My own fault. I’m the one who left for college and never came back. I’m the one who let enthusiasm for my new life eclipse the old one. My nonexistent relationship with my nieces and nephews would take more than a few caramel apples to fix, but they were a start.
Elizabeth must have seen me coming because the door flew open before I was even up the steps to the front porch. With her sandy-red hair piled carelessly on top of her head, her face scrubbed clean, and one of Wyatt’s T-shirts swimming on her, she looked scarcely older than her teenage daughters.
She held the door open with one hand and watched me clatter onto the old wooden porch, struggling not to spill the goodies I held. “You should have called before you drove all the way out here,” she said, taking the tray out of my hands. “Wyatt’s not here.”
I shook the rain from my hair and pretended not to notice that she didn’t seem all that pleased to see me. “That’s okay. I came to talk to you.”
“What for?”
“We’re family. Do I need a reason?”
Elizabeth blocked the doorway for a minute longer, then, without a word, turned away to let me inside. The screen door banged shut behind me, and I closed the door against the storm. The big country kitchen had always felt warm and welcoming before. Today, it seemed cold and lifeless. I wondered if I was feeling the void caused by Wyatt’s absence, or if there was something else at work here.
Elizabeth stood in front of the refrigerator, arms folded high on her chest, her eyes narrowed uncertainly. The muffled pounding of bass from a stereo overhead told me that at least one of my twin nieces was home. I glanced into the living room to make sure neither of the boys was in there, then tossed off a grin to break the tension and jerked my head toward the ceiling. “Dana or Danielle?”
“Both. They’re punishing me.”
Punishing her? Interesting. Did that mean the girls weren’t on board with their parents’ separation? I thought it might be a trifle crass to badger her with questions right off the bat, so I made myself comfortable at the table and tried some small talk. “Where are the boys?”
“Wyatt picked them up a couple of hours ago. He was going to take all the kids to dinner, but the girls aren’t speaking to him, either.”
Okay.
If she wasn’t going to pretend that everything was normal, I wouldn’t, either. “What’s going on around here, Elizabeth?”
She turned a tight scowl in my direction. “You don’t know?”
“I’ve heard a few rumors. I’d rather hear the truth from you.”
“You’re Wyatt’s sister. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I have. He’s not saying much.”
“Really?” Elizabeth let out a skeletal laugh and mumbled, “That’s a first.”
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there’s some bitterness here. So what’s the deal?”
Elizabeth’s mouth pinched. “There’s no deal. We’re just working a few things out, that’s all.”
“What things?”
“That’s a little personal, isn’t it? That’s between Wyatt and me.”
“Not anymore, it’s not. Or haven’t you heard what’s been happening in town?”
“It’s nothing. All marriages have trouble now and then.”
“Yeah, but not like this. For twenty years you and Wyatt have had the best marriage I’ve ever seen. Now, suddenly, he’s moved out, and you’re here raising the kids on your own. Rumors are flying all over town. A man’s dead, and the police think Wyatt’s responsible. How much more would it take for you to think there’s something we should be talking about?”
Elizabeth’s jaw clenched and unclenched while she fought with herself over whether to talk to me or kick me out. I’ve seen her get stubborn with Wyatt and he usually caves in, but I am a whole lot more patient than my brother.
She stared into my eyes, trying to make me back down. I stared back, watching for the flicker that meant she was losing focus. It finally came, and a minute later she gave in. “You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not what anybody thinks.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not when something’s important to me. So tell me.
Please
. Why do people think Wyatt killed Brandon Mills?”
Elizabeth plowed her fingers through her hair, pulling locks of it from the clip that held it up. “Sometimes I hate the way the people in this town think everything is their business. We can’t even have an argument without people thinking they have the right to comment.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the hell of a small town,” I told her. “At least people care. If I’d been living here, maybe somebody would have told me about Roger and WhatsHerFace when they first started playing around. And that might have saved me the trouble of catching them making whoopee on my bedroom floor.”
