“Decided to get in a run before a set of virtual meetings.”

His clothes seemed to bear that out: running pants in black that hugged his legs and a fitted ­long-­sleeved dark gray hoodie with black stripes down the sides, his hands gloved against the cold. Mud coated his shoes and splattered his running pants halfway up his calves.

“Took the bush track down from my place,” he said, catching her glance. “I heard about the cabin, wanted to see how bad it was.” He pushed back the hood to reveal the golden strands of his hair, his tawny eyes returning to her after a quick look at the ruins. “I’m sorry. I know how much it meant to you.”

“I’m just glad I wasn’t in it at the time.” Using the excuse of turning to regard the damage, Anahera took several steps away from the edge of the cliff. Paranoia or not, she felt a hell of a lot safer now that she wasn’t anywhere near an edge over which she could be pushed. “Do you remember that summer when my mum and I moved in and we all had a picnic in the yard?”

Vincent angled his head slightly, his breath fogging the air. “I wasn’t here, remember?”

Frowning, Anahera thought back, the past unraveling in a string of faded Polaroids. “No,” she said slowly. “You weren’t. I guess I’m so used to thinking of you as part of my childhood that I put you into memories where you weren’t actually present.” He’d been one of her closest friends for so many years, before life splintered them into shards going in different directions.

Before they all made choices.

Vincent’s smile was that guileless, sweet one that made her heart ache. “It’s funny,” he said. “I do that, too. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

Anahera nodded, far enough away from the edge that she felt comfortable talking with him. “Too bad we couldn’t stay children,” she murmured. “But then, I never much liked being a child.” Playing with her friends had been one thing, but the helplessness of her size had eaten away at her. All she’d wanted was to get bigger so she could physically fight her father when he began to beat on her mother.

“Neither did I.” Vincent’s smile faded. “Always had to listen to my parents telling me who I was supposed to become, the man I was supposed to be.” He flexed and closed his hands by his sides. “Sometimes, I felt like a prize poodle, being trained and given pats on the head when I behaved properly.”

It was odd, Anahera thought, how thoroughly he’d stifled his anger as a child and teenager; they’d felt sorry for Vincent but he’d seemed fine going along with his parents’ demands. “Your parents took tiger parenting to the next level,” she said aloud. “But you’ve found your own way, reached for your own dreams.” That wasn’t quite true, but she wasn’t heartless enough to point out that he was still following the blueprint the senior Bakers had drawn up for his life.

“I loved her, you know.” A soft confession by a handsome ­golden-­haired man gilded in the morning light. “She was the first thing I loved in all my life that was mine. That no one had trained me to love, trained me to like.”

Anahera stilled. “You’re not talking about Jemima, are you?”

“Don’t pretend, Anahera,” he said, dropping his head. “You’re sleeping with that cop. I’m pretty sure he’s told you.”

Anahera didn’t say anything, waiting, watching.

58

“Miriama was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” Vincent murmured, his eyes on the ocean in the distance. “Like a dancer even when she was standing still. I wanted to wrap her up and freeze her in time so that nothing would ever hurt or destroy or taint her. At the same time, I wanted to take her to every glorious corner of the earth and show the world that she was mine.” A rough exhale. “I booked us a surprise trip to Venice. It was to be this month.”

“I think she must’ve loved you, too.” Anahera didn’t have to lie to speak those words. “For her to break the rules by which she’d been raised. I remember how she and Matilda always went to church on a Sunday, rain or shine.” Matilda in her best matching long skirt and top, Miriama in her white church dress with a ribbon in her hair.

Vincent held her eyes, his own welling with pain. “She resisted at first, but I kept on pursuing her, kept on courting her.” A faint smile. “That’s such an ­old-­fashioned word, isn’t it? But that’s what I did with her. Because she was like that. Had to be treated with care.”

Vincent, Anahera saw, had put Miriama on a pedestal. And she’d walked away from him. Had the rejection pushed him over the edge, caused him to seethe until he lashed out and destroyed the very thing he professed to love? Men did that. Anahera’s knowledge was born of a thousand dark memories of screams, of the sound of a fist hitting flesh, of guttural, drunken swearing that turned a person into a thing.

“Did you hurt her?” she asked because the question was a ticking bomb between them.

Vincent’s smile turned lopsided. “Thank God you ­asked—­it’s so stupid to just ignore it, isn’t it? No, I didn’t hurt my Miriama.” He swallowed, his throat moving. “If I was going to murder anyone, it’d be Jemima.”

The flatness of his tone had Anahera very grateful she’d put distance between them. “You don’t mean that,” she said, thinking of Jemima’s recent joy and the Vincent the other woman must’ve seen in comparison to the one standing here now. “She’s deeply in love with you.”

“I didn’t say I would.” Another smile, as if they were talking about the weather or old memories. “I’m just saying it would make more sense. Jemima’s the trap, while Miriama was my freedom. With her, I could be the man I would’ve been if my parents hadn’t decided to mold me into their image of a perfect son. If only Miriama had been patient a little longer, I would’ve made it happen.”

With every breath she took, she inhaled the memory of fire until it seemed to be in her hair, her skin, her mouth. And she remembered another fire. The one that had ended with two dead people and Vincent finally free of his parents. “Were you thinking of divorcing Jemima and marrying Miriama?” she asked, playing along with his delusion that he’d been willing to walk away from his perfect life for a girl with the wrong pedigree to fit that illusion.

“I already bought the ring,” he said in a voice so soft it was nearly snatched away by the quiet wind. “I just wanted her to wait until my kids were a little more grown, but she couldn’t. And now she’s dead.”

Anahera’s heart began to thump, her skin burning from the inside out. Maybe it was grief causing the flat patches in Vincent’s ­delivery—­or maybe it was a cold kind of calculation. All the smiles, all the sadness, what was real and what wasn’t? What kind of a man could talk so unemotionally about murdering his own wife?

“Jemima told me you came to see her,” he said without warning. “She’s very happy to have made a friend in town.”

Oh, Jemima. Controlling men like Vincent didn’t like for their wives to have friends. “I understand what it feels like coming into a ­tight-­knit community,” she said, trying to make light of the situation. “It was the same for me when I moved to London. All the people I met were friends with Edward. It was hard to make friendships of my own.”