Page 50

Julia

Julia drove back to Lake Timmeny in a daze.

David, her dear friend, was a low-budget pornographer.

Even worse, he was partially responsible for a young woman’s death and was also connected to the Mob.

What the hell? In her mind, Julia kept seeing a young man splayed out on the rocks in a river, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, a tangential casualty of David’s shady occupation.

Jimmy T’s dealings weren’t on the up-and-up. That’s what the bartender said, but what did that mean exactly? Everything Julia knew about the Mob, she’d learned from The Sopranos.

At a rest stop on the drive home, Julia took out her phone and did some research.

Sure enough, she came upon a series of articles dated five years ago confirming the death of a young man found in the Walloomsac River with his neck broken.

It was deemed an accident, but Julia knew better.

Maybe she could help rewrite history, go to the Bennington police, and tell them about her conversation with the bartender.

But his words of warning came back to her with force.

Don’t ask questions about Fiona or her family in this town. It’s not safe.

She wished she hadn’t come looking for answers, because all she left with were more questions, including the odd riddle that David had recited about committing the perfect murder.

How do you shoot someone without ever pulling the trigger?

Julia had no idea, but was that what he’d done to Fiona—somehow shot her without firing a weapon?

David’s connection to his missing girlfriend wasn’t simple or straightforward.

There was far more than jealousy to stoke Fiona’s fires.

She may very well have a motive for revenge, and David a reason to keep her quiet.

It was a bright and clear afternoon when Julia returned from her sojourn. Somehow, in her absence, the surrounding greenery had lost its vibrancy, and the lake’s sparkle had dimmed to a dull shade of gray. She found Erika at the shorefront, entertaining the twins.

“Thanks for the car. Why are you with the kids?” Julia asked as she handed Erika her keys.

“David gave Izzy some time off and then regretted it, so I came to his rescue. He’s working in his office.”

Julia peered into the glass house, spotting David seated at his computer on the third floor.

Fortunately, she couldn’t see whatever explicit images might be on his monitor.

She wanted to tell Erika everything about her trip—what she’d learned at the Black Rose.

But sharing all that would probably mean confessing her own secrets, including the loss of the lake house and David’s distasteful offer to fix her money troubles.

The only picture she could post to Instagram to capture her current state of mind would be a mushroom cloud exploding over the New Mexico desert.

“Where are Lucas and Rick?”

“Rick dragged him to see Champlain College. I don’t know what kind of bribe he used to convince him to go,” she said.

“Or threat?” suggested Julia, which got a smirk out of Erika.

Nearby, Brody and Becca splashed at the shoreline without a care. Erika watched them from under the brim of her sun hat. “I miss those simpler days, don’t you?” she said.

“Little kids, little problems,” answered Julia, reciting the familiar parents’ maxim.

Somehow the aphorism jarred something inside her. Suddenly an answer to her troubles that had once seemed so elusive became stunningly clear. The best way to address her problems was to shrink them down to a manageable size. It was so simple, so effective—and yet so easy to overlook.

You don’t tackle a massive project all at once—you break it down into manageable steps. You turn a big bite into many small ones. It was as if the way forward had been magically downloaded into her brain.

Back in her house, Julia called her financial advisor, who didn’t answer, but she left a voicemail. The next call she made was to Christian.

She endured a pang of sadness at the sound of his voice, but girded herself for what she had to do.

“Hey, I’m so glad you called,” Christian said. If he had been a wine, she’d describe him as genuine with notes of remorse and full-bodied sadness.

“How are you doing?” she asked without much cheer. “Are you sober?”

“Not a drop since the lake,” he promised. “I’ve been going to two meetings a day.”

“Good,” said Julia. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Even though she meant it, she was still surrounded by his betrayal—swallowed by it, actually.

She could forgive him (maybe), but she couldn’t escape what he’d done.

Even if she left him, she’d still bear the scars of losing the lake house.

Time would not heal that wound. She’d be forced to relive his deception in her constant yearning to come to a place where she no longer belonged.

