a mystery, this is the moment where Tessa becomes my spunky sidekick, only I’m not sure she’s ever anyone’s supporting character.

“That would be a big help,” I tell her.

Outside, we trade numbers and plan to meet here, at this awful, now ominous, coffee shop, tomorrow afternoon. Tessa and Jasper disappear around the corner. She isn’t doing this only to help me. She needs to know what happened to Regina as badly as I do. This doesn’t just involve my child anymore. It’s about her son too.

Chapter Eleven

Tessa

Jasper and I swing by Abbot Kinney on our way home. In the car, I watch him through the rearview mirror, monitoring for signs of an imminent meltdown. The short drive to the police station hardly counted as his second nap. He babbles to himself, clearly giddy. He liked Barb. Children, like dogs, have instincts for people. If Jasper trusts her, I do. If she says her daughter didn’t accidentally drown, I believe her.

The Brig has just opened for the day. As I push Jasper inside, I realize I’ve never stepped foot in here before, only passed by so many times it seems familiar. The false memory of the space casts a swell of doubt, especially because Gabe wouldn’t like this. It’s become another mantra, companion to Trust your instincts. Gabe wouldn’t like this. They go hand in hand, my intuition and my deceit.

Two old Venice types with scraggly white beards and faded leg tattoos are seated at the otherwise empty bar. It smells of stale beer, made all the more pronounced by the bleach trying to cover it up.

The woman wiping down the bar surveys us, unamused. “No one under twenty-one allowed in here.”

“Oh, he’s only having a nonalcoholic beer,” I joke, thankful that Jasper’s attention is on my phone as he navigates it with a deftness that makes me feel like a neglectful parent.

She frowns. The two men at the bar chuckle.

“Cut her some slack, Sydney,” one guy says as he throws back a shot. Sydney is young enough to be his daughter, with pink hair fastened in high pigtails, her work T-shirt cut above her pierced belly button. She sticks her tongue out at him, and he casts his fat tongue back at her. Then he focuses on me. “You all right?”

This has some effect on Sydney because she stops cleaning to study me. There must be something wrong for a pregnant woman to be in a bar with a toddler at four in the afternoon.

“Actually, I am a touch tired. Would you mind?” I motion to the bar, where one of the old-timers pulls out a stool for me. I can tell Sydney isn’t happy about it. “If I could get a glass of water? Then we’ll be out. I promise he won’t touch anything.” Not that there’s anything for him to touch. It’s a spare bar, not minimalist but empty.

Sydney hands me a glass of water. “If the cops stop by, I’m gonna let you explain why there’s a minor in here.”

The chatty old-timer leans toward me. His breath smells strongly of whiskey. “I would say she woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but this is just her personality.”

“I’ll throw you out too,” Sydney warns.

“Speaking of throwing people out, I wanted to ask about a woman who might have been here two nights ago.”

“You a cop?” Sydney asks, revealing what she thinks about cops.

“Do I look like a cop?” I ask genuinely, causing the old-timers to laugh. “My friend Regina.”

I motion to Jasper to give me the phone. He holds it defensively, barking, “Mine. Mine.”

Sydney tosses the cleaning rag between her hands. “I already told the cops. She had a few too many, and I asked her to leave. That’s our policy. If someone’s too drunk to be here, they gotta go.”

I almost tell her it’s not her fault, but I can see that will make things worse. Instead, I ask, “Did she come here often?”

Sydney shakes her head. “Never saw her before that night. She was with a woman. Got the sense it was a first date. Didn’t seem to be going so good, and that’s when she started drinking. I was surprised when she ordered a tequila soda. Was getting real AA vibes. But I just serve. I don’t judge.”

“What happened to the other woman. Do you know her name?”

She frowns at my question. I take greedy gulps of water and stand. I’ve learned everything I’m going to from Sydney.

“Thanks for the water.” I place a five-dollar bill on the bar. She swipes the money off with a nod that makes me think I should have left more.

“It was Monica Colfax,” one of the old-timers calls to me.

“The actress?”

He nods, twisting his newly refilled shot glass.

“She was here?” It’s not surprising to see a celebrity anywhere in LA. But the ever demure and sophisticated Monica Colfax at the Brig?

Sydney tosses a lemon wedge at him. “That woman was at least a decade younger than Monica Colfax.”

“Who knows what kind of seaweed wraps and baby seal serums she uses.”

Sydney shakes her head intently. “It wasn’t Monica Colfax.”

I nod and wave goodbye, more confused than when I arrived. Some woman, not Monica Colfax, met Regina at the Brig, then left when Regina got too drunk. I picture Regina on edge about being at a bar for a first date. She orders club soda. Then the date loses interest, Regina feels slighted, she orders a drink, then another and another. I know as well as anyone how fickle sobriety can be. Yet after seven years, one bad date would make her reach for a drink? Even to me, after everything my mother put me through, that doesn’t sound right.

Outside, the sun is blinding. It’s that time of day where it strikes from every angle. Jasper wrenches and screams, trying to hide from it. I hand him my sunglasses, which quickly become a toy to break, and squint as I push him toward the car. When my mother died, there was no denying that she’d been drinking before she got behind the wheel, nothing suspicious to make me doubt the bare facts of her accident. That’s what makes me trust the sensation I have now, the one that insists Regina couldn’t have relapsed, wandered into the canals, and drowned. It’s like seasonal allergies mixed with the sloshing of too much bubbly water. I had none of those jitters with my mother.

I tense when I unlock our front door and hear movement inside the house. Someone’s in the kitchen. I slip my hand into my purse and find my pepper spray, holding it out in anticipation as my heart pounds. Jasper stands beside me, still bending my sunglasses. I dart in front of him, using my body to shield his. This positions my daughter as the first victim. I put my hand across my stomach, vowing to keep her safe, inching forward as I keep the pepper spray bottle steady in my outstretched hand.

“Whoever’s there, I’ve called the police.”

“T.?” Gabe pokes his head into the hall.

I drop the pepper spray and lean against the wall, panting. “Jesus, Gabe. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What’re you doing home?” Gabe’s never home early.

“Dada,” Jasper shouts as he races toward his father. Gabe lifts him up and blows raspberries across his stomach. He plops Jasper down, and Jasp toddles into the living room, where he spots a puzzle.

Gabe walks over to me, tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

“My last patient had to reschedule. I picked up dinner from Gjelina.” As my heart rate steadies, I smell the aroma of tomatoes and truffles. Gabe pulls me into him. “You okay?”

I nod, not quite prepared to speak.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” He says this again and again, melding my body into his. I nestle into him, staring out at our quiet garden, watching the tourists trickle by. I sense Claire before I see her. When she steps into view, she’s walking with Erin. A wave of jealousy hits me, even as they motion for me to join them. I wave that I can’t, and Claire blows a kiss before they saunter away.

“I’m okay,” I tell Gabe once the tension releases. “And starving.”

“That’s good, because I ordered enough for everyone on the island.” Gabe winks at me, then disappears around the hall into the kitchen area. I take one more minute to steady my breath, embarrassed that my first assumption was an intruder.

Gabe lines the counter with so many take-out boxes that he must have ordered the entire menu. This is his style: no holding back, anything and everything we may want. When Gabe was in med school in Atlanta, he subsisted on ramen and PB&Js. My Brooklyn diet was strikingly similar, even when I was working for Harry Winston, designing engagement rings that could have paid my rent for a year. We were long distance for the first two years, after meeting at a destination wedding we both went into debt to attend, then further relying on our available credit to buy regular flights across the Eastern Seaboard, forgoing fancy-restaurant dates for takeout in bed. When Gabe finally moved to New York for his residency, we managed to pay off the credit cards only by maintaining that strict, minimally nutritious diet. Over a decade later, it’s still a novelty to us: being able to afford takeout from Gjelina, our house along the canals. Gabe grew up with money, his dad’s money. When he turned eighteen, he took out his own loans for college and med school and has been financially independent ever since. It enraged his father, which, at least partially, was the point. Then Gabe and I changed our last name, and it was the final straw, any chance of a reunion obliterated with the end of the Rossi line—Gabe’s father’s last name. Gabe pretends he’s at peace with his decision, but I can see his disappointment whenever we spot grandfathers at the playground, multigenerational brunches at the Waterfront. Though we’re building our own family, it doesn’t erase the ache of the family we’ve lost.

Gabe grabs two plates and a rubber dish for Jasper, who’s so familiar with Gjelina that he shouts “Lina” at the take-out containers. An ominous prickle creeps down my spine. I glance outside. The walkways are empty. I take a deep breath. Gabe casts me that concerned expression again, which I pretend not to notice. This jumpiness isn’t good for me, for the baby, for any of us.

Throughout dinner, the sensation of being watched persists. I try to ignore it, being extra complimentary about the corn agnolotti, which is usually my favorite. Today, the mere thought of this food gives me acid reflux. It’s the pregnancy. It’s also the toxicity of all this anxiety. I need to calm down.

Gabe raises his eyebrows, waiting for me to respond. I’ve been so lost in thought that I didn’t hear his question. “Where were you and Jasper coming from?”

“What?” I ask, unprepared for this question.

“You had the car, so I assume he wasn’t at Claire’s.”

“No.” I pause. Although I should have seen this coming, I haven’t figured out how I’ll explain our adventures today to Gabe. We don’t keep things from each other. We don’t lie either. That’s the vow we made when we changed our name. Both of our childhoods were filled with lies. We wouldn’t be that kind of partner to each other. That kind of parent to our children. We’d be Irons strong, our bond able to withstand any truth, to bend without breaking.

Gabe casts me a curious look as he continues to eat. I’m acting weird, but it hasn’t set off any alarms for him. Yet.

“Don’t freak out,” I stammer. This is quite possibly the worst way to begin.

Gabe puts down his fork and folds his hands, heeding my advice to wait.

“When I went to see Officer Gonzales, he said that Regina, the woman—” I point to the canal. Golden light settles onto the walkways that, despite the terror still coursing through me and the beauty of the predusk hour, remain empty. “Had been drinking before she—” I poke my finger harder toward the French doors, the quiet landscape beyond. “So I stopped in the Brig, where he said she was, to see if anyone would talk to me.”

“You took Jasper to a bar?” He’s more confused than angry. I want to bark that it’s not like Jasper’s never been around alcohol before. Gabe is calm. I can’t be snippy and defensive when he’s so calm. “What’d you learn?”

“The bartender said she’d been there.”

“Drinking?”

I nod, picking up my fork to stab at a chunk of burrata. Snot textured, it oozes from the pressure. Gabe strokes at the facial hair he’s never quite been able to grow, trying to piece everything together.

“Officer Gonzales. That’s the police officer you spoke with after the accident?”

I’m about to tell him it wasn’t an accident but opt instead to nod. The faster we’re done with this conversation, the better.

“You saw him again?” The expression on Gabe’s face changes with an unpleasant realization. “Did you take Jasper to see the police? Like, to the police station?”

I hesitate, then nod, finding my voice before I lose total control of the conversation. “He recognized her, Gabe. I’m certain of it.”

“And you told the police that? What did they say?”

“They made a note of it.”

“But they still think it’s a random accident?” Reluctantly, I nod my head yes, my fork tines etching swirls of the liquidy cheese. I’m about to mention Barb, that it isn’t just me who feels like there’s more going on here, when Gabe throws down his fork, a rare outburst from him. It clangs against the plate. Jasper abruptly stops smearing twenty-eight-dollar pizza across the tray of his high chair.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” Gabe runs his hand through his hair. “You walk in here ready to Mace me. Then I find out you went to the police without even telling me first, let alone asking if I might have a problem with it. They say it was an accident, so, again, without discussing it with me, you take Jasper to a dive bar.” His eyes bore into me. “T., tell me you hear how this sounds?”

The intensity of his stare makes my cheeks burn with shame. I do hear how it sounds. Claire’s words drum in my head, Trust your instincts, urging me to stay strong. “You’re sure she doesn’t look familiar to you?”

Gabe rubs at the stubble that’s grown in a day, lips pursed in thought. I hold my breath, willing him to say You know what, maybe we did see her the other day. Claire mentioned spotting her in the neighborhood. If Gabe and Jasper crossed paths with her, if they played chicken as he angled Jasper’s stroller around her and Jasp reached out to her . . . If they spoke for a few moments, if it was that recently, then it would explain why my son recognized her at Café Collage. If Gabe could say yes, then this could all be a random coincidence.

“No.” He picks up his fork, stabs at a piece of cauliflower. “Not at all. Can we please let this go?”

He stares at me, waiting for me to comply.

“T.” Gabe’s face softens. “Please.”

He’s right. I should let this go. I’ve told the police what I know. It didn’t arouse suspicion. I’ve spoken with the bartender who served Regina, and serve she did. Everything points to a tragic accident.

I offer a nod in agreement. He resumes eating, trusting that this is the last time he’ll hear about the woman who drowned outside our house. I push the food around my plate, unable to take a bite, that allergies-and-bubbly-water sensation potent, its effervescence pinging my limbs, insisting that none of this is right.

The next morning, Jasper and I head to the park, resuming our regular morning routine. I command myself to move on, like I promised my husband I would. The unease lurks in me like a morning sickness I haven’t felt in months.

The other mothers are huddled, whispering. The sight of them offers a perverse relief. My friends are still worried too. It isn’t just me.

“Tessa.” Claire waves me over. Freed from his stroller, Jasper takes off, and I head toward my friends, debating what I’ll tell them about the police, the Brig, Barb, how much I’d want to know if I were in their position. While it wasn’t their child who recognized Regina, it easily could have been.

“Did you hear it too?” Claire asks. I’m struck by a dread that borders on jealousy. Do they know something about Regina that I don’t?

“Hear what?”

“That incessant jackhammering at like five this morning,” Claire says.

Ines pinches the bridge of her nose. “It gave me such a headache.”

“Horrible.” Erin places both hands on her temples. “It’s those people on Howland. The ones who bought two lots?” Oh, I know about those people on Howland who bought two lots. My friends talk about them whenever there’s nothing more salacious to discuss, complaining of how their compound will ruin the vibe of the canals.

“It’s like they’re begging their neighbors to find some sort of violation to report.” Ines’s tone intimates she’s already researched it.

“Where’s Judy when you need her?” Claire teases. “What’s wrong?”

It takes me a moment to understand that this question is aimed in my direction, that they’re all staring at me, equal parts curious and worried. Apparently I’m not hiding my feelings very well—my shock that this is what they’re talking about two days after Regina’s corpse was found in our canal.

“I took Jasp to the police yesterday.” I glance over at my son, who’s marveling at Javier as he pushes Summer down to get to the slide. Although he can tantrum with the best of them, Jasper isn’t aggressive. He never pushes. Never bites. I’d like to think this is something Gabe and I have instilled in him, but it’s just who he is. My sweet, gentle boy.

“Javier Luis, I know you did not use your hands.” Ines storms toward the play structure, and I see a glimpse of the studio exec she once was, her commanding powers now relegated to the playground.

“Oh, right,” Claire says, her attention focused on Ines, who has plopped her son beneath the magnolia tree, where he wails as she tries to reason with him. “How’d it go?”

Her lack of interest confuses me. What happened to Trust your instincts? To You need to tell the police?

“They added it to the file.”

“Well, good.” She grabs my shoulders, giving them a loving shake. “Now you can let it go.”

I gape at her, lips parted, tongue slack. First Gabe, now Claire. The more insistent everyone is that I let it go, the more it feels like there’s something to hold on to, something that’s still taking shape.

Ines returns to our circle, clearly dismayed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I don’t know how to get through to him.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t apologize,” Claire chides. “There’s nothing wrong with being firm.”

“You were holding a boundary,” Erin agrees. Ines nods, not quite believing her.

On the playground, Javier is already mounting the stairs of the play set again, ready to wreak havoc, his mother’s reprimand quickly forgotten.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket. My chest flutters when I read her name.

Hi Tessa! It’s Barb. I’m off to find Regina’s girlfriend. Want to meet me at Café Collage after?

I glance between the text and my friends, bunched again, the conversation returned to the neighbors jackhammering their way into the canals.

Claire has moved on. The other mothers have moved on too. My husband. The police. Barb hasn’t moved on. She can’t. She won’t. I can’t. I won’t either—not until I figure out how my son knew the woman who died outside our home. And not just died. Though Barb never said it, it was on the tip of her tongue. Both our tongues. Regina was murdered outside my home. There is no moving on until we find out what happened to her. I tell Barb I’ll meet her at 1:30, after I drop off Jasper at Claire’s.

Chapter Twelve

Barb

I stare up at Regina’s building, grimy and salt stained. The fire escape that snakes up the side of the three-story building appears so rusted, I doubt the ladder could be lowered in an emergency. As I scan the four windows on each floor, wondering which belonged to my daughter, I can’t fight the disappointment that this isn’t somewhere I would have wanted her to live. She never brought me here when I visited. It wasn’t somewhere Regina wanted to show me either.

In the front alcove, there are six buzzers. I run my hand over the names, stopping at Geller, and press the buzzer. It rings and rings. I don’t want it to end, but it has to, and when eventually it does, this feels like another small death. How many more times can I lose her?

I press the button for Rosenthal, chuckling to myself. I’d wanted Regina to go to temple to meet a nice Jewish boy. Instead, she went to Venice Beach and found herself a nice Jewish girl. At least, I hope she’s nice. I hope she was good to my daughter. It rings twice, then she buzzes me in without inquiry.

Maisy’s apartment is 3B, so I mount the stairs, sending piercing stabs through my right knee. Though I’m in good shape, I’ve been walking too much. On the second floor, the police have blocked a door with crime scene tape. A few pairs of sandals are lined against the wall beside a mat with a typewriter on it. I check under Regina’s mat. There’s no key. I take my shoes off and slip my feet into her plastic sandals. Grains of sand itch my toes through my nylon socks.

A woman’s voice echoes from above. “It’s the third floor.”

I climb up, wondering who Maisy thinks she’s buzzed in. There’s no world in which she knows she’s about to talk to Regina’s mother.

An Asian woman materializes at the top of the steps in a ribbed tank top and shorts so short they may as well be underwear. Her straight hair is ear length and greasy. She has a ring in her nose and lilies grafted onto her arms. Thick liner engulfs her dark eyes.

“You have my food?”

“You’re Maisy Rosenthal?” I ask uncertainly.

“My dad’s Jewish,” she says, unfazed, though it’s the kind of moment that would show up in the sensitivity training videos I had commissioned for my company. “My food?”

Her impatience quickly shifts to discomfort as she realizes I’m not the delivery person.

“I’m Barb Geller.” For years after Isaac and I divorced, I debated returning to my maiden name, to sever the most symbolic way I had belonged to my ex-husband, ultimately deciding against it because I wouldn’t have had the same surname as my daughter. When I say Geller now, it isn’t Isaac’s last name. It’s Regina’s. “I’m—”

Maisy thunders down the stairs and thrusts her arms around me so tight, I can feel her rib cage contracting and expanding as she starts to cry. She smells ripe, sweaty. I let her embrace me. It’s the closest I’ll get to holding Regina ever again.

“Sorry.” Maisy pulls away from me. “I don’t know what came over me.”

She wipes black tears off her cheeks. They leave streaks, little dark lines like wrinkles. I squeeze her arm, trying not to cry myself.

“I’m sorry too. I know you were close with her.” It’s odd, consoling this woman I don’t know over my daughter’s death. I can tell by her blotchy face, her bloody nail beds, her stench, that she needs someone to comfort her. I can be this person. I tell myself it’s what Regina would have wanted.

“Do you want to—” Maisy motions up to her apartment. “I should warn you, I’m not neat like your daughter.”

Regina, neat? In high school, no square of Regina’s carpet was spared from dirty clothes, no inch of her desk free from water glasses or empty plates. When she stayed at her father’s, I would clean her room. She’d return, say nothing about the now-orderly space. We never fought about it. Instead, she’d proceed to create as much chaos as she could until she left for Isaac’s and the cycle began again.

Maisy isn’t exaggerating. Her apartment is as bad as Regina’s room ever was as a teenager. Clothes bury the furniture. Record jackets are opened and tossed across the living room floor. Puddles of burnt candles are scattered about. This mess has a bohemian vibe to it, one that almost seems intentional.

Maisy clears enough space for me to sit on the couch. I flop onto it, not expecting the cushions to be quite so soft. I’m already dreading having to stand back up.

Her intercom buzzes, and she presses the button to let the delivery person in.

“Can I make you some tea?” Maisy scampers into the cluttered kitchen, tossing a pot into the already crowded sink to make room for the kettle on the stove. She opens a nearly empty cabinet. “Let’s see, I have—” She pulls out a box of Irish breakfast, frowning as she shakes it, then returns it empty to the cupboard before continuing the same routine with a box of chamomile and a tin of something called Sleepytime. There’s a knock on the door, and she retrieves a bag with a receipt stapled to it.

“Is water okay?”

“Water’s fine.”

Except the Brita she removes from the fridge is empty. “How about wine?” she asks, holding up a half-full bottle of something white.

It’s barely noon, but if ever a glass of wine was in order, it’s now.

Maisy kicks the fridge shut, then fills two small water glasses with the colorless wine. After handing one to me, she tosses a pile of clothes off the recliner beside the couch and sits down, unstaples the delivery bag. Inside, a burrito as large as a sub is sliced diagonally in two. She holds one half toward me.

“Jackfruit carnitas?” I must cast her a funny expression because she adds, “I’m vegan.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” I tell her, realizing I’m famished. Still, I’m not about to take half this girl’s lunch.

Maisy folds one leg under her and regards her burrito like she, too, is uncertain it’s edible. Another black tear trickles down her cheek.

The wine is either corked or really terrible. Possibly both.

Maisy drops the burrito onto the coffee table. A little splatters on the smudged glass, which she doesn’t bother to wipe off. “I still can’t believe about Reggie.”

I’ve never heard anyone call Regina that before.

She leans back in her armchair, runs her hand through her short hair, and wipes the tears from her cheeks, leaving more black lines across her freckled skin. “Sorry, I’ve been such a mess. I just keep thinking what I could have done differently. We couldn’t have stayed together. Maybe if I hadn’t ended it, maybe she’d still be alive.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say. Then I brave, “When did you break up?”

“Which time?” She half laughs, half cries. “Sorry, I don’t know how to do this.”

“I don’t know how to do this either.” My eyes water, and I blink, letting the tears fall. “Maybe we just talk about her?”

When Maisy doesn’t say anything, I go first.

“I saw her in March. Before that . . .” It’d been seven years. What kind of mother doesn’t see her daughter for seven years? “It was the most time we’d spent together since she was a teenager.”

Maisy grins, sniffling. “She was really excited you were visiting. It meant a lot that you were working on your relationship.”

“It meant a lot to me too. Can I ask—when was the last time you saw her?”

“I definitely passed her in the lobby last week, but we hadn’t spoken in like two.” Sadness mists her face, making her appear so young, so lost. “Things didn’t end so well the last time.”

Maisy chews her nail. She glances at her wineglass, now empty, and her burrito, untouched.

“I don’t want you to worry about my feelings. Anything you tell me is a big help. Even if it hurts,” I say. Everything hurts. The good. The bad. The sweet. The ugly. I want to know it all, even if it will break me.

“We were dating on and off for almost a year. Full-on the last six months. It was the longest either of us had been in a relationship. You know that joke: What do lesbians bring on a second date?” I’m unfamiliar with this joke, and my lack of response must convey this to Maisy, because she explains, “A U-Haul. That wasn’t Reggie. It totally freaked her out. I mean, we both have friends who’re married with kids. It’s different here. Everyone in Venice is young or pretends to be young. It’s not a place to raise a family. God, not that either of us was thinking about a family. Reggie told me on our first date she never wanted to have kids.” Even though I knew this, Maisy’s words blast through me, a gaping hole in my midsection that stings from the ocean air. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I suppose it isn’t a secret that her father and I had an unpleasant divorce.”

“Reggie didn’t talk much about it, just that her dad cheated on you with your best friend, which is a total asshole move.” I never said anything to Regina about Isaac’s infidelity, allowing her to believe his relationship with Anna had started after we divorced. At some point, though, she’d realized. “If it helps, she dodged his calls way more than she did yours.”

A week ago, I would have relished this news. Now, knowing that she had fraught relationships with both of us doesn’t feel like a win.

“I told myself she was just scared of relationships because she’d never seen a good one. I knew it couldn’t last, but I was so in love with her.” Her voice cracks.

I start to push myself off the soft couch to comfort her. I can’t get up. It’s better, though. It’s not my place to console this woman whose heart my daughter broke.

“Can I ask what happened?”

Maisy pulls her knees to her chest, curling into a ball. “She was always secretive, whispering on the phone, having to run out at odd times. And she always had way more cash than any other wannabe screenwriters I know. She said her dad helped her.” I wouldn’t put it past Isaac to pay her rent, to give her a credit card, without telling me. “I made some joke about it, and she got super defensive. That’s when I knew she was cheating. All the sneaking around, the nice stuff. Instead of denying it, she would make it my fault. ‘Why don’t you trust me? Why can’t you take me at my word?’” Maisy snorts, stands up, and walks over to the counter where the wine bottle rests. She fills her glass to the brim, spilling a little as she walks over to refill the glass I’ve barely touched. “I saw them together. A few times.”

Them. I force myself to exude calm as I ask, “Did you tell the police?”

“They came around asking for my alibi. After that, they couldn’t get out of here fast enough.”

Suddenly, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that I need to leave as well. The room’s overly warm, and I’m not sure I like Maisy. Her brokenness is palpable. I don’t like thinking that Regina was drawn to her because my daughter was broken too. Only, I have one more question I need to ask, one I know will hurt her. At some level I want to hurt her. She’s alive, while my daughter’s dead. “Do you know who she was having an affair with?”

“Some rich asshole who lives on the canals.” I fall backward on the couch. The canals. The canals. “A few weeks ago, I followed her there. I always thought she hated men. I guess you don’t have to like them to fuck them.” I startle at this vulgarity, waiting for Maisy to apologize. She laugh-cries again and downs the rest of her wine. I need to get out of here.

“Do you think—” I can’t believe the words are able to form in my mouth. “Do you think he killed her?”

There’s no way Maisy can answer this, and given her state, I have no reason to trust her. Still, I need her to make this real. Someone murdered my daughter. And not just anyone. A man living along the canals.

Maisy shrugs. “Fuck if I know.”

“Well . . .” I rock my torso a few times until I have enough momentum to catapult off the couch. “I appreciate you talking to me.”

I search the room for paper. When I don’t see any, I rip off a piece of the take-out bag that she threw on the floor and find a marker on the windowsill. I write down my number and hand it to her.

“If you need anything or want to talk.” She nods coolly, but I can tell she’s grateful. “You don’t have a key to Regina’s apartment, do you?”

She shakes her head. “I have some of her stuff, though.”

Maisy disappears into her bedroom, returning with a small cardboard box and a leather jacket. She hands me the box, packed haphazardly with travel-size shampoo bottles, a hardcover book—Being You: The Art of Embracing Yourself—and a plastic baggie with a jumble of necklaces and several slim, colorful rings I saw Regina wear when we chatted over FaceTime. The sight of those little shampoo bottles overwhelms me, that Maisy saved them, that Regina kept miniatures at her girlfriend’s apartment, knowing they wouldn’t be together long enough for her to finish a normal-size bottle.

Maisy plays with one of the metal snaps on the leather jacket, not quite ready to relinquish it. When she finally thrusts it at me, the leather is surprisingly soft, obviously expensive. I hug it against me, inhaling. It smells of tannins and fire, no traces of my daughter.

Outside, the sun’s exposed for the first time today, making the afternoon bright in the way I’ve always imagined Southern California to be. Despite the creeping temperatures, I slip on Regina’s leather jacket as I walk down her steps. The coat pulls across the shoulders and hugs my upper arms. Forget about trying to button it. I lodge the small cardboard box under my arm and tuck my hands into the jacket pockets, where I find a cough drop and something sharp. It’s the post of an earring, three-tiered with diamonds. Nothing my daughter would wear. The sight of it makes me uneasy. The jewelry in the baggie is all plastic and cheap metal. Colorful.

My phone buzzes, and I slip the earring back into Regina’s pocket before answering. It’s Linda, checking on me.

Did you meet her? Linda texts.

This is too much for my thumbs to communicate, too much I haven’t sorted out for myself. And besides, I’m late. I text her back yes, that I’ll call later, after I’ve met up with Tessa again.

Don’t forget! Linda says, adding a googly-eyed emoji I don’t understand.

I turn right and head toward that charmless café with the box of Regina’s belongings tucked against my side. Regina was acting weird before she died. Secretive. She hadn’t relapsed. She was having an affair. An affair with a man who lived along the canals.

The Venice Beach sign materializes in the distance. When I’m close enough to read the letters, a panic paralyzes me. There’s only one man along the canals whose son knew my daughter, whose wife is searching for answers. Could it be—am I going to meet the wife of my daughter’s murderer?

Chapter Thirteen

Barb

When I arrive at the café, Tessa is waiting in the back corner, her face turned down, her finger worrying a spot on the table. I study her, trying to determine whether she’s harboring any suspicions about her husband. Sensing she’s being watched, she peers up, then smiles when she finds me by the door. If Tessa had any inclination her husband was having an affair with Regina, that he might have murdered her, she never would have befriended me.

Befriend. Is that what we’re doing? I barely know Tessa, yet I feel a gravitational pull to protect her. I can’t tell her about the affair, not until I have proof. If I try to explain now, she’ll blame me instead of her husband. I refuse to be her husband’s scapegoat.

I drape Regina’s leather jacket across the back of the chair beside mine and hold the box on my lap as I slip into the seat across from Tessa. She hands me a disposable coffee cup. “I got you an oat milk latte. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s perfect,” I say, even though it’s a little too California for my taste. “Where’s Jasper?”

“With his nanny.” I hear what she doesn’t say. Jasper won’t be a part of this anymore. “How was your morning?”

“Weird? I met Regina’s girlfriend. Ex.” I tell her about Maisy, how broken she was, not just over Regina but in every way a person can be broken. My story has too much detail. I’m hoping if I get lost in the minutiae, I won’t have to tell Tessa the only part that will matter to her.

“When did they break up?” Tessa asks, twisting the coffee cup in her hands.

“It seemed fresh. Regina was cheating.” I won’t tell Tessa about her husband. I won’t lie either. She’ll have to tease it out of me, to decide how close we’ll inch toward the truth.

Tessa perks up. “At the Brig, they said she was there with a woman. Maybe she was seeing someone new?”

Of course Tessa assumes it’s another woman. Of course her mind doesn’t tilt toward her husband. Tessa had said that her husband thought she was making something out of nothing, which had sounded patronizing. Sexist, not sinister. What kind of father isn’t terrified that his son may have known the woman who died right outside their home?

“Did you learn anything else at the bar?” I ask.

Tessa hesitates, then admits, “No. That’s all they knew.”

“We should find her. If she was the last person who saw Regina—” I scoot my chair toward the table, causing the small box of Regina’s belongings to slide off my lap and scatter. The tangle of jewelry spills from its plastic baggie, the shampoo bottles lie capsized, the self-help book flips open where a piece of paper is lodged between the pages.

The barista, who’s wiping down the table next to us, notices the items fall to the floor.

“Here, I’ve got that for you.” He bends down with the cartilage of someone in their twenties and swoops everything into the box, putting it on the table between us.

“Regina left these at Maisy’s,” I tell Tessa as I retrieve the sheet of folded paper from the hardback book. Tessa leans toward me to survey the list of dates, times, and locations scrawled across the crinkled sheet: Expo Hall, Downtown Lofts, Rabblerouser’s, Contessa’s, Lollygag, South Sea, Love Self-Tape, Starfish.

“What do you think they were?” Tessa asks.

“AA meetings.” Immediately, I know I’m right. Regina was still in treatment, still judicious about her sobriety.

Tessa motions to the baggie of jewelry. I nod my approval, and she riffles through it.

“Alexis Bittar.” Tessa holds up a neon-green plastic earring, the bottom curve shaped to look like it’s dripping gold paint. “It’s plastic, Lucite, but it’s not cheap.” I must be making a confused face because she clarifies, “I’m a jeweler.” But really I’m wondering how Regina had earrings that Tessa, with her band of sapphires and an engagement ring that must be three carats, would describe as not cheap.

Regina’s leather coat is draped over the chair beside mine like she’s stepped away momentarily and will soon return with a logical explanation for how she paid for these earrings. I reach into the pocket of her jacket, remembering the other earring I found, one that was certainly not cheap.

I place the earring on the table before Tessa. “What about this?”

Tessa stands so forcefully, her chair falls behind her, clanging on the ground.

“Where did you get that?” she asks breathlessly.

“It was in Regina’s coat pocket.”

My body grows ice cold. I know what she’s going to say before she utters, “It’s mine. I mean, it’s one of my designs. I made it.”

It’s Tessa’s design? Now I’m confused. Well, not confused. Disgusted. What kind of sick, twisted monster gifts his girlfriend a pair of earrings his wife designed?

The kind that kills.

“I’ve got to go.” Tessa squats to pick the chair up from the floor, then grabs her purse from the back of it.

“Tessa, are you okay?” At last she’s putting the pieces together. I stand, too, start returning the jewelry to the baggie. “Let me come with you.”

“It’s better if I go alone.”

“Tessa, please, I don’t think it’s—”

“I’ll call you later,” she says, halfway to the door.

I dart after her. She’s faster than I’d expect. Outside, I scan the crowds congesting the sidewalks, not seeing her anywhere. Every fiber in me knows it was her husband. She can’t confront him alone. But she’s already gone.

Chapter Fourteen

Tessa

She had my earrings. Why did Regina have my earrings?

I mull this over as I drive to Beverly Hills. I don’t do much retail anymore, only a few high-end stores when they request a line or commissions are slow. I designed this style for Ezra Linsky & Sons. Each pair’s priced at $5,000, on the lower end for my work—still more than most people can afford. Certainly more than a tutor and freelance writer could spend on a pair of earrings.

Then my mind goes somewhere it shouldn’t, somewhere I don’t want to follow. Gabe’s the sole link between my earrings, my son, and my home. Is it possible . . . Could Gabe have bought my earrings for Regina?

As quickly as the notion materializes, I discount it. It’s twisted and weird, buying your wife’s art for another woman. Besides, Gabe doesn’t cheat. I know that’s what every naive wife says. In my case, it’s true. His father cheated. Then denied it. Then took it out on Gabe’s mother when she caught him. Then took it out on Gabe when he tried to defend her. My father didn’t cheat. He was just never a part of our lives. My mother didn’t drink because he left. He left because she drank. It turns you one of two ways when you come from families like ours—either decidedly against having children, or all in on creating the family you never had. Gabe and I dove in. Iron strong. It’s how I know he’d never cheat. Still, the fact remains: Regina had my earrings.

I pull up outside the unassuming white building on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. I press the buzzer for Ezra Linsky & Sons. I should have called first. They’re by appointment only. If they have no appointments, no one will be upstairs. I wait as it rings, willing someone to answer.

“Yes?” It’s Maya Linsky, the eldest of Ezra’s two daughters. There are no sons at the venerable Ezra Linsky & Sons, a charade that almost made me look elsewhere for a retailer. I like Maya, though. She’s the first to admit it’s sexist, but she’ll stomach a little patriarchy if it means more sales.

“Maya, hey. It’s Tessa Irons.”

“Tessa.” She says my name like she’s been expecting me and dreading it. “Now isn’t really a great time.”

Maya and I are friends. Friendly, anyway. Sure, we haven’t spoken since I confided that I was pregnant again and wouldn’t be able to fill my annual line. I can still hear the uptick in her voice when I told her, the present she sent the next day—a special stretchy swaddle that was the only kind her son would sleep in as a baby. It isn’t like her to be so curt with me now.

“It’ll just take a minute. I wanted to ask you about the earrings I made for you last year. A pair surfaced somewhere unexpected, and I want to make sure they weren’t stolen.”

The pause is too long.

“Sure,” Maya finally says. The door buzzes, and I lunge for it before it locks again.

I press the button for the elevator, growing anxious. Normally, I’d take the stairs. At thirty-seven weeks pregnant, I get out of breath from any small exertion, even a flight of stairs at sea level. I don’t want to show up panting when this already feels so awkward.

The elevator doors open, and I walk down the empty hall to Ezra Linsky’s, where Maya is waiting at the door. She flinches when she spots me, staring at my stomach as though she’s forgotten I’m pregnant, forgotten she sent me her son’s favorite swaddle.

“Don’t worry, I won’t go into labor in your store,” I joke as I waddle toward her.

The corners of her lips flit upward into something resembling a smile while the rest of her remains remote. Then she shakes her head, breathes deeply, and reaches over to hug me. Between my stomach and the energy coming off her, it’s a lopsided embrace. She pats the air around my stomach. “You’re ready to pop.”

“I’m hoping she’ll stay put for a bit.”

Maya’s eyes well. “It’s a girl?” She does that deep breathing again. “That’s great, Tessa.” Maya weaves her arm through mine. “Now, let’s see about those earrings.”

Inside, the store is minimalist, as all expensive jewelry stores are: glass cases with necklaces and rings the price of a down payment on a home, carefully displayed on black velvet. Maya motions to the couches by the window, where I wait as she gets us each a cup of tea.

“I guess you’ll have your hands full for a bit,” she says as she places the tray on the table.

“I should be back in no time.” The lie stings my teeth. I have a decent number of sketches, but it will be months before I have any prototypes, let alone finished pieces.

“Right, because it’s so easy to get back to work when you have two children,” she teases, traces of the Maya I know surfacing. “How are you feeling?”

She doesn’t mean it in the rote way people ask, assuming I’ll say tired or nervous or surprisingly good. Answers that allow them to respond sympathetically or not at all.

“I’m not sure,” I tell her honestly. In my second pregnancy, I’ve learned that what’s so nerve racking is that I can’t know the person inside me. Although there are tests to calculate the likelihood of various conditions, while I can gauge her size by fruits and vegetables, hear her heartbeat, I won’t know what she’ll look like, her personality, her disposition, until she’s here. I know I’ll love her, but I have no idea if I’ll like her too.

“So, this might not be something you usually do, but—” I fidget, trying to get comfortable. “The white gold with the four rose-cuts I made last year?” Maya nods, knowing exactly which ones I mean. I made five pairs, and they sold so quickly, Maya asked me to make more. Instead, I made something similar in platinum that were twice as expensive and sold even faster. Maya knew better than to ask for a third round. Five is the most I’ll make of any piece. With molds, it’s easy to churn out multiples, more cost-effective. Gabe’s always trying to convince me to scale up, to find ways of optimizing profit while making myself a household name. It’s smart business, but it isn’t my style.

“I met this woman who had a pair of them, and something seemed fishy about it. I want to make sure they weren’t stolen.”

“No one’s reported anything stolen to us. We haven’t heard from any insurance companies or the police. What’s her name?”

Even if Maya had heard about the drowning, I doubt she’d remember Regina’s name. Still, I’m not ready for her to know this has something to do with Regina. I wish I’d lied, told Maya that I needed the contacts for my newsletter.

“She wouldn’t have purchased them herself. If I could see the list of people who bought them, I might be able to figure out how she had them.”

Maya starts twisting everything she can: her hands, her mouth, her ankles. “Tessa, I can’t give out—”

The phone rings, and Maya motions for me to hold on as she goes to answer it.

This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have put her—or my career—in this position. What was I thinking? I tug my bag higher on my shoulder, inch forward to commence the multistep process of standing. Once she’s off the phone, I’ll apologize for bothering her and leave. There are other jewelers who will sell my lines.

“What are you doing? I told you to stop calling,” Maya whispers into the phone. She peers over at me, and I quickly become interested in my purse. “Of course this is hard for me too . . . That’s not fair . . . Paul, you have to stop.”

I can sense Maya watching me, so I pull out my phone to give her privacy. There are two texts from Barb.

Is everything okay???

Tessa, I’m worried. Are you home? Is your husband there?

Three dots dance on her side, and I jump in before she gets carried away. I’m fine! At jewelry store to see about the earrings. Will keep you posted!

The ellipsis continues to undulate until she writes, 1 of the appointments on Regina’s list is Mon morning? 10 AM. Should we go?

I’ll pick you up after my husband leaves for work, I write, relieved Barb didn’t ask to meet over the weekend. We only have two weekends left, three if by some miracle the baby is head down and Dr. Avagyan lets me go to term. This is sacred family time with Jasper and Gabe, who has promised not to work on weekends until after the baby arrives.

I stare at my phone, partly waiting for Barb’s response, mostly trying to maintain a veil of privacy for Maya, who continues to whisper-fight.

In my periphery, Maya hangs up and rubs her arms, warming the chill of that nastily quiet call. Then she slips into the office and returns with a binder.

When Maya sits across from me, she’s even sadder than before. She pulls in one exaggerated sniffle, then opens the binder. “What’d you say her name was?”

“Is everything okay?”

Maya folds her hands on top of the open binder, tears pooling. I’m about to apologize for prying when she says, “My ex-husband. Almost ex. After our son—” Her voice cracks. She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. Any mother who talks of a child like that, it can only mean one thing.

“Oh, Maya. I’m so sorry.” Of course I have questions, but they’re voyeuristic, self-centered, meant to assure me that nothing so terrible could happen to my children.

“It’s been five months. Paul’s having trouble coping. He’s paranoid. And obsessed. I can’t help him.”

“You need to take care of yourself.” It’s a little too close to advice, and she shudders. I’m about to apologize when she sniffles again, flips through the binder, and angles it toward me.

“Here’re the people who bought the white gold pairs.”

I scan the list. I don’t recognize the first four names. Then the fifth steals my breath. Dan Huntsman. My best friend’s husband. My neighbor. He bought my earrings. Regina drowned in front of his home. Not mine.

My finger wobbles as I point to Dan’s name. “Is he a regular client of yours?”

Maya shakes her head no.

