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Her tone gives nothing away, and I don’t know her well enough to tell what she’s thinking. “Where do we stand, Julia?”
“I can’t answer that right now. I need some time to think about it. We’ll talk soon,” she says and ends the call.
I toss the phone on the console. Of course, she needs time. I just unloaded some heavy stuff on her. No woman in her right mind would want to be involved with me. Everything I have is at stake—my reputation, my family, my freedom.
TWENTY-FIVE
JULIA
I hear Conrad calling for me, and when I look up, I’m surprised to find myself in a rocker on the porch. I was so absorbed in my conversation with Will, that I don’t remember coming out to the porch. I don’t believe this. What a fool I am. Why didn’t I ask more questions when Will spoke of sorting through issues and seeing a therapist? I’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I’ve exchanged one man’s problems for another’s. If I didn’t have such strong feelings for Will, I’d dump him right now.
Conrad appears in the doorway. “I’m hungry, Mama. What’s for dinner?”
I ease myself out of the chair. “Soup and salad.” I no longer feel like grilling chicken as planned.
I do my best to appear normal during dinner and afterward while I help Conrad get ready for bed. But my insides are churning. I’m distraught about the prospect of losing Will, but I’m terrified about what might now become of my son and me.
After tucking Conrad into bed, I turn on all the outside lights and sit down at the table with my computer and my gun. I locate the segment on the local news website and replay it over and over again. The footage is crystal clear. There is no denying I am the one in the videos kissing Will on the veranda and emerging from my cottage on Saturday night with hair and clothes a mess. I click on pause and zoom in for a closer look. Over my left shoulder beside the front door is the cottage’s name, Golden Sands Hideaway, and address on Beach Drive.
The Six has access to the most advanced technology, and a Google search of facial recognition software tells me what I already know. Conrad and I are sitting ducks.
I’m tempted to reach out to Eleanor, but doing so would be admitting defeat. We’ve gotten this far. No turning back now. We’ll have to move. But where will we go? Staying in the Lowcountry is out of the question. When the boogeymen find out where we are, they’ll scour the area. We’ll have to go to a different state. A different region would be even better. The Midwest, maybe? But I’ve grown accustomed to the ocean. Conrad and I are happy in Water’s Edge. He’s making friends, and I’m finally able to write again. These past few weeks have offered a glimpse of the happy life we could lead here, and moving would be an enormous setback.
I fall asleep with my head on the dining room table and my hand on my gun. The first rays of dawn creeping through the windows wake me the following morning.
All eyes are on me in the carpool line. The moms cover their mouths to hide their whispers, as though I can hear them from the distance. I long to roll down my window and scream, “I’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t even know Will back then.”
But that would be a mistake. They’ll video me with their phones and post the footage on social media with captions like Will Darby’s Secret Mistress Gone Mad.
Leaving the school, I drive over to the shooting range where I spend two hours blasting bullet holes into paper targets. By the time I stop at the store for groceries, it’s almost noon.
I’m waiting in the carpool line, searching the Internet for the top-ranking romance authors, when Ellie appears beside my car. She motions for me to roll down the window, and I wave my phone at her. “I’m busy,” I say, loud enough for her to hear me through the glass.
Ellie grabs the door handle, and discovering it’s locked, she pounds her fist on the window. She yells, “I was right about you, Julia. You are a slut and a home wrecker.”
I swing open the door and step out of the car. “Shh! Keep your voice down. There are children nearby.”
Ellie lowers her voice to a loud whisper. “Tracy was one of my best friends, and she confided in me. She suspected Will was cheating on her.” She jabs her finger at me. “It was you. You broke up their marriage.”
I laugh in her face. “That’s ridiculous. I wasn’t even living in Water’s Edge at the time.”
“What’re you hiding, Julia?”
Fear creeps up my spine. I tell myself she’s bluffing and to remain calm. She couldn’t possibly know anything about my past. “What’re you talking about? I’m not hiding anything.”
She squints her eyes at me. “There’s something fishy about you. Water’s Edge is the most out-of-the-way town in the Southeast. People don’t randomly move here. They come here because they have connections. I believe Will was your connection.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I moved here from Colorado,” I say, the lie sliding easily off my lips.
“You’re lying. You were living in Charleston or Beaufort, somewhere close enough for Will to sneak away from his family to be with you. Then as soon as Tracy was cold in the ground, you moved to town and took over her life.”
“Ask Will. We met at the hardware store after Labor Day.” I notice the other moms gathering around us with their phones out, videotaping our altercation.
Ellie gets close enough to my face for me to smell her stale coffee breath. “Fair warning, I will find out what you’re hiding, Julia Becker.”
“Go ahead. But you’re wasting your time,” I say in a shaky voice. If Ellie starts digging into my past, she’s likely to find out I don’t have one. At least not in Colorado.
The school door bangs open, and the children file out. Ellie lowers her voice to a whisper. “You don’t belong here, Julia. And you are not wanted. Do us all a favor and leave.” She spins on her heels and disappears into the crowd of moms scurrying back to their cars.
