“No! Why?” Allie was on her feet, her tea spilling. “You can’t do this, Cassie. Just butt the hell out. I—I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
“And whose fault is that?” Cassie threw back as Jenna, holding the snapshot in quaking fingers, stared at the image.
“Is it possible?” she whispered.
“Possible and probable. Laura was nuts. I think she killed her sister. She miraculously survived when Elana didn’t. And her parents, they died in a house fire. How about that. Careless smoking, though they’d both given up the habit years before.”
In her mind’s eye Cassie saw Laura as she had been in her shop, desperate for a cigarette and desperate to tell Cassie the news about Holly. She’d played a part, yes, she could act, but deep down, no doubt, she’d loved telling the story, reveled in the taking of a life.
Jenna was shattered and Cassie couldn’t help but wonder, was it worse to know that your child was the victim of murder, or a killer herself? Did it matter? Both were now dead. And Jenna, no doubt, would feel forever guilty for giving up her firstborn.
There really was no good news.
“I don’t know why you came here,” Allie said, her eyes dark.
Cassie sighed. “Because we’re a family. Like it or not, ‘Baby Sister,’ we’re what each other’s got.”
With that she left, gave her mother a kiss on the head, promised she’d be back, noticed the still simmering hatred in her sister’s eyes, and drove home. To Trent’s ranch, where both he and Hud, who had somehow been injured, were recuperating.
As she drove past the lush fields and noticed the new foals next to the mares in one pasture, calves and cows in another, she realized how much at home she felt. It was ironic, she thought, that Allie had been right about one thing. She had found happiness. With Trent. Who would have thought it would be in Sticksville, Oregon? Certainly not she. But as she parked and picked her way around puddles, stopping to pat a wiggling Hud on his head, she understood why, so long ago, Jenna had packed up her daughters and moved away from the glitz, glamor, fame, and stress of Hollywood. This really wasn’t such a bad place.
She walked into the kitchen, the dog limping slightly as he raced down the hallway in front of her, and she heard Trent’s voice. “Hey, there, Hud,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. “Did you find my wife?”
Hud yipped loudly.
“Oh, you did? Well, do you think you could convince her to bring me a beer?”
She walked into the den and saw him stretched out on the couch, the TV on low, one heel propped on the pillows.
“Not a chance in hell,” she said to him and grinned wickedly. She walked to the couch and trailed a finger from his waistband to his neck before winking. “Get your own damned beer.”
Epilogue
She didn’t belong here, Allie thought as she stared through the window to the manicured grounds of Mercy Hospital.
No matter what the doctors or the lawyers or the judge thought, Allie Kramer did not belong in a psych ward, and especially not the same one where Cassie had so recently stayed.
It was outrageous.
And she’d told them all so.
No one had listened.
Her doctors insisted she needed help.
Her mother was relieved she was “safe.”
Her damned sister seemed to think it was ironic.
Her lawyers told her to stay put; they were pleased that she was in the hospital rather than jail and promised to spring her soon.
But she really was going out of her mind. As she walked through the connecting rooms of the psych wing she itched to get outside, to be free again. The other patients, well, they should probably be here, especially that freaky Rinko kid who studied her so intently. He’d been Cassie’s friend and he was weird as hell.
She made her way into a common area where a couple of patients were playing checkers, another one knitting, and still another reading a book. Rinko was there, too, going through a magazine about cars.
Ugh.
She flopped onto the couch and wanted to scream and rail at the heavens at the unfairness of it all, that she was a star, damn it, that she was Allie Kramer. But she didn’t and forced her gaze to a television in the corner, one of those old bubble-faced ones. On the screen an advertisement for some antacid gave way to a promo for another show, and there, bold as brass, was Whitney Stone’s intense face.