“For what it’s worth, that’s been pointed out to me now in a major way by my own lovely, gorgeous wife who was furious thinking that I’d also managed to endanger my own children in the process.”
Thane narrowed his eyes in a lethal squint. “The fact of the matter is both of you wanted this guy so badly you would’ve done anything to get him.”
“Am I arguing that point? No. Because I did want Henry to pay for what he did. We both wanted that. Neither one of us is arguing that one point. That’s the major reason I allowed myself to go off on this tangent to do it. The week Isabella Rialto died, the two of us were grieving to such an extent that maybe we weren’t exactly thinking straight. The nuts and bolts of the plan called for your Izzy to become Isabella, to do whatever was necessary to lure Henry anyway she could. She wanted, no, she needed to do this for herself.”
“See, that’s where I have a problem with this whole thing. You’re supposedly a smart guy. Everyone says so. How does someone like that just sit back and watch while she waits for this guy to come after her? You were nowhere around when she was a sitting duck back on Long Island.”
“Okay, point in your favor. But I’m not sure you really understand the loss of power women like Izzy and Isabella give up when they marry a narcissist and a control freak, a man who takes everything away from them, either all at once or chips away at it daily, little by little, until all the decision process has been taken away from them.”
“I understand that. I’ve watched my share of Oprah and Dr. Phil. I know about feeling the loss of empowerment.”
“Maybe you think you do. I’m not sure I understand it, not fully anyway, not to the degree that women like Izzy and Isabella did. I never gave up my freedom, my power, not like that for anyone or anything and my guess is neither have you. So both of us are already a step behind the curve when it comes to appreciating what one Isabella wanted to do for the other Isabella and why. Not just that, but she convinced me with one thing she said.”
When Thane started to speak, Logan held up a hand to stop him. “She said that by hiding out, pretending to be Isabella for a while, Garth wouldn’t be able to find her and that he would eventually move on.”
Thane frowned. “I…I hadn’t considered that.”
“Nor had I. But that’s exactly what Garth eventually did. She was wise enough to know his traits and take that path. She looked at all the angles and decided the best thing to do for herself, was to somehow convince Henry that his wife had survived the attack that night. She was convinced that by pretending to be his wife, Henry would try it again. I admit, it sounded reasonable enough to me at the time because Henry was so obsessed with Isabella he couldn’t see straight. That was irrefutable. I ought to know I watched it happened over the years and did nothing about it.”
“You must’ve known Isabella well. How well?”
Logan’s temper finally snapped in full force. “It wasn’t like that. Not ever like that. She was a kid to me. It was actually her father I was closest to—Javier Rialto helped me get established in the art world enough that I could grab a foothold and become what I am today. If not for Isabella’s father I doubt anyone would even know Logan Donnelly from any other struggling artist.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“No, it’s true. Believe it. Javier was an influential presence in my life, a respected collector, who knew his stuff. He also knew the right kinds of people to get me embedded into the scene. Do you have any idea all the talented artists out there who go undiscovered? Thousands. Millions. Javier made sure I wasn’t one of them. But the man had one weakness. Javier loved his daughter and wanted to protect her. The Rialtos had been friends with the Navarros for several decades. Javier knew Henry better than anyone did. But on occasion, usually after we’d had too much to drink, Javier would tell me stories about how awful the bastard had been to Isabella over the years. It went back to their childhood. Isabella’s mother, Jenna, even caught him slapping her to the ground a couple times. From what I discovered later, Henry was a disturbed individual who never quite outgrew his idiosyncrasies, translation, his meanness, his tendency to lean toward psychopathic bullying. I suspect Henry killed Javier. He either did it himself or had someone else do it for him. But I can’t prove it.”
“Yeah, that’s what Izzy said, and is one more reason that says your plan was so amazingly ill-conceived.”
“Okay, another point in your favor. But think about it. Henry Navarro made Javier’s death look like an accident. Her father had been actively encouraging Isabella to break it off with Henry. I wasn’t around a lot back then. I’d gone on to spend some time in Tuscany, to work, to create, to add to my inventory. When Javier died on Long Island it took some time for the news to reach me. Even before I had time to digest the loss, to react to my mentor’s death, the next thing I knew Henry had taken charge of everything, the money, the estate, and of course, Isabella. Before I could stop it, they were married in a quickie ceremony without any of her family around.”
“I hate to point this out to you, but you’re not exactly making a case for yourself. Instead, you’re making mine for me. If this Henry did all that and you suspected him of it, then why in hell would you allow Isabella to take such drastic measures to bring him out in the open? And for God’s sakes, why didn’t you at least stand by while Izzy completed the illusion?”
Thane paced back and forth in front of Logan, his anger building up again. “Why not try to get Isabella out of her horrible marriage to Henry while she was still alive, knowing what Javier had told you about this bastard?”
Logan shook his head, sent him a disbelieving look. “You can’t be that clueless. You can’t help someone out of a marriage, even an abusive one, if that person isn’t willing to take that major step to get away. Again, something people who haven’t gone through it couldn’t possibly understand. If they aren’t ready to take that step...if they aren’t ready to get away from their situation, it’s useless to pound away on them. You can encourage. You can be a sounding board, but the decision to leave is ultimately theirs.”
