“Not satisfied with just holding my hand, Mrs. Stark?”

“I’m fine with hand holding for now,” I say archly. “But later, I want more. Later, I want your hands on all of me.”

The glance he shoots me overflows with heat and promise. “I think that can be arranged.”

“Eyes on the road, driver,” I say, then point. “And turn here.”

He does, and immediately my mood downshifts. Because now we’re on my actual street. Now, we’re a few blocks away from my childhood home.

I draw a breath. “Almost there. And I’m fine,” I add before he has a chance to ask. I’m not fine—not entirely—but I’m hoping that by saying it, I’ll banish the hideous aching in my gut and the nausea that is starting to rise up inside me.

“Just tell me when.”

I nod, and for a moment, I picture us driving past, just going on and on until we’re out of the neighborhood, back in Dallas proper, and far, far away from the memories that are now washing over me like wave after wave crashing onto a sandy shore. Me locked in a pitch-black room because little girls need their beauty sleep, and Ashley whispering to me through the closed door, promising me that nothing is lurking in the dark to hurt me. A stylist tugging and pulling on my long, golden hair, ignoring my tears and cries of pain as my mother stands by, telling me to control myself. That I’m embarrassing her. My mother gripping my arm as she tugs me up the walkway to register for my first pageant, my eyes still red from the sting of her hand on my kindergarten-age bottom, a reminder that beauty queens don’t complain and whine.

I think of a dinner plate with the tiniest portion of plain chicken and steamed vegetables while my mother and sister eat cheesy lasagna, and my mother telling me that if I want to be a pageant winner, I need to watch every calorie and think of carbohydrates as the devil. Then her mouth pursing in disapproval when I insist that I don’t care about being a pageant winner. That I just want to not be hungry.

I was never good enough. Too chunky, too slouchy, too lackluster. Even with an array of crowns and titles, I never met her expectations, and I don’t remember a time when she ever felt like mother or friend. Instead, she was the strict governess of stories. The wicked stepmother. The witch in the gingerbread house.

My older sister Ashley escaped her clutches by the simple act of not winning the pageants she entered. After several failures, my mother gave up. And though I tried to fail, too, I was cursed with crowns and titles.

For years, I’d thought that Ashley had the better end of the deal. It was only when she later killed herself after her husband left her, that I understood how deep Ashley’s scars had run. Mine were physical, the self-inflicted scars of a girl who took a blade to her own skin, first to release the pressure and gain some control, then later to mar those pageant-perfect legs and end the madness of that horrific roller-coaster.

Ashley’s wounds were under the surface, but still deep. And at the core, both mine and my sister’s scars were inflicted by our mother.

My heart races, and I force myself to breathe steadily. To calm down. We’re almost there, and if I’m going to see my mother, I need to be in control. Show even the slightest weakness, and she’ll pounce on it.

And, yes, I’ve grabbed the upper hand before—I sent her back to Texas after she tried to take over planning my wedding, ignoring what I wanted in favor of her own skewed vision—but in Dallas she definitely has the home-court advantage.

“Nine-three-seven?” Damien asks, referring to the address, and I nod.

“The first house on the left after the bend,” I say, and I’m proud of how normal my voice sounds. I can do this. More than that, I want to do it. Clear the air. Wash away all the cobwebs.

Basically, I’m doing the parental equivalent of burning sage in a house tainted with bad memories.

The thought amuses me, and I’m about to tell Damien when the car rounds the bend and my humor fades.

Moments later, my childhood home comes into view. But it’s not my mother’s Cadillac parked in the drive. Instead, I’m staring at two unfamiliar Land Rovers, a Mercedes convertible, and a moving van.

So where the hell is my mother?

2

A chill cuts through me, a cold sweat breaking out over my whole body as Damien eases the limo in behind the van, then kills the engine.

I turn to him, searching his face for the answers I need, but of course he doesn’t have them. And for one quick, horrible moment, I’m overwhelmed by the sensation of being swept out to sea, pulled away from everything warm and safe until I am cold and alone and drifting without anything to anchor me.

Outside the car, a little boy of about four runs across the lawn toward us, his eyes wide. A woman who’s probably five or six years older than me hurries behind, calling for him to stay away from the car.

I watch the boy, as mesmerized by him as he is by the Phantom. Then his mother reaches him and swings him around, making him laugh before she settles him on her hip, and he snuggles close, his thumb going into his mouth.

I exhale, only then realizing I’d been holding my breath.

“Come on,” Damien says gently, reaching for his door.

“But she’s not here.”

He brushes a lock of hair off my cheek, the touch as soothing as his voice. “But the house still is.”

He’s right. I’d been focusing so hard on my plan to see my mother that I hadn’t thought about the other memories that surrounded her. Memories made inside the walls of this house. I think of Ashley, who would now be about the same age as that young mother, and suddenly I want nothing more than to see the room that had once belonged to her. “You’re right.” My voice is thick with the tears I’m determined not to shed. “Do you think we can go in?”

“We’ll go in,” he says in the same firm, confident voice I’ve heard in both the bedroom and the boardroom. Immediately, I relax, because no matter what else went wrong today, I am certain that somehow, someway, Damien will get me inside that house.

He gets out, then circles the car to open my door. It’s early summer, and a wall of Texas heat slams into me, overwhelming the lingering cool inside the air-conditioned car. Damien helps me out, and by the time he shuts the door behind me, the mother and her son have reached us.

“May I help you?” Her voice has the clipped, polished tone of someone raised in the northeast.