I left his room with another knot in my gut—something just didn’t seem right.

ELLE

Spring was in early bloom this year.

The breeze was light and cool.

The air fragrant.

The landscape almost indescribably beautiful.

From the rich, vibrant colors of azaleas, rhododendrons, and tulips bursting across the adjacent meadow to the fence separating this holy ground from the wildness beyond, with its overabundance of yellow daffodils growing against it.

The grass, too, was picture perfect. Although barely green, it was still soft and welcoming. And each building had planter boxes outside its windows filled with hundreds of purple violets.

Then there were the pathways. They were made of smooth gray stones that peeked out beneath a mat of leggy clover and dandelions. The dandelions. The reason I picked this location over so many others Michael had suggested.

Green Meadows was a small cemetery on the west side of Boston in Watertown, and although Michael thought it was too small and too far, I thought it was perfect. It reminded me of my childhood, of my sister and me running through the fields, picking dandelions and blowing on them.

Perhaps sensing in a way that I knew what Lizzy would prefer, Michael had conceded, and Green Meadows was the place we’d laid my sister to rest. The funeral gathering was small and nondenominational, the sermon short, and the gravestone marker was simple. It read:

Elizabeth Sterling O’Shea

In loving memory

Anything else would have been hypocritical.

To say loving wife and mother would have been a lie. Lizzy had deserted her husband and child for a life she had somehow found more fulfilling. A life filled with drugs, sex, and money.

To say loving sister, well, since we hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. That said it all. The last time I saw my sister was when my mother died and I was lying in a hospital bed. She came to say goodbye and left me alone with our father, who by any definition was a monster.

And to say loving daughter would have been a joke. I hadn’t talked to our father in twelve years, and when I finally found the strength to track him down and call him to let him know Lizzy had died, he told me, “She has been dead to me for years.” When I hung up, I knew that would be the last time I’d ever talk to him.

After the casket was lowered, we all began to leave the cemetery. Michael took my hand and I tried to pull it away, but he just seemed to grip it tighter. I couldn’t wait to see Clementine, to hold her to me. Michael and I had both agreed she was too young to attend.

Coming to a halt, I glanced back. I knew Logan was somewhere in the distance watching me, but that wasn’t why I stopped. I had a few things I needed to say and do. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up,” I said to Michael.

“I’ll wait in the car,” he told me and headed that way with the dozen or so other people who had attended. Aside from his sister and her husband, and his father, I didn’t know anyone there.

With the delicate silver bracelet I’d recently found gripped tightly in one hand, I closed my eyes. The bracelet was the one that my sister had given me on my tenth birthday. It was meant to bring me comfort on those nights my father would insist on having sex with my mother when it was clear she wasn’t interested. It was also the same one I had thrown at her when she told me she was leaving me alone with our father. The same one I’d found in her car. The dainty silver chain was a lot of things, but right now it was a keepsake I’d hold on to. I’d save it and give it to her daughter one day when thoughts of her mother might surface.

My sister’s daughter would never know her mother. Never know she’d been abandoned. Never know the things mothers and daughters should share. I’d paint a pretty picture for her, though, of how wonderful her mother was, because there was a time she was. Still, I was certain there would be days she’d cry for her mother. And that broke my heart. At the right time, I’d give her this, and tell her a happier version of the story of how it came to be.

Letting my tears fall, I picked a dandelion from the ground and clutched it in my other hand. With a gust of breath, I turned toward the heavens and whispered, “Blow, Lizzy, just blow.”

As I walked toward the car, I breathed in a deep lungful of the spring air. The sweet scent of the just opening cherry blossoms was poignant, and I was content with the place my sister would lie forever more.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked, handing me a tissue once I’d gotten into his car. He had driven himself, opting to forgo the formality of limos and the procession of cars following the hearse to and from the cemetery.

I drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “Yes, I am. What about you? Are you okay?”

He looked at me. “I have no idea. Elizabeth seems like the wind, she blew into my life and out so quickly.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Remaining silent, he eased out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Once his tires were no longer on the gravel, he glanced over at me. “I will be . . . okay,” he said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. “I just want all of this to be over, so I can focus on my daughter. She’s what’s most important to me.”

Easing my hand out of his grip, I pretended to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “She’s going to be fine, Michael.”

He nodded. “I know she will.”

Catching the worry on his face, I had to ask, “What’s next?”

He hesitated and then said, “We take one day at a time.”

Whether purposely avoiding what the real question was or caught up in his grief, I couldn’t be certain but I had to know. “I mean about the drugs. Is all of that over? Are you and Clementine free from danger now?”

With a thoughtful expression, he glanced over at me. “You know, I think we are. With the five million dollars’ worth of drugs now in the possession of the police, there’s nothing left for anyone to go after.”

I blinked. Shocked that he was lying to me. “The news reported cocaine worth about half that was found.”

“That’s what I said.”

The blatant lie threw me for a loop. That was not what he’d said. Was he testing my knowledge of the situation? Did he know where the rest of the cocaine was? Was he hiding it? Did he have it? Was he keeping it for himself? And if so, what the hell was he going to do with it? Was Michael even more involved than I had thought? For Clementine’s sake, I had to hope not. Still, I had to put my faith in him that he’d do what was best for her. I didn’t have much of a choice. If I didn’t follow his rules, he’d cut me out of her life, and I couldn’t let that happen.

From this point forward, though, my eyes would be more than wide open.

We rode the rest of the way back to his house in silence. With my eyes focused out the window, my mind started to drift.

I had two men in my life. Both had earned my trust. One was regurgitating the police’s theory that my sister’s death was the result of a fall after a self-induced drug overdose and, rather than dealing with the fallout, whoever she had been with at the time tossed her body in the river. The other believed my sister was murdered . . . by her husband . . . the very man sitting beside me.

I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

The police were still investigating but with no solid leads, their theory would hold true and the case would be closed in no time.

Michael O’Shea was no longer my sister’s husband; he was now my sister’s widower. I wasn’t sure what I was. My sister and I had been estranged, and up until three and a half months ago, Michael and I had never met. Still, he’d been the one to call me upon Lizzy’s disappearance. Concerned, I came to Boston. Once I’d arrived, I met Clementine, my one-year-old niece, and after that I knew there was no way I was leaving. I fell in love with her the moment I laid eyes on her, and I wanted to be a part of her life. And Michael, not even knowing me, had let me into his daughter’s life. Something he didn’t have to do.