“You mean Isabella wasn’t ready? How could that be? Why on earth…?”
“No, she wasn’t ready. And the short answer is I have no idea why. Guilt plays a huge chunk of my part in all this.”
“Yeah, that’s what my Izzy said, that she feels she should’ve been there for your Isabella that night,” Thane tossed back.
“Now you’re beginning to get the drift. Guilt. Do you have any idea the lengths Izzy went to, to see this thing through? To make sure it was a believable ruse? How committed she was to its success? She took classes in self-defense. She learned how to fire a weapon. Izzy put her life on hold for three years. Three years of living life as Isabella, breathing in her persona and personal habits just in case Henry had sent his emissaries to spy on her. Those first two years she lived at the Rialto family home on Oyster Bay, she did such a compelling job even the neighbors had no reason to believe it wasn’t Isabella staying there. They didn’t even question her performance. But after time passed and there was no activity on Henry’s part, she came out here to try to stir things up.”
“And you went along with it every step of the way?”
Logan rubbed his eyes, scrubbed his hands over his face, weary of the discussion. “Yes, I went along with it. Not only that, I didn’t say a word about this to Kinsey. So you see I’ve had a rough couple days with my own problems dealing with my less-than-forthcoming behavior.
“Ah.”
“Until three days ago my own wife didn’t know the truth. And let me tell you Kinsey was not happy with me. So believe me when I say I understand where you’re coming from.”
“So Izzy’s past is just as real to you?”
“You bet it is. It’s very real. Garth Lattimer treated her just as shitty as Henry treated Isabella. So you see no one could have played this role more to perfection than Izzy and pull it off the way she did.”
Thane started to pace again, to
storm back and forth. “And where is this Garth guy now? Maybe I should look him up.”
“He’s not that hard to find since he still lives in the Denver suburbs in the same house he shared with Izzy. For a year he scoured the country for her and when the private investigator he’d hired couldn’t find a trace of her, Garth got the message. He gave up the hunt and filed for divorce. The next year he remarried a woman he met over the Internet.”
“Someone should’ve stepped up and tipped her off, warned her about what she was getting into.”
“You think we didn’t try? Isabella and I signed up at the same site, found her email address, and sent her several messages as a caution. But some people refuse to see the writing on the wall no matter how large the script is. None of it made a difference. The woman married the son of a bitch anyway.”
“You just called her Isabella.”
Logan blew out a frustrated breath. “Maybe that’s because I don’t think of her as Marisa. I’ve leaned on her as a friend ever since that night in Alberta when Isabella Rialto slipped away from us. She’s stronger than the Isabella Rialto I knew. She’s happier, more at ease forgetting she was ever married to Garth Lattimer. I have no problems thinking of her as Isabella.”
“I’m in love with her. I don’t want to be but I’m in love with her.”
“I figured as much. You wouldn’t be standing here itching to put a fist in my face if it was just lust or a casual fling.”
“But what happens when you find out that you’ve been lied to though? Tell me that much.”
“You either find a way to forgive or you move on. It’s as simple as that.”
“That’s a helluva choice. It’s not that easy.”
“I never said either one was easy.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“It’s never an easy thing to eat crow either.”
“Yeah, especially when I’m in the right. The thing is now I have to figure out how to get over the way I’ve acted like an ass.”
“That’s the easy part. Women are used to us acting like asses most of the time. The deal is to know you were right but still be able to pull off the big apology.”
For the first time in days, Thane grinned. “I guess I could work on that.”
The rest of that day Thane walked through his routine in a fog. His anger hadn’t completely subsided and probably wouldn’t. He knew himself well enough to know it still simmered just beneath the surface and at the slightest provocation might go volcanic if pressed.
Inside his little office at the restaurant, he got into it with Fischer over ordering meat supplies. When he waited on customers he was a tad on the short-tempered side. Not a good habit to get into when you were trying to get a new business up and going. When he had to fix the soda machine, he used words he hadn’t used since his playing days to no one’s benefit but his own. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get past the way he felt about Isabella.
Later that afternoon when Brent brought his family in to order a large pepperoni pizza, Thane couldn’t help but ask River how Izzy was doing.
River rolled her eyes at the question. “She’s maintaining the status quo for miserable heartache. If you’re so worried about her why not pick up a phone and ask her yourself?”
Brent sent his wife a knowing glare. “We discussed this, remember? Stay out of it.”
“Fine. But is being right worth being alone? That’s really the question,” River reasoned, lifting a shoulder in a unbiased gesture. “I’ve heard the ability to forgive is a virtue.”
After that exchange, the Cody family moved to a table and got Luke settled into his booster chair. They sat down to wait for their pie. Sitting across from each other, Brent whispered, “I’m so glad we agreed that you’d stay out of it.”