You can’t just walk into Ezra Linsky & Sons. You need an appointment. If Dan bought my earrings, he was looking for them. Barb mentioned that Regina was having an affair with someone. Could it have been Dan? That could explain how Jasper knew Regina, if she was at the Huntsmans’ sometime when Dan was alone with the kids and invited his mistress over. I’ve let Jasper over there so often without asking any questions about supervision, simply trusting that he’d be safe. Why did I trust that he’d be safe? Dan’s always bothered me. Why didn’t I listen to that intuition?

The snap of the binder jolts me out of my thoughts. Maya stares at me, willing me to leave.

I stand slowly so as not to faint. I’m lightheaded, but it isn’t from low blood pressure. My son is at Dan Huntsman’s house now. He’s playing in a murderer’s living room.

I will my legs to keep Maya’s leisurely pace as she escorts me out, while my body screams at me to run. Every moment Jasper is at the Huntsmans’ is a moment too long.

“Be safe,” she says as she holds the door open.

The comment chills me, putting me further on edge, until I see she’s staring at my stomach. She means the delivery, the part everyone takes for granted except the mothers.

“Let me know when you have new work.”

“I’m really sorry to hear about your son,” I say.

She nods but doesn’t respond. It’s every mother’s worst fear, and she knows it. It’s not her job to console me.

I drive back to the canals as swiftly as the congested streets will allow, berating myself for leaving Jasper at the Huntsmans’, for not knowing about Maya’s son. It seems impossibly cruel, me flaunting my huge stomach in front of her, but I really didn’t know.

When I swing into the alley in front of Claire’s, I put the car in park and jump out, the impact with the cement sending an acute pain down my tailbone. I can barely feel it through the terror that animates me. I trudge toward the door and bang on it so forcefully, the wood rattles with every pound of my fist.

I startle when Claire opens the door. I was expecting Marisol. I’m not prepared to see my best friend turned wife of a murderer.

“Hey, you.” She leans out to kiss my cheek as she swings the door open to let me inside.

I scan the room, trying to remain calm. “Where’s Marisol?”

“I’m ahead of schedule on my commission, so I knocked off early to hang with the kiddos. Come, I’ll make you a spritzer.”

“We actually need to get going.” Claire doesn’t hear me as she makes her way to the kitchen.

My pulse pounds in my temples, the flattened arches of my feet, my shallow breath. My skin prickles in anticipation until I spot Jasper seated on the floor, inspecting a puzzle piece, while Summer bangs a tub of Play-Doh against the floor, trying to force it open.

“Jasp, honey?” I try to stay calm, but my voice cracks, betraying me. “Sweetie, we have to get going.”

Jasper ignores me as he trades the puzzle for one of those sensory switchboards. Although every fiber in me resists, I step farther inside the familiar house.

“Jasper, come.” When he still doesn’t move, I waddle over and lift him off the floor as he writhes in protest. A ligament—loose from pregnancy—pulls as I try to contain him. I stifle the burning throb as I manage to half drag him toward the door.

Claire pokes her head out of the kitchen, holding two wineglasses, some sort of juice elixir for me and a dark red for her.

“Everything okay?” Claire asks.

“Perfect. Marvelous. Swell.” Swell? I don’t think I’ve ever said swell in my life. I force a smile at my best friend, who frowns, knowing something’s up. “We’ll see you soon,” I add, not waiting for her to respond.

Once we’re secure in our own house, I try to go about my normal routine, willing myself not to peer over at Claire’s. As I measure a cup of rice and run it beneath the faucet, I involuntarily glance outside. Dan’s home. He and Claire are in their living room, slow dancing to music I can’t hear. Summer plays on the floor beside them. Sensing he’s being watched, Dan finds me across the way. His gaze remains fixed on me as he tilts his head to kiss Claire’s temple. It sends a shiver through me. I quickly shut the water off and spin away from them, trying to calm myself. I have no idea why he would have bought Regina my earrings, if it’s some jab at Claire, if he simply didn’t know where else to buy his girlfriend jewelry with his wife’s money. The fear quickly calcifies into anger. Whatever the reason, he’s involved my son.

The moment Gabe gets home, he knows something’s wrong. The house reeks of burnt coconut that I’d been toasting to put over the rice. The rice on the stove, also neglected, is now mush.

“T.? Sorry I’m late. Stacey scheduled a late retrieval,” he calls as he walks in through the door from the garage, confronted by the charred stench. “Is everything okay?”

He stops at the entry to the kitchen, relieved when he discovers it’s just dinner in peril. He stares at me, waiting for me to explain what’s happened. The fact that Regina had my earrings won’t change anything for Gabe. The fact that Dan bought them for her will only make him more insistent that I need to mind my own business.

Before I can decide what to tell him, Gabe’s phone lights up with a text, then another and another. Gabe flares his nostrils, tightens his jaw—an expression that means it’s Aram, Gabe’s embryologist.

“Let me see what he wants.” Gabe dashes upstairs.

While Gabe’s upstairs, I make one final attempt to brown coconut flakes, setting two timers and not taking my eyes off the toaster oven, even when Jasper grabs at my pants, nearly pulling them down.

“Mama, Mama, Mama,” Jasper calls, refusing to be ignored.

“What, baby?” I ask, lifting him to my hip. Once there, he has nothing more to report. He just wanted my attention. There’s so much I can intuit, but his connection to Regina isn’t one of those things.

A man pushing his bike skirts my periphery, and I glance outside, more out of habit than interest. On the corner, the woman who paints most days packs up her easel and palette. What does she capture in her renderings of the canals?

“Dede. Dede.” Jasper guffaws, pointing to Judy at our gate, who’s making a bizarre monkey gesture that Jasper finds hilarious. Judy nods goodbye, then continues her walk, on to the frat house and the house after that until she reaches the end of our island. It would make me feel safe, someone constantly on watch, if it were anyone other than Judy.

Suddenly, the alarm blazes, the kitchen fills with smoke. Gabe thunders downstairs and runs past me to open the French doors, then stands on his tiptoes, waving a towel under the smoke alarm. The coconut. I’ve burned it again.

We eat the pasty rice without the coconut, and it’s obvious that something’s missing.

“So,” Gabe says, “are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

I drop my fork to my plate, acid pricking my chest even though I haven’t eaten more than a bite. I have to tell him. He’ll be hurt that I broke my promise to move on, a promise I only tacitly made. Still, he deserves to know. I need him to know. I need us to deliberate together like we always do, to decide as a team what to do about Dan Huntsman.

“I went to see Maya today.” He stares blankly at me, the name not immediately familiar to him. “At Ezra Linsky’s.”

“Did you talk to her about a new line?” His excitement is enough to break my heart. He’s so proud of me. My sweet, supportive husband. I picked a good one.

“She—” I can’t disappoint him. I search for the right words. “Her son died.”

Gabe inches his left hand toward mine. I expect to find shock on his face, horror at his worst fear realized. He smiles, close-lipped and sympathetic, ready to console me while remaining unfazed himself. Gabe’s a doctor. He’s trained to distance himself from other people’s tragedies. Also, he doesn’t know Maya.

“She’s our age. My age,” I correct, our constant joke. Right now, it isn’t funny. It’s devastating. “Her son couldn’t have been more than four.”

“Do you know what happened?”

I shake my head no. “I think she and her husband are getting divorced.”

Gabe releases his hand from mine to caress my cheek. His phone rings again. Aram. He sends it to voicemail.

“So this is what’s been eating at you.” He pulls me to him, and I rest awkwardly between my chair and his, my belly hanging low. It’s amazing how quickly he’s forgotten about Regina.

Gabe lifts my face toward his. “Jasper’s healthy. The baby’s healthy. You’re healthy. Everything’s okay. Let’s have a good weekend.”

It’s one of our last as a family of three. Tonight, the canals will be filled for the weekend. Tomorrow, the tourists will be back, the pathways belonging more to them than to us. Until Monday, when the water will be drained and whatever has collected over the weekend will expose itself again.

Chapter Fifteen

Barb

I don’t understand why anyone would want to live along the canals. Sure, they’re scenic, particularly on a Saturday, when they’re full of water so the docks and boats float rather than lie beached in the sludge-filled basins. Even with the fishy stench circulating, there’s magic to them. Yet it’s like living in a diorama. Most of the homeowners leave their blinds open, sometimes their doors, bordering on exhibitionism as they go about their day. It’s somewhere you live when you want to be envied, when you require external approval. Perhaps the confusing part is not why anyone would want to live here but why Tessa does. She seems more confident than that. More private too.

I monitor Tessa’s house from across the canal, standing on a path outside a glass house. Behind me, the husband, shirtless, watches a soccer game and screams at his wife, the woman I saw with Tessa, that caftan-clad, braless beauty. From their kitchen, she matches her husband’s shouts with her own, punctuating her threats with a knife as their daughter plays on the floor, immune to the cursing and the threat of violence that surround her. I don’t mean to listen, but they want me to listen, as though without an audience, their fight, their relationship, wouldn’t be real.

The shades at Tessa’s house are up, although it’s dark and quiet inside, indicating they’ve been open all night. This is not the act of people wishing for privacy. It makes me feel less guilty for spying on her. Rather, for spying on her husband.

The fight behind me is getting louder, more distracting, so I walk down a few yards to a blue-shingled colonial and hide in the shadow of an olive tree while I wait for Tessa and her husband to appear downstairs.

The people who pass me are in varying layers of clothing. Two women who powerwalk with strollers wear vests and gloves. A woman with an easel under her arm dons earmuffs with flip-flops. A man walks his Yorkies in shorts and a fleece jacket. My bare arms are goose pimpled, and I rub them, debating whether I should go back to the hotel for a jacket. It’s a damp cold, one that inflames my knee. When I almost can’t take it anymore, a man slips out the patio door at Tessa’s house, a wet suit dangling around his waist.

This must be her husband. He’s tall and muscular with short hair so dark I can see the white dusting his temples. He’s handsome. Of course he’s handsome. Tessa’s attractive in the put-together way that suggests she wouldn’t settle for someone less photogenic than she is. He unlocks a storage shed and grabs a surfboard out of it before heading toward the bridge that will bring him across to my side. I hunt for somewhere to hide. There’s nowhere to hide along the canals. Maybe I should start walking. It’s suspicious, standing here, pretending not to watch. Before I can decide what to do, he’s approaching. I hold my breath, trying to channel a cloak of invisibility. He strolls right by without a gaze in my direction. I don’t need a cloak of invisibility; I already have a natural one. It’s enough to make me hate him. More than I already do.

I hate him because he’s not the kind of man Regina would like—someone conventionally attractive, married to a woman who wears diamond studs and has no idea her husband is a cheating murderer. The truth jabs at my heart. This is the guy. The rich asshole who lives on the canals. Maisy was right.

I follow him a few blocks to the beach, where he zips up his wet suit and bounds into the water. I try to keep track of him bobbing on his board. There are too many surfers weaving in and out of the waves. I can’t differentiate him from the others, not until he’s jogging out of the water toward a man on the beach who looks Middle Eastern. Tessa’s husband walks up to him, annoyed. He stands his surfboard upright in the sand and leans against it as they talk. The other man gesticulates as he speaks, tugging at his short dark hair. He has a neatly trimmed beard, leather shoes ill-equipped for the sand. Tessa’s husband rests a hand on his shoulder, tries to calm him. The man nods, somewhat appeased, keeps nodding as he walks away.

“Aram,” Tessa’s husband shouts, chasing after him. They talk for a few more moments, Tessa’s husband again offering him that steady hand on his shoulder along with some counsel. The other man, Aram, nods again before he trudges away through the uneven sand, climbs into a red Mercedes, and pulls out of a parking spot. There was something unhinged about this man. It must’ve unsettled Tessa’s husband, too, because as soon as Aram’s car has disappeared from sight, Tessa’s husband jogs up the beach in the direction of the canals, even though he’s been surfing less than ten minutes. Again I follow him. Again, he doesn’t notice me.

Back at their house, I monitor them all morning. I don’t set up an easel to hide behind; I don’t wear binoculars to pretend to be bird-watching. I’m as obvious as obvious could be, yet no one acknowledges me. When Tessa and her husband step onto their patio, I hold my breath. While I don’t want to get caught, I also don’t want to confront the possibility that I’m as invisible to Tessa as I am to her husband. I walk quickly toward the busy avenue at the end of her canal, peering behind my shoulder to make sure she hasn’t spotted me. My hip smacks into something. It’s a plastic seat, fastened onto the front of a bike.

“Watch it,” a gruff man says, catching his bike by the child seat before it falls. He’s got a few days’ stubble on his face, dark circles that reveal his fatigue. I mutter a quick apology before stepping out of his way.

When I arrive at the edge of the canals, I look back quickly to see if Tessa and her husband are headed my way. They push Jasper’s stroller in the opposite direction, which I take as an opportunity to retrace my steps and sneak up to their gate. Their patio has couches as well as a grill, a small dining table under a tree with a baby swing. It would be so easy to open the gate and step inside.

“Looking for something?” I spin around to see the woman from the ramshackle house next door glaring at me.

I motion toward the yard. “My grandson would love a swing like that.”

She softens a little at this, making me think she’s a grandmother too.

Not too. I will never be a grandmother. Momentarily, I’m jealous of this lonely woman who has nothing better to do than spy on her neighbors.

As I start to walk away, I wave behind me. “You take care now.”

I round a corner and slip onto another canal, lined with houses similarly on display to the public. Regina’s murder could have happened anywhere along these waterways, but it didn’t. It happened outside Tessa’s home. Her husband’s.

That afternoon, I google the addresses from the handwritten list I found in Regina’s self-help book. Expo Hall, Downtown Lofts, Rabblerouser’s, Contessa’s, Lollygag, South Sea, Love Self-Tape, Starfish. About half the meetings have already happened. The others will unfold without Regina. Lollygag, Contessa’s, and Rabblerouser’s sound like bars. To my relief, when I locate them, none of the businesses are in the libations industry. There’s only one Lollygag in LA: Lollygag Studio in Venice. It’s a rehearsal space where you can rent a room by the hour. According to her notes, Regina had a meeting there last Tuesday. My birthday. When we spoke, she was en route to Lollygag.

I drive up Pacific Avenue until I spot the sign for Lollygag Studio, a stand-alone building that looks like a storage facility. Two cars are parked in the lot. I pull up right out front. The door’s locked. Inside, the lights are off, and I press my face to the glass, trying to get a glimpse into the dark halls inside.

“Can I help you?” a man lugging a crate of camera equipment says. He puts down the box.

“I’m trying to find information on my daughter. I think she was here last Tuesday.”

He takes a card out of his back pocket and presses it against the pad to unlock the door. “I don’t know who had the space last week. We’re holding auditions next week.”

“Do you know, are there AA meetings here?”

“Not next week, there aren’t.” Deftly, he throws the door open, bends down for the box, then stands, catching the door with his foot before it closes. I could help him, but I don’t offer and he doesn’t ask.

The week before her meeting at Lollygag Studio, she had one listed at someplace called Love Self-Tape. It’s located in a warehouse in Marina del Rey not far from here, so I head there next. The complex is divided into tiny self-taping studios, which I learn from the receptionist are where actors record auditions for parts.

“There’s one rehearsal space,” she tells me, glancing at the photo of Regina on my phone. “I’ve been here four years, never seen an AA meeting. If your daughter was here, she was probably auditioning. She’s pretty enough to be an actress.”

An actress? So these weren’t AA meetings? While that doesn’t mean she relapsed, it feels like a blow, a growing fissure in my story. She’d always been a writer. Wouldn’t she have told me if she was auditioning? She must have known that I would try to talk her out of it. Acting is even more of a crapshoot than writing. We would have fought. It would have strained our fragile symbiosis. She was right not to tell me, which is hardly a comfort. It’s one more notch on the long belt of ways I’ve failed her.

Of course this is when Isaac calls, as the doubt is creeping in, threatening my resolve. I hesitate on the sidewalk outside the self-taping studio, then pick up.

He asks a few benign questions about how I’m doing, never once inquiring if my trip has been fruitful. To him, this is a futile quest of misplaced grief.

“The l’vayah’s tomorrow,” he says. I hate that he calls it a l’vayah instead of a burial, that religion makes his grief profound.

“I’m aware.”

“I know you feel like you need to be in LA. I just don’t want you to regret—I’d hate for you to look back and wish you’d been here.” His voice is so laden with concern it makes me want to lash out at him for thinking he knows what I need more than I do. It comes from a good place. Isaac was never a bad man. He just never understood me. He certainly doesn’t understand me now.

“I appreciate that, but I need to stay and—”

“You’ll be back for some of the shiva, though, right?” Now he’s begging, like it might break him not to have me there. It breaks me, too, a cracking through my breastbone. Even if this burial and shiva aren’t what Regina would have wanted, it’s the only funeral she’ll have. And I’m going to miss it.

“I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t find out what happened to her,” I explain.

“Let me know when you’re back,” he says gently. I stop myself before I ask why. Isaac and I aren’t friends. We won’t grow closer now that our child, our sole connection, is gone.

“Isaac?” I ask before he hangs up. “Did Regina tell you she was getting into acting?”

“She was a writer.”

“She was auditioning,” I tell him.

“Whatever you say.” There’s an edge to his voice, the first sign that he’s losing his patience, that his sympathy for me is finite. “Take care of yourself, Barb,” he says, like I haven’t been doing that for years.

As I drive back to my hotel, I call Linda.

“Should I come home?” I ask her.

“Are you ready to come home?” she asks me.

“I should be at her burial.”

“What will you regret more, missing her funeral or leaving too soon?”

We both know the answer.

“I’m going to find out what happened to her,” I promise Linda, and Regina, and this impossible, shapeless city.

Chapter Sixteen

Barb

On Monday morning, the canals are muddy basins again, with stagnant water collected in their bowels. This is the third morning I’m watching Tessa’s husband. He leaves the house earlier today for his surf, I assume because he has to work. He rides the waves for an hour without any disruptions to his routine. When we return, Tessa is downstairs, playing on the floor with Jasper. My heart swells at the sight. I’m growing attached to them, more attached than I should.

Tessa’s husband, clad in that sandy wet suit, bends down to kiss her. She wraps her arms around his neck, allowing him to pull her up and deeper into their kiss. They seem so bonded, the picture of a happy family. My resolve starts to weaken. It’s a classic amateur-sleuth mistake, grasping for the first suspect, assuming the murder can be solved that swiftly. There’s no evidence to suggest Tessa’s husband is anything but the doting father and partner he presents himself to be, someone with only a weakness for the Pacific Ocean. I have zero reason to suspect him of cheating, until I remember that everything along these canals is an illusion, even the waterways themselves.

When he disappears upstairs, presumably to shower, I rush over to Pacific Avenue, where I’ve parked my car, hoping he isn’t so fast I’ll miss him. Tessa mentioned that he leaves for work around this time of day, so I take my chances that he’s headed there by car. LA is a driving city. It’s a calculated bet. I wait at the end of the alley, conspicuous, but all the action takes place on the other side of these homes. A few minutes later, Tessa’s garage door swings open, and a black Lexus SUV pulls out. His face grows clear in my rearview as he passes me. I put my rental into drive, instinctively checking my mirrors again, not expecting to spot anyone. Instead, what I see makes my arm hairs stand on end. It’s that woman from next door, leaning against her doorjamb, scowling at me. We lock eyes through the reflection as I drive away.

I tail Tessa’s husband like the detectives do in my novels, with three cars between us, sunglasses obscuring half my face, fingers nonchalantly tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the oldies station. When he pulls into a small corner lot and parks in a reserved spot, I hang back on the street. Tessa’s husband steps out of his car and stretches exaggeratedly before scanning traffic, then darting across the street, away from the storefront where he’s parked. He walks through the lot of a strip mall but stops abruptly when he sees a man leaning against the wall at the far end. The man stands up when he notices Tessa’s husband. It’s the man from the beach. Handsome, Middle Eastern, manic. As they talk, Tessa’s husband’s back is to me, blocking my view of their faces. I debate inching my car forward to get a better angle, imagining what Elizabeth Best from The Thursday Murder Club might do in this situation. Tessa’s husband turns around, his hand gripping the other man’s upper arm as he forces him toward the street corner. Now I can see their faces clearly. Tessa’s husband looks stern, the other man terrified. They stand at the corner in silence as they wait for the Walk sign. When it changes, Tessa’s husband escorts the other man halfway across the street, where he stops and jabs his pointer finger in the air, motioning him to keep walking. Then Tessa’s husband heads back to the strip mall, unlocks a door, and disappears inside.

The man from the beach mutters to himself as he steps onto the sidewalk and heads down the block in my direction. He continues his conversation with the ground until he looks up, not fifty feet from my car. Abruptly, he halts and stares right at me. His curiosity shifts to revelation, and my heart begins to race. He recognizes me. How could he recognize me? He didn’t even glance in my direction at the beach. He begins to charge toward my car, and there’s no doubt that he intends to engage me. My hands shake as I put the car in drive and pull away from the curb. When I pass the building where Tessa’s husband has parked, I read the name. Longevity Fertility. The man steps into the street, motioning me to stop. I tug at the wheel, the car screeching as I disappear around the corner.

A few blocks away, once I’m certain he hasn’t followed me, I pull over outside a bright-yellow bungalow. My hands are still shaking as I search “Longevity Fertility” on my phone. Sure enough, it’s located in Santa Monica, led by one Gabe Irons, whose photograph matches Tessa’s husband. In my day, all gynecologists were men. Now I assume they’re mostly women. Who would see a man about fertility struggles when you could see a woman instead?

The bio under his photo proclaims Dr. Gabe Irons a pioneer in fertility. He has a 50 percent higher success rate than the national average, which he credits to a combination of wellness plans, acupuncture, and state-of-the-art technology. Testimonials lavish him with praise: a doctor who actually listens and cares. There’s a link to a scheduling email but no other signs of anyone who works with him, as though Dr. Irons is a solo operation, which from nearly fifty years of human resources, I know is impossible. It’s arrogant to exude a facade of independence, like everyone who works for you is replaceable.

Here I go again, taking on someone else’s injustice as my own. Something about him bothers me, though. I can’t quite put my finger on it, and the altercation I just witnessed with the man from the beach certainly doesn’t help. Still, I’m beginning to doubt this has anything to do with Regina. Maisy must have gotten it wrong. Or maybe Regina’s mystery man was someone else. There are other husbands along the canals. Or wives. What about the woman Regina met at the bar? Would Officer Gonzales have told me if she lived along the canals? I need to find her.

After fifteen minutes, I pull away from the yellow bungalow and creep back to the commercial street. I park in the lot of the strip mall where Gabe Irons disappeared, then tiptoe toward the door I saw him open. The windows are opaque. One word in lowercase font is imprinted on the frosted glass door: rosebud. I press my face to the door and make out a faint light down a hallway. I’m so focused on seeing through the darkness that I don’t realize the door’s being pushed open until it knocks into my leg. Reflexively I jump back, bending down to massage my knee.

“Do you need something?” a woman asks. She’s dressed in black slacks and a red blouse with rubber clogs best suited for gardening.

“Is this a medical office?”

The woman peers at my knee. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?” Her tone indicates that she’d prefer I decline this offer.

“Just a glass of water would be great.” I hobble toward the door. She continues to block the entry, motioning with her chin toward the corner.

“There’s a convenience store at the end of the block.” She gestures me along, waiting at the open door as I scamper away, trying to ignore the ache in my knee and feeling foolish.

In my car, I settle behind the steering wheel, deciding my next step. I’m miles afield from Regina. I have no business being here. No reason to question Gabe Irons, the husband of the one friend I’ve made since arriving in LA. Still, something about him irks me. Something about this clandestine office doesn’t seem right. I google “rosebud.” It’s a popular name for businesses. Florists, of course. Also coffee shops, preschools, nail salons, none located at this strip mall. I type in the address along with “rosebud.” It doesn’t appear to be listed anywhere online. I lean back and revisit the events of this morning. There’s something here I’m not connecting. The doubt percolates with a growing certainty that this has nothing to do with Regina. I try to ignore it, to convince myself that Elizabeth Best would follow this wherever it leads, all the while knowing I’ve been wrong before. My mistake got me fired. Upended my life.

I should have retired when Covid hit. I should have become part of the Great Resignation rather than having to help my firm deal with it. It was an overwhelming time. The market was uncertain, clients were panicking, everything was shifting to remote work. I’d never heard of Zoom. I didn’t have the interest, much less the expertise, to run new training programs, tackle new forms of harassment, support people through their anxiety. It was only a matter of time before I couldn’t keep up with my field. I just expedited my departure.

I’ve always liked Dick, Linda’s husband. Despite his name, he’s anything but. He’s the kind of man who drives across the state for his grandson’s Little League games and signs up for mentoring programs with his alma maters. He’s never made me feel like a third wheel when I join them for dinner, never taken Isaac’s side, never unduly criticized him either. And above all, he’s never been handsy or flirtatious with me.

Jessica was a Covid hire, in large part thanks to Dick. He and Linda are friends with her parents. She’d already been working at the firm for a year before we were back in the office. Although we only required people to be in the office twice a week, many of our employees came daily, the older ones eager to regain normalcy, the younger ones hoping to impress the partners with their commitment.

I was heartened when I saw Jessica and Dick leave together for lunch. He was taking her under his wing, making sure she succeeded. It didn’t surprise me when they returned, deep in conversation, laughing. Then, their goodbye at her cubicle was a little too long. He stood a little too close, pinning her to the outside partition as he whispered in her ear. When she angled away from him, he leaned in deeper, undeterred.

Later that day, I called Jessica into my office. She scuttled in like she was in trouble. Already I was handling it wrong. I should have popped by her desk. Instead, we had a stiff conversation where she said she couldn’t be happier.

And Dick? I asked. He’s the mentor you want?

She laughed, seemingly confused. Why would I want someone else?

All I could think was, You poor girl, you don’t even understand the situation you’re in.

What situation was she in? I’ve had lots of time to revisit this on my own and with my therapist. I know what I saw, the angle of his body, the recoil of hers, his mouth on her ear, his arm possessively on the wall, trapping her.

As the head of HR, I had access to everyone’s email, and I’d check when necessary, always with someone from IT as witness. I’ll never be able to sort out why I didn’t follow protocol with Jessica. Maybe it was because it had to do with Linda’s husband. Maybe it was because, in a different life, Jessica could have been Regina. Maybe it was because I knew I had no business checking her email.

When I searched her email, there were numerous exchanges between her and Dick, all professional, with the occasional note to say hi to her parents. Whenever they returned from lunch or crossed paths in the hall, I remained vigilant, but I never saw anything untoward between them again. Still, I knew what I had seen. I checked Jessica’s calendar, went to happy hours I had no business attending to get a sense of how she was faring. In the end, the person who made her uncomfortable was me.

I realized I’d overstepped when I found myself on the other side of the conference table from where I usually sat. Camille, whom I’d hired and groomed to be my second, looked tortured beside the three founding partners. Although I grasped I was in trouble, my interactions with Jessica, searching her email, were far from my mind. I thought it was about the sexual harassment videos I’d commissioned, which were not as current as they should have been, with stereotypical casting and caricaturized lechery. I was ready for a scolding. It took me longer than it should have to grasp why I was there.

Forty-seven years, and it ended that quickly.

In addition to the unsanctioned email investigation, they had a list of complaints about me. I’d made several recent hires uncomfortable by asking questions that were too personal. Before I could argue my case, Camille placed a folder on the table and asked if I’d thought about an early retirement. I was about to turn seventy. Calling it early was a kindness. The package was too generous to refuse, particularly since they left me no room for refusal.

The partners hurried out, leaving Camille and me alone at the long conference table to discuss the details of my retirement. I’m not sure anyone ever knew that it had to do with Dick. That was the one relief in the unjust and horrible affair.

Despite everything that happened, it still doesn’t feel wrong that I tried to protect Jessica, that I’m trying to protect my daughter now. I’m just not sure that’s what I’m doing as I spy on Gabe Irons.

In my periphery, something moves. I glance up to see Gabe Irons slip out of the Rosebud storefront, holding a small shopping bag as he makes his way toward the crosswalk. He checks his phone while he waits for the light to change. I’ve poised my index finger on the ignition button, ready to follow him by car, when a knock on the window startles me. It’s the woman from Rosebud who caught me snooping, her face lined with anger. She motions for me to roll down the window. I wave to her, press the starter, and back out, leaving her monitoring me with that constipated expression. My heart clatters as I pull into traffic, away from Gabe Irons, away from Longevity Fertility, away from Rosebud, whatever that place may be.

Chapter Seventeen

Tessa

Jasper, Barb, and I head east on the 10 toward Contessa’s Studios in Atwater Village, where Regina has an appointment scheduled in an hour. Barb fidgets in the passenger seat. She seems distracted, lost to thoughts she’s reluctant to share. It distracts me, too, pulling my eyes away from the freeway ahead, but I chalk it up to nerves over whatever situation we’re walking into, whatever truths we might learn about her daughter.

There are a dozen locations across LA with the name Contessa’s, everything from a premium food store to a life coach’s office. Barb insists that this warehouse in Atwater is the right address, that the appointment is for an audition, not an AA meeting. Apparently Regina was an actor. In a city where everyone from your hairdresser to your dog walker wants to get into Hollywood, it’s hardly shocking that Regina was in the industry. Still, as we make our way toward the 10 and the interweaving of LA’s freeways that will land us in Atwater Village, Barb seems unsettled by this discovery.

“Regina was a film major in college,” Barb says to the palm trees that recede in our periphery. “Screenwriting. She never said anything about acting.”

“In Hollywood, I think you take what you can get,” I explain, which does nothing to appease Barb.

Online, I came across an article Regina had written entitled “My Mother’s Daughter.” It was about her estrangement from Barb. In it, Regina described how the longer she went without talking to her mother, the closer she felt to her. Their relationship became primal, less corrupted by good intentions and hurt feelings. The essay was five years old. I assumed that they’d repaired their relationship. Judging from the way Barb stares out the window, they weren’t as close as either of them would’ve hoped.

From the back seat, Jasper narrates our drive, shouting at trucks and cranes, hooting at a pair of sneakers dangling on the wires above our car.

“Shoe!” he says for several minutes after he spots the sneakers. This snaps Barb out of her trance, and she echoes Jasper’s call, chanting “Shoe, shoe” a beat behind him.

“I hope it’s okay I brought Jasper,” I say as I exit the freeway onto Fletcher. “Normally, I’d leave him at my neighbor’s . . . there’s something I need to . . . I know how Regina had my earrings.”

I tell her about Ezra Linsky’s, the earrings that Dan Huntsman bought.

When she asks, “So, you think they were having an affair?” she sounds more doubtful than I’d expected.

“That’s the only reason I can think to buy someone $5,000 earrings.”

“And you’re sure he bought them for Regina?”

“I only made five pairs. I didn’t recognize the other names. That would be an awfully big coincidence.”

“I think we can both agree that nothing about this is a coincidence.”

Barb’s quiet for the rest of the drive. I give her the space to absorb what I’ve told her. Regina’s murderer has a name now. A face. A house along the canals where her daughter died.

We park on a residential street a few blocks from Contessa’s. Fortunately, between the dangling shoes, salty snacks, and Barb’s doting, Jasper didn’t fall asleep on the drive.

I turn off the car, then stay seated behind the wheel. “We don’t have to go. It’s probably got nothing to do with what happened to Regina. We can just go back to the Westside.”

Barb casts me a vacant smile and throws the door open. “Don’t be silly.”

Contessa’s is housed in a warehouse with art and music recording studios. We take the elevator to the third floor and follow the signs to the rehearsal space. Drum solos and guitar riffs waft down the hall, entangling with the mustiness of the raw space and the piquancy of oil paint, a particular ambience I haven’t experienced since my twenties in New York and an entirely unfamiliar universe to Jasper, who marvels as I push him down the hall. I have a studio in Santa Monica, but it’s new, luxury. This is raw and real in a way I miss. This is art.

The metal door to Contessa’s scratches the floor as Barb shoves it open. The space is one large room with laminate floors and stark white walls. We’re ten minutes early, but at least forty women are already here, some clustered, others intentionally distanced. Their chatter quiets as we step inside. They’re all in their twenties, thin brunettes. Barb, Jasper, and I are the only people here who don’t fit the type.

“Are you from Reggie Ray Casting?” one of the women asks Barb, who does a double take, the name clearly signifying something to her. Reggie Ray Casting? Could this be Regina’s? Was Barb mistaken—did she get into casting, not acting? Like Barb, Jasper, and me, Regina doesn’t fit the type of the other women in the room either. Reggie. It’s not so far off from Regina. From Gigi.

All eyes are on Barb, who studies the women as she stitches together the scene, so foreign to us yet so common to the actresses in the room.

“That’s right,” she finally says. “Give us a moment to set up.”

She motions me to follow her toward the sole table in the room, off in the far corner.

“Do you think she meant Regina?” I whisper to Barb.

“Her girlfriend called her Reggie,” she mutters back as we head toward the corner. Jasper leans forward, bending around the side of his stroller to investigate the women across the room. “And her dad and I called her Regina Ray when she was little. Regina Ray of Light. She was our sunshine.” Barb beams at a distant memory. There’s so much I want to ask her, so much that’s none of my business, so much we don’t have time for now.

“What’s the plan?” I ask as I situate Jasper’s stroller beside my chair. He’s still staring at the women, giggling when he makes eye contact with one of the bolder ones. We’ll see how long his curiosity keeps him pliant.

Barb shrugs, then shouts across the room, “Who was here first?”

The women all raise their hands, fanning their headshots like goods in a market. Barb points to one at random, then leans against the table as she uses her index finger to motion the actress toward us.

“I’m going to need everyone else to stay back.”

I study Barb in awe, instantly ten years younger, commanding in a way I haven’t seen her before. There’s so much I don’t know about Barb.

The actress stands a few feet away from the table, primping her hair and staring at Jasper. “Do you want me to play opposite him in a scene?”

Barb’s attention shifts between the woman and Jasper. “No, he’s not—we don’t want you to read anything. We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay.” The woman tucks her hair behind her ears, clearly uncomfortable. This isn’t what she was expecting. I don’t know what she was expecting. I’ve never been to an audition before.

“Tell me what you know about the part,” Barb says.

“Only what I read on the audition call.” She slips her hands into her armpits, and I want to tell her to stand up, be proud. She’s beautiful. Every woman in this room is beautiful. “About a mom who deals oxy to get her son lifesaving medicine.”

Barb studies her, and the actress does her best to puff out her chest and present confidence. Finally, Barb thanks her for coming and says we’ll be in touch. The woman is about to protest, confused at how abruptly Barb has dismissed her. Instead, she hands Barb her résumé and headshot before despondently ambling away. Her name is Astrid Mailer. I repeat it several times, hoping to one day see it across a marquee.

As Barb calls over another actress, Jasper’s interest quickly fades. He kicks his legs, shouting, “Ow, ow.” He can’t pronounce the t at the end of out, so it sounds like he’s in physical agony instead of everyday toddler distress. He rubs his eyes, eager for a nap, but he’ll settle for a meltdown instead.

“I’m going to take Jasper for air,” I tell Barb. For her part, Barb is thriving. She says she’ll talk to a few more of the women, then meet me outside. Everyone watches me as I push Jasper toward the door. One of the actresses holds it open for me. There’s something about her, her large doe eyes, her luminescent skin, a magnetism that these other beautiful women don’t quite have. I’m certain she’s the one, even if I know nothing about casting, about this movie Regina must have been involved in.

As I push Jasper down that dingy hall, my mind drifts to the artist’s eternal dilemma. Who paid for all this? Of course. Dan Huntsman. He’s a producer. He must be funding the movie, must have hired Regina. Rather, Claire did. Oh, that asshole. First earrings, now a casting job. He was using his wife’s money to keep his mistress happy—until she wanted too much, money or attention or both, and he killed her. It’s so mind-bogglingly perverse, I know it’s true.

The elevator door starts to close as we approach, then judders open. As soon as I step inside, I wish I’d lingered longer, not giving her a chance to hold it for me. Astrid is inside, disappointment wafting from her in waves. She focuses on the numbers above the door as the elevator descends. I want to tell her this isn’t a rejection; we have no authority. There’s something freeing about living in LA outside of Hollywood. Although I’ve designed for several actresses, crafted the occasional piece for a period film, and Gabe has had plenty of famous patients, we could do our work anywhere. I don’t know what it’s like to come here for a purpose, one you may never fulfill.

Jasper and I wait outside for Barb. Two more actresses wander out, one remarking, “Well, that was a total waste of time.” I wonder if they know each other from auditioning, from constantly competing for the same roles.

My phone buzzes. A text from Gabe. Stuck in the office. Can’t make it today. Don’t hate me? Let me know how it goes.

It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about my checkup with my OB scheduled for this afternoon. I’m always telling Gabe he doesn’t need to come to every appointment. I did want him with me today, though, for my thirty-seven-week visit, when I’ll find out whether the baby is still breech. If she is, I’ll need to schedule either an ECV to turn her or a cesarean to cut her out of my body. Both procedures involve pain. Both are my decision. Still, I’d hoped Gabe would be with me. I don’t text him back. Instead I text Claire, asking if we can do nanny share at our house for the foreseeable future, claiming that with the baby coming, Jasper’s been regressing, that he’ll be better in his own home. It sounds plausible enough, even though I’m pretty sure Jasper has zero understanding of how drastically his life is about to change. When we say Jasper, where’s your sister? he points to my stomach. When I poke my own belly and say Who’s here? he shouts, Baby. Those are memorized responses from weeks of trying to prepare him. Claire wouldn’t know this, though. She only has Summer.

More of the women stream onto the street, unlocking cars, disappearing around corners, on to other rooms where they will blend into other crowds. We’re going to have to find our own nanny. Jasper can’t share a nanny with a murderer’s daughter. I can’t be friends with a murderer’s wife either. I’m not prepared to face that fact any more than I am the nanny share or how exactly we’re going to live across the canal from a killer. Claire texts back a thumbs-up, no questions or protests. For now, I don’t need any long-term solutions. I just need to keep my son away from Dan Huntsman.

A few minutes later, Barb struts out, high off her performance. As soon as we’re back at my car, she collapses into the passenger seat, drained. For his part, Jasper drifts to sleep before I’ve even started the engine.

“Do you mind if we call it a day? That was a lot,” Barb says.

“Sure. I have a doctor’s appointment anyway.” I drive toward the serpentine highways that will take us back to the Westside. “Did you learn anything else from the other actresses?”

Barb shakes her head no. “That’s all they knew. A movie about a mother who dealt drugs to save her son. I think Regina must have written the script too. There’s no way she would have cast someone else’s movie when she wanted to write her own.” There’s a smugness to Barb’s assessment, a relief that she can speak confidently about her daughter’s motivations.

“But a movie about an oxy dealer?” For some reason, the little I know about Regina, this doesn’t seem right.

“Regina always worked through things by writing about them,” Barb says.

I think back to Regina’s essay I found online, the one about their complicated relationship. Has Barb read it? Does she know her daughter worked through their struggles by writing about them too?

“And she was always interested in how it’s not just the addict that makes an addiction.” The assuredness fades from Barb’s face as her words hit too close. Whether or not she’s read the essay, Barb knows her daughter found her triggering. “I can see her wanting to understand the perspective of a drug dealer.”

She says this last part so stoically, I can’t tell if she views this as a form of empathy or blame.

I press down on the gas pedal, trying to decide how I can be a comfort to her. The car propels us up the ramp to the highway. The only thing I can think to do is inch her toward the truth.

“Dan Huntsman, my neighbor—”

“I remember,” she interrupts. Of course she does.

“He’s a producer. A movie producer, I mean.”

“You think he had something to do with that audition?”

“It’s the biggest hurdle, getting funding. If they were having an affair—”

Barb’s phone rings, and she motions for me to hold on. I listen as Barb says, “Oh, hello,” followed by “That would be great,” and then “Right” and “Sure” several times. When she hangs up, she explains that it was Regina’s super, who can let us into Regina’s apartment tomorrow. She doesn’t have to ask if I’ll join her. We’re in this together.

At lunchtime, the freeways are surprisingly clear, even through downtown, where too many roads intersect at once.

“Dan Huntsman,” Barb says to the looming buildings as we snake through downtown. “Dan Huntsman.” She rolls the name over in her mouth, tumbling it until it’s familiar. Each time it makes me shiver. Each time it becomes more fact than suspicion.

I don’t need Dr. Avagyan to tell me that the baby is still breech. On the ultrasound, my daughter’s head floats upward, her legs suspended as they kick. Dr. Avagyan stares at me expectantly, wanting my answer on the ECV. She’s been trying to talk me out of it—Gabe, too, although he’s skeptical of her reasons, believing she prefers the efficient, more lucrative C-section. There are benefits to a scheduled C-section. It will be easier to plan around. It’s quicker, safer. The recovery is what preoccupies me. I don’t know when major abdominal surgery became both routine and stigmatized, as though by trading a vaginal delivery for having your midsection sliced open, you’re somehow cheating labor.

Seeing my baby on the sonogram, so comfortable, so playful, I know that even if Dr. Avagyan wrenches and twists my stomach, the little lady isn’t budging. I tell her to book the surgery.

She spreads my legs apart to feel inside me.

“Well.” Dr. Avagyan snaps off her gloves. “You aren’t dilated yet, so we can go until thirty-nine weeks. No later.” She wags a finger like I’m trying to get away with something. That gives me ten days.

Ten days is a vacation, a guest who’s overstayed their welcome. Ten days is all I have left as a mother of one. Ten days to prove that Dan Huntsman killed Regina. Ten days to discover what her death has to do with my son.

Chapter Eighteen

Barb

I’ve been following the wrong husband.

I google “Dan Huntsman” and find him listed as the head of development at Winsome Films, a production company that makes reality shows designed to bring out the worst in women and movies that turn them into victims. As soon as I see his picture, I recognize him. He’s the angry man who lives across the canal from Tessa, the one who screams at his wife for sport, who’s as thirsty for violence as his name implies.

