1
serenity
GRIPPING THE STEERING wheel tightly, Serenity Alston navigated the winding freeway heading east toward Donner Summit. Dark, ominous clouds hung low on the horizon. Although she was driving a BMW X5, which had 4-wheel drive, if it started to snow, the highway patrol could close the road before she could get over the pass. This was California, where even a little bad weather was cause for panic.
The Lumineers’ “Ho Hey,” a song that had been popular when she’d first married Sean eight years ago, came over the sound system, bringing to mind the way he’d been back then—handsome, charming and so earnest and true.
Or so it had seemed...
She told Siri to delete it, but the next song—Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up”—brought painful memories of how committed she’d been to him, and what it had cost her.
Unwilling to go through her entire playlist right now, for fear she’d be tempted to delete most of her collection—and lose too much of her focus—she turned off the music. Snow didn’t often come to the Sierra Nevada Mountains after April. But here it was nearing the end of May and those dark clouds loomed ahead. She needed to beat the storm, just in case. The two women she was meeting at the cabin were relative strangers; only she had a key. If she got caught on the road, how would they get in?
Although...
She eased off the gas pedal. Maybe it would be better if she didn’t make it through. She’d been experiencing some regret since she first set this up. Sean’s trial was over. She could finally close that chapter of her life, put it behind her and move on. Why ask for a whole new problem? One that could easily create more wreckage in her life? Right now her family was strong, functional, happy. They could stay that way if she ignored what she’d found, just let it go.
Part of her was tempted to do that. She could head back right now. But another part—her natural compulsion to reach the truth at any cost—won out. She’d never been able to turn a blind eye to anything, which was why, she supposed, she’d become a true-crime writer.
At any rate, she couldn’t ask two people to come clear across the country to meet her and then stand them up.
Her phone rang and Bluetooth announced that it was her mother.
Damn.
After taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she told it to answer. For the sake of everyone involved, she had to continue to act as though nothing had changed. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey!” her mother chirped, as breezy as ever.
Serenity winced at the sound of her voice. Hiding anything from Charlotte was difficult. But if she hadn’t answered, her mother would’ve just called back. And if she didn’t behave normally, Charlotte might begin to suspect something was wrong, which would only make the next days and weeks, maybe months, while she was trying to figure this thing out, that much harder to navigate. “Hi, Mom.”
“What are you up to?” she asked.
Serenity adjusted the heat, increasing the warmth inside the car. “I’m heading to the cabin.” She spoke casually, as though this trip was just like every other, even though it wasn’t remotely the same.
“Again?”
“Sure, why not?” Serenity couldn’t see why her mother would mind, not if she didn’t know what Serenity had planned. Ever since her parents had moved away from Berkeley, where she lived, to San Diego, the place sat empty. With the rest of the family nowhere near Tahoe, it wasn’t as if anyone else could drive to the cabin for just a couple of days. Serenity had a brother and two sisters, but her brother, the youngest at twenty-four, was getting his master’s at UCLA, and her twin sisters, who were twenty-eight, both lived in San Antonio. One had married a man who was from there, and the other had married a man who was flexible enough to move to Texas so the twins wouldn’t have to live too far apart.
“It’s just... I don’t know,” her mother said. “You’ve been going to Tahoe almost every weekend.”
“I love Tahoe.” The cabin had become a refuge for her. As soon as Sean had been sentenced, and she no longer had to worry about his smarmy lawyers getting him released on probation with time served, she’d started trading the rat race of the Bay Area for the peace and tranquility of the mountains whenever she could. Heading up the hill gave her something to do, somewhere to go when she’d normally be with the man she’d married.
It also gave her a break from researching the gruesome facts behind the Maynard murders that were the subject of her latest book—about Frank “Coop” Maynard, a pharmacist who killed his whole family, fled the state, married again and started anew. She used to be able to maintain a sort of clinical separation from the crimes she wrote about, but she seemed to be losing that. Ever since she found those files on Sean’s computer, the fact that a person could be a monster down deep troubled her more and more. And that made her fear, at some point, she wouldn’t be able to continue writing.
What would she do then?
“We all love it up there,” Charlotte was saying. “But do you have to go every weekend? You’re still so young.”
Although she was only thirty-five, Serenity felt older. Having to testify against her own husband seemed to have aged her by a decade or more. “What does my age have to do with anything?” she asked.
“You should be out meeting people. It’s not as though you socialize during the week. You write at home and never get out.”
She had to work. She had deadlines. And now that she was no longer planning to take a break to have a baby while Sean supported them—thank God she’d found those files before they’d gotten that far—she had to be extra careful to maintain her career, or she could wind up without an income. That was one of the reasons she went to Tahoe so often; the beauty and isolation helped clear her mind. “Are you talking about another man? Another relationship?”
“Of course.”
Irritation made Serenity tense up even more—until she felt as though she’d shatter at the slightest touch. “I’m not interested in another man, Mom.”
“You need to move on at some point, Serenity. You’re only getting older.”
“You just said I was too young to closet myself away at the cabin every weekend. Now you’re saying I’m too old?”
“I’m saying if you want to have a family, you can’t wait forever.”
“I’d like a family one day. But if it isn’t meant to be, it isn’t meant to be.”
“You can’t take such a passive approach—or it won’t be. Not all men are like Sean. Look at your father.”
Her mother was using her father as an example of integrity? When he might be in on the lie they’d been living? Serenity was no longer sure she was even related to him or to the rest of the family. The Facebook message she’d received six months ago, after taking a DNA test mostly on a lark—just to see how it all worked for the sake of her writing—had upended everything she’d ever believed she could rely on. “I’m not ready to start dating,” she reiterated.