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To his surprise, she had stood up and was getting ready to edge her way down the aisle. She glanced back at him, holding her phone up as explanation.
God, she was absolutely unbelievable. Gavin was due up any minute—he was one of only about two or three kids who hadn’t performed yet. He reached out and grabbed her arm. He must have squeezed too hard, because she let out a cry loud enough to be heard up on stage.
“Sit down,” he whispered. He jerked his head toward the stage. “Gavin.”
He ought to let go of her forearm. He knew that. She was obviously strung out. She was humiliated because her son had a piddly part in the school play. She was mad at Mike for not caring. Plus, she’d had to repress all that resentment against Cicely Tillman, and self-control wasn’t her strong suit.
She was probably as hot and high-pressure as a volcano ready to blow.
But he didn’t let go. He was pretty damn angry, too. He knew who was on the other end of that cell phone. Her new boyfriend. The one she was going to be spending a month in Europe with, starting tonight. The guy was welcome to her, but, goddamn it, couldn’t she at least pretend to put her son first, for once in her life?
“Let go of me, Michael,” she said. Her whisper was so shrill it turned heads three rows away. “You’re hurting me.”
He hesitated one more second, and then he dropped his hand, aware that, in their section of the audience, they were now more fascinating than what was happening onstage. She rubbed her arm dramatically and then, with a hiccuping sob, made her way down the row.
Mike stared hard at the stage, ignoring the curious faces that were still turned in his direction. Gavin, who had just put on an old-fashioned hat, came forward.
“Our schoolroom is small, but it has to hold us all,” he sang in a horribly off-key soprano. “My students walk for miles, and I greet them with a smile.”
That was probably where Gavin was supposed to smile, but he didn’t. He finished his tiny part, and then he scurried, head bowed, back to his spot on the risers. Mike felt his stomach clench. Was this just stage fright, or had Gavin actually heard his parents squabbling?
Justine didn’t return even when the show was over, and Mike was fuming, though he managed to hide it fairly well, he thought. He ate cookies and drank fruit punch with the other parents until the kids joined them, enduring the awkward silences while everyone tried to figure out what to say about Justine’s absence.
Finally Gavin came racing out, beaming. He barreled into Mike, trying to knock chests like the professional sports figures, but instead hitting Mike’s ribs with his nose. Mike forgot Justine and his heart pounded a couple of heavy thumps of typical proud-daddy love. The kid was growing like crazy. In a year or two, that chest-bumping thing just might work.
Best of all, Gavin looked ecstatic now that his ordeal was over. He grinned up at Mike with those knockout blue eyes that were so like Justine’s. “It’s over!” He laughed. “I sucked, huh?”
Mike smiled back, relieved that the episode with Justine apparently hadn’t reached the kids’ ears. “Yep, you’re pretty bad, pal. You’re definitely no Pavarotti.”
This was the kind of candor that would drive Justine nuts. She had the theory that admitting any inadequacies was bad for the boy’s ego. But Mike knew that Gavin’s ego was perfectly healthy. Maybe too healthy. Gavin was as gorgeous as his mother, he lived in a six-thousand-square-foot mansion with his own boat and plasma TV, he pulled down straight As, and he boasted the best batting average in his Little League conference.
It would do him good to face the facts: Hugh Tillman was a better singer.
“I know,” Gavin agreed happily. “I can’t ever get the tune. Mrs. Hadley hates me. Where’s Mom?”
Mike felt the eyes of the other parents once again.
“She’s outside,” he said as casually as he could. “She got a phone call.”
“Oh, well, tell her I love her, okay? I gotta go.” Gavin and his buddies had plans to celebrate the success of the play with a pizza party at the Tillmans’ house. “Hugh’s mom is already waiting in the minivan for us.”
“Go tell her yourself,” Mike said. He knew if he let Gavin leave without saying goodbye, she’d carp about it all the way home.
The boy flew off, with Hugh and about four other boys trailing behind him like a pack of puppies. Mike grabbed a napkin, wiped cinnamon sugar off his hands and tossed his empty punch cup in the big trash bin.
“Three points,” Phil Stott, Judy’s husband, said with a smile. Mike appreciated that. He knew that Phil, a nice guy who didn’t have kids but was here to support his wife’s school, was trying to bridge the embarrassment gap.
Gavin was back in a flash. “Found her! She says to tell you she’s waiting for you in the car.” He held up his hand for Mike’s goodbye slap. At home it would be a hug and a kiss, but with Hugh and the other “dudes” standing by, a high five would have to do.
Mike obliged, and then did the same for all the other boys, who were accustomed to parading by him this way after every Little League game. He’d coached these boys since they were in T-ball. They were good kids. But he couldn’t help thinking his own smart, silly son was the best.
He wished Gavin were coming home with him right now, but he realized that was pretty cowardly. Yeah, the ride home would be a bummer, with Justine pouting or ranting, but he could handle it. He didn’t need to use his son as a buffer.
By the time he got to the car, Justine wasn’t speaking to him. Good. Pouting was ridiculous, but it was easier to ignore than the ranting.
