Change of Heart (5 page)

Sadly, none of that mattered to Evelyn at the moment. “Gigi, can you take me home?”

“Of course.” Gigi stood.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Doris wore her standard wide eyes. “I saw on the news they were cleaning out your whole house. Those men reminded me of the crew that took E. T. away from Elliott.”

“It’s fine now, Doris,” Evelyn said.

“Okay, then. We’ll be checking up on you,” Doris said.

Evelyn didn’t doubt it.

The ride to her house was quiet. Too quiet. And Evelyn could sense Gigi wanted to say something. Normally she might’ve told the older woman to go ahead and say what was on her mind, but not this time. Not when she didn’t want to hear any truth being spoken. She wanted to go on believing that maybe, possibly, somehow there was a chance her husband was innocent.

Even though her own mind had begun adding up inconsistencies.

The lake house. The vacation home. The jewelry he sometimes brought back from Denver. The fact that he’d never told her about any bad investments. She hadn’t known he’d lost any money at all.

That alone spoke volumes.

“You all right, dear?”

Evelyn glanced up and realized they were sitting in her driveway, which
 
—thankfully
 
—was clear of news trucks. At least for now.

“I’m sorry, Gigi. Yes, I’m fine.” She opened the car door.

“I’m here if you need anything, Evelyn,” Gigi said as Evelyn stepped out. “I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but I’m a good listener.”

Evelyn smiled. “I know you are. Thank you.” She closed the door and leaned down to the open window. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime.”

Evelyn stood still while Gigi pulled away, leaving her alone with a too-large house that had likely been turned upside down.

Her heels
click-click-click
ed on the pavement as she walked toward the door, the sound of a light breeze rustling the leaves overhead. It was almost as if Evelyn were outside her own body, like this couldn’t be her real life, only a dramatic reenactment.

But as soon as she opened the door, she was whisked back to the moment the FBI intruders had pushed their way in that afternoon.

She stood in the vast entryway, staring into the living room. The marble fireplace stared back, mocking her.

The room looked like it had been plundered, drawers removed from side tables, their contents scattered about. How could this have happened?

Evelyn forced down the tears she desperately wanted to cry and began picking up the mess left in the wake of the FBI raid. She made her way through the living room to the kitchen. Why they’d tossed the drawers in the kitchen, she didn’t understand, but one thing was certain: they weren’t careful about it. Evelyn spotted her cell phone on the kitchen counter
 
—the agents must have examined and discarded it already. She dropped it into her purse without checking for messages.

After she returned everything to its rightful place, she entered Christopher’s study and gaped at the mess. Of course this room had been given the most attention. They’d ransacked it. What were they hoping to find that they didn’t already have? While she couldn’t say for sure that her husband was innocent, he certainly was smart, and if he’d been guilty of a crime, he wouldn’t have left any evidence of it here.

Would he?

She closed the door, her desire to clean up the mess gone.

Upstairs, she made her way through more disorder into her room, where she found a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Christopher hated when she dressed like a gym rat, but she didn’t care. Silk pajamas had never been her style anyway. Besides, he wasn’t here to say anything about it, was he? According to Casey, they’d made a point to arrest him late on a Friday so he’d have to spend the weekend in jail.

Maybe that was good. What would she even say to him if he were standing in front of her right now?

The sound of the doorbell startled her. She glanced at the clock. It was almost nine.

Almost nine on the worst day of her life.

She stayed still and quiet, wishing all the lights were off, but the doorbell chimed again. Next, the house phone rang. She looked at the caller ID.
Whit.

“Hello?”

“You’re home, right?”

She’d left Casey’s without telling him where she was going. That probably wasn’t the best choice, but did he really care where she was? He was probably happy to be rid of her. “Yes, sorry. I’m home.”

“I’m outside. Can you open the door?”

What was he doing here? Had he come to apologize? To tell her he was wrong about Christopher
 
—that her husband couldn’t have done those things and he was sure there was a simple explanation?

“Please, Evie?”

She walked to the door, receiver still in her hand, and opened it just as a van pulled into the driveway. He stood on the porch, phone up to his ear.

“Who’s here?”

“Just get back inside.”

He pushed his way into the house and shut the door, turning off all the lights and drawing the blinds.

“What’s going on?”

Whit turned and faced her. “You ditched me after Casey’s. I’ve been looking for you for over an hour.”

Why? Why had he come looking for her after he’d made it so clear where he stood on this whole thing? He stopped inside the den, brooding, looking out of place and unhappy.

She frowned at him. “What’s gotten into you?”

He glanced away. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Outside, another van parked in front of the house.

“What is going on?”

Evelyn watched him for several long seconds, then finally turned toward the television.

“Evelyn, don’t.”

