The thought brought a clammy wave of nausea, and for a moment, she thought she might actually be sick. Lowering the window, she sucked in a dizzying breath. She needed to get herself together. She couldn’t just sit in the middle of the road and go to pieces, and at the moment, she was dangerously close to doing just that. She needed to get out of Riddlesville—now.

She was reaching for the gearshift, thinking about calling Missy as she had promised to, when her cell phone went off. She dragged it from her purse and answered without looking, wondering if there really was such a thing as telepathy.

“Missy, I was just about to call you.”

“It’s not Missy.”

“Wade?”

“I was worried about you.”

Something about the simple words caused Christy-Lynn to crumple. She let out a gut-wrenching sob, unable to check the sudden torrent of tears flowing down her cheeks.

“Talk to me, Christy-Lynn. What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

Was she hurt? It was such a ridiculous question she hardly knew how to answer. “No,” she finally managed, gulping down a fresh sob before it could fully form. “Yes . . . I don’t know.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m here.” She paused to wipe her nose on the back of her hand. “I saw her, talked to her.”

“And what else?”

“He has a daughter,” she blurted. “Stephen and Honey had a daughter.”

“Jesus . . .”

“Iris. Her name is Iris.” She closed her eyes, slumping forward to lean her head against the steering wheel. “She’s three.”

“Christy-Lynn, you can’t be sure. It could be—”

“No, it couldn’t. She’s his. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“So how did you leave it?”

“I didn’t. I just got up and walked out. Rhetta . . . Mrs. Rawlings said she’d answer any questions I had, but then there was Iris, and I couldn’t sit there another minute. I just . . . left.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in the car, about to head back.”

“Christy-Lynn, you can’t. You’ve been driving all day. You’ve got to be exhausted.”

Her throat ached, and she could barely breathe. “I can’t stay here.”

“Please promise me you won’t drive tonight. Find a motel and get some sleep. You can leave first thing in the morning.” When she said nothing, he prompted her. “Promise me.”

“Yes. Okay. I’ll find a motel.”

“And some food, since I’m guessing you haven’t eaten. I’ll check on you in the morning.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I’ll check on you in the morning,” he repeated firmly.

“All right then.” Her thumb was poised to end the call when she hesitated. “Wade?”

“I’m still here.”

“Thank you.”

“No sweat. Get some rest.”

Christy-Lynn’s room at the Conner Fork Day’s Inn was clean and quiet. She dropped her bags on the bed, stripped out of her clothes, and headed for the shower, determined to scrub away the lingering traces of stale grease and cigarette smoke still clinging to her skin and hair.

She had no idea how long she stood there under the scalding stream or how long it took to finally cry herself out, but eventually she emerged from the bathroom, pink-skinned and spent. She donned a T-shirt and leggings, then flipped on the television, hoping to numb out with an old movie, but it was no use. Like a video on an endless loop, the day’s events kept replaying in her head, and the facts couldn’t be denied.

Stephen and Honey had a little girl, and that little girl was now an orphan. She had assumed Ray Rawlings’s motives for wanting to keep his sister’s sins under wraps had to do with shielding the family from scandal. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was about protecting an innocent little girl. The moment Honey’s name was made public the reporters would swarm. It would be only a matter of time before they stumbled onto Iris—a child with a famous father and a mother who wasn’t his wife. Had Stephen given a second thought to what might happen to his daughter in such a case?

And suddenly it was there—the question she’d been trying not to ask herself. How had Stephen taken the news that he was going to be a father? Had he been angry? Horrified? Or was it possible the idea of a child had actually appealed to him, that in some dark and ambivalent corner of his alpha male psyche, part of him longed to leave a piece of himself to the world?

Or maybe the questions she should be asking weren’t about Stephen at all, but about herself? Was there some part of her—some broken or missing part—that had prevented her from seeing that Stephen needed more? Had she been so busy trying to outrun her own scars that she had missed the signs? Or had the affair been exactly what it looked like, a midlife crisis with a celebrity-struck, surgically enhanced blonde, the child a mere afterthought? Was it only obligation that had bound them together, or had it gone deeper? The only two people who could answer those questions were dead.

But there was Rhetta.