A Man to Rely On

Scott nodded. “I know. What makes you think she’s gonna jump?” He couldn’t even say the part about her being naked. It was too impossible to imagine.

“Jessica dared her. She said if Marisol thought she was such hot stuff, she ought to let them all see.”

“And she said yes?” The girls he knew got mad if you said something about the strap of their training bras showing. He couldn’t imagine one of them voluntarily taking her clothes off in broad daylight before God and everybody.

A hush fell over the crowd in the water as Marisol stepped up onto the flat top of the thick post that supported part of the guardrail. She didn’t look at any of them. Instead, she stared out across the water. Scott held his breath, awed by the expression on her face. She wasn’t that much older than him—maybe fifteen or sixteen. But she looked so determined. Not scared at all. He’d seen girls jump before—with their swimsuits on—and every one of them had looked like she was about to cry before she dove into the water.

But Marisol Luna looked calm, as if she was waiting to cross the street in front of the school.

“Take it off! Take it off!” Someone started the chant and others picked it up, until it was a deafening chorus, echoing off the water.

Scott remained silent, watching the girl on the post. She glanced down at the water, and in that moment, her expression changed. She looked angry, he decided. Was she angry at Jessica and her friends for taunting her? Or at all of them for watching?

He ducked his head, feeling ashamed, then quickly brought it up again, unable to resist seeing her fulfill the dare. He looked at her again, and this time, he saw hurt alongside the anger. He felt the hurt in his own chest, but still could not turn away.

She brought one hand to the strap of her suit, and a half smile formed on her lips. She reached back and undid the strap slowly, then let it fall down across her still-covered breasts, taunting them.

“Take it off! Take it off!” The volume of the chant increased.

The same amused expression fixed on her face, she grabbed the top of the suit with both hands and shoved it down, then quickly stepped out of it.

The chant faded away in the heavy, hot air. Scott stared at the girl, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. She had small round breasts, tipped with dark brown nipples, a small waist and round hips. He could see the tuft of dark brown hair between her legs, and felt a stiffness between his own legs. He stifled a groan and sank deeper into the water, not daring to take his eyes from her for a moment.

She raised her hands over her head and held the pose for what seemed like a full minute. No one said anything. Scott could hear the water slapping against the concrete pilings of the bridge, and the buzzing of dragonflies that hovered on the river’s surface, and his own frantic pulse throbbing in his ears.

Then she dove, her legs and arms folded together in a perfect jackknife, cleaving the water like a bullet.

The mournful keening of a siren broke the stillness, and a sheriff’s car came to a halt on the bridge. A deputy climbed out of the car, his uniform shirt plastered to his back by sweat. “What are you kids doing?” he bellowed. “Y’all know you’re not supposed to dive off here.”

They scattered then, swimming or running away from the site. When Scott looked back, the deputy was holding up Marisol’s swimsuit and talking with Jessica and Danny. He dropped his gaze to the water, but Marisol was nowhere in sight. Scott froze, half sick with fear. What if she’d drowned?

Then he saw her, farther down the bank, half-hidden in the salt cedars that grew beside the river. She was picking her way through the shallows, moving away from the bridge, as graceful as a mermaid, and as naked as the day she was born. Scott stared until he couldn’t see her anymore, then he reluctantly made his way home.

That night, and many night afterwards, he dreamed of Marisol, standing on the bridge. Of the beauty of her body, and the defiance and pain that shone from her eyes. In his dreams, he wanted more than anything to comfort her, but she was unreachable, someone he could only long for from afar.

CHAPTER ONE

Cedar Switch, Texas 2008

M ARISOL L UNA ONCE SAID she would never come back to Cedar Switch, Texas, except to dance on the graves of all those who had scorned her. The image pleased her, of whirling and tapping and kicking and leaping past the stolid tombstones of the men and women who had looked down their noses at her. Her steps would reverberate down to where they lay unmoving in their coffins, and reduce the soil over them to dust.

As far as she knew, most of those people were still alive. Alive and well enough to see her come home with her head ducked in shame. She’d disappoint them in that respect at least. Of all the emotions that had dogged her in the past nightmare of a year, shame had not been one of them. She had done nothing wrong. A judge and a jury had said so—though her enemies would never believe it.

Correction. She had done one thing wrong. She’d made the mistake of falling in love with a man who kept more secrets than the CIA. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she thought of her late husband. Lamar Dixon, star center for the Houston Rockets, the highest paid player in the history of professional basketball, had been a liar and a cheat and a gambler who lost more than he could ever afford to repay. In the end, it had cost him his life, and it had almost cost Marisol hers.

But that was over now. She was making a fresh start. Cedar Switch was only the first stop in her new life. She’d stay long enough to sell the house her mother had left her, then take that money and head to a place where no one had heard of Lamar Dixon or his infamous widow.

Marisol glanced toward the passenger seat. Her fourteen-year-old daughter, Antonia—Toni—had her eyes closed, bobbing her head in time to some hip-hop tune on her iPod. Oblivious to her mother. Toni had Marisol’s light brown skin and wide mouth, and her father’s strong chin and thick, unruly hair, which she wore in long braids gathered with a clip at the nape of her neck. She’d been a pretty child and would be a beautiful woman, if Marisol could only manage to see her through these turbulent teen years.

