Chapter 2

The last of my hope died with those words.

Inside, Sienna went quiet.

“She’ll find out eventually. Unless you can guarantee Robert didn’t keep another ledger.”

“There wasn’t another one.”

“How can you know?”

Cole’s breathing grew heavy.

“I watched the office burn to the ground.”

I bit my lip hard enough to keep silent.

He had watched the office burn. Which meant he hadn’t arrived after the alarm that night.

He had already been there.

“You saw a fire,” Sienna said. “You didn’t see a ledger turn to ash.”

“Enough.”

“You were the one who said burning it would end everything.”

When Cole finally spoke, his voice was barely audible.

“I only meant to destroy the ledger. I didn’t know it would turn into...that.”

“Robert died. Ava almost died with him.”

“I saved her,” Cole snapped. “And for three years, I’ve done everything I could to make it up to her.”

Make it up to me.

So our marriage hadn’t been love in his eyes.

It had been restitution.

An alarm went off in the station. As the doorknob turned, I slipped into the supply closet next door.

Through the crack, I watched Cole stop beside the cream I had spilled.

“Cherry,” he murmured.

He knew I baked him a cherry pie every anniversary. For one terrifying second, I thought he knew I was there.

Then another firefighter called his name, and Cole ran toward the bay.

Only after the hall went silent did I come out.

Back in my car, I hid the pregnancy test and booked an appointment under my maiden name. I replaced Cole with Margaret as my emergency contact.

Until I knew the truth, my husband could not know about the baby—or control my medical records.

He came home at seven that night.

I was putting one of my father’s old recipe books into a drawer when the door opened.

Cole didn’t kiss me. He stood there holding white roses, his gaze fixed on my right hand.

“Did you go out today?”

“I picked up a few things at the grocery store.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.”

He set down the flowers.

“There was cherry cream outside the office today. The same kind you use in my anniversary pie.”

I showed him the red mark on my finger.

“I burned myself and dropped the pie. It went in the trash.”

The mark was actually from digging my nail into my skin that afternoon.

Cole studied my hand for several seconds before letting it go. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me.

Then he sat across from me.

“There’s something I wanted to tell you before you heard it somewhere else. Sienna is back.”

I stared at my hands and pretended the news was new.

“Your ex?”

“She’s pregnant. The father abandoned her. She has nowhere to stay.”

He didn’t mention that only hours earlier, he hadn’t been sure the baby wasn’t his.

“You want her to stay here?”

“Only for a few days.”

“You already told her yes, didn’t you?”

He avoided the question.

“She’s pregnant. I can’t leave her on the street.”

“Then you aren’t asking me.”

“Ava, I’m asking you to understand.”

His phone lit up on the table while he went for water.

I still have the restaurant key. If they reopen the case, we’re both finished.

I photographed the message and uploaded it to a private cloud account.

“Can she stay?” Cole asked.

If I refused, Sienna could disappear with the key. If she moved into my house, she would bring the evidence with her.

“Yes,” I said.