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As the tablet played, Sonya took it with her downstairs.

Cleo turned from the stove.

“Since the cooking part of my brain got crowded out, and I just beat you down here, we’re having my pasta in vodka sauce.”

“I love your pasta in vodka sauce.”

“How much am I making?”

“Trey got held up with work, so it’s just you and me. Look, if you haven’t started that yet, let’s FaceTime Mom, then we’ll just make a big salad for dinner.”

“A big salad, and girl movie night. I have to let the whole Event stay quiet awhile.”

“I ordered the invitations. And the displays for my presentation. I feel just a little queasy about that.”

“Get over it. Let’s sit down and have some time with Winter.”

While they did, Trey stood in front of his client’s house. Or what had been her house. Police tape stretched across the broken front door. Both front windows had been boarded over.

He muttered a curse, then took photographs for his files.

He turned when Owen drove up, got out of his truck.

“I heard. Figured you’d be here.” Owen studied the house alongside Trey.

“How the hell did he make bail?”

“His parents mortgaged their fucking house—that’s the word. And Milt Treeter agreed to take him in until the trial.”

“Treeter’s always been an idiot.”

“They slapped restrictions on him. No contact with Marlo, no drinking, no travel outside the county, mandatory addiction therapy, anger management.”

Owen chin-pointed to the boards, the police tape. “That worked out well.”

“Under two hours out, he gets drunk, punches Treeter in the face, knocks him down and out—busted nose, concussion—he steals Treeter’s car, comes here, busts in.”

Trey scrubbed his hands over his face. “I got a look inside before they closed it up. He trashed what he could, busted up furniture, broken glass everywhere. Jesus, if Marlo and the kids hadn’t gotten out, gone back to New Hampshire, it would’ve been worse than last time.”

“They can thank you for that. Fuck it, Trey, that’s a fact. You pushed that through so she could take the kids the hell away from him.”

“She only took what they absolutely needed with her. She was still hurting from when he went at her. She didn’t want much else, sent me a list a couple days ago, and we were arranging for the rest of her stuff to be sold, donated if it didn’t sell.”

“Does Marlo know?”

“No.” Thinking of it, Trey rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck. “Informing her’s the happy duty I’ve got coming up. Then we’ll deal with that wreck in there when I’m cleared to go back in.”

“I’ll help with that part. I’ll help,” Owen insisted. “You’re not doing all that as her lawyer. He could’ve come after you, but he didn’t.”

“I’m not a woman he’s got fifty pounds on, or a kid. Or a goddamn empty house.”

“That’s exactly why he didn’t. Go do what you have to do.” Owen laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll pick up some takeout. You got her out and away, Trey, her and the kids. This? It’s just stuff.”

“Yeah, but it was her stuff. She didn’t have a hell of a lot, but it was hers.”

Chapter Sixteen

Trey spent most of the next day dealing with the fallout of Wes Mooney’s drunken rampage.