“Since when do you read the paper?” It was slightly buried underneath her body. She raised her ribcage to let me pull it out and I rolled onto my back.

“I saw it when I was checking out at the grocery store.” She looked half guilty. I unfolded it and looked at the front page.

“Laura,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but seeing her picture caught me by surprise. I got a sick feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about it.

“New leads in the Laura Hilberson case,” I read. The paper said that one of her credit cards had been used at a gas station in Mississippi. Since the gas station had no video surveillance, they weren’t able to get a shot of who was using the card. The teenager behind the counter was high at the time and didn’t remember anything at all.

“You dated her,” Olivia said. I nodded. She pushed her textbook aside and rested her head on her fist. “So, what was she like? Do you think she would just disappear? Do you think someone took her?”

I scratched my belly. “It was like a week. I didn’t know her very well.” That isn’t true. Why am I lying?

Olivia knew I was lying.

“Tell me,” she says.

“There’s nothing to tell, Duchess.”

“Caleb, you’re one of the most perceptive humans I’ve ever met. Are you really telling me that you have no insight into this situation?”

My brain locked and I wasn’t sure which way to send my tongue. This was such a touchy subject. I was about to tell another lie — or maybe it was the truth, when Cammie came barreling into the room, saving me.

“Oh my god! Did you guys have sex?”

I propped my hands behind my head to watch as they started their usual playful arguing.

Where was Laura? This was crazy.

Laura Hilberson was a compulsive liar. I knew it within three dates. She was a pretty girl, shy for the most part, but everyone seemed to know who she was. It might have been because her parents owned a yacht and she invited everyone on the weekends. Our college was a private one. Olivia was one of the handful of students who attended on full scholarship. No one else really needed a scholarship.

I asked Laura out after we were assigned to a group project in Speech class. Date one included her telling me about her best friend dying from a four-wheeler accident three years earlier. She cried when she told me, saying she was closer to the girl than she was to her siblings. When I asked her how many brothers and sisters she had, she paused only briefly before saying — eight. Eight siblings. Wow! I thought. Her parents must be stretched pretty thin. How did they even manage to hug everyone in one day?

Date two was spent on her parents’ yacht. For all their money, they were simple people. Her mother made us sandwiches for lunch, one slice of turkey, white bread and a tomato. They spoke about their church and the mission trips Laura had gone on throughout high school. When I asked if any of her siblings went with her, they stared at me blankly. Laura saw a school of dolphins just then and we all were distracted with watching them play in the water. Later we went back to their house so I could pick up my car. They lived in a modest two-story, the only indication of their money really being the yacht, which they called their splurge.

She showed me around the house while her mother got us some Cokes from the garage fridge. I counted the bedrooms: one, two, three, four. Each one had a queen, except for Laura’s — she said she preferred a twin. When I asked where everyone slept, she said that most of her siblings were older than her and had already moved out.

My internal alarm really went off when I said goodbye to her family in the foyer. On the wall to the right of the front door was a huge montage of family pictures. Grandparents, Christmases, birthday parties — my eyes scanned each one as we chatted about school and upcoming finals. When I finally said goodbye, I walked to my car knowing two things: Laura was an only child, and Laura was a compulsive liar.

Date three should never have happened. I was thoroughly turned off after I figured everything out. It was a group date and I landed up paired with Laura. We went on a road trip to see the Yankees play the Rays. Everyone knew it would be an embarrassing game for the Rays, but we wanted to get out of town and have some fun before finals killed us. Laura drove with me and one other couple. She sat in the front seat chatting about her last trip to Tampa, when her sister got lost at the beach and her parents had to call the police.

“I thought you were the youngest,” I said.

“It was a long time ago. I think she was only five,” she said.

“So, that made you how old?”

“Three,” she answered quickly.

“You have a memory of that happening?”

She paused. “No. But, my parents tell me about it all the time.”

“Is your sister in college now?”

“No. She’s in the military.”

“What branch?”

“She’s a Navy SEAL.”

My eyebrows went up. I checked my rearview mirror to see if John and Amy heard her in the backseat.

They were both slumped over, sleeping.

Damn.

It was dark. I was glad she couldn’t fully see the expression on my face. There were no women in the Navy SEALs. I may not be fully American, but it was a pretty well known fact. Or at least I thought it was.

“Well, that’s impressive,” I said, for lack of anything better. “You must be proud.” Or lying.

For the remainder of the drive, I asked what each of her siblings did, and she had an answer each time.

At that point I was simply doing it for amusement. At the baseball game the next day, I wedged myself between two of my friends so I wouldn’t have to sit next to her. The lies were exhausting me. But, that night I went back for more.

I asked her about her mission trips, trying to decode some of her psychology. Christians weren’t supposed to lie — not this big anyway. This was delusion. Maybe she wasn’t right in the head. She acted normal socially. God. This was blowing my mind. It made me wish I’d done what I’d wanted and studied psychology instead of business. I asked one of the girls in our group about her later that week.

“She’s cool,” she said. “Kind of quiet.”

“Yeah. It’s probably because of being the youngest of all those siblings,” I said.

Tori screwed up her face. “She only has two — a brother and a sister. They’re both studying abroad.”

Oh hell no.

I’d never spoken to Laura again. I couldn’t figure out if she knew she was lying, or if she did it because her brain was cracked. Or, maybe she thought it was fun. Who the hell knows? I didn’t hang around to find out. When they said she was missing, I immediately thought she disappeared on purpose. Then I felt guilty for thinking that.

She’d probably been abducted and there I was making up stories to suit my interpretation of her.