She’d rolled back her silk sleeve and was rubbing conspicuously at the discoloration just above her wrist. He checked it out of the corner of his eye, just cynical enough to wonder which way the finger marks were facing. He was pretty damn sure he hadn’t been rough enough to bruise anything. She’d probably done it herself, while she waited for him to come out.
He considered trying to make conversation, but it seemed like too much trouble. Woodcliff Road was kind of tricky, with a twenty-foot drop through wooded slopes on the passenger side. He needed to concentrate.
Let her sulk. She loved that anyhow.
Finally, though, her resentment simply had to bubble out in words. She swiveled in her seat and glared at him. “So? Don’t you have a single thing to say for yourself? After what you did to my arm?”
Damn. He’d almost made it. They were only a couple of miles from Tuxedo Lake. He negotiated a curve through some overhanging elms, which were just beginning to go yellow. He glanced at her face, which looked slightly jaundiced in the glowing light. The shadows of the trees passing over her made it seem as if her mouth were moving silently, though he knew it wasn’t. It was a disagreeable sight.
He turned away and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe you were actually going to leave right when Gavin’s part was coming up.”
She waved her hand. “You call that a part? I can’t believe he dragged us all the way out there for that. He made a fool of me, that’s for sure.”
Clenching the steering wheel, Mike tried not to react. This was pointless, and he knew it. He’d tried for years to make Justine think about any situation, anywhere on this earth, without viewing it through the prism of her own self-interests, but she simply couldn’t do it. He’d looked up sociopath once, and it fit perfectly. It was kind of scary, actually.
But, like an idiot, sometimes he just couldn’t stop himself from responding. He accelerated, whipping the passing trees into a batter of lemony green.
“He made a fool of you? Sorry, but you’re going to have to explain to me how Gavin’s school play can possibly end up being all about you.”
She didn’t answer right away, and he knew that was a bad sign. She was lining up her ammunition, which meant this wasn’t going to be just a skirmish. It was going to be war.
“That’s just so like you,” she said. “The perfect Mike Frome can’t make mistakes. If anyone dares to point out that you’ve done something wrong, like rough up your own wife, you just launch a counterattack, trying to change the subject. Well, I won’t be put on the defensive. You manhandled me, and I ought to go to the police.”
“You’re not my wife,” he said. That was stupid, too. That wasn’t the point. But she did that to him. She made him so mad his brain shut off.
“I’m your son’s mother. I think that is just as important, don’t you?”
“No. I think it’s tragic.”
“God, you’re so melodramatic.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tragic? Because I took a call on my cell phone? I’m sorry to tell you, but that doesn’t make me a bad mother.”
He’d had enough. “No,” he said. “What makes you a bad mother is that you’re a raging bitch. You’re the most self-centered, foul-tempered bitch in the state of New York. That’s what makes you a bad mother.”
He half expected her to slap him. He definitely expected her to start yelling epithets at him. But she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she did something that shocked the hell out of him.
She opened her car door.
“Justine—”
“Stop the car.”
“Damn it, shut the door.”
“No. Stop the car. I’m getting out.”
He was already applying the brakes, but he had to be careful. She had one leg out. He didn’t want to fishtail on these narrow, curving roads. He was mad as hell at her. He might wish he’d never met her, but he didn’t want her to get hurt.
He maneuvered the car to a safe spot. His heart racing, he turned to her. “Are you insane? Do you want to kill yourself? Shut the damn door.”
She didn’t answer. She just picked up her purse and got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her.
He rolled down the down the window. “Justine, for God’s sake.”
“Go to hell,” she said without looking at him. “Just go straight to hell where you belong.”
He looked at her, so messed up with contradictory, heart-racing emotions and adrenaline that he couldn’t even decide what he felt. It was about five o’clock, and the trees behind her were already full of shadows. She had on high heels, the better to impress the other Volunteer Mommies with, but no damn good at all for walking along an uphill cliff road.
“Justine. Okay, look. I’m sorry. Get back in the car.”
She didn’t even answer. She just began to walk.
He trolled along behind her for a few yards, leaning over to beg her through the window and steering the car with one hand. He felt like a fool, which was bad enough, but when another car came up behind him and honked impatiently, the embarrassment of it was just too much.
“Justine, get in the car right now, or I’m going to drive away, and you’re going to have to walk the rest of the way home. It’s nearly a mile.”
No response, except another short toot from the car behind.
“Justine, I mean it. It’s getting cold. I’m not coming back to get you.”
She didn’t even turn her head. She shifted her purse to her other shoulder and kept walking. The people behind him probably thought he was a stalker, or a serial killer.
Honk…
Well, screw her, then. If she wanted to walk all the way home in a snit, fine. She logged about five miles on the treadmill in the home gym every single day of her life. He figured she could handle half a mile out here.
He rolled up the window and hit the gas. He watched her in the rearview mirror, getting smaller but never once looking his way or acknowledging her predicament by the slightest twitch of a muscle.
Finally he came to a curve, and when he looked in the mirror again she was gone.
