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PERLA

I heard they sent an ambulance to the Wultzes’ house after the 9-1-1 call. We were in bed; I mean, gosh, it was like three in the morning, but I woke up when I heard the sirens. I remember going to the window and looking out and seeing the red and white lights reflecting against the trees as the ambulance passed our house. Of course, it wasn’t needed. By the time they got there, it was too late.

—Nikkila Matthews, homemaker

On the back deck, just beside the pool, we sat under the stars. It was a full moon but cloudy, with a snap in the air. I had opened a 2016 bottle of Masseto merlot and brought Grant a cigar, then curled up in a big afghan in one of the rocker lounges that surrounded the firepit. He had turned the flames to low, and I scrolled through the playlists on my phone and selected one of his favorites. “Ole Man Trouble” by Otis Redding began playing through the hidden speakers, the soulful tune floating on the evening breeze. It, along with the crackle of the fire, instantly turned the dial down on my stress.

I rested my head back on the chair’s cushion and closed my eyes, humming along with the song. After that was a Sam Cooke tune, and I kicked off my slippers and rested my feet up on the pit’s wide rim, twitching my toes to the beat. Grant smiled and took a deep draw on his cigar as he watched me.

I waited until Grant had finished three glasses of wine before I brought up my surgery. I tried to downplay it, but he was a detail lover, and I sighed after his fourth question. “I don’t have all of the details, Grant. The details don’t matter. It’s a nose job. It’s with Kellan’s office. It’s all above board. You know how I am with things like this. It will be safe.”

“Okay, but you mentioned a recovery period.” He stretched to one side and dug into his pocket, withdrawing his slim silver phone.

“I’ll need to take it easy for a little bit. There will be a week or so where I’ll need to stay at home, take some pain meds.”

He fiddled with the touch screen and moved his chair closer so I could see his calendar. “What day is the procedure?”

“It’s in three weeks. On a Wednesday.”

“The eighth? Or the fifteenth?”

“I’ll have to look.” I placed my hand on his forearm and squeezed the muscle, his hair soft and golden from the sun. “It’s okay. I’ll arrange transportation to and from the surgery, and I’m bringing in extra help to take care of Sophie while I recuperate.”

He lifted his gaze from the phone, and I steeled myself for an argument. We had never before discussed a nanny, but it was understood that he carried the same opinions I did regarding pawning our child off on a stranger.

“What do you mean, ‘extra help’?” His thick brows pinched together, creating a sea of deep wrinkles and stress lines across his forehead.

“There’s a waitress at the country club who’s going to help with getting Soph to and from school, with her homework, that sort of thing.” I cupped my wineglass with both hands and brought it up to my lips.

“But you hate the idea of nannies.”

I made a face. “That’s not true. I’ve— we’ve —raised her to be independent. I don’t let people coddle her, and I don’t believe in tossing her off to a stranger instead of doing our duties as parents.”

Grant chuckled. “Please, tell us how you really feel.”

I smiled. It was possible my voice had risen an octave in that last sentence. “Okay,” I conceded. “I’ll get off my high horse. But I’ll be fully involved and supervising. I just want to make sure, if there’s an accident or if anything happens while I’m impaired from pain or medicine, that there’s a capable and responsible adult here at home while you’re at work.”

There. He couldn’t possibly say anything about that.

He looked out toward the darkness of the backyard and slowly swirled his glass, considering it. “Okay,” he relented. “You know best with Sophie. You always do. If you think someone is needed while you’re healing, then someone is needed. Do you like the girl?”

I nodded. “I do. You will too.”

And he would like her. I’d bend over backward to make sure that happened.

And she’d love him, at least on paper. On paper, she’d love him so much that it would drive her to kill.

Sweet, quiet, shy Paige. A girl who would enter a world of wealth and power and fall for the king of the castle—a man she would see as a path to the life she wanted, a life that could be hers, if not for his wife and child. A life she would kill to have.

It could play. I could make it play.

I leaned forward and held out my wineglass toward Grant. “Cheers to a beautiful life.”

“I’ll drink to that.” He clinked his glass to mine, and we both sipped in silence.

And that moment ... under the stars, a cool hush to the night, his eyes warm from the wine, his leg against mine, a promise of more in the air ... It felt pregnant with perfection in the way that only something with an expiration date can.

Our expiration was looming, and I was both giddy and nostalgic for it.