Free The Perfect Stranger by Wendy Corsi Staub

simultaneously was hired as an assistant in a tiny PR firm in Mobile. She decided that everything she wanted and needed—for the time being, anyway—was right here.
    “Mom?”
    “Hmm?”
    “You’re going to Cincinnati, right?”
    “Of course,” she tells Addison. “Of course I’m going.”
    And somewhere in the back of her mind, a flicker of anticipation accompanies her apprehension.
    “Hi, you’ve reached Landry Wells,” drawls a pleasant, recorded voice. “Please leave a message and I’ll get right back to you. Have a great day!”
    Elena hesitates, then hangs up without leaving a message. By the time Landry returns the call, this brief lunch break will probably be over. Better to wait until she gets home tonight and try her back then.
    She looks again at the headline on her computer screen, the one that made her heart pound when she first clicked on it. The kids were still in the classroom then, so she couldn’t react. Now they’re in the cafeteria, and the salad-filled Tupperware container she brought from home is sitting untouched on her desk.
    LOCAL W OMAN MURDERED IN APP ARENT HOME INVASION
    There isn’t much detail in the article. It doesn’t report how Meredith was killed or where she was in the house when it happened. Standard procedure, Elena guesses, to leave out certain details. It’s an active police investigation. No mention of suspects, and anyone who can provide a lead is asked to call a special crime hotline.
    “Elena?”
    She looks up to see Tony Kerwin, the gym teacher— again . The guy manages to find his way into her classroom several times a day, and she’s not exactly in the mood for him right now.
    Really, she’s never in the mood for Tony.
    Ironic, because when he walked into the first staff meeting right after he was hired here last fall, she was immediately drawn to him. So was her friend Sidney, a fellow teacher and recent divorcée.
    When Tony introduced himself, it turned out he was in his early thirties, like Elena. He had grown up south of Providence, just as she had—he was from Cranston, she from neighboring Warwick.
    Over drinks after the meeting, Sidney mused, “The new gym teacher looks like what’s his name—that hot actor who was in the movie we watched on cable last weekend . . .”
    “Mark Wahlberg?”
    “Yup. Do you think he’s married?”
    “Mark Wahlberg?” Elena chose to deliberately misunderstand the question, buying herself a moment to decide whether she wanted to admit to Sidney that she, too, found him attractive. If she did, Sidney would probably back off in her intended pursuit.
    As a statuesque, slender blonde, Sidney has no shortage of dates and—to her credit—is well aware that men gravitate toward her instead of relatively short, curvy, brunette Elena when they’re together.
    “I don’t care whether Mark Wahlberg is married!” Sidney said. “I’m talking about the new gym teacher.”
    “Nope. Not married—unless he is and he doesn’t wear a ring.”
    “You looked?”
    She grinned at Sidney over the rim of her pinot grigio glass. “Oh, I definitely looked.”
    With that comment, Elena knew, she’d sealed the unspoken deal. Sidney would let her have the first shot at Tony.
    It’s hard to remember, now, that there was a time when she thought of him as potential dating material . . . let alone that she actually went out with him.
    Just once, back in September.
    Once was all it took for her to realize that the guy was an opinionated jackass. Sidney was welcome to him—except by then she didn’t want him, either.
    But he wanted Elena. He persisted in asking her out, so clueless that she finally resorted to inventing a fake boyfriend to get rid of him.
    That was Meredith’s advice; Elena had confided in her about the situation. Confided in her about almost everything, really.
    Tell him that you’re seeing someone else, Meredith wrote in an e-mail after Elena told her she couldn’t shake Tony.
    You want me to lie? I