existed.
• • •
T HERE WAS NO TIME TO SLEEP. Though she disliked coffee, she made herself an oversized mug from Richard’s Italian machine—and hit it with a double shot of espresso.
Headachy from the crying jag, wired up on caffeine, she combed through every paper in the box, making piles.
Hotel and restaurant receipts when viewed with newly opened eyes told her he hadn’t just lied, but had cheated.
Room service charges too high for a man alone. Add a receipt for a silver bangle from Tiffany’s—which he’d never given to her—from the same trip, another five thousand at La Perla—the lingerie he preferred she wear—from another trip, a receipt for a weekend spent in a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont when he’d said he was going to finalize a deal in Chicago, and it began to solidify.
Why had he kept all this, all this proof of his lies and infidelity? Because, she realized, she’d trusted him.
Not even that, she thought, accepting. She’d suspected an affair, and he’d likely known she had. He kept it because he’d thought her too obedient to poke through his personal records.
And she had been.
The other lives he’d lived, he’d locked away. She hadn’t known where to find the key, would never have questioned him—and he’d known it.
How many other women? she wondered. Did it matter? One was too many, and any of them would have been more sophisticated, more experienced and knowledgeable than the girl from the little mountain town in Tennessee he’d knocked up when she was nineteen, dazzled and foolish.
Why had he married her?
Maybe he’d loved her, at least a little. Wanted her. But she hadn’t been enough, not enough to keep him happy, keep him true.
And did that matter, really? He was dead.
Yes, she thought. Yes, it mattered.
He’d made a fool of her, left her humiliated. Left her with a financial burden that could hound her for years and jeopardize their daughter’s future.
It damn well mattered.
She spent another hour going systematically through the office. The safe had already been cleared. She’d known about it, though she hadn’t had the combination. She’d given the lawyers permission to have it opened.
They’d taken most of the legal documents, but there was five thousand in cash. She took it out, set it aside. Callie’s birth certificate, their passports.
She opened Richard’s, studied his photo.
So handsome. Smooth and polished, like a movie star, with his rich brown hair and tawny eyes. She’d so wished Callie had inherited his dimples. She’d been so charmed by those damn dimples.
She set the passports aside. However unlikely it was she’d use hers or Callie’s, she’d pack them up. She’d destroy Richard’s. Or—maybe ask the lawyers if that’s what she should do.
She found nothing hidden away, but she’d go through everything again before she shredded or filed it all away again in packing boxes.
Hyped on coffee and grief, she walked through the house, crossed the big two-story foyer, took the curving stairs up, the thick socks she wore soundless on the hardwood.
She checked on Callie first, went into the pretty room, leaned down to kiss her daughter’s cheek before tucking the blankets around her little girl’s favored butt-in-the-air sleeping position.
Leaving the door open, she walked down the hall to the master suite.
She hated the room, she thought now. Hated the gray walls, the black leather headboard, the sharp lines of the black furniture.
She hated it more now, knowing she’d made love with him in that bed after he’d made love with other women, in other beds.
As her belly twisted she realized she needed to go to the doctor herself. She needed to be sure he hadn’t passed anything on to her. Don’t think now, she told herself. Just make the appointment tomorrow, and don’t think now.
She went to his closet—one nearly as big as the whole of the bedroom she’d had back in Rendezvous Ridge, back home.
Some of the
• • •
T HERE WAS NO TIME TO SLEEP. Though she disliked coffee, she made herself an oversized mug from Richard’s Italian machine—and hit it with a double shot of espresso.
Headachy from the crying jag, wired up on caffeine, she combed through every paper in the box, making piles.
Hotel and restaurant receipts when viewed with newly opened eyes told her he hadn’t just lied, but had cheated.
Room service charges too high for a man alone. Add a receipt for a silver bangle from Tiffany’s—which he’d never given to her—from the same trip, another five thousand at La Perla—the lingerie he preferred she wear—from another trip, a receipt for a weekend spent in a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont when he’d said he was going to finalize a deal in Chicago, and it began to solidify.
Why had he kept all this, all this proof of his lies and infidelity? Because, she realized, she’d trusted him.
Not even that, she thought, accepting. She’d suspected an affair, and he’d likely known she had. He kept it because he’d thought her too obedient to poke through his personal records.
And she had been.
The other lives he’d lived, he’d locked away. She hadn’t known where to find the key, would never have questioned him—and he’d known it.
How many other women? she wondered. Did it matter? One was too many, and any of them would have been more sophisticated, more experienced and knowledgeable than the girl from the little mountain town in Tennessee he’d knocked up when she was nineteen, dazzled and foolish.
Why had he married her?
Maybe he’d loved her, at least a little. Wanted her. But she hadn’t been enough, not enough to keep him happy, keep him true.
And did that matter, really? He was dead.
Yes, she thought. Yes, it mattered.
He’d made a fool of her, left her humiliated. Left her with a financial burden that could hound her for years and jeopardize their daughter’s future.
It damn well mattered.
She spent another hour going systematically through the office. The safe had already been cleared. She’d known about it, though she hadn’t had the combination. She’d given the lawyers permission to have it opened.
They’d taken most of the legal documents, but there was five thousand in cash. She took it out, set it aside. Callie’s birth certificate, their passports.
She opened Richard’s, studied his photo.
So handsome. Smooth and polished, like a movie star, with his rich brown hair and tawny eyes. She’d so wished Callie had inherited his dimples. She’d been so charmed by those damn dimples.
She set the passports aside. However unlikely it was she’d use hers or Callie’s, she’d pack them up. She’d destroy Richard’s. Or—maybe ask the lawyers if that’s what she should do.
She found nothing hidden away, but she’d go through everything again before she shredded or filed it all away again in packing boxes.
Hyped on coffee and grief, she walked through the house, crossed the big two-story foyer, took the curving stairs up, the thick socks she wore soundless on the hardwood.
She checked on Callie first, went into the pretty room, leaned down to kiss her daughter’s cheek before tucking the blankets around her little girl’s favored butt-in-the-air sleeping position.
Leaving the door open, she walked down the hall to the master suite.
She hated the room, she thought now. Hated the gray walls, the black leather headboard, the sharp lines of the black furniture.
She hated it more now, knowing she’d made love with him in that bed after he’d made love with other women, in other beds.
As her belly twisted she realized she needed to go to the doctor herself. She needed to be sure he hadn’t passed anything on to her. Don’t think now, she told herself. Just make the appointment tomorrow, and don’t think now.
She went to his closet—one nearly as big as the whole of the bedroom she’d had back in Rendezvous Ridge, back home.
Some of the