Keegan stopped at the door, meeting his gaze.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You didn’t have to. You could have gone to another firm, and I’d have been none the wiser. I really appreciate you looking out.” His lips twisted ruefully. “Of course, if I go through with this and Zandra finds out, she’ll never speak to me again.”
Keegan gave him a smile of sympathetic understanding.
“‘Cheat if you must,’” he said, quoting an old Navy SEAL expression, “‘but don’t get caught.’”
Chapter Six
Landis Kennedy’s unexpected visit left Zandra shaken for the rest of the day.
On her way home from the office that evening, she mentally replayed the painful confrontation until her insides churned with anger and her eyes burned with fresh tears.
After all these years, and after everything she’d done to put her traumatic past behind her, she should have been immune to her father’s cruelty and hatred. But she wasn’t.
And something told her she never would be.
Closing her eyes, Zandra let the memories wash over her, pulling her deeper under.
Fifteen years ago when she’d graduated from high school as class valedictorian, she’d had her choice of any college or university to attend. Determined to get as far away from home as possible, she’d stunned everyone by accepting admission to Oxford University in England. She’d majored in economics and spent the next four years studying rigorously while working odd jobs to help pay her tuition. She’d loved living abroad, and had only returned home every summer to look after her mother, who remained trapped in an abusive marriage.
No matter how often Zandra implored Autumn Kennedy to leave her husband, to run away and start over someplace new, Autumn had insisted on staying. She was afraid to do anything else. And after her mother passed away, she seemed to cling even more to Landis.
But when Zandra graduated from Oxford, Autumn had made the trip overseas without her husband, who couldn’t be bothered. After the graduation ceremony, she and Zandra had celebrated over lunch. Autumn’s face had held the serene glow of someone who was at peace with herself, a memory that would haunt Zandra years after her death.
When she announced her decision to remain at Oxford for graduate school, Autumn had reached across the table and taken Zandra’s hands between hers. She’d told Zandra that she loved her and was very proud of her, which Zandra already knew. But hearing it again, on that day, had meant the world to her.
Over dessert, Autumn had opened up and spoken poignantly of her own dreams of living the artist’s life in Paris, painting masterpieces inspired by the beauty and romance of the city.
So for the next seven days, she and Zandra had lost themselves in Paris. They’d visited museums, gone for long strolls, sipped coffee at cozy sidewalk cafés, enjoyed the simple pleasure of breaking the crust on a crème br?lée while watching pedestrians dash across a busy street.
And Autumn had painted to her heart’s content. She’d painted people at a market, a red dress hanging in a boutique window, a bridge overlooking the Seine.
And she’d painted Zandra, a tender smile on her face as she’d quietly stroked her brush across the canvas.
It would be the last time Zandra saw her mother alive.
Shortly after Autumn returned home, Zandra received the phone call from her father that would change her life forever.
In a voice devoid of emotion, he’d told her, Your mother’s dead. Come home.
Reeling with shock and grief, she’d rushed back to Chicago, where she learned the unspeakable details of her mother’s suicide.