This story is so much neater than the one I’ve failed to put together for Gabe Irons. This is how mysteries work—the ones that feel truest to life, anyway. The killer has been lurking in the background all along. Dan and Regina were having an affair. He was helping her make a movie about a victim before she became one herself. He drowned her outside his home. It still leaves the question of how Jasper knew Regina, why Dan bought Tessa’s earrings. Maybe the straightforward answers are right there too. Jasper must have met Regina through Dan. Tessa said she shared a nanny with the Huntsmans. And most men know nothing about jewelry. Dan had the good fortune to have a neighbor who was a jewelry designer.

I stand in the shadows of the old olive tree, a few doors down from the Huntsmans’, waiting for him to appear. Although it’s dark inside, I have a clear view of their open floor plan through the glass walls. Across the way, Gabe Irons slips out of his house and grabs his surfboard. When he walks by me, I say hello. He nods back, no recognition. No interest either. He’s still an arrogant ass, but his arrogance isn’t my problem anymore.

When I see movement inside the Huntsmans’ home, I head over to the bridge, where I have a clearer view into their living room. I lean against the wooden rail, scrolling on my phone for cover. Linda has texted me a series of question marks. I’ve been dutifully sending her a firework emoji each morning to let her know I’m still alive. I forgot to check in today. I text her that explosion now, and she responds immediately with a yellow thumbs-up.

The Huntsmans’ morning routine is similar to the Irons’. His wife cares for their child as he gets ready for work. He arrives downstairs in a slick gray suit. Unlike Gabe Irons, Dan Huntsman doesn’t toss his child into the air, doesn’t kiss his wife goodbye, just shouts at her as he throws his bag over his shoulder. Beads of sweat materialize on the back of my neck. Instinctively, I scan behind me, toward Tessa’s house, assuming she’s spotted me, not that I have anything to hide now that I’m spying on someone else’s husband. Only it isn’t Tessa. It’s that next-door neighbor, taking her morning constitutional. She’s paused midstep, does nothing to hide the way she sneers at me.

I quickly trot around to the alley where I’ve double-parked near the Huntsmans’ home, outside a house I’ve ascertained is currently unoccupied. Still, it’s a relief to see my car hasn’t been towed. I settle behind the wheel and wait until a Tesla backs out of the Huntsmans’ garage. Once he’s pulled onto the street that leads out of the canals, I follow him.

Since the audition, I’ve had a renewed sense of purpose, one I lean in to as I trail Dan Huntsman down a boulevard congested with traffic. I stay a few cars behind him. Not just purpose but confidence. At the audition, it felt good to have a crowd look to me, based on my age and demeaner, as the leader. It feels good to be in charge now, clear eyed and focused. Traffic creeps forward. The contours of Dan’s white car are visible ahead. A pang hits me. I was good at my job. I’ll never get to do it again.

I’m so lost in thought that I don’t notice the car in front of me switch lanes. Suddenly, I’m right behind Dan Huntsman’s white Tesla. I can’t be this close. Fear creeps into my chest as I flick on my signal to transition lanes. No one moves when the light changes to green ahead. Through his rearview mirror, Dan’s attention shifts to me. He squints as he takes me in. I angle the wheel toward the right, my fingernails nervously tapping on the steering wheel, my right leg jostling. He sees me. I need to get out of here.

I concentrate on the right lane, hungry for a gap to slip into, acutely aware that Dan Huntsman is now getting out of his car and approaching mine. Traffic in the right lane starts to move. No one’s letting me in. Dan’s car blocks the left lane ahead. Why won’t anyone let me in? I keep my attention on the right lane, keenly aware of the shadow his shoulders cast over my driver’s side window, that he’s stationed right outside my car. The driver behind me honks. Dan pounds on the glass. I’m too scared to look at him as he screams, “Roll down the window.” The pressure of his fist thuds on the car, making me flinch like he’s actually hitting me. He tries the door handle. I panic, relieved as we both discover it’s locked.

A man steps out of the car behind me. “Come on, man. You’re blocking the road.”

“Mind your fucking business,” Dan shouts at him. They get into it, barking back and forth. There’s a break in the right lane, and I floor the gas pedal and leap into it. A car skids to avoid hitting me. Its horn wails, but I’ve escaped. I can see Dan Huntsman in my rearview mirror, fists clenched at his sides as he watches me disappear around a corner. A few blocks ahead, I pull over, shut my eyes, and breathe. My instincts are raging. This man killed my daughter.

I wait outside Regina’s apartment building for Tessa, trying to calm my uneasy body. Every inch of me is tense, Dan Huntsman’s voice still rattling in my chest. Tessa waves as she nears, too far away to notice how anxious I am. If I squint, I can see Regina. Between their stature and coloring, I can pretend she’s my daughter. As she approaches, rocking between her feet to lug her middle down the block, I realize just how pregnant Tessa is. In her loose linen dresses, she carries it well. For a moment, I let myself believe she’s Regina, pregnant. It’s enough to make my knees buckle.

She stops a few feet from me, sensing something’s off. “What’s wrong?”

I knead my hands, gathering the courage to tell her, unsure how she’ll respond. It was stupid of me, following someone so unpredictable, so angry. More than stupid. Reckless. Fatal.

“Your neighbor, Dan Huntsman. I followed him this morning.” I relay the brief series of events, him pounding on my window, his gaze trailing me as I fled.

I wait for her to tell me how careless it was, how I could have jeopardized our entire investigation.

“Are you okay?” She steps toward me, comforting the air around my shoulders, and I go weak with gratitude. This is why I trust Tessa. She’s a mother even to someone twice her age.

The super is five minutes late. Tessa tells me not to worry. That’s still on time in LA. She shifts her weight, clearly uncomfortable, then wobbles back and forth until she’s low enough to drop onto the steps.

“I may have to live here now,” she jokes, trying to lighten the mood. The moment is too heavy, fog-laden with the dark clouds of Dan Huntsman. She pulls up her skirt to massage her ankles, so swollen they have no definition along the bones.

“For me it was spider veins.” I sit down beside her. My veins burned like they were filled with mercury. It’s easy to forget how different pregnancy is for everyone, the only constant being the discomfort. I stretch out my legs, my knee cracking. “I may have to live here now too.”

We continue to wait in silence for the super, whose lateness is bordering on rudeness. Tessa checks her phone. Puts it down. Checks it again.

“Everything all right?”

“Just checking on Jasper. I’m sure it’s fine,” she says unconvincingly. She puts her phone in her bag, presses both hands against it, willing herself not to open it again. I’m tempted to tell her that it’s good for him to have time away from her, to recognize that she exists as a person separate from him, but I know better than to offer unsolicited advice to another mother.

“Do you think we should tell Officer Gonzales about Dan Huntsman?” I ask Tessa.

“Since he’s been so helpful this far? We need proof. That’s why we’re here.”

Fifteen minutes later, the super swaggers up, unapologetic. Instead, he’s annoyed.

“Who’s this?” He points to Tessa.

“Regina’s sister.” I can’t bring myself to call Tessa my daughter, even if that’s the more natural way I would refer to her if it were true. He studies Tessa and must be convinced by their similarities because he motions to us to follow him inside. Either that or he didn’t know Regina. She was too independent to have called the super every time the faucet dripped.

We follow him up the single flight of stairs to Regina’s apartment. Every few steps, Tessa stops to catch her breath, and I’m relieved for the breaks. There’s no fighting it. I’m going to need knee surgery when I get home. The ache is too constant. And it’s a pain I can fix.

When we finally arrive at Regina’s apartment, the super unlocks the door and hands me the key.

“She’s paid through the month, so I’ll need it cleared out by then. Either that or next month’s rent.” He sneers, revealing small, crowded teeth.

I expect Regina’s apartment to be torn up the way it is in novels—cut cushions, down feathers aloft, bookshelves overturned. Instead, her apartment is pristine, the pillows on her emerald velvet couch fluffed. The art deco lamps on the end tables still upright, the white patterned rug shoeprint-free. The beechwood coffee table remains perfectly aligned with the front of the couch, a notebook splayed open at its center to a sketch of Maisy, her face visible beneath a curtain of hair. The portrait captures Maisy beyond her beauty, exposing her vulnerability, her magnetism, too, something I hadn’t seen on my own. It’s obvious that Regina loved her. The notebook contains several more sketches of Maisy, a list of what seem to be usernames and passwords, the grocery list of someone who does not cook despite the fancy copper pans hanging above the stove. I flip through, searching for drawings of Dan Huntsman to match the ones of Maisy. I recognize the barista with ropelike dreadlocks among sketches of people unfamiliar to me, some mere outlines, their faces unknown to Regina too. I put the journal in my purse, knowing I’ll want to pore over it later. These images are the closest I’ll get to seeing the world with my daughter again.

I survey the spotless room, wondering where to begin. The decor is not only too nice for this space but also for what I expect Regina could afford. In fact, it looks more like Tessa’s style than Regina’s. The bookshelf is decorated with as many knickknacks as books. Without thinking, I open a vintage box resting on the top shelf, relieved when it holds a set of tarot cards rather than a pipe and marijuana or something else that would have confirmed Officer Gonzales’s assessment of Regina. The tarot cards are a surprise, one that hits me with regret rather than disbelief. There are so many things I don’t know about my daughter. Things I might never know, if we can’t uncover what happened to her.

Chapter Nineteen

Tessa

I’m used to the feeling of being watched, the lightheadedness of it, the out-of-body experience. I’m used to the way it makes you react and perform simultaneously, the way it forces you to be too aware of your skin, your bones, your breath. This isn’t being watched. It’s something more intrusive, something I don’t understand.

Regina has my couch. She has my coffee table, my end tables to match. Even the candle on the windowsill is the same brand and scent I have in each of our bathrooms. The copper pans. The Japanese knives. My belongings read differently in her space, more bougie minimalist than maternal chic, a pared-down version of my life.

I stumble to the couch—my couch—and try to breathe. Has she been inside my house? Did the cleaning service send her? Or she worked for our contractor? Bartended at one of the parties we hosted before Covid? Is that how she met Dan, at my home? Was she obsessed with me, as some weird way of being closer to her lover across the canal?

Barb fusses with a deck of tarot cards, her face contorted with worry. Worry, not fear. Something about this apartment unsettles her. Only it doesn’t terrify her the way it does me.

I try to quell the dizziness. My ankles are throbbing. The baby hiccups, sending jolts through my stomach that alarm me each time. Regina can’t follow me anymore. Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel safe.

Barb notices my measured breathing. “You okay?”

“Just low blood pressure.” I elevate my throbbing ankles.

As Barb walks by, she rubs my shoulder, her fingers warm against my bare skin.

“Take your time,” she says before disappearing into the bedroom.

I try to relax, only each time my breath settles and the couch grows comfortable, I remember it’s my couch, my coffee table, my vase. The cycle starts anew. Why was she copying my life? Shouldn’t she be coveting Claire’s? The same thought loops, growing more menacing each time: Why me? Why me? Why me? And then, Why Jasper?

I need to get out of this apartment. I feel it as profoundly as I’ve felt everything else about her. Regina’s a threat to me. Even in death. Especially in death, where I can’t confront her, can’t caution her to leave me and my family alone.

I find my phone and text Marisol to tell her I’ll be home early. Pins and needles shoot through my calves as I head toward the bedroom to tell Barb I’m leaving. At least the bedroom looks entirely foreign. The headboard and dresser, although clearly expensive, are farmhouse chic rather than modern like mine. Barb sits on the bed, an iPad resting in her lap.

“It was on her dresser,” Barb says distantly. “The police didn’t even take it.” And I can hear what she’s really saying, how little they investigated, their utter disregard for her daughter’s death.

I’m still on edge, but here, in this bedroom that’s nothing like my bedroom, the urge to leave lessens. I sit on the bed beside her and reach for the iPad, pressing the power button on the top. It’s dead.

“Did you find a charger?” I ask.

She shakes her head no. I check the surface tops first, which are clutter- and dust-free, then the bedside table. When I see a vibrator, I shield the drawer from Barb. The charger isn’t in there, so I begin the indignant process of squatting until I’m low enough to see beneath the bed. Sure enough, an Apple cord is plugged into the outlet below her headboard. I further disgrace myself by flopping onto my side so I can wiggle toward the bed to reach beneath it.

“Tessa, my god.” Barb breaks free of her trance and reaches a hand to help me up. She guides me to the bed, where I catch my breath while she plugs the cord into the tablet.

The screen remains black. She taps it. Nothing happens. Frantically, she starts prodding it. “Is it broken?”

The screen lights up, and we both startle. I don’t like that it’s on, that we can bring Regina back to life that easily. I swipe up, surprised to see that it doesn’t have a password set on it, then quickly understand why. There’s no social media on the tablet. No Documents icon. The iMessages and FaceTime are turned off. The mail isn’t linked to an account. Just apps for streaming devices. She used it as a TV, nothing more.

“Anything?” Barb asks.

I shake my head no. This gives me an idea. I go to Settings, not sure it will work. I scroll until I see three green icons in a row. Phone, messages, and FaceTime. iMessages and FaceTime go through your Apple ID, something Regina would need to have linked to be able to download the streaming apps. I push the iMessage button over to activate it. FaceTime too.

“Anything?” Barb asks.

“Not sure yet.” I close the settings and wait.

“Tessa, what are you looking—”

Suddenly, texts materialize across the screen, four in total, all new messages. Regina must have deleted messages after she read them, something I’ve never seen anyone do. If that doesn’t scream sketchiness, I don’t know what does.

There’s one message from a 310 area code; another, 626. LA County. The other two area codes I don’t recognize. The first text reads, Hi! It was nice to meet you last week. I’d love to talk more about your project . The second text is colder, Not interested. Pls leave me alone. It’s the third text that gets my attention: Hey! Running late. So sorry! See you at the Brig in ten. The Brig. This must be the woman she went to meet.

We should hand this over to the police. It may be useful to their investigation. Except the iPad was on her dresser. They didn’t take it. They won’t want it now. There is no investigation except ours, the mothers’.

Before I can second-guess myself, I punch the telephone number into my phone to call the woman from the Brig and put it on speaker, motioning to Barb to stay quiet. I’ll do the talking. It rings three times, and as I’m debating what to say in a message, the woman picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you like this. I’m a friend of Regina’s,” I cautiously begin.

Before I can say anything else, she interrupts, “I told Reggie never to contact me again. Or maybe she was too drunk to remember. I’ll make myself clear now. Leave me alone. I’m not interested in Reggie’s offer, from her or from you.”

With that, she hangs up. I call her back, but it goes straight to voicemail. I try her again, to the same result.

“Call her again,” Barb insists.

“It won’t work. She’s blocked me.”

“She’s wrong. There’s no way Regina was drunk.” She incants drunk like it’s a spell, a curse this woman has cast over her daughter. “She must have tricked Regina into drinking.”

Even I can hear how unlikely this sounds. Although I was reluctant to believe it before, I know it’s true now. Regina was drunk the night she died. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t murdered, but it’s a fact Barb can’t continue to deny.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you, from when I talked to the bartender at the Brig.” I hesitate. Is there really any purpose in telling her that Regina was drunk? How would it change her murder? Barb deserves to know, though. Even if she hates me for being the messenger, she needs to confront the truth about her daughter’s death. “She said that Regina ordered a tequila. That she kept ordering. I’m sorry I left that part out before. I didn’t want to be the one . . . it doesn’t change anything.”

Barb peers over at me, bruised. Betrayed. She shifts away as she scrolls up to the newest message from the 626 number. Hey! It’s April. I finally have an LA number. No going back now!!! Speaking of, got a call back. So Stoked. Need to resched tho. Hope that’s okay. Still totally interested!

Barb narrates as she types. “‘Hi April. Congratulations on your big break. I’d still love to meet up. Does tomorrow work for you? Hope to see you soon. Best. Regina.’ Sent.”

It’s not a text anyone under sixty would write, but I don’t correct her. Besides, she already pressed Send.

Waiting for April to respond is anticlimactic. Plus, the room’s still charged with the secret I kept from Barb, the betrayal she feels in response.

“Barb, I’m really sorry. I should have told you what the bartender said.”

We both jump as the iPad pings in Barb’s lap.

Tomorrow works! Same place, same time?

“How’re we supposed to know where to meet her?”

I reach for the iPad and type, Can we say 10? I’ve got a tight day tomorrow.

We stare at the tablet, hoping she’ll take the bait. The tension between us persists, the story I withheld, the reason why.

“I didn’t want to be the one to tell you. I know how that feels. My mom was an alcoholic. I thought she was sober, then she died in a car—” My voice cracks, and I’m unable to finish the confession. After all these years, that wound can still be opened. It hasn’t healed completely.

10 AM at the Ferris wheel it is:), April writes back.

The expression on Barb’s face remains surprisingly disappointed. “There’ve got to be Ferris wheels all over LA.”

“She means the pier. In Santa Monica.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s another Ferris wheel in Newport Beach, but the only one someone local would call the Ferris wheel is the one in Santa Monica. Barb, I’m really sorry.”

Barb observes me, her persistence making me fidgety until she says, “You were trying to protect me.” She stands, stretches, both knees cracking. “I know what this looks like. Even if she was drunk, I know my daughter. I know she didn’t relapse and drown.” Barb rests her hand against her stomach. “When Isaac was cheating, I knew in my gut that something was off. He just kept telling me I was being paranoid. I wanted to believe him, so I did. When I found another woman’s underwear underneath my bed—my friend’s—I vowed never to doubt myself again. Right now my gut is saying that Regina didn’t simply get drunk and drown.”

I don’t know if Regina relapsed that night or was mid-bender. I don’t know what prompted her to drink. Just because she was drunk doesn’t mean her death was a simple accident. She was having an affair with Dan. She drowned outside his home. She had my sofa, my plates, my knives. My son knew her. There’s more going on here. I’m certain of it too.

“Trust your instincts,” I tell her.

I drive home in a daze, the uncanniness of Regina’s apartment, its familiarity, souring my stomach. My phone buzzes in the console. It’s Marisol.

“Hey, I’m almost home,” I say as I pick up.

“Take your time, Miss Tessa. The children are with Miss Claire.”

“What?” Instinctively, I slam on the brakes, the car screeching to a halt mid-block. The street is quiet, residential. A man walking his dog barely registers me. Surely he sees stranger things on his walks through Venice than a car violently braking on an empty street. “Marisol, please tell me you didn’t leave them at the Huntsmans’.”

“Yes, with Miss Claire. She needed to take Summer early, so she said she’d watch Jasper until you’re back so I could go early. I told her you’d be there soon. That’s okay, right?”

My mind starts racing, spiraling, trying to think of how I can reverse this chain of events so my son isn’t at Dan Huntsman’s.

“Of course it’s okay, Marisol. I’ll get Jasper there. Thank you,” I add as I throw the car in drive and slam on the gas.

I double-park my car in the alley behind Claire’s. As I pound on the door, I imagine Regina here a week ago, stumbling down from the Brig, drunk, desperate to talk to Dan. I can picture his furious face at the sight of her in the middle of the night, completely wasted and ready to wake his family. Maybe he ushered her around to the canal, where they fought. Maybe he pushed her, and she fell over the saltbushes, tumbled into the basin, too drunk to stand back up. Or maybe he jumped in after her and held her head down. Even if their camera caught him drowning her, Dan could have erased the video. Anything could have transpired that night. The one thing I know for certain is that I can’t share a nanny with Claire anymore.

I ring the bell, wait a few seconds, then ring it again.

“Come on. Come on,” I mutter, squirming like I have to pee. I do have to pee. I always have to pee these days, but I’m not about to use Claire’s bathroom.

My heart stops in my chest when the door opens. Literally, it skips a beat.

“Hey T.,” Dan says warmly as he steps to the side to let me in. He’s dressed in a custom suit, his collared shirt opened one button too low. I can feel the heat off his body so close to mine. I wonder if he can smell my fear, can hear my ragged breath.

“Dan,” I stutter. “What-what are you doing home?”

Before he can answer, his attention swivels to Claire, who trots downstairs in sweats, her eyelids shadowed, her lashes mascaraed, her hair clipped up to keep it away from the setting makeup.

“Jesus, Claire, you aren’t even dressed? We have to be—Summer, what in the hell—” Dan storms across the room, where Jasper and Summer are dropping books from the shelf, shrieking as they add hardbacks to the mess of toys and magnetic tiles strewn across the living room. My stomach tenses as the baby kicks, girding me to pounce if he so much as breathes in my son’s direction.

“Dan,” Claire cautions in a firm yet loving voice. He stops midway across the room and nods to her, breathing to calm himself down. “Sorry, he’s a bit on edge about this premiere tonight.” She kisses the air near my cheeks. “It’s his baby.”

As opposed to his actual baby, whom he was about to berate. I wonder if this film was Regina’s baby, too, if it has anything to do with why he killed her.

Claire grabs my arm, her face and mood suddenly bright. “Summer’s staying with my parents tonight. God, I can’t remember the last time Dan and I had a night alone.”

I panic at the thought of her alone with him, what he might do when there are no children, no neighbors around. I try to come up with something, anything that might get her to pass on a night alone with her husband. Before I can, Jasper barrels into my leg, sending a lancing pain through my core.

“Mama,” he delights. For a fleeting moment, it’s all I can hear. I lift him up. While I can’t keep Claire from Dan, I can get my son away from here.

“I’ll let you finish getting ready.” I heave Jasper onto my hip. I think Claire says something to me. I can’t hear her over the shouting in my head that we need to leave now.

His voice is loud and clear, though. It stops me cold.

“Tessa?” Slowly I turn, willing myself to remain calm. He’s holding Jasper’s diaper bag, dangling it like bait.

“Right. That would help.” I force a laugh, like I’m so forgetful, and command my legs to approach him, my free hand to reach for the bag.

I hear myself thank him, register my voice telling Claire to have fun tonight. Then I walk out as deliberately as I can, even as my mind screams at me to run faster than the baby inside me and the baby on my hip will allow, certain this is the last time my son will ever step foot inside Dan Huntsman’s house.

Chapter Twenty

Tessa

I toss and turn as Gabe snores softly beside me. I’d like to blame my insomnia on his snoring. I’d like to blame it on the pregnancy, too, how there isn’t a single comfortable position even with the body pillow. It’s not the snoring or the pregnancy that’s keeping me up. Every time I roll over, I see Dan and Claire at his premiere, hands entwined, his touch a comfort to her. Then I see Dan hunched in the canal, leaning over Regina as he presses her face into the shallow water, holding her down until she drowns.

I poke Gabe, hard enough that he murmurs, “What was that for?”

“You’re snoring.”

Gabe mumbles “Sorry,” rolls back over, starts snoring even louder. It’s like a horse braying. When I can’t take it anymore, I slip out of bed and head downstairs for a glass of water. The night’s quiet enough to hear the ocean even with the French doors closed, those dark hours before sunrise when the helicopters are no longer searching, the sirens no longer chasing, the only time of day when I don’t get that persistent feeling of being watched.

Across the canal, a front door slams so loud, it reverberates through the empty basin, vibrating our patio doors. The entryway light at the Huntsmans’ goes on as Claire storms into the living room in a plunging emerald dress, hair in a complicated updo. Dan stumbles in behind her, fists clenched. I freeze, my glass of water midair, debating what to do. The lights are off at our house. They can’t see me.

Dan screams at Claire, tossing pillows off the couch, books off the shelf where they’ve been refiled after Jasper and Summer tore up this same living room more playfully than Dan is now. Claire speaks to him from across the room, trying to placate him. Once he seems to have calmed down, she walks over and places her hands on both his cheeks. They stare at each other, and just as I think he’s going to embrace her, he slaps her so hard she falls to the floor.

I gasp, instinctively clamping my hand over my mouth, even though there’s no way they heard me. Except Dan twitches. Claire uses both arms to lift her torso from the floor, the side of her face that he’s hit away from me, so I can’t see the extent of his violence. They stay frozen for a few moments until she nods at him. He yanks her up by her perfect updo and throws her violently over his shoulder. Though I can’t hear her screams, I can see her legs kick as she tries to break free from his grip. He’s too strong. He easily contains her as he heads toward the stairs, where they disappear from my view.

Terrified, I waddle upstairs, my uterus pounding inside me with every rushed step. At one point, I have to stop and let the twinges subside before I can continue. When I get to my bedroom, Gabe’s still sleeping. I rush over to the window, hoping that Dan hasn’t hurt her again. Their drapes are shut, a narrow strip of light visible along the edges. I can’t see them, can’t tell what he’s doing to her. I don’t think so much as react. I couldn’t save Regina, but I can save Claire.

My phone’s charging on my bedside table. I grab it and rush into the hall to call 9-1-1. When the dispatcher asks me what’s my emergency, I tell them to come quickly. The short call ends, and I cradle the phone, knowing I’ve done the right thing.

“Come on. Come on,” I mutter as I monitor their house from my bedroom window, waiting for the familiar sound of the sirens, certain they’re too late. If something happens to Claire, I’ll never forgive myself.

After what feels like hours, the sirens grow louder until they echo through our bedroom, loud enough to wake Gabe.

He sits up, strands of his sleep-churned hair illuminated by the light outside, emanating from the downstairs of the Huntsmans’ home. “What’s happening?”

When he realizes the sirens aren’t a part of his dream, Gabe bolts out of bed, finds me by the window, and envelops me in his arms. I lean into the comfort of his embrace, the certainty that I’ve saved my best friend.

Up and down the canal, one bedroom light turns on and then another, everyone still on edge from the drowning a week ago. Gabe and I watch as Dan leads two police officers into his living room, where Claire is quickly returning the pillows to the couch, the books to the shelves. Dan’s shirt’s misbuttoned, half tucked. Claire stops tidying up and pauses, staring out at the canal, her face fully visible to me. Her skin is as porcelain as ever. And that’s when a new worry settles in, deeper in my gut, one I don’t fully understand. I saw Dan hit Claire hard enough to leave a mark. More than a mark. A bruise. A swelling. But the skin on her cheek looks completely untouched.

Beneath our window, a figure appears on the walkway. I tense. Gabe feels it. He nestles his chin against my forehead and kisses the top of my head. Momentarily, I think she’s a phantom, the ghost of Regina, until I recognize that posture, arms behind her back, short white hair pulsating with red and blue light. Judy peers up and finds me through the window. She shifts her gaze to the Huntsmans’, where Claire and Dan are speaking with the police, then back to me, smiling before continuing her patrol. It sends a chill through my core. Judy knows what I’ve done.

I will myself to relax as Gabe continues to hold me. Judy can’t know. No one can. No one will. After a few minutes, the police leave. Claire and Dan remain in their living room. He’s pacing, growing angry again. She’s trying to calm him. It’s different now. They aren’t mad at each other.

Abruptly, Dan wooshes past her toward their back door and trudges into his garden. He charges toward the bridge and crosses over to our island. He can’t be headed for our house. He can’t know it was me. Only, he’s opening the gate to our garden and is banging on the French doors.

“Let’s go back to bed,” I say too quickly. Gabe’s arm goes limp around me.

“T.,” he whispers. “What’s going on?”

I hesitate and Gabe’s arm flinches around me.

“I can explain.”

Dan’s banging continues. “Tessa? Get down here.”

“Stay here,” Gabe says.

From downstairs, Dan’s voice booms. Gabe has let him inside. Dan Huntsman is in our house. I tiptoe into the hall.

“I know it was her,” Dan barks. “Every time I look, she’s watching us.”

Is that true? Do I watch them? A shiver runs through me. That means he’s been watching me too.

“If it doesn’t stop, I’m filing a restraining order. Be a man and control your wife—” He pauses when Claire interrupts him.

“Dan, come on. Let’s go home.”

Before I can second-guess myself, I race downstairs. Everyone freezes when they see me, their expressions mismatched. Dan, expectedly, is furious. Gabe, concerned. Claire—her flawless face blushed and bronzed—distraught. And that’s when I see them, gleaming from her earlobes. Three tiers of diamonds. My earrings. Claire’s wearing them. Dan bought them for her, not Regina.

“Claire—” I start. She shakes her head no, reaches for her husband’s hand, and gently tugs him out of our house, his cold glare fixed on me the entire time.

Gabe watches our garden after they’ve disappeared. I wrap my arm around him, leaning my chin into his shoulder. Gabe’s a patient man. His clinic runs hot with emotions. Parents-to-be, especially fathers, are prone to frustration, sometimes anger. They unfairly accuse him, branding him a greedy liar when treatments don’t work. He’s trained himself to remain collected no matter how vitriolic they get. I sense it now, the way he fights to maintain his composure.

“I can explain,” I whisper.

He waits, ready to listen, and I have no excuses. The only proof I had was pinned onto my best friend’s ears. I don’t understand how Claire wasn’t hurt by the slap I saw, the slap I practically heard. I still don’t know what Dan’s capable of, but he didn’t buy Regina those earrings. He didn’t kill her.

I flop onto the couch. “I came downstairs for a glass of water, and I saw him hit her. I saw him drag her upstairs. I thought he was going to kill her, but she doesn’t have a mark on her. Her hair—” I mimic him pulling Claire’s hair on my own head. “He pulled her up by her hair, but it isn’t messed up at all. I saw it, though. I didn’t imagine it.”

The tears flow as I try to fight them. They’re manipulative, even though I don’t mean them that way.

Gabe sits beside me and pulls me against him. “I’m sure that was scary.”

I let my body relax into his until he chuckles suddenly.

“You realize you called the cops on your best friend’s kink?”

“What do you mean?”

“T., they were role-playing. You know.” He waits for me to catch on. “How sometimes you like me to play doctor.”

“What? Who would fantasize about that?”

“Claire, apparently.” He laughs. It isn’t funny. It’s twisted, disturbing. It makes me think I don’t know my best friend at all. “Oh, come on. It’s kind of funny.”

I manage to summon a smile. I stand, smooth out the only pajamas that currently fit me. “I’ll apologize. I’ll go over and explain.”

“No.” Gabe rests his hands on both my shoulders. Those golden brown eyes bore into me. “Let it go.”

He has no idea how much more I need to let go than Claire and Dan.

“Do you think Claire’s mad at me?”

“I think she’s probably more embarrassed.” He pulls me onto his lap, kisses my hair. “She’ll get over it. Give her some time, and she’ll see it’s actually pretty funny.”

Gabe chuckles again as he heads upstairs to bed. I stay seated on the couch, trying to make sense of everything that’s just transpired. I’m mortified, for sure. Also unsettled. If Dan didn’t buy Regina those earrings, if he didn’t know her, didn’t kill her, I have no idea who did. I try to summon the list of names Maya showed me. I’ve always thought in images. It helps as a designer, being able to envision a piece before I’ve started to render it, let alone fabricate it. I can see the troubled expression on Maya’s face, the way she sniffled as she opened the binder to the list of five names. I squint, trying to make those other names come to life. I can see letters, a first name that stars with A, the last name Jackson. As the names partially materialize, they remain fragmented, unfamiliar. My mind’s eye drifts back to Maya, her twitching mouth, her pale face, a tragedy I can’t begin to imagine, a cruelty I’m going to impose on her. I need to see the list again.

Outside, one light shuts off, then another, our neighbors putting this strange disruption to bed. I’m not really searching for anything, just staring vacantly in the direction of the canal, lost in thought, when Dan materializes across the way. He’s in his boxers now, his bare chest smooth and muscular. Slowly, he pulls one blind down, then another, his attention lasered on me. His face disappears behind the gossamer fabric, but I can still see the outline of him, standing at the window. It’s impossible to hide in a house made of glass.

On Wednesday morning, I wake up to radio silence on my mom-group text chain. Our text chain is never quiet, especially not on a weekday morning when we all report our ETA for the park. Even though I know what this means, I tell myself it’s nothing. They simply forgot to text. I’ll go to the park and see that everything’s fine.

It’s not fine. I realize just how not fine it is when I stop outside the park gate and they turn in unison. Erin scowls. Ines purses her lips like the easily disappointed executive she once was. It’s Claire’s face that wrecks me, though—the hurt, the heartbreak. I should just leave, find a new playground for Jasper, a new set of moms, a new nanny, a new best friend. I could take or leave the playground, the other mothers, but I don’t want a new best friend. So I unbuckle Jasper and prepare to grovel for Claire’s forgiveness.

Jasper explodes onto the playground, racing toward that familiar structure, as I take my time walking toward their circle. Erin and Ines tighten around Claire. Up close, I notice that her face is blotchy. She shakes her head no at me, subtly, almost imperceptibly.

“Claire, if I can explain,” I start.

Erin steps in front of her. She’s small but scrappy. For a moment I think she might grab me by the bicep and toss me out of the park like a bouncer evicting me from a club. “What could you possibly explain?”

“What’s the matter with you?” Ines snipes. “What kind of person calls the cops on their friend?”

“I thought he was hurting you.” I want to tell her about my mistake with the earrings, the audition. It all rests on a damning, irrevocable truth. I thought her husband was capable of murder. At some level, I still do, even if he didn’t kill Regina.

“Why were you even watching?” Erin asks. “What kind of freak spies on her neighbors?”

As Claire and I study each other, her lip quivers. That’s what hurts her the most, I realize. I’ve exposed something I was supposed to pretend not to see. I’ve broken the code of life along the canals, mortifying my best friend along the way.

“I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t change anything, but I’m so sorry.” I walk away before Erin and Ines can say anything cutting in return. “Jasp.” I wave to my son. “Time to go.”

He protests. Before he can melt into a full-on tantrum, I say, “I think there’s a bowl of strawberry ice cream waiting at home,” loud enough for the other mothers to hear. Let them judge. Let them have opinions about the fact that I’m feeding my son ice cream at nine in the morning.

Jasper stands upright at the sound of strawberry ice cream and trots over to his stroller, saying “Cream. Cream.”

On the short walk home, I stop on the pathway outside our house and gaze at the spot in the basin where they found Regina. I squint, as if that might reveal the indentation of her body. There’s no trace of her, just a foot and a half of stagnant water that smells so putrid, it’s nauseating.

What am I doing? I’ve lost my best friend over this. I’ve been keeping secrets from my husband, something I vowed never to do. I’ve been exploiting my son and squandering these last days before my daughter arrives. For what? I don’t know why Jasper called to Regina, but every sign points to an accident. She was drunk. She stumbled into the canals and drowned.

“Cream. Cream,” Jasper shouts. It takes me a moment to translate that he means the ice cream I’ve promised him, my bribe to get him to leave the park. I understand his garbled half speech, but I was wrong about Gigi. I don’t know why she had my couch, my lamps, my dishware. It may have been an innocent obsession, some sort of transference, a new addiction, as random as it was intense. And the earring may not have been mine at all. I’d only glanced at it briefly before I panicked. I didn’t even check the back for my maker’s mark. It could have been a knockoff or a similar design—an antique even, possibly costume. Now that I’m remembering, I’m pretty sure the stones didn’t refract light in a rainbow of color, like a diamond would, but in the orange-and-blue fire of a cubic zirconia. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t mine. I’d seen what I wanted to in the earring. I’d heard what I wanted to in Jasper’s cries for Gigi.

I bend down and brush the wispy curls from his forehead. “You didn’t know her, did you?”

Jasper frowns, and fleetingly I hope this is one of those preternatural moments where he’ll erupt into complete sentences to tell me to stop worrying—she was just a familiar face along the canals, like the woman who paints, the man who walks his Yorkies, the surfers next door. Maybe that’s why Jasper recognized her, because he saw her lurking. Maybe it’s all as simple as Gabe proposed. Gee-gee for girl, not Gigi for Regina.

“Cream. Cream,” he says more insistently.

“I did promise you ice cream, didn’t I?” I give his hair one final caress, then haul his stroller into our garden, glancing at the clock inside. I’m supposed to meet Barb in an hour.

Nothing I say will deter Barb from this mission. She needs it for closure, or maybe for an opening, to begin the process of grieving. I won’t try to stop her, but I can’t be a party to this anymore. It’s already cost me too much.

I’ll go to the pier. I’ll explain to Barb that Dan didn’t kill her daughter. We’ll say goodbye, and I’ll let her continue on this fruitless quest. I lift Jasper from his stroller and hug him to me, trusting my decision. This is Barb’s tragedy, not mine.

Chapter Twenty-One

Barb

I can’t believe I’m late. Tessa and I were supposed to meet at 9:45, and it’s 9:53 as I charge past the aquarium. The concierge had said it would take ten minutes to walk to the pier, so I gave myself fifteen. I don’t know if I should be flattered that he overestimated my ambulatory speed. It’s hardly a comfort when I’m late for quite possibly the most important meeting of my life.

The morning’s still gray and chilly, but the pier is buzzing with tourists, mostly families. I locate Tessa through the crowd, pushing Jasper’s stroller up and down a short stretch of wooden planks outside Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I stop momentarily to observe her. She never finished telling me what happened to her mother. She said enough, though. We’re more connected than I realized.

“I know, I know,” I say as I hustle up to her. She peeks over at me with a tortured expression. “What’s the matter?”

“I was wrong,” she says. “My neighbor—he didn’t buy your daughter the earrings. I made a mistake. It wasn’t even my earring she had.”

The way she says your daughter makes my stomach sink.

Except the story she confesses is something confusing about Dan Huntsman and his wife role-playing, something we don’t have time to discuss now.

“Tessa.” I cut her off, a little harsher than I intend. She flinches. “Can we talk about this later? We’re late.”

I start to walk toward the Ferris wheel, stopping when she doesn’t follow.

“I can’t. I want to—I know I’ve—it’s important—” Tessa starts and stops, trying to compose a thought. We don’t have time for this. It’s 10:02. We can’t be late for April. Later than we already are.

“I’ll go,” I say. “It’s probably better if we don’t ambush her, anyway. Wait here. I’ll be back soon.”

I don’t give her a chance to respond before I’m off.

There are several people waiting in line for the Ferris wheel. It’s hard to tell where the groups delineate. No one seems to be alone. A car swooshes down the curve of a roller coaster behind the Ferris wheel. Beneath the yellow tracks, one woman waits, scanning the crowd until her attention stops on me.

“April?” I cautiously approach her, which causes her to hug her purse to her side. “Don’t be scared.”

These words have never reassured anyone. They do little to calm April now. She regards me with large eyes, shockingly green. Something about her is familiar. I can’t put my finger on what movie I’ve seen her in. She continues to watch me, wary yet hopeful. Whatever role Regina discussed with her, she wants it badly enough to find out whether I can offer it instead.

“I just want to talk.” My words are the lines of pedophiles, kidnappers, creeps. I shrug, hoping for once to appear as the harmless old lady I otherwise detest. “I’m Regina’s mother. She asked me to meet you. She said I should talk to you about the part.”

I’m taking a gamble, calling it a part, since April had mentioned it as an opportunity in her text. I assume this is about Regina’s movie. What other opportunity could my daughter have had to offer?

“I knew this was too good to be true.” She starts to walk away.

“Wait.” I race to keep up. “I’m sorry, I’m—” I hesitate. “Regina’s dead.” Her expression is pure horror. “I need to know what happened to her. Please.”

She studies me. Whatever she sees hardens her face. “You have some nerve. Are you even Reggie’s mother? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Just leave me alone. You and Reggie should be ashamed of yourselves, taking advantage of innocent people.”

She clutches her purse tighter as she scurries, then sprints away, as fearful as prey. Her slender frame disappears into the crowd. I don’t chase after her. The roller coaster races down the track again, rumbling through my immobilized body as my hair stands upright around my head. If April’s prey, that makes me and my daughter predators.

Oh, Regina, what did you get yourself into?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tessa

“Barb. Barb,” I mutter, wheeling Jasper’s stroller back and forth across the wood planks as I watch the boardwalk where Barb disappeared to meet April. I let her walk away without telling her I can no longer be a part of this investigation. I’m letting her return thinking we’re still in this together.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I assume it’s Barb, asking me to come meet April. As soon as I read Gabe’s name, I know something’s wrong.

Gabe starts talking all at once, his sentences braiding into each other, their strands impossible to follow. “Oh, Tessa. Shit. I can’t believe—I’m freaking out—I don’t understand how—”

My first thought is Jasper, and the baby. My first thought is always the children, even though they’re always with me.

“Slow down,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”

“When I got to work, Aram’s car was already in his spot. It was a little strange. Sometimes he’s here early, though. He’s got tinted windows.” This seems irrelevant, but I let Gabe meander toward whatever he needs to tell me. “Only he wasn’t inside the clinic. He never showed up. Then Lara’s calling, asking if we’ve seen him. He didn’t come home last night, and—”

The wheels on Jasper’s stroller clunk to a stop. He delights at the impact, kicks his legs, eager for more. The crowd around us blurs. I know what’s happened before Gabe tells me that Aram’s dead.

I steady myself against the handles of Jasper’s stroller, trying to catch my breath.

“I’ll be right there,” I tell Gabe.

Barb wanders back in a daze, her shoulders slumped. She begins to tell me how terrified April was, that Regina was in some kind of trouble. I can’t focus.

“I need to go. Something happened with one of Gabe’s employees.” I grab the handles and start to push Jasper, his stroller rattling along the pier. Barb keeps pace, asking what happened. “One of his colleagues, he’s dead. I need—”

Jasper reaches for Barb, hindered by the stroller’s safety belt. “Bar. Bar.”

It distracts us momentarily, forces us to stop and take notice. I didn’t realize he knew her name, how much she’s become a part of his life.

“Actually, can you watch him?” I don’t have time to consider the implications of what I’ve just asked her. My son has already seen too much death. Plus, there’s no one else who can babysit. Claire was the one to find Marisol, and even if I had hired her, I would let Claire keep our nanny. It’s a meager penance for the mistake I made. But it does mean that I’ve just traversed a line with Barb I won’t be able to retreat from so easily. “I won’t be more than an hour.”

Barb’s face grows serious, as though I’ve asked her to be responsible for national secrets. “Go.”

I point down the paved path that lines the beach. “There’s a playground at the end of the pier. Or you can take him to the skate park. It’s a bit of a walk. Or Café—”

“Tessa, I’ve got this. Go.” I bow my head in thanks and bend down to kiss Jasper’s curls. As I walk away, I wait for Jasper to cry for me, but I hear only the waves crashing against the beach, the bustle of tourists deciding where to eat, what to ride. When I peer back at them, Jasper is laughing, reaching for Barb’s nose as she leans toward him, then away. I hurry off before Barb can see me, before she can think I’m nervous, when really I’m overwhelmed with a gratitude that scares me. It’s not just Jasper who’s become attached to her.

