A diamond bracelet found in the wrong handbag. Three letters mailed from a county jail that never reached me. A brother who always offered to “handle things” for the family. For seven years, I believed the woman I loved took my mother’s money and ran. For seven years, she believed I’d let her go to jail. Somebody had built both of those lies. And it wasn’t who either of us thought.
CHAPTER 1: FOUR LITTLE GIRLS
By eight o’clock that night, I was supposed to propose to Celine Montrose in the glass conservatory on the top floor of the Thorne Building, overlooking Halcyon Park.
A hundred and fifty guests. Bankers. Board members. Senators’ wives. My grandfather, Augustus Thorne, ninety years old next month, in his wheelchair at the front of the room. And my mother, Cordelia, who had arranged every detail, down to the color of the napkins.
The Montrose family owned the biggest shipping company on the east coast. The Thornes owned half the buildings in Port Easton. Celine was elegant and polite and as bored by me as I was by her.
It wasn’t love. It was a merger with a ring on it.
My name is Everett Thorne. I was thirty-three that winter, and I’d stopped expecting to be happy around the time I turned twenty-six.
At four-thirty, my younger brother, Silas, texted me.
Don’t be late tonight. Grandfather’s watching. Don’t screw this up, brother.
Silas had always worried more about my love life than I did. He’d introduced me to Celine. He’d told our mother we’d be “a perfect match for the company.” With our grandfather planning to name his successor at his ninetieth birthday gala next month, Silas had become very interested in making sure I looked settled.
I needed air. So I left the Thorne Building and walked two blocks to Larkin’s, a little restaurant where I sometimes ate lunch alone, and went to wash my face in the restroom before facing the night.
Four little girls were standing at the sinks.
Six years old, maybe. Matching navy-blue dresses that had been washed so many times they’d gone soft and gray at the seams. They were giggling and fighting over the hand dryer.
One of them tucked her long brown hair behind her ear, tilted her head, and pressed her lips together into a tight little line.
The other three instantly copied her, then collapsed into giggles at their own reflections.
I stopped breathing.
Maren used to make that exact face. Every time she was nervous. Every single time.
One of the girls caught me staring in the mirror.
“Why are you looking at us, mister?”
“Sorry.” My voice came out rough. “You just remind me of someone.”
She grinned. A tiny dimple appeared in her left cheek.
Maren’s dimple.
See more on the next page
