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“Never.” After her husband’s early death from heart disease, Leah had raised Will as if he were her trophy. She wanted everything, but nothing ever filled her up. Nothing would ever be enough. “She’d take you to court if she even suspected Will was Tony’s—” Isabel broke off, unwilling to utter the word.
Leah Barker had collapsed the second Isabel had phoned her. Leah had been the worst kind of permissive, overprotective, overfond mother, raising a son who’d never questioned his sense of entitlement.
“We can’t let her find out.” Ben spoke her thoughts exactly. Sudden relief relaxed his mouth and seemed to travel through his body on a shudder. “So you can’t tell your mother and father.” He tugged her toward the stairs. “My God, I don’t understand the Barkers.”
“I was one of them,” she said. The name had filled her with pride on her wedding day. Leah had promised to be as much a mother as her own. Talk about a promise that couldn’t be kept. But Will had chosen her to be his wife. With her parents, she’d always come second to Faith. She’d loved her sister and tried not to mind, but much of her new-wedded bliss had been built on gratitude to Will for putting her first.
What a fool she’d been.
Abandonment wrapped Isabel like a fine layer of the falling snow. She shivered, cold all the way to her soul.
Ben opened the sides of his jacket and pulled her into his warmth. Isabel held still, unwilling to make herself vulnerable.
“It’s okay, Isabel. You can trust me.”
Longing to believe, she pressed her face against Ben’s shirt, reveling in his heat, in the comfort of her best friend’s arms.
“You understand why we have to keep this secret?”
“When you talk like that, I can’t trust you.” She’d faced too much truth in the past three months.
Ben’s heart thumped against her ear. “I can’t help it. I haven’t felt safe since I read that note.”
Would she ever feel safe? “Do you trust me, Ben?”
“I saw what you looked like when you realized what you’d give up if you kept my secret. I can’t trust you.”
“Too bad for you if everyone can see straight through me.” She didn’t like her own bitterness.
“Would Amelia be able to put Tony first?” Ben tucked her head against him, and she suspected he didn’t want to see her emotions. “Or would she tell herself Tony could learn to be happy with her and George? He might even forget me.”
“Forget you?” Even to her, that image of the future was unbearable. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”
Ben kissed the top of her head, his gratitude more real than either of their marriages had been. “Thank you, Isabel.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m sure lying is wrong. Look how it’s already destroyed us.”
FINALLY IN BED in the guest room, Isabel tossed and turned under crisp sheets and a down comforter. In darkness relieved only by an outside streetlight, she tried to shut off the accusations racing around her mind. There was no one left to accuse. Ben couldn’t have kept Faith at home any more than she had Will.
Pounding her pillow, she lifted her head to stare at the clock—2:17.
Second, third and hundredth thoughts pulled her upright. She still wondered why Ben really wanted her to stay. She couldn’t live with him and Tony forever.
He’d brought her bag upstairs before he’d taken the sitter home. After he’d left she’d returned to the baby’s side, her heart melting into her shoes. Even knowing Will had been his birth father, she still loved Tony.
Why hadn’t Will divorced her? She’d have given up rights to the business—any stake in his blessed bank account—to avoid a sentence in the hell he’d left behind.
Isabel jerked the bedding aside and turned on the lamp. Her sneakers lay on their sides by the closet. She stepped into them without bothering to tie the laces. Then she pulled a sweatshirt over her pajamas and opened the door.
Silence blanketed the dark hall. Ben and Tony needed sleep. After waiting a few seconds to make sure she hadn’t disturbed them, she hurried down the curving stairs, snatched her coat out of the closet and then reached for the front door, her only thought, escape.
She glanced down at her clothing. The knife her husband and sister had slipped into her back was no one else’s business. Wandering the neighborhood in her jammies would expose her and Ben, maybe even her parents, to ridicule and questions.
She turned, instead, toward the kitchen. When she opened the back door, the cold sucked the breath out of her lungs, but it felt better than smothering in her sister’s home. If she didn’t get fresh air, she’d need CPR.
Isabel stepped onto the deck and sank in snow that crept around the edges of her shoes. It felt good. She was alive if the cold could hurt.
