Page 72 of The Wife Stalker

She’d seen pictures, and the house was stunning. Nestled in acres of green, it perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The gray-shingle facade was all windows and white trim with decks boasting views of the water from all sides.

She wanted to go the day after Christmas and have a nice holiday break, where they could really start to bond as a family, and had brought it up to Leo back in November.

“It’ll be perfect. A wonderful getaway for our new family to spend some time together bonding. We can play board games with the kids. Go hiking. Just relax. What do you say?”

“It will be too cold to hike in December. Besides, I’ve already booked our trip to St. Barts. The children like to get away somewhere where they can swim and be warm. It’s really much nicer at the Maine house in the spring and summer; we can go there then.”

She’d let the subject drop and resigned herself to heading to St. Barts the day after Christmas. A couple of days before the twenty-fifth, though, she’d checked the forecast for Maine and seen that it was supposed to be unseasonably warm all week—inthe fifties. Later that evening, right after she and Leo had made love, she ran a finger lightly up his arm. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“What is it, my love?”

She leaned up on one elbow and looked into his eyes. “It’s something I want for Christmas.”

He smiled. “I’ve already gotten your presents.”

“I’m not talking about presents. You know how much I want for Stelli and Evie to accept me, to think of me as a mother.”

His expression grew serious. “Of course.”

“Well, I think it’s important that we have some quiet time together to reflect and plan our goals for the new year. Going to the islands is your old tradition. The children are still going to see me as an intruder replacing their mother there. I want to start a new tradition. Instead of airports and hotels, let’s finish the holidays in a more old-fashioned way. Board games, popcorn, and movies. And hiking together as a family experience. It’s going to be in the fifties in Bar Harbor all week.”

He sighed. “I can see your point. I can cancel the trip to St. Barts if you really want, but I don’t know about hiking. I worry about Stelli. He’s not great with boundaries, and the trails are so high up. If he fell...”

“We’ll watch him. We’ll make sure he’s safe.”

“I’m not so sure about that. He didn’t know better with the slide...”

Was he really bringing that up again? “Well,Iknow better now. We won’t take our eyes off him. I want us to make new memories there. Family memories.”

He got a faraway look and was quiet. “Maybe it would be good. But I know the kids were really looking forward to the island.”

“I’ll talk to them tomorrow,” she said, nestling back against hischest. “If they really object, then we’ll go with the original plan, okay?”

The next day, she gathered the children around the kitchen table. She’d given Rebecca the afternoon off and had made their snacks—green smoothies with some liquid vitamins—and they sat contentedly, Evie swinging her legs back and forth under the table.

“This looks weird. Why is it so green?” Stelli asked when she put the glasses down on the table.

She’d forgotten to buy blueberries, which made it purple normally. “Because I put in Hulk powder,” she said, smiling.

His eyes widened. “Like the Incredible Hulk?”

She nodded. “Yup. It will make you strong like him. And it’s got yummy fruit, so it’s sweet. Try it.”

He reached for the one farthest from him, but she stopped him. “Not that one. That’s Evie’s.” She pushed the other one toward him. “Different vitamins for different kids. This one’s yours.”

He took a sip with the straw. “Not awful,” he said.

“Told you,” Piper said, taking a seat. “Listen, Daddy and I were talking yesterday, and we thought it would be fun for us to do something different for Christmas break this year. How would you like that?”

Evie stopped drinking and sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we were thinking it might be fun to go to the cottage in Maine.”

“That sounds boring. I want to go to St. Barts,” Stelli said.

“If we do go to Maine, I was thinking we could get the new Oculus Rift virtual reality system and play games together. We could get the new Xbox, too,” Piper told him.

Stelli’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

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