The Last to See Her
Praise for the novels of Courtney Evan Tate
“Sensually delicious. It gives us a glimpse of the train-wreck that can occur when the past meets up with the present in a catastrophic way.”
—Tarryn Fisher, New York Times bestselling author, on Such Dark Things
“An authentic, absorbing story of love, friendship, and grief.”
—Library Journal, starred review, on I’ll Be Watching You
“Fans of domestic thrillers with an unreliable narrator will gobble this up. Recommended for all thriller suspense collections.”
—Booklist on Such Dark Things
“Written in breathless style, this page-turner relies on quick thrills, surprise twists...[for] readers seeking a fast entertaining tale.”
—Publishers Weekly on Such Dark Things
“Keeps you thinking about it long after you have finished it... Such Dark Things is a novel full of suspense that you will love to read!”
—Fresh Fiction
COURTNEY EVAN TATE
THE LAST TO
SEE HER
Also by Courtney Evan Tate
Such Dark Things
I’ll Be Watching You
Courtney Evan Tate, author of Such Dark Things and I’ll Be Watching You, is the nom de plume (and darker side) of Courtney Cole, the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the Beautifully Broken series and the Nocte Trilogy, among other work. She spends her days dreaming of new characters and story lines and surprising plot twists, and writing them beneath rustling palm trees in Florida.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
1
Genevieve tipped the courier and set the certified letter on the coffee table.
She knew what it was. She’d been waiting for it for almost a week.
Every day, she’d wondered, Will it be today?
And each day it wasn’t.
Until today.
Nervous energy buzzed through her fingers and toes, tingling through her veins, like ants scurrying in a thousand directions. She paced for a minute, stopping at the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring at the magnificent cityscape lining the horizon. Buildings burst through the hazy pollution, their tips scraping the clouds.
People far below her were bustling here and there, quick to walk, slow to linger. They had things to do, places to be, and she didn’t.
Not anymore.
She ripped open the envelope, pulling the banded documents out, scanning through the words, hunting for the official stamps and signatures that declared this an official act of the court.
They were all there.
This was real.
It was finally happening.
She focused her gaze on the words before her.
Honestly, they were simple.
The black-and-whiteness of them was stark and startling. There were no gray areas, no areas open to interpretation.
They reduced the last ten years of her life into a handful of legal phrases and technical terms. Incompatible differences associated with adultery, marriage dissolution and absolute divorce.
She stared at the words.
Soon, she would be absolutely divorced. She just had to sign the papers.
It had only taken six months of her life to iron out the details. To separate all of their worldly possessions into two camps, his and hers, to figure out who got what. Divorcing a lawyer was the only thing worse than being married to one. No matter that he was the one in err, because he repeatedly fucked someone else, he was out for blood and it took months to sort it all out.
But thank God no children were involved.
That’s what people kept saying, like it was a good thing or a blessing.
But if she’d had a child, she wouldn’t be all alone, and someone would still love her.
She felt like she was floundering. For so long, she’d put all of her energy into a man who hadn’t deemed her worthy to stay faithful to. That had done something to her self-confidence. Something terrible. It wounded her in places she hadn’t known she had, and now she had to figure out who she was without him.
She wasn’t Genevieve Thibault anymore, one half of a whole. She was Genevieve McCready again, and what was Genevieve McCready going to do now, now that she had to stand alone?
She pushed herself off the couch and ran water in her coffee cup. It was a habit Thad had taught her. He hated it when the cups developed coffee rings. She stared at the running water, and then set her cup down.
She didn’t have to do what he wanted anymore. If she wanted coffee rings or tea rings or any kind of fucking rings, she could have them.
It was an epiphany.
She was her own person again. It had been so long since she was a me instead of a we.
She looked around, at the condo she had fought so hard for...the marble floors that they couldn’t agree on—she’d wanted slate, he’d wanted marble—at the modern light fixtures that he’d gotten his way on, at even the tan wall colors. She’d wanted gray.
Why had she even wanted this place?
It was all Thad, and none of Genevieve.
A sense of exuberance, a strange jubilation, welled up in her as she searched online for a Realtor and then dialed the phone.
Bubbles of excitement swelled in her belly as she arranged a time for the Realtor to come see the place.
And then again, as she stared at a map.
Unlike Thad, someone who had spent years building up his legal practice and honing his networking skills in this one city, she could work from anywhere.