“Listen to my words carefully,” Julia said.

“I still love you, though I’m not entirely sure why.

I’ll have a therapist help me unpack that down the road.

But while you are sober—and you need to stay sober—you will find a buyer for our failing business.

I don’t care if we leave cash on the table.

You will get this albatross sold, and then you will use that money to save my house. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” Christian said. “I know my apology rings hollow, but believe me, Jules, I feel sick about what I’ve done. I’ve never been so sorry in all my life.”

“Not even after you screwed that stranger?”

She heard his sharp intake of breath. “I know you well enough to understand that this is even worse.”

He’s not wrong there.

“Honestly, Christian, I don’t care about your apology.

Right now, I care about this house—all the memories I have here—and Taylor’s school.

And I do care about our family. I know you have an addiction, and maybe that’s manifested in some sort of gambling problem involving our assets.

You certainly have a problem with truthfulness as well, but you need to sort all that out yourself.

The bottom line, Christian, is you need to fix what you’ve broken. I mean it. Fix it now .”

Julia ended the call without a goodbye, feeling strangely energized. Surprisingly, empowerment felt more intoxicating than Erika’s Lake Escape cocktail.

She turned her attention to her laptop, where she found her résumé in a folder that would have been covered in dust if it hadn’t been a digital archive.

It was strange to see an accounting of her life before she climbed aboard Christian’s entrepreneurial rocket ship to nowhere.

Now it was time to get back into her own vehicle.

She was good at running organizations and loved nonprofit work, but her skills were portable.

She could look for work in the corporate world that might pay better.

It wasn’t going to save the lake house, but it would give her back some of her dignity.

After Julia fired off her résumé to a few choice contacts she found on LinkedIn, she heard a knock at the door.

She went to answer it, but hesitated when she saw David through the window, standing on her doorstep holding a bottle of wine in each hand. She steadied herself before opening the door. He greeted her with a smarmy smile.

“Erika is with the kids, Taylor and Izzy are off somewhere—we’ve got some time,” he said with a glint in his eyes.

Julia didn’t invite him in.

“I went to Bennington to look for Fiona,” she told him.

David seemed genuinely confused. Julia put it together quickly.

“You didn’t know she was from there, did you?”

“What? No. She’s from New York City.” David sounded quite sure of himself.

“You can check her high school transcript if you’d like, but I happen to know for a fact that she’s from Bennington and does her dry cleaning at Kelly’s, at least according to the ticket I found in the Porsche.”

Julia had never seen the color drain from someone’s face as rapidly as it did from David’s.

He might have passed out if she told him Fiona was also Jimmy T’s daughter, but she held that ace close to the vest. It was possible he already knew, but she suspected he didn’t.

He wouldn’t have let a woman with a vendetta get that close to him.

Besides, with David’s Mob connections, she felt safer keeping some information to herself.

However, other tidbits were too compelling not to share.

“And I’ve also found out that you, David Dunne, are into underground porn. I know that your talent scout business is nothing but a front for illicit adult websites.” Julia couldn’t mask her disgust. “Revenge porn? Really, David! How could you?”

He stammered, looking like a fool, his jaw moving but no words exiting his mouth.

“Let me be blunt,” Julia continued, her tone clipped.

“My body is hereby and forevermore off-limits to you. And if I find any videos of our past escapade on one of your websites, I swear to God, I will use a hot poker instead of the law to teach you a lesson so instructive you’ll be shitting out of a catheter for the rest of your life. Do I make myself clear?”

For the second time in less than an hour, a man answered her question with the same single word: “Crystal.”

“I can’t trust you, David. And don’t bother trying to defend yourself, because I’m not interested. I’m solving my own problems from now on. I don’t need your coercion, your money, or anything at all from you. Somehow, some way, I promise I will come out on top, and I’ll do it on my terms.”

With that, Julia closed the door in David’s face, and for the first time since coming to the lake, she finally had something to feel good about on vacation.