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I wanted to remind Brent that the argument between my father and I five years ago likely would have been worked out if I’d had the chance to talk to him again. Instead, I was arrested three days later for robbing the Cape Craven Historical Society where the family jewels had been on loan.

  Sergeant Craven, military hero, became Ax Craven, disgruntled jewel thief. When my father heard about the crime, he urged the police department to prosecute me to the full extent of the law. In his eyes, I’d turned my back on the family.

  The only problem was, I didn’t steal the jewels. I was set up.

  Set up by the asshole brother who was now looking at me like butter wouldn’t melt in his tight-faced mouth.

  “What do you want, Brent?” I ask, tired of the walk down Memory Lane.

  “What do you want, Alexander? Why come back to Cape Craven? Father won’t see you, that I can guarantee. So if you think you’re going to weasel your way into some money, you can forget about it.”

  I stare at him, saying nothing. The emptiness stretches out between us as I sit there, unmoving. Brent begins to fidget in his chair, checking his phone, then his expensive watch. Finally, he can’t take the silence any longer.

  “You’re not welcome in Cape Craven,” he says, standing up. “Consider me the reverse Welcome Wagon. You have a week to get your things and get out of town. If you stick around after that, I promise you, things will become quite uncomfortable for you.”

  “That so?”

  “You can bet on it,” he says, then opens the cabin door. Before he closes it behind him, he pauses. “I should have guessed that prison wouldn’t make you any smarter.”

  “Oh, it might not have made me smarter, but it has made me harder. And even more stubborn.”

  He swallows, then nods. “If this is the way you want to play it, that’s fine by me. Get out of Cape Craven, Alexander. Or I’ll enjoy making you leave now like I enjoyed getting rid of you then.”

  The door closes behind him, and I rise to my feet. A hum of anger is vibrating through me, and I have to discharge it, or I feel as if I’ll explode. My fist flies out, shattering the wood paneling in front of me and leaving an ugly hole in the wall. My other fist puts a matching hole beside the first one.

  I stand there, panting, blood dripping down my injured hands. After a moment, I head to the sink to wash my wounds.

  My meeting with Brent had gone much as I expected it to. Still, that didn’t make it any easier to sit through. The thought that my own brother would be so willing to hurt me, to lie about me, to push me out, was sickening.

  And my father. Brent said he wouldn’t see me. I suppose the whole thing with the Craven heirlooms had pretty much shattered any chance of reconciliation I might have had. In prison, I’d briefly considered trying to prove my innocence and to build a case against my brother, but I realized that five years would have given Brent all the time he needed to destroy the evidence.

  The town’s sentiment is already against me. They think I’m a criminal. So does my own family. It would be much easier to convince everyone that I’d pulled Brent into my criminal ways than convince them that the golden boy who’d done everything right his whole life had decided to frame his brother for a crime he didn’t commit.

  My freedom doesn’t mean shit to me, not in a life that’s already been ruined. And, by the reaction Sabrina gave me earlier, that bridge has been burned as well. No, it will be much simpler to go down again and take my brother down with me this time.

  Prison will seem like a luxury vacation, knowing Brent is rotting away in the cell next to me. This time around, he’ll be the one fighting for his life. And I’ll be there to watch it all unfold.

  Usually, my revenge fantasy fills me with cold satisfaction. But now, I feel—nothing.

  8

  Sabrina

  Lex refuses to come out of her room for dinner that night. The next morning, when she goes to get in the shower, I do the only sensible thing I can think of.

  I take her bedroom door off the hinges.

  She’s not a big fan of my handiwork. Protestations of invading her privacy and ruining her childhood follow me around the house, but hey, at least she’s talking to me. Finally, I inform her that she will have to earn her privacy back. She sits in stony silence, listening to my list of demands.

  “First, you will prove to me this week that you are able to react calmly when confronted with something you don’t like. Second, you will convince me that you can be truthful. And third, you will show me that you take school seriously. Am I understood?”