She rummaged through a basket on the coffee table until she found the remote and clicked the TV on, flipping to a channel out of Denver.

Whit let out a groan.

Heat rushed straight to the center of her stomach as she watched in horror. Photo after photo of Christopher
 
—her Christopher
 
—in compromising, horrible positions. A talk show host with short blonde hair spoke, but Evelyn couldn’t hear the words she said. It was as if her mind got stuck on the words underneath the image.
Mistress of Senator Christopher Brandt Comes Forward.

Evelyn’s skin didn’t so much tingle as burn, as if that ball of anger radiated its heat from her core.

“What does this say about the senator’s wife, Evelyn Brandt?”

The host’s mention of her name pulled her out of the fog. Trevor reached for the remote, but she held it tightly.

“Either she knew everything and turned a blind eye, or that is one oblivious woman,” the other host
 
—a man in a black suit
 
—responded.

“It does seem unlikely Mrs. Brandt was unaware of so many of her husband’s indiscretions,” the woman said, “especially when he seems to have documented each one.”

“Let’s keep in mind Mrs. Brandt has often been criticized for never really joining the political community. It’s highly possible she knew and didn’t care, but it’s more likely Mrs. Brandt is the saddest victim of all.” The host in the black suit wore a look of pity as he teased the next story coming up after a commercial break.

Trevor walked three steps to the television and shut it off. “Enough.”

But the damage had been done. Evelyn had seen images she would never forget
 
—not for as long as she lived.

She didn’t even know her own husband.

And here she thought the day couldn’t get any worse.

The home phone rang again and her parents’ names and number appeared on the caller ID.

The hits just keep on coming.

Evelyn didn’t answer, letting the machine pick up the call. She heard her mother’s voice from the other room as she left a message.

“Evelyn, we received a very disturbing call from a church friend of ours this afternoon. I thought it was some kind of practical joke, but I’m watching the news. What is going on?”

Maybe, for once, her parents would be on her side. Maybe they’d sympathize. She could do with a little sympathy right about now.

“Who would do this to poor Christopher? Who would frame him like that? We need to get to the bottom of this. I hope you’re at the jail trying to get him out of there. It’s a wife’s duty to support her husband
 
—no matter what.”

Her mother’s voice faded, or maybe Evelyn simply stopped listening as a knot formed at the base of her throat. Her parents hadn’t approved of her marrying Christopher
 
—not at first
 
—but he’d won them over eventually, the way he did with everyone. Now they would never see what she was only just beginning to realize, that there could very well be a side of Christopher none of them knew.

A flash from the yard drew their attention, and Whit quickly pulled down the only still-open blind in the room. “Stay here.”

He hurried outside, shutting the door behind him. A few minutes later, he returned, out of breath and even more agitated. “I don’t think you should stay here tonight.”

She glanced past him and saw another news truck parked in front of her house.

Whit closed the door. “Pack a bag. You can come stay at the guesthouse. These people aren’t going to leave you alone.”

But Evelyn wasn’t thinking about the news or the people outside or where she would finally go to sleep that night. She couldn’t think of anything except the image of her husband in the arms of a leggy, half-clothed brunette.

And in that moment she knew Christopher was as guilty as they said he was.

CHAPTER

E
VELYN LAY ON THE COUCH,
fully aware of the media circus outside her home. She’d practically forced Trevor to leave, but as soon as she was alone, she wished she’d gone with him. His attitude toward her was no match for the knowledge that these men and women were waiting to take her picture or catch her saying something they could play on tomorrow’s news.

Not to mention, she hated being in her lavish house alone. She always had, and yet it seemed that’s how she spent most of her time. Funny, a part of her married Christopher so young to avoid that very thing.

She tried
 
—and failed
 
—to fall asleep, too many thoughts tumbling in her mind. She thought about Christopher and the night they’d met. The big win on the football field had been reason enough to celebrate, and though she’d met only a few people in town, she found her way to the Brandt home. That night, it seemed like maybe Whit would be the one to eventually ask her out
 
—after all, he’d sat with her most of the evening.

She later decided he must’ve been gathering information about her for Christopher because it was he
 
—not Trevor
 
—who called her a few days later and invited her to a Broncos game.

Evelyn didn’t know Christopher very well, but he was gorgeous and confident, and from the beginning of their first date, he’d made her feel like she was the only person on the planet.

She’d never felt that way before. And they’d been together ever since.

Evelyn rolled over and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. She’d given that man everything. He was the only boy she’d ever loved. She never even looked at anyone else, let alone cheated
 
—and this was how he repaid her?

She glanced out the window. Unbelievable. Still two trucks parked down the street. As if she wouldn’t notice. The rest would be back early, she assumed. Everyone wanted to know how she was involved. What did she know? What was she hiding?

