“I had no choice.”
“Believe me, Zach, you’ve always had choices. I’m the one who didn’t.” She took a deep breath and looked up at this boy—man—she’d loved from the first time she saw him, and the pain of their past was overwhelming. “I want Grace,” she said evenly. “I filed the papers today.”
“I know you hate me,” he said. “But don’t do that to Grace. She won’t understand. I’m all she has.”
“No,” Lexi said. “That’s not true anymore.” She heard a car drive up, tires spin on gravel, and she had no doubt about who had arrived.
Jude. Sweeping in to save her son and granddaughter from terrible Lexi.
“Good-bye, Zach,” Lexi said, turning away.
“Lexi, wait.”
“No, Zach,” she said without looking at him. “I’ve waited long enough.”
*
Jude was shaking as she strapped Grace into her car seat.
“Ow, Nana!”
“Sorry,” Jude mumbled. A headache had spiked behind her eyes, and she could hardly see. She texted Miles to get home ASAP and then climbed into the driver’s seat. But she couldn’t go home. Lexi knew where they lived.
“How come I’m goin’ home early, Nana?” Grace said from the backseat. “Was I bad again?”
Home. That was it.
She drove—too fast—to Zach’s cabin and parked beside his truck. Once there, she took Grace in her arms and hurried inside, slamming the door shut behind her.
The sliding glass door was open. The whole place smelled of the beach at low tide. Zach stood on the deck, looking out at the Sound.
Jude carried Grace into her bedroom and put her down on her bed. Handing her a well-worn copy of Green Eggs and Ham, she said, “Read this for just a minute, okay? I have to tell your daddy something, and I’ll be right back.”
Jude left the room and closed the door behind her. Then she went out to the deck and approached her son. She could tell by his stance—his shoulders rounded in defeat, his hands plunged deep in his pockets—what had happened. She hadn’t gotten here in time. “Lexi was here,” she said bitterly.
“Yes.”
“She wants another chance, but we don’t get one. Mia will always be gone. I can’t look at the girl who killed her every day.”
Zach looked at her. “Grace is her daughter, Mom.”
The simplicity of that made Jude catch her breath. She felt suddenly as if she were hurtling toward a precipice, as if they all were. It scared her to her bones; in the past years, they’d healed just enough to survive. They couldn’t go through it again.
She’d watched from a distance as her immature, coltish boy had become a man. Grief had shattered him; fatherhood had put him back together.
She flipped open her cell phone and called the friend who had been their lawyer for years. “Bill. Jude Farraday. The girl who killed Mia is out of prison, and she’s filed a petition to get custody of Grace … tomorrow? Great. See you then.” Jude hung up the phone.
“Grace is unhappy,” Zach said, and the heartbreak in his voice was terrible.
“Lexi isn’t the answer, Zach. She’s the cause. Remember that.” Jude touched his arm. He needed her to be strong now. Maybe he’d needed that for years and not had it, but she would be there for him now; this time she would protect him.
Twenty-three
The next morning, Jude woke up early and dressed carefully.
“It’s not a funeral,” Miles said when he saw her in the kitchen.
“Really? It feels like one. I’ll meet you in the car,” she said, hurrying away from him. The last thing she wanted to hear right now was his moral superiority or more endless questions about what they were doing. Of course, the Zen Master wanted to explore the idea that bringing Lexi into their lives could heal them. Last night, when they’d gotten home from Zach’s, she’d actually told him to shut up for the first time in their marriage.