Her gaze flashed to mine, but I couldn’t read the emotions there. “Yeah. Maybe. But then the whole town would have kept scorecards while you battled through the divorce.”
That put a knot in my stomach. “Is that what you’re doing? Getting a divorce?”
She sighed, but the wind rattled the window behind her and drowned out the sound. “Ask Wyatt.”
“I thought
you
kicked
him
out.”
“I did. But only because he wouldn’t stop—” She cut herself off with a shake of her head and pulled two bottles from the fridge. “Do you want a beer? I think I need one.”
I didn’t, but I nodded, thinking it might help loosen her up.
She carried the bottles to the table and handed one to me. “I know finding out about Roger’s affair was hard, Abby. I can’t even imagine what you went through. But do you have any idea how hard it is to be accused of something you
didn’t
do?”
I uncapped my bottle and took a sip. “Is that what happened?”
She nodded miserably. “After twenty years, you’d think my word would count for something, wouldn’t you? But nothing I say makes any difference. He’s convinced I’m lying, and the kids are half-convinced he’s right. They’re so confused right now, they don’t know whether to pet the horse or saddle the dog.”
“He’s been talking to the kids about this?” Had he lost his mind?
Rain spattered against the window. Elizabeth glanced at it and shook her head. “No. He’s not that far gone, I guess. But the kids hear things. You can’t keep anything secret around here. And they’re not babies. They’re smart enough to figure out what’s going on.”
“So you
weren’t
having an affair with Brandon?”
Elizabeth’s eyes flew wide and indignation brought her face to life. “Absolutely not. Did you even think I
was
?”
“No. But how could Wyatt believe the rumors are true? He adores you. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“If you can figure out what’s going on inside his head, you’re a smarter woman than I am. I’ve been trying for months, and the only thing I can figure out is that he’s having a midlife crisis. But if that’s the case, I wish he’d just go out and buy a Porsche or something. Bankruptcy would be easier to handle than this.”
She opened her bottle, but instead of drinking she focused on the metal cap as if it held clues to Wyatt’s odd behavior. “There are times,” she said after a minute, “when I’ve wondered if it has something to do with your divorce. Not that I’m blaming you or anything,” she assured me quickly, “but I think finding out about Roger really bothered him. He couldn’t figure out how you didn’t know. I mean, Roger had been seeing that girl for what—a year?”
Now
there
was a subject I loved talking about, but I couldn’t very well shut down if I wanted Elizabeth to talk to me. I watched the trees in the yard bending under the onslaught of the storm and said, “Eighteen months.”
“And you really didn’t have a clue?”
I’d asked myself the same question a thousand times, but the answer kept changing. “It’s hard to explain,” I told her. “Looking back, I can see all kinds of clues, but at the time I didn’t see a thing. I guess maybe I didn’t want to know.”
“It’s that part that I think bothers Wyatt the most. I think he started stewing on it—you know how he does.”
I nodded slowly. That made sense, but according to Rachel there’d been trouble between Elizabeth and Wyatt for longer than I’d been divorced. “So you think he just imagined all of this?”
“What else could have happened?”
I hesitated to ask the next question, but I had to. Skimming over the rough parts wouldn’t help anybody. “Has he ever hurt you, Elizabeth?”
She gaped at me. “Who? Wyatt?”
“Has he?”
“Are you asking if he’s ever hit me?”
“Hit you. Shoved you. Dragged you out of the church like a rag doll.”
“Is that a serious question?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She barked a laugh and sat back hard in her chair. “Someone actually told you that Wyatt dragged me out of the church like a rag doll?”
“Someone mentioned it.”
“Oh, this is unbelievable. Who was it?”
It wasn’t exactly loyalty to Rachel that kept me silent. I just didn’t think dropping her name would be the smartest move considering Elizabeth’s current mood. “I don’t remember who it was,” I said. “And it really doesn’t matter. The point is that people are talking about it. Did it happen, or didn’t it?”
“No, it didn’t happen. At least not the way you’re making it sound.”
