Read A Family Affair: Summer: Truth in Lies, Book 3 for Free Online Page A

didn’t even know the whole truth.
    “I don’t think I’ll be heading home anytime soon.” Melanie grew up in San Diego. She wouldn’t understand that people in Magdalena carried grudges as big as a warehouse filled with lipstick, especially when one of their own skipped town without so much as an apology. She’d been so confused and full of pain, she could think of nothing but getting away from Cash, who insisted they talk and deal with things.
    And what had she done? Made a grand escape. Well, she’d escaped all right, straight into a self-imposed prison with invisible bars and no way out. Daniel “Cash” Casherdon lived in her soul, a constant reminder of what she’d thrown away.
    “I’ll bet everyone will be happy to see you,” Melanie went on, creating Tess’s backstory as though it were true. “They probably think you’ re some sort of celebrity, being a small town and all.”
    Hardly.
    “You need to do this, Tess. Go home. Relax and regroup.” She gave her a quick, strong hug. “And call me in six months.”
    ***
    Tess flipped through the travel brochure she’d picked up this morning. Blue skies. Blue ocean. A seven-day cruise to the Caribbean. It did look relaxing. It even sounded relaxing with descriptions of massages, saunas, poolside drinks. There was only one problem, but it was the same one that threw a roadblock at the other five brochures she’d perused the past ten days.
    She couldn’t relax. She’d tried, but the attempts were more stressful than a red-eye to Hong Kong. The very word relax signified a release of control, a giving up of carefully constructed defenses, like denial and self-preservation. Once that happened, then good old introspection snuck in, taking over her brain and her memory until all that remained was the truth and with that the by-products of that truth: remorse and guilt.
    Relaxation gave a person too much time to think. It was as bad as analyzing oneself and one’s motives, which she’ d spent a full year doing. Books, lectures, classes, even three sessions with a therapist, had rendered the same answer, the one she ignored. What was the point of confronting something that couldn’t be changed? The pain would still be there, the wounds newer, more severe. The regret, endless.
    And the results would still be the same. JJ was dead. Cash was gone. Her choices could not be undone, no matter how many books she read or therapists she saw. The only way she could breathe day in, day out, was to obliterate the past and avoid as many situations as she could involving couples, families, and children. That wasn’t always possible, but with enough practice, she’d gotten quite good at extricating emotion from situations, which earned her a reputation as cold and uncaring.
    At least with a reputation like that she wasn’t in danger of having her life crushed again. Tess threw the brochure aside and rifled through the others. The Grand Canyon. Australia. India. New Zealand. She pushed them all aside. She needed work. Long hours. Deadlines. Time zone changes. Damn Melanie and her six-month non-compete clause. Maybe she should call her mother and invite her to Virginia. They could head to D.C., tour the Capitol and the Smithsonian—but only for a few days.
    She didn’t like to surround herself with her mother’s scrutiny, and though Olivia Carrick was never obvious about it, there were semitransparent cues during their monthly phone conversation: a long pause when Tess told her where she’d been, a hitched breath after the mention of someone’s grandchild, a casual and recurring remark about family. Olivia had very specific opinions about her daughter’s life and how she should be living it. Or rather, how she shouldn’t be wasting it selling lipstick.
    Tess chose to ignore the subtleties and limit the time she spent with her mother. Instead, she sent gifts : a watch, a mixer, a sweater. Money for a new washer. She was debating a slow cooker for her mother when the