She wrote novels.
She could work in Antarctica if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to, but she could.
She already had a plan. She knew where she was going, and what she was doing. She just had to have the courage to do it.
She picked up the phone and called her only sister, Meghan.
“Meg, I’m moving home.”
He
r sister paused. “Home as in...?”
“Cedarburg.” There was a long pregnant pause now.
“Um. Why would you want to move back to Wisconsin? You haven’t lived there in...”
“In eighteen years. Since I left for college. Yes.”
“But...why?”
“I don’t know,” Gen said honestly. “I just feel a need to get back to my roots. I love Chicago, but the traffic and the noise...” She stared out from her twentieth floor windows again. Even from up here, even though the vehicles looked like Matchbox cars, she could still hear the honking. “This feels like Thad. I want to feel like me.”
“There’s nothing there,” Meg said carefully. “Nothing but fields and cold and—”
“And friendly people,” Gen interrupted. “And our parents, and familiarity, and open spaces, and distance from Thad.”
“But I won’t be there,” Meg reminded her gently. “I’m not moving back. I think you need to be near me, Gen. You need a support system. Divorce is no joke.”
“I know that,” Gen said patiently. “I’m the one living it. You’re still with your Prince Charming and point five children living the American Dream, and I’m the one sitting in an empty condo.”
She fought to keep the bitterness out of her voice, as she compared Meg’s bustling, messy home to her own stark and empty condo in her mind’s eye.
“I’ll tell Joey that you’re counting him as a point five,” Meg chuckled.
“Well, he’s only five, so it’s fitting. I mean, honestly. He’s not a whole person yet.”
They laughed again, and then Meg sobered up.
“Is this really something you want to do?”
Gen nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
Meg took a big breath. “Well, let’s do it, then. I’ll help you with your condo, and finding a moving company, and looking online for a house there, and hell’s bells, we’ve got a lot to do!”
“You don’t have to help with all that...” Gen trailed off, but Meg interrupted with their lifelong pact.
“Sisters forever,” she decreed. They’d used that pact since they were kids. Whenever one didn’t want to do something, the other would remind them “sisters forever,” and they would concede.
Gen realized she wasn’t going to get away with not letting Meg get her hands in all the new plans.
“Sisters forever,” she agreed.
“But first, you promised to go to my convention with me,” Meg reminded her.
Gen hesitated.
“Don’t tell me you forgot. New York City? Spa days, shopping—you need a new wardrobe, sis—and nights on the town. You promised.”
Gen paused again, and Meghan cajoled, “Pleassssse. We need this. You need this. It can be your divorce party.”
“Okay,” Gen found herself saying. “Fine. I’ll still come.”
Her sister squealed and Gen hung up before Meg could get too excited. She was moving away from everything she’d known for over a decade. Even though the world seemed unsettled and uncertain, for the first time in at least five years, she felt at peace.
2
The airport was busy today, which was fine. Gen was used to busy. Chicago teemed with life, with people, with traffic. Soon, though, she’d have to acclimate to rural living again. The slowdown, take-a-minute-and-chat kind of life. So, yeah, it would be an adjustment.
But first... New York City.
She hefted her battered leather laptop bag over her shoulder. She’d packed everything else into a moving truck, and she had one suitcase checked in for the plane, but she would never trust anyone else to transport her laptop. It was the instrument she worked with. It was how she lived. It was more precious to her than gold. She’d be leaving directly from NYC to her new home. She already had a farmhouse out in the country bought and paid for, sitting at the end of a little one-lane road in Cedarburg.
She wove in and out among the people crowded in O’Hare’s corridors now, and made her way to a bar. Flight delays sucked, but at least she could have a drink while she waited.
She pulled up a stool at the far end of the bar, and ordered a Long Island iced tea, her drink of choice. The bartender didn’t even blink.
“Sure thing, little lady.” Being five-seven, she wasn’t little, although she was slender. But she smiled anyway.
She set her laptop at her feet and watched the people.
Being a writer, her favorite game was to make up a story for everyone.
“See that lady over there?” she asked the bartender as he set her drink on a napkin in front of her. She motioned toward a heavily made-up woman standing in the middle of the flow of people, talking on her cell phone. “I think she’s breaking up with her boyfriend because she works too much.”
He lifted an eyebrow, examining the woman. “Oh, really? What makes you think that?”