They found her at the Miami Airport. When the papers started reporting about her abduction by a man named Devon, I tried not to question it. Tried. Olivia was fascinated with the case. She read everything she could. I don’t know if it was because she was studying law or because she had a personal tie to Laura. I kept my opinions to myself and hoped she was okay.

Then there was a night after Estella was born. I was making dinner, and news was playing softly on the television. I heard her name. Softly, but my ears were tuned to that name. I came out of the kitchen to find Leah trying to change the channel.

“Don’t,” I said. Olivia was on my flatscreen, walking with a man I presumed to be Dobson Orchard. She waved away from the press and got in a car with him.

No, Olivia.

I wanted to tell her to stay away from this case. To stay away from him. I wanted to touch her silky, black hair and wrap her in my protection. My mouth was dry by the time the news went to commercial.

That’s when I realized they’d flashed Laura’s picture, describing her as one of his first victims. Dobson/Devon…

Forget it, I thought. She’d been drugged. Maybe she got the name wrong. Maybe the news did. Maybe she jumped on the Dobson train because she wanted the ride. When she was in college she was looking to be a part of something, a family of eight. Maybe, just maybe, she found it in the faces of Dobson’s abducted, assaulted victims. Fuck if I didn’t pick the strangest women to spend time with.

Chapter Nine

“Where are we?” Cammie sits up, rubbing her eyes.

“Naples.” I pull down a heavily wooded street, and she looks around in alarm.

“What the hell, Drake?”

Olivia, who has been quiet the whole drive, looks impassively out the window. I’m worried about her. She hasn’t asked once where we’re going. Either she trusts me, or she doesn’t care. I’m good with both.

The road curves, and I pull down a much smaller street. The houses here are spaced further apart. There are ten of them, all sitting around a lake and surrounded by their own five acres. The closest neighbors own horses. I can see them grazing behind white picket fences. As we drive past, Olivia’s head cranes to get a better look.

I smile to myself. She’s not a hundred percent zoned out.

I stop the car outside an ornate white gate and reach into my glove box to find the automatic opener. My hand grazes her knee and she jumps.

“It’s good to know I still have that effect on you,” I say, pointing the device at the gate. It swings open just as her hand shoots out and smacks me on the chest.

I grab her hand before she can pull away and hold it right over my heart. She doesn’t fight me.

Cammie sniffs in the backseat, and I let her go.

The driveway is paved with creamy, brown brick. We follow it for two hundred yards until we reach the house. I throw the car into park; Olivia watches my hand.

I watch her, watch my hand. When she looks up, I smile.

“Where are we?”

“Naples,” I repeat, throwing open my door. I lean the seat forward to let Cammie out and walk around to open the door for Olivia.

She gets out and stretches her arms above her head, looking at the house.

I wait for her reaction.

“It’s beautiful,” she says. I grin and my hammering heart calms down.

“Who does it belong to?”

“Me.”

She raises her eyebrows and follows me up the stairs. The house is three stories, brick-faced with a turret and a widow’s walk that has the most astonishing view of the lake. As we approach the front door, she gasps.

The knocker sits on a solid wood door and is in the shape of a crown.

I stop at the door and look at her.

“And you.”

Her nostrils flare, her eyelashes beat, and her mouth puckers into a little frown.

I turn the key in the lock. We walk into our house.

It is unbearably hot. I head straight for the thermostat. Cammie swears colorfully, and I’m glad they can’t see my face.

The house is fully furnished. I have someone come in once a month to dust and clean the pool — which has never been used. I move from room to room, opening the shades. The girls follow behind me.

When we reach the kitchen, Olivia wraps her arms around her body and looks around.

“Like it?” I ask, watching her face.

“You designed this yourself, didn’t you?”

I like that she knows me so well. My ex-wife liked everything to be modern: stainless steel, sterile white and tile. Everything in my house is warm. The kitchen is rustic. There is a lot of stone and copper and hardwood. I made the decorator use a lot of red, because the color reminds me of Olivia. Leah has red hair, but Olivia has a red personality. And as far as I’m concerned, red belongs to the love of my life.

Cammie wanders around the living room, eventually plopping herself down on the couch and turning on the television. Olivia and I stand side by side, watching her. This was not how I intended for her to see this.

“Want me to show you the rest of your house?”

She nods and I lead her out of the kitchen and toward the curving staircase.

“Leah-”

“No,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about Leah.”

“Fine,” she says.

“Where’s Noah?”

She looks away. “Please stop asking me that.”

“Why?”

“Because it hurts to answer.”

I consider her for a moment and nod. “You’re going to have to tell me eventually.”

“Eventually.” She sighs. “That word is so us, isn’t it? Eventually, you’ll tell me you’re faking your amnesia. Eventually, I’ll tell you that I’m pretending not to know you. Eventually, we’ll come back together, fall apart, come back together.”

I watch her study my wall art, riveted by her words. She says things that genuinely move me. She lets her soul slip through her lips, and it’s always raw and incredibly sad.

“Caleb, what is this house?”

I stand behind her as she lurks in the doorway to the master bedroom and tug on the ends of her hair.

“I was building it for you. I was going to bring you here the night I proposed. It was only an empty lot, but I wanted to show you what we could build together.”

She blows air through her nose and shakes her head. It’s the way she fights tears.

“You were going to ask me to marry you?”

I briefly consider telling her about the night she walked in on me at the office, but I don’t want to overload her emotionally.

“Why did you keep building? Furnish it?”

“A project, Duchess,” I say softly. “I needed something to fix.”

She laughs. “You couldn’t fix me — or that dirty redhead. So you went for a house?”