Ten minutes later, I’m rushing down the sidewalk toward Gabe’s clinic. The police have blocked off the parking lot outside Longevity Fertility and are conferencing around Aram’s red Mercedes. Despite the flurry of people, there’s a tranquility to the scene, similar to the one along the canal a week ago.

I survey the area, searching for Gabe, freezing when I see a familiar face. Dan Huntsman angles to see around the crowd. What’s he doing here? And is that Erin beside him? Farther over, the man with the bike who snakes up and down the canals stands beside my always-shorts neighbor and his Yorkies. My heart pounds, the baby kicking as she feels my fear, making it her own. I need to calm down, for her if not for me, but I see too many familiar faces. Too many people here who were also along our canal.

I scan the crowd for Officer Gonzales. Surely he will see how troubling this is. The patch on one of the police officer’s arms catches my eye. It says Santa Monica Police Department. Not Los Angeles. This is a separate city. A different jurisdiction. When I notice the always-shorts guy again, he tugs the leash of a golden retriever three times the size of my neighbor’s Yorkies. And that isn’t Erin. It’s another brunette with poutier lips. Although the man with the bike has the same bright-orange children’s seat mounted to the front, I don’t remember the father along the canals sporting a beard like the one cloaking this man’s face. These are different neighbors, witnesses to a separate tragedy so close to their lives. When Dan turns my way, he’s paler, doughier, less angry. The only people who were at both death scenes are me and my husband.

“T.” Gabe encloses me in his familiar arms. I go slack as he holds me and explains how he found Aram unresponsive behind the steering wheel with pill bottles all around. He called 9-1-1, but they were hours too late.

Gabe buries his head in my hair. “Oh, T.” His breath is hot and ragged against my neck. I don’t sense any fear in him, just profound loss. He isn’t thinking about Regina, how recently we’ve been this close to another tragedy. He isn’t even considering how his patients might interpret a death where they’re hoping to create life. His thoughts are only on his friend and colleague, inexplicably gone.

I pull my husband closer, trying to exude a calm I don’t feel. At some point our tiny world is pierced by a wail. Across the parking lot, Lara, Aram’s wife, is being held back by an officer as she tries to get to the open car door, where her husband is still inside. She’s wearing a floral pajama set, flip-flops, her hair oily, her face splotchy. Gabe lets go of me and rushes over to her. I start to follow him when a spasm hammers my tailbone, forcing me to slow down. Gabe hugs Lara while one of the nurses rushes into the clinic, returning moments later with a glass of water. Lara holds it in her hand, uncertain what she’s supposed to do with it.

“This makes no sense,” Lara keeps saying to Gabe. “Did you tell them this makes no sense? Aram didn’t do drugs. You know him. He would never.”

With Lara, I hear the same bewilderment I’ve witnessed in Barb. Not willful ignorance or wishful thinking, but certainty. This wasn’t an accident. Regina’s death wasn’t either.

There are no benches in the parking lot, so Gabe escorts Lara into the office lobby, where it’s eerily empty. Gabe’s office is never empty.

As soon as Gabe and Lara have vanished inside, my brain starts racing. Overdoses and drunken accidents happen all the time, but two in a row? In two people who seemed clean? Outside our home and my husband’s clinic? Even if I was wrong about Dan, my instincts are right. Something’s going on, something I don’t understand. One thing I know for certain. The only person connected to these two deaths is Gabe.

A few minutes later, Gabe files out and finds me.

“How’s Lara?” I ask.

“She’s with an officer, answering some questions.” He scans the crowd. I can’t tell who he’s looking for, if he’s looking for anyone at all.

“It is suspicious,” I tentatively begin.

Gabe’s gaze returns to me. “What?”

“You said it yourself, he’s been on edge lately.”

Gabe clenches his jaw. “So you think, what, Aram’s been acting weird lately? He must be on drugs?” He shakes his head, disappointed.

“I just mean, first Regina outside our house, and now at your office? To a man you’ve never known to have a drug problem?” Her name rolls off my tongue too smoothly. I recognize my slip-up immediately.

“Regina?” Except his tone is more confused than surprised. He doesn’t remember her name. She’s omnipresent in my thoughts, my days, but my husband doesn’t even know the name of the woman who died outside our house.

“The woman who drowned. You don’t think it’s strange? First our home, now here?”

Suddenly, Gabe’s furious. He’s never furious. Particularly not at me. “My colleague was just found dead outside our place of work. His wife is inside—” He points to his clinic, where two police officers are stationed by the door. “This isn’t about you. Don’t make it about you.”

This hits me so hard it’s practically physical. My stomach jolts as my daughter kicks. Gabe notices, places his hand on my stomach. I’ll always be between him and my children. Even after they are part of the outside world, they remain inside my DNA, reordered. He’ll never know our children like I do. Nothing is about me. It’s always about them.

“I just thought maybe we should mention it to the police,” I say sullenly.

“Sorry.” He pulls me toward him. I let him hold me, but I don’t hug him back. “That was a shitty thing to say. You’re right. I’ll mention the other accident to the police, okay?”

I nod, not entirely trusting that he’ll say anything to the cops. Gabe searches the crowd, suddenly worried. The Dan look-alike is still there. The man with the bike and the child’s seat. A woman in spandex—not Erin, not the woman I saw moments ago either.

“Where’s Jasp?”

“What?” This question shouldn’t startle me as much as it does. Gabe is a good father. Like me, he never stops thinking about our son. “With Marisol,” I blurt before I catch myself.

“Claire was okay with that?”

“I asked Marisol directly.” I ignore the tiny grumble that warns me I’ve just lied to my husband. Not omitted, not withheld. Lied. Bold faced. Intentional. “I assume Claire’s with Summer today.”

The grumbling intensifies, our iron-strong bond bending with the pressure, threatening to snap.

“You two will work it out,” Gabe says so confidently I almost believe him. “Let me walk you to your car.”

Gabe opens the driver’s side door for me and helps me in.

“Don’t forget to tell the police about Regina,” I say as he shuts the door, his expression hidden behind its frame.

I drive robotically toward the pier, trying to make sense of this confluence of events. Regina drunkenly drowned. Aram overdosed. If someone did kill them, their deaths were designed to look like accidents, something the police would discount, something you’d be crazy to think was plotted. Barb isn’t crazy. Lara isn’t crazy. I’m not either.

I pull over and call Officer Gonzales, whose card I’ve kept in my wallet, though I was hoping I wouldn’t need to use it.

After I say my name, there’s a long pause. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Irons?”

“Someone who works for my husband, his embryologist, Aram Yassin, was just found dead outside their office. Supposed overdose.”

“Oh.” I hear him typing. “Where was this?” I give him the address. The typing stops. “Mrs. Irons, that’s in Santa Monica. You need to call the Santa Monica Police Department.”

“They’re already there.”

“Then I’m not sure what you want from me.”

“First Regina, now Aram. That’s two deaths in one week. At our home, now at my husband’s office.”

“Were Miss Geller and Mr. Yassin acquainted?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Help me understand. You think their deaths are connected?”

“Regina died outside our home, and Aram died in the parking lot outside my husband’s clinic.”

“Look.” Why do men say look when they’re trying to appease women? I don’t know what I was thinking. If my husband can’t see the connection, there’s no way Officer Gonzales will. “I’m making a note of this. And I’ll call one of my buddies in the SMPD. If there’s anything suspicious with Aram Yassin’s death, we’ll find it.”

“Okay. Thanks.” As I hang up, I hate myself a little for thanking him. I can’t force Officer Gonzales to believe me. I can’t force my husband to either. I don’t get why Gabe doesn’t make the obvious assumption that their deaths are related to us, that this might have something to do with him. But he doesn’t know that Regina was obsessed with me. He’s still not convinced our son knew her. It’s easier, more comforting to assume their deaths were random tragedies. They weren’t random, not their causes nor their locations, in our canal and Gabe’s parking lot. I can’t make sense of this, which only serves to terrify me more.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Barb

Jasper and I are at a small playground along the beach when Tessa finds us. Playground is a generous term for the sculptures that line the sand. Jasper doesn’t mind. He asserts his independence on the boat, scrambling up the stones to the bow and barreling down to the stern. When Jasper spots Tessa, he gallops toward her. She squats and lifts him into the air, the conflict vanishing from her face. For a moment, there’s only her son, until she sets him on the ground and finds me and the pained expression returns.

I don’t know what an embryologist does, but I don’t interrupt Tessa as she shakily tells me the news. Her fingers twist, her body rocks, every part of her in subtle motion. This embryologist’s overdose reads as unlikely to her as Regina’s intoxication sounded to me.

We stand at the edge of the grass as Jasper explores the dragon head, tiptoeing into its maw before jumping back, delighted that it didn’t animate and devour him. “I told Officer Gonzales I think they’re connected. You can guess how he responded.”

“You think someone’s targeting your husband?” It gives me whiplash. Gabe Irons. Dan Huntsman. Gabe Irons again. The moment Maisy told me, I knew it was Tessa’s husband. I let myself be distracted by their neighbor and his anger. That kind of anger is too obvious. Although I still don’t entirely understand what transpired last night when Tessa called the cops, I get her impulse, the desire to protect that came out wrong. It cost Tessa her best friend. Fortunately, the same wasn’t true for me, only because Linda doesn’t know what I was searching for in Jessica’s emails, if she knows the particulars of my firing at all.

Tessa bites the corner of her mouth so hard she winces. “First our house, now his office. You see how this doesn’t seem random?”

“Is there anywhere you and Jasper can stay until it’s clear what’s going on? Go visit family?”

Tessa’s eyes well, and I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before. There is no family. Nowhere to go. There’s only Gabe and their house along the canals.

“We’ll be fine.” She forces a grin. “There’re always people watching. Besides, Gabe would never leave.”

Maybe you should leave him. I don’t say this. I can’t say this.

“I’m worried,” I try again.

“Thanks.” She pauses, deliberating over what to say next. As she’s about to continue, Jasper points to a kite diving in the wind, then darts across the grass toward it. “Jasper, stop.”

Tessa grabs the collapsed stroller, tosses it over her shoulder, and moves alarmingly fast in her bowlegged waddle, catching up with her son less than twenty yards away.

“Tessa.” I start toward them, prepared to say whatever I can to keep her from her home, her husband.

“I’ll call you later.” She waves, saddled with her son and the stroller and a truth she will not confront.

“No, wait—” I start to follow her, but she’s already on the walkway, headed home.

As I unlock the door to my hotel room, I berate myself for not bringing Tessa and Jasper with me. I could have splurged for an extra room. Or Tessa could certainly afford it. She was so rattled that I forgot to tell her about April’s weird response, how she said Regina was taking advantage of innocent people. This feels more ominous now that someone else is dead.

I flop back onto my king-size bed, so exhausted I could pass out in my street clothes. On my phone, I google what embryologists do. They’re the lords of the lab, the caretakers of women’s eggs as soon as the eggs are retrieved, the ones who check viability and fertilize. The doctors may get the fame and glory, but the embryologists are the ones who make it all possible. Why would someone want to kill an embryologist, at work no less? I google “Aram”—I don’t know his last name—“embryologist, Longevity Fertility,” not expecting results. After all, Gabe didn’t advertise his employees’ services on his website. As images of Aram Yassin load, I bolt up in bed. It’s the man from the beach, who I also saw at that Rosebud building. I can still picture the fearful expression on his face as he recognized me. He was manic, not drugged. Terrified, not paranoid. And now he’s dead.

My phone rings. An unfamiliar 310 number. I pick it up, knowing it’s local.

“Barb? It’s Maisy. Regina’s—” She pauses, not knowing what to call herself.

“Hi, Maisy.” I stand, fully energized. “How are you holding up?”

It’s the fate of the older woman to put other people’s needs first, even when they’re grieving. It’s the fate of human resources too. Maybe that’s why so many women go into the field, because it reduces us to being the moms of the workforce.

“As good as can be expected.” I wait for her to ask me how I’m doing, too, wondering if I’ll give her a noncommittal response. “I found Reggie’s computer. I didn’t realize she’d left it here.”

Her words are wooden, stiff from the lie. She knew she had it. She had no intention of giving it back to me. I don’t ask why she’s changed her mind. Instead, I offer to pick it up.

When I arrive at the building, Maisy is waiting outside, the computer resting in her lap. Her lipstick is smudged, her eyes puffy. I fight the urge to comfort her. Despite how much she’s clearly hurting, I still don’t like Maisy. It’s instinctive. And overwhelming.

“My therapist said I should give it back to you,” she admits, handing the computer to me. “I don’t know why I kept it. I can’t even get onto it. She changed her password like every week.”

“Why?”

Maisy shrugs. “She said it was for work.”

“Thank you for giving it to me now.” The impulse to hug Maisy intensifies, so I pull the computer to my chest, giving it the maternal comfort I can’t offer her. She smiles sheepishly at me before holding a hand up in goodbye and disappearing inside.

As I make my way to my car, I text Tessa to tell her that I have Regina’s computer. Almost immediately, she texts back to meet at Café Collage in a half hour. Clearly, she’s been waiting for my text. Clearly, she doesn’t want to be alone with her thoughts either.

I’m the first to arrive at the café, so I order us each a smoothie and settle into what has become our regular table, tucked away in the far corner. I place Regina’s computer on the crumb-covered tabletop and decide to search it while I wait for Tessa. Her backdrop is a photograph of surfers bobbing along the waves at sunrise. At the center of the screen, a small image of Regina hovers above a space to enter a password. In the photo, she has that knowing expression, a smirk just short of a smile.

My fingers lurk above the keyboard, and I rack my brain for the password. I have no idea what it could be, particularly if she changed it so often. And why would she change it so often as a tutor? A casting agent?

I read in some mystery—I forget which, one where the main character was tech-savvy—that the most secure way to store passwords is on paper, hidden in your home, written in a shorthand only you can decipher. If this low-tech approach really is the most secure, it’s probably what Regina did. I try to think if I’d seen a list of passwords anywhere. Then I remember the notebook I took from Regina’s apartment. It’s still in my purse.

I flip through, skimming over the drawings of Maisy, the barista who ignores me now, those other unfamiliar faces, Regina’s sad grocery list, a seagull pecking a—wait. Was that . . . ? Could it have been? I page back through a series of sketches of skateboarders until I see him. It’s a close-up of his face, his trimmed beard, that aquiline nose, those thick eyelashes. It’s as detailed as any of the drawings of Maisy, and it’s of Aram, the embryologist.

After that, I stop searching for the passwords. I leave the notebook open to his portrait and wait for Tessa.

Jasper lights up when he sees me, and through the dread, something softens in me. He’s been the one bright spot in all this. He and Tessa. But I have no idea how she’ll feel toward me when she uncovers the truth about her husband.

Tessa dumps an armload of treats in Jasper’s lap, burying him in the sugar and preservatives that would have many contemporary mothers judging. I don’t judge her. I won’t judge her.

With Jasper entertained, Tessa sits across from me, immediately noticing the sketchbook splayed open on the table.

“What’s this?” She shifts the notebook around so she’s staring directly at Aram. “Is this—was this Regina’s?”

I nod, waiting for the inevitable chain of realizations: Regina knew Aram. She must have known Gabe too. They’re both dead. He killed them.

She pores over the drawing, trying to decide what it portends. I can see the thoughts forming as she traces the confident lines of Regina’s portrait. Then she shakes her head like she’s warding off a chill and asks, “Is that Regina’s computer?”

At first, I’m not sure how she knows, until I see the bumper stickers on the back that reveal it to be the computer of a young person. Younger, anyway.

“There’s a password. I’m not sure, this might be it.” I flip through the sketchbook, Aram’s picture disappearing between its pages until I find the list of passwords, all crossed out except the last.

Details from the crossed-out list hit me right away. Pet turtle 767676@@@. Her turtle Charlie Brown, whom she loved but never remembered to feed. Isaac and I replaced the red-eared slider three times before she decided to set him free. Fave color nickname !*!*!. Orange, because it was no one’s favorite color. Mascot address#***, which could be her high school mascot, a colonial man she’d found patriarchal and successfully petitioned the school to change, or the eagle the school replaced him with, equally patriotic without the misogynistic undertones. At the bottom of the list, one password stands: favecolor+Nickname+!*!*!+mom’s birthday (MMDD). Mom’s birthday. I was right to worry when she didn’t call. I’m right to worry now.

Tessa is a generation younger than I am, and it shows in her ability to handle the computer.

“Macs give you thirty chances to unlock your computer,” she explains, cracking her swollen knuckles to prepare for the task at hand. “Only, it’s not that simple. You get ten attempts here, then another ten in recovery mode, and ten again in the cloud. Since we don’t know her iCloud password, we really only have twenty tries.” She taps her nails against the metal table, plotting her next move.

The barista calls my name, and I hop up to get our smoothies. While I’m up, Tessa takes out her phone, something I’ve never seen her do. She’s an old soul. At least she seemed that way, until I find her scanning social media from the moment I walk away. It strikes me as rude until I realize she’s scrolling through photographs of Regina on Instagram. It steals my breath, those candid moments of her at the beach with Maisy, at restaurants with other friends I don’t know.

“If you look through the comments, all her friends call her Reggie.”

“How did you—” I can’t finish my sentence, so I point to Regina on Tessa’s screen.

“Her account was private, but I found Maisy’s.” Maisy’s timeline displays photo after photo of Regina. My daughter really did break her heart.

“Any thoughts on her favorite color?” Tessa asks, so focused on our agenda that she doesn’t notice I can barely breathe, barely exist.

“Orange?” I manage to whisper. “It was orange when she was a kid.”

“Hey.” Tessa puts the phone on the table so a picture of Regina and Maisy holding tacos stares up at us. “Should we stop?”

I shake my head no.

“Let’s try orange,” Tessa says, typing. “Your favorite color usually stays the same, right? So, orange, Reggie—when’s your birthday?”

“June 4.”

Tessa shudders, knowing what happened on June 5 as well as I do. She waits for me to say something. I’m not prepared to talk about this or the fact that I will never remember my birthday without mourning my daughter’s death. I point to the series of exclamation marks and ask Tessa what they mean.

“Most passwords require special symbols.” Tessa types, angling the screen toward me so I can read orangeReggie0604!!***. “How’s this?”

We hold our breaths as she presses the Return key.

The screen wobbles. Of course it’s not that simple. I think back to that book with the tech-savvy protagonist. I can see her tattoos, the descriptions of her litheness as she runs from the killer, but not the steps she took to unmask him.

“She does wear a lot of blue,” I say.

Tessa types in the same password with blue instead, and it’s wrong again. We still have eighteen more chances.

Moments later, without even realizing it, we’ve exhausted the ten chances from the home screen and have to reboot the computer in recovery mode.

“You’re sure there wasn’t a particular shade of orange she liked?”

“Maybe pumpkin? Is that a shade?”

Tessa shrugs, gives it a try. We now have seven chances left. Tessa slurps loudly from her smoothie, then abruptly puts it down and types. Regina’s desktop fills the screen, the background picture some anonymous photograph of mountains that likely came with the computer.

“Gigi,” she whispers. The nickname. It’s not Reggie. It’s Gigi. “I knew he recognized her.” There’s no satisfaction in being right now, not for either of us.

On the desktop, everything is meticulously stored. There are folders for essays and scripts, photographs, receipts, medical records, tutoring clients, taxes. We try to open the Clients folder. It’s password protected, as are the medical records. Neither of us is ready for another round of guess-the-password.

I may be merely the ex-wife of one, but I know how to think like an accountant. I motion for Tessa to click on the Taxes folder. If you know how to read them, tax returns can tell the story of who a person is.

On her most recent tax return, Regina’s taxable income was solidly in the six figures. She had no W-2 pay, only 1099 work. I scroll down to find the names of the companies she worked for, then overshoot, arriving at the end of the form, where Regina gave Geller Tax Ltd. permission to complete her taxes. Isaac. He knew how much money she was making and never mentioned it.

I scroll up to her 1099 pay. A tutoring company that paid her modestly and three even smaller sums from magazines. But the bulk of her income was from Rosebud LLC.

I glance over at Tessa, who clenches her jaw as she notices that name, her temples pulsing. She knows what Rosebud is. At last, she understands. This all leads back to her husband.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tessa

Acid burns through my chest as I read Rosebud LLC on Regina’s tax return. Gabe’s business is divided into several LLCs. Four or five of them, for tax purposes. Other than Longevity, they’re all references to us. Something with steel, something about the canals, Rosebud.

When we were first dating, Gabe couldn’t believe I’d never seen Citizen Kane, so he secured a projector and set up a picnic on the roof of my building in Brooklyn. We were long distance then, relishing every minute together, no time to waste, even for a classic movie. I don’t think we made it ten minutes before our desire got the best of us. Ever since, when we’ve tried to watch Citizen Kane, we end up naked before the first act’s over. The movie isn’t sexy, but it’s become our shorthand for a quickie. If we’re at a party and want to have sex, one of us will say, Want to watch Citizen Kane? I’ve still never seen the movie to the end.

I thought it was sweet, how he named the different arms of his company after us. Seeing Rosebud LLC on Regina’s tax return isn’t sweet. It’s twisted.

I close her return and the Taxes folder, unsure what I’m searching for until I see a PDF saved as “Rosebud 1099.”

Under the payer’s information is all the evidence I need. The address. It’s the same as Longevity’s.

Rather, it’s an odd address on the same street, consecutive to Longevity’s. Does Gabe lease extra office space he hasn’t told me about?

“I’ve gotta go,” I tell Barb, standing so quickly an acute twinge shoots along my pelvis. It feels like I’ve pulled a ligament. I probably have. Everything in my body is loose and leaky. The truth is loose and leaky, too, dripping from the seams, about to burst.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Barb seems so small, seated below me. So afraid. So hopeful. I can’t vocalize what I’m thinking, can’t give it weight. I grab the handles to Jasper’s stroller so forcefully, half the treats I’ve dumped on him fall onto the floor. He protests briefly, then shifts to one of the many snacks still blanketing him. More fall, and we leave a trail of prepackaged junk food in our wake.

“Tessa, stop. Where are you going?” Barb stands, ready to follow, but I tell her I’ll call her later. I can’t be around her right now. She can’t be my confidant, the one to tell me I’m jumping to conclusions, to confirm that my suspicions are reasonable either. “Wait—it isn’t safe.”

I know I’m not safe, not until I find out why Regina was on Gabe’s payroll, why he had another office, why two people who worked for him are dead. I wave goodbye and hope she’ll take the hint.

Fortunately, Barb doesn’t follow me. Outside the air is stringent with salt, just chilly enough to make me feel alive. “Call me as soon as you get this,” I say into Gabe’s voicemail.

As we rush to the car, I keep calling Gabe, knowing he won’t answer while he’s at work. I need to understand how he lied to me. Whether they’re paid through Longevity or one of his other LLCs, I know everyone who works for my husband. We have holiday parties, Fourth of July barbecues, dinners at our house. I know their children, their spouses, their pets. Not Regina. Gabe kept her hidden from me.

I thud Jasper’s stroller to a stop a few feet from my car. Invested in a crispy rice square, he barely notices. There’s only one reason Gabe would have hidden Regina from me, why he’d deny knowing her. It’s wholly unthinkable, even though it’s the most common excuse of all.

Momentarily, the money throws me. If they were having an affair, why would she be on his payroll? I laugh at my own stupidity. He’s bankrolling her life, finding a way to do it as a tax write-off. It’s so Gabe—not the cheating part, but making his deceit fiscally responsible. He furnished her apartment in the only style he knows. My style. She had my sofa in another shade, my life in another form. And I’ve befriended her mother.

A car honks, jolting me out of my spiraling thoughts. The man rolls down his window. “You okay?”

I’m about to bark at him Of course I’m not okay. I just realized my husband’s cheating on me and his mistress drowned outside our home, but he’s staring at my stomach. To the outside world, I’m a pregnant woman, ready to pop. To the outside world, this is the biggest thing going on in my life, the sole thing that matters. Although I can never forget I’m pregnant, I’ve spent so little time over the last week thinking about my baby. It would be enough to make me cry if it didn’t make me angry. Gabe has robbed me of this precious time with my daughter, the last days she belongs to me instead of the world.

I wave to this concerned stranger that I’m fine and hurry over to my car. He waits for my spot. I don’t rush. Instead, I run my hands along the wheel, trying to piece together what I’ve been refusing to consider.

If Regina was sleeping with Gabe, how did she know Aram? Why is he dead too? There are too many variables I can’t know, not without talking to Gabe. Again with the naivete. I’m still assuming that my husband will tell me the truth after he’s broken our most fundamental tenet. He cheated and lied about it. He’s gotten two people killed. He may be next. I have to protect him. It’s still my first impulse, even though he’s betrayed me.

Before I pull out of my parking spot, I set the house to “Away” on my home-security app, activating the alarm on our doors and windows. I should be doing this all the time when we leave. That’s why we have an alarm. But we barely use it. Our house is so visible, the tourists our best form of surveillance. It’s foolish to assume the presence of strangers makes us safe. I’m foolish for doubting the voice that’s been telling me my son knew Gigi, that her death was connected to us.

Not to us. To Gabe.

The moment I step into our living room, the sensation of being watched hits me like a bad smell, rank and pungent. Outside, a family walks by, wearing matching UCLA sweatshirts. Across the canal, the woman who paints hides behind her easel. A man I don’t recognize photographs a woman leaning against the bridge’s railing near a bike that’s been abandoned, its orange child seat bright and empty. It’s not just me. The bike isn’t locked. Everyone here has lulled themselves into a false sense of security.

I set the alarm to Home and plop Jasper into his play area. He’s about to protest until he spots a truck that makes the most cloying ring when rolled back and forth. My sweet boy. If only he could tell me when Gabe brought him to meet Regina, how often they saw her. Of course that’s how Jasp knew her. A heat spreads through me. Gabe knew Jasper would never be able to communicate these details to me. He acted like I was being hormonal for worrying that Jasper recognized her, when he’d made my son an accessory to his affair. An affair he promised never to have. It makes me want to melt onto the floor, to permanently exist as a puddle, to never have to reconstitute. How could Gabe cheat? How could he betray our iron-strong bond, the family we’ve worked so hard to build?

Just then, the baby rolls, trying to comfort me. I rub my belly, feeling like I’ve failed her before she’s even been born. I want to shield her from this. Jasper too. It’s my job to shield them. That’s the heartbreaking truth of parenthood. You fail at your most basic job. The world is cruel. The world is violent. As a mother, I can’t prevent them from encountering the cruelty and violence of the world. I can’t keep them safe. But I have to try.

I grab Jasper and bring him upstairs to our home office. I sit behind the mahogany-and-oak executive desk, opening and closing drawers, trying to find receipts for the couch Gabe bought Regina, the table, the vase, the candles. Love notes he’s written her. Poems she’s written him. Anything that proves what I already know.

The long drawer has pens, bits of lint, paper clips that have been unbent, then approximated back into shape, something Gabe unconsciously does when he’s thinking. The first side drawer holds magazines and local newspapers with articles featuring Gabe. He and other doctors, the top specialists in Los Angeles, pose on the cover of Los Angeles magazine. When I flip through it to locate the article on my husband, a sheet of paper in the back falls onto my lap. It’s trifolded and thin, crinkled.

My limbs go numb as I spread it out and see that it’s a restraining order for civil harassment. It’s blank, making it even more menacing. It could be for anyone. Was it intended for Regina? Had their affair ended and he was paying her off? Did she get drunk and stumble to our house, desperate to talk to him? Did things get out of control, and he . . . Could he . . . ? Gabe would never . . . he’s not a . . .

I’ve never seen an inkling of violence in him, but it isn’t just this restraining order that’s ominous, world shifting. It’s everything about Regina and their affair, all the secrets. I don’t know my husband at all, what he’s capable of. And in pregnancy, my sleep, when it comes, is heavy. If I’m in deep sleep, nothing will wake me. It’s entirely possible that Gabe skulked outside for an hour that night and I didn’t stir. Was Aram involved? Did Gabe call him after he killed Regina, terrified, and he helped my husband make it look like an accident? He’d been calling obsessively lately, more so since Regina died. Was he getting nervous, unpredictable? Did Gabe kill him too?

I leave the restraining order on the desk, shut the second drawer, and open the bottom one, not sure I want to find anything else that tells me my husband is a murderer.

Relief washes over me when it’s just a pile of catalogs for jewelry equipment, stickers on the tumblers and shaft tools I’ve selected over the years. In the back of the drawer is a small wooden box. I rest it on the desk, creak the top open. There are prototypes for pieces I’ve long forgotten. An art deco eternity band with baguettes—here, cubic zirconia, but in the finished pieces for Linsky’s, diamonds. Linsky’s. CZs. I dig through the box more furiously, rifling through other earrings and rings, a few pendants. When I don’t see it, I dump the box on the desk. The pieces clink and scatter, about forty prototypes. It isn’t here. The prototype for the earrings Dan bought for Claire. The one Regina had. One, singular. It wasn’t from a pair of my earrings or anyone else’s design. It was the prototype that should be in this pile.

I mine my phone from my pocket and text Barb to ask her to find the earring.

Are you okay??? she texts back immediately. I’m coming over.

Please, just find the earring.

She starts to text back, the three dots undulating unbearably slowly, so I call her.

“Tessa, I’ve been so worried.”

“The earring. Barb. I need you to focus.”

“Why do you—”

“I don’t have time to explain right now. Please just find it.” I don’t mean to be short with her. She isn’t even being that slow, but every second feels too long.

“I’ve got it,” she says.

“The back? Is there a little drawing carved into the metal?”

“It’s like a sideways I?”

The phone slips from my hand, bouncing off the Turkish rug beneath my feet. A barbell. My maker’s mark. The drawing I carve into every piece, even my prototypes.

Regina was in my house. She was in this office. She may be dead, but she can still make me feel vulnerable, her obsession, her desire to be like me. And Gabe cultivated it.

“Tessa, what’s going on?” Barb’s voice bleeds from the phone on the floor, crackling and distant. “I’m worried about—”

Downstairs, the alarm beeps. I freeze, waiting for it to blare. It stops before the cautionary dinging intensifies. Gabe’s home.

“T.?” Gabe calls from downstairs.

I bend down, quickly realize my uterus won’t oblige the action, and kick the phone to the left where I can lean sideways, a stitch shooting up my hip, and grab it.

“I gotta go,” I whisper into the phone as Barb continues to ask me to wait, to insist she should come over. “Don’t come. Let me talk to my husband. I’ll call you later. I promise.”

I hang up as his steps grow louder on the stairs. My heart thumps, leaving me gasping for breath, more so with each thud of Gabe’s feet. What can I say to this man I thought I knew, this man I’ve built a life with, this man who might be a murderer?

“Why’s the alarm on?” he asks as he appears in the doorway, leaning his long, lean body against the doorjamb. I hate how attracted I am to him, even in this moment.

Jasper has been rolling that fire truck back and forth, its cloying ring a background noise that I only notice now that it’s stopped. Jasper throws the truck and runs over to his father. Gabe’s face softens as Jasper collides with his shin. He swoops Jasper into his arms and storms toward me. I swallow my breath as he approaches, momentarily petrified until he plops Jasper into my lap and falls to the floor, hugging my legs as he weeps. That’s the only word for it. His shoulders convulse, spasming in loss. It’s so shocking that I just sit there as he burrows his head in my lap. It roils my stomach, but I don’t tell him to move. My husband, broken like I’ve never seen him before. This man didn’t kill Aram. He isn’t capable of killing anyone. He did lie, though. He cheated. Somehow, he got two people killed.

“Dada.” Jasper hits Gabe in the head, his uncoordinated attempts at consoling his father.

“I’m okay, Jaspy.” Gabe lifts his head off my leg and reaches for Jasper, scooping him into his long arms. Their connection exists outside me. Somehow, it included Regina. That’s the worst part. Maybe for another woman, it would be the cheating. The part that hurts me the most is that he let another woman have a relationship with my son.

Eventually, Jasper gets bored, eager for a release. Gabe puts him on the floor, and our son searches for something he can tear or break. I’m about to ask Gabe about Rosebud when he spots the restraining order on the desk.

“What’s this?”

“You tell me. I found it in the drawer. Are you being threatened?”

“I didn’t even fill it out.”

“Who was it for?” He has a pleading expression on his face. I’m not wrong to make him tell me. He will not make me feel unreasonable again.

“I didn’t want to worry you.” He pauses for effect, sending my heart to catastrophic levels.

“Judy,” he finally admits. “She’s always watching us, and we’d just gotten Jasper home. I guess I was sleep deprived and a little on edge.”

“Judy?” Judy’s always been too nosy, intrusive even, but she’s never seemed dangerous.

“I just wanted her to go away.”

“So why didn’t you file it?”

“Probably the same reason Dan didn’t. You can’t file a restraining order on your neighbor and expect to continue living beside them.”

This stings. He means for it to sting.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean—I don’t have the mental capacity to think about Judy right now.”

“What about work?” I ask. “Have you ever filed a restraining order there?” I don’t know how to ask him why Regina was on his payroll, what they did in that extra office space across the street. I’m afraid of his answers, their permanency.

“Never. There’ve been moments. A few protestors. Some angry clients who wanted their money back when IVF didn’t work. No one that would warrant a restraining order.” Gabe leans against the wall, runs his hand through his hair. “I think you’re right. After the baby comes, we should look into moving. We’re too exposed here.”

Gabe stands up and closes the space between us. He kisses my temple, his lips like sandpaper against my skin. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Want to order some dinner? Whatever’s fine.”

I think I nod. I can’t be sure. Whatever my response, it’s enough for Gabe, who wanders down the hall. The shower turns on, a faint static in the distance.

I don’t know how I’m going to sit through dinner with Gabe, much less sleep beside him tonight. Every inch of me knows it’s over between us, but I’m having a baby in eight days. You can’t upend your life eight days before a C-section. Plus, as certain as I am about Regina and Gabe, I don’t have all the facts. I don’t know who killed her. Or Aram. I just know it wasn’t Gabe.

Could the restraining order really have been for Judy?

As if reading my mind, Jasper starts to shout, “Dede. Dede. Dede.”

The office is the only room in our house without a view to the canal or the alley, just one window that faces a complementary window in Judy’s home. She keeps all her shades closed. Only, today the window is bare. She stands there with one eye shut, tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth, eager to entertain my son. Jasper toddles toward the window, delighted, while I’m paralyzed. Somehow, she knew exactly where we were in our house. Jasper presses his lips to the glass and slaps his hand against the pane in glee.

“Jasper, no.” I jump up too quickly, and my uterus thuds against my pelvis.

Judy beams and waves when she sees me. It sends a chill down my spine.

“Come.” I lug him away from the window and smother him in kisses before he can protest. As I carry him downstairs into the living area, where the walkways outside are dark and empty, I can sense her lingering. Judy, our busybody neighbor. Could she be dangerous? I’ve always pitied her. Feared her loneliness, her desperation, never her. Loneliness and desperation, though, can make a person unhinged.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Tessa

I don’t know how I get through the night with Gabe. On the surface, everything’s normal: overpriced takeout, Jasper’s bath, bedtime stories, mindless TV, collapsing in our California king, Gabe spooning me, the rise and fall of his steady breath. It’s all so painfully normal that I lie awake, disbelieving everything I know is true on a cellular level. Gabe cheated. Regina is dead because of him. Aram too.

I lie awake for so long that I convince myself Judy’s a mastermind, a murderer obsessed with my husband. She killed Regina out of jealousy. Aram out of spite. She wants to cut off Gabe from the outside world. As the contours of our furniture become visible with the morning’s first light, I convince myself I’m next.

By the time Gabe’s alarm goes off, I’m rattled, scrambling for how to defend myself, my family, from Judy. Gabe leans over to kiss my forehead like he does each morning before he leaves to surf. I feel nothing—not revulsion, not anger, not love. Just an emptiness so vast I’m not sure I’ll ever climb out of it.

In his absence, the room smells of him, the sheets still crumpled from his body. I run my hand over them, missing him, missing us. In the full light of morning, I know Judy isn’t a mastermind. That only makes me more anxious, because if it isn’t our unstable neighbor who’s after Gabe, I can’t begin to imagine who is.

A light blinks from the table on Gabe’s side of the bed. His phone. He always leaves it at home when he surfs. His home screen has a picture of Jasper and me from our rowboat on a summer day when the water was high and gleaming. Since he can’t swim, I rarely take Jasper on the boat. I can’t remember if we were at the ducky race or a movie or on a simple family outing. From our smiling faces, you can’t know how nervous I must have been. Even without remembering the occasion, I know my first instinct was to protect my son.

The phone gives me pause. Why would he leave it if he had something to hide? Because he knows I’d never look. Our iron-strong bond. He hasn’t needed to be careful because I’ve been so naive.

I even know his password. It’s the date we met. Again, it’s another example of the open, honest man I love. The smartest cover of all.

I start with his call log. There are too many area codes I don’t recognize to know what to do with them. He has two voicemail messages, both clients, both in the last twenty-four hours.

Someone named Sally called with news of her pregnancy. “It’s been so long, I didn’t think it would happen. Thank you, Dr. Irons. I don’t know what else to say but thank you. Okay, I have to go call my sister.”

I chide myself for the swell that rises in my chest. Gabe’s qualities as a doctor have never been in question.

The second call is more frantic, a woman named Denise, who’s in severe pain. She thinks it’s ovarian hyperstimulation because of what she’s read online. Nothing irks a doctor more than WebMD. I check back over his call log, and sure enough, there’s a call to Denise’s number, one minute and sixteen seconds in which he must have reassured her with his stabilizing rationale that has so often quelled me. Fooled me.

The folder for deleted voicemails is empty. His text message log is equally sparse. Read messages from me and his sister, a chain with over one hundred unread messages from his med school friends that’s mostly about basketball, another with Aram. I scroll through his conversation with Aram, too short given how often Aram contacted him, no texts relating to the patients they constantly discussed. Gabe’s number one priority is patient confidentiality. Well, number two, after getting them pregnant. I’m not surprised he deletes any messages pertaining to them.

His email is the opposite of these other records, so overwhelming it has the same effect as being empty. From the last twenty-four hours alone, he has at least one hundred unread emails—some spam, most from clients or potential clients so desperate that they’re reaching out to him directly instead of through the portal. Cynthia reads through Gabe’s work emails, flagging any that require his response. Only a handful bear that little red flag. The others, Cynthia answers herself. This email is communal. There won’t be any secrets here.

Gabe has a personal email address, too, and it takes me longer than it should to find the Gmail icon in the Utilities folder. Was he hiding it there? There’s a week’s worth of unread spam, punctuated by the occasional email. A few hopeful, enterprising clients have found his personal email. There are forwarded articles from his sister, evite invitations, and check-ins from one of his alma maters. All unread. I scan quickly, certain there’s nothing here. When I’m about to give up, one email gets my attention. The subject reads “Reggie.” It’s from Aram, the day after Regina died. Unlike the other emails, this one is marked as read. I hesitate, then open the email.

Gabe, Pick up your phone!!!! I’m freaking out. We aren’t safe. This is too much. We need to tell the police. Call me!!!

I read the short message over and over again, the fear and anxiety dripping from it like honey. Gabe ignored Aram’s fears. And now Aram’s dead.

I drop the phone back on the end table, trying to slow my racing pulse. The baby rolls, the sensation bordering on pain, a knee or an elbow raising my abdomen in protest, reminding me that she’s there, that I need to shield her, even if I don’t know what from. One thing feels crystal clear. This isn’t just about an affair. Something else was going on between Gabe and Regina, Aram too. Something that got Regina and Aram killed. Something Gabe’s trying to ignore. Something he’s hiding from me. Something that puts us all in danger.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Barb

Tessa never did call me back. All night, after drifting off to sleep, I’d see Tessa’s face and bolt up, berating myself for letting her go home to a murderer, for heeding her plea not to come over. Eventually, at four in the morning, waiting became too labored. I texted her, Are you okay??? For the next hour, I checked my phone every few minutes with no word from Tessa, until eventually, involuntarily, I fell back to sleep.

When a crack of light between the curtains shines a bright white, I sit up. It’s early, but not so early I can’t act. On the dresser, I find the earring with its little etching on the back. It scared Tessa, revealed something she didn’t want to know. Fleetingly, I consider calling Officer Gonzales to tell him about Regina’s connection to Gabe Irons. I have no idea what Regina did to make all that money. It feels dirty, twisted. Officer Gonzales certainly will see it that way. I need to find out more before the police recast her from a victim to a villain, someone deserving of her fate. There’s only one person who can help me figure out what she was doing for Rosebud LLC, someone who’s conveniently up at 7:00 a.m. West Coast time.

“Hey, Barb.” Isaac intones my name differently now, no longer elongating the ar with sympathy. Instead it’s short. Curt.

“Did you file Regina’s taxes?”

“If you’re asking, you know I did.”

“So you know she made over two hundred thousand dollars?”

“She’s been doing well the last few years.”

“Doing well at what?”

“As an accountant, it’s not my job to ask.” He says accountant like it’s his superpower. I can’t fight my frustration anymore.

“What about your job as a father?”

“You’re serious? It’s the middle of Regina’s shiva, and you’re giving me a hard time about her taxes? I can’t do this. It’s my fault for answering.”

With that, he hangs up, and I’m left alone with my thoughts and that strip of harsh light between the blackout curtains. I try to envision myself seated beside Isaac and Anna in their living room, day after day of hard chairs and deafening quiet, impossible loss that we’ll never be able to share. I was never going to that shiva, not even if I’d been in New Jersey.

This isn’t Isaac’s fault, but he’s an easy target, especially since that kind of money should have alarmed him. He should have asked questions, discovered what she was up to while we could still help her. I have no idea what she did for Gabe Irons, whether it’s connected to Reggie Ray Casting, which wasn’t listed on her taxes.

These questions bring me back to Tessa, to the worry that’s kept me up all night. I let her go home to a murderer.

Are you okay? I text her again. I pace the room, waiting for her to write back, more certain with every step that she’s not safe. When I can’t take it anymore, I call Linda.

