“I still act, in addition to the work I do for the Bradfords. Since I don’t juggle anymore, I had to find another way to stay fit. So I took up Pilates.”
“Fabulous,” Nikki replied. “I gave up exercise in 1992, but I’ve recently been thinking that I’d be excellent at Pilates.”
“Britt?” Maddie’s voice drifted from the kitchen.
“I’ll be there in a minute. The show I’m watching out here is too good to miss.”
Britt’s words brought Maddie out immediately. “What’s too good to miss?”
Britt nodded at Clint and Nikki. “The interaction between these two.”
“Some privacy would be welcome right about now,” Nikki said.
“You’re in my shop,” Britt reminded her. She set her palms beneath her chin and blinked several times. “Don’t mind me.”
Maddie set her palms beneath her chin and blinked, too. “Don’t mind me, either.”
Nikki gave a huff and turned to Clint. “Is it any wonder that Britt doesn’t have a boyfriend?”
“I’ve had lots of boyfriends,” Britt said.
“But you haven’t managed to keep a single one.”
“I haven’twantedto keep a single one.”
“Anyway.” Nikki gave Clint a these-immature-people-are-so-tiring expression. “When is your next Pilates class? I’d love to join you.”
For Zander, arriving at Frank and Carolyn’s house when he was a teen had been like arriving at an island of calm after a long, stormy voyage at sea.
The small bedroom with the twin bed and navy-and-white striped bedspread had held peace. The acres thick with trees that surrounded the house had brought comfort. The food they’d served him—casseroles and stir-fries and tacos and chicken salads—had steadied him. So had Carolyn’s reliability and Frank’s sense of humor.
On the days when Daniel had baseball practice after school and couldn’t drive Zander home, Carolyn had always been waiting for Zander in the carpool line in her Subaru Outlook. Not once had she forgotten.
Frank had insisted that Daniel and Zander watch funny movies with him on Sunday nights. He’d felt duty-bound to give them an education in films likeBlazing SaddlesandMonty Python and the Holy Grail.
Looking at Carolyn and Frank’s house now through adult eyes, Zander could see its modesty. The house had been built more than twenty years ago without the use of imagination. The front was flat. Its sides, gray. Black shutters. Two utilitarian stories. Neither Frank nor Carolyn had a green thumb, so nothing more interesting than hedges accessorized the exterior.
Inside, however, the house overflowed with color. Carolyn collected stained-glass windows. All sizes and shapes of them covered every inch of wall space. Sitting inside the living room felt like sitting inside a greenhouse.
When Kurt Shaw had arrived and Carolyn had ushered him in, he’d chosen to sit in Frank’s weathered TV-watching chair.
Courtney and Sarah, Frank and Carolyn’s daughters, occupied the sofa. The identical twins looked just like their father would’ve if he’d been female and thirty-two years old. Both had Frank’s dark hair, his hazel eyes, and his sharp-cornered smile that dug into the apples of their cheeks. Not that he’d seen a smile out of either of them over the past days.
They lived ten minutes apart from each other in Seattle, attended the same church, and spent a great deal of time together.
They’d been incredibly gracious about sharing their mother and father with Zander and Daniel. Especially because, having only spent time with Courtney and Sarah five times during their childhoods, Zander and Daniel had been near strangers when they’d moved into the girls’ former bedrooms.
Carolyn sat across from Zander, looking as fragile as she had when they’d visited the police station. Was her neck strong enough to support the rope of peach-colored beads she’d coiled around it?
Zander had tried to soften the news the best way he knew how when he’d told Carolyn about Nora’s suspicions concerning Frank’s identity. Even so, it had still sent Carolyn, Courtney, and Sarah reeling. All three looked shell-shocked, as if unsure when they’d receive the next blow.
“Zander told you that he found information on a second Frank Pierce, correct?” Kurt asked Carolyn.
“Yes.”
“Two people were using one birth certificate,” Kurt said, “which meant the birth certificate had been paired with at least one of them incorrectly. I had your husband’s fingerprints processed, and it turns out that he’s not the one the birth certificate belongs to.”
Zander’s attention honed on Kurt like a camera focusing.