“I simply have an opinion and voiced it. That’s all. I’m entitled to do that you know. In case, you haven’t noticed everyone’s picking a side. Most women think what Izzy did was nothing short of incredible while the men are taking a ‘she lied and I’m not forgiving her for a minute’ stance.”
“And yet, I’m supposed to be pleased that the women in town endorse what Isabella did.”
“I’m simply saying that there are people willing to get in the middle of the issue and not think twice about it.”
Thane overheard the discussion and knew River was right. He’d heard all the rumblings firsthand. His friend, Fischer, the worldly New Yorker, hadn’t had a problem weighing in. Fischer had already counseled Thane to distance himself from the woman who’d been so dishonest.
Thane had gotten an earful from each and every customer who’d walked through the door at Longboard Pizza. Everyone it seemed had an opinion. Ryder, Zach and Troy seemed to be firmly in his corner while their significant others held slightly opposite viewpoints. He’d listened to more sentiments than he’d bargained for from Julianne, Drea, and Bree.
But it had been Jonah who had added the most poignant thing of all to the debate. His son didn’t care so much about opposing perspectives. The boy just wanted to know why Izzy wasn’t coming around anymore.
“Did you two have a fight?” Jonah asked while practicing his spelling words sitting at one of the tables next to the Codys.
Thane hated being put in this position, which only made him resent Izzy all the more at the moment. That feeling, in turn, prevented him from eating the crow he’d discussed earlier with Logan. “Grownups disagree sometimes. It’s the nature of adult relationships. We’re having a disagreement.”
“Could you have it somewhere else so she could read me a story tonight? She promised to read me the one about the baby dragon.”
Thane ignored River’s snicker coming from the next table. “I’ll talk to Izzy tomorrow about it, how’s that?”
About that time, Thane heard Brent’s cell phone ring, listened while the top cop dealt with an obvious law enforcement issue, the problem, an apparent BOLO, something about a roadblock and an escape.
Brent pushed back his chair and said to River, “I have to go. Box up the pizza when it comes out and take Luke back home. I have to go see Isabella.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Thane said in alarm.
“Henry Navarro somehow managed to slip past the guard stationed outside his hospital room and escaped from the secure ward. He’s gone on the run.”
Thane jumped to his feet. “What? They let him get away? What about Isabella’s safety? Henry will come after her. You know he will.”
“I’m taking care of it. I’ll put a guard around her twenty-four seven.”
“What good will that do? We need to come up with a better plan than that,” Thane pointed out.
“I’m all ears.”
Thane began to pace. “Normally I’d say a defensive position is the answer but in this case we need to go on the offense.”
“I know you don’t mean a stakeout. That’s what brought Henry here in the first place,” River said, helping Luke out of his booster seat. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to put anyone else at risk that way.”
With those words, something inside Thane moved. The scales tipped all the way in Isabella’s favor. She’d pulled off an incredible feat. Why hadn’t he been able to see that and be more supportive? The realization hit him then that Henry Navarro had to be dealt with once and for all. If the man was allowed to remain free, Henry would never stop coming after the woman he thought was his wife.
During the rest of his shift Thane went through the motions at work, considering his change of heart. He went over everything in his head again, like keeping track of an inventory list. He slid what he knew into columns of pros and cons. But in the end it was what he felt in his heart that eclipsed everything else. Maybe it had taken something like this to admit he’d fallen all the way in love.
Later, there was Jonah’s homework to check, bath time to deal with, and story time before bed. Once that was all done he was too tired to think anymore.
Thane turned out the ligh
ts and plopped down on the couch in the dark. He didn’t seem to be able to muster the energy to do anything else. What a mess, he decided as he let his head fall back on the cushions. At some point, he drifted off to sleep.
Soon, it was as if he’d landed in a dream that kept fading in and out. All he could see in his mind was a man standing in the shadows holding a knife watching Isabella from a distance.
The angle changed and he was able to zero in on her face. She looked so defenseless, so ill-prepared to take on an armed attacker. Looks, though, could be deceiving. Even in this version he knew she could handle herself. She’d already proven she could.
As the fantasy played out, Thane called to her. When Isabella turned to look at him, it was the intruder who sent him a wry smile and took advantage of the distraction to go on the attack. Henry brought the knife up and then down. Thane started running, doing his best to get to her in time. But no matter how fast he ran it wasn’t fast enough. Through a haze he saw Henry hit his mark again and then again, more and more determined with each slice of the blade to end Isabella’s life. Thane watched as blood turned the sheets bright red, watched as the pool grew larger and larger until…
Fischer walked into the dark living room, spotted Thane tossing and turning in his sleep. He went over to the sofa, jostled an arm, trying to roust him awake. “Hey, Thane, what are you doing in here? Go to bed,” Fisch directed. “You look awful.”
Thane bolted upright, almost knocking Fischer off his feet.
“Whoa, it’s just me. You’re really letting this whole thing get to you.”
Rubbing his eyes, Thane gave Fischer a look of disgust. “I was dreaming that Henry came after Isabella again. It was like being a witness to murder this time. Like before, he carried a knife…” Thane held out both hands as if measuring. “About this long.”
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