Chapter 1 - The Little Yellow Dress
The last thing Adrian Vale remembered before his daughter screamed was kissing his wife.
It wasn't a particularly romantic kiss.
It was the sort of quick, distracted affection a husband gives when he's thinking about three other things and assumes the woman beside him knows he loves her.
Corinne tilted her face toward him, smiling beneath the enormous white sunshade.
"You're missing the best part of the afternoon," she said.
Adrian glanced at his watch.
"Give me five minutes. Jonas needs me to look at something downstairs."
"Five actual minutes, or Adrian Vale five minutes?"
He laughed.
"I'll be right back."
He kissed her cheek.
Corinne caught his wrist.
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart."
Adrian stood, straightened his white linen shirt, and walked toward the yacht's interior doorway.
He didn't look back.
If he had, he might have noticed how quickly his wife's smile disappeared.
Corinne waited until his footsteps faded down the stairs.
Then she took a folded napkin from the table beside her lounger and wiped her cheek.
Once.
Twice.
Hard enough to leave a pink mark.
"Disgusting," she muttered.
The word tasted better than the kiss had.
The yacht rocked gently beneath her. Beyond the bow, sunlight scattered across the waters of Narragansett Bay, turning the afternoon into a glittering postcard.
It was an eighty-eight-million-dollar view, according to the ridiculous brochure the yacht broker had once shown Adrian.
Corinne had learned that wealthy people enjoyed attaching prices to beautiful things.
They called it appreciation.
She called it inventory.
Behind her, music drifted from the aft deck, where several guests were drinking champagne beneath striped umbrellas. They were far enough away that their laughter came as a distant murmur.
For the moment, Corinne had the forward deck to herself.
Almost.
"Cor'inne?"
She closed her eyes.
Not now.
A small voice came again.
"Cor'inne?"
Corinne opened her eyes.
Three-year-old Lila Vale stood beside the neighboring sun lounger, wearing a yellow cotton dress with little white flowers along the hem.
Brown curls stuck to her forehead.
In her right hand, she held a wooden sailboat barely longer than her palm.
One side of the boat had been painted red. The other was blue, with a tiny white star near the stern.
Her mother had painted it.
Her real mother.
The dead woman whose photographs Adrian still couldn't bring himself to put away.
Lila held the toy toward Corinne.
"Look. My boat."
"I can see that."
"It goes fast."
"Wonderful."
Lila smiled, missing the meaning of the woman's tone.
She took another little step.
Her shoes made soft squeaking noises against the deck.
"Can I play with you?"
Corinne looked at her.
Really looked.
At the curls Adrian brushed so carefully every morning.
At the eyes that resembled his.
At the little face that made him stop talking in the middle of business calls.
Seven months of marriage, and Corinne had never once been the most important person in her husband's life.
There was always the child.
The bedtime routine.
The nightmares.
The questions about Mommy.
The tiny interruptions that somehow mattered more than million-dollar contracts.
"Go find somebody else," Corinne said.
Lila's smile faltered.
"But Daddy said—"
"I don't care what Daddy said."
The girl blinked.
Then, with the relentless optimism of someone who hadn't yet learned that cruelty could be deliberate, she held out the boat again.
"You can have the red one."
There was no red one.
Only the little wooden sailboat, painted in two colors.
Corinne understood what Lila meant anyway.
She was offering half of something she loved.
For an instant, Corinne felt an uncomfortable pressure behind her ribs.
It wasn't tenderness.
It was irritation at being asked to feel tenderness.
"You little bastard," she snapped. "You're just as disgusting as your father."
Lila went very still.
She didn't understand every word.
But she understood the voice.
"Don't be mad," she whispered.
Corinne's face hardened.
Lila stood about three feet from the exposed side of the deck, her back toward the water.
The stainless-steel safety rail had been removed during maintenance earlier that week. The temporary barrier that should have stood in its place was gone too.
Below the deck's outer rim was a narrow metal lip, part of the yacht's hull fitting.
Beyond it, nearly seven meters of empty air separated the bow from the sea.
Corinne knew exactly where the edge was.
She planted both feet against the deck.
Then, without rising from her lounger, she thrust both palms against Lila's upper body.
It happened once.
A single, violent shove.
Lila staggered backward.
Her first step was a desperate attempt to regain balance.
The second carried her closer to the edge.
Her little wooden boat slipped from her hand and clattered against the deck.
"Ah—!"
Her heels went over.
Her body pitched backward.
For one terrible fraction of a second, she disappeared.
Then her right hand caught the metal lip beneath the rim.
Her left hand slapped desperately against the edge and found a hold.
Her small body swung against the white hull.
Her legs kicked in empty air.
Seven meters below, the water moved in lazy blue folds.
Lila couldn't swim.
She couldn't even reach the bottom of the shallow end of the family pool.
Her fingers were already slipping.
Above her, Corinne rose slowly from her chair.
She approached the exposed rim and looked down.
Lila stared up at her.
Her face was wet with tears.
"Please," she whimpered.
Corinne's mouth curled.
For the first time that afternoon, her smile was completely genuine.
She studied the child's hands.
Then she shifted her weight onto one leg and raised the other foot.
Her cream-colored shoe hovered above Lila's fingers.
The little girl looked at the shoe.
Then at Corinne.
Something changed inside her.
Something no three-year-old should ever have to understand.
"Daddy! Help me!"
The scream tore across the bow.
Corinne's smile remained.
Until a man's voice erupted from the open interior doorway.
"Lila!"
Adrian.
Corinne froze.
Her raised foot stopped inches above the child's hands.
The pleasure vanished from her face.
May you like
Her breath caught.
And somewhere behind her, a door slammed open.