Would anyone believe that she was as much in the dark as the rest of the world?

With just an hour before the sun came up, Evelyn did the stupidest thing she could’ve done. She turned on the television again. She told herself she was going to find some old program to hopefully fall asleep to, but the truth was, she was curious.

“Don’t turn the TV back on,” Whit had said when he left that night. “Promise.”

She hadn’t promised, though, and he probably knew she wouldn’t because it might turn her into a liar.

Now here she sat, listening to the playback of an earlier talk show segment
 
—commentators speculating about her husband’s sins and her involvement in them.

“Do you really think Mrs. Brandt had no idea? Come on. Is she that naive?”

“Many women don’t know their husbands are cheaters.”

“But it’s not like this was a one-time fling. Senator Brandt had multiple affairs. On an ongoing basis, dating back years. Tell me how Evelyn Brandt doesn’t see that. Maybe she liked the money and the lifestyle too much to admit what was going on right under her nose.”

Pictures of her house flashed across the screen. Then photos of the vacation home. Christopher in his Audi. Christopher and the other women.

Her heart raced. Everyone was talking about her, speculating about her. How she had become the focus of conversation, she wasn’t sure, but did they really think she was in on all of this? That she approved of his lying and cheating and embezzling? No one who knew her could believe she’d actually been involved
 
—could they? How would she ever convince them that all she’d ever wanted was a family of her own and a house in the country?

She looked around the lavish living room. Her choices certainly said otherwise.

She’d tried so hard to fit the mold that had been carved for her
 
—the one that would give her the validation she’d been seeking for so many years
 
—and for what? Now those efforts to become someone worthy of respect and admiration were all exploding in her face.

Evelyn turned the television off and walked through the house, the blue light of the moon mixed with the promise of dawn illuminating her path. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen, and the memory of last year’s Christmas party flittered through her head.

In an instant, she could hear the jazzy Christmas music filtering through the sound system Christopher had installed earlier in the week. His colleagues strolled through their home as if it were a museum. Evelyn had spent the evening anxious and worried
 
—about how she looked, about things going perfectly, about appearing like the ideal political wife when all she really wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with her sketch pad and a glass of merlot. But those were things of the past, weren’t they? The only wine she drank anymore was the kind served at fancy dinner parties, swallowed with shallow conversation.

Christopher had insisted on the Christmas party.

“A way to give something back to the people who make what we do possible,” he’d said. He spent a fortune on a professionally decorated artificial tree. Evelyn hadn’t told him, but she hated it. If it wasn’t a real tree chopped from the Christmas tree farm out on the edge of town, it wasn’t worth her time. Who cared if it was lopsided or a bit misshapen or not the full ten feet he wanted? If it filled their home with the scent of evergreen and dripped spicy, sticky sap, then it won her seal of approval.

But then he hadn’t asked for her opinion, had he?

Evelyn moved toward the island at the center of their chef’s kitchen. Christopher had decided on brand-new stainless steel appliances. Granite countertops. Beautiful new cabinets.

She’d asked where the money was coming from, and he’d told her to stop worrying about it. They were fine. He’d make sure they were always fine.

So she stopped worrying.

The night of the party, a young guy in a suit had passed through the kitchen. “Anyone seen the senator?” But he snapped his mouth shut as soon as he made eye contact with her.

She smiled. “Jordy, right?”

In retrospect, Jordy had looked uncomfortable as he nodded his reply.

The caterer had everything under control, yet here she was, moving bruschetta from one tray to another. Hiding.

“I think he had some business to attend to in the study,” she said, remembering what Christopher had told her. “Do you want me to get him for you?”

Jordy shook his head. “Oh no, no, that won’t be necessary. It’s not important.” He glanced around the kitchen. “You have a beautiful home.”

“Thank you.” She smiled again.

From where she stood, she saw the door to the study open and Christopher emerge. “Oh, there he is now.” She turned in her husband’s direction. He met her eyes, then quickly looked away, intercepted by another man.

Evelyn finished plating the bruschetta as Jordy fumbled over his good-bye and disappeared amid the throng of people invading her home. Seconds later, Evelyn glanced back up just in time to see the door to the study close again, but not in time to see whom Christopher had been meeting with.

She’d assumed it was another suit.

She’d assumed . . . but what if . . . ?

Evelyn gasped, reality pushing the memory to the edges of her mind. What if the reporters were right? What if she simply didn’t want to see what was going on under her nose? Had she been making up excuses for her husband all along, afraid their perfect little life would come tumbling down around them?

A wave of nausea rolled through her body as the walls of her too-big kitchen began to close in on her. She closed her eyes, focusing on slowing her breaths.
Breathe in . . . breathe out. . . .

