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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1748c73e-1d17-5731-a242-703ed7b3ad61)
HER BREATH CAUGHT in her throat, Julie Fairbanks crouched on the floor, hugging her knees, staring at the television screen. The baby who’d been born in a man-made bubble town, who’d been raised and surrounded by people who were only there to keep up appearances, was a man himself now. And about to break free...
The creak of a door opening disrupted her concentration. Lila McDaniels, managing director of The Lemonade Stand, stood in the entranceway. All six women, lounging in various positions on the couch, chairs and floor, looked at her. Five were residents at the unique women’s shelter. Julie was a volunteer who hadn’t left after she’d finished her art therapy session. Lila’s gaze homed in on Julie. With a sideways quirk of Lila’s head, Julie knew she’d been summoned.
Before the show’s hero broke free.
Smiling at the other women, she quietly left before the happy ending that was coming soon. And hoped each one of them would find the necessary strength and support to create her own happy ending.
“What’s wrong?” Julie asked as soon as the door was closed behind them.
Lila shook her head, but her tight gray bun hadn’t moved. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to have a chat with you,” the unflappable woman said. Her voice was kind—as always. And the words were issued with Lila’s usual emotional distance.
The woman both intrigued and frightened Julie. Intrigued because Julie sensed there was so much more to Lila than her ability to maintain calm in an atmosphere of pain and fear. And watching Lila frightened her sometimes, too, because she doubted she’d ever know Lila’s sense of peace.
For the most part she’d love to have Lila’s life. Unmarried and yet with a huge family of women and kids to tend to every day. Making a strong, positive difference in the lives of others.
They were heading for Lila’s private suite—rooms that were her off-duty space at the Stand. Lila stayed there any time she didn’t make it home to the condo she owned in town. Julie hadn’t been aware of any situation at the Stand that had prompted the director’s need to stay over this particular early-October Friday night.
But as a volunteer at the Stand, mostly working with the children, Julie wasn’t privy to every circumstance.
Lila offered her tea. Julie accepted. And watched the older woman bring out the exact brand and flavor she preferred. In some ways they were so much alike, she and Lila.
And yet, Julie knew next to nothing about the other woman’s circumstances, other than that she’d been the managing director of The Lemonade Stand since day one.
Word was that she’d applied for the job while the resort-like shelter was under construction. She’d undergone a normal interview process and had been hired.
From what Julie had been told, in all the years Lila had been at the shelter she’d never had a personal visitor. Not a family member or friend. And even in town, she wasn’t known well.
That was where Julie and Lila differed. Everyone in Santa Raquel knew who Julie Fairbanks was. Many of those people she’d once considered friends. There was still a handful.
A carefully selected, heart-vetted, very small handful.
“How are you doing?” Lila asked, giving Julie a rare, full-on smile as she took one of the two wingback chairs on either side of the claw-foot table in her small but elegantly decorated parlor.
“Good.” Julie nodded as she sat in the other chair, suddenly feeling as if she was onstage under bright lights. As if she could be seen but couldn’t see what was out there. “Busy,” she added. And then, perhaps to ward off whatever was coming, she continued. “The annual celebrity gala for the Sunshine Children’s League is coming up and, of course, I’m fully involved with that...” Her seat on the league’s board had won her the opportunity to chair the gala. “And Minoran Child Development is getting ready to open up a thrift shop. The red tape is endless, although Colin’s being a sweetheart and helping out tremendously.” Lila was well acquainted with Julie’s older brother, who not only ran the family’s prestigious law firm in town but had recently become a major donor to The Lemonade Stand.
“I hear that Chantel is pregnant.”
“Three months!” Julie grinned. Her sister-in-law, who now shared the family mansion with Julie and Colin, had come into their lives as an undercover cop pretending to be a member of their privileged society, and had become her best friend. “I can’t wait to have a little one in the house!” These days, that new baby was the first thing she thought of when she woke up in the morning.
She was just the aunt. She’d maintain her proper place. But still, she couldn’t wait. “I’m going to watch the baby when Chantel goes back to work. At least for the first couple of years.” If Julie had her way, she’d be the child’s nanny until he or she went to school, but it was ultimately up to Chantel and Colin, and they all had time to figure that one out.
