It did, which led to her bedroom—and favor number three, he thinks with a smirk.

And then favor number four—not commenting after he found the prosthesis in her bra and the angry scar where her breasts should have been. Who knew she was hiding such a deep, dark secret?

“Cancer?” he’d asked when he found it.

Either she pretended not to hear him or she really didn’t. She was pretty wasted.

He dropped the subject—for the moment, anyway—and got back down to business—favor number five.

That was followed, the next morning, by favor number six—driving her to the airport up in Boston, and by offering favor number seven—picking her up from the airport last night.

First she flatly—and rudely—refused him, then she avoided his calls all day Saturday. To top things off, by Sunday she had apparently blocked his number on her phone, because every time he tried to call her, he got a recording: “The number you are trying to reach has calling restrictions that have prevented the completion of this call.”

It took him a few calls to realize what she’d done, and every time he heard the message—which gave way to an immediate dial tone—he was increasingly infuriated. Not just with her, but with himself. He’d gone out of his way, and for what?

Ungrateful bitch.

Although—he does feel a little better now that he at least knows why she made up that story about having a boyfriend last fall, after he took her out on their one and only date—unless you count Friday night’s hookup.

He doesn’t.

He’s an old-fashioned romantic. He can’t help it. He wants to wine and dine her—well, he wanted to. Not anymore. Not after the way she treated him.

And here he’d been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, even after she lied to him back in the beginning.

He’d known all along that she wasn’t really seeing someone else. He’d followed her around long enough to know that she was home alone most nights, or out with her friend Sidney.

He’d actually thought she made up having a boyfriend because she was trying to get him to stop asking her out. Now he knows it was obviously because she’d been ill with breast cancer. She probably thought he’d be turned off by that; by her scars.

I wouldn’t have been. I would have made her feel beautiful. She didn’t give me a chance.

Damn her, anyway.

Now it’s Monday morning. He has to go to work and see her there.

Is he looking forward to that?

Hell, no. Good thing this is the last week of school.

He steps out of the shower, rigorously towel dries himself, throws on a pair of shorts, and heads for the kitchen. He’ll get dressed for work later. Plenty of time for breakfast in front of the TV, where he’ll catch up on the latest Red Sox trade.

Standing at the counter, he peels a couple of bananas and tosses them into the blender for his daily smoothie. Then he adds four raw eggs. Plenty of protein—that’s what you need to start the day.

Too bad Elena chose to keep her breast cancer a secret from him. If he had known, he could have been giving her healthy tips like that. He could have had her on a solid fitness regimen and—

Feeling a rush of movement behind him, he starts to turn around, only to feel a piercing jab, like a bee sting, in his neck.

What the hell?

By the time the gloved hand pulls the syringe out of his body and tucks a tortoiseshell comb into the back pocket of his shorts, Tony Kerwin is lying on the floor dying an agonizing death.

Part III

Saturday, June 15

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

I was thirty years old when I got my diagnosis. I had to go see my doctor for test results while I was on my lunch hour at school—his office was right around the corner. I remember wishing it were a hell of a lot farther than that, because I had about a minute to transition from “You have the big C” to “the letter of the day is C.”

It was. Can you freaking believe it? The letter of the day was a C.

That’s just the way it worked out.

And the whole time I was standing in front of my first-graders that afternoon teaching them that C is for Cat and Car and Cup, I was thinking that C is also for Cancer and also for a whole lot of Curse words that I wanted to scream.

—Excerpt from Elena’s blog, The Boobless Wonder

Chapter 13

Bright sunshine glints on the tranquil waters of Mobile Bay, beaming hot on Landry’s bare arms as she cuts roses in her garden. Saturday morning sounds fill the air: the pleasant buzz of hedge clippers, lawn mowers, motorboats; the neighbor kids; laughter as they romp in the yard; the occasional barking of dogs being walked along the water.

Filling a second large plastic bucket with fragrant pink blooms, Landry needs enough flowers not just for the usual vases in the living and dining room, but also for the kids’ rooms where her guests will be staying. Addison can sleep in the master bedroom with her, Tucker on the couch downstairs. They weren’t thrilled about the prospect of giving up their rooms, but they’ll live.

Right now they’re at work. Landry will be leaving for the airport—again—in forty-five minutes.

The first outing was at 5:00 A.M., when she dropped off Rob and his golf clubs for his early flight to North Carolina.

Even after he got out of the car and was hugging her good-bye, he was talking about canceling the trip, worried about leaving her.

“We’ll be fine,” she kept saying. “I’ll have plenty of company all weekend.”

“I know. I’d just feel better if—”

“If they weren’t ‘strangers’?”

“I didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t have to. Look, you’ve spent every Father’s Day with your dad your entire life. He’s getting up there in years. You never know how much longer you’ll have with him.”

With anyone.

“I know,” Rob said. “I keep thinking of that. I want to go—I need to go, but—”

“You’re going. Get it-got-it-good.”

He laughed. “Bossy.”

“So are you. I’ll see you Monday. Go.”

He went.

And her friends are on their way.

Bruce Mangione delved into both Kay and Elena’s backgrounds and is ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that they are who they claim to be. Not a threat to her family’s safety.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine?” Landry echoed when he reported that verdict a few days ago. “Not a hundred percent certain?”

“Nothing in this world,” he told her, “is a hundred percent certain. Anyone who tells you that it is full of—”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I never was worried about the two of them anyway. It’s Jaycee who scares me.”

“But she isn’t coming this weekend, right?”

“No. She never even responded to Elena’s invitation.”

She took the folder Bruce handed her, filled with documentation showing that Elena and Kay are just Elena and Kay, and she handed him a check.

If she opts not to tell Rob about it, he’ll never notice it’s missing. She’s the one who handles all the finances. Ironic, because he’s the one who makes all the money.

But she will tell Rob. Just . . . not yet. Not until this is all behind them.

She may never tell her friends, though—Kay and Elena—that she hired a private investigator to check out their backgrounds along with Jaycee’s. Neither of them has children. They don’t know what it’s like to imagine someone under your roof creeping around the house in the wee hours, capable of . . .

God only knows what.

Jenna Coeur’s daughter Olivia was Addison’s age when Jenna presumably stabbed her to death, in her bed, in the middle of the night.

Jenna is still out there somewhere.

Bruce is still looking for her; looking, too, for solid evidence that Jenna Coeur and Jaycee the blogger are the same person.