The image of Christopher walking out of the study assaulted her mind. He hadn’t been in a meeting, had he? He’d been with a woman that night. In
her
home. A woman she’d probably welcomed and shaken hands with. A woman whose coat she’d probably hung by the door and to whom she’d likely served beverages and hors d’oeuvres.

Her pulse quickened as she struggled for a breath. Her head started to spin, and for a moment she thought this might be the end of her. Chest tight, she doubled over, aware that this one was too vicious to stop. She sat on the kitchen floor and inhaled. Then inhaled again and again but still felt like the air wasn’t reaching her lungs. The tips of her fingers tingled and she desperately tried to calm her breathing, to keep her thoughts from racing.

How many minutes would the panic have control of her this time?

Seconds felt like hours as she finally
 
—finally
 
—convinced herself that she wasn’t having a heart attack, despite the constriction in her chest.

You’re fine. Just breathe. No one ever died from a panic attack. Right?

She’d been off her anxiety medication for months. She’d been doing so well. Christopher didn’t approve of his wife being medicated.

“People will think you’re crazy if they find out. They’ll say you’re mentally unstable
 
—and that’s the last thing I need to hit the newspapers.”

She would’ve much preferred for that “scandal” to be the only one in the newspapers, given what she now faced.

Besides, maybe she
was
crazy. Crazy for believing a single thing he’d told her since she’d first met him fifteen years ago, since she’d married him ten years ago. Was any of it true?

Just yesterday morning, the community had viewed her as a happily married woman with a beautiful home and a bright future. Even after hearing of the embezzlement, she’d clung to her perception of Christopher, desperately clutching the idea that these accusations were fabricated.

But now even her heart told her otherwise.

Those pictures hadn’t been photoshopped. Her own memory hadn’t misrepresented the Christmas party. Her husband had been cheating and lying and most likely stealing
 
—for years.

Evelyn’s mind quieted, her pulse returned to normal, and she lay on the floor, face pressed to the cool travertine tile.

Her entire life had been a lie. A lie that had her stomach in knots most days. She’d endured the spotlight, the public appearances, the social events because that was what Christopher wanted. What he said he needed. He didn’t care that she was painfully shy
 
—the worst kind of introvert. He’d never once asked what she wanted or what she dreamed of.

Worse, she wasn’t sure she even knew the answer anymore.

After lying on the floor for too long, Evelyn finally pulled herself up and went upstairs. She needed a shower and a fresh change of clothes. Most of all, she needed to get out of this house. It was filled with Christopher’s fiction and follies. The lies crawled out of the woodwork, and she knew they would continue to torment her if she didn’t leave.

Maybe if she left early enough, the reporters wouldn’t be prepared.

Mind spinning again, trying to land on her next move, Evelyn rushed to get ready and packed an overnight bag with clothing and shoes that might be appropriate for meeting with the authorities at some point.

Of all the women she’d interacted with at social functions, she supposed Susan Hayes was the kindest, the most like her. She quickly dialed her number and drew in a deep breath meant to bolster her courage.

“Hello?”

“Susan, it’s Evelyn. I’m so sorry to wake you.”

“Evelyn? How are you? I was worried.”

She swallowed. “I’m okay. It’s just kind of a zoo over here. I wondered if I could stay with you for a few days. Just until I get things sorted out.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, the kind of pause that made Evelyn instantly wish she could take back her request.

“Never mind, Susan. I don’t want to put you out,” she said quickly, desperate to fill in the silence.

“Oh, Evelyn, I’m sorry. I hope you understand,” Susan said. “I just don’t think it would look very good for us to get in the middle of it. For Jerry’s sake.”

Her husband, also a politician, would certainly want to avoid any affiliation with the Brandts, and Evelyn couldn’t blame him, though it stung to know that Susan would put that in front of whatever friendship the two women had.

After Evelyn mustered a “Thanks anyway,” she hung up and swallowed a lump that had formed at the back of her throat.

Her mother’s phone call replayed in her mind. She couldn’t bear the thought of calling her parents in Texas, of admitting they’d been right when they told her she wasn’t ready to be anyone’s wife, of hearing them defend the son they’d never had.

She considered calling Gigi, but she didn’t think she could bear the questions the older woman was bound to ask. Gigi was a fixer, and right now Evelyn didn’t want the false hope that anyone could mend what her husband had broken.

She had no one.

She’d spent her life building shallow relationships that had no lasting value. Her only friends were Christopher’s friends. Small-minded and judgmental, they would be more interested in the gossip than in her well-being.

Evelyn threw her bag in the backseat of her Lexus and started the engine. She opened the garage, aware of the reporters parked near her front lawn, and pulled away, certain there was only one safe place for her to go.