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then winced. “I’m sorry.”
    She nodded, bracing herself internally, but externally she laughed. A version of the trick from Jenna, only Monica was far better at it. “That day outside the police station? It looked like most of the town showed up.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said, and that was shocking. The apology actually took a few moments to assimilate. “After what you had been through, you deserved better than people standing around to watch you leave.”
    She glanced at her lemonade and lifted it, as if to take a sip, but realized she had no taste for it.
    “Thank you,” she said, meeting his eyes again.
    “So, Monica,” he changed the subject with grace. “How long are you staying in our fair town?”
    “Indefinitely,” she said and he blinked and straightened, as if he’d been poked.
    “The Wild Child is moving to Bishop?”
    Her heels sank again and she jerked them out, uncomfortable with the nickname, a leftover from that ill-fated two-year reality show Simone had signed them up for when Monica was a teenager, ripe for rebellion. And while the moniker might have worked when she was sixteen, at thirty it was wearing thin. She hadn’t danced on a table, started a fight, smoked drugs, screwed another girl’s boyfriend, or any of the other things she did on and off the screen in years, though no one seemed to care.
    Titling the book Wild Child had been her publisher’s idea, and all it did was make sure no one ever forgot the girl she’d been.
    She’d written two works of nonfiction, the first a pretty crappy exposé on groupies, the second a bestseller about growing up a wild child, a life lived on theroad and backstage, traveling around the world and through the rocky and terrible terrain between girlhood and womanhood.
    She’d written bad poetry, waited tables, traveled the world, and held her best friend’s hand while Jenna died in near poverty, too proud to ask for money until it was too late.
    But no one was interested in those things.
    It was as though she were in frozen animation—a wild child forever.
    “Not quite. I’m here to write a book, and I’m not sure how long it will take.”
    “What’s your book about?” He eyed her over the edge of his glass before taking a sip.
    “The night my father was shot.”
    He swallowed and coughed. “The murder?”
    Inwardly, she cringed. She really was growing to hate that word.
    “Yeah. I’m a little behind and my deadline is coming up quick, so I need to do some interviews this week.”
    “Interviews?” He made it sound as if she’d said rectal exams. “With whom?”
    “Some of the people there that night.”
    “This has to be a joke,” he muttered. “It has to be.”
    She laughed, awkwardly trying to fend off his tension, his increasingly obvious dismay. “Is this a problem for you?”
    “A problem? That you, Monica Appleby, are writing a book about the night your father was shot dead by your mother in Bishop, the most notorious crime in our history? And you want to talk about it with people here? This week?”
    She didn’t like it said that way, the part about her mother—it was like someone dragging a rake over a chalkboard, and all of her internal organs cringed.
    “I’m not sure why this is important to you, or why you’re suddenly being an insensitive jerk about it.”
    “Oh Jesus.” He put down his glass with a thump, his eyes widening as if he’d just thought of some new horror. “Is your mother coming?”
    “No. And who the hell cares if she does?”
    “I do. I have one week, Monica. One week to get this town to win that damn TV show, and I can’t have any drama or theatrics get in the way.”
    “I’m not here to cause trouble.”
    “But isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that what you’ve always done?”
    She stiffened and set down her own glass. All that lovely buzzing awareness, all that sweetness behind those eyelashes—it was all gone. “I’m going to go back to the Peabody. Thanks for the