“But...” Serenity echoed, sitting down again.
“Those are the consequences of my actions, right? If I cut it off with Drew and leave Edison & Curry, at least I’ll be able to look myself in the face again.”
Lorelei put a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. “Just in case you can take a few bites,” she said softly.
8
serenity
AFTER BREAKFAST, REAGAN went to her room to answer a few work emails. She said too many people—both coworkers and clients—were waiting for something from her, and she had to take care of those responsibilities.
Serenity felt bad for her. Reagan had said that ever since she’d slunk away from the office a week ago, disheveled and ashamed, she’d been too upset to interact with anyone connected with the agency. She was afraid her coworkers would somehow guess, and she was embarrassed as well as humiliated. But Serenity had encouraged her to keep her head up and finish strong. All Reagan could do at this point was show her contrition by taking steps to get out of Drew’s life.
After Reagan went upstairs, Serenity helped Lorelei clean the kitchen and then Lorelei sent Lucy to put on her boots and coat. Lucy wanted to go outside to play in the snow. Later, when she was having a nap and Reagan was finished taking care of her business, they’d sit down together and begin to hash out possible scenarios for how they could be related.
They were all supposed to bring pictures of their parents and other close relatives, as well as anything else that might be pertinent—although Serenity didn’t expect Lorelei to have anything. Lorelei had grown up in the foster care system. She didn’t know who her parents were.
“Found my coat, Mommy!” Lucy called down.
Lorelei was standing in the living room, examining the pictures on the wall while Serenity sat on the couch, using her phone to respond to an email from her editor. Serenity had been working with a woman named Nikkita Woods for about two years, ever since her first editor resigned and moved to a different publisher. But despite the number of business emails they’d exchanged, they didn’t know each other all that well. That was partly why Serenity was pretending to be further along in her current work-in-progress than she really was. She wasn’t sure her editor would stand by her, couldn’t risk spooking her by admitting the truth—that she was still struggling to become productive again. If she didn’t get going soon and send in some sample chapters, she was afraid her publisher would contract someone else to write about the Maynard Murders.
“Good job, honey,” Lorelei called back. “Don’t forget your boots.”
“Boots?” Lucy echoed as if the word was foreign to her.
“What we bought right before we left home—with Elsa on them.”
“Oh! My Elsa shoes.”
As Serenity hit Send, she was amused by the fact that Lucy had very likely never owned a pair of boots. Watching Lorelei with her little girl made Serenity a trifle envious. She’d expected to have a child this year. She and Sean had just decided to go off birth control so they could start a family when she found those files. And now that she was thirty-five, divorced and disillusioned, who could say if she’d ever become a mother?
“This is a great picture,” Lorelei said.
Serenity put down her phone and walked over to gaze at the painting of the lake that had captured her own attention yesterday, right before Lorelei and Reagan arrived. “That’s Emerald Bay.”
“Is the water really that blue?”
“It is. The lake is nicknamed Big Blue. I can’t wait to take you down there, but we’ll wait for Reagan to join us, if that’s okay.”
“Of course we can wait. Lucy will have a blast just playing outside. Yesterday was the first time she’d ever seen snow.” She pointed to the photograph of Serenity’s parents at the casino. “These are your parents?”
“Yes. Meet Chuck and Charlotte Currington.”
“They’re a handsome couple.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“And these are your siblings?” She pointed to a different picture now, the one with the Christmas tree.
“Yes. That’s Beau, my brother, who’s getting his master’s in aerospace engineering at UCLA. And these are the twins, Tara and Tia.”
“They’re all younger than you. I remember you telling us that.”
“Yeah—Beau’s twenty-four and the twins are twenty-eight.”
“So you were seven when the twins were born.”
“Yes.” She’d been old enough that she could remember her father taking her to the hospital to meet them and how excited she’d been to have not one but two baby sisters.
Serenity hadn’t thought much about the age gap while she was growing up. She’d figured her parents had simply decided to wait. Or Mother Nature hadn’t, at first, cooperated. Charlotte had always said Serenity was her “right hand,” as if she felt lucky to have had so much time alone with her oldest daughter.
But knowing what she knew now, the fact that she was seven years older than her twin sisters seemed a little suspect. Was there a bigger reason than she’d supposed?
Lorelei didn’t say anything for several seconds, but she studied that Christmas picture as though she wished she could climb inside it.
Finally, she moved on to another one. “Is this you?”
“Yes—sledding with my dad.”
She indicated the beach shot. “At this elevation, it’s hard to imagine it gets warm enough to swim. But it must. Look at all those people in the water behind you.”
“The air warms up in the summer, but the water stays cold because the lake is so deep.” Feeling a bit nostalgic, Serenity touched the photo. “That’s Sand Harbor, one of the most popular beaches in Tahoe.”
“Was your dad taking the picture?”
“No, I’m sure that was my uncle Vance or his girlfriend. They were visiting.”
“Where was your dad?”
“That particular day?” Serenity shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Did he usually come up with you?”
“If it was on a weekend. Maybe he had to meet a client in San Francisco, where he worked at the time.”
Lorelei studied the photo more closely. “Where is Sand Harbor? Will I be able to see it while I’m in town?”
“Sure. It’s right here at Incline Village. You can even walk to it.”
“And the casinos?”