Chapter 1 - The Perfect Woman
Six months before the wedding, Lucas Bennett believed he had finally rebuilt his life.
He had spent four years believing that survival and happiness were the same thing.
They were not.
After his wife, Anna, died in a highway accident, Lucas had functioned rather than lived. He went to work, returned home, helped Sophie with whatever preschool assignment she had been given, read her bedtime stories, and sat alone afterward in a house that felt too large.
Anna had been thirty-one.
Sophie had been three.
Lucas had thought grief would eventually become smaller.
Instead, people simply became better at carrying it.
Then Rebecca appeared.
They met at a charity dinner for St. Matthew Children's Hospital. Lucas's company sponsored the pediatric rehabilitation wing. Rebecca was coordinating donor relations.
She was elegant without seeming arrogant, confident without being loud.
Most importantly, she seemed to understand loss.
Her older sister, she told Lucas, had died when Rebecca was young.
"I think grief makes people impatient with meaningless things," Rebecca said that first evening.
Lucas remembered looking at her and thinking that no one had understood him so quickly in years.
Rebecca never pushed.
For four months they were friends.
For another six they dated casually.
She waited almost a year before spending a night at Lucas's home.
When she met Sophie, she arrived carrying no extravagant gift.
Only a children's book about a fox looking for the moon.
Sophie loved it.
Lucas noticed.
So did Rebecca.
Everything happened slowly.
That was why Lucas trusted it.
Two years later, when he proposed, Sophie was seven.
Lucas had taken Sophie with him to choose the ring.
"Do you like her?" he asked while they sat in the jewelry store parking lot.
Sophie had looked through the windshield.
"I think she likes you."
Lucas smiled.
"That's not what I asked."
The little girl was quiet.
Lucas mistook the silence for shyness.
"What do you think about her living with us forever?"
Sophie rubbed her thumb across her palm.
It was a habit she had developed after Anna died.
"Will Grandma Margaret come back if you get married?"
Lucas's smile faded.
Margaret.
Anna's mother.
The relationship had been complicated since Anna's death.
Margaret had blamed herself for encouraging Anna to drive home during the storm the night she died. After the funeral she became distant, moving from Virginia to Maine.
At least that was what Lucas believed.
Rebecca had told him Margaret wanted space.
Rebecca had also helped manage some of the correspondence after Anna's death because Lucas could barely open condolence letters without breaking down.
"Grandma can visit anytime," Lucas said.
Sophie looked at him.
"Then why doesn't she answer me?"
That should have been the first warning.
Lucas did not understand it then.
He assumed grief had damaged something between grandmother and granddaughter.
Three months later, wedding preparations took over Rosewood Mansion.
Rebecca wanted a celebration large enough to represent a new beginning.
Lucas did not care about flowers or menus.
He wanted Rebecca happy.
He wanted Sophie safe.
He assumed those things could exist together.
One Saturday morning, Lucas found Sophie sitting beneath the kitchen table while Rebecca spoke with a decorator.
"What are you doing down there?"
Sophie glanced toward Rebecca.
"Nothing."
Lucas crouched.
"Soph."
She whispered.
"Rebecca says flower girls don't sit with family."
Lucas frowned.
Rebecca immediately turned.
"That's not what I said."
Sophie looked at her.
Rebecca smiled patiently.
"I told her the flower girl table is with the other children."
Lucas relaxed.
That sounded reasonable.
Sophie did not.
Later that afternoon, Rebecca entered Sophie's room.
She closed the door.
Sophie sat on the carpet arranging photographs of Anna into a small album.
Rebecca picked one up.
Anna stood beside Lucas on a beach, laughing into the wind.
"You know your dad deserves to be happy again, right?"
Sophie nodded.
"Yes."
"And sometimes being happy means letting go of old things."
Rebecca placed Anna's photograph face down.
Sophie quickly turned it over again.
Rebecca watched her.
"After the wedding, some things around here are going to change."
"What things?"
Rebecca smiled.
"You'll see."
That night Sophie asked Lucas if people could stop being daughters after their fathers remarried.
Lucas laughed gently.
"Of course not."
Sophie looked relieved.
He kissed her forehead.
"You'll always be my little girl."
Lucas walked out without asking why she had wondered.
Downstairs, Rebecca stood in the dark kitchen holding a phone.
She waited until Lucas disappeared upstairs.
Then she dialed.
A man's voice answered.
"Have you found it?"
Rebecca looked toward the staircase.
"Not yet."
"You said the child knew where Anna kept things."
"She's seven, Dad."
"And she's the reason this wedding has to happen before September."
Rebecca's face hardened.
"I know."
Charles Whitmore lowered his voice.
"If Lucas learns what's in that trust before you become his wife, everything we've worked for is finished."
Rebecca stared at the engagement ring on her hand.
"I'll find the letter."
"And the girl?"
Rebecca said nothing.
Her father's answer came quietly.
"Rebecca."
May you like
She looked upstairs.
"I'll handle Sophie."
