Page 3 of The Getaway

Safe Travels!

The driver’s side door popped open, letting in the sweet, cut-grass-scented air of the outside world. Marshall plugged his phone in and let out a world-weary sigh.

Normally Marley would ask if everything was all right, but today she couldn’t bring herself to care. Instead she pointedly stared straight ahead. He would not get the satisfaction of her sympathy.

How could he do this to her? Just turn his back on everything they’d been talking about and hoping for since they’d gotten engaged? The fact that he refused to even discuss it was what made it so unbearable. His righteous insistence that giving up was the right thing to do. That she’d see it his way in the long run.

So what if they’d come close to being the chosen couple three times now? So what if the last time she’d actually held the baby girl in her arms for ten minutes before her birth mother had changed her mind and DCF had whisked the baby away? So what if Marley had been in such a deep depression for two weeks after that she hadn’t even been able to rouse herself enough to take a shower? None of this meant she was going to give up on her dream of becoming a mother.

Great. Her eyes were welling up again.

I’m not going to change my mind, he’d said last night. This is what’s best for both of us.

“You ready for this?” Marshall asked, putting the car in gear.

Her jaw clenched when his gaze flicked to her ginger ale bottle. He fished a granola bar out of the center console and held it out to her. When she didn’t take it, he placed it between her legs on the seat. She took a deep breath, clenching her hands into fists to keep from picking up the snack and smacking him with it.

“Let’s just go.” She slipped her sunglasses on, slumped down, and turned to stare out the passenger-side window.

“It’s only a week. And we can’t change the past. All we can do is—”

“Move forward. I know,” she snapped. They’d talked about this. About whether or not to go when Lily wasn’t going to be there. When Lily was two weeks into her third rehab stint. When she would have to sit there in her cream-colored safe room (cords and shoelaces and sharp objects removed), knowing they were all enjoying her favorite week of the year without her. They’d talked about it a lot. And the decision had been made. She reached forward and cranked up the AC. “So let’s get it over with.”

“That’s the spirit,” he replied, not unkindly. Which just pissed her off more. She wanted him to be obnoxious to her so she could bite back. She wanted to fight and claw and spit until he heard her. It was honestly all she could do to keep from grabbing the back of his head and slamming him forward into the steering wheel.

All she wanted was what she’d always envisioned for herself. Their little family. One kid. Was that too much to ask? She and her sister had been adopted by their aunt and uncle when their parents had been killed in a car accident. Marley had been two years old and Justine four. Ever since she’d been old enough to understand how selfless that act had been, how much love they’d brought into her and Justine’s lives, she had wanted to do the same for another child. Just one. She didn’t need a pair of siblings. She wasn’t greedy. She wouldn’t ask for more. Her eyes prickled with new tears.

Deep breaths, Marley. Deep breaths.

He turned on his favorite stuck-in-traffic playlist, and they were off.

2

Suzy

“I just don’t understand why you can’t make them put me in a bottom bunk,” Kasie said, looking away from the screen with her signature pout. “Can’t you just tell them I’m allergic to dust? It’s so disgusting, Mom!”

“Kasie. Sweetheart. You need to explain to Mommy why being in the top bunk is so objectionable,” Suzy said, holding the phone out in the front seat of Sean’s massive SUV. Outside, the scrub brush and pine trees of the Hamptons sped past, and she felt a touch dizzy as she tried to focus on her twelve-year-old’s face. Or, more accurately, the side of her face. Beside Suzy, Sean let out a mighty sigh and gripped the steering wheel tighter. It felt like he was gripping her intestines. He’d barely said two words to her this entire drive. There was definitely something stressing him out that had nothing to do with the kids and their new camp, and he wasn’t sharing. At least Kasie’s call was filling the silence.

“Because! Mom! I just told you! There are, like, a zillion cobwebs up there. God! Couldn’t you have sent me to a clean camp?”

In the back seat, Suzy’s chihuahua, Wintour, barked twice, as if agreeing with her human sister.

From the corner of her eye, Suzy saw Sean’s knuckles whiten. He was frustrated. Clearly. But was he about to volunteer to take over? Negotiate the situation? Of course not. And as such, he and his knuckles could kiss her ass.

Sean was always going off about how spoiled their kids were, never quite saying it was her fault but always implying it. As if she was the one making high-seven figures and insisting on private school and biannual vacations at only the hottest of-the-moment resorts. As chief executive counsel at Lincoln’s company, Home Team Hotels, Sean felt it was important to his career that they do everything five diamond, four star, white glove, luxe—ironic since the company’s themed hotels were anything but. He had a certain image to uphold, and there were always CEOs to entertain, hoteliers and hospitality gurus to impress. Suzy certainly wasn’t complaining, but she was not about to shoulder all the blame here. Besides, her kids weren’t spoiled. They just knew when things were not up to standard. That was a good thing. She glanced at her husband, and he rolled his brown eyes at her.

She rolled hers right back. Suzy was still irritated that Sean had refused to tell her what was eating him when she’d asked. Clearly it had something to do with work. If it was anything else—his golf score, his poker buddies, the biopsy results on that mole he’d had removed—he would have told her. Work he often kept close to the vest, especially when things were going awry. Which was, of course, what worried her.

That and the fact that they were driving all the way out to the easternmost point of Long Island when there was a deadly hurricane bearing down on them. At least the kids were up in Vermont, far away from any wind shear or flood risks. And for the first time in her life, she was glad the Villa wasn’t directly on the beach. A few blocks from the water, at least they’d be less likely to flood. But if the shit went down, she was saving herself and Wintour first, especially if Sean was giving her the silent treatment.

Outside the window, the driveways had started to come fewer and farther between as more modest homes gave way to the grander estates of the North Shore. When the ornate gates in front of the Willingham compound flew past, Suzy knew they were getting close. She shifted in her seat, a nervous flutter in her gut.

“Mom!” Kasie snapped.

Ugh. Suzy wished she had never picked up this call. But when your two kids are off at sleepaway camp for the first time and the camp calls, you pick up. The campers at Pine Mountain were not allowed to have their cell phones in their bunks—a key selling point of the camp—so Suzy was talking to Kasie on the camp director’s cell phone. And as it was outside of scheduled family-communication time, she knew her daughter must have worn the woman down with at least an hour of whining and cajoling.

“Okay, okay, Kasie. Put the director back on the phone.”