Inevitable, the regret. The recriminations. The scandal. The breakup.
Inevitable that Park dumped her, and she didn’t want Perry, who was more than happy to play the chivalrous knight, being half in love with her himself, and always had been.
Inevitable that nine weeks later, pale and clammy and borderline hysterical, she was driven to Knoxville by her best friend, where no one would know or see or stop her, and had the life they’d created that night carved from her belly.
5
THE WIFE
Olivia brakes, hard, the car behind her shrieking to a stop just shy of her bumper. She waves a hand in apology and yanks the Jeep to the shoulder, the wheels skidding on the loose gravel.
Lindsey’s voice shouts through the car’s speaker. “Are you okay? I heard the brakes—”
“I’m fine. All good. Car in front of me braked at the yellow.”
She is not fine. She is not all good. She is numb. And numb she must stay, or the whole world will crumble around her.
She can’t handle Perry on top of all of this.
Perry, with his soft gray eyes and floppy blond hair. Perry, with his rangy body, hard and lean in all the right places. Perry, with his heart of gold and silly laugh and velvet lips.
Perry, Park’s brother. His twin, for God’s sake.
“I assume he called?” she hears herself ask, voice sounding calm and cool. Disinterested.
“Texted. He needs to be in New York next week. He thought he’d fly here first, before he heads up north, then back to Europe. He has a shoot in a month. He has to climb the Matterhorn. Can you believe that?”
Perry, swathed in gear, goggles on, his beard crusted in ice and snow, grinning from the top of the world, arms outstretched as if to say—I rule this place.
That image, burned into her brain from the climb when they almost lost him.
You’d think almost dying in an icy crevasse would deter him. Losing two toes, three friends, a Sherpa guide, and thousands of dollars of the best camera equipment the BBC’s money could buy would convince him to stay home, to give up the dangerous lifestyle of a nature photographer. Olivia has never understood his compulsion to fling himself heedlessly into harm’s way.
He has a shoot in a month.
Clearly it hadn’t.
The two of them, her husband and his brother, so different—in looks, in temperament, interests, attitudes. Even politics. How they’d shared a womb was beyond her. Park was so settled in comparison to Perry, who was more comfortable lying on his stomach in a mud puddle with a long-lens camera waiting to see if a leopard would come to a drinking hole than having a simple conversation. Yin and yang.
“Olivia?”
“Sorry, Lindsey. Zoned out.”
“What are you up to right now?”
“I’m on my way to a client’s house.”
“Pick me up? You can drop me at Fido’s on your way. I can grab a coffee and work from there for a while.”
“All right. See you in five.”
“Liv?”
Olivia pulls the car back onto Hillsboro, careful to make sure there is no oncoming traffic in sight. She doesn’t need to be anywhere near other drivers like this. “Yeah?”
“Are you really okay? You sound off.”
“Yeah.”
She punches the button on the wheel to cut the call before Lindsey pushes further. Non-answers don’t work with her. She’s a lawyer and she’s literal, wants every detail broken out, likes her stories told sequentially, but always forgets the punchlines of jokes just when she gets to the good part. Olivia loves her. Olivia is afraid to be alone with her now, because there’s no way they aren’t going to go there, going to dig into the past that Olivia has so carefully fortressed, especially when she shares there’s been another miscarriage.
But who else can she talk to about this...betrayal? This monstrous betrayal? Who else knows her as Lindsey does?
She makes all the lights, a miracle in this town, turns into Forest Hills, then onto Lindsey’s street, sees an icy, remote blonde with the profile of a Russian princess and calves that could cut glass standing at the intersection. She must have run down the hill.
Lindsey, wrapped in an oatmeal cashmere sweater and black tights against the early fall morning chill, sipping from an Ember travel mug. Great. Already caffeinated.
There is not enough caffeine in the world to handle this morning.
Olivia maneuvers the car to the curb, putting on her hazard lights so no one accidentally plows into them, and depresses the lock button. Lindsey opens the door with a lascivious wink.
“Hey, lady. Wanna date?”
Olivia can’t help the smile. She has always been astounded by Lindsey’s bawdiness. You’d think after all these years...but no. Olivia will always be the girl who blushes at the inappropriate remark. It’s who she is.
“You know it.”
Once her seat belt is dutifully clicked into place, Lindsey sets her thermos in the cupholder and turns ice-blue lasers on her best friend. “Spill. What the hell is going on?”
Olivia explains as succinctly as possible. Just the facts, ma’am. Be dispassionate.
“Park is at the house with the detectives who are working on Beverley Cooke’s murder. There’s a DNA match to a suspect, and they’ve traced it through some database to Park.”
The gasp is satisfactory. “Park? That’s impossible.”
“Not Park.” Olivia doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “Apparently he has a child. A son.”
She risks a glance. Lindsey is staring out the window, shoulders tense.
“Did you know?”
“Know?”
The tone... “Lindsey. Tell me.”
“No. Of course not. It’s nothing. Really. I was just thinking about Chapel Hill. You know, everything that happened with Park while y’all were broken up. Hey, you just drove past Fido’s.”
“Dang it.”
Chapel Hill. She hasn’t thought about that for years. Not really. A chapter of Park’s life she wasn’t directly involved in until after the fact, but a chapter closed, nonetheless.
Of course. That’s how the police put him together with Beverly’s killer. His DNA was in the system.
She takes the next left, circles the block, then enters the parking lot. She makes no move to get out of the car, and Lindsey, taking the hint, takes a pull on her mug and twists in her seat to face Olivia.
“There’s more. Talk.”