As if feeling her mother’s gaze on her, Toni jerked the earbuds of the iPod from her ears. “I can’t believe you’re moving me all the way to East Podunk,” she said, picking up the argument that had raged between mother and daughter for days. “I don’t know why we couldn’t stay in Houston.”

“Did you really want to spend the rest of your life barricaded in your house, dodging reporters?”

Toni stuck out her lower lip and twined the cord of the iPod between her fingers. “They would have gone away, eventually.”

“Maybe. But the truth of the matter is, we couldn’t afford to stay in Houston any longer,” Marisol said. “I spent pretty much everything we had on lawyers.”

Toni’s eyes widened. “Do you mean we’re poor?”

Marisol’s idea of poor and her daughter’s were probably several decimal places apart, but Marisol understood that to Toni their present reduced circumstances might seem dire. She had some money set aside—enough to pay for Toni’s education. But she was determined not to touch it. “We’re not rich,” she said. “And I’ll have to get a job. But you don’t need to worry about having enough to eat or a roof over your head.”

Toni slumped back in the seat with a sigh. “I just wish we could go home,” she moaned.

Me too, Marisol thought. But the house in River Oaks, the platinum credit cards, the exclusive clubs and the luxury vacations had disappeared with Lamar’s death. All she had left was her car, a small savings account and the house she’d inherited from her mother. That house was her ticket to a new future, a less extravagant one for sure, but one in which she’d call her own shots. After her experience with Lamar, it would be a long time before she was so naive as to trust anyone else again.

A green city limits sign announced their arrival in Cedar Switch, Texas, population 9,016. Marisol turned her attention from her daughter as she guided the red Corvette down Main Street. She wished now she’d sold the car and bought something more conservative, but she’d told herself she could always trade it in later if things got really bad. Lamar had given her the vehicle for her last birthday; it was one happy memory to hold on to in spite of everything that had happened since then.

But the Corvette was definitely the kind of car that made people take a second look, and when folks in Cedar Switch realized who was in the car…

She took a deep breath and told herself to get over it. Why should anyone care if she was here now? Likely no one remembered what had happened all those years ago.

“What a dump,” Toni said, scowling at the passing scenery.

“Actually, it looks better than it did when I was here last,” Marisol said. In her memories, everything here was sepia-toned—the brown brick of the courthouse, the faded facades of storefronts and the yards of houses brown from winter’s frosts or summer’s drought. So it surprised her to recognize color all around her. Azaleas bloomed pink and lilac around the courthouse. New stores with bright striped awnings lined the streets.

She drove past the corner where the Dairy Freeze had once sat—now occupied by a bright yellow McDonald’s—and turned onto a wide, shady street. Her destination was halfway down, on the right. She blinked rapidly, cursing the tears that stung her eyes as she stared at the familiar white brick ranch house, with its narrow front porch and cracked concrete drive. Even the mailbox was the same, the paint faded over the years but still readable: Davies.

She pulled in front of the garage and shut off the engine. “This is it?” Toni asked. “It’s so tiny.”

Marisol laughed, a bitter attempt to avoid bursting into tears. “It’s little to you because you’re used to our huge house in Houston. But when I was a little girl, this seemed like a really big house.” Before Mercedes Luna had married Harlan Davies, she and Marisol had shared a one-bedroom apartment over a dry cleaner’s downtown. Marisol had stayed in bigger hotel rooms than the place where she’d spent the first eleven years of her life.

Toni shook her head, unimpressed by nostalgia, and shoved open her car door then climbed out.

Marisol sighed and got out as well. She refrained from looking around as she headed up the walk to the front door. The neighbors were probably already getting cricks in their necks, trying to see what was going on at the Davies’ house. The phone lines would be buzzing when they figured out who was back in town.

She dug in her purse for the key the lawyer had sent. Toni waited on the porch, slumped against the post, feigning boredom, though impatience radiated from her. No matter what she said, the girl was interested in this glimpse into her mother’s past—a past Marisol had never found reason to share with her.

She took a deep breath, bracing herself against the onslaught of memory, then turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness in the closed-up room, but in that time the scent of White Shoulders filled her. Her mother’s perfume. One breath and it was as if Mercedes were there in person, urging her daughter to shut the door and come inside. To make herself at home.

She groped for the light switch. A single yellow bulb glowed feebly overhead, revealing furniture draped in old sheets, and the same red-and-black patterned rug that had been bought new when Marisol was eleven.

Toni gingerly lifted one sheet. “You really lived here?” she asked.

Marisol nodded. She had not really wanted to come here, but told herself she had no choice. Staying here until she could sell the place seemed like the safest bet for her and her daughter. And she couldn’t deny a curiosity, a need to see what had become of this place she had left so long ago. An unvoiced hope that in death Mercedes might have left behind some clue as to what had really happened to tear them so irrevocably apart.

“I want to stay in your room,” Toni said, interrupting her mother’s reverie. Before Marisol could stop her, she hurried down the hall, opening doors as she went, looking in at the dusty furnishings of a guest room/-home office, bathroom and finally, at the end of the hall, Marisol’s girlhood room.