Lila’s smile looked somehow...worried, suggesting that she saw some kind of sadness in Julie’s situation. In her gray skirt and blouse, with her hair in its usual bun, Lila didn’t resemble Julie’s idea of a psychic, but she felt sure the older woman had otherworldly talents of perception.
Lila’s next words confirmed Julie’s personal opinion. “I’m concerned about you,” she said.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
The woman watched her, as though waiting for Julie to confess to something. “Why?”
“There’s a wine tasting at your home this evening.”
She nodded again. She’d helped arrange the event that was raising money for the Santa Raquel Library fund—a cause that had become dear to her and Colin and Chantel, since the library’s fund-raising efforts had been instrumental in creating the bond the three of them shared. Chantel, while posing as a writer from a privileged family in New York, had been dating Colin as part of her cover. She’d agreed to write a script for the library’s grand opening party in the renovated mansion that had been willed to the city as a library site. The evening’s event had been a mystery caper, and Chantel had written herself right into the hands of a privileged, wealthy, respected man she’d discovered was a serial rapist—Julie’s rapist. She’d risked her own life in order to give Julie’s life back to her.
“The wine event is there. You’re here.” Lila stated the obvious, so Julie just shrugged.
“You’re cohosting an event, and you aren’t there.”
Feeling those bright lights again, Julie sipped her tea. Stared at the polish on her toes, the black leather straps of her flip-flops across her pale feet. And then she looked straight at Lila. “I am capable of being there,” she said with complete assurance. “Knowing that, I’ve given myself the option of choosing not to be.”
“Why make that choice?”
So maybe she’d recognized from the moment Lila had appeared exactly why she’d wanted to see her. The summons. The tea. Julie would’ve liked to stand up and leave. To defend her right not to be subjected to inquiry. But she didn’t really feel defensive. Or upset with Lila.
“You know I’m uncomfortable around that crowd.”
True enough, though no one on the night’s guest list knew that. The rapist’s father was one of the state’s most prominent bankers—so the details, including names, had been kept out of the news. Smyth Jr. had accepted a plea agreement. And money really did carry a lot of power. But Lila knew—Julie and Colin had become associated with the Stand through the ordeal. As did others closely associated with Smyth’s ten years’ worth of victims.
“I also know you’ve made a point, with Chantel’s and Colin’s support, of rejoining your social group. I heard that you used to love dressing up for parties, too.”
“And I can now attend these things without panic attacks,” she told Lila. “It’s like I said. I know I can, so I no longer have to.”
“We’re talking about a function in your own home, Julie. Yet here you are.”
She didn’t like how Lila’s statement made her feel. As though she, Julie, wasn’t quite done with moving on. As though she was still broken.
The truth was, she’d never be done with it. Not really. There was no way to erase what had happened, and no way not to be affected by it.
But she was able to live more normally now.
For some reason, she needed Lila—a highly respected professional working with female victims—to see that.
“I wanted Chantel and Colin to be able to welcome guests into their home as a couple. More specifically, I wanted Chantel to feel like the hostess, the woman of the house. Since she came into our lives on a lie, she still sometimes feels like an imposter, like she’s not really one of us, especially when there’s a gathering that includes people who don’t know the details. It can be hard for her. As if making the transition from street cop to detective wasn’t difficult enough, she’s living in a society that’s completely unfamiliar to her. If I was there, people would naturally turn to me as the hostess and...”
It was the reason she’d given her brother and his wife for skipping out on the high-dollar evening they’d been planning for several months. They hadn’t been happy with her proposed absence, hadn’t thought it necessary, but they’d accepted her choice. Because her reasoning was valid.
“But why are you here?” Lila asked.
Julie frowned. It wasn’t unusual for her to be at The Lemonade Stand. In a volunteer capacity with the children, but also hanging out with the women. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s Friday night. You’re twenty-eight years old. Independently wealthy and lovely. You could be doing any number of things for fun and relaxation. Okay, so you wanted to be away from your home for the night. You could’ve booked yourself into a resort spa. Gone to the theater. You could have been on a date.”
Julie didn’t respond to Lila. She couldn’t.
Inside her, everything was tense. Poised for escape.
“We need you here, Julie. You know that. And we all want you here. You bring a nurturing and understanding and compassion that’s special and very, very precious to these women. And to the staff.”
Julie raised her eyes to Lila’s. And was scared by the concerned crease in the other woman’s brow.
