“You’ve mentioned how busy she is,” Lorelei said. “Is it possible she really did have to go?”
“Yes, but it was still a brush-off.”
Serenity finally poured the tea. “What was your father’s name again?”
“Stuart Sands.”
“Stuart,” she repeated. “I’m going to text my mother and tell her that I ran into someone here in Tahoe who claims to have known her and give her that name.”
Reagan’s hand stalled as she was bringing her glass to her lips. “What if she says he’s dead?”
“Then that’ll prove they knew each other,” Serenity replied.
After taking a long drink, Reagan put her iced tea back on the table and reached for the pasta. “Yes, it would—and the simplest explanation is often the right one.”
* * *
serenity
Would Sawyer even pick up?
Although he’d called her recently, the conversation hadn’t gone well. Maybe he was finished with her after making the effort to be friendly and not getting a very warm response. Maybe he’d only rung her in the first place as a final check-in, to make sure she was doing okay after the trial so he could feel that his duty to stand for truth and protect the innocent was done.
She couldn’t imagine any other reason he’d be interested in talking to the person who’d once been married to his stepbrother and had driven such a wedge between him and the family who’d taken him in and raised him. Even if that wedge had been the result of Sean’s actions and wasn’t her fault—she knew they both understood that—she was afraid she represented the entire negative experience for him.
She had herself so convinced that Sawyer was frowning when he saw her name pop up on his phone that she almost didn’t allow the call to go through.
He answered before she could stop it. “Hello?”
She froze.
“Serenity?”
If she disconnected now, she could pass it off as a pocket dial. She had Nina waiting for those pictures that might be at the house in Berkeley, but she could hire someone to lift the boxes down for her and deliver them to Nina’s house herself.
There were ways around getting Sawyer involved; she knew, in her heart, that Nina was just the excuse she was using to call him. This wasn’t about Sean’s pictures as much as the regret she felt for being so remote with Sawyer when he’d reached out to her the last time.
“Hi.” Although she’d hesitated, she hoped it wasn’t long enough to reveal her anxiety. She was pacing in her bedroom with the door shut even though Reagan, Lorelei and Finn were gone. When they’d mentioned taking Lucy on a walk after lunch, she’d begged off, saying she had to take care of some emails. She’d wanted privacy to make this call, and she figured she’d have a better chance of enlisting Sawyer to help her this weekend if she gave him some notice.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
His voice was so deep. Everything about him was different from Sean. Sawyer was tough, mentally and physically. He could be a poster boy for the marines—he’d been a marine before starting his own real estate appraisal business, so that made sense—while Sean had been more talkative and social, and was always looking for the next “fun” thing to plan or do or buy. Serenity had been drawn to his optimistic, happy-go-lucky personality. He loved wine, food, traveling, dinner parties, movies and television.
But then...who wouldn’t love those things? Maybe it was just that Sean had always had the luxury of indulging himself. He could take a relaxed approach to life because he came from a place of privilege, having such a devoted family to act as a safety net if anything went wrong.
Sawyer, on the other hand, had sustained considerable loss at a young age, and he’d largely had to fend for himself ever since. Life for him had been a struggle, and he took it more seriously.
Now that she’d suffered a serious setback, her first major life blow, she understood Sawyer and his caution far better—and she was sort of embarrassed. She’d suddenly realized that the difference between her and Sean, and Sawyer on the other side, was that Sawyer had grown up a lot sooner than they had.
She wondered if he’d recognized her immaturity, if that was part of the reason they’d always been at odds with each other.
“I’m fine,” she replied.
She thought of all the things she wanted to say to him but couldn’t decide where to start. Should she tell him how grateful she was for his support? If he hadn’t felt the need to protect her, he probably would’ve been able to avoid creating such a terrible rift with his family. At the very least, his actions wouldn’t have been such a focal point during the trial. And she’d never thanked him, never even broached the subject. She’d simply ignored his sacrifice while she tried to cope with all the other emotions that were making her miserable.
She opened her mouth to acknowledge what he’d done but changed her mind. She didn’t want to put him on the spot, make him uncomfortable.
He broke the strained silence. “What’s up?”
She had to say something. “I was... Please don’t feel any pressure to say yes, but...”
“But...” he prompted when she didn’t finish.
“Never mind. I don’t have the right to ask you for anything. I’m sorry I bothered you,” she said and disconnected.
“Great. That was just great,” she muttered to herself. “Congratulations, Serenity. You’re an idiot.” What made her think Sawyer would want to gather up the last of his stepbrother’s items and deliver them to a stepmother who now hated him?
She obviously hadn’t thought that through carefully enough—
Her phone vibrated in her hand; he was calling back.
Damn it. She had to answer. He knew she was right there, next to her phone—she’d just called him. “Hello?”
“Care to tell me what’s going on?” he said.
She stopped moving and spoke while staring at her feet. “Your stepmother texted me last night.”
“I’m sure you were happy to hear from her.”
The sarcasm was unmistakable. “Yeah, not so much. She claims I have some of Sean’s childhood pictures. But if I do, they’re on the top shelf in the basement, where I can’t reach them. Even if I could, I don’t like going down there. There’re too many rats and spiders—”
“You want me to come get them for you,” he guessed before she could finish.
“If you would.”
“No problem. What time?”