Gen examined her, too. “Well, check out her pricey shoes. They indicate that she’s not married. Husbands tend to throw fits about shoes that expensive. She’s not wearing a wedding ring, and her suit is super expensive. Also, she’s been crying.”
Her eyes were red, and the bartender nodded. “You could be right.”
Gen sipped her drink. “I probably am. But either way, that’s what is happening with her in my head.”
“Okay, what about him?” the bartender gestured toward an elderly man in the back corner, nursing a beer. “He’s been there for at least an hour.”
“Him? He’s waiting on his mail-order bride, of course,” Gen said immediately. “That’s still a thing, you know. She’s coming in from the Czech Republic and her flight was delayed.”
He chuckled, and his eyes crinkled as he laughed. “You’ve got friendly eyes,” Gen observed. “You like your job.”
“I do,” he agreed.
“You must see all kinds of stories here.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Gen sipped again. “Wanna share? I’m a writer. I can always use new material.”
“What do you write?” he asked with interest. “Because I’ve been working on a sci-fi novel for a couple of years now.”
Gen tried not to cringe. That was inevitably something she heard from strangers. Oh, you’re a writer? Awesome, I’m writing a book, too! How do I get it published?
“I don’t know much about sci-fi,” she admitted to him. “I write romance.”
He looked down at her. “Oh, you’re one of those writers.” She could hear the disapproval in his voice and it made her want to whip out her tax returns from last year and wave them under his nose for validation.
But, of course, she didn’t. That was considered socially unacceptable.
Instead, she smirked. “Yeah. I write about sex. They say to write what you know.”
Then she winked.
Because fuck him.
He didn’t have to know that she hadn’t had sex in months.
He seemed intrigued now, at the very least. Mention sex, and you get a man’s attention. It wasn’t always the attention you wanted, though.
He stared at her. “So, what’s your story?”
Gen paused, taking another sip of her drink. It was perfectly mixed with the right amount of sour and liquor. “Me? I’m not that interesting.”
“Are you running from something?”
Her head snapped back. “Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “You’ve just got the look.”
“I most certainly do not,” she said, as indignantly as she could. “My sister is a surgeon, and I’m going to spend the weekend with her while she’s at a convention.”
He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“It’s true,” Gen insisted. “And then I’m moving to a new life. I’m not running from anything.”
He stared, unconvinced.
“Damn, bartenders are intuitive,” sh
e said finally, drumming her fingers on the bar top. He grinned at that. She glared. “But I’m not running. I just lost two-hundred pounds of cheating husband. I’m divorcing his ass.”
He eyed her up and down. “What kind of idiot would cheat on you?” he asked, and she couldn’t decide if she was flattered or unnerved at the way he was looking through her. She shrugged.
“My ex, I guess.”
“What did the chick look like?” he asked, still incredulous.
She shrugged again. “Does it matter? I don’t even know how many there were. My ex is a lawyer, so he knew all the tricks to avoid a paper trail.”
The bartender cocked an eyebrow. “So how did you find out?”
“I saw him with one. From the back. It was entirely by chance. I was in town, and so was he. Only...he was with her.”
Gen was sarcastic, so she didn’t show her pain from that moment. It still stung.
Seeing him with her was so unexpected. It had sent her into a literal physical shock. Her mouth had gone dry, her vision blurred, she’d gotten cold and clammy. She hadn’t suspected a thing until that moment. She’d been such a fool.
“He was a dumbass,” the bartender told her, although he didn’t know her or her ex personally.
“Yes,” she answered. “And soon, he’ll be out of my life for good.”
The divorce would be final just a few weeks after she mailed the papers. They were tucked safely in her bag right now.
Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at it to find texts from her sister. Meg was already in the hotel in New York City, anxiously awaiting her.
I hope you packed lightly. We’re gonna buy all new clothes for you. I can’t wait!!!!!! Hurry up and get here!!!!!
Her sister’s excessive use of exclamation points was a direct comparison for her personality. Meggie was a walking exclamation point. Honestly, she was the one who seemed like a romance author, expressive and passionate, and Gen was the one who seemed like a physician, meticulous and careful.
Over the intercom, Gen’s flight to LaGuardia was announced.
“Can I get my bill?” she asked. “My plane is boarding.”
He shook his head. “Go ahead. It’s on me today. Have fun with your sister.”