Read Online Folly Cove by Holly Robinson - Free Book Online

the real thing gnawing at her was this: Laura didn’t believe Jake was really going into the office. Wouldn’t he have taken his laptop with him? His computer sat on the kitchen counter, silver and sleek. Mocking her.
    Jake hadn’t mentioned Anne this morning, even when Laura had vaguely said over breakfast that her little sister “might be visiting.” Yet now Laura felt anxious, her caffeine-fueled imagination shifting into overdrive. What if Anne had secretly been texting Jake? What if they’d been in communication all along?
    It was possible. In the past few months, Laura had learned it was easy to deceive your spouse. Just this morning, she’d answered three texts from Tom while she was down at the barn, then deleted them all, even though they’d arrived on the burner phone she’d bought so the bill couldn’t possibly appear on their family plan.
    Laura quickly cleared the breakfast dishes, forcing her mind away from Tom. He wasn’t a problem, she reminded herself. It was an online friendship. A virtual flirtation, at most. She could stop anytime she wanted.
    At least Elly would be here tomorrow. She was the only person Laura had ever confided in about Jake and Anne. As she rinsed the dishes and moved like a robot through the kitchen, clearing and cleaning, Laura replayed that horrible day, exactly as she’d described it to Elly.
    Three years ago, she’d taken Kennedy to visit friends in Maine for a weekend while Jake was at a conference. Anne had a teaching job with summers off, so Laura had asked her to stay at the house and look after the horses. She’d even offered to pay her, but Anne had refused the money.
    â€œIt’s a vacation for me, too, getting out of my hot little apartment,” Anne had said. “And you deserve time off.”
    Anne had always been generous. But she was also a man magnet: a combination of fierce and vulnerable, a tomboy with movie-star curves and dusky skin. Her eyes could go from blue to silver depending on her mood, and she had red hair—not that horrible ginger-carrot color, but a rich auburn. Laura had often been jealous of her, growing up. Much more so than of Elly, even though her middle sister was the traditional beauty, with her long legs, sharp cheekbones, and straight blond hair.
    Still, Laura had never imagined that Anne would try to poach her own husband.
    Anne had taken off surprisingly early on the morning that Laura and Kennedy returned from Maine. Laura had felt a sting of disappointment; she’d been looking forward to a sisterly night out to thank Anne for house-sitting.
    When Laura asked Jake why Anne had left so soon, he’d shrugged. “No idea,” he said.
    Laura sensed something was up from his potent silence and continued to press him. Finally her husband became agitated and said they needed to have “a serious talk” after dinner.
    Despite that warning, Laura was blindsided. Money was usually the subject of Jake’s “serious” talks: how they needed to tighten their belts, cut back on restaurants and clothes, et cetera. She knew the drill.
    Laura put Kennedy to bed early, then poured herself a generous glass of wine before joining Jake in the living room. Too generous: the wine sloshed over the rim of the glass. It was impossible to scrub the red stain out of their white Berber carpet.
    Later, she would pull up the rug in a fury, hacking away at it with kitchen shears. She wouldn’t have been able to stand looking at the stain and knowing what it represented.
    Once Laura was seated on the living room couch, Jake pulled the hassock over and perched on it in front of her, hands dangling between his knees. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but I need to be honest,” he began. “First of all, you should know that I would never do anything to deliberately hurt you and Kennedy.”
    Laura’s stomach had immediately started roiling. She drank the cheap