  My daughter looks at me like I’m an alien with three heads. I look at her like she’s an ignorant and ungrateful child.

  She crosses her arms over her chest and stares me down.

  I cross my arms over my chest and wink at her.

  “Fine,” she says sullenly. I watch with amusement as she digs out her math workbook and begins to struggle through her multiplication tables. I give her a few helpful hints, and before long we’re giggling over the rhyme I teach her to remember eight times eight.

  It’s our first victory, and to celebrate, I suggest a change of scenery. Getting out of the house might be good for us. Tucking Mom into her armchair, I promise to bring her back a surprise. Then I open the door and wave Lex out of it.

  We walk down the dirt and dust road until we reach the pavement at the end of the block. Although Cape Craven is a solidly middle-class town, parts of it are still a low rent. This includes the small house my mother owns where we live, the mortgage for which I now pay out of my meager office assistant salary.

  Main Street is only a mile and a half walk down a winding tree-lined avenue. The sun is out today, warming my shoulders. We walk in silence for a few minutes. I trace the patterns of shadows through the tree branches with my eyes.

  “Do you really think I’m a liar, Momma?”

  I frown. “No. Not really. Just—imaginative sometimes.” Lex had her toddler phase of lying to avoid punishment when she’d disobeyed or broken something, but she’d grown out of that like most kids do. At least that’s how it seemed to me.

  Her lies now tended to be more of the lying-to-herself variety. Life is hard as a kid with a single mom and sick grandmother. In a small town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Maybe sometimes Lex says things to make herself feel better.

  I know I sure do.

  Don’t worry, Sabrina, single moms have it easier. Could you imagine if you had a husband to boss around too?

  Good moms don’t date when their kids are this young. Better you be lonely than Lex get attached to some boyfriend who doesn’t end up working out.

  Or, my personal favorite: Hey, Sabrina, you can do it all without a partner. You’ve got it all figured out.

  “I think Miss Samantha is a liar,” my daughter mumbles, her face gloomy.

  “What exactly do you have against Miss Samantha?” I ask, keeping my tone light and inquisitive.

  “She never takes my side.” Lex’s green eyes are far away. “Billy Sitwell is her cousin, so she lets him and his crew get away with whatever they want.”

  I nod. As I remember, Billy’s crew includes Kent Washington. “Well, I’m sure she’s doing her best to keep a class of unruly kids in order.”

  “She doesn’t let me brush Henry.”

  Ah, now we’re getting at the root of things. “The hamster? Why doesn’t she let you brush Henry?”

  “Last time after I brushed him, he got out of his cage. She said I didn’t close the cage correctly but, Mom, I know I did! I saw Billy over by the cage after me. I think he let Henry out. But the teacher blamed me.”

  I listen, nodding along. It seems Henry the Hamster is big drama in Miss Samantha’s fourth-grade classroom. “Could you have accidentally left the cage unlatched?”

  Her eyes hit me, full of disappointment. “No, Momma, I swear. I double-checked it. I’m always real careful with Henry.”

  “And Miss Samantha said you were lying when you blamed Billy?”


  “Something like that,” Lex says looking at the ground. “And she won’t let me brush him now. It’s not fair.”

  It doesn’t sound fair, and I make a mental note to speak to Samantha Sitwell myself, once the suspension is lifted. “I’m going to tell you a little something about life, Lex. Something we all have to learn. And it’s a hard lesson too. You ready to hear it?”

  Lex nods, ready for me to impart some intellectual wisdom unto her.

  “Life isn’t fair.”

  She looks at me, blinking a couple of times, then shakes her head. “Yeah. I know.”

  She probably does. A kid without a dad already knows she’s been dealt a bum hand. Still, I press on. “No one likes to hear it, but every day things happen to us that could be considered unfair. We have to accept those things when we can’t change them and move on.”

  “But, Mom,” she says, “that’s not—”

  “Not fair?”