“Do you think she’s in danger? Would he hurt her?” I say when Linda picks up.

“I’m going to need a little more information,” Linda says.

Too much has happened in the three days since we’ve last spoken. I try to catch her up, telling her about Tessa, asking her what she thinks Gabe might do, insisting I will never forgive myself if anything happens to her.

Linda cuts me off. “Barbara, it’s not your job to protect her.” Her words startle me. “Sorry if that was harsh. It’s just hard to watch. You have this giant heart, but she’s not your child. She’s responsible for her own decisions.”

This is why I called Linda—so she could give me permission to release some of this worry. It isn’t working. Tessa has no one else. Except Gabe.

Linda’s words hit me with a different wave of guilt over the story I never told her about Jessica, the other young woman I tried to protect. About her husband, where exactly my giant heart led me.

“There’s something else, I should have told you months ago when I was fired—”

“Barb,” Linda intervenes, “let’s not start spiraling here.”

I am spiraling, only it isn’t out of control. It’s a tornado barreling toward the truth.

“Please, I need to tell you something. There’s something you deserve to know.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not important. All right?” She pauses, building up to say something. I give her this space. “It’s okay. If you start to find out things you don’t want to know, it’s okay to walk away. To come home. We miss you.”

Is that what she’s asking of me now, to walk away, to shield her from a truth she won’t want to know? And what was the truth, really? I’ve had months to revisit it. What exactly did Dick do wrong? Get a little flirty, lean in a little deep? I’d chosen to see that act as lecherous, when it may just have been clumsy, inappropriate even, but not necessarily indicative of a greater violation. The only truth is that, after decades of friendship, I assumed the worst of Dick. The only truth is that I haven’t been as good a friend to Linda as she has always, unfalteringly, been to me.

Despite Linda’s attempts to absolve me, I can’t stop worrying about Tessa. I check my phone, then check it again. By 8:30, I can’t wait anymore. I need to make sure she’s okay. I dress in the first suitable thing I find, grab my cardigan from the arm of the couch, my door key from the coffee table, and march toward the door, where I hesitate before returning to the sitting area.

Regina’s iPad rests on the coffee table, where it’s been plugged in since we found it. Only now the screen isn’t black. It’s lit up with a new text message from three minutes ago.

8:27 Sorry, I shouldn’t have reached out.

I open the iMessage icon and read through four other texts from the same number.

8:02 Hey Reggie! It’s Marley Jones, not sure if u remember me. Wondering if u might have something more for me?

My mind starts racing. Was Regina dealing drugs? Did she get them from Gabe? Is that what’s going on here?

8:05 I know u said it’s a one-time thing. I’m hoping u can make an exception?

8:10 I know it’s a longshot.

8:12 I hope u aren’t offended I reached out.

And then that last apology, fifteen minutes later. Sorry, I shouldn’t have reached out.

I scramble to respond, fearing I’ve missed my window.

8:43 Marley! I certainly remember you. I delete it, then type, Of course I remember you. I delete that, too, then settle on, Hey Marley! Great to hear from ya. Perfect timing. Let’s meet? hoping it sounds like my daughter.

8:43 Playa del Rey again? Tower 50? Sat at 11? she writes back instantaneously.

I tell her both the location and time are perfect. I’m not sure if Tower 50 is the name of a bar or what. Tessa will know. She’ll also know how to talk to Marley so she doesn’t run away.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tessa

Marley had to pick a Saturday to meet, when it isn’t so easy for me to get away. Gabe’s being particularly affectionate, rubbing my feet as we watch TV, holding me any chance he gets. Each time he reaches for me, I’m conscious of his fingers, soft against my skin, of his breath, hot on my neck. But it’s as if I leave my body, hover above and outside myself. I’m angry. And afraid. Mostly, I’m heartbroken. Whatever’s going on, Gabe won’t tell me, and it’s ruined us. His secrecy forces me to lie, too, to spend these final days searching for a truth he keeps from me, a truth that has already gotten two people killed.

I tell Gabe I’m getting a prenatal massage. It’s our last weekend as a family of three, and I expect resistance from him, arguing that we should be spending this time together before everything changes. Everything is about to change. Like Jasper, Gabe has no idea how much.

“I think that’s great,” Gabe says as he whisks batter for pancakes.

“You don’t mind?” I probe. Although this isn’t the right fight, I’ll take it.

Gabe pours batter into the shapes of snakes, iron bells, Js. He cuts strawberries and bananas into moons and stars. Momentarily, I get lost in the way he plates Jasper’s breakfast with so much care that it’s a shame Jasp’s just going to eat it, or more likely throw it on the floor. Something unfurls in my chest, a thawing, until I remember Gabe let Regina have a relationship with our son.

“Mind you taking care of your body? Of course not.” Gabe’s a big proponent of self-care for his patients. He has a masseuse on staff, an acupuncturist. Although there’s no proof that your mental state affects fertility, it makes his clients feel more in control, more relaxed, which certainly can’t hurt.

I follow Gabe’s eyes down to my ankles, which spill out of the only shoes that still fit my feet. He gazes at our daughter, who has dropped and sits heavily between my hips. Then he kisses me on the temple and tells me I deserve some pampering. I deserve a lot of things, but I don’t say this.

Barb referred to tower 50 like it’s Studio 54, but it’s just a lifeguard hut somewhere in Playa del Rey. Mornings at the beach are uncrowded, even Saturday mornings in mid-June. It’s too late for surfers, too foggy for sunbathers, too cold for families. When I pull into the lot by tower 50, one woman sits on a sarong on the empty beach, her dark hair blowing in the wind as she communes with the ocean.

Barb’s parked a few spaces down, and she steps out of her car when she sees me. Before we talk to Marley, I have to tell her about Rosebud, that Regina was on Gabe’s payroll, that she’d been in my house, had taken the prototype earring, that they were having an affair and were up to something else too.

“That’s got to be Marley, right?” Barb asks as I approach her, her face half hidden behind tortoiseshell sunglasses, unnecessary given the cloud cover.

When I nod, she takes off into the wind, forcing me to follow.

“Listen, Barb, there’s something I need to—” Barb is already across the parking lot, waiting at the edge of the beach. When I reach her, I try to say, “Barb, I really need to tell—” She takes my arm and practically drags me onto the beach into a torrent of wind. We trudge across the loose sand. A gale catches my words and carries them away. After a few steps, my calves start to ache. My tailbone thuds. I need to stop, but Barb charges ahead.

“Barb,” I shout. We keep walking until we’re mere feet from the woman.

The woman peers up, confused. Not scared. Not ready to run. She has shoulder-length dark hair, warm-brown skin, piercing hazel eyes, high cheekbones, long legs. She seems familiar even as I’m certain I’ve never met her before. The sun is an ambient blob somewhere above us. Marley shields her face to see me and Barb.

“Reggie?” she asks uncertainly. It takes me a moment to realize she’s mistaken me for Regina. Her focus turns to Barb. “Is this your mom?”

“Yes,” Barb confirms as I say, “I’m not Regina.” Barb glances at me, confused. I shake my head no. We need to be honest with her.

Barb pushes her glasses onto the top of her head so Marley can see her whole earnest face. “I’m Regina’s mom. This is Tessa. A friend.”

The change is instantaneous, all-encompassing. She stiffens, then grabs her bag and stands.

“I was expecting Regina.”

She starts to walk away, the sand slowing her down.

“Please,” I shout, awkwardly following her. “Please, just give us five minutes.” Marley fights through the wind as her pace quickens. “Please,” I shout. Then I say the only thing I can think of, something instinctually I know will make her turn back. “You may know my husband, Dr. Irons?”

She whips around. “You’re Dr. Irons’s wife?”

“How do you know my husband?” There’s more accusation in my voice than intended. I can’t help it.

“Through the donation.”

It makes me think of Goodwill, money to charities, the hours Gabe clocks at Planned Parenthood each month.

“What donation, dear?” Barb asks. I’ve never heard her use the endearment before. It’s decidedly old lady, by design.

Marley hugs her arms around her chest, debating what to share with us. Her attention drifts to the ocean, the modest waves that inch up the sand. Subtly, she rubs her lower stomach. The blood rushes to my head as I expect her to tell us she’s pregnant, that it’s Gabe’s. Then I realize it’s the opposite.

Marley lays out her sarong, and the three of us sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the ocean. It puts Marley at ease, sending her story off to sea. The sand is too soft for my inflamed tailbone, too damp against my swollen ankles.

“It was about a year and a half ago,” Marley begins. “At the time, most casting companies were still auditioning by video, so when one was in person, you dropped everything. Regina was a lot nicer than most casting agents. She really considered everyone, didn’t just write you off. I don’t know who the part went to. I ended up getting the better deal, though. Indie films don’t exactly pay like eggs do.”

Regina called to tell her she didn’t get the part but to stay in touch, so Marley did. Quickly, their text exchanges became a rapport. It wasn’t flirtatious, romantic. It was two young women in a big anonymous city, making each other feel less alone.

Marley stops suddenly, her face quieting. “There was no movie, was there?” When we don’t answer, she monitors the retreating wave, the jellyfish left in its wake. “Reggie never took advantage of me. She was a friend, got me paid when I needed money.”

Regina assured her the donation would remain anonymous. Neither the baby nor the parents would be able to find her. There’d be some paperwork to make sure she met the criteria, genetic screening, a little break from alcohol, pills that caused a few days of bloat, then a payday that would cover her rent for the next six months, all while helping fulfill someone’s dream.

“Donating my eggs was the best decision I ever made. I would’ve had to go home if it weren’t for Reggie.” Then she stares at me, making my chest tighten. “And your husband.”

Her voice is rich with gratitude. It makes me too heavy for my body, for this beach, this world. Longevity Fertility doesn’t harvest donor eggs, but Rosebud LLC must. Clinics recruit donors all the time. There’s nothing illegal or immoral about this. Except Gabe never mentioned it.

I’ve been sitting so still that a charley horse shoots up my calf, causing me to wince. I start to massage my leg, the cramp lingering longer than it should. The baby kicks and punches, fighting my ribs and pelvis. It doesn’t make sense. Why keep this part of his business a secret?

“Is Regina okay?” Marley asks, realizing how strange it is that we’re here in her stead.

Barb puts her hand on Marley’s. “She’s fine, dear. Just couldn’t make it, so she sent us. She’s not doing that work anymore.”

Marley shrugs. “I knew it was a long shot.”

She stands. Barb stands too. I’m not ready to move, not until I can understand the unease that’s rising like acid. Marley was an egg donor. Regina recruited her on Gabe’s behalf. As the embryologist, Aram must have prepared her eggs for storage or implantation. It’s all an essential part of the field. The burning creeps up my throat. I want to retch, only there’s nothing solid, nothing coherent to purge. Just the persistent inkling that something isn’t right.

Marley stares down at me, and I wiggle to the side so she can retrieve her sarong. “When are you due?”

“Next week.” I mean my C-section is scheduled for then. I don’t elaborate. It takes all my energy to emit those two words.

“Say congrats to Dr. Irons for me.” Her well-wishes send a jolt up my spine.

Barb and I watch Marley walk away, her slender, curvaceous body getting smaller as the distance between us grows. I can’t shake the suspicion that I know her, that she’s the younger sister of one of my friends, a teacher at the nursery school we toured for Jasper, a waitress at Great White.

“It’s uncanny,” Barb says. “She could be Laila Ruiz’s little sister.”

That’s it—why Marley is familiar. Laila Ruiz’s face is everywhere from movie billboards to perfume ads, even in her mid-forties. When she got pregnant last year, I knew. It was you, wasn’t it? I asked Gabe. He’d smirked, admitted nothing, but anyone in their forties who wants to get pregnant and has the means goes to Gabe. He gets impossible results. Maybe they aren’t so impossible after all.

Laila Ruiz must have used Marley’s egg. It’s not surprising that she would keep this secret. Plenty of celebrities use donated eggs without divulging it to the press. The public doesn’t deserve this information. Sure, it creates a false sense of fertility. If Laila Ruiz can get pregnant at forty-five, you can too. As her doctor, despite any misgivings he may have had, Gabe would have honored her privacy. Only, it isn’t merely privacy. It’s secrecy. The extra office space. The donor recruiting. Regina’s connection to my son. This is bigger than Laila Ruiz, bigger than mothers who don’t want to broadcast their fertility struggles to the world. And it couldn’t all be to hide an affair.

Regina’s connection to my son.

I grab Barb’s leg like I might collapse, even though I’m still sitting. I let go of Barb and roll onto my side, trying to make myself so small I’ll disappear. Only my stomach is too obstructive, too hard, too full of life. My head spins. This time it isn’t from low blood pressure. It’s from an impossible truth starting to take shape in the form of my son.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Barb

Tessa lies on the sand, legs curled up, cradling her belly. I fight the urge to lie down beside her, to wrap my arms around her.

With one aggressive rocking motion, Tessa lunges up and stumbles across the beach toward the parking lot. I trot to keep pace. She doesn’t hear me shout over the wind, asking her what’s going on. Her blond hair is a tornado around her head, making her seem crazed. She isn’t crazed. She’s a mother, determined.

I climb into her car, and Tessa is already backing out of the spot before I have my seat belt on. My rental car grows smaller in the rearview as we barrel out of the parking lot. I’ll have to come back to get it. I can’t think about that now.

I brace my hands against the dashboard as she slams the brake, then grasp the handle above the door as she speeds up again.

“Tessa, slow down.” It’s like she can’t hear me.

By the time she pulls up to the curb, I feel like I’ve been in a rowboat on the open sea. She leans over me to read the numbers on buildings I don’t recognize.

“Tessa, stop. Tell me what’s going on.”

From Marley’s story, I gather she was Gabe’s patient. A donor, whom my daughter recruited. I don’t see why that’s sinister enough to put Tessa on edge, to have gotten Regina killed.

Tessa pulls a U-turn that sends me flying into her shoulder, then swings into a parking lot I recognize. She thunders out of the car, half running, half waddling up to the coffee shop on the far corner of the shopping center. Then she scampers in the opposite direction, scans the numbers on the buildings until she stops in front of Rosebud.

She tries the door, thwarted by its lock, then attempts to peer in, but the glass is opaque. A line of sweat outlines her spine along the back of her dress. I approach her cautiously. When I place my hand on her shoulder, it’s soaked.

“I need to see. I need to know,” she says into the door.

“Know what?”

Then she gazes right at me. “If he’s mine.”

Her words send a chill through me. Before I know it, Tessa grabs a loose brick from the side wall at the end of the strip mall, holds it above her head as she charges toward the door.

“Tessa, stop.” I take a step back to avoid getting hit with glass shards when she throws the brick into the frosted glass. Around us, cars drive by, oblivious or indifferent to what’s happening.

The glass shatters. Momentarily, Tessa pauses, stunned by what she’s done. An alarm blares inside. Glass crunches beneath her sandals as she walks through the cavity of the broken door.

She scans the room, locating the alarm against the far wall. She tries a few combinations before it stops. “Jasper’s birthday.” Her harsh laugh echoes through the space.

Inside, the office is clean and spacious, an upscale lobby. Tessa surveys the room, then walks down the hall to the two rooms in the back. One looks like a doctor’s office, with a reclining medical chair. The other has a few large metal tanks with black lids, a table with a bank of microscopes, some other equipment I don’t recognize. On the counter next to a microscope, Tessa locates a binder. She flips through it, closes it quickly. She peeks in drawers, which are filled with vials and more medical equipment.

“Tessa. What’s going on? Why are we here?”

She ignores me, walks back to the lobby, where she spots a sleek green filing cabinet doubling as a credenza with three cacti spaced across it. No surprise, the cabinet is locked. As she races toward the door, I think we’re finally done with this mad expedition. Then she bends down to retrieve the brick amid the broken glass, whips around, and slams it against the lock on the cabinet until it submits.

A siren blares in the distance. I have no idea if it’s for us or one of the many other emergencies in Los Angeles. I don’t know if a break-in even qualifies as an emergency in LA. Either way, it scares me to my senses.

“Tessa, we need to get out of here. Now.”

It’s like she can’t hear me. She thumbs through the files, then gets frustrated and grabs an armful and races toward the door.

“Are you going to help or what?” She motions to the filing cabinet. “Grab some.”

I don’t have time to ask why. Whatever we’re doing, I’m already in this with her.

It takes three trips before we’ve emptied the cabinet. Then she climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the car. I hesitate. This journey she’s on—I’m not sure whether it has anything to do with my daughter. Tessa peers at me through the passenger window, worried. She needs me. So I open the car door and climb inside.

She’s calmer now, acquiescing to the laws of the road. I still can’t settle the knots in my stomach. I’m confused. It’s more than that, though—something I can’t quite put my finger on.

As Tessa pulls into the garage behind her house, a new fear hits. “What about your husband?”

“He took Jasper to the pier. They’re getting lunch after.” She checks the time on the dashboard. “They won’t be home for at least an hour.”

I follow her inside, carrying an armful of the files we’ve just stolen, then drop them on the kitchen peninsula next to the pile she’s already brought in. She goes back into the garage to get another armful. I stay in her house, realizing that I’ve only seen it from outside. Standing in the living room, it’s immediately obvious that Regina’s living room wasn’t just the same style as Tessa’s. It was exactly the same, right down to the position of the television, the simple beech coffee table, the velvet couch in a different hue. It has a strange logic to it. In high school, Regina was a chameleon. One month she was a serious athlete, wearing her soccer windbreaker everywhere. The next, she was one of the theater kids, donning red lipstick and rehearsing lines for parts that weren’t hers. She was a hippie, a goth, a long-distance runner, a debate team captain, an artist, a mathlete. I assumed she was searching for an identity that fit. When she told me she was going to school for writing, I said something about how it was a big commitment.

You don’t get me at all, she’d said without an ounce of the histrionics her words implied. Why do you think I’m into everything? I need to understand what makes people tick or my characters will be bloodless.

It’s how she interpreted the world, through imitation. If she wanted to understand her lover, how he’d vowed himself to someone so different from her—in personality and style if not in looks—Regina would have copied Tessa’s style. I get that, I do, and I’m trying not to judge. But Regina’s apartment wasn’t copying a style. It was inhabiting a life.

Tessa waddles in with the rest of the files, stopping momentarily when she sees a girl outside snapping a picture of her house with an old camera. Tessa shoos her away but doesn’t follow up with the logical next step of pulling down the drapes. Across the way, I see other people I’ve noticed before, the bearded man with the bike and the orange child’s seat, the woman with the easel and palette, the fit redhead with the stroller. Everyone has accessories here, covers for what they’re really doing—watching.

Tessa skims a file, then tosses it onto the floor. Opens another and does the same. Intake forms fall from the folders as they hit the floor, exposing passport-size photos of pretty young women, handwritten responses on questionnaires. Another folder drops, obscuring the image of an Indian woman with golden eyes.

“Tessa, stop. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You know how you said Marley looked like a younger version of Laila Ruiz?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Laila Ruiz was one of Gabe’s patients. I mean, he never told me, but trust me, anyone that high-profile went to Gabe.” Tessa shows me an open file. Sure enough, it has a small photo of Marley with her measurements and background, her genetic history, other testing. Tessa types on her phone, then hands it to me. I skim a gossip article announcing Laila Ruiz’s pregnancy. It says nothing about a donor.

“Do the math.” Tessa points to the date on Marley’s intake sheet, the day her eggs were harvested. “She got pregnant the same month Marley donated her eggs.”

“Okay.” I hand her phone back to her. There’s nothing wrong with using an egg donor, with keeping it private.

“Only Gabe never told me about it. Not Laila Ruiz specifically. He wouldn’t break doctor-patient confidentiality. He never told me about Rosebud, that he’d started an entire wing of his business for donations. Why wouldn’t he tell me that? Don’t you see?”

All I see is a woman with dark circles under her eyes, tearing through files she’s stolen, tossing them on the floor when they don’t deliver the news she’s expecting. Other people might see something different, someone hormonal and unhinged. I see a mother, searching for answers in the wrong place. I don’t know what Regina’s death has to do with the files scattered across Tessa’s kitchen floor, the donors Regina evidently recruited for Gabe. I know he was the man along the canals that Regina was having an affair with. I know he killed my daughter. I know Tessa still refuses to accept that.

Before I decide what to say, Tessa diverts her attention to the French doors, sighing heavily as she offers a reluctant wave. I follow her gaze to the woman from next door, still as a statue on the walkway outside Tessa’s patio. The woman doesn’t wave back as she steps into the garden, toward the house. Her attention is fixed entirely on me. That’s when I know everything’s about to change.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Tessa

“Let me get rid of her,” I say to Barb. I use my toe to edge an intake sheet of a brunette back into its file, then step over the pile toward the living room. The brunette looks nothing like Regina. Nothing like me either.

Barb gathers her purse, the sweater she always carries but never wears.

“Don’t leave,” I say, motioning her to stay. I haven’t found a file for Regina yet. It’s here, though, and it will confirm what I already know is true. When I find it, I don’t want to be alone. “It’ll just take a second.”

Barb hesitates. She doesn’t get what’s going on. I haven’t given her enough information to follow. But she will. When I find Regina’s paperwork and the dates of her retrieval align with mine, she’ll understand. Then she can help me decide what to do.

As I approach Judy, she’s glowering, lips snarled, her anger aimed at Barb.

“Hey, Judy. Everything okay?” She’s angling around me, trying to see inside. I use my belly to block her entry.

A sharp sting daggers across my side, mellowing just as quickly. A Braxton Hicks contraction, even if it hurts more than the others did. My body doesn’t know it’s destined for a C-section. Instead, it’s training for a labor it will never experience.

“She a friend of yours?” A little spittle drips from Judy’s mouth as she glares at Barb.

Barb sways foot to foot, nervous and uncomfortable. Something sinks inside me, even before Judy says, “Be careful. I’ve seen her lurking.”

“What do you mean?” My attention stays glued to Barb, who won’t look at us.

“She’s been following Gabe. Creeping behind him when he goes to surf. Waiting for him to leave for work.”

Another stabbing cramp rips through my hip toward my groin, stealing my breath. Since Regina died, I’ve had this feeling that someone’s been spying on me. Could it really be Barb? Barb glances in our direction, purse clutched to her side, pure dread across her face. When we lock eyes, her face grows tortured. I want to run to her, to disavow everything Judy’s insinuating, but that expression on Barb’s face—it’s guilt. I’ve fallen for an act. Barb, with her slight limp, her cool demeanor, her grief. She was never my friend. She’s used her motherhood against me.

Judy steps toward me. “You want me to come in?”

Although she’s never been inside our house, she thinks nothing of trying to barge in now. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t move off the doorframe, not until my midsection releases the contraction.

“Thanks, Judy. I’m fine.”

Judy doesn’t seem convinced as I shut the door between us. I shoot her a thumbs-up, pretending that everything’s fine. Everything isn’t fine. At Rosebud, Barb asked, Why are we here? I was stuck on the we. I should have been stuck on the here. Barb knew where we were. She knew it was Gabe’s office. She’s been following him. I thought we were in this together. She’s had an ulterior motive this whole time, a side investigation into my husband. And into me.

My mind starts racing as I rewrite every interaction I’ve had with Barb, dating back to her collapsing on the walkway outside my house, waiting for me at the police station. She knew who I was. Another stabbing pierces my side. It’s intense, longer than before. Could she have known who my son was, too, her relationship to him?

I stay fixed on Judy until she sighs performatively and retreats. I wait to make sure she’s gone, using the time when my back’s to Barb to decide what I can possibly say to this woman I’ve let into my life, this woman I’ve let get close to my son.

“Everything okay?” Barb asks.

“You tell me.” I hold my breath as the contraction abates, trying not to reveal how much it hurts. “Since you’ve been watching us, you must know how everything’s going.”

Barb shrugs. “He knew my daughter.”

Her calmness confirms my suspicions, all the ways she’s betrayed me and isn’t sorry for it. Her poise enrages me, makes me start pacing like I’m in labor. Maybe these contractions aren’t Braxton Hicks. Maybe they are phantom pains, my body trying to labor the lies.

“Stay away from Jasper.” The volume of my voice catches us both off guard. Barb seems wounded and confused, but it’s all an act. “You can’t take my son away from me.”

Barb holds out both hands, motioning for me to take a breath before cautiously stepping toward me. Her maternal energy is magnetic, forceful. Without realizing it, I’ve come to depend on Barb. I’ve imagined her visiting my baby, holding her in a way my own mother can’t.

“Jasper’s mine. Mine.” I hit my chest harder than I mean to. It leaves a red impression across my skin.

“Tessa, relax.”

“Don’t—”

Barb pauses, considering her words, words we both hear before she says them. Words she can never take back. “He killed my daughter.”

I grunt involuntarily, partly on account of what Barb has said. Mostly to hide the sharp, all-encompassing pain at my side. I need to sit down. That feels too close to surrendering, so I rub my stomach, trying to make the pang subside. It’s too intense for Braxton Hicks, but at my last appointment, I wasn’t dilated. I can’t be in labor. A cramp across my hip screams otherwise.

Barb confuses my weakness for agreement. She braves a step toward me.

“You aren’t safe with him.”

“Gabe would never hurt me,” I say as resolutely as I can over the physical agony. “Gabe would never hurt anyone.”

“Tessa.” She’s standing closer than I’d like, close enough that I can smell the waxiness of her makeup, can see her fingers tremble as they resist reaching toward me. The contraction releases, but there’s no more calm between them, just quiet tension as I wait for the next one, inevitably stronger. “I don’t know what you’ve uncovered here about these donors, what mess Regina got herself into, but Gabe killed her. They were having an affair, and he killed her.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” I want this to come out as a threat. Instead, my voice warbles, and I realize it’s true. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Barb’s said nothing about Jasper, Regina’s connection to my son. She doesn’t know, can’t fathom what’s really going on here. My heartbeat hastens as I brace myself for the next round. It doesn’t come, not yet. The anticipation leaves me dizzy. Everything’s spinning. I’m confused and scared of what’s happening in my body, scared of Barb. I can’t make sense of anything except the overwhelming need to get rid of her before she discovers she’s related to my son. Before she tries to lay claim over him.

“Leave,” I say with all the energy I can muster.

“Tessa, please.”

“I need you to go. Now.”

Barb reaches for me. I pull my arm away. “I’m scared for you.”

“I don’t need you to be scared for me.” I point toward the door, and she’s pleading how worried she is, how she doesn’t want anything to happen to me. It’s so intense, it seems contrived. It isn’t. It’s misdirected. She isn’t trying to protect me. She’s trying to protect her daughter, something she failed to do when Regina was still alive.

When I don’t respond, she says, “I’ll leave, but I’m here. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here for you.” Her words are so paternalistic, I can’t believe I ever found this woman maternal.

Once Barb leaves, her perfume lingers in the house, cloyingly sweet, and I know I haven’t seen the last of her. Although she doesn’t yet realize her connection to Jasper, she will. And when she does, will she have a legitimate claim to him, her daughter’s son? There’s no paperwork on my end, no signed agreement to confirm I had a donor, no biological evidence to prove Jasper is mine. By law, does he belong to me or Regina? It’s all too confusing—he’s my son. He’s also Regina’s. No, he’s mine. Only mine. And Gabe’s. This is his fault, yet his paternity isn’t at stake.

One thing is perfectly clear, though. Barb can’t be a part of our lives anymore.

Chapter Thirty

Barb

I race out of the canals, thoughts spiraling as I try to piece together what’s happening. Tessa isn’t safe. Although I can’t help her, it doesn’t mean I’m helpless. My hands tremble as I dig through my purse for his card. After I pull it out, I drop it on the walkway, fumbling as I bend to retrieve it. I punch the wrong numbers, delete, and start over.

When I’m back on Pacific, I take three deep breaths, then dial again, managing to get the numbers in the right order.

“He killed her,” I say as Officer Gonzales picks up. A truck drives by, the rattle of its wheels swallowing my words.

“I’m sorry, who’s this?”

“It’s Barb Geller.”

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Geller?”

“Gabe Irons killed my daughter. Now he’s going to kill his wife. You need to do something.”

“Mrs. Geller, I know this is difficult for you, but we spoke to Dr. Irons and his wife. There’s nothing to—”

“You’re wrong. I have proof.” I tell him about Regina’s tax return, the affair, how Gabe Irons was up to something at his clinic, something he killed his embryologist to keep secret, something he killed Regina to keep secret too.

As I explain all this to him, I hear him asking someone whether they’ve followed up with a witness on a case in which he’s actually doing police work.

“I’m going to need you to focus here, Officer Gonzales.” I can feel him cower through the phone. I forgot this sensation, taking command, ordering an arrogant young man to listen.

Officer Gonzales sighs into the phone, heavy, elongated. “Look, why don’t I send someone to your hotel to get your daughter’s iPad, her computer. We’ll take it from there, contact the numbers on it, talk to Dr. Irons. If there’s anything suspicious, we’ll uncover it.”

“Tessa’s in danger. You can’t let someone else die.”

The line goes quiet, and I know I’ve offended him. I don’t care. Maybe he didn’t let Regina die, but he’s letting her die a false death.

“I’ll have someone swing by the Irons’ house to make sure everything’s okay. Will that make you feel better?”

What would make me feel better is if he actually cared about the lives of the women in his precinct. I don’t say this. He’s made it my issue. Although I’m not invisible to him, he isn’t seeing me clearly.

I hang up. There’s nothing left to say. I’m never going to get justice for Regina. Not unless something happens to Tessa too.

I spin on my heels back toward her house. What was I thinking, leaving her there? I hurry down the ramp into the canals. I won’t be able to forgive myself if anything happens to her. When I turn onto Linnie, her next-door neighbor is waiting. Her face is so sour, it must hurt to hold the expression.

She’s not a big woman, but she knows how to use her stature to impose and threaten.

“Leave her alone,” she snarls.

“She’s in danger,” I insist.

She places her hands on her hips, occupying even more space. “I’m very good at calling the cops.”

Beyond her, Dan Huntsman stands on the walkway, his pretty wife behind him, glancing over his shoulder. The painter peers from behind her easel. The man always dressed in shorts lifts up his Yorkies, holding them against his chest like I might attack. I’m not welcome here.

Reluctantly, I start to leave, glancing over my shoulder at the neighbor, who maintains her position, hands fixed on hips, not budging until I’m gone. My car’s still at the beach, so I get an Uber to take me back to Playa del Rey. From the parking lot, I stare at tower 50, trying to locate the spot where Marley waited for us. It’s sunny now, and the beach is covered in umbrellas and tarps, too many bodies. In the time since we met Marley here, I’ve become a threat to Jasper, when all I’ve ever done is try to protect him. Them. I’m failing Tessa now too.

After an interminable drive back to my hotel, the cool air of the lobby stings when I walk inside and head toward the elevators. I want to collapse on my bed. As I step onto the elevator, someone calls, “Barbara.” No one calls me Barbara. No one except my book club.

A hand catches the elevator doors before they close. When they reopen, I see her. Linda. My best friend. Before either one of us can speak, Linda envelops me in a hug. We embrace as the ground beneath us rises. When the doors open on my floor, she lets go. I look right at her and say, “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Tessa

Gabe would never hurt me. It’s so offensive, so incredibly condescending that she, a stranger, thinks she knows my husband better than I do. He’s done something perverse, something unforgivable, but he isn’t violent. Barb, on the other hand—if she finds out about Jasper, there’s no telling what she might do. Barb. Her name snags me with its hook. Barb. Barb. Barb. I’m right to keep her out of our lives.

Over one hundred files are scattered across the floor, commingled and disordered. I still haven’t found one for Regina, no paperwork that proves she was my donor. Outside, tourists amble by. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t feel like someone’s watching me.

There are only four folders left to read. Four women who might be Regina. If there isn’t a file for her, I’m not sure that would prove she wasn’t my donor. It would leave room for doubt, though. Doubt that I crave. Doubt that I want to cradle and insulate until eventually it becomes truth.

Another contraction cleaves my side. I’ll have to wait them out until my C-section next week. As I’m hunched over the counter, breathing through the pain, the door creaks open, and Jasper runs to me, throws his arms around my leg. Through the sharpness that steals my breath, the acute burn of panic radiates. They shouldn’t be home yet. I haven’t had time to deal with the folders, to decide what I can possibly say to my husband. Jasper tugs at my dress, wanting my attention. I can’t gather the strength to lift him.

“T., you here? Listen, something’s come up at work.” His words grow louder as he walks down the hall. Another contraction pummels me, raging like it will never end. I can’t move, can’t begin to devise a plan. “I need to head to the—” His sentence ends abruptly. My vision blurs. I see only the shape of him running toward me.

“T.” His voice is rich with concern, the attentive husband I’ve always known. He spreads his fingers across my back as I breathe into the pain. His other hand laces mine, our wedding rings nestled together, steel bands I carved into Möbius strips, mine with tiny blue sapphires. It’s unusual to mix gemstones with steel, to cast wedding bands out of a metal so affordable. Steel is made from iron and carbon fortified with copper. It’s how iron becomes strong, mixing it with other metals. Despite the pain, my racing mind, I study our matching rings, noticing how much attention I’ve bestowed on cheap metal, how weak iron is on its own.

“Just breathe.” Gabe rubs my back. I want to scream for him to get off me, but as long as he’s tending to me, he hasn’t noticed the folders scattered on the floor. This buys me a few moments to devise a plan. The contraction releases. I pretend it still has its grip on me as I use my foot to push the files under the peninsula, out of view from where we stand in the kitchen. I’ll distract him until I have a chance to move them to a drawer or cabinet, somewhere he won’t think to look.

Jasper’s laugh pierces the moment. His mischievous cackle. On the floor, he’s pulling the files out from under the peninsula, tearing one of the folders. Gabe peers down. A shock radiates through my chest. I’m not ready for everything to change.

For a second we’re all still, even Jasper, even my body, placid between contractions. Jasper holds a paper toward us. A pretty Asian woman smiles from the intake sheet. Gabe lets go of me. He doesn’t reach for our son. Instead, he pries the intake sheet from his hand, surveys it, ignoring Jasper, who tugs at his leg, begging for the paper back.

“Why do you have these?” His expression is so cold it makes me numb. “Did you break into my office?”

Gabe’s temples pulse, and I can tell he’s furious. His hand shakes. The intake sheet he’s clutching vibrates like it’s caught in a soft wind. Every muscle in my body tenses as he inches in on an anger I’ve never seen before. I brace myself for him to snap, something he never does.

“You mean Rosebud’s office,” I manage to grunt.

Gabe starts pacing from the kitchen into the living room and back, piecing together what I’ve done, what I know, saying “You really shouldn’t have done this” over and over again, his tone growing more insistent each time. “Jesus, Tessa. What were you thinking? The cops are there now.”

Another contraction stabs through me. He keeps striding that short distance, ignoring my imminent labor. I’ve become invisible to him, and so has Jasper, who’s now clutching my leg with that pinched, stunned expression he gets when he’s terrified. Jasper decides the fear is justified and unleashes a panting cry, different from when he’s throwing a tantrum, from when he can’t communicate his desires, when he’s tired or hungry. Even from at night, when the terrors grip his imagination. This is the sound of pure fear. He’s afraid of his father. It makes me realize I’m afraid of Gabe too.

At last Jasper’s shriek breaks Gabe’s trance. He bends down to pick up Jasper, who tries to lunge from Gabe’s arms, shouting “Mama” as Gabe carries him into the living room. A thought nearly bowls me over. Would he hurt our son?

I start to stand when I’m hit with another contraction, one that sends me retreating to the peninsula again for support. Gabe hardly notices as he carries a flailing, screaming Jasper toward the couch, saying in his familiar soft voice, “Hey, buddy, it’s okay. Daddy’s just a little upset. Everything’s okay.”

Gabe rubs his back until Jasper submits to his embrace, lying against his father as he pops his thumb into his mouth for comfort.

“You’re okay,” Gabe keeps saying, trying to settle Jasper’s overstimulated body as he gasps for air. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

My jaw releases some of the tension. Gabe would never hurt him. This has all been to bring Jasper into this world.

“Just breathe, buddy.” Gabe brushes Jasper’s curls. I want to believe I’m safe with Gabe too. As I glance down at the intake sheets, the sweet faces smiling up at me, I admit for the first time what’s been plain all along. He’s already killed two people to keep these secrets hidden.

Once Jasper has calmed, Gabe plops him into his gated area. Jasper finds blocks and begins stacking them, the fear of moments before so quickly forgotten. Gabe’s steps are heavy and measured as he returns to the kitchen, where he bends down and gathers the folders.

“I thought we were better than this.” His disappointment borders on heartbreak. “I thought we trusted each other.”

This is what he does, what he’s been doing to me all along. He uses concern to manipulate me into thinking I’m irrational or overreacting, impulsive. When I’ve been clearheaded about everything except for him.

Before either of us says anything, another impossibly acute contraction cuts around me. I grunt before I can hide it. It’s too painful. I lean down, rest my hands on the counter. In my periphery, I spot my phone.

“We need to get you to the hospital.”

“It’s only prelabor. It’ll stop.” I breathe into the contraction as it lingers.

“Tessa, you can’t go into active labor.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. I reach for my phone to call 9-1-1. When I swipe up to unlock the screen, Laila Ruiz’s face stares back at me from when I’d shown Barb the article on her pregnancy. Barb. She knew I wasn’t safe with Gabe. I start to dial 9-1-1.

Gabe grabs the phone from my hand, hits End, and puts it in his back pocket. He shakes his head, and with that deliberate movement, I know I’m in danger.

“Come on.” He reaches for my arm.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I try to pry my arm away, but his grip holds firm as he leads me to the couch.

Sitting does nothing for the pain, for my racing heart, for the thought that drums on repeat through my head: My husband is a killer. My husband is a killer. He killed Aram. He killed Regina. He might kill me too.

“I’m not sure what you think you’ve uncovered here.” Gabe crouches down, rests his hands on both my knees, his face too close. “It’s all perfectly normal. I’ll explain. For now, we’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

I want to argue that I won’t leave until he tells me if Jasper is Regina’s, when another contraction pelts me. If my husband doesn’t kill me, this pregnancy will.

“Jasper,” I manage to grunt.

Gabe’s face falls as he realizes what I’m thinking. The plan was for Marisol to watch him when I go in for my scheduled C-section. We didn’t prepare for an emergency. We didn’t imagine we’d find ourselves in this situation. Any of it.

“I’ll call Marisol,” Gabe says.

I pace, trying to breathe through the pain as I listen to Gabe’s side of their brief conversation.

He hangs up. “She can be here in an hour.”

I’m about to protest that I can’t wait that long when another contraction hooks me, tearing at my insides.

“I’ll call her,” Gabe says, and I’m about to protest that he can’t call Barb. I don’t want her anywhere near Jasper. He holds a finger up, motioning me to wait. “She’s not picking up.” He calls again and again, and all I can think is, Please don’t involve Barb. I don’t trust her.

When he speaks her name into the receiver, it knocks the wind out of me, literally sends me falling to the floor. “Hey, Claire. Sorry to be calling you like this.”

Of course he didn’t call Barb. He doesn’t know about Barb. Reaching out to Claire is hardly a reassurance, even though I know she’ll watch Jasper, that she’ll tend to him like she always has. I gather the energy to stand and shout to her to help. Gabe squints in my direction. He must intuit what I’m considering because he scurries into the garage to talk to Claire. Another contraction takes hold, and I lean back on the couch, incapable of anything but enduring it.

Gabe triumphantly strides into the living room. “She’ll watch him until Marisol can get here.”

He starts toward the stairs, then hesitates and returns to the kitchen, bends down, and collects the files from the floor. He shakes his head at me as he neatens the pile, then carries the files upstairs.

Above us, footsteps creak in the office. I can hear the filing cabinet open and shut. Then his footsteps thump into our bedroom, where drawers open and close as Gabe starts to put together what we need for the hospital. I don’t have much time.

I take a few deep breaths, preparing my body to move. In one swift motion, I lean against the sofa’s arm to push myself to standing. As soon as I’m up, I’m forced down again by the pain. Jasper glances over from the gated area, a precarious pile of blocks before him, decides I’m okay, and returns to his construction. I am okay. My eyes flit toward the ceiling, where I can hear Gabe above, still in our bedroom. He has to pack a bag for Jasper too. The contraction recedes. The calm it leaves in its wake is fraught and charged, hardly gentle. I manage to get back on my feet and lumber across the living room toward the door. At the door, I breathe for a moment, peek at Jasper, who’s too busy to notice me. I sense the contraction before it hits, bracing my abdomen for the jolt. It doesn’t come, not yet, and I muster all the energy I have left to throw open the door and step outside.

I stagger into the garden, scanning the walkway. I don’t see anyone. Every time I want a moment of privacy, there’s always someone lurking, and now that I need those voyeurs, they’re nowhere to be found? A contraction wallops me. It seems dramatic, how intensely my body reacts, but it really is that painful. I lean against the outdoor sofa and breathe.

“Miss, are you okay?” I lift my head to find an older couple monitoring me, the wife clutching her husband’s arm. This white-haired husband and wife walk the canals as I’ve imagined Gabe and I would after a lifetime together.

“Do you need me to call an ambulance?” the man asks, taking his phone out of his back pocket.

“I need your help,” I mutter.

The woman lets go of her husband and steps into our garden. My midsection releases its tension, and for a fleeting moment, I think I’ll be okay. Before she can reach me, Gabe swoops outside with three bags hanging from his arms.

“Hi there,” Gabe says, putting his hand on my back. It sears my skin. “We’re all set. I’ve got the car waiting. Come on, babe.”

Gabe never calls me babe. It isn’t meant sweetly now. The strangers can’t know the threat beneath his endearment.

The woman hovers just inside our gate.

“Don’t—it’s not. Please, help,” I try to say. The agony swallows my words as Gabe explains that he’s a doctor, that we’re headed to the hospital.

He throws my arm over his shoulder and lugs me upright off the back of the couch. I try to tell him to stop. I try to scream for help. I’m too weak, Gabe’s grip on my waist is too tight. His body is too close, too warm, too familiar.