But it really hurt. Damn. Suddenly she was also swearing at Will and Faith. And then at Ben for convincing her to stay.
Snowflakes wet her cheeks. She ran down the deck stairs and trekked through drifts to the gazebo where she and her sister had shared coffee, tea, secrets and each important milestone in Tony’s life.
Last winter Faith had danced with her son in his first snow. He’d laughed as bits of ice bounced off his soft skin, and Faith had kissed each wet spot. Isabel gritted her teeth. Tony had lost a loving mother.
Faith’s happiness that day had pricked at all Isabel’s doubts. She’d trusted her sister enough to confide her worst fear—that Will might have found another woman.
Isabel hunched into her coat on the swing Will and Ben had hung from the ceiling. Her breath painted the air in front of her face. She exhaled again and watched the mist widen and then dissipate.
Faith had said she was being foolish. Her less-than-comforting response had hurt, but Faith had been right. No woman could have been more foolish or gullible.
“You’ll freeze.”
She jumped. “I didn’t hear you, Ben.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’d take a lot more than a guy in the dark to scare me tonight.” She pulled one knee to her chest. “I’m spoiling for a fight.”
“Yeah.” He sat beside her, jostling the swing. “I’d like to punch someone, too.” He’d positioned spotlights around the yard, and their dim light colored his face pale blue.
“I’m sorry you had to find out with a note,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d ever have found the courage to tell you, but I’m sorry you had to read about it.”
“I knew something was wrong, but I never guessed anything about Will.” He shrugged and the whole swing rocked. “I was lucky. Faith left the note in her makeup drawer. Amelia and George might have found it. They arrived the night of the accident.” He pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “Fortunately, I answered the phone when the mortician called about bringing her stuff.”
“Good God.”
“It was pretty awful.” His silence echoed with pain. “Why did you wait so long to come?”
She stared into the dark, not wanting to answer, but how could he think worse of her? “I considered not coming at all.”
“Really?”
She had shocked him.
“But Mom and Dad would have guessed something had come between Faith and me.”
“And you wouldn’t hurt them.” He stopped the swing with his feet.
“You needn’t sound suspicious.”
“I’ll be glad when your mother and father come over tomorrow and you don’t tell them immediately.”
“You hope that’s the way it goes?” His doubts almost made her laugh. “You have to be kidding. If I wasn’t able to tell you—when you were living the lie that changed me into a cynic—how could I tell my mom? She might feel better, but Tony would lose the last stable figure he’s known.”
“His father.”
“His father, Ben. I agree with you.”
The silence told her he doubted her. Just about the time she was getting angry, he nudged her elbow with his. “What are you going to do about the house?”
She pushed the swing back. “I don’t think Will filed for divorce, and I was too busy finding a job. If the place still belongs to me, I’ll sell it.” She glanced his way. “Meanwhile, you have to decide if you want Will’s half of our assets for Tony.”
“Not a chance. I don’t want anything from that bastard.”
Cold crept through her coat and her pajamas. “What if Tony needs the money when he’s older? We’re not talking a simple piggy bank. This is a lot of capital.”
“Give it to Leah. If the truth comes out, she can decide whether she should help her grandson.”
“I’m serious about not trusting Leah. I could turn over everything Will and I owned together and she’d still look for any crumbs I might have forgotten. She married into a mainline Philadelphia family, and she’ll protect her name with her last breath. The more money to bolster her position, the better. You can’t trust her finer qualities, Ben. You definitely shouldn’t make Tony beholden to her.”
“I won’t touch a penny Will ever made—especially not for my son. I provide for Tony.”
Isabel opened her mouth to suggest he wait until he wasn’t so angry, but it was pointless. She didn’t need his permission to ask her lawyer about creating a trust fund for Tony. “After I get out from under all this, I’m heading back to Middleburg. I love the horses and the trees and the farms. I’m not important enough to matter. No one looks at me with pity. No one expects me to be Mrs. Will Barker.”
“We’ll talk about your plans after you sell the house.”
His domineering note struck a nerve. Will had always tried to steer their lives toward the image he wanted.
“You’re upset.” She tried to start out gently. “And I’ve made it worse by talking about Will, but trying to push me around won’t change anything for you.”