  Her mouth stays open for a moment, then snaps shut. I put my arm around her. “I know, Lex. It’s not fair, and it sucks.”

  We cross a residential street, and I make sure to have her look both ways, but she pulls away when I try to take her hand in mine. “So is that why Miss Samantha says you aren’t truthful sometimes? Because she thinks you let Henry out?”

  Lex purses her lips. “Yeah, maybe.” She takes a couple of beats, then hangs her head. “No.”

  I eye her. “What happened?”

  “We had to do an oral report. On someone important to us.” Lex frowns. “A couple of the other girls in class were going to do one on their dads. I asked Becky why she picked her dad, and she tells me that he’s the smartest man on Earth and a bunch of other stuff. Then Billy and Kent come over and start saying it’s too bad I can’t do a report on my dad because I don’t know who he is.”

  I keep my expression neutral, but inside my heart is breaking. I’ve kept the secret for so long, thinking I was doing what was best for the both of us. Now I realize I might have been taking the coward’s way out.

  “I tell them to shut up, that I do too, but then they start laughing and calling me names. So I decide I am going to do my report on my dad.”

  My eyes widen. Oh shit. “And what did you say in your report?”

  “I told them all that my dad is on a special secret mission, and that’s why he isn’t here. I told them he’s deep undercover for the government, hunting bad guys around the world. And if he comes home, it will blow his cover.”

  Figures. No wonder her teacher thinks she’s “inventive.” Still, she’s not too far wrong. Her dad had been fighting bad guys around the world. Until he became one of the bad guys.

  “The whole class starts laughing at me, and Miss Samantha makes them stop. Then she tells me that I have to do the whole report over again and this time I have to do it about someone who actually exists.”

  I cross out the mental note I’d recorded earlier to talk to Miss Sitwell and revise it to include giving her a knuckle sandwich to chew on.

  “Oh, honey,” I say, pulling her into the crook of my arm as we walk. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  “Why won’t you tell me who he is, Mom?” Tears start to fall, and my heart cracks into a thousand pieces in my chest. “Why do you let me go around looking like an idiot with no dad?”

  “Okay,” I say as she buries her face in my side. “I get it.”

  I take a deep breath, wondering what to say. No matter what it is, it won’t be enough. “Sweetheart, I want to keep you safe,” I settle on, feeling lame even saying the words. “I never planned for things to work out like this, and I’m certain your father didn’t either.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she says mumbling, and I can tell she’s disappointed, but I just can’t get up the courage to tell her. There are too many unknowns still floating around, too many potential issues that could damage my baby. And I will not let that happen.

  We walk the rest of the way downtown in silence. Lex pulls away and wipes her face on her hands. Reaching the corner that holds the general store, we walk inside, into the coolness of the air conditioning.

  I feel out of sorts, raw after Lex’s reveal. I’d kept silent on the subject of her father for a host of reasons. Each one, I thought, to protect my young daughter from the cruelty of the world around her. Now, I realize that I’d been equally cruel, keeping things from her. Keeping her in the dark has left her open to ridicule from her peers.

  Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

  Lex runs over to the frozen food aisle, our stated destination on this particular field trip. I follow behind more slowly, rubbing my arms to warm them. I feel chilly, and not just from the air conditioning. Passing the cereal aisle, I’m assaulted by the memory of five years ago when Ax had popped up out of nowhere to surprise me.

  Five years ago, I’d had a daughter who was too young to be bothered with not having a daddy. Five years ago, Mom hadn’t shattered her hip. Five years ago feels as far away from the present as Disney World feels to Tabor Correctional. At least, I imagine.

  We’d ended up spending the night together and had even made love in the shower the next morning. Good Lord that man could fuck. I almost chastised myself for the use of foul language in my own head, but there really is no other way to say it.

  Ax Craven fucks like a god.

  When he dropped me off that morning, I thought for a second about inviting him in. I imagined leading him into Alexa’s room and showing him his daughter. Introducing them for the first time. How would he take it? Would he scoop her up into his strong arms and pronounce his instant and abiding love? Or would he shake his head and sneak out the back door?