“Then how?”
She let out a huge sigh and crossed her legs. “I shouldn’t even dignify that question with an answer.”
“You have to dignify it, Elizabeth. This isn’t a game we’re playing. You might be pissed off as hell at Wyatt right now, but do you really want the father of your children in prison for murder?” She didn’t say anything, so I pressed a little harder. “How did it happen? Be honest with me.”
“It happened,” she said, “because he found out I’d lied to him.”
Her voice was so low, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “You lied to him? About what?”
The lights flickered, and the music overhead went strangely quiet. “It was stupid, really. A stupid decision on my part. I would have taken it back if I could have, and I’d have done everything differently. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”
“What did you lie about?”
“I had coffee with Brandon a few times. That’s all. Just coffee. I don’t know why. We’d been working together on a project—I can’t even remember what it was now. Anyway, we got to talking. You know how you do. One thing led to another, and I came home late a couple of times. Nothing happened,” she assured me quickly. “We just lost track of time. Maybe I should have told Wyatt the truth, but it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.”
“So you lied.”
She nodded miserably. “I told him I’d been talking, but I didn’t tell him with who. And then a little while later I realized that Brandon was expecting more out of the relationship than I was. The minute I realized that, I put at end to it. But by that time it was too late to tell Wyatt the truth.”
“It’s never too late to tell the truth,” I said. My voice sounded pinched and disapproving, but I couldn’t change that.
Elizabeth’s eyes pleaded with me to understand, but I was having trouble doing that. Maybe she hadn’t had sex with Brandon, but there’d obviously been an emotional connection between them. Sometimes emotional intimacy is more threatening than physical.
Any
kind of infidelity leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
“How did Wyatt find out?”
“One of his buddies saw us having coffee and, of course, he couldn’t wait to let Wyatt know.”
“I guess somebody had to.”
Elizabeth glowered at me. “
Did
they?”
“Wyatt deserved to know.”
“Know what? Nothing was going on. They should have just left well enough alone.”
“You were seeing another man and lying to your husband about it,” I pointed out. “Maybe you didn’t see it as wrong, but obviously other people did.”
“I
wasn’t
having an affair.”
“Maybe not technically, but what you were doing must have felt wrong or you would told Wyatt about it yourself.”
She reached for the bottle in front of her. “I should have known you’d take Wyatt’s side in this.”
Maybe she should have. Frankly, I couldn’t decide what I was feeling. I was angry for Wyatt and furious with myself. It wasn’t that I’d ever expected my friendship with Brandon to turn into something more, but I’d sure been blinded by his charm. It was particularly galling to realize that, like Elizabeth, I’d actually thought that I had my eyes wide open the whole time Brandon had been busy pulling the wool down over them.
“When did all this happen?”
“A couple of years ago.”
“That long ago? Well then why did you kick Wyatt out now?”
“I asked him to leave because he can’t seem to get over it. He doesn’t trust me, and he’s always calling to check up on me. I’m sorry that I hurt him. Really, I am. And I’ve given up almost everything I used to do, hoping that seeing me here with the kids will make him feel better. But nothing helps, and I can’t spend the rest of my life doing penance for one stupid mistake. I just can’t live that way.”
I tried like hell not to let my lousy marriage infect theirs, but I just couldn’t convince myself that Elizabeth was the victim here. “I don’t understand,” I said. “If this is all old news, why do the police think Wyatt suddenly went off the deep end?”
Elizabeth hesitated over that one. “Because Brandon called me last week,” she admitted after a long time. “He said he had something important to talk to me about, and he asked me to meet him for coffee.”
“And you
agreed?
”
“He sounded upset.”
Until that moment, I’d always thought of Elizabeth as an intelligent woman. “When did
that
happen?”
She looked miserable. “The day of the fire.”
My whole system recoiled as if she’d tossed a pot of icy water into my face. Did that mean Brandon stood me up so he could meet my sister-in-law? That felt wrong on about a dozen different levels. “What time did you meet him?”