“That Sarah Barnes has been lying about her background for years. That she married Billy Barnes under false pretenses and that she’s now in a relationship with an intern half her age while fighting a lawsuit over her late husband’s estate.”
“I’m not half her age, and there are no other women,” she said and then instantly wanted to kick herself.
“So it is true then, Lizzie?”
Lizzie pressed her lips together.
“I’m not discussing Sarah’s personal life with you.”
“You just did.” Sandra let that sit for a moment. “Listen, I’m going to run this story. I have sources, I have documentation, I have photographs. What I don’t have is Sarah’s side. Or yours. If you want to go on record—”
“I have nothing to say.”
“That’s your choice. We’ll reach out to the resort before publication. Give Sarah a chance to comment. But Lizzie?” The professional warmth was back. “You might want to prepare yourself. This is going to come out. The only question is how bad it gets.”
The line went dead.
Lizzie sat with the phone in her hand. The lobby continued around her. A couple at the far end of the desk. Ceiling fans turning. A child dragging a pool float through the glass doors.
She picked up her personal phone and called Sarah. Four rings, voicemail. She called again. Same.
A text came back three minutes later:
I’m at the city commissioner’s wedding in Marathon. Can’t talk. Everything okay?
She looked at the message.
Yes. Call me when you get home please.Nothing was okay, but she couldn’t’ really drop all this on her in the middle of a wedding.
Sure thing. Love you.
Lizzie started at the screen and considered texting her what had happened. But she didn’t. Instead she typed back a simple Love you too and got back to work. This, she knew, was going to be the worst day of her life.
Chapter 25
Sarah
She saw Esmeralda before she’d even turned off the engine.
That alone was wrong. Esme didn’t do parking lots. She was not the kind of woman who stood in the sun waiting for people. Sarah pulled into her spot and got out. The look on Esmeralda’s face stopped her before she could say good morning.
“You need to see this.” Esme held out the newspaper.
Sarah took it.
The photograph was from Carlson Island, from the evening after they had reunited in the storage room. Her and Lizzie sitting side by side at a table, playing Jenga, close together, laughing at something. She looked happy in it. She looked like a woman who had stopped being careful for five minutes.
The headline above it read:Barnes Resort GM: Lies, Lesbian Lovers and an Abandoned Family.
“Don’t’ read it out here. Read it in your office.”
They went in through the side entrance, but it didn’t help. The lobby already had that particular quality. Conversations that paused a beat too long. Heads that turned and then made a point of turning back. Her desk phone was ringing. She could hear it from the corridor. Her cell had gone off twice during the walk from the car.
She closed her office door, sat down, and read the article.
Her mother had spoken to them. She recognized it immediately. The specific combination of self-pity and grievance that her mother had spent thirty years perfecting. According to the piece, Sarah had abandoned her family the moment money appeared. She’d watched them struggle while she lived in luxury and she had cut off all contact after Billy died and left them with nothing. Billy came across as a knight in shining armor, Sarah as the heartless wench. The reporter had printed it as though it were verified fact, annotated with phrases like sources close to the family and those who knew her in those years.
Then the car accident.
