“Oh.” Parker was silent for about ten seconds. “Colin told you the hotel we’re staying at . . . right? So if there’s any problems and the cell phone isn’t working down there you can call?”

Matt looked at her through his rearview mirror. “Yes, Mom. I know the hotel and the flight numbers and I even know the location of a pot shop that delivers chill pills for overanxious women.”

He caught his brother trying to smother a chuckle.

“I’m pretty sure that was an insult,” Parker said, her lips pressed in a thin, unamused line.

Matt busted out a laugh. “If you’re only pretty sure, I’ll try harder next time. We’ve got it, Parker. Erin’s an adult. Austin is . . .” He hesitated. “Not a baby. And I’m going to be around enough to make sure Erin is okay.”

Colin swiveled in the front seat to look at his girlfriend. “It’s going to be fine, hon. The place will still be there when we get back.”

While Matt was smiling, he glanced up again and saw a look of fear pass over Parker’s face. He’d seen that look before. On the faces of people who were evacuating their homes while he and his coworkers rushed in. That’s when it dawned on him. Yeah, Parker might be over-the-top controlling with all her instructions and words of caution. The reality was, she’d almost lost her house less than a year prior, and he was betting she was remembering that right about now.

“It’s not fire season,” Matt said quickly. “Everything is still green and the Santa Anas aren’t blowing.”

He noticed her blinking several times. Her lips sealed.

Colin reached into the back seat. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s understandable,” Colin assured her.

Matt hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405 and took a deep breath. “I got ya covered, Parker. Go to Cabo, get a tan, and come back relaxed.”

“You okay?” Colin asked her.

“Yeah. I really need this vacation.”

Matt looked over at his brother and grinned. He knew he had a ring in his luggage and a pretty elaborate plan as to how to put it on her finger. Maybe once she felt like she wasn’t shouldering the whole burden, she’d relax.

He looked in the rearview mirror again.

“This traffic isn’t going to make us miss our flight, is it?”

On second thought . . . he wouldn’t be holding his breath.

Erin didn’t consider herself a babysitter, and Austin certainly wasn’t a baby. However, once Parker and Colin pulled away with Matt at the wheel, she found herself planning meals for the next several days and scheduling an extra trip to the grocery store to ensure she had everything she needed to feed the two of them.

Then she remembered Parker’s lengthy list of instructions and how Austin would often have friends over after school. Considering he was a high school senior without parents, his friends opted for his house instead of their own, even for video games. Keeping all that in the back of her mind, she doubled the amount of food she planned on cooking just in case there was another hungry kid around.

She’d always liked to bake, but it wasn’t until she’d moved into the guesthouse that she really started to enjoy cooking. That was in part because she didn’t eat out very often. A fact based less on the reality that dining out was expensive and more on the need to stay hidden. As her friendship with Parker grew, she’d often cook for the two of them, or even everyone in the household on weekdays when they were all there. Mallory had only moved out a few months ago, but came over on the weekend with her live-in boyfriend, Jase. It helped that Jase was also a first cousin to Colin and Matt.

She loved the big family atmosphere along with the different personalities and laughter. An image of her sister and her family floated in her head. Their last conversation before Erin disappeared forever.

“Where will you go?” Helen, her sister, had asked.

“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone.”

“How will I know the bastard didn’t get to you and you’re dead?”

“My divorce attorney will keep me updated on you, and you on me.” It was the best Erin could do. “Maci Brandt no longer exists. I’m legally changing my name, passport, ID, everything.”

By now her sister was crying on the phone. Erin hadn’t dared to have the conversation in person or her sister may have tried to convince her there was another way out. So she’d made the phone call minutes after she’d fled. Hours before Desmond would realize she was gone. It was against what the experts on changing your identity and disappearing forever had told her to do, but Erin didn’t have it in her to let her sister worry.

“What will I tell Dad?”

“I honestly don’t care. Tell him I’m dead. Whatever is easier for you.” She’d never see the man again.

“Maci, don’t do this. There has to be an easier way.”

The image of a casket, the one Desmond had shown her when he prepaid for their funeral expenses just days after she’d been released from the hospital, flashed in her head. He’d compared the white satin of the interior to her wedding gown and suggested a young corpse would look beautiful inside of it.

His threat wasn’t missed.

The man was capable of killing her and making it look like an accident.

He’d be the poor widower, and she’d be dead.

“I love you, Helen. Please don’t provoke him. He’s dangerous. If he thinks getting to you and your family will get to me, he’d do it just to drag me back. Please, for all our sakes, don’t try and find me. Stay away from him.”

“Don’t go. Please, let’s talk this out.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m already gone. Now tell me you love me one last time.”

“Damn you, Maci.” Her sister was hurting, she heard it in her voice.

“Those aren’t going to be your last words to me.”

Helen was sobbing. “Maci . . . please.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. God, I hate him. How did this happen to you?”

A very good question.

“One more time,” Erin said.

“I love you, Maci.”

She hung up the phone, tucked it into the seat of the bus she was on, and exited at the next stop.

Maci Brandt stopped existing that day, and Erin Fleming was born.

Erin had hopped around the country for six months, made sure the last of her scars could be covered by makeup, and then settled in Parker’s guesthouse. Only then did she buy a cell phone instead of using a prepaid one that couldn’t be traced back to her. Only then did she heave a sigh of relief and sleep more than three hours at a time. She was up to four now, and thought that was a minor miracle. She could count on both hands the number of nights she’d slept all the way through, and each one she woke dripping in sweat with nightmares that gripped her neck so tight she couldn’t breathe. What she really needed was therapy. A fact she couldn’t ignore but was too afraid to pursue. Because therapy would reveal her past to a stranger, and that was the one thing she was never supposed to do.

So why was she so focused on this now?

Erin moved around Parker’s kitchen, enjoying the larger space to move, and prepared what she was going to make for dinner. Austin didn’t rush home from school but hadn’t texted to say he wouldn’t be around that night. He probably didn’t expect dinner from her. He was self-sufficient, as any eighteen-year-old just a few weeks from graduation was. But that didn’t stop her from planning a meal.