Page 107 of Masks and Mishaps

She lets out a slow sigh and focuses her attention on me now. “Are you okay, Essie?”

“To be honest, I’ve been thinking about what I may have ruined for you.”

Without hesitation, Alyssa walks around the island and pulls me into a hug—the kind that starts as an embrace and doesn’t stop. The jolts in my bones and muscles fade, and in their place, I find the comfort of her arms.

The things I’d give to go back and tell fourteen-year-old Essie that one day, a mother would hug her again.

Alyssa pulls back but keeps her hands on my upper arms. “Remember: It’s their problem, not ours.” She smiles at me, and I smile back. “Now, has anyone seen my son, or is he off doing sad boy shit? Nobody? Typical. I’m sure he’s in that treehouse of his.”

“Treehouse?”

“Backyard. Near the gazebo,” Alyssa confirms. “When Dalton was a kid, it’s where he would hide when he was fighting with his father. It’s his favorite place...” She lets out a sigh and bobs her chin at the many glasses of wine she just poured. “Well, I wanted to give him one of those and tell him the wedding is off.”

The words don’t register until a beat later, and when they do, my stomach somersaults. “Alyssa—” I begin, alarmed—but she waves me off.

“Please. I’m perfectly happy with this decision and would be far happier if I knew my son were too.” She holds my gaze, and the corners of her lips rise. “Youshould tell him. Take this.”

“He wasn’t drinking tonight,” I comment, glancing at the glass of wine. “He actually doesn’t drink much anymore—hardly anything since I started drinking occasionally.”

Alyssa pulls her head back. “Well,” she murmurs before she releases a quiet, appreciative chuckle. “It sounds like I’m going to be your mother after all.”

Thirty-Eight

ESSIE

It’sstartingtosnow.

The property is more vast than I realized, and there’s a stark aridity in the air as I jog across the faded lawn, which is nearly blue under the night sky. The thin, dormant grass glitters with flecks of snowfall, and the moon is heavy overhead, ripe and white and tinged with the faint aura of clouds. The treehouse is a speck of gold in the distance.

A straight-line path transects the lawn, and I follow the pavers until I reach a clearing where the speck of gold has grown to a full beacon. The treehouse is bigger than I imagined, but it looks exactly like the ink on Dalton’s skin.

Inhaling deeply, I ascend the stairs and open the door.

Dalton looks up when I enter, and the confusion on his face quickly melts into concern. “You’re going to get cold,” is the first thing he says.

“It’s warm in here,” I remark, leaving out the part where I’m already freezing. I look around the sparse wooden space. There’s a small table and chair set, which Dalton clearly outgrew decades ago, and not much else beyond the light bulb in the center of the ceiling. “And there’s electricity?”

“Solar,” Dalton answers. “I had it installed last year. I figured my kids would play out here one day, and after spending hundreds of nights freezing my ass off, I wanted to make it nice.”

I lean against the door. He’s sitting on the floor with his back against the opposite wall, legs up, arms on his knees. The expression on his face looks…tired. I thought he would be restless after the fight in the dining room, but he’s not.

He looks devastated.

“How did you find me?” he finally asks.

Instead of responding, I flick the snap buttons on the front of my jacket, exposing the zipper. The sound of the metal teeth is audible in the small room, faint against the hot buzz of the lightbulb above us. When my jacket is undone, I slide it off and let it fall to the wooden floor.

I’m still wearing my dinner dress: another emerald green number Dalton bought for me. It’s tight with buttons in the front, and by the time I get to the third button, the one that exposes my breasts when I undo it, Dalton forces himself to look away.

But I keep going. The fourth button. The fifth. Sixth. Eventually, he looks at me again. His eyes are somber, deep pools of coffee and amber and black, and he takes in the stretch of skin I’ve exposed to him—and so much more.

“Baby.” His voice is pleading, tinged with a request for me to put him out of his misery.

I slip the dress off and I’m nearly naked. My stockings are thigh highs, and his eyes fix on the spot where the tops indent my skin, and one of his hands flexes.

“I seriously can’t—”

I step forward, keeping my stockings and my heels on. When he realizes I’m really going to stop there, his composure finally breaks.

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