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  “But Little Miss Perfect said she’d never even met Jeanne.”

  “When did she say that?”

  “When I opened the door to her. She was standing there holding the doormat, and she looked at me as if I were an insect she wanted to squash.”

  “Aren’t you glad I talked you into taking out the nose ring?”

  “Not really,” Zoë said. “If I’d known the third prisoner was going to be a judgmental, uptight little snot, I would have had a dozen more piercings.”

  “I really don’t think you should make judgments before you get to know her.”

  “Why not?” Zoë asked, taking a deep drink of her soda. “She made lots of judgments about me. I could pretty much read her mind. In fact, I could read her life.”

  “Come on,” Faith said, frowning. “You’re not being fair. No one can read another person’s life.”

  “Okay,” Zoë said, wiping her hands on a napkin. “Let me tell about you.” She didn’t wait for Faith to answer. “You grew up in a small town, loved by everyone, went to church all the time, had adoring parents—What?” She broke off because Faith had started to laugh.

  “I think you should clean your crystal ball. You could not be further from the truth.”

  “So how am I wrong?”

  Faith started to speak, then smiled. “No you don’t. I’m not telling my story until all three of us are together.”

  “Do you think that Miss Perfect is going to come out of her room in the next few days? No way. She’s going to stay in there until she thinks it’s safe to leave, then she’ll go back to her loving family, who will protect her from whatever nastiness she thinks has happened to her.”

  “Maybe Jeanne should have sent you to a camp where they teach courtesy,” Faith said, glaring. “We don’t know what happened in Amy’s life and I don’t think you should set yourself up as judge and jury. How would you like it if you were judged by how you look?”

  “But I am. And so are you. We all are.”

  “And you want people to know that you’re…” She trailed off as she looked at Zoë’s makeup and hair.

  “I’m what?” Zoë said daringly.

  “If you’re so determined to talk, please do so. Tell me all about your rotten childhood and how you grew up hating everyone because of something awful that happened to you. What was it? An uncle that visited you in the night?”

  Zoë blinked at Faith for a moment. “You can give it out, can’t you?”

  “You mean that I can be as hateful as you? You may think you know all about me but you don’t. For your information, when I was a teenager, I was considered the wildest girl in town. I drank too much, rode in too many fast cars, and had sex with lust and abandon.”

  “What changed you?” Zoë asked softly.

  “Marriage to a good man,” Faith said quickly, then picked up the bill off the end of the table. “Shall we go? Or do you want to sit here and cut other people to shreds?”

  They paid at the register without saying a word to each other, and when they walked back to the summerhouse, Faith kept ahead of Zoë, not speaking to her. She unlocked the front door and went in, still saying nothing to the younger woman. Faith stayed in her bedroom with the door closed and waited until she heard the water running in the bathroom, then she slipped out the back door and into the little garden.

  As soon as she was outside, she flipped open her cell phone and called Jeanne. “This isn’t working,” she said without preamble.

  “What isn’t?” Jeanne asked, her mouth full of food.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. This. All of it. The three traumatized strangers staying together in one house.”

  “Okay, tell me everything,” Jeanne said.

  Faith told her about being the first to arrive and how she thought the town and the house were both lovely. She didn’t know what was supposed to be accomplished there, but she’d had high hopes.

  “That is until Zoë arrived. How could you have thought that that aggressive, opinionated girl and I would get along?”

  “Did she tell you about herself?” Jeanne asked.

  “Not a word.”

  “That’s because she doesn’t know much about herself. She was in a car accident that split her head open and she doesn’t remember anything after she was about sixteen. All she knows is that she woke up in a hospital and an entire town was furious at her.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “But surely you could find someone who knew her and you could ask them.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And what did they say?” Faith asked.

  Jeanne was silent.

  “Well?”

  “Patient confidentiality. Why don’t you ask Zoë?”

  “Cute,” Faith said, “but you’re trying to entice me to like her.”

  “Not like her, but have some patience.”

  “That’s not easy,” Faith said. “Zoë says she can’t stand Amy and wants nothing to do with her.”

  “How is she?”

  “Amy? Zoë opened the door to her and she looked scared to death. She took her suitcase into the new bedroom and we haven’t seen her since.”

  “I feared that. She doesn’t want to be around anyone she hasn’t known for twenty years.”

  “Jeanne’s Crazies,” Faith said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Zoë calls us Jeanne’s Crazies.”

  Jeanne laughed so hard she nearly choked. “I think I’ll get a plaque carved with those words. Think I should hang it over the door?”

  “Wonderful idea,” Faith said. “I’d sure want to be a visitor to a house with a sign like that.”

  “Okay, I won’t do it,” Jeanne said, “but I’ll never be able to look at the house again without seeing that sign there.” Her voice changed to serious. “Look, Faith, none of you are crazy. I don’t put disturbed people together. Each of you has been through a great personal trauma and I think it would do you good to talk about what happened to you to someone other than a professional. It’s that simple.”

  Faith sighed. “My husband died after a very long illness. I still don’t see that as a trauma. It wasn’t as though his death wasn’t expected or planned for.”

  Jeanne was silent.

  “Stop it!” Faith said. “I mean it! Stop it right now! I can see the look on your face. You want to say that if it wasn’t such a trauma why did I take a bottle of pills? And why did I attack my mother-in-law at the funeral?”

  “You tell me,” Jeanne said.

  “I have told you!” Faith said, her voice rising and filling with exasperation. “I spent an entire year telling you why I did both of those things, but you’ve never believed a word I’ve said.”

  “Faith,” Jeanne said, “how old are you?”

  “You know how old I am.” When Jeanne said nothing, Faith sighed. “I am thirty-eight years old.”

  “When you stop looking fifty and look your true age, I’ll begin to think we’ve made some progress. As it stands now, I don’t think you and I have achieved anything. How’s your former mother-in-law?”

  “Dead, I hope,” Faith said before she thought.

  “I rest my case. Faith, the truth is that I’ve made more progress in less time with people who have been declared criminally insane than I’ve made with you. For the last year, every day I’ve expected a call in the middle of the night telling me that you’ve committed suicide.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? What’s in your handbag?” When Faith didn’t say anything, Jeanne said, “I hope Zoë makes you furious. I hope she makes you so angry that you tell her things that you’ve never told me.”

  “I think I may have already,” Faith said softly, as she remembered telling Zoë that she’d been a wild child in high school. She hadn’t told Jeanne that in their therapy sessions.

  “Good!” Jeanne said, then lowered her voice. “Faith, I shouldn’t tell yo