I jumped at the unexpected interruption. Wes Ryder stood at the entrance to the room, looking typically rumpled and frazzled, but also worried.
“I’m so sorry for barging in like this. I tried to call,” he said, giving Evan an entreating glance.
Evan stood slowly. “What is it, Wes?”
“I was wondering if I could speak with you, Evan? Privately?” he asked, his glance striking me and then bouncing away.
Evan stared at his old friend with narrowed eyelids. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“When I heard the… uh… news,” he faltered, his gaze shooting to me again. “I thought I should come. I spoke with Valeria this morning, and she said you’d called and asked her to take a few days off. I talked her into giving me the entry code. Can I talk to you, Evan? Privately?”
“Not now,” Evan said in a clipped tone.
“It’s all right,” I said, standing up from the couch. “I told Valeria yesterday that I’d found out Elizabeth and I were doubles… That you’d married a replica of your first wife. Valeria undoubtedly told Wes that the cat’s out of the bag,” I said to Evan, giving Wes a weary, irritated glance. I retrieved the coffee cup Evan had brought in from outside and held it up. “I’ll just go warm up my coffee.”
“No, Anna. I don’t want you to go,” Evan said.
“It’s all right,” I told him, holding his stare for a second so that he could see I meant it. “I’m not going anywhere, except to get some sunshine on the terrace.”
I gave Wes a cool glance as I passed him. I had the impression he wanted to back away from me… give me a wide berth, but that he held his ground with effort.
He sees a ghost when he sees you.
And then quick on the heels of that: Wes slept with Elizabeth.
Lake Tahoe was cobalt blue on this late summer morning. I stared out at that perfect alchemy of water and sunlight, wondering about those seemingly random thoughts that had popped into my brain while I looked into Wes Ryder’s big, glassy eyes as I passed him a few minutes ago. Maybe my thoughts weren’t as random as I’d initially thought they were. I recalled the way he’d talked about Elizabeth up at the overlook, the obvious admiration and more subtle tinge of longing and loss in his tone.
I remembered something Evan had told me last night: “She slept with more men than I could count over the years. Guys we’d grown up with, and gone to school. My friends… She needed sex. She needed the desire of men, like an addict needs a drug.”
I didn’t second-guess the knowledge that Wes Ryder had been one of Elizabeth’s conquests, any more than I doubted that she’d left an indelible mark on the doctor. Elizabeth may have considered Wes to be a passing fancy—a quick fix—but Wes would remember her until his dying day.
Poor Valeria.
The thought was distant and somehow unconnected to me.
Movement to my left caught my attention. I was so numb that I wasn’t surprised when someone rose up a stone stairway to the left of the terrace. I didn’t think much of anything at all as the dark-haired woman with a stocky build walked toward me, as though she’d known she would find me there. She looked solid and real enough in the blinding sunlight. Her white Velcro tennis shoes gleamed on the gray stone pavers.
She wasn’t a particularly attractive woman. But the expression on her face as she glared at me made her appear downright ugly.
“You ought to be ashamed of what you’re doing,” she accused.
I blinked at the sheer venom in her tone. I found myself staring at the thick, tight bun on her head. I recalled seeing the outline of it in the car leaving South Twin.
“You’re his nurse, aren’t you? Noah Madaster’s nurse?”
“This is from him,” she said. She shoved an envelope toward my midriff. I reached for it unthinkingly. The nurse turned and marched away, disappearing down the steps as rapidly and inexplicably as she’d arrived.
I became aware of the envelope in my hand. It felt warm, like the heat from the woman’s anger had been absorbed by it. I lifted it and stared at the writing scrawled on the paper.
Anna Solas, it read.
A chill passed through me. Not Anna Halifax. It was inscribed with my maiden name.
Which meant that Noah Madaster had been researching who I was.
“Anna?”
I turned to see Evan walking across the terrace. I folded the letter in half and shoved it in my shorts pocket before I faced him.