That boy was gone. If he’d ever really existed at all.
CHAPTER 4
Jack
I barely rememberedthe drive here. Pauline Wells was in California, and the only person who could fill in the details was Claudette.
I climbed out of the car.
The house was nice—modern but warm, lots of natural light, the kind of place that looked like a home rather than a showroom. Michael had done well for himself, and more importantly, he made my sister happy. I had given him hell because that was my job, because Claudette was my baby sister and no man would ever be good enough for her, but somewhere along the way I had started to acknowledge that I couldn’t have had a better brother-in-law.
Not that I would ever tell him that.
I knocked on the door like a civilized person. Waited. Counted to ten. Knocked again, harder this time, because patience had never been my strong suit and today it was hanging by a thread.
The door swung open and Michael stood there in a wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants, hair sticking up in every direction.
I absolutely did not want to think about what he’d been doing.
“Jack.” He blinked at me like I was a hallucination. “You good?”
He stared at me for a long moment, clearly waiting for an explanation. I didn’t offer one. After a beat, he sighed and stepped aside to let me in, but not before positioning himself in the doorway in a way that felt distinctly territorial.
It should have annoyed me. But it didn’t.
This was a man who would protect my sister. Who would stand between her and anything that threatened her peace. I had watched him sit by her bedside during the worst of her illness.
He loved her. Not the way men in our circle loved their wives, as accessories or status symbols, but I could see how much Claudette meant to him.
I gave him a short nod as I passed. An approval I would never say out loud but hoped he understood.
“Hello to you too,” he muttered, closing the door behind me. “Claudette’s in the kitchen. Try not to start anything—we just got the good china unpacked and I’d hate to see it become a casualty.”
I was already walking past him before he finished the sentence.
Claudette was perched on the kitchen counter with her bare feet swinging, eating ice cream straight from the container. She looked up when I walked in and her face split into a grin.
“Well, well. Look who came.” She waved her spoon at me. “If you’re here to threaten Michael again?—”
“I’m not here about Michael.”
“That’s a refreshing change.” She dug into the ice cream again, watching me with sharp curiosity, even as a kid—nothing got past Claudette.
“So what’s the occasion? Is something wrong?”
I leaned against the doorframe, trying to figure out how to say this. I had rehearsed the conversation in my head the entire drive over, but now that I was here, the words felt too loaded.
There was no good way to ask what I needed to ask.
“I ran into someone yesterday,” I said.
“Fascinating. Do go on.”
“Pauline Wells.”
Claudette’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. Her eyes went wide, then narrow, and suddenly she looked less like my baby sister and more like a predator sizing up a threat. The transformation was instantaneous—one second she was a woman eating ice cream on the counter, the next she was a wall I wasn’t sure I could breach.
“Oh,” she said. “Interesting.” Her tone suggested it was anything but.