The swing went forward and back. The metal chains sang a high-pitched, mournful tune until Ben stopped their motion.
“Don’t talk about leaving now.” He pushed the swing again, hard. “Please.”
That “please” obviously cost him. She softened. “I won’t.” But was she falling into old habits? Trying to please a man whose gruff tone threatened to withhold affection? She gripped her armrest. “As long as you realize I’m no longer Will’s amenable little wife. I was afraid he’d leave me, I guess, but I’d rather be left than play those kinds of games.”
He turned to her. A stranger behind Ben’s face who gave nothing away. Where was her old friend, loving, lovable, demonstrative Ben? “Thank you,” he said.
She was right to doubt him. He wanted her here for some reason. She didn’t understand, and she assumed it was going to hurt someday, but he might be correct about Tony needing familiar faces.
Ice crept between her collar and her neck. She shivered. From the snow? Or from doubts about Ben?
She turned toward the house, drawn to the faint glow of a night-light Faith had always left on in Tony’s room.
Face it. In Ben’s shoes she’d lie to keep Tony, and she’d keep on until someone caught her.
“I’d better go in,” he said. “I don’t like leaving him alone.” Standing, he held out his hand. “You should come, too. If you fall asleep out here, we’ll find you in an ice block in the morning.”
She tried to laugh. “Ben, what if we came clean? We could work out visitation for everyone.”
“Are you out of your mind? Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I’m willing to lie because it’s best for Tony, but all the lies got us into this mess.” Gut-sucking tragedy, she meant. “Wouldn’t you have divorced Faith and been civil if she and Will had told us the truth?”
“After Tony came?” He started up the deck stairs. “I’d have killed her and buried her in the cellar, because I’d never have seen Tony again. And neither she nor Will would have believed they were denying me anything.”
“Stop.” If she hadn’t known him better than she knew even her own parents, she might have believed in his threats. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “I know you. Don’t talk like that. You are not that kind of man.”
“I want to be.” Unshed tears weighted his voice. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, refusing to believe in the bad man he was trying to become.
He held her off for a moment, and then his arms came around her, almost too tight. Neither of them spoke, and she listened to his rough breathing. She’d been as angry as he was. It felt like sporting a cement foundation on your chest.
“Nothing hurts as much now that we’re together,” she said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Because I didn’t tell you? If I could have asked you if you wanted to know, maybe I would have gone straight to you, instead of to Middleburg. I doubt it though. Will seemed surprised I was so hurt. Faith tried to call me a couple of times, but I never gave her a chance to speak. I kept hoping they’d realize how wrong they were, and they’d break off their affair. You’d never have to know.”
He looked down at her with his stranger’s face. “Do you believe that?”
She tried. If she could make herself believe, maybe she could convince him. But she was done with being an idiot, and he’d never let anyone past his suspicions.
“No.” She stepped away from him. “And I’m cold.”
“We don’t have to pretend with each other,” he said.
“They pretended to love us for years. That’s why I hate the lies. I was blind to Will, and I don’t want to be the same as he was.”
“He must have loved you once.”
“Because Faith loved you?”
He took her hand, but she’d bet it was an unconscious response. “Maybe she only used me to get close to Will. You were already engaged by the time she and I met.”
“Hold on.” Alarm bells rang in her head. “We can’t let them make us think we’re not worth loving, and I won’t turn into one of those women who refuses to trust because one man cheated on me.” Another lie. She hadn’t fully trusted Will since he’d first strayed. She tugged her hand out of Ben’s, more interested in standing on her own two feet.
Ben let her go. “I’m more worried about being so angry I make Tony forget how to be happy.”
“You’re a good dad. You won’t do that.”
“Thanks, Isabel.” He took the first two stairs in one stride. “I needed that.”
He seemed to feel better, but she noticed the beginnings of a headache and a thick coating of ice in her shoes. Too many moral questions to ponder around here.
“What are you going to do in the morning?” he asked.
“Start on the house.” A labor that would have unmanned Hercules. “I have to sort our things.”
“Let me help. Make a list of what you want to keep and we’ll go through the rest.”
