More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
if I distrust those people, especially men, will I eventually look at him the same way? He has to wonder. After all, he’s his father’s child.
I’m well aware that my paranoia is part of my huge, overwhelming desire to never give up control, ever again. And I know that same impulse could be hurting my children.
It’s ironic that there are protection programs for witnesses, but not for us. Never for us.
The smartest ones are never found out. I never would have been, except for that stupid drunk driver. Our lives would have gone on just the same. That is almost certainly true.
It’s your fault I’m where I am, though. That was completely true.
Mel had refused to exonerate me from his crimes, and a zealous, fame-hungry neighbor had claimed she saw me carrying something she thought might have been a body
This ain’t the old days, Gina. Reverse image search can bring the wolves right to your door.
any hope at all is a new feeling for me.
It’s a nice, quiet evening, and all I can think of, as I lock up and set the alarms, is that it can’t possibly last.
Mel’s smiles were never open, never free. For all that he played the good husband, the perfect father, it was Method acting to him. Never break character.
Even when Mel had been perfect in his camouflage, he’d been shallow. His calm had felt stretched and unnatural, and so had his affection.
It was my marriage. Not ours. Because it had never been a marriage to Melvin Royal.
I’d been his camouflage.
I’m still willing to run if I have to, but not until it’s necessary.
I imagine Mel will be furious about the loss of his carefully hoarded fortune, and that makes me very, very happy. It soothes me to think I’m using that money to pay for a new life.
Sam Cade has given him dreams that I couldn’t,
Mel was a good dad in the stock photo sense: he showed up, smiled, posed for pictures, but it was all surface.
A distant blur of lightning illuminates his face, and for a strange instant he looks familiar. Not like Sam. Like someone else. Someone I can’t place.
I’m in trouble, I think.
I’ve never felt this vulnerable before. Not since I was Gina Royal.
I don’t fool myself that Sam can fix what’s broken in me. I don’t think he deludes himself about it, either.
We’re both scarred—I have been able to tell that from the beginning.
That image gives me peace, he says. I hope you’re not sharing it with anyone else but me.
He’s seen us—a photograph, at least. Seen me and Sam together on the porch.
He knows where...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
I don’t want to run anymore.
It’s time to trigger a plan that I set in place a long time ago, one I’d hoped never to have to use.
It’s a failsafe, a nuclear option. Onetime use, and I paid dearly for it.
“This is Gina Royal,” I say. “Absalom says that you’ll know what I need done. Do it.”
can’t tell if my own daughter believes me.
If I stay here, I am helping my kids, but I’m risking everything, too.
Mel likes to play chess. This move, this visit, is my checkmate. I can’t afford to flinch at the cost of making it.
Everything he’s done is tainted now to me. Every smile was just mechanics. Every laugh was manufactured. Every public sign of affection was just that: for the public.
And always, always, the monster lay just under the surface of it all.
“This was a warning, Mel. Next time you play with me, you fucking die. Is that clear enough? Do we need to have another round of bullshit threats?”
“The first hint I have that they know where I am, I will put an end to you.”
“If I die in here, everything I know goes online. I’ve made arrangements. Just like you have.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I tell him, enunciating so clearly I know he can make out the words through the soundproofing.
If I end up on the wrong side of this barrier someday, maybe that’s just the price I have to pay to protect my kids. I can live with that just fine.
All the way, I remember that ghostly, ghastly smile on Mel’s broken face. That smile tells me he’s not done. That we’re not done.
I thought he’d get the message, but instead he wasn’t even worried. He isn’t afraid of me. That means I’d better be afraid of him. Again.
I’m faced with a stark reality: Mel knows where we are. He knows. He talked about Brady. Specifically about my son.
everyone runs from the monster. Everyone except the monster slayer, a voice in my head says.
Don’t do this. You’re happy here. Don’t let him win. You have the upper hand, and he knows it. He doesn’t want to die, and you can always, always pull that trigger.
“Maybe they have a point,” he says. It sounds different. Rigid and harsh, now. “Maybe they still think you’re guilty.”
Mel knows where we are.
Now Sam Cade knows everything, too. Friend or not, ally or not, I can’t trust him.
I can’t trust anyone. I n...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Running may make me look guilty, but at least I can get them away from this, get my kids safe, and come back to clear myself.
You’re not just running from stalkers, or even from me. You’re running from the police now. How far do you think you’ll get once they’re really hunting for you? Once everyone is hunting for you?