  Ax didn’t seem like the abandoning type, but still, I had a niggling of fear. Enough doubt existed that I wasn’t ready to expose my child, our child, to her father yet. Still, that hadn’t stopped me from hoping we’d see each other again.

  He’d promised to call, and I’d waited for a couple of days, giving myself excuse after excuse as to why he hadn’t followed through yet. Once again, I was building a fairytale out of our relationship, one that wouldn’t have a happy ending, as it would turn out.

  A few days after our one-night hookup, I heard he’d been arrested for stealing from his own family. I was shocked, surprised, angered. Ax wasn’t the type to steal. But his brother didn’t seem like the type to tell lies, either, and he sure convinced the judge that Ax was guilty.

  So he’d gone to Tabor Correctional, and I’d stayed in Cape Craven, never revealing to his daughter the truth. But I can’t keep hiding it from her. She deserves to know, no matter how sordid that truth may be.

  Lex, baby, you see, I got pregnant with you on prom night, and by the time I found out, your daddy had run away to join the military. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, so I never told him. And when I did see him again, he got himself thrown in jail for another five years. Oh, and did I mention his family is rich beyond imagining and basically owns this entire town?

  Sure, that should go over swell with an angry nine-year-old.

  I sigh, then round the corner to the frozen food aisle.

  Where I find Ms. Birch standing across from Lex, her hands on her bony hips.

  “What a surprise to find you here,” she says, her mouth turned down. “I thought you had the flu.”

  I cough once, not very believably, then brace myself for what comes next.

  9

  Ax

  Sleep was evasive last night. I spent hours trapped in bad dreams. Nightmares of me back behind bars. In one, Sabrina had come to visit me, big fat teardrops falling from her beautiful blue eyes.

  We can’t keep meeting like this, she said.

  That had set off a round of dreams of our time together, of her limbs wrapped around mine. Until I’d turned over in bed and she’d vanish.

  I woke up in a cold sweat, my dick hard enough to pound nails.

  To push my evil thoughts to the background, I got up with the dawn and start
ed the fitness routine I’d used to keep myself in shape in prison. Hundreds of pushups, crunches, and curls later, and I hit the shower, trying to blank my mind.

  It’s hard, showering in a place that holds so many erotic memories for me. And by hard, I mean my dick is still throbbing. Prison was a long, dry stretch for me, but if I’m being honest, it wasn’t like there were a ton of women before they’d locked me up.

  Only one woman, in particular, had ever been able to make me crave her beyond all reason. And it’s that woman I can’t stop thinking about now.

  As the water hits me, I let myself fantasize about her skin against mine, about what I’d do if I had her with me. I’d often done the same in prison. I imagined her lying next to me on my bunk, whispering naughty things into my ear, almost making me explode without touching my dick.

  I realize that my erection won’t go away, not without a little help. This time, I’m afraid the cold-water cure won’t do the trick. Seeing Sabrina again, being close to her, is too potent, too powerful to drive away by normal means.

  Leaning back, I close my eyes and let the water wash over me, remembering the warmth of her perfect skin against mine. I wrap a hand around my aching cock and stroke it.

  It doesn’t take long, once I let the memories of Sabrina broadcast themselves to my hungry mind. My muscles are shaking before I realize it, my cock throbbing, longing to bury itself within her tight, wet heat.

  Afterward, I dry myself off and remind myself that Sabrina is a fantasy and will remain so. Just a fantasy. I can’t allow her to be anything but that, not only for her own safety, but for mine.

  After a boring breakfast of toast and orange juice, I ride into town, to the little post office where my agent had rented a box for me. I pick up the supplies I ordered and return to my cabin. Now I sit at the small table and open those boxes.

  One holds a laptop, another a router and modem combination. The third has a small satellite dish. I lumber outside, pull a rickety ladder out of the shed, and climb to the roof where I secure the dish.