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came through with an interview at the Preservation Board, she’d insist that Meredith fly home immediately.
    Dessert had been cleared away and after-dinner brandy poured when Hunter asked Jonathan if he knew anyone in nanotechnology.
    Her brother’s tone was so casual that it stopped the brandy snifter midway to Samantha’s lips. She knew that tone and recognized it for what it was. Hunter was many things; meticulous, crafty, even predatory. Casual wasn’t even on the list.
    She watched her husband’s face as Hunter told him about the great investment opportunity he had if only he could put his hands on the half million dollars he needed. He presented it with the same level of conviction with which he’d presented the green energy company out of Kansas, the oil exploration in North Dakota, and the soul food/sushi restaurant franchise that the prospectus had claimed would catch on in the Midwest and then spread “like wildfire” across the United States.
    Her husband had been financing Hunter’s investment schemes since shortly after their wedding, when he’d underwritten the nine-year-old Hunter’s plan to create and corner a secondary market for
Star Wars
action figures. Over the years, Hunter’s investment schemes had grown bigger and riskier while Jonathan’s losses grew larger.
    She thought it would actually be cheaper and less stressful if Jonathan simply deposited a certain amount per month as he did for Meredith, rather than allowing the fiction that Hunter was an entrepreneur on the verge of the big score, to continue. It frightened her how much like their father he seemed; how easily he burned through money and people. How careless he was.
    She’d warned her brother after the last debacle, when some of Hunter’s investors had threatened lawsuits and Jonathan and his firm had been embarrassed by the association, that she’d cut him off herself before she’d allow Jonathan’s name to be sullied.
    She prayed regularly that her warning would suffice and told herself that a Hunter engaged, however briefly or expensively, was better than a Hunter with too much time on his hands.
    She saw the flare of triumph in Hunter’s eyes when Jonathan said he’d look over the materials and think about it. And she knew with a sinking heart that what that really meant was yes.

CHAPTER FIVE

    T HE SKY WAS DARK AND THREATENING BY THE time Brooke returned to the Alexander that Tuesday morning. She’d taken Darcy in the car to drop Natalie and Ava off at school and after parking the Volvo wagon, she hustled the dog outside to her favorite tree behind the parking garage.
    Normally Darcy took her time, holding out until the last possible moment to prolong the time outside. But Darcy wasn’t a big fan of “wet” and did her “business” in record time. She didn’t even whimper in protest when Brooke packaged the doggie doo-doo in a clear plastic bag, dropped it in the Dumpster, and speed walked them back into the building, making it seconds before the rain began to fall. Brooke wished she could package up and throw away the refuse of her life as quickly and efficiently, but the wounds Zachary had inflicted would not heal or disappear.
    On the way upstairs Brooke considered her reflection in the shiny brass of the elevator. She’d spent a good twenty minutes before she woke the girls that morning trying to club her humidity-charged hair into submission and applying enough makeup to disguise the night spent tossing, turning, and trying to resist the leftover pizza in the refrigerator.
    When Zach had first insisted that they enroll the girls in the ridiculously expensive private school, she’d flinched each time the tuition check was written.
    “It’s a no-brainer,” he’d said dismissively when she objected to paying the equivalent of a year of college for a year of prekindergarten. “Look around you. These women care what they look like. And they have the money to pay for improvements.” He’d looked at her