“Walk,” he mutters as he waves goodbye to the couple.

As he helps me inside, I peer over my shoulder at the older woman, who’s still watching us, sensing something’s off. “Please,” I say. “I need your help.”

“It’s all right, babe.” Gabe kisses my forehead, sending a wave of nausea through me. “I’ve got you.”

The couple continues to stand there as Gabe shuts the door. When he lets go of me, I twist my head to see the husband motioning to his wife to keep walking. She studies me, then nods to assure me I’ve got this, and my hope deflates. She’s seen me, but she doesn’t understand what’s going on. She can’t help me. No one can.

Gabe manages to carry Jasper, along with the three bags, to the car, keeping a strong hold on me as he guides me to the garage. As he straps Jasper in, I lean against the car, trying not to faint. He lifts me into the passenger seat next, his breath against my neck as he reaches over to buckle my seat belt.

“You killed Regina, didn’t you?” I mutter.

“I would never hurt Reggie,” he says as he taps the door shut.

Just like that, I know it’s all true. The affair. Jasper. The murders. The danger I’m in.

Gabe trots around to the driver’s seat. He takes both my phone and his out of his back pockets, puts them in the cup holders, along with his wallet and the keys. The garage door creaks open. The only thing on my mind during the short drive across the canal is that I have to get my son out of the car. He’ll be safe at Claire’s, safer with Dan Huntsman than he would be with his own father.

We pull up in the alley behind the Huntsmans’ house, and Gabe says, “I’ll be right back.”

Gabe unbuckles Jasper, who reaches for me, pleading “Mama.”

“It’s okay, sweetie.” I force a smile as Gabe lugs him out of the car seat. “Mommy just needs to bring your baby sister home. You go play with Summer.”

My words shift his begging into an all-out scream, like he’s physically hurt. Gabe slams the door. I can still hear Jasper screeching as they head toward the house, where Claire stands, Dan lurking behind her. They nod along while Gabe talks. Claire glances in my direction, and I sit up, try to roll the window down. Gabe has turned off the car. I mouth “Help,” make a phone with my thumb and pinkie to signal she should call 9-1-1. She has no reaction to this, not confusion or fear, just quickly returns her attention to Gabe. I lean back, trying to think. My son is safe. Soon, my daughter will be too. I sit upright, panicked. Gabe knows how to do a C-section. He could be taking me to his clinic, somewhere I can’t get help. I unbuckle the seat belt, reach for the handle, and push the door open. Before I can get my foot out of the car, Gabe is running to my side.

“Claire!” I shout, but the door is already shutting, and it’s Dan Huntsman, not Claire, who spots me and decisively pushes it closed.

“Relax,” Gabe says, part encouragement, part threat. He buckles me back in and shuts the door. I loll my head to the left, defeated. Then I spot my phone in the console. I only have a few seconds. I grab my phone and open the first name on my text exchange. Barb. I don’t have time to decide whether she’s the person I want to be texting right now. I quickly type help, hit Send, and drop the phone back in the console as Gabe bounds into the car.

“You’re going to be okay, T.,” Gabe says in the sweet voice I’ve always trusted. The car rolls beneath us, sending a wave of nausea through me. Despite the air-conditioning blowing icily across my face, I’m sweating profusely. I’m trapped here with Gabe, a man I no longer trust.

Another contraction slices through me. It’s hard to differentiate the pain from the fear as Gabe keeps talking to me, saying it will only be a few minutes, insisting everything’s okay. He doesn’t tell me where we’re headed, simply that we’ll be there soon. I have no idea where he’s taking me. It could be anywhere. I’m completely at his mercy.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Barb

Linda doesn’t leave my side the entire time I pack, as if she’s worried I’ll make a break for it when her back is turned. With every button-up blouse that’s folded, every pair of slacks, I’m tucking away a piece of Venice Beach, of Tessa, of the truth about Regina I’ve only half uncovered. It feels wrong, leaving when I’m this close to answers, but they’re answers I’ll never find. The police aren’t investigating. Tessa won’t accept the truth about her husband. Maybe that denial shields her. I have to hope so, because she won’t let me near them again. I can’t protect her. I can’t get justice for Regina. The only thing I can do is go home, start to heal myself.

Linda monitors my progress from the sitting area. I can see the effort it takes for her to refrain from asking what happened. I’m relieved I don’t have to reassure her I’m fine. I’m not fine. The hard part is just beginning. Going home, figuring out how to continue living, knowing I’ll never expose the facts of my daughter’s death. I have my appointment with Christine, my therapist, on Monday. We meet every two weeks. So much has happened since I last spoke to her, yet I haven’t even missed a session. She doesn’t know my daughter is dead. Maybe I won’t tell her, and therapy can become a space where Regina’s still alive. Christine will know, though. She always knows when I lie to her. I’ll cancel, then. Quit altogether. I’m not ready to do the work she’ll demand of me. I stuff my dirty laundry into a packing square, angle it into my suitcase, and zip up the last ten days in California.

The sun is still bright as we head to the airport. Block after block, strip malls filled with nail salons and marijuana dispensaries disappear behind us. How did Regina expect to find beauty in a city this ugly? Why did she think she’d be happy here? Linda has booked us on the 6:30 flight back to Newark, determined to get me airborne before I change my mind. I study Linda as she drives my rental car, navigating the surface roads to Alamo. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I silence it. It won’t be Officer Gonzales or Tessa, the only people I want to hear from.

“Why now?” I ask Linda. “How’d you know to come now?”

“When we last spoke, you really worried me.” Linda stays focused on the road ahead. “I didn’t like you being all alone out here.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

“She’s not your family.” Linda drifts to a stop at a red light. I hear what she means by this. I am your family. I don’t deserve her kinship, her unconditional love.

“I’m sorry,” I begin. I need to tell her. Whatever it may do to our friendship, she deserves to know the truth, what I thought about her husband, how I distrusted him so quickly. “Last time we spoke, I was trying to tell you, when I was fired—”

“I knew,” Linda blurts, unable to hold it in any longer. “Dick told me they were going to fire you. He made me promise I wouldn’t tell you, but to hell with that. I should have warned you. I shouldn’t have let you get blindsided. I’m sorry.”

The light changes, and Linda floors the gas pedal.

No, I’m sorry, I’m about to say. Her expression makes me hesitate. She’s calm, absolved. She needs to forgive herself, not to forgive me.

“It’s not your fault,” I say instead. It wasn’t Dick’s fault either. I wasn’t fired because of anything he may have done. I wasn’t fired because I’m obsolete, because I’m a woman, an older woman. I was fired because I went against protocol. I overstepped and made a young woman uncomfortable along the way. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

And that’s the truth of it. It would have made no difference if Linda had told me. In fact, I probably would have done something rash in response. She was right not to get involved. My meddling hasn’t helped anyone. It didn’t help Jessica. It didn’t save Regina. It hasn’t kept Tessa safe. It won’t benefit Linda now, if I tell her what I thought I saw between her husband and his employee. I let this moment, its apology, belong to my friend. That’s what she needs from me.

Linda turns the radio on, and we listen to songs from our youth until we pull into the rental car lot. The sky becomes a pale orange as we wait for the shuttle bus to take us to the terminal. Outside, it’s still warm. My coat dangles over my arm, carefully positioned so the phone won’t fall out.

A jolt shocks my leg like I’ve been electrocuted. It’s only my phone, the airline, alerting me of a gate change. I close the text exchange, then freeze when I notice a missed text from Tessa, sent over an hour ago.

Help.

The shuttle bus pulls to a stop before us. The driver helps Linda with her suitcase, and she mounts the steps behind him, stopping when she realizes I haven’t followed.

I stare up at her from the sidewalk. “I have to go.”

“What do you mean?” Linda leans out without stepping off the bus. “Our plane leaves in eighty minutes.”

“I need to help Tessa.” I wave my phone in Linda’s direction. Tessa has asked for my help. I can’t abandon her now.

Linda climbs down from the bus, grabs my phone, and reads the text.

“Barb,” she cautions.

“I’ll explain everything when I get home, all right?”

“I’m staying with you.”

The driver watches us. “Ma’am?” the driver asks Linda.

It rattles Linda, who likes being called ma’am about as much as I do.

“I’ll be home soon,” I promise her.

She studies me, about to say something, then steps onto the bus. We hold each other’s gaze as the doors close and the bus pulls away from the curb. I may not have been able to save Regina, but I can save Tessa. If I’m not too late.

The sunlight is starting to fade by the time I’m back at the canals, banging on Tessa’s front door. No one answers. I step back into the alley. A light glows from the second floor. Someone is home.

“Tessa,” I scream. “Tessa.” I jump up and down until my knees remind me I’m too old for the impact. “Tessa,” I shout again.

I feel her first, a prickling across my skin before the ominous words “She’s not here.”

I whip around to see the next-door neighbor, unable to decipher what her constipated expression forebodes for Tessa.

“Where is she?”

A chill settles through me when she says, “The hospital.”

Oh god. I’m too late.

“Did he hurt her?”

Just then, Tessa’s door opens, and a young Hispanic woman I’ve never seen before pokes her head into the alley.

“Is Tessa okay?” I ask her.

She glances at the neighbor, who’s still got that sour expression on her face, then back at me. I grin weakly, hoping I exude trust. It must not work, because the young woman offers each of us the same wariness. Whatever’s going on out here, she wants no part in it. It’s unfamiliar, this young woman’s misgivings. I’m used to being ignored. Infantilized. I’m used to all the ways I’m undermined and discredited as an older woman, taken for granted. I’m not used to being distrusted. It’s almost a compliment.

“Look,” I say to the younger woman, “I know you don’t know me from Adam.” Her face grows curious at my old-fashioned phrasing. “I promise you, Tessa sent me to check on her.” I want to lie and tell her I’m Tessa’s mother, but this neighbor, inching in on our conversation, will know it’s not true. Instead, I show the babysitter Tessa’s text. She bites at her bottom lip as she scans that single word. Help.

“Tessa’s in danger.”

“She’s not in danger,” the neighbor scoffs. “She’s in labor.”

It hurts to ignore a woman my age. Still, I tune her out, willing the babysitter to focus on me, just me, and not lump me in with this meddling neighbor.

“I need to know what hospital she went to.”

If he’s hurt her, if he’s going to hurt her, they might not be at the hospital at all.

The babysitter continues to shift her focus between me and the neighbor, debating which of us to trust.

“They’re at Cedars,” she finally says. Even I know the famous hospital.

I dash across the alley, waving thanks behind me, as I reserve an Uber to meet me on Pacific. It won’t arrive for ten minutes. I don’t want to imagine what he can do to her in ten minutes, let alone however long it will take me to get to Cedars-Sinai. If that’s even where they are. If he hasn’t taken her somewhere else entirely.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Tessa

I don’t know where Gabe’s taking me. The prelabor is too intense for me to focus on our surroundings. A contraction releases, but my entire midsection burns as intensely as if another one has started. We’re on the highway now, headed east in near-standstill traffic. We aren’t going to Longevity or Rosebud, that much is clear. He could be taking me anywhere.

Gabe monitors the stop-and-go traffic ahead.

“This is too slow.” He pulls onto the shoulder, barreling toward the next exit. I try to read the sign, but I’m pummeled by another contraction. I hug myself, hoping he’s not as big of a monster as I fear.

“Gabe, where are we going?” I grunt.

“We’ll be there soon, love.” Through the agony, I feel him squeeze my knee, and the nausea his contact induces.

“Did you kill them?” My unanswered question echoes through the car. The fear sends my brain spinning, trying to focus between contractions. He killed them. After he delivers the baby, he’ll kill me too.

When the car slows to a stop, I think, This is where it ends.

Only, when I look out the window, we’re parked at the entrance to Cedars’ labor and delivery.

“You took me to the hospital?”

“Where else would I take you?” I gaze into his dark eyes, the golden specks that used to make me melt. Maybe he’s still the man I love.

Then a flood soaks the seat of my pants as my water breaks, a reminder that he’s already violated me.

From there, everything happens too quickly. Gabe throws my door open and attempts to lift me out.

“Don’t touch me,” I scream. Gabe recoils as a nurse maneuvers around him and helps me out of the passenger seat. Gabe shouts that he’s going to park the car, then he’ll be right in. I’m fully focused on getting the nurse’s attention.

“I need your help,” I say to the nurse who’s pushing me through the hospital corridors.

“Just breathe,” he tells me.

“It’s about my husband. He’s dangerous.” Another contraction pummels me. It seems impossible that they could get stronger. Somehow, there’s always more pain.

Inside, the attendant shouts to another nurse, who takes over. He doesn’t say goodbye, let alone respond to what I’ve told him. This nurse is female. She’ll be more likely to listen.

“Please, I need your help,” I pant.

“We’ll just get you into your room, okay?” She pushes me down the hall, motioning to another nurse, her focus everywhere but me.

“No, it isn’t about the baby. Something’s happened.”

In the hospital room, she clicks the brake on my wheelchair. “I know it’s scary. You’re in good hands.”

Two other nurses help me stand and change into a gown. I’m not sure I’ve managed to say anything beyond “Wait. Stop. Please.” One puts a blood pressure cuff on my arm while the other scans the back of my hand for a vein.

“I need your help,” I whisper right before she inserts a needle for the IV with no warning. It’s violent, like she’s trying to hurt me. I wince, and at last she makes eye contact.

“All done.” She smiles.

Before I can speak again, several more nurses come in and wheel me down another hall.

“Please,” I keep saying. “I need you to call the police.”

One nurse, a decade older than the rest, shouts orders to the others, outlining what to do when we get into the OR.

“Please,” I whimper. “Police.”

In the OR, the anesthesiologist introduces himself, asks me a few questions about my history with anesthesia. I manage to tell him I get nauseated and then say, “Please, I need you to stop for a moment. I’m in danger.”

“We’ll take care of you,” he reassures me.

“Police,” I say. He casts me a confused expression, then tells me to spread my arms on the rests they’ve positioned at a cross. A blue paper sheet hides everything below my belly button. Before I can say anything else, the cold rush of whatever he’s put into my IV courses through me. The nausea is instantaneous. I tell him I don’t feel so good. This he hears. He gives me something for it. Just as quickly I feel fine, then nothing at all.

The nurses work quickly. I can no longer speak. I’m in a haze from fear and the drugs and the fact that in a few minutes I’ll be a mother of two. As they prepare my body for the C-section, the nurses debate the length of my pubic hair, whether they need to shave me, which even in my current state is incredibly embarrassing. I’m positioned supine on a cross, sacrificial. They’re remarking on the doctor’s preferences when Gabe comes in wearing scrubs. He’s going to operate on me. I try to lug my limp body up.

“Keep your arms down,” the anesthesiologist says. Gabe sits on my side of the sheet. With Jasper, I was so scared, but we had this, me and Gabe, harbored from everything on the other side. This time, I’m far more afraid of Gabe than anything going on behind the blue curtain. He’s stolen this moment from me. He’s already taken so much, and now he’s taking even more.

Two doctors come in and quickly introduce themselves, explaining that Dr. Avagyan is in surgery with another patient. Then they disappear behind the curtain. Gabe is saying all the right things, how I’m so strong and brave. The two doctors gossip. Through the anesthesia and adrenaline, I can’t make out their words. One is telling the other a story; the other is monosyllabically encouraging her. They occasionally stop chatting to tell me I’m going to experience some pressure before resuming their prattle. With time, everything becomes routine, even cutting women’s bodies open and removing their babies. Even implanting them with another woman’s egg.

The tugging is more uncomfortable than I remember. Last time, with Jasper, I was so nervous, I couldn’t feel anything.

Distantly, I hear that animalistic, newborn squawk.

“Here she is,” one of the doctors says. She lifts my baby over the sheet so I can see her. My lower body is numb, but a warmth spreads through me as I take in my daughter for the first time. I want to hold her, to forget everything outside this moment. Too quickly, she’s whisked away. Gabe is no longer next to me. He’s joking with the nurses. Then he brings our daughter over to me, leaning her head to mine so we’re nose to nose. Even though I can’t move, I try to nestle into her. Gabe pulls her away before I’m ready. He holds her to him, promising all the things I want a father to vow to his daughter in her first moments of life: how we’re so happy she’s here, how he’ll keep her safe.

The tugging becomes more intense, pulling my attention away from my daughter.

“Is there supposed to be so much pressure?” I don’t recognize my own voice. It’s reedy, uncomposed.

“We’re putting your uterus back,” the chattier of the two doctors says. She continues with her story to the other doctor, complaining about something. When I search for Gabe, my baby, they’re gone.

I flail desperately, but I’m only able to move my arms.

“We’re almost done,” the doctor says. “We need you to stay still a little longer.”

“My baby,” I scream. “My baby.”

“She’s with Dad,” the doctor says.

“No, please. Don’t let her be alone with him.” I don’t want his voice to be the first one she knows. His smell. His morality.

“A couple more minutes.” Her voice is so rote, it sounds like a recording.

No one talks to me again until the doctors leave and a nurse finally asks me how I’m doing. Before I can answer, two more nurses come in and count to three as they lift me onto a gurney.

In the recovery room, Gabe is sitting shirtless with my daughter to his chest, eyes closed. He hasn’t heard us enter. I want to tear my daughter out of his arms. Adrenaline pumps through me, keeping me awake and craving the touch of my daughter. Otherwise, my body is immobilized. A nurse wheels me in and locks my gurney into place, her gaze softening as she watches Gabe snuggle my daughter.

“I’ll be right back with ice chips,” she says, never taking her attention off Gabe. Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with my husband and daughter for the first time. Only, it’s nothing like I expected, nothing like this same moment was with Jasper. Gabe continues to lounge with my daughter against his skin. A new fear creeps in. We didn’t do IVF this time. We weren’t trying to get pregnant. At least I wasn’t. Could he have implanted Regina’s egg in me another way? Is it possible my daughter isn’t fully mine either?

I clear my throat, and Gabe’s eyes drift open. He stands, rocking the baby, in no rush to hand her to me. When the nurse returns with ice, she asks if I want to try nursing. Gabe situates my baby against me. I see her wrinkled, elfish face. As I put my nipple into her mouth, she immediately knows what to do, and I feel that subtle tugging, unlike anything else in the world. Gabe will never have this. He will never know the sensation of having your child feed from you. Regina won’t either.

When the nurse leaves, he sits beside me and strokes my hair, staring at our baby. It would be so easy to submit to this moment, to trust the man before me.

“You killed them, didn’t you?” I say a little less certainly. Because we are here at the hospital, where he promised to take me. Because seated beside me is the gentle, loving man I’ve always known.

“Tessa.” His voice is rich with disappointment. “I’ve made some mistakes, but I would never hurt anyone. You know that. Especially not Reggie and Aram. I loved them like family.”

He pleads with me, and despite myself, I believe him. What’s worse, I want to believe him. I want him to tell me that I have it all wrong. Regina isn’t Jasper’s mother. My baby girl’s. I search his eyes, which soften when they meet mine, and it hardens something in me. How many times have these eyes, this handsome, earnest face, reassured me that Regina was a stranger? Gabe’s right. I do know him. He isn’t violent. He’s a liar. More than a liar. A perpetrator. A violator. There isn’t an exact word for how much he’s exploited me.

“I want you moved out by the time I get home,” I say steadily.

He leans over to kiss my forehead. I feel like vomiting, from the surgery, from his touch, from the fear of having him this close to us. “You’re in shock. We’ll talk about this once you’ve rested.”

I fight the urge to lash out at him. Because the truth is, as much as I want to kick Gabe out of this room, our house, our lives, I need an answer only he can provide. I need to know if my son is mine. My daughter too.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Barb

At Cedars, the hallways in labor and delivery are eerily quiet, the buzzing of fluorescent lights casting everything in a sickly hue. There’s a nurse at the desk, reading.

“Is Tessa Irons here?” My tone is harried.

She continues to read her book. “Visiting hours ended at seven. You can come back tomorrow.”

“But she’s okay?”

Her attention flits to me. “I’m sorry, you are?”

Who am I? I’m not Tessa’s mother, her aunt, her friend, her doula or birthing coach or whatever they call it. Who am I to Tessa?

I’m the woman who will save her.

“Tessa asked me to visit her.”

“You can come back tomorrow.” Her attention returns to her paperback.

“But she’s okay?”

The nurse huffs. “Of course she’s okay. She and that beautiful baby girl.”

Relief washes over me. Tessa and the baby are okay.

“She and her husband are resting. You can see them tomorrow.”

The panic creeps in again. Her husband. Gabe’s here too.

I scan the halls for a sign of Tessa or Gabe. Maybe I can make a quick dash for her room. The nurse puts her book down, slips her glasses up her forehead, lasering in on me. There’s no way she’s letting me near them tonight.

Obediently, I press the button for the elevator, telling myself that as long as Tessa’s in the hospital, Gabe won’t hurt her. The baby either. In a day or two, when they release her, he’ll be completely in control. For the moment, she’s fine, but she still isn’t safe.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tessa

I wake in a panic, unsure of where I am. The room is too dark to see anything beyond the shapes of the furniture. My baby. Where’s my baby? I try to bolt up. My swollen core is too weak even with the binder for support. I hear a soft murmur. I reach out, my hand hitting something plastic. Her bassinet. She’s here beside me.

I fumble for the bed remote, the IV stinging as I shift my hand. Once I’ve found it, I can’t locate the button to elevate the bed, so I feel for my phone to use its flashlight, remembering that Gabe still has it. Now that I’m alert, I hear him snoring. I press a few buttons on the remote until the bed inches up with a motorized creaking I fear might wake the baby. Instead, it wakes Gabe.

His footsteps echo as he heads to turn on the bathroom light, revealing the composition of the room, my baby still in her bassinet. She’s swaddled, the crown of her head concealed by a blue-and-pink-striped hospital cap, her tiny face exposed, bottom lip sucked in, lids clamped tight. As an infant, Jasper used to suck in his bottom lip, too, confusing the line of his chin. I’d forgotten he did that. I’ve forgotten so many things. As I watch her sleep, I vow not to forget anything.

Gabe walks over, kisses my forehead. Forgetting is easy. Remembering is the hard part. It takes energy. For a moment, I let everything go. The thing about the body, though, is that it has its own instincts. It remembers fear.

Gabe notices me recoil, but he doesn’t back away, just pulls over the room’s only chair and brushes my hair from my face.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Is he mine, Gabe?” I barely manage a whisper. I never found a file for Regina. I want to believe that means she wasn’t my donor, that Gabe would never do this to me.

Gabe’s face betrays no truth other than his concern for me.

“Did you use Regina’s egg on me? With Jasper?”

It sounds paranoid, almost science fiction, wholly unreal. And it is unbelievable. Unbelievable that I have to ask. Unbelievable that he would do this.

He motions for me to be quiet, as though I’ve forgotten that my daughter’s asleep. This just makes me angrier.

“Either you tell me the truth, or I call the nurses right now and get you escorted out. I’ll make sure you never see me or my children again.” He pulls his hand away, sits quietly beside me, staring at my daughter. Our daughter. I want to disclaim him, to create a barrier between my children and this monster my husband’s become, but I can’t. Try as I might, she’s his. Ours.

“I’ll tell you,” he whispers. Part of me is still hoping he’ll deny it with a reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve him violating me.

He strokes his cheek, his face impossibly sad. I want to console him, to embrace him as the man I love, because that’s the man who’s looking at me imploringly. It’s a lie, though. It was always a lie. And so I wait. I have nothing to do but wait. Wait for my body to heal. Wait for my daughter to be hungry again. Wait for my husband to tell me what he’s done. My nipples are tender from where my daughter gnawed at them a few hours ago. Everything hurts, especially my heart.

“Knock, knock.” The nurse pushes the door open, smiling as she notices Gabe at my bedside, the image of a doting husband. “How are you feeling?”

I can’t begin to answer that, so I say, “Fine.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in?”

I can’t begin to answer this either. My incision aches more than stings, so I tell her a seven. Seven will not encourage her to give me drugs that make me groggy. It will not minimize the trauma to my body either.

“You’re up for ibuprofen and hydrocodone. You can take both now, or I can give you one in two hours to split it up?” I opt for the ibuprofen, even though I could use something stronger. My brain needs to stay sharp.

“Let’s see how our little girl is doing.” The nurse unwraps each layer of swaddle until my daughter feels the cold against her wrinkled skin and screams. Gabe holds my hand. I shake it free. He raises a cautionary eyebrow at me. For the moment, my rage is targeted at this perfectly nice nurse, who weighs and changes my baby, carries her to me so I can feed her. Gabe backs away as the nurse consumes his space, positioning my daughter to my breast. I want to tell her this isn’t my first rodeo. I don’t need to. My daughter latches like a champ.

“She’s a natural,” the nurse says. Of course she is. She’s mine. I can’t speak to her DNA, but this child feeding off me, with milk she enabled me to produce—this child is mine. Together, we’re iron strong.

“Opal.” I peer down at my daughter. The nurse waits for me to explain. “Her name’s Opal.” I glance over at Gabe, who appears hurt that I’ve named her without his input. He knew I wanted to name her after a gemstone, as with Jasper. We’d discussed Jade, Pearl, Ruby. He didn’t like the roundness of Opal. I didn’t like the superstition of it, how it’s an omen of bad luck. It’s a soft stone, capable of breaking. My daughter doesn’t need luck. We don’t need to be hard not to break.

“Opal.” The nurse lifts my daughter from me. She fell asleep while feeding and now flops onto the nurse. “You’re as precious as your name. Is there anything else I can get you?” she asks as she takes Opal back to her bassinet to swaddle her.

Gabe picks at his cuticles as he waits for me to decide whether I’ll ask her to call the police, to have security kick him out.

“We’re fine,” I tell her. More than anything, more than the police or security, I need the truth.

“Get some rest, Mom.”

When Gabe and I are alone again, I dare him to say anything about the name. He’s taken so much of this birth from me. He can’t take this. He can’t take Opal. I won’t let him.

“I’m still waiting for you to explain.”

I can see from his stupefied expression that he’s convinced himself if he evades me for long enough, I’ll let this go. My stare is unwavering as his focus flitters between Opal, his feet, the dark TV, Opal again, anything and everything except me. Finally, he flops onto the couch, resigned.

“It was never going to happen, T.” He braids his fingers and leans toward me, rocking on the edges of his feet. “I wasn’t planning on . . . it was only a precaution. After three failed IUIs, I figured I’d have it ready as a backup in case the egg retrieval didn’t work either. I knew how much you wanted to be a mom, and I couldn’t bear the thought that you might not be able to.” The remorse in his voice, the conflict across his face—it isn’t regret. It’s pity. He’s actually pitying me.

“Gabe,” I snap. “Is Jasper mine?”

He repositions the chair the nurse moved to my bedside. This close, I can see the faint scar on his left cheek that he got as a child. The twitch at the right corner of his mouth that only activates when he’s tired. I can see all the ways I know him, my husband. Even the expression on his face, laden with sympathy, is one I recognize and love. I just didn’t understand how rehearsed it was.

“None of your eggs were viable,” he says.

I think back to waking up at Longevity, foggy headed and nauseated, Gabe stroking my hair. He was this close then, his familiar face, that scar, the relief that washed over me when he told me the procedure had been a success.

“You harvested fourteen eggs. Five were fertilized.” I want to prove him wrong with everything I know to be true about my IVF process. “They weren’t my eggs,” I state. “They were Regina’s.”

He’s stroking my hair now too. I want to tell him to stop, but I crave human contact, even if it comes from Gabe.

“I knew it would break your heart. I’d seen it break so many women’s hearts, and I couldn’t do that to you.”

“But you could impregnate me with your girlfriend’s egg?” Aloud, it sounds even more twisted and sordid than it did in my head.

“My girlfriend? You think me and Reggie—Tessa, I would never cheat on you. Come on, you know that.”

But you would violate me.

Before I can respond, he adds, “Besides, Reggie wasn’t exactly interested in men.”

“Or maybe she wasn’t interested in you.”

He scoffs, the idea of any woman not finding him attractive an impossibility, and I wonder how I ever found his arrogance sexy.

“It wasn’t what I wanted for you, for us. I didn’t have a choice. Not if you wanted to be pregnant.”

“No.” I try to sit up. Despite its torrent of anger, my body is still weak. The compression band doesn’t offer enough support for my midsection. I lie back. “I didn’t have a choice. You took that from me.”

Gabe’s jaw tenses. He remains quiet.

“So she’s his mom.” I can barely form the sentence. That’s why she was watching us, why she had our furniture, my earring. It wasn’t because she was obsessed with me, the wife of her lover. It was because she was obsessed with my son. Her son.

“You grew him, so biologically speaking, he’s yours. Genetically, on a DNA test, he’d show Regina’s—”

“So she’s his mom,” I interrupt, not letting him make this a semantic argument.

“She was never his mom.” His eyes are insistent. And he’s right. She was never Jasper’s mother, not in the ways we think of a mother. Genetically, phenotypically, though, he’s hers. Hers and Gabe’s. Because of course this isn’t about him, the father.

“You let her have a relationship with him?”

Gabe’s still combing his fingers through my hair. I swat him off me. It causes the IV to pull out. Suddenly, blood pours from the back of my hand, pooling in violent red. The insertion point stings. Gabe jumps up and gets a tissue to put pressure on the bleeding. He untapes the IV and starts to fix it.

“Get off me,” I shout, and he darts back. I press the button for the nurse. Gabe hovers against the wall as the nurse comes in and repositions the IV.

Once she’s gone, I tell him, “You can talk to me from over there.”

He cowers in the corner, shocked, refusing to speak.

“Gabe.” I use the remote to put the back of the bed a little higher. “Explain to me how you let this woman have a relationship with our son.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he pleads. “She just showed up. Totally out of the blue.”

“When was this?”

“Maybe seven months ago?”

Seven months ago. My first trimester with Opal. I could hardly get out of bed, barely able to stave off the constant nausea. Gabe rearranged his schedule so he could take Jasper to the playground and the beach while I rested. I remember how grateful I was, how lucky I felt to have a husband who prioritized our family. It was during that time he introduced Jasper to Regina.

“I didn’t plan for her to meet Jasper. She just was outside our house, acting all paranoid, which wasn’t like her. I guess I wasn’t picking up my phone, and she was freaking out about one of the donors. She was starting to make a scene, and I wasn’t thinking. I grabbed Jasper and told you I was taking him for a walk. I just needed to get her away from our home. I didn’t tell her about Jasp, but one look at him and—”

“I get it.” I can’t let him finish his sentence, let him vocalize the intuitive bond Regina had with my son.

Jasper would have been eleven months old. His language was even sparser then than it is now. I wonder when he babbled Gigi for the first time, if it was something he’d been saying in front of me for months, something I discounted as meaningless when it couldn’t have been more meaningful.

“How’d she know where we lived?”

“What?” He’s thrown by my question, its unimportance. I’m not ready to ask the questions that matter, the ones that will break me. I need to circle my way toward the truth.

“She was never at any of our parties. You were clearly keeping her a secret from me. So, how’d she know where we lived?”

“It’s the canals,” he says, like that explains everything, and it does. Gabe must have mentioned living on the canals. It’s something people remember. From there, it would have been easy for her to find us. Our shades are always up. Anyone can peer inside.

“You let her into our home.”

“No, never.”

“She had my earring.”

“What?”

“One of my prototypes. She had it.” I’m about to mention Barb, Regina’s leather jacket, but he doesn’t know about our investigation. I’m not about to let him shift the conversation, allow him to interrogate me instead.

Gabe’s eyes flit to the ceiling. “It was three-tiered? Rose-cut diamonds?” I nod. “Jasper had it. We were on the beach path, and Regina noticed him putting something in his mouth. Grabbed it from him. We were both really scared. I guess I never got it back from her?”

“How often did you let her see my son?” My voice betrays me, raising when I want it level, heated when I aim for ice cold.

“Come on, T. We don’t need to get into all this. I know you’re upset, and I don’t blame you, but—”

“That’s a relief,” I say harshly. “What a relief that you don’t blame me for being upset that you implanted another woman’s egg in me without my permission.” I need to keep saying it to make it sound real. The only inconceivable part is that Gabe, the only man I’ve ever loved, could do this to me.

“I asked you if you knew her, and you lied to my face. You made me feel like I was being paranoid. Like I was an emotional pregnant woman, when my instincts were right.”

“No. I never called you emotional.” His voice grows louder and firmer. I’m afraid he’s going to wake Opal, but newborns can’t hear that well. This is all ambient noise to her, nothing she will internalize, nothing that will corrupt her before she’s even left the hospital. “I would never use your pregnancy against you.”

While he may never have called me emotional or directly evoked my hormones, those accusations informed every word, every gesture, every moment he tried to reassure me. Maybe he’s been so conditioned to assume the irrationality of pregnant women that he didn’t even realize he was doing it. What am I talking about? He did realize. He implanted another woman’s egg inside me. Every action that followed was intentional, nonconsensual.

He rubs his face with his hands, tugs at his hair, seemingly distressed. I can’t tell what’s real with him anymore and what isn’t. “Please don’t let this break apart our family.”

“Don’t you dare put this on me.”

“Come on, Tessa. You know I didn’t mean it that way.” He’s doing it again. Making this my fault instead of his.

“How often did he see her? Because Jasper knew exactly who she was when we ran into her. That doesn’t happen from seeing her only a few times. So I want to know, how often did you let this woman see my son?”

“It wasn’t like an arranged schedule or anything. It was incredibly stupid of me. I see that now. I never should have. But she knew about him, and I was scared she might tell you or appeal for custody.” He hesitates, and I realize, in horror, that she may have actually had a legal claim to my son.

My thoughts start spiraling: all this time, there was a woman out there who could have tried to take my son from me, who may even have succeeded. I tell myself that she’s dead now. My son’s safe. No one can steal him from me. But there’s still Barb.

I’m vaguely aware that Gabe is still talking, offering excuses for his actions.

“That would have been very bad for everyone,” he says, and I think, Yes, her taking my son away from me would definitely constitute bad. More than bad. The worst possible thing Gabe could do to me, even worse than what he’s already done. He’s still talking, still explaining. “I just thought that maybe if I granted her limited access, I could control the situation.”

Except now the situation has shifted, Barb in place of Regina. Barb, whom I’ve trusted. Barb, whom I’ve texted for help when she could be the most dangerous person to me, even more than Gabe. And this all leads to another impossible question, one I can’t believe I have to ask.

“And Opal?”

He casts me that confused look again.

“Is she mine?”

I hate the way I phrase this. Because either way, she’s mine. Jasper too. It’s not about biology or genetics or the law. I’m the one who wakes in the middle of the night a moment before my son does. I’m the one who checks his temperature when his cheeks are flushed, who feels loss commingling with pride at every milestone. Even if the egg was Regina’s, I’ve always been his mother. Opal’s too.

Gabe still has that contrite expression on his face, the one that makes him seem arrogant and entitled.

“You basically just told me I’m infertile. So, what, did you slip me something when I was sleeping, impregnate me with one of the eggs we had on ice when I was passed out?” Because of course the four embryos we have frozen aren’t mine either. They’re Regina’s.

“You think I would do something like that?”

I’m so sick of staring at his face, that bruised veneer barely able to contain his indignance. I start to turn away, only that seems like retreating. So I gaze straight at him, straight through him, trying to make him feel an ounce of the disrespect and betrayal he’s made me feel.

Evidently, he doesn’t like my probing. He walks over to Opal. He hovers above her bassinet as she sleeps. “She’s our miracle.”

Outside, the sky has lightened enough to see the stout white buildings of Cedars’ campus through the hospital room’s only window.

“It happens sometimes. After IVF, even when it seems impossible. It happens.” Gabe caresses the air around Opal’s face, knowing better than to touch and risk waking her. His face is strained when he returns his attention to me, but his eyes are resolute, clear as ever. Despite myself, I believe him. Despite myself, when he says, “I never meant for any of this to happen,” I know it’s true. While it doesn’t change anything, I know he’s being honest with me about Opal.

Only, something about his word choice strikes me as off. It’s plurality. Any of this. And something else he said earlier when I was hardly listening, how it would be bad for everyone if Regina had gotten the courts involved.

“Is there more?” I ask. For a smart man, he’s incredibly gifted at looking stupid. “You said you never meant for any of this to happen. What else did you do?”

“What? No. Nothing. I just mean, this. Jasper.”

“You’d think after lying to me for the last two years, you’d be better at it.”

He shrugs like I’m being cute, and I continue to glare at him until he sighs and retreats to the couch.

“It was just supposed to be one time, with Bethany. I never meant for it to be—”

“Yes, yes, we’ve established this all just spiraled out of your control, that you’re an innocent bystander here.” He frowns. I’m not being unduly mean. He deserves anything, everything I want to throw at him. “Bethany Steinmann?” I ask. She’s the only Bethany I know.

He nods, tight lipped. I’m going to have to eke every bit of information out of him. Even now, when he’s cornered and his family is at stake, he won’t offer it freely.

Bethany Steinmann was my first private client in LA. First private client ever, in fact. In New York, I’d only ever designed for stores. Bethany found me through one of the jewelry stores that had commissioned my work. She liked my aesthetic. I liked her last name, “stone man” in German. She’d wanted to take the three-carat round diamond from her previous engagement ring and reset it for her new promise ring. I liked Bethany. I liked the way she thought about jewelry and life. I made her the perfect ring. When she wanted the perfect family to accompany it, I referred her to Gabe.

“Gabe, did you do this to her too?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Bethany knew.”

I release my balled fist, relieved that he isn’t that much of a monster.

“Her husband wanted a baby, but Bethany was too old.”

I cringe. Too old, as though at forty-four, Bethany had one foot in the grave.

“After six rounds of harvesting, it was clear she had no viable eggs. She was scared her husband would leave her, find a younger wife who could—” He spins his right hand in a circular motion that is meant to confer reproduction. “One time when he wasn’t at her appointment, she asked me about finding an egg. Only, she didn’t want her husband to know. Didn’t want any record.”

“So you were just like, ‘Sure, let me break my Hippocratic oath and do it off the books’?”

“No. I mean, I pushed back. I tried to convince her that her husband would come around, that the baby would need to know, for hereditary diseases and predispositions, but she was adamant. She said, ‘Just find someone who looks like me, and no one will ever know.’”

“And that was enough to convince you?”

“It was just supposed to be that one time.”

“But it wasn’t.”

He subtly shakes his head. “A few months later, Bethany’s friend came in, asking for what Bethany had. I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t be reasoned with, and she could have gotten my license revoked.”

“So it’s her fault? The great Dr. Irons, undone by some unstable woman with baby fever.” He frowns, disappointed in me again. “Do I know her? Bethany’s friend?”

He shrugs. “Her name was Liv, Liz. Something like that.”

“You don’t even remember her name?”

“It was five years ago. Do you know how many patients I’ve seen since then? I think she had an Italian accent. Or maybe Spanish?”

Liv Russo. I made her an engagement ring. And anniversary earrings. And a push present.

“And then, from there? What, anytime a woman wanted to use a donated egg without telling anyone, she came to you because you would do it off the books?”

Even before I see the recalculation on his face, I startle at my own naivete.

“Wait, did some of the women not know?”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Please stop saying that.”

“Do you know the odds of getting pregnant in your forties? At forty-one, forty-two, you have a thirteen point eight percent chance. After that it’s even worse. Four point two. They were all hoping for a miracle. No, not hoping. Expecting. With donor eggs, it’s over fifty-five percent right off the bat. They didn’t have to ask. I knew what they wanted. When a woman comes in and says, ‘Bethany recommended me,’ or ‘Tara’ or ‘Dianne—’” He starts rattling off names I recognize from my own client roster. Gabe and I used to joke that we were a packaged deal. I’d get them hitched, and he’d get them knocked up. It had sounded so innocent. The whole time, he knew what he was doing. “When they were over forty and had a referral, I knew what they were really asking for.”

His words send a chill right through me. Not just for what he’s done but how it all leads back to me. It started with Bethany. I recommended my husband.

I don’t want to listen to him anymore as he tries to justify what he did, insisting that he gifted his clients a motherhood they would never otherwise have, the choice he stripped from them and made on their behalf, a choice that could possibly be taken away from them again, if the donors ever found out and decided they wanted their genetic children back. In the files, I didn’t find any release forms relinquishing their right to their eggs. Gabe built in no protection for the women he’d violated.

“Gabe.” I can’t hide my horror.

He glowers at me. “You aren’t in the room with them every day. All they want, more than anything in the world, is to be pregnant. They’ll do anything. Pay anything. No questions asked.”

I glance over at Opal, who sleeps peacefully. I’m glad she’s sheltered from this, even if she can’t possibly understand.

“Besides.” His face goes smug. “They all knew, even if they didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know.” I scan my body for instincts I ignored. My bond with Jasper wasn’t immediate. When we brought him home from the hospital, I was tired, stressed. All he did was cry. I didn’t know how to help him. That disconnect, the way anxiety overshadowed affection—it wasn’t because I feared I wasn’t his mother. It’s because I knew I was. I wanted to protect him, and I didn’t know how.

“I had no idea,” I insist again.

Gabe leans toward the window, the early-morning sunlight outlining the expanse of his broad back, defined from surfing, as he stares out at Cedars’ quiet campus.

“So Aram was in on this too?” Aram would have had to be in on it. Other than to extract the eggs from the follicles, Gabe doesn’t touch the eggs. He wouldn’t have been able to swap them, to fertilize them on his own. “He was fine with you deceiving countless clients?”

Gabe spins toward me, frowning at my interpretation. I will keep reframing his story away from the heroic version he harbors. He deceived his clients. He broke his medical vow and made a shitload of money along the way.

“Aram understood that we were helping these women.”

“Only, now he’s dead. And Regina?”

“She was the reason it all worked.” He relishes some memory before his face falls as he realizes it didn’t work, not in the end. “Regina came up with the idea for a separate business, of casting calls. It was brilliant, really. We could advertise for phenotypic and genetic matches for clients. And the donors liked her. They trusted her.”

“Because she was one of them?”