“But we aren’t being a friend back to you,” Lila went on, “we aren’t good for you if you’re using us as a hideout.”
Ironic, considering that the Stand existed so women had a place to hide and be safe while they healed.
“If you need to be here, you are welcome. Always. I don’t ever want you to need to come to us and then change your mind. Or your course of action. But if you need to be here, then we need to be doing something to help you.”
The band around Julie’s chest relaxed a little.
“It helps me just to be here,” she assured the other woman.
Lila waited until their eyes met again. “Those women you were with tonight... Do you think any one of them would choose to be here? If they had a place to go, where they’d be safe and could live a healthy life?”
Thinking of the five women she’d had dinner with in the cafeteria and then wandered to the lounge with—women who all had rooms in cabins on the premises—Julie shook her head.
All of them mourned for the lives they’d lost. For the dreams they’d lost. For the sense of security that had been taken from them. They yearned for real homes. Yearned to be in control of their lives again. And they lived in fear, too.
Julie wasn’t afraid of being attacked again. She had a lovely home that she cherished, a bed of her own that she’d be returning to that night.
“As a staff member, volunteer or not, you are one of us, Julie. And you will be for as long as you choose to share yourself with us. And also as a friend. You’re both things to us.”
Okay, good. No problems. She wanted to breathe easier.
But didn’t.
“I’ve come to suspect that you’re here for a third purpose, too.”
No. No, she wasn’t.
“You’re aware that most state facilities have time limits on the number of weeks a woman can remain in a shelter like ours, right?”
She knew. The Lemonade Stand, as a private facility, didn’t have to adhere to those mandates. They had their own mandates, loosely based on state laws, but they didn’t send away women who were doing everything required of them, who were participating fully in their own recovery, who were making progress but just weren’t ready to leave yet.
“Do you know why the state sets those time limits?”
“Because of the money.” Obviously. “And we mostly adhere to them because we don’t want our residents to start feeling powerless, to lose their sense of self-reliance by relying on us too much.”
“And because if they depend on the Stand to fill an emotional void, a void left by abuse, then they lose their ability to fill that void themselves.”
“You’re telling me not to get too attached to the residents. Not to become personal friends with them because they’re going to move on.” She was well aware of that. And didn’t let herself get too close—even while they were intimately in each other’s personal space as they opened up and shared their most vulnerable secrets.
“I’m telling you that I’m worried you’re using us to fill a void in your life.”
The words had come, in spite of Julie’s attempts to forestall them.
This was what she’d been afraid to hear.
CHAPTER TWO (#u1748c73e-1d17-5731-a242-703ed7b3ad61)
JULIE STOOD UP in Lila’s parlor, wishing she could escape into any of the antique paintings on the walls depicting faraway places. The way she escaped into her own paintings in her home studio. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here tonight...” As she heard her own words, she heard Lila’s earlier ones, too, about not ever wanting Julie to feel that she shouldn’t come to The Lemonade Stand.
Lila wasn’t telling her to leave. But Julie would rather leave than hear what Lila was telling her.
“You can go if you’d like, of course,” Lila said, her voice as calm as always. Her teacup sat untouched on the table between them as she watched Julie. “But I hope you’ll stay, continue our conversation.”
In other words, Lila thought she needed help.
That was what this meeting was about.
Julie was already in regular counseling, with Bloom Larson in town. Chantel had introduced them the previous year when she’d spent time keeping the psychiatrist safe from a threat to her life.
Julie was doing what Bloom called her “personal work”—challenging herself to face the situations that frightened her, dare to live life fully, not to let the bastard who’d stolen her youth have the rest of her life, too. So she had more work to do, and Lila knew full well that these things took time. Maybe even a lifetime.
She met Lila’s gaze again. Then focused briefly on the rose-colored silk fabric of her chair. Confusion had her sinking back into the seat she’d so abruptly vacated.
“Have you told Dr. Larson about all the time you spend here when you aren’t working or socializing with staff?”
Julie shook her head.
“Needing to be in the company of others who are going through some of the same struggles you face, who’ve been indelibly hurt by those they trusted, is normal,” Lila said.
Julie felt better for a moment.
Was something wrong? Or not?
“But I think that, for the most part, you’re beyond that stage,” the director continued. “You’re more like a mentor to these women than you are one of them.”
