At the time, the industry had written it off as creative differences. Rowan had written it off the same way.
Now she wondered.
And there was a set decorator named Pam Oakes who’d given Vince a wide berth whenever he was on the floor, always finding a reason to be somewhere else when he entered a room.
Rowan hadn’t asked why. She wished she had.
But before she contacted anyone—before she said a word to another person about what she’d seen—she needed her own account to be airtight. Everything she remembered about that night was still locked inside her head, unwritten, unrecorded, vulnerable to time and fear and Vince’s very expensive lawyers.
She needed to get it down. Specific details. The exact sequence of events. What she’d heard. What she’d seen. What she’d done afterward and why.
She needed a record that existed somewhere outside her own memory, somewhere safe.
She didn’t know what came after that yet. But that was the first step.
She could do that much.
Someone knocked at the side door. Naomi walked over to answer and, a moment later, Wes and Remington stepped into the kitchen.
And an entirely different set of problems filled her mind.
Rowan watched as the dogs sniffed each other in greeting.
At the sight of Wes, everything in Rowan shifted at once. Her awareness sharpened. Her nerves tightened. Her pulse quickened.
Being around Wes again felt like stepping backward into a version of herself she barely recognized anymore.
The two of them had met in fourth grade after a teacher decided the quiet boy in the corner might balance out the girl who talked too much. Ms. Anderson had placed them at the same table as partners.
The teacher’s plan hadn’t worked.
Rowan had still talked too much, while Wes had listened with that steady patience he still had today. They’d become best friends.
By high school, they’d realized they liked each other. By eleventh grade, they were dating.
Between school plays and football games, awkward teenage years, and long summer nights, he’d become her safe place. Especially after her father died.
Wes had been the one person outside her family who’d never expected her to perform or compete or prove herself worthy of attention.
By the time she and Wes had graduated from high school, everyone assumed the two of them would end up married one day. Maybe part of her had assumed it too.
But Rowan had wanted more than the Blue Ridge Mountains could offer. More than small-town life and familiar roads and people who already knew every version of her.
So she’d left for California while Wes joined the Marines, and at first, they’d tried to hold on to each other through late-night phone calls and hurried visits.
Eventually the distance became more than miles. Their worlds no longer fit together the way they once had.
And they still didn’t, Rowan reminded herself. She’d be wise to keep that in mind.
CHAPTER 8
Wes’s eyeswent to Rowan.
She sat at the table, both hands wrapped around a mug and an unfinished plate of eggs in front of her.
She looked up when he entered, and something shifted in her expression—not quite surprise and not quite relief.
Remington crossed toward her without any prompting, and Rowan’s face changed the moment the dog reached her. The tension around her eyes eased just enough to be noticeable.