“No.” His insistence startles me. “I told you. I didn’t plan for her. When she started working with us, she demanded to go through the process herself. Said she needed to be able to tell other women it was safe. And it was safe. We didn’t flood their systems with drugs like other donor-program companies. We paid them well. No one was victimized here.”

“A lot of people were victimized here.” I do the math in my head. Gabe sees between one and two hundred women a year. Not all of them would have been implanted with a donor embryo. What if a third, possibly half, were? Bethany’s daughter is five now. If he’s been doing this for five years, that could be as many as five hundred babies born as lies. “How many? How many times did you do this?”

“It’s not like I kept count.” His eyes flit back and forth as he tries to calculate the number of times he betrayed his clients. Whatever approximation he comes up with, he doesn’t want to divulge it to me. It doesn’t matter if it was twenty babies or a thousand. Any number is too many.

“How’d you connect with Regina?”

“She answered an ad on Craigslist.”

“You put up an ad for an egg recruiter on Craigslist?”

“It was for a tutor. At the start, when it was just a patient here and there, I’d put up an ad on Craigslist for a tutor and interview until I found a good match. Regina wasn’t a fit, but there was something about her. From the second I met her, I knew I could trust her.”

His words hit me hard, burning across my incision as I shift, the binder digging into the loose flesh across my abdomen. For some reason, this betrayal feels the worst of all.

“She saw how to make it all work: the office, the legitimate second business, separate staffs at each clinic. The casting calls. The system of running the eggs across the street to Aram. All Regina.”

His words stun me, how easily he deflects blame. How unwilling he is to be introspective, even now.

“So, who killed them? Who’s threatening us?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the break-in before Regina died?” We both know the other break-in, yesterday, was me. Barb.

Barb. Could Jasper really belong to her? Would she ever try to take him from me?

“Pretty sure that was paparazzi. They’re always lurking.” He says this with such disgust, such arrogance, still superior.

“You think the paparazzi killed Regina and Aram? That makes no sense. What about the restraining order? Was that really for Judy?”

He shakes his head no. I want to lash out at him for vilifying Judy, but I’d believed him. I was willing to assume she was unhinged just because she’s lonely. Nosy.

“Who was it for?”

“Just this dad who thought I should reimburse him when his wife couldn’t get pregnant. It wouldn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Why? His wife didn’t get the special Gabe Irons treatment?”

Gabe frowns like I’m being unnecessarily cruel and trying to hurt him. Only, it isn’t cruel. Cruel is just another word we use to demean women who don’t back down and submit to the niceties expected of them. To my surprise, I’m good at being honest. It’s cathartic, saying what I think without regard for how it might make him feel.

“He had a low sperm count and didn’t want to deal with it.”

“You need to go to the police.”

“I’ll lose my medical license.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

Gabe kneels beside my bed. “Let me fix this.”

“There is no fixing this.” My voice is too loud. It wakes Opal, who whines, then wails. Gabe lifts her from the bassinet like a fragile package. He holds her. Smells her. Pats her back, and her cries become coos as she’s comforted by him. Men get away with so much by being good fathers. But not this. Never this.

Gabe brings Opal to me. Her lips are sucking before I’ve even untied my gown. I unswaddle her, exposing her to the cold, harsh reality of this world.

“I’ll go to the police. I will. Give me a few days to get everything in order.” He isn’t asking. He’s cutting a deal, a confession on his terms. If Gabe goes to the police, Officer Gonzales will listen. After being doubted and dismissed, I find it difficult to conceive of being believed. It’s not me he’ll believe. It’s Gabe. And if Gabe speaks to him alone, without me, he can wield a tale that absolves him. I need to be present for his confession, which won’t be possible with a newborn and a raw incision across my abdomen.

“A few days. You need to stop. Now.”

“I have. We did the last few retrievals Reggie set up. Since she and Aram . . . there’s no one else I trust.”

Did he really just say this? That he’s stopped because he couldn’t find anyone he trusted? Not because he got two people killed? Not because he’s violating his patients? Not because he put his family at risk?

“Do we need to move? Me and the kids,” I quickly clarify. “Should we go somewhere?”

Gabe shrugs. “If they wanted to hurt me, they would have done it already.”

I’m not sure I agree that we can anticipate the behavior of someone we can’t identify, someone we can’t begin to know.

“I’ll leave. That way, no one will have any reason to threaten you,” he adds, as though this is a noble sacrifice he’s making, as if I’m not kicking him out.

I’m too tired to fight with him anymore, and the truth is, I want to go home. It’s so hard taking Jasper somewhere unfamiliar, navigating new sets of stairs or bookshelves that aren’t secured to the walls, electric fireplaces, or non-childproofed cabinets. It’s too much for me alone, for my body, limited by fresh stitches and healing wounds. At home, along the canals, we have neighbors in close proximity, a community who can watch and protect us.

“As soon as I’m home and settled, we’ll go to the police?”

“We’ll get through this,” he says with conviction, like our bond is still iron strong.

You can judge the strength of a metal by how much pressure it can withstand before deteriorating, how far it can be stretched, the impact it can endure, how much compression before it fractures. All metal has a breaking point, especially iron, if it isn’t fortified with anything else.

“I need you to go,” I say. Stretched, impacted, compressed. Not broken.

“I’ll go relieve Marisol.”

“No,” I shout, not wanting him anywhere near my son. But Jasper is Gabe’s son too. Gabe kisses my forehead, then walks over to Opal and strokes her head. As he’s leaving, I shout, “And Gabe? Give me back my phone.”

He hands it to me. He looks so sad and pathetic, though still handsome. I hate that attraction is woven into my feelings for this morally bankrupt man.

“There are all kinds of DNA tests out there. How’d you think this was going to end?”

“Even if they do find out, deep down, they already know.”

“Until one of the donors decides she wants her baby back,” I spit.

Gabe shoots me a confused squint like I’ve just said something incredibly stupid. “They have no claim. They signed all the standard paperwork. It was a totally legitimate business.”

“Except Regina,” I say coolly, and the condescension slips from his face. Except Regina. Only, Regina is dead.

“We’ll sort this out,” Gabe half begs, half insists. “We’ll figure out who’s after us. I’ll keep us safe.”

No, I think. I will.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Tessa

After Gabe leaves, I cry as I hold Opal, my tears darkening her white linen swaddle, stains that lay claim on her as mine. I hold her tightly, thinking of all the other mothers who have no idea what truths their children’s DNA holds, the secrets I can’t keep. Not from them, not from Barb either. When Gabe gave me back my phone, I read through the dozen texts she’d sent, saw the genuine fear Barb had for my well-being, the worry that persisted after she was thwarted at the nurses’ desk when she tried to visit me last night. I’ve let her know that I asked Gabe to leave, offering little explanation for why. I have to tell her about Jasper, and I will. I will trust my instincts that she wants to help, not ruin my life.

Barb knocks on the partially open door to my room, then rushes to me like a mother would.

“I’m sorry.” Barb takes my hands in hers. “I should have told you as soon as I had my suspicions about your husband. I shouldn’t have spied.”

I clutch her hands, shaking my head, insisting I’m not mad. We sit there, heads bent toward each other, silently acknowledging everything we’ve been through together. I want to hold on to this closeness, but it isn’t real, not until she knows about Jasper.

Barb lets go of my hands as she spots Opal, who lies in her bassinet, cocooned, awake. Barb asks if she can hold her.

“Welcome to the world, Opal.” She cradles my daughter, bending over to kiss her tiny face. I don’t know how to differentiate the gratitude from the fear, the certainty that whatever happens, this moment cannot last. It’s enough to make me cry.

“Hey.” Barb sits on the side of my bed and hands Opal to me so I can feed her. Before I know it, I’m telling her everything Gabe has admitted to me about his scheme, about Regina’s role. I don’t lay the blame at Regina’s feet, like Gabe did. Even if she streamlined the process, if she was better at talking to the donors, if she’s responsible for the choices she made, she’s not the perpetrator here. I won’t off-load Gabe’s blame onto anyone else.

During my story, Opal falls asleep with my nipple still in her mouth. I let her stay there, suckling, gently gnawing, cracking my nipple and guaranteeing the next feeding will be more uncomfortable. I want her latched to me. It gives me the strength to tell Barb the parts that scare me, the details that can still change everything between us.

“There’s something else.” My pulse pounds as I hold Opal’s small body against my bare chest, wanting her to give me strength. But I’m too exposed. I don’t know how to be this vulnerable. Barb stiffens with worry. She has no reason to hope. “I know why Jasper recognized Regina.”

Barb’s face remains stoic as she processes what I’m telling her, her connection to my son.

“You should know—” My voice is surprisingly calm. It betrays the anxiety electrifying my system. “Regina never signed paperwork. There’s no proof that she forfeited her rights to Jasper. Legally speaking.”

I hold my breath in anticipation of how she’ll respond as I clutch Opal, who emits gastric sounds too loud for such a tiny human. Despite the tension, Barb and I laugh. It feels good to laugh, even though it hurts, too, physically as well as emotionally.

“He has her eyes,” Barb says once our laughter fades. “I always thought there was something familiar about his eyes.”

Barb’s attention glazes over, shifting inward. Her eyes are Regina’s eyes too.

“She never wanted to be a mom. I’m not sure what attachment she developed to your son, but she never would have tried to take him from you.” And I hear what she doesn’t need to say: Barb would never try to take him from me either.

Relief courses through me, a cool rush of calm.

Barb stares intently at me. “We need to go to the police. Officer Gonzales can’t ignore this.”

“Gonzales will just think I’m a jilted wife with an axe to grind against my husband. We need someone else to come forward with DNA proof. One of the other mothers.”

I hand Opal to Barb as I use my arms to pull myself up and stiffly waddle over to the bassinet. Barb puts Opal down so I can change her. Naked, she’s all wrinkled limbs, not quite ready for this world. Each day, her skin will grow a little less pruned, her eyes a little more open, her body more nourished. Still, it will be my job to protect her.

I slip a diaper beneath Opal. “I’ll start with the ones I know, keep calling until someone agrees to help us.”

“You think they’ll be open to this? It’s a lot to absorb.” Again, I hear what she doesn’t say. It’s a lot for her to absorb too. She hasn’t yet processed what I’ve told her. Still, I know she won’t take Jasper from me. I trust that conviction, the bond it’s built upon.

“I can’t keep it a secret.” And I hope she hears the words I don’t say, too, that I would never, could never have kept this from her. That’s not how this will work between us. Not with the other mothers either. Maybe some of them will hate me for it. Maybe they’ll write me off as crazy, at least until the news breaks. And it will break. Whether it’s in a year or in ten, one of the children will take a DNA test. If the mothers find out I knew . . . if I keep this hidden . . . then I’m no better than Gabe.

I swaddle Opal, tugging the cotton so tight I’d worry I was suffocating her if I didn’t know this is what infants like. I’ve done this before. I know I won’t harm her by binding her snugly. I know her ragged breath is just the natural rhythm of a baby’s respiration. I know that the black-tar poop in her diaper is normal, that when it becomes green it will be normal too. I have so much wisdom inside me to trust. Most of all, I know to not let anyone make me doubt myself, my instincts, again.

“I don’t think you should go back to your house,” Barb says.

During flood watches, wildfires, evacuation orders, I’ve never understood why people refuse to leave their homes. I thought Gabe was my home. I thought we sheltered each other. But Gabe’s been the worst kind of threat, the one I couldn’t see until it was too late. Even now, as I look back for signs I missed, I don’t feel there were any. I thought the house was the illusion, new disguised as old, when it had always been Gabe who was the lie. The anger starts to rise again, a prickling in my chest that wants to unleash, and sometimes that kind of fury is a force to reckon with. Right now, though, it won’t help us. I don’t know what will. I just know that I’m tired and I want to be with my children in the only place that has ever felt like home. That’s not Gabe. It’s the house itself. It was Gabe’s dream, but it’s become my harbor.

“I don’t want to go anywhere else.” I shuffle to the bed. Although I’m ready to be strong, my body craves a rest. Anywhere we go, I’ll still be waiting for the murderer to find us. At least at home, I know the dangers, the systems to keep us secure. I settle onto the firm mattress.

“I’m staying with you.” Barb doesn’t hesitate. She isn’t conflicted. It’s natural, her maternal instinct to protect me as well as my children. It’s foreign for me to accept it. I will try. Because I don’t need to keep us safe alone. We will. Me and Barb.

There are things Gabe can’t take away from me. He can’t take away the pleasure of my daughter at my breast, the sensation of being woken by her cries and remembering she’s here. He can’t take away the first time she curls her fingers around mine. The first time she sneezes. The first time she yawns. He can’t take away the first time my son meets my daughter.

Jasper appears in the doorway, hugging a stuffed giraffe to his chest. When a hand nudges him into the room, I expect to see Marisol inch in behind him. The plan was for Marisol to bring him to meet Opal; then the four of us would return home. If Marisol thought it strange that she was bringing Jasp instead of Gabe, she didn’t convey it over the phone. She simply repeated the time and promised to bring my son.

Only, it’s not Marisol stepping into the room after Jasper. It’s Claire. I can’t hide my surprise at the sight of her. Jasper scans the room, trying to make sense of this place, until he spots me. Right away my chest swells. Jasper. My Jasper. My son.

“Mama.” He lets go of Claire and runs to me, abandoning the giraffe mid-trot. He charges into me, resting his head against my leg. If I could bend down to lift him, I would, staples and stitches be damned. My abdomen still isn’t strong enough. So I cling to him, feeling the burn through my incision.

Opal squawks, and Jasper perks up, confused. I wasn’t sure how much he’s understood, and I’m still not, even as he stumbles toward her bassinet.

“Jasper, that’s your sister, Opal,” I say. He reaches up and bangs on the plastic, tempting me to tell him to be gentle. The bin doesn’t even shudder with his touch. I use the remote to push my bed up so I can stand. Jasper gets distracted by the sounds and movement of the mechanical bed and tries to touch the buttons.

“Bun. Bun,” he says, pressing the remote too softly to move the bed, Opal already lost to him. I wanted their first meeting to be monumental. This is better, though. More honest than the tender scene I envisioned.

Claire remains at the door.

“Thanks, Claire. Thanks for coming to get us.” She brought Jasper. It’s an opening, a crack, however small. “Thanks for bringing my son.”

My son. My son. I think it again and again, fortifying it each time. My son. My son. My daughter. My children.

“Marisol had a family emergency, and I couldn’t exactly ask Dan to pick you up.”

This isn’t meant as an olive branch. It isn’t even an olive twig. A leaf, a bud.

“Well, it’s still appreciated.”

“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Gabe?” Her voice has the cool neutrality of a reporter. She drums her nails against the doorframe, impatient for a story she can relay or discredit at the playground. Claire isn’t my confidant. I’m not sure she ever was.

“Gabe and I are over. I’ve asked him to be gone by the time I get home today.” To my surprise, I have to stifle a cry when I say this. My bed gyrates as Jasper jabs the buttons. He’s close enough that I can smell the pineapple of his shampoo. The piquant scent unleashes something in me. I wipe my tears, uncertain if I’m crying for Gabe, or because of him. If I’m grateful for what I still have, or mourning what I’ve lost.

Claire studies me, inquisitive yet unsympathetic. It’s not cruel, exactly. Just distant.

“You’re sure that’s the best idea?” she finally says. “Whatever he’s done, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. And when it’s over and you’re still there, he’ll love you even more.”

We watch each other, and I’m struck by an overwhelming sadness for Claire, even though she regards me resolutely. There’s so much we don’t know about each other’s marriages, about each other too. I nod, pretending to hear her, when really I’m nodding from a different understanding. Claire and I were always going to lose each other. We want different things from this world.

“I am sorry, you know. I never meant to interfere.”

Claire observes me, betraying no emotion. Then she tilts her head toward the hall and says, “I’ll be downstairs.”

Just like that, I’m alone with both my children for the first time.

Jasper trades the remote for my bedsheet, playing a little game of peekaboo with its starchy fabric.

I limp over to Opal and carry her to the bed, where Jasper scrambles up beside me. I lean Opal toward him. “Jasp, this is your sister, Opal. You can touch her.”

He stares at the bundle of blankets in my lap, Opal’s pinched face barely visible beneath the pink-and-blue skullcap. I have no idea what’s going on in his head. It all started with this, with Jasper not being able to communicate fully. With me believing a better mother would be able to access the thoughts of her son.

Finally, he taps Opal on the shoulder, then burrows into my lap beside her.

“She’s going to come home with us today,” I tell him.

After Jasper was born, they kept me at the hospital for four nights. Everyone had advised me to stay as long as possible, to accept the help, the experience, the rest. I couldn’t wait to get home, to start our life as a family. This time, they’re eager to get rid of me after forty-eight hours. Opal’s gaining weight and latching well. The on-call pediatrician has deemed her healthy, but my body is too weak to do this alone. I’m not about to let Gabe back just because I need someone. Although Barb can help, she isn’t going to live with us permanently. Even if she wants to stay in our lives, she needs to develop a new normal. I need to too. And that starts by letting go of Gabe, by not protecting him. It starts with the calls I have to make. It starts with the mothers.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Barb

I’ve gotten so used to spying on Gabe, it’s become second nature. Except now I’m not spying on him for Regina but for Tessa, watching as he sets up a banner, rolls a bassinet around the room, situates the pillows on the couch, then rearranges them again. He never once glances out as I stare blatantly. I’m still invisible to him.

Tessa texts that she’s checking out of the hospital and will be back within the hour. If Gabe isn’t gone, I’ll go in there and make him leave. I’m not sure how I’ll do this, so I’m relieved when he disappears and doesn’t return. Once enough time’s passed, I trust he isn’t coming back. I unlock the house using the key Tessa gave me.

Inside, I take in the familiar furniture, Regina’s furniture. To her, it wasn’t Tessa’s. It was Jasper’s. She wanted to occupy his space, to exist in some version of his world. Maybe that’s twisted. As her mother, I ache for her, for everything she couldn’t tell me, for everything she tried to understand in the wrong ways.

Jasper’s sweet face appears to me, his eyes that are my eyes, his lips that Regina inherited from Isaac. I need to tell Isaac. But tell him what, exactly? It’s not like we’re going to take Tessa’s child from her, raise him as we raised Regina, between two houses where she never felt settled, never felt supported. I know Tessa’s worried I might try something, and I’m honestly not offended. It isn’t me she distrusts. It’s the situation that pits our love for her son against us, a crisis her husband created. The only truth, as far as I’m concerned, is that Regina donated her eggs. Tessa bore a child, a child who has my eyes and Isaac’s lips. A child who is hers, not Regina’s. As much as I’d like to claim Jasper as my grandson, it’s up to Tessa what kind of relationship Isaac and I have with her son.

In the kitchen, a sign hangs above the peninsula. Welcome home, Opal. I debate taking it down, throwing away the pastries on the counter, the envelope resting against the box. It isn’t sealed. I slip the card out. It reads I’m sorry, and there’s a printed list of women’s names and dates folded inside. Right away, I know. These are the mothers he deceived.

The list is longer than I’d expected. At least three hundred names. Some of the women are so famous, even I’ve heard of them. When scandals involving celebrities break, I never feel particularly sympathetic for the famous people involved. They chose life in the spotlight. But this? No one chose this.

Some dates have multiple names listed, with asterisks indicating that he’s not sure which patient he implanted with another woman’s egg. How could he forget? At what point did it become another workday? I’ve always felt this way about doctors. More so as I’ve aged. My knee pain is the knee pain of every seventy-year-old they see. My bone decay. My heart rate. At what point did Gabe stop seeing these women as people? As mothers? At what point did Regina too?

How could my daughter do this? She was never motivated by money. She only would have been part of this if she believed she was helping these women—the mothers, the donors too. This doesn’t justify her decisions. I’m not excusing her actions. Rather, it’s a way of seeing my daughter in this horrible thing she did.

I fold the list and place it back in the card, the card in the envelope, the envelope on the counter. I understand Tessa’s impulse not to keep her husband’s secret. I’m glad she told me, trusted me at her own risk. And I wouldn’t dare doubt her conviction that she needs to tell the other mothers, too, to undermine what her body has just been through by implying she isn’t thinking clearly. But it’s a monumental decision, one she can’t undo. There’s no harm in letting it marinate. Nothing will be different in a week, a month. Yes, I can hear the hypocrisy, the advice I didn’t follow myself. I don’t want Tessa to regret her decision the way I do mine with Jessica.

When a car pulls to a stop in the alley, I throw the door open to find Dan Huntsman’s wife helping Tessa out of the passenger seat. I hate that I think of her as an extension of that angry man. I don’t know her name. She hoists Tessa’s arm over her shoulders and helps her toward the house. Then Tessa motions that she can make it inside on her own. The neighbor returns to the car to unbuckle Jasper. He spots me and barrels over. His small body crashes into my leg, sending a sharp punch through my bad knee that’s quickly overshadowed by relief. He’s safe. It’s more than that. He’s safe with me. Still, it’s Tessa’s choice. I must fight my instincts with him. As his grandmother. As his friend too.

The neighbor carries Opal’s car seat over and hands it to me. It’s heavy, and the stinging in my knee is now a throbbing. I manage to use both hands and arch my back to keep hold of it. The woman’s gaze locks with mine, but there’s no communing, no acknowledgment of the village we’ll build around Tessa. In handing Opal to me, she’s relinquishing any role in this.

Jasper toddles around me, peering inside.

“Dada,” he calls, confused by his father’s absence. I manage to lug Opal’s car seat into the living room, placing it beside the couch. Tessa shuts the door and sets the alarm. She surveys the banner Gabe’s hung, the counter he’s covered in food. I can’t tell if she’s hoping to find Gabe, too, or if it’s starting to sink in just how difficult this is going to be without him. I’m here now, but I can’t stay forever, not even if Tessa lets me be a part of their lives.

“He’s not here,” I tell her.

Tessa nods distractedly. I help her to the couch, ask her if she wants some ice for her incision. She shakes her head no and motions to the bassinet in the corner, asking me to wheel it over beside the couch, where she grunts as she bends over to lift Opal out of the car seat and into the bed. When I start to help, she shakes her head no again. As painful as it is, as much as her body still has to heal, Tessa wants to do this on her own. Despite Tessa’s clunky movements, Opal doesn’t wake. She keeps her lids closed tight against this uncertain world. Outside, the man who walks his two Yorkies rushes by. Across the canal, I lock eyes with the man who pushes his bike, the child’s seat still empty. You’re a father, I commune to him over the waterless basin. Protect her. He scratches his beard as we breathe each other in. In our contact, I hear him promise that he will.

The house phone rings. Gabe’s name blinks on the caller ID. Tessa shakes her head no yet again, and we let it go to voicemail. He calls four times before getting the hint.

Jasper and I roll a ball back and forth on the floor as Tessa rests on the couch. I can tell from her steady breathing that she isn’t sleeping; that, as still as she is, her mind is racing. Suddenly, the room reeks of excrement, but not the yeasty odor of baby poop, which, even after all these years, I can still recall in an instant. Jasper points to his bottom and shouts, “Poo. Poo.”

Tessa sits up, shifts her focus between Jasper and the staircase, dismayed. It’s been years since I’ve changed a diaper, but like the memory of baby poop, it’s something that never leaves you. I offer to change his diaper, knowing not to read too much into it when Tessa tells me it would be a big help.

When we return downstairs, Tessa is now upright on the couch, reading the sheets of paper with the women’s names. Jasper races across the room, lunging for a bag. I help him dump out dozens of colorful plastic shapes, their magnetic edges gravitating toward each other and locking into place. I make my way across the room to sit beside her. Thanks to my career, I’ve had a lot of experience offering advice that people don’t want to hear, circumventing the truth rather than plowing right through it.

“I know you want to do the right thing. You just got home. Let your body heal. Let yourself adjust to the change. This information will still be here when you’re ready.”

Tessa nods, skimming one page, flipping to the next. “So many of my friends are on this list.”

In the hospital, it had surprised me when Tessa said she’d start with the women she knew, that Gabe could do this to people he’d met for dinners and playdates. Not he. Them. If Tessa is the one to call, to expose the truth, the mothers will blame her as much as they blame Gabe. They’ll ostracize her, shun her like her neighbor friend has. Though we need evidence to bring to Officer Gonzales, she can’t call them. She can’t do this to the mothers. She can’t do this to herself either.

I try a different tactic. “See here.” I point to the names with asterisks. “We don’t know which ones were—” The words are too horrifying to vocalize. “We’ll unnecessarily scare some of these mothers if we reach out to them now. We need more information. We need to come up with a plan.”

“When this breaks, they’re all going to be terrified that it happened to them. Everyone in their life is going to ask, ‘Isn’t that the clinic you went to?’ At least this way, they’ll know first, have time to cope.”

It’s become a foregone conclusion that this will break. That doesn’t mean Tessa needs to be the one to crack it open.

“I can’t keep Gabe’s secret,” Tessa insists.

“Let’s not decide anything now.” I gingerly reach over and take the list from her hands. I fold it and return it to the counter. “We’ll make a plan. Trust me, you don’t want to do something this big without thinking it through first.”

I haven’t told her about Jessica, my missteps at work. I haven’t wanted her to see me the way Jessica did, as an old lady who confuses meddling for helping. I don’t want to tell her now, but I will, if it will help her make a better choice than I did.

“You’re right.” Tessa lies back on the couch and drapes her arm across her face.

A loud crash jolts Tessa upright again, and she scans the room, expecting disaster. It’s only Jasper, throwing the plastic pieces against the wall. Tessa winces from the sudden movement, shuddering each time the plastic thumps.

My knees crack as I stand. “What would you say to me and Jasper taking a little trip to the park?”

Opal’s asleep in her bassinet. Tessa could use this time to rest, restore, regroup.

At the sound of park, Jasper is already standing, shouting, “Par. Par.”

He waddles over and reaches for my hand. Again, I remind myself not to read more into this than what it is: an adult willing to give him what he wants, a nod from his tired mother, who could use a moment to herself. We all need to exhibit patience right now. Me, in defining my relationship with Jasper. Tessa, in contacting the mothers. Jasper, in tugging my hand to get to the park.

When Tessa locks the French doors behind us and stumbles over to the entryway to set the alarm, I’m reminded that we all can’t wait too long. Everything’s calm for now, but my daughter’s murderer is out there somewhere. Someone who might know the truth. Someone who has already killed a second time. Someone who has no reason to be patient.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Tessa

After I set the alarm, I lie back down on the couch, trying to decide whether this makes me safe. Over the last seventy-two hours, I’ve uncovered more truths than I could have imagined. Yet I’ve learned nothing about who might be after Gabe, or who killed Regina and Aram. The alarm countdown ends, beeping to indicate it’s set. Despite its security, I remain on edge.

With Jasper and Barb gone, Opal’s shallow breathing fills the house. Conversations from tourists waft in. Two women speedwalk by, talking about a date. “They were fashion sweatpants, but still. On a first date?” one woman says. “Next!” her friend rejoices, glancing at me as they walk past. A couple—neither of them can be more than twenty years old—stop at my bougainvillea and lean into each other for a selfie. They don’t notice me until after they’ve taken the picture, and the girl mouths, “Sorry.” I nod that it’s fine as she tugs her boyfriend out of view. I’m jealous of their voyeurism, so comfortable in their lives that they can envy someone else’s. I’ve never felt more in a fishbowl, more like a sitting duck—all the animalistic clichés—than I do now. Their presence doesn’t make me feel safe either. It never did.

Barb is right. I don’t have a plan. I can’t just call one of my clients and say, Hey, we haven’t talked since I made those earrings for your anniversary, but you should know, my husband implanted you with another woman’s egg. Oh, and I had the baby, so I’ll be back to work in no time. Don’t be a stranger. I hear how this sounds. And it won’t be the same as it was telling Barb. With Barb, it was enriching. A gift. With the other mothers, I’ll be taking something from them, something they don’t know they could lose. Still, I can’t just sit here waiting for my body to heal, hoping the killer won’t come for us. Maybe, if the mothers know, if the truth’s exposed and Gabe’s prosecuted for his crimes, the killer will have no reason to strike. My body isn’t capable of much right now. It can call the mothers. It’s the only thing I can think to do that might protect us.

I shuffle over to the counter to get the list, to the front door, where my phone’s somewhere at the bottom of my purse, then back to the couch. I cradle the phone against my chest as I craft a short script. I can picture Barb’s patient face cautioning me, but I need to get the truth out. I physically can’t hold on to it anymore. And I only need one woman to believe me. One woman to send her child’s DNA for testing. One person to make this whole house of cards come crashing down.

I run my finger down the list of names, stopping on Nancy Clark. She’s been my client through three engagements. The call goes to voicemail. Before I can leave a message—what can I possibly say in a recording?—she texts that she’s in a movie.

Anything urgent? she writes.

There’s no urgency between a jeweler and her client, which only makes my call stranger.

No rush, I write back. This isn’t news for a text either.

I try three more clients, feeling a strange mix of relief and impatience when their voicemails pick up. Then panic when Lucy, one of my most regular clients, answers with “Tessa,” like she was just thinking about me. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I have these diamond studs I want to get reset into something a little hipper.”

I have loyal customers. It’s because I do good work. Gabe had loyal customers too. It’s because he did good work. Too good.

“Hi, Lucy.” I tread carefully. “I’d be happy to do that. I’m calling for another reason, though.”

“Oh?”

Suddenly, the script I was practicing just moments before has vanished.

“Listen, this is going to sound crazy.” I cringe. Why did I start that way? “You went to my husband, Gabe Irons, for fertility issues?”

She pauses, then mutters, “That’s confidential.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. There’s something you need to know about Gabe. He hasn’t been entirely honest with his clients. I don’t want to worry you, but he may have—”

“Well then, let’s not worry me, all right?” She hangs up before I can finish my sentence.

Gabe was right. She knows.

My phone buzzes. Gabe’s picture fills the screen. It’s one of my favorites, even though I have no idea when I took it. He looks impossibly handsome and confident. Now I can see how his smile is too even, his expression too pleased with itself. It’s like a switch. Everything I loved about him now disgusts me. I send his call to voicemail.

As I’m dialing Trixie next, a text comes through. When can I see the kids? I ignore him again.

I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to Trixie, that she’d silently stopped being my client, until she picks up. “What do you want, Tessa?”

I forgo our normal small talk and start to tell her that Gabe has been lying to his patients.

“You’re serious?” Trixie barks. “After your husband convinced me to do five rounds of IVF with no results? What happened to ‘one and done’? To ‘the man who can get any woman pregnant’? You have some nerve.”

Her name blinks across my screen as she disappears from my life. She’s angry because Gabe couldn’t get her pregnant, not because he implanted her with another woman’s egg. I’ll happily lose a client if it means there’s one less woman out there whom Gabe has violated.

The call with Trixie gives me the conviction I need to continue. I choose Ciara next.

“Tessa?” she says, confused. Ciara is a newer client. Was a newer client? It’s hard to know whether it’s a one-off project versus the start of an ongoing relationship. I made her a pendant with a teardrop opalescent stone, lab-created from breast milk.

“Ciara, I—” I stumble, remembering she was Gabe’s client first. Your husband mentioned you’re a jeweler, she said when we met to discuss the project. He’s a godsend. Even then, her words had sounded too zealous.

“It’s so funny you called,” she interrupts. “I found another bag of milk at the bottom of my freezer. I’m getting it made into a stone now. Can we set up a meeting to go over ideas?”

Two weeks ago, I would have dived at this offer headfirst, all in. I would have viewed it as a sign that I could claw my way back. That rather than ruining my career, motherhood and pregnancy have tapped me into projects like breast milk jewelry that I wouldn’t have understood so intimately before. Breast milk that Ciara produced because Gabe had made her fertile. Gabe, whom she isn’t about to turn against now.

“Why don’t you give me a call when the stone comes in, and we’ll set something up?”

“It shouldn’t be more than a few weeks.”

I try to imagine my life in a few weeks. Opal losing her nocturnal rhythms, sleeping longer stretches. Jasper, adapting to the reality of our new family dynamic. Where will Gabe be then? And Barb? Will I have found a mother to come forward? Will the killer have been caught? Will I have kept my children safe?

As she’s hanging up, Ciara says, “Oh, and tell Dr. Irons I say hi. He’s probably responsible for half my friends’ children at this point.”

I picture a playground, a birthday party, full of children with betrayals in their DNA. This isn’t a random woman here or there but entire communities of mothers who’ve been deceived.

From her bassinet, Opal squawks, her vocal cords too underdeveloped for an outright cry. My sutures tug as I stand, and I rest both hands on the side of her bassinet as I prepare my body for the task of lifting my daughter from her bed.

On the couch, I nestle Opal in my arms, angling her mouth toward my nipple. I should unswaddle her. I don’t have the energy to wrap her back up again and can’t remember why it’s so bad to let her feed cocooned like this. Gabe keeps calling, and I let the phone ring. Except it’s on vibrate, so it’s anticlimactic, just tremor after tremor on the couch beside me. At some point, Opal’s lips fall open, loosening their latch as her breath heavies with sleep. I use my last reserve of energy to place Opal into her bassinet, then flop back onto the couch. The list of names rests on the coffee table, and I scan it, unsure if I have the energy to place any more calls. One name pops out at me, someone I didn’t refer. It’s nearly impossible to get an appointment with Gabe. Women I barely know reach out to me. Maya Linsky didn’t. I never knew she was Gabe’s client.

Maya’s son is dead. Is there any reason for her to know the truth about his genetics? How will it help her? How will it help any of these women to know, to come forward and expose themselves at the center of a scandal? A scandal ripe for documentaries and headlines and urban lore. Barb was right. I need a better plan. I can’t call these women and implode their lives. I can’t do this to Maya, to any of them. Even though Gabe is the perpetrator, I’ll become the villain.

I lie supine, thinking back to that dinner when I told Gabe about Maya, the aroma of burnt coconut, what I thought I’d uncovered about Dan. Did Gabe choke when I said her name? Did he shudder? I don’t remember him having a reaction. Maybe he didn’t make the connection between my story and his client Maya. Maybe he’s had several patients named Maya. Maybe he forgot about her, like he’s forgotten about so many of these mothers, such that a child’s death meant nothing to him.

A pounding wakes me up. I didn’t realize I’d drifted to sleep. I jump up faster than I should, my incision screaming like I’ve ripped a stitch. Is someone trying to break in? To crack the glass? The pounding continues. I scan the room, my heartbeat pulsating in my wound. Opal’s asleep in the bassinet. And Jasper? Where’s Jasper? I panic until I see him blowing raspberries against the glass door. I stumble over, my incision on fire. The alarm beeps when I open the door, and I limp over to the opposite side of the house, hoping to get to the keypad before the alert intensifies and wakes Opal.

“Someone didn’t want to get off the slide.” Barb helps Jasper inside. He trips on the lip of the door like he does every time. Today, he laughs, but as easily he could have burst into tears. Jasper runs to me, jumping on me, making the searing pain worse. I wrap him in my arms and flop to the floor, ignoring the tearing that burns. If my scar ends up crooked and raised, my abdomen shelved, forever puffy, my imperfect body will hold the marks of motherhood, of putting my children first.

Jasper spots a wooden peg puzzle and abandons me for its sea creatures, trying to force them into the wrong cavities. I shuffle back to the couch, wincing with every small step. I haven’t taken any painkillers since I left the hospital.

Barb sits beside me. “You okay?”

I can’t begin to answer this, so I ask her to get the bottle of Advil from the kitchen cupboard and then pop three. It’s the same as my ibuprofen prescription.

“You sure you don’t want anything stronger?”

“It’s all I have in the house. I’ll be fine.” I shift again, and it feels like the doctors have left a serrated knife inside me, its jagged edges sawing at the sutures holding me together.

Jasper starts to yawn. It’s past time for his second nap. I motion him off the floor, where he stares up at me, bleary eyed and obstinate, refusing to budge. I grunt as I stand to coax him up.

“Jasp, up now.” It comes out less forceful than I intend. He makes no gesture of heeding my weak command. I consider scooping him up, smothering him with kisses before he can protest, but I’m not supposed to lift him for another month. The prospect sounded heartbreaking when Gabe was here to help. Now, without him, it’s impossible.

“I can get him,” Barb offers tentatively, the longer conversation we still need to have sitting heavily between us. For now, she’s dancing around it, a polite little shimmy that lets me know how precarious the truth is for both of us.

Barb’s and Jasper’s footsteps disappear upstairs, their muffled voices vanishing along with a conversation about trucks. Through the French doors, I meet the gaze of the man who pushes his bike around the canal, his child’s seat always empty. He looks how I feel, eyes engulfed in deep purple, hair standing at odd angles. Clothes wrinkled, jaw hardened beneath an overgrown beard. He stares at me, sending a chill down my spine.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone fall asleep that quickly,” Barb says as she staggers down the stairs, trying to hide or ignore her limp. She keeps talking about Jasp and his impressive stuffed animal collection, all of which crowd his crib. My attention is fixed on the man, who continues to study me.

“Barb,” I whisper. When I sense her at my side, the man scuttles down the pathway, out of view.

“What?”

“There was a guy outside. Gave me the creeps is all.”

Barb unloops her purse from the back of a stool at the peninsula and tosses it over her shoulder.

“You’re leaving?” Suddenly, I’m breathless, afraid, dizzy. I’m not ready for Barb to leave, to do this on my own.

“I’m getting your prescriptions. It’s not up for debate. You don’t have to take them, but I’m not going to sit here and watch you hurt more than you have to.” She digs through her purse, pats down her pockets, then asks, “Can I borrow your car?”

I hit Standby on the alarm, then wait at the door to the garage as Barb backs into the alley. It won’t take her more than twenty minutes. Still, it’s a reminder that at some point, she will leave for good.

I lock the door to the garage and punch the Away code on our alarm, Jasper’s birthday. All our passwords are variations of his birthday. That will have to change now that Opal’s here, now that it seems like favoritism. I’m about to press the Home button when Jasper shouts a string of gibberish from upstairs. I rush to the bottom of the stairs, then hesitate, waiting to see if he’ll fall back to sleep. He doesn’t cry again, so I retreat to the living room. The house is quiet, unsettlingly so. I don’t want to do this alone.

My breasts sting, the familiar pins and needles I haven’t felt since Jasper was nursing. My milk has come in. Already, I’m engorged, uncomfortably swollen. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s almost as painful as my incision, more nagging than clawing, just as fertile. Opal’s still asleep. While I don’t want to wake her, my body won’t be able to wait very long. I should pump. I hate pumping. It makes me feel animalistic in all the wrong ways. It’s necessary, though, if I want to keep my production up. I’ll pump in a few minutes. Let me just shut my eyes, gather my energy to pump or wake her.

I’m asleep before I can cycle through these limited options again.

I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep when something startles me awake. I jump up, causing that searing along my stitches to ignite again. The compression band around my waist cuts into my swollen stomach. Two sodden circles spotlight my breasts, full past capacity and tingling. My entire body stings, exacerbated by my racing pulse. Slowly, I shift my gaze to the French doors, certain I won’t see anything, that it’s just my mind, the canals, playing tricks on me.

Only, there’s a man at the door, hands against his forehead, peering in. We see each other, and he stands upright. It’s the man who rides his bike around the canal, the one with the bright-orange child seat. The man who looks how I feel, who so recently gave me the creeps. He reaches for the handle. I sigh in relief because I locked it after Jasper and Barb returned. He can’t get in. If he breaks the glass, the alarm will blaze. It may take a while for the police to arrive, but everyone along Linnie Canal will hear. Someone will help. I try to relax, to remind myself we’re safe. His hand starts to twist the handle. It’s locked. I know it’s locked. I know it won’t turn. As he pushes down, the latch releases and the door inches open.

I forgot to lock the door. The alarm—I wait for it to sound. It will blare. It will scare him away, alert some Good Samaritan. But the alarm isn’t on. I forgot to hit Home when Barb left. The man’s boots clap against the hardwood as he steps inside.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Barb

At the pharmacy, I wait behind five other customers. The line is moving quickly. The pharmacist rings up each customer with militant speed before beckoning the next, until I’m first in line. I check my watch. I’ve been gone thirteen minutes. I’m not superstitious, but the unlucky number irks me, making me anxious to return, even though the children are asleep and Tessa needs to rest. It’s instinctual, this need to get back to them, this urgency that I never should have left.

In front of me, the customer is unhappy with the higher cost of her medication.

“I get this filled every week,” she insists to the no-nonsense pharmacist, who keeps saying, “I don’t set the price.”

“But it’s not right,” the woman argues.

“You need to take it up with your insurance.” She angles around the woman, signaling to me to approach. The customer isn’t budging. Behind me, the line has multiplied. A dozen people file up the aisle. Still, the customer stands her ground. Although I agree that she should not acquiesce to the cruel whims of the insurance industry, she stands between me and getting back to Tessa, the children.

Finally, the woman grabs her prescription and huffs off. The pharmacist motions me up with an index finger like I’m in trouble. I give her Tessa’s name and scroll to her contact to read off her number.

“Is this for someone else?” the pharmacist asks.

“For my daughter. She just had a C-section.” I don’t falter when I say this, and it astounds me, how natural it feels to call her family.

The pharmacist squints, like she’s trying to peer through my flesh to see the blood inside and know if I’m lying. I act annoyed, impatient. Because I am annoyed, impatient—and fearful she will tell me what I already know. I have no legitimate claim to Tessa, to any of them.

The pharmacist sighs and stands, returning moments later with a white paper bag. “Next time have your daughter put it in writing,” she says as she hands me the bag.

From her SUV, I text Tessa to tell her I’m headed back. Cars crawl along Pacific Avenue. I angle my head to peer out the driver’s side window, hoping to see around the endless traffic. Every inch feels like an eternity. I don’t even hit the gas pedal, just release the brake, then engage it again. At this rate, I won’t be there until dinner. Maybe I should pick up food while I’m out. I discount this idea. I want to be back as quickly as possible.

At last, I enter the canal neighborhood, barrel up and down a bridge on Dell Avenue. I roll down their alley, then slam the brakes when I see it. The bike. The one with the orange child seat. It’s resting against Tessa’s garage.