That was the last time anyone—except perhaps her killer—ever saw Justine Millner Frome alive.
CHAPTER TWO
Two years later
“HOLD STILL. You’ve got a spot of green paint on your face.”
Suzie Strickland waited while the man in front of her reached up and teased the bridge of her nose with his fingernail. She didn’t believe for a minute that she had any paint there. Ben Kuspit just wanted to touch her. He’d been flirting with her ever since she arrived an hour ago to take pictures of his son.
He was paying her four-and-a-half thousand dollars for a painting of Kenny, the youngest of his four kids. It was the largest commission she’d landed yet, and she needed it. Still, if they’d been alone, she would have made it very clear that the price didn’t include groping rights.
Unfortunately, nine-year-old Kenny was still in the room, and she was reluctant to embarrass Daddy in front of his kid.
And, to be fair, maybe Ben wasn’t inventing the speck of paint. She had been using viridian paint this afternoon as she finished up her current project, a pair of adorable two-year-old twins with green eyes, green dresses and green ribbons in their hair.
She’d come a long way since the early years, when, after a day’s work, she’d find splattered color everywhere. In her hair, under her fingernails, even on the soles of her shoes. She still painted with passion, but she’d learned how to harness that intensity. Today, her sunny workroom on the third floor of her Albany townhome was the cleanest, best-organized space in the house.
Still, paint was paint, and it had a way of insinuating itself into some pretty strange places.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling politely at Ben, though her voice was tight. He needed to back up. He was seriously violating her personal space. And that smile was gross. The man was fifty, for God’s sake. His kid was staring right at him.
She lifted her camera up between them and moved to the far side of a gold chair, the kind of fragile, frilly thing Mrs. Kuspit apparently loved. The huge room was full of them.
“I’ll just get two or three more shots, and then I think I’m done here.”
“Great.” Ben looked over at Kenny, who stood next to the living room mantel, where trophies were arrayed like a metallic rainbow, catching light from the overhead chandelier and tossing it onto the flocked ivory wallpaper in little oblongs of silver and gold. They didn’t match the frilly gold chairs, but apparently Mrs. Kuspit didn’t make all the decorating decisions.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Ben said, snapping his fingers. “Kenny, pick up the football. Make like you’re getting ready to toss a long one.”
Kenny grimaced, but he bent down and retrieved the football at his feet. He lifted his arm awkwardly, glancing sideways at his father. “Like this?”
Ben made a disgusted sound. “Damn it, Kenny, why are you flashing us your armpit?” He strode over to the boy and began twisting his skinny elbow into a better position. “If you think I’m paying four-and-a-half thousand dollars to have you look like a geek, you’ve got another think coming.”
The boy flushed, but he didn’t protest. He just stared at the floor while his father adjusted him like a mannequin. Suzie lowered her camera and tried not to hate the man. Throwing a football in the formal living room? Come on. His ego had to have some limits, didn’t it?
She didn’t say anything, though. She’d had weirder requests, like the woman who wanted her parakeet’s picture painted as if he lived inside a genie’s bottle. She’d like to meet the psychiatrist who could figure that one out.
She had taken that commission, too. She needed every job she could get. If the Kuspits liked her painting—and she could already tell she’d have to add about ten pounds of muscle to the little boy in order to please Daddy—they would hang her picture where their rich friends could see it.
Their rich friends would then decide that their own little darlings deserved to be displayed in a big, beautiful rococo gold frame, too.
And voil?! Suzie could pay the mortgage on her town house, and everyone was happy.
Except Kenny.
Poor kid.
Ben was big and beefy, a good-looking former athlete. Kenny was scrawny and appeared to have about as much athletic ability as a scarecrow. Most of the trophies on the mantel were inscribed with phrases like Most Improved or Best Sportsmanship.
“Okay, that’s good, hold that. Don’t move.” Ben gestured impatiently toward Suzie. “Get one of him like that.”
Suzie lifted the camera, although the image she saw in the viewfinder was hardly inspiring. Kenny looked like he was being tortured.
He must hate football, but Ben obviously didn’t care. The three older Kuspit offspring were girls. Suzie would bet that, the minute Ben saw the little manly splotch on the ultrasound, he had scrawled “live vicariously through my son, the awesome high school quarterback” into his engagement calendar. He wasn’t going to let the dream die easily.
If he only knew what a mistake he was making. Look at Mike Frome, the most “awesome” jock in Suzie’s high school. At seventeen he’d landed Justine Millner, the prettiest girl in Firefly Glen. By eighteen, he’d been forced to marry Justine—because she’d had his kid—though he no longer even liked her. By twenty-five they were divorced.
Not that Suzie was keeping tabs on his life or anything. She knew all that only because, right after the divorce, Justine had hired Suzie to paint her son Gavin’s portrait.
It had probably merely been Justine’s way of spending Mike’s money as fast as she could, but Suzie didn’t care. She would have taken a commission from the devil himself to jump-start her career. And Gavin had actually been a pretty neat kid in spite of having been scooped out of a scummy gene pool.
“Suzie?”
