All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [67]
She hadn’t thought about the Connolly case in a long time. It had happened when she was only thirteen, and at the time, her parents had sheltered her a bit from it, not wanting to scare her. But she’d worked the rumor mill like every other kid in town, and while they may have had the story straight, no one knew all the details.
The Connolly girls disappeared one afternoon on their way home from school. They were attending Harpeth Hall, the exclusive all girls’ prep school in Belle Meade. The school was close to their home, and they usually walked or rode their bikes back and forth to school in their little uniforms. So safe was the neighborhood, no one gave it a second thought. Their parents finally called the police that evening when the twins didn’t come home. In the age before Amber Alerts and twenty-four-hour-a-day news coverage, the news hadn’t gotten too far. Taylor never really remembered seeing it on television or in the paper, just hearing about it from friends. The girls disappeared, but were found a few days later. They’d escaped from their kidnapper, a strange man named Nathan Chase. According to the official accounts, they were just fine when they got home. The rumor mill, on the other hand, was moving in high gear.
The appearance of the Connolly sisters at Father Ryan, Taylor and Sam’s high-school alma mater, had caused only a minor stir; the genteel students and their well-mannered parents had seen to it that the girls were welcomed with open arms and never bothered by the stories from their past. At least that was the surface impression. In reality, the whispers and stares were done discreetly, the stories told quietly behind closed Junior League doors, the privileged teens murmuring during cheerleader practice and football games. The walls of Belle Meade Country Club oozed the story, wiping themselves quickly if any member of the Connolly family appeared.
But the Connolly girls were readily accepted, invited to all the right parties, dating the best and brightest boys, making excellent marks and never failing to fit in. Or so it appeared. Their scandal, instead of hurting them, made them.
The summer skies were darkening with a typical afternoon storm. Taylor opened the sunroof, catching a breath of cool air that preceded the storm. Crossing Interstate 40, traffic was slow and aimless. Passing through the quiet streets of West End, she finally came to the intersection of Harding Road and White Bridge Road. The Starbucks date she’d shared with Sam seemed like days ago, not just this morning. She’d managed to put aside all the emotions from her two-day roller-coaster ride during the afternoon, but seeing the Starbucks brought the news, or non-news, back in a flash. Talk about dodging a bullet.
She supposed she’d have to tell Baldwin about the false alarm, share the near miss with him in as lighthearted a manner as she could. God knows she didn’t want anything to screw with their relationship. Things were good. She was content. She loved him, he loved her. End of story. She didn’t want the same things many women craved. A great man, a wonderful bedmate, relative companionship. That was enough for her. Certainly, her plan didn’t have room for two point five kids and a dog. She’d never been married, hadn’t ever come close. Before Baldwin, she’d always taken her physical pleasure where she could, avoiding all emotional entanglements. Discreet, short-lived affairs on her terms. Sex, not love. Funny, she’d never realized how lonely she had been.
She slowed as she came up on the entrance to Belle Meade. The accident had been cleaned up and the road was back open, but there was still glass scattered carelessly in the roadway and the grass of the median. Cars whizzed through the intersection without a care in the world, their drivers oblivious to the four lives that were lost in this very spot. A shiver of apprehension rippled through her, and she put the window up, blaming the feeling on the breeze billowing forth from the gray skies. She turned left and began making her way along the sedate