I fumble to unbuckle the seat belt and jump out of the car, ignoring the spasm in my knee as my feet hit the pavement, and plow toward the front door. When I try the door, it’s locked. The keys are in my purse on the passenger seat. I debate grabbing them, but I pound on the door instead. I need to make sure Tessa and the kids are okay.

“Tessa? You there?” I put my ear to the door and hear the murmurs of two voices: one male, the other Tessa’s. I pound harder.

Her voice grows clear through the closed door. “Barb, can you come back later?”

Her voice is eerily calm. In it, I hear her plea for help.

“Sure, I’ll come back later?” I say, equally steady.

“That’d be great,” she says.

They might be watching me through the Ring camera, so I turn slowly, calmly, toward the car, fighting the instinct to sprint. One steady step, then another. When I get to the car, I’ll drive a few feet down the alley, out of sight, then dial 9-1-1. Another step. Right, then left. I’ve made it five steps when the door opens behind me and an arm reaches out to yank me inside.

My head hits hard against the wall as he throws me aside to slam the door shut. He grabs my bicep and pushes me toward the living room, where Tessa sits. The light glints off something he’s clutching in his other hand. When he shoves me onto the couch and hovers above us, I see it. A chef’s knife, its edge gleaming.

My head spins as I try to piece together what’s going on. Where are the children? Has he hurt them? Tessa motions with her eyes to Opal’s bassinet in the corner, then toward the ceiling. Both children are still asleep. I don’t want to think what might happen if they wake up.

I should have called the police the moment I saw his bike. I shouldn’t have run to the door, shouldn’t have acted on impulse instead of using common sense. Tessa’s car is double-parked in the middle of the alley, the driver’s side door still open. Someone will notice it, investigate, maybe even call the police. Someone will come for us. For now, I need to keep him from using that knife.

“Your issues are with my husband. Not us,” Tessa says. “You don’t want to do this.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” He looms over us, his back to the French doors and the walkway beyond. The tourists can’t see the knife, only three people engaged in a private moment. “I want the police to do their job. I want to be at home.” He punctuates each desire with a jab of the knife. Each stab causes me to jump. Tessa reaches for my hand, presses her palm firmly into mine. “With my boy and my wife. But I can’t. Your husband took all of that from me.”

He starts pacing aggressively enough that it attracts the people walking by. They glance sheepishly as they breeze past. Prying is only fun when you won’t get caught.

My boy. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have known the tone, the cadence of a childless parent. It’s almost enough to make me ache for him, his misdirected grief, until I remember he’s my daughter’s murderer.

“Was your wife a patient of Dr. Irons?” The man looks at me as if he’s forgotten I’m here. “Sorry, I’m a little behind here. Can you tell me what happened?”

Through human resources training, I’ve prepped for a lot of scenarios. Sexual harassment. Racism. Ageism. Ableism. Mental health crises. Never this. Never appeasing the man who killed your daughter. But I know how to reason with people who are upset, incensed. The main thing is to get them talking. More often than not, more than they want lawsuits, raises—revenge, even—people just want to be heard. The way he seethes, the way he isn’t in control of his anger, it communicates that he has a story to tell and no one to listen. I’ll listen. Even as my mind rages This man killed your daughter, I’ll let him tell me his story.

“Who’s this?” he asks Tessa, motioning toward me with the knife.

I’m about to answer Regina’s mother because I want my face seared into his memory—the face of the mother of the woman he killed.

Before I can speak, Tessa says, “My mother.”

It catches us both off guard, me and this man, this murderer.

“I’m guessing you don’t know the kind of man your daughter married.” He snarls at me, exposing small, crowded teeth. “I’m guessing you don’t know how he took advantage of his patients, extorted money from them, then violated them.”

His words ricochet off the walls, the floors, the counters, the bassinet, any hard surface. He continues to shout that Gabe can’t get away with this, that he wants his son back. I brace myself for Opal’s cry, for Jasper calling to Tessa from upstairs, what either of those sounds might do to this unhinged man. The house remains quiet except for his booming voice.

When Tessa starts to speak, he shouts “I don’t want to hear your excuses” with so much venom that Tessa squeezes my hand tighter.

Outside, clusters of tourists hustle by, determined to mind their own business. Could this man actually harm us with so many witnesses around?

“Everyone said, ‘You have to use Dr. Irons. He’s the best. He can get anyone pregnant.’ The wait list was over a year. I tried to convince my wife there were other doctors, but it had to be Dr. Irons. She wouldn’t trust anyone else.” He scratches his head with the butt of the knife. “Ex-wife. I have your husband”—he waves the knife in Tessa’s direction—“to thank for that too. She doesn’t want to accept the truth. She keeps telling me to let it go. How can I let my boy go?”

“You can’t,” I say because it’s true. When your child dies, you want answers. At any cost.

There’s a glimmer. A moment of gratitude before he goes cold again. I shift my attention toward the bassinet. Opal remains silent. He hasn’t seen her. We have to keep it that way. I need him back here with me.

“How’d your child pass?”

“Leigh syndrome. I’d never heard of it either. Funny thing, though. My wife isn’t a carrier. Ex-wife. I had her DNA tested after Marcus . . . it’s through the X chromosome, so only the mother can pass it to a son. If we had a daughter—” He laughs in disbelief. “If we had a daughter, maybe she’d be a carrier. She wouldn’t have developed Leigh’s. She’d still be alive.” He points the knife at Tessa again. She clutches my hand a little tighter. “And your husband would have gotten away with it.”

Tessa’s hand goes limp in mine. “You’re Maya’s husband.”

He emits that cruel little laugh again. “I forgot that you recommended your husband until I saw you at the clinic—”

Tessa wears an expression I can’t decipher, something dawning on her. “It was you, when Aram—” Then she snaps to and grows insistent. “I didn’t know Maya went to Gabe. I didn’t refer her. I didn’t know about any of this.”

Any of this. I think I understand what’s going on, but it’s difficult to piece things together when he’s brandishing a knife in our direction. He had a son who died. The son had a disease that only affects boys, one that’s passed down through the mother? Somehow, the presence of the disease indicated that his son was not his wife’s, that the child inherited the disease from the woman whose egg Gabe had secretly used.

“I’m sorry about your son.” Tessa is alarmingly good at controlling her emotions. “I’ll go to the police with you. I’ll back you up. I know what Gabe did.”

What Gabe did to you too, I want to scream. If this man learns she’s a victim, too, maybe he’ll stop pointing the knife at the wrong person. I open my eyes wide, motion with my chin toward the list of papers on the coffee table, willing her to tell him, to let him have sympathy for her. But this man has no sympathy. Just grief. And desperation.

“You think I haven’t tried talking to the police?” He steps closer to us, the knife inching toward Tessa’s face. “I went to the police, wrote the attorney general, the AMA. Thing is, I don’t have evidence.” To my relief, he starts pacing again, the knife retreats. “Maya wanted Marcus cremated so we could spread his ashes at the beach. I liked that, letting him live on in his favorite place. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t realize how unlikely it was that he would have this syndrome since it didn’t run in my wife’s family. I didn’t want to believe it. Now . . . now, no one else believes me.”

“I believe you,” I say. He glares at me. I recoil, unsure why this was the wrong thing to say, if we’ve passed the point of reason.

As he continues to pace and talk, Tessa makes strange facial movements, flicking her nose toward the glass doors. Outside, three women stop mid-powerwalk, Dan Huntsman’s wife and two others I don’t recognize. Tessa mouths, “9-1-1.” The women stare at her with an array of emotions, ranging from conflict on the face of Dan’s wife to outright disdain on one of her friend’s faces. Dan Huntsman’s wife says something to the other women, and they walk out of our view. Tessa slumps back, defeated.

“They weren’t very careful, your husband and his associates.” Tessa’s gaze darts in my direction. Associates. Regina. Aram. “I guess that’s what arrogance gets you. Or maybe they were gloating. You know what they were doing was legal? The stuff I could prove, anyway. Egg harvesting. Totally legal. I know because when the AMA and the attorney general were useless, I hired my own lawyer. After a hundred thousand dollars of legal fees, he tells me that without Marcus’s DNA, we can’t prove that your husband used someone else’s egg on my wife.”

He collapses into the armchair beside the couch, leans forward, allows the hand with the knife to dangle between his legs. Momentarily, his eyes drift downward, unfocused and distant. I glance at Tessa, motioning toward the knife. His grip is loosened around it. We can grab it, overtake him. Then I notice the brace around her midsection. She’s in no state to attack. Before I act, his attention returns to us, knuckles white around the knife’s handle.

“I called her friends who used him, which only pissed off Maya more. See, people don’t want to know the truth if it will destroy their world. Maya still doesn’t want to know. But then he gets away with it. And I can’t let that happen.” His voice is pleading now, desperate and depraved. He doesn’t want to be doing this. I believe that. He also won’t stop. “I tried talking to his associate, the girl with the tattoos.” I flinch, and Tessa’s hand squeezes mine. He’s talking about Regina. This man, who killed my daughter, is talking about Regina. “I didn’t mean—this isn’t how I wanted it to happen. If she’d just talked to me. If she was willing to help, then—”

“What did you do to her?” I recognize the voice as my own, but I don’t feel it emanate from me, all that vigor and anger behind it. He peers over at me, tormented. I am no longer capable of having sympathy for this man.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

My mind is whirling now, and despite the stiffness in my knee, I start to lunge forward. Tessa holds my hand firmer, keeping me grounded on the couch. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, she shakes her chin no. My heart is pounding so forcefully I have to concentrate to hear the story I don’t want to know, the truth I’ve traveled thousands of miles to uncover.

“I thought if I brought her here, if I made her face him, what they did . . . I didn’t mean—I didn’t want to hurt—it all just got out of control. And then—then I had no choice but to—”

His words drop mid-sentence as he notices Tessa motioning with her chin in the direction of the French doors, where her next-door neighbor, the one with contempt for me, plays with a pink flower on Tessa’s bougainvillea.

All the torment vanishes from his face, replaced with a rabid, seething anger.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He charges toward the doors and fumbles to pull down the shades, then realizes they’re electric. “You fancy people.” The shades descend, blocking our view to the canals. The neighbor peers up from the flower she’s worrying. I make eye contact with her as her face disappears behind the taupe fabric.

The man’s shouting doesn’t do it. His thunderous footsteps. His sinister laugh. None of this wakes Opal. Instead, it’s the shades when he holds his finger on the switch for a moment too long. Completely unrolled now, they click as they try to go down farther. It’s a small noise. The most disruptive ones often are. Her cry from the corner is more animal than human. All baby.

At first, he doesn’t hear Opal. It must take every ounce of energy for Tessa to ignore her child. Her cry intensifies with the injustice of being woken up. He stops pacing and turns toward her bassinet in the corner. He is more animal than human too. All predator. He takes one step toward her bassinet, then another, like he has all the time in the world.

Chapter Forty

Tessa

It happens in a flash, so quickly that I don’t immediately feel myself attack. His back is to us as he leans over the bassinet, the knife suspended in his right hand. The moment he reaches for Opal, I pounce.

I’m on his back, biting his right shoulder until I taste blood. He screams and drops the knife as he stumbles away from my baby. His other arm reaches to tear me off him, but my teeth are still sunk into his flesh. I can see he isn’t a large man, now that he’s not holding a knife. As we stumble around the living room, the pain starts to creep in, throbbing. I’m certain I’ve ruptured my stitches. Momentarily, the burning distracts me, and I loosen my bite enough for him to throw me off his back. I hit the ground hard, shoulder first. That ache is nothing compared to the hot rage of my incision. He pulls me up by the hair. I stumble backward, forced to follow him even though I can barely walk. He throws me onto the couch and starts screaming, calling me a bitch, a cunt, a whore, all his spite toward women directed at me. I curl into a ball, enduring his rant until a voice forces him to go quiet.

“Mama?” Jasper bellows from his crib upstairs. The call is inquisitive at first. When I don’t answer, he starts to sob. “Mama!” The syllables stretch until he runs out of breath.

Maya’s husband lumbers toward the stairs, hands clenched into fists, face tortured, staring up into the space where Jasper’s fallen silent, waiting to see if I’ll answer his call. He doesn’t want to see my son, to be forced to act against another child, any child—even Gabe’s. That’s when I notice he’s no longer holding the knife. It’s on the floor beside the bassinet. I expect Barb to lunge for it, but she isn’t there. She isn’t anywhere.

I roll from my side onto the floor, catching my body with my forearms. My shirt is drenched in milk and sweat, my chin sticky with his blood. My stitches are ruptured, and I’m fairly certain I can’t stand. I use my forearms and knees to crawl around the far side of the couch, where he won’t see me. Every inch burns; my midsection begs me to stop. I’m focused exclusively on the knife.

When I make it to the end of the couch, the knife is only a few feet farther. I continue crawling, the blood soaking into the compression band where the incision must have opened. One more lunge forward and my fingers graze the tip of the knife. It makes a scratching sound as I drag it toward me. I turn to Maya’s husband, certain he’s heard it, that it will send him running across the room to kick me or use the knife against me. He remains paralyzed at the base of the steps as Jasper calls to me again. The sound of his voice flutters through the pain, giving me the strength to persist. I stretch my arm until I can grip the handle and push myself to sit, cradling the knife. I breathe into my core as I begin to lift myself off the ground.

Before I can stand, I hear a loud crack. I see Barb hovering above the man, who’s now motionless on the floor, my cast-iron skillet gripped in her right hand. She raises it again, about to strike, and reactively I shout, “Don’t.”

She hesitates, the pan still above her head.

“Don’t,” I say, calmer. The skillet slips from Barb’s hand and clangs against the floor. She gives the man a hard kick in the side. He grunts, indicating he’s still alive.

“You okay?” She hurries over to me, leaning my body against hers as we limp over to the couch. She helps me sit down. Vaguely, I hear Jasper, so desperate for me that he’s no longer calling Mama. He’s screeching incoherently, ear-piercingly. I want to charge upstairs, to pull him to me, to inhale his sleepy breath and tell him everything’s okay. But my energy is zapped. I can’t move. The knife falls from my hand onto the floor below. Barb lifts my shirt to survey the damage. The compression band is covered in blood. Barb doesn’t try to remove it. She reaches for the knife, marvels at it in her hands, tries to decide what to do with it.

“T.?” I hear the familiar greeting as Gabe’s footsteps echo down the hall.

Jasper stops screaming, his voice now hopeful. “Dada?”

“Tessa, why haven’t you been answering my calls. Is everything—” He walks in, sees the man crumpled at the base of the stairs—and Barb, standing above me, holding the knife.

“Gabe, no,” I shout as Gabe charges Barb, pouncing on her, sending her flying to the ground, Her shoulder hits the coffee table. Gabe grabs the knife from her and throws it across the room.

“Stop,” Barb and I shout, our voices entangled. Gabe can’t hear us. He’s straddling Barb, holding her arms down.

“Who are you?” he shouts in her face.

“I’m Regina’s mom,” she says.

“Gabe, stop. That’s Regina’s mother.”

He doesn’t get off her, but he stops pressing her arms into the ground.

“Gabe, get off her.”

He climbs off and kneels at her side. Barb sits up, rubbing the back of her head. He holds out his hand to help her.

“Stay away from me.” She swats his hand away.

The living room is a symphony of wails. Jasper above. Opal in the corner. For the moment, Gabe focuses on me. He rushes over to the couch where I’m perched and touches the blood on my chin. Maya’s husband’s blood.

“Are you okay?” He rotates my shoulder, and I wince. “It’s not broken.”

Gabe leans forward and kisses my forehead. For this fleeting moment, we’re us again. Tessa and Gabe, Irons strong.

“Gabe!” Barb shouts, somewhere in the distance. It’s far away, remote, from the world outside us. Gabe studies my face, then winces before he falls on top of me. Something warm and viscous drips down my bare leg until it collects in a pool of red on the floor. The knife sticks out from Gabe’s back. Behind it, Maya’s husband towers above us, victorious, as the sound of sirens grows stronger.

Chapter Forty-One

Barb

Six months later

December isn’t the ideal time to move to the tristate area. Snow isn’t as common as it once was, which only makes the biting cold less fun. It’s too chilly for playgrounds and sandboxes, the type of play kids from Southern California expect year round. The children will be here for Hanukkah, though they’ve never celebrated the holiday before, and I can’t remember the last time I lit the candles. Still, I unearth the menorah from the attic, polish it in preparation for sundown. It feels symbolic that they’re arriving on the first night of Hanukkah. A small miracle. A symbol of resilience and survival.

Tessa keeps calling it a trial move. She’s starting a new job in January. I invited her to stay with me indefinitely. My house has been too empty for too long. It could use the sounds and detritus of children. Plus, it’s nicer and freer than anywhere she can afford. She insists she doesn’t want to overstay her welcome. There’s no way she could possibly overstay. Ultimately, it’s her choice, though. I won’t push her.

I’ve cleared out Regina’s old bedroom, set up her crib by the window. It’s white wicker, with wheels that roll. I hope Tessa doesn’t find it too old-fashioned. I hope she isn’t overwhelmed by the toys I’ve collected from my book club. I want her and the kids to be comfortable, which can easily come off as overbearing.

It all happened so quickly. When Gabe arrived, he’d left the door open, so the police were able to file in and swiftly overtake Paul Marker, Maya Linsky’s husband. Paul Marker pled guilty to Regina’s and Aram’s murders, as well as to attempted murder for stabbing Gabe, and has been locked away for the last six months, awaiting sentencing. He confessed that, when the government and the American Medical Association wouldn’t intervene, he broke into Longevity Fertility, hoping to find proof of the donor Gabe had used for Maya. When he couldn’t find any evidence, he tried reason instead. He thought Regina would help him. She was a young woman. She’d understand. He followed her to the bar, where he slipped a small dose of crushed ketamine into her drink, hoping it would pacify her and make her more willing to talk to him. He didn’t know she was an addict, that her ginger ale had no alcohol in it. That when he then ordered her something stronger, he’d precipitated a chain of events he couldn’t undo.

I believe that after he’d drugged her, she began drinking on her own. I believe that no substance could break Regina’s loyalty. That even when she was so intoxicated she could barely speak, she would still refuse to help him. I believe that when he brought her to Gabe’s house and she remained stoic, anger overcame him, unleashing something in him that he couldn’t control. But I have no pity for him. I have no pity for anyone who chooses vengeance over justice.

Mothers aren’t the only ones with instincts. Paul Marker was right. From the first time he’d heard Leigh’s syndrome, he knew something was amiss. Leigh’s is so rare—it wasn’t something Gabe tested for, particularly since it hadn’t come up in the donor’s family history. Maya Linsky dismissed her husband’s suspicions; so had their pediatrician, their couples therapist. He was grieving, and grief can make you believe conspiracies. Still, he was resolute. He got a sample of Maya’s saliva from her toothbrush, had it tested, found she wasn’t a carrier for Leigh’s. He understood that if she wasn’t a carrier, she couldn’t have been the genetic mother. After that, things about their son started to make sense. His hairline. His freckles. The way he rolled his tongue. It took months of following Gabe, Regina, and Aram to uncover what they were doing. During that time, his marriage crumbled, his friends distanced themselves. It made him more determined to uncover the truth, to make Gabe pay for what he’d done.

When the toxicology reports finally came in, they confirmed Paul Marker’s story that he’d given Aram a bouquet of substances to make it seem like an accidental overdose, that he’d fed Regina ketamine and enough alcohol that he barely needed to hold her head down in the canal after he pushed her in.

In the end, a confession was better for Paul Marker than vengeance. It allowed him to tell his side, to expose Gabe, to tarnish my daughter’s legacy. The press was eager to peddle his story. They cast him as a people’s hero, a morally ambiguous Robin Hood. If one of the mothers had been responsible, the media would have treated her differently. They would’ve called it a deranged act. It wouldn’t have made the public any kinder toward my daughter, but it would have shown her murderer for what he was: violent and wholly unhinged.

Gabe needed a blood transfusion and was in the ICU for a week before he managed a full recovery. Physically, anyway. He hired a hotshot lawyer who had represented actors and producers in equally high-profile cases, ones with a different kind of assault. But even she couldn’t get him off on probation. There was simply too much press around the case—the culmination of decades of fertility doctors deceiving and abusing women with little consequence. The doctor in Cleveland, who used his own sperm on over one hundred patients. The clinic in Irvine that implanted one couple’s embryo in another. But because those instances occurred before there were laws around fertility, they weren’t criminal.

It turns out that we’re still in the Wild West when it comes to fertility laws. Like on so many issues, though, California is at the forefront, criminalizing all sorts of nonconsent. Seven of the mothers brought criminal charges against him, two of which were dismissed. Gabe pled guilty to the other five counts of illegal use of an embryo. There were no other accomplices alive to stand trial. The nurses at both clinics, the anesthesiologists, knew nothing of what went on across the street. I recognized the anesthesiologist from Rosebud as the woman with the rubber clogs who’d chased me away. She was a fixture on the news, explaining how they got away with the scheme, how they were able to deceive her.

Gabe was appropriately contrite, and the judge sentenced him to three years for each charge, to be served concurrently. His sentence would have been further reduced if Tessa had written a letter on his behalf. She stayed at his side while he was in the ICU, speaking on behalf of the father of her children. Once he could speak for himself, she was done. He needed to take responsibility for his own sins.

Given his lack of a record, with good time served, Gabe will likely be out in a year.

I have Tessa’s flight number, and I check it every ten minutes. They’re in the air somewhere above Pennsylvania. I wipe the counters, check the safety gates on the stairs, adjust the height of the welcome sign hanging in the foyer. I can stand on the step stool with ease, thanks to my new bionic knee. It wasn’t just platitudes after all. My replacement knee really does make me feel young again. Younger, anyway. Young enough to balance on a step stool and chase children around my house for the first time in years.

Tessa got Jasper’s DNA tested. Opal’s too. She didn’t divulge the results of the tests, but I know. From the moment I met Jasper, I’ve felt connected to him.

Before Tessa agreed to stay with me, she asked if I’d mind signing paperwork to relinquish any claim I might have to Jasper.

I’m sorry to have to . . . I completely trust you. After everything, my lawyer just feels strongly . . . Tessa fretted.

Tessa, I worked in HR for half a century. I understand the necessity of a contract. I assured her Isaac would sign too.

Isaac and I met for lunch to discuss everything that had transpired since our daughter died. I couldn’t imagine how he felt about me, now that he’d heard the story on the news, what our daughter did, what I’d helped expose. At the restaurant, Isaac walked toward me with his head bowed. I was relieved he didn’t bring Anna. When he arrived at the table, I stood, bracing myself for however he planned to behave, shocked when he hugged me, whispering apologies into my hair. We held each other for longer than we needed to, neither of us wanting to let go.

I told Isaac everything. About the saltbushes along the canal where Regina died. The olive tree I hid behind when I spied on Dan Huntsman. I told him about the wind off the ocean as I watched Gabe surf. The smell of Maisy’s jackfruit burrito. The way I could squint and see Regina in Tessa, the way I could squint and see Regina in Jasper too. He signed the agreement without delay, even though he’s normally the type to consult a lawyer. He understood the gravity of the situation, the need to keep the law out of our relationship with Jasper. When Tessa’s ready, I’ve promised to have Isaac and Anna over. I’m not so naive as to think this is what Regina would have wanted. If she were still alive, though, I’m certain she’d be pleased by the bonds we’re forging. Although she’s gone, I can sense her changing with us. Growing, evolving, forgiving.

I wander outside to sit on the steps and wait for them to arrive, even though their plane still hasn’t landed. When it grows too cold, I return inside to set out wood for a fire, then decide against lighting it. It’s a hazard, especially for children from Southern California who are unfamiliar with cold that necessitates fires. I stand before the fireplace, listening to the hum of my impatient house, the ticking clock, the hissing heat, sounds that will soon be drowned out by children. The historical fiction novel my book club has chosen sits on the coffee table. I’m done with thrillers for the foreseeable future, and all the book club ladies agreed that it was time for a change. I’m hosting this month, so the five As can meet Tessa. She’s already got the ending sound to her name, our primary criterion for initiation. I sit on the couch with no protest from my knee and try to read the novel while I wait.

Despite the book’s immersive rendering of San Francisco after World War II, I can’t focus, not when my phone sits next to me and it’s so easy to refresh the status of Tessa’s flight. Landing in seventeen minutes. In an alternate world, I’d be refreshing the status on Regina’s flight, arranging the welcome sign for her. With Regina, it would have read Welcome home, as though proclaiming it would make it true.

It’s been six months and nine days since she died. Although it no longer seems like she might walk through the door, I’ll catch a glimpse of dyed-blue hair or a whiff of the musky perfume she wore as a teenager and get pummeled by loss. Jasper isn’t compensation for Regina. Tessa and Opal aren’t, either, but they’re evidence of a path forward. Like Tessa, I have to forge a new way.

I never wanted to stop working, and the audition at Contessa’s, the sensation of commanding a room again, it stirred something in me, something I could no longer avoid. Dick, of all people, is helping me. I don’t know whether he feels guilty about not warning me before I was fired, or if he’s simply the good guy I’ve always considered him to be. He referred me to a friend who’s opening a real estate office in Bergen County. It’s a smaller job than the one I lost, only a dozen employees to manage. Still, it will allow me to be useful again.

I’m staring into the cold cavity of the fireplace when I hear a car pull up outside. Tessa insisted on renting a car, even though I offered to pick her up and am happy to share mine. At some point, she will have to stop being polite. For now, she’s here. They’re here.

Chapter Forty-Two

Tessa

Barb is waiting at the door when we pull up, excitement plastered across her face. I can see how much it means to her to have us here, which hits me with an unexpected grief. I’m grateful. I am. And my god, am I ready for a new beginning. But you can’t have a beginning without an end, and despite myself, I grieve my old life, the life Opal will never know, the life Jasper will soon forget. Despite myself, I miss Gabe. The way he kissed my temple each morning before he left for the beach, the way he would throw Jasper into the air when he returned from work. The way he made me laugh. The way he made me feel loved. This is the fresh start we need, necessary only because of our tremendous loss.

It’s strange, the divergent responses people have had. The friends who were once so loyal, now radio silent. The aloof acquaintances who were suddenly warm. Erin started bringing over coffee like Claire used to. It wasn’t the same, though. She was eager for gossip, not friendship. Whenever I saw Claire, if she was gardening or having a cocktail on her patio, she’d pretend she’d forgotten something inside. If we made eye contact, if I held her gaze, she’d say hi, greet the kids, and that was it. Although I’d already lost her, it was devastating to lose her again.

And then there were the former friends forfeited to distance and years suddenly back in touch. At first, I was guarded with them, assuming they were eager for details, cultural cachet. But they genuinely wanted to make sure I was okay. My friend Angie went as far as offering me a job. She’d risen in the fashion world since our days at FIT and wanted me at the helm of her new jewelry line. It seems like the perfect time for a fresh start, she explained when I asked why she would possibly want me. Plus, you have impeccable taste. Well, not when it comes to men.

Jasper clings to my leg as we approach Barb waiting at the door. It’s awkward, walking with one kid affixed to my calf, weighed down on the other side by Opal’s infant seat. Barb bends down to Jasper’s level, which causes him to hide behind my leg.

“Jasp, you remember Barb.” For the first time, grandmother wafts into my brain. Barb and I haven’t discussed what he’ll call her, and I’m not sure she wants to consecrate him as her last connection to Regina. I was relieved when she signed the paperwork, that she wasn’t offended by my request. And I did need the agreement, not just for its legal protection. I needed it as an acknowledgment that DNA isn’t what bonds us.

Jasper angles his head around my leg, surveys Barb without recognition. It’s been six months since we’ve seen her, a quarter of his life. In another six months, will he forget Gabe too? There’s so much I haven’t figured out about Gabe: what I’ll tell my children, what kind of relationship they’ll have with him when he’s out of prison. I won’t keep any of it a secret. Jasper will never have to confront the truth of his identity. But I don’t know how to begin to explain it to him. For now, we are here. For now, this is a beginning, not an ending.

Gabe survived the stabbing. Of course he survived the stabbing. He’s a survivor. We both are. Our children will be too. They have to be. When the story broke, none of Gabe’s patients were exempt. They all had to confront the possibility of a life-altering truth. Some of the mothers who tested were relieved to discover their babies belonged genetically to them, having had viable eggs into their forties. Others refused testing and the truths they had already tacitly accepted. Some were so famous they wanted to maintain what privacy they still had. And too many were forced to piece together a new normal. We’ll never know the exact number of women Gabe deceived. His files were intentionally vague, and he’d genuinely lost track. As the children get older, as they decide to check their DNA if their parents haven’t, more donorships are bound to be revealed.

For now, over three hundred women have filed a class action lawsuit against Longevity Fertility and Gabe. It’s a breathtaking number. Almost inconceivable, except they each have a face and a name, a child who is theirs. Their cases will take years. Gabe declared bankruptcy for Longevity Fertility, and the clinic is now defunct. There’s no business money there. But California is a community property state. Financially speaking, I am as responsible as Gabe. Everything we have personally, from the sale of our house to our joint bank accounts—my business, even—will go to paying the victims. I’m happy to give every cent to these women, to relinquish every tie I have to Gabe. To start over with only my children. And Barb.

My lawyer pressed me to go public, to tell the media and the court that Gabe compromised me, too, to align myself with the victims. Although it wouldn’t change my fiscal role, it would make the public more charitable toward me. She urged me to speak out against the stigma of fertility problems, to publicly criticize Gabe not only for the ways he violated us but for perpetuating unrealistic expectations of fertility, for turning egg donation into something shameful and sinister when it should be praised. She wanted me to stand on behalf of the mothers Gabe abused and pronounce that even though my son doesn’t have my DNA, he is my child. Barb agreed. She hated watching my clients abandon me, other mothers shun me and my children, the media cast me as an accomplice if only in my willful ignorance. It was painful. It’s still painful. But I don’t want my son’s picture in the tabloids. I don’t want to speak for other mothers, to homogenize their voices.

The day before we left LA, I had an unexpected visitor. The house had sold well under asking price, and I was packing up the last of the boxes to put in storage. At some point, I’d have to deal with our furniture, the art we’d collected, the cast-iron and copper pans I’d envisioned seasoning over years of use. At some point. Not now. For the moment, I had a plan, a job, a place to take my children.

The knock on our front door startled, then uneased me. I assumed it was a reporter who’d seen the Sold sign and realized this was their last chance to speak to me before we fled the canals. When the story first broke, they camped out in the alley. As it became clear Gabe wasn’t living with us, that I wouldn’t speak in his stead or as his opposition, they grew more interested in the mothers who wanted the spotlight.

When I opened the door, I saw Maya.

Maya Linsky didn’t join the lawsuit. She didn’t go on the news or talk shows or write op-eds for The New York Times, even as reporters hounded her. No matter how many other mothers wanted to speak, it was her voice the public wanted to hear.

I’m sorry to show up like this, she said guardedly. I tried calling, but—

I changed my number. I kept my body half hidden behind the door.

Me too. I relaxed. She wasn’t there to berate me. I opened the door wider.

Do you want to come inside?

She followed me into the house. Both children were asleep upstairs, and I was thankful that Maya didn’t have to see them.

She accepted my offer of a cup of coffee, and I motioned her into the living room, crowded with packing boxes. Make yourself at home.

Make herself at home. Here, where her violator once lived. Here, where her ex-husband had tried to kill us. There was no relaxing here for either of us.

When I returned with two cups of coffee, Maya was staring outside at a couple walking by.

Do you ever get used to it? Maya asked as I handed her a mug, then sat in the armchair across from her.

If you want to live here, you have to. I took a sip of my coffee. I made it work . . . My sentence trailed off. I made it work for Gabe. The canals became home. They felt secure when they weren’t.

We drank our coffee in silence. It wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. Maya seemed more at ease than the last time I’d seen her.

I could have stopped him, she finally said. Paul had been acting erratic for a while. I had a restraining order. I never really thought he was dangerous. I just wanted him to leave me alone. If I’d known, if I’d had any inkling that he could kill someone—she shook her head and rotated the coffee mug in her hands—I knew too. Marcus had these beautiful bowed lips, like a doll. No one in my family has those lips. Paul’s either. And his toes. They were so long. His fingers too. It was more than that, though. There was this energy between me and Marcus. I don’t know how to explain it, because it’s not like I loved him less or like I wasn’t his mother. There was just this feeling between us. It wasn’t even friction, or something off. Just charged. She glanced over at me. It sent a chill down my arms. Was it that way for you too?

I was too stunned to respond.

When you came to the store, you were searching for something you weren’t sure you wanted to find.

I nodded, debating what to say. Maya had constructed a version of that interaction that had bonded us, one where I had the same instincts about Jasper that she had about her son. But that wasn’t the way it happened for me.

I told Maya about our run-in at Café Collage the day before Regina drowned. About the police, who didn’t believe me. About meeting Barb, whom the police didn’t believe either. How our investigation led me to the earrings.

Jasper knew Regina. No one believed me, but I felt they were connected. It was as close as I could come to confirming her version of events, and maybe it was the same. My instincts told me my son knew Regina. If I’d probed, perhaps I would have seen their bond for what it was. Even now, it’s impossible for me to believe I had any inkling about Jasper’s DNA. That’s how I’ve come to see their connection. It isn’t about biology or motherhood. They’re linked through their genes, nothing more.

When Opal started to cry, Maya and I tilted our heads toward the sound. Her cries had developed into more nuanced forms of communication. For the moment, she cried in protest of waking up. Soon, it would grow louder and deeper with hunger.

Maya stood, smoothed her pants, placed the mug on the coffee table. I followed her to the front door, where we paused, unsure what to say to each other.

Good luck to you, she said before she stepped outside and disappeared from my life.

Good luck to you, I called back, even though we didn’t need luck. We made our own luck. In that moment, I knew what my new line of jewelry would be—my signature art deco styles inlaid with opals and jasper.

Jasper’s still clinging to me as I manage to maneuver the three of us inside Barb’s house. In the foyer, he peers at Barb, curious.

“I heard there might be someone here who likes dinosaurs?” Barb reaches behind her back and holds out a stuffed T. rex. He considers it, then me, and I nod. He runs over, giving it a big hug.

“Tino-res,” he says. Jasper can’t tell me that he misses his father. He can’t say brother or California. Yet he can name more dinosaurs than I know, his vocabulary devoted to his obsession. It started with a book Judy bought him, one of those Poke-a-Dot books, a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet. I’d exhausted so much time thinking about all the ways the world treated me as a pregnant woman, seeing me as irrational, reactive, weak, that I didn’t stop to acknowledge how I was a perpetrator, too, reaffirming myths about lonely women. Judy, who had grandchildren. Judy, who thought of our island as her family to protect. Judy, whom we’d all judged. Judy was the one to call the police when she saw the knife in Paul Marker’s hand before the blinds closed.

“There may be a few more dinosaurs inside. Do you want to come see?” Jasper nods eagerly, and Barb reaches for his hand. She winks at me as she leads him into the living room.

Barb’s house is a turn-of-the-century Tudor home. It’s been well maintained, if a little dated in the decor department, spacious without being massive. Although there are enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own, the children will stay with me. I haven’t transitioned Opal yet, and Jasper’s started having night terrors again, bloodcurdling and confused. The terrors occur less frequently when he’s next to me, his sleep more restful. Besides, I want my children where I can smell and touch them, where I know they’re safe. I’m sure the advice books list countless reasons why my approach is enabling or counterproductive, but it’s not like those parenting gurus have experience raising children as a single parent after your husband has violated you and countless other women—our bodies and our trust. Maybe I’ll write my own parenting book: How to Trust Your Instincts When the World Tells You Not To.

I lift Opal out of her carrier.

“Opal, do you want to see your new home?” I cringe at my word choice. This isn’t our home, no matter how much Barb wants it to be.

I carry my daughter upstairs. She takes in the grand oak steps, the hall that leads to our bedroom, the crib. Opal’s an observer, soaking everything in with a stoic expression and sporadic babble that’s impossible to decipher. I step inside the bedroom and walk to the window that overlooks a neat backyard with a modest patio and brown, patchy grass. Bare trees line the fence, half obscuring Barb’s property from the neighbors. In the spring, when the leaves grow in, her house will be fully hidden, cloaked in privacy. We won’t be here then. We can’t be. Staring out at the yard now, it feels like something you could take for granted in a house like this—no one is watching.

Opal puts her hand on the window and makes a string of “ba-ba” sounds.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” I say to her, knowing she can’t answer me. There are so many things she won’t be able to convey. So many things Jasper still can’t share. I know so much without them having to explain it. I know how to fight for them. I know to trust my instincts. I know that as hard as this is, it’s the right move for us. Me, Jasper, and Opal. Barb too. This is the right thing for my family.

Acknowledgments

Every novel requires a leap of faith, but this one’s felt especially big. I was entering a new genre where I’d only ever been a reader. Plus, this story felt more personal than my other books, as it examined my fears as a mother, albeit in an exaggerated form. I’m grateful to the many folks along the way who helped me take that jump and keep going.

Thank you first to my agent, Marcy Posner, who believed in me before I’d even written a word of this novel or told her what it was about. Anytime I doubted myself, I remembered that you never did. Thank you for the unparalleled support.

To Liz Pearsons, for responding so enthusiastically to this book from the start and for seeing the novel so clearly. It is a real treat to get to work with you and everyone at Thomas & Mercer. Thank you also to Tegan Tigani for her thoughtful eye and careful notes that elevated this book beyond what I imagined it could be.

This book would not have evolved out of the early stages without Nancy Rawlinson’s expertise. And it would never have gotten to that first draft without Kevin Doughten, who dispenses sage advice so often that he didn’t even remember giving me the integral note that made this narrative work. Thank you to Christi Clancy, who also offhandedly offered a plot suggestion that changed the trajectory of this novel.

One of the best parts of being a novelist is existing within a community of talented, generous, and empathetic writers. Thank you to Katy Hays, Julie Clark, Amy Jo Burns, and Caroline Frost for the early reads, and to all my writer friends for being in the trenches with me. I fear if I start to name you all here, I will just be bragging about all the amazing, inspiring people that I get to call my friends.

One of the other best parts of being a novelist is getting to know so many booksellers, librarians, and readers. I’ve always found that books bond people, but having my books connect me with so many other people has truly been surreal. Thanks to Katie Smith-Cook, Rachel Person, Mary Webber O’Malley, and Maxwell Gregory for the early support. To the Bookstagram community, which is filled with readers who play a vital role in championing books. I’m particularly grateful to beyondthebookends and somekindoflibrary, who have supported me since my debut.

Every novel requires expertise outside the writer’s own, and this book needed more research than it might seem. Thank you to Jasmine McGlade and Mark Galanty for sharing stories from their lives along the canals. To Jess Cantiello and Trish Tucker for letting me turn our girls’ trip into a work trip. To John Tassini and Steven J. Katz for details about police investigations. To Jessica Chan, for helping me with medical questions on all of my books, but particularly this one, where your specialized expertise was essential. I can’t give you an IMDb credit, but you have permanent residence in my acknowledgments.

Thank you to my family, which has grown over the years as the next generation is born and as we become more firmly rooted in LA. Thank you to my parents, who have always supported my dreams of being a writer, as impractical as they may have been. To the Meyersons, Perrottas, Chans, and Taners—I feel so lucky that my children get to grow up with your children and that we get to have you in our herd.

Finally, to Adam, Wes, and Ruby. Adam, this stage of life often feels like a journey, and there’s no one else I’d want to be on it with. Thank you for always believing in me and for taking such good care of our kiddos, particularly when I sneak off in the early mornings to write. Wesley and Ruby, you have expanded my imagination in ways I could never have imagined. It’s my honor to watch you grow and to learn from you in response.

This novel has made me think a lot about motherhood—all the shapes it can take and all the assumptions we hold about it. I feel lucky to have a space to share these preoccupations and to in turn invite more conversations around fertility. Thank you, reader, for spending time with my book.

Discussion Questions

1. Tessa and Barb are at opposite ends of motherhood. Tessa is a new mom, while Barb is entering retirement and suffering the loss of her daughter. Despite these obvious differences, what similarities do you see in their journeys? Through Tessa and Barb, what is the novel saying about motherhood?

2. At the end of chapter seven, Claire tells Tessa to trust her instincts. Throughout the novel, both Barb and Tessa grapple with their intuition and whether to follow it. What role do instincts, particularly maternal ones, play in the novel? Has there ever been a time in your life when, despite being doubted, you were glad you trusted your instincts?

3. What resonated with you from the book’s focus on motherhood and fertility?

4. How does the setting along the canals contribute to the tone and suspense of the novel? Would you want to live somewhere like the canals, which are beautiful and unique but also a tourist destination?

5. Even though Regina is largely absent from the narrative, her presence looms large in the novel. What was your impression of her? Did you suspect Regina’s connection to Jasper?

6. Barb has a lot of regrets over her relationship with Regina as well as over her own firing. Do you agree with her assessment that she often takes “on someone else’s injustice as [her] own”? Do you think Barb was unjustly fired? Could she have done anything differently to strengthen her relationship with her daughter?

7. What do you think of Gabe and his actions? In the end, do you think justice was served?

8. Barb and Tessa are frustrated by Officer Gonzales and the fact that the police never investigate Regina’s death. Did you find yourself agreeing with them? Did you see Officer Gonzales’s perspective? Should he have taken Tessa’s and Barb’s concerns more seriously?

9. Did you have any empathy for the killer when he told his side of the story? Is he, as the media in the novel says, “a morally ambiguous Robin Hood”? Do you agree with Barb that if one of the mothers had been responsible, the press would have called it “a deranged act”?

10. What do you think happens after the novel ends?

About the Author

Photo © 2020 Amanda Treyz

Amy Meyerson is the acclaimed author of the internationally bestselling The Bookshop of Yesterdays, The Imperfects, and The Love Scribe. Her books have been translated into eleven languages and are frequently chosen for best-of lists, including lists from Good Morning America, Publishers Weekly, The Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Texas Library Association’s Lariat List, among others. Meyerson completed her graduate work in creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she now teaches in the writing department. You can keep up with her books and other news by following her on Instagram (@amy.meyerson) or on her website (www.amymeyerson.com).