A Family Affair: The Promise; Truth in Lies, Book 7

by Mary Campisi

  “He lied to me.”

  Was that a question or a statement? There wasn’t enough air in it to tell, but Bree thought it might be a bit of both. The woman looked about to faint. Her presence should have made Bree fall flat on the ceramic tile floor, a mix of despair and grief. But it didn’t. Instead, it made her stronger, more determined to let Brody’s mistress know exactly what kind of man she’d been sleeping with—a liar. Bree had never thought he’d cheat, even in the darkest of times, when she’d lost the baby and refused to let him touch her. They were a family, a team, partners in life and love, and while they’d been through a few rough spots, that did not mean they gave up and turned to someone else.

  Losing Brody had torn out a chunk of her soul, left her adrift, uncertain where to turn. She’d found comfort at the cemetery lying next to his grave, arm slung across the dried-up sprays of roses. It was there that she talked to him, reminiscing about their firsts, laughing at some, crying at others. She’d refused to think about the night of his death, her attempted seduction, his anger and subsequent departure from the house. And then the visit from Rudy Dean, delivering the horrible, catastrophic news: her husband was dead. A breath of air followed by silence, before the words A woman called 9-1-1.

  What woman, she’d wanted to ask, or maybe yell, but she hadn’t. She’d stripped the meaning from the words and tucked them away. Now the meaning in those words stared back at her in the form of Leslie Maurice, bereft and acting as though she’d been the one cheated on. Hah. Imagine that. Bree sipped her tea, assessed the woman. Beautiful, seductive, but there was something fragile about her, something damaged.

  The woman swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, sniffed. “Was everything he told me a lie?” Her voice fell to a whisper. “He wasn’t going to divorce you, was he?”

  “Divorce me?” Brody had told her that?

  The tears started, spilled down Leslie Maurice’s tanned cheeks to her chin, onto her neck. “He said you wouldn’t give him a baby.”

  Damn that man! Now she’d had it. If he were still alive, she swore she’d grab the meat cleaver and take care of his business so there’d be no more talk of babies. Ever. “I was a baby machine! Did he tell you that?” When the woman shook her head, Bree bit out the rest. “We had three girls, but he wasn’t happy. Oh, no, he wanted that boy. I got pregnant again, but this time, I miscarried. Her name was Samantha. I had a rough time recovering. Losing a child does something to you, and I couldn’t think about more children, but he wouldn’t stop pestering. Finally, I lost it and fell apart. That’s when he stopped, but only for a few weeks. Then he started dropping hints again.”

  The woman’s shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. He told me I was special, told me he needed me, and you didn’t care about him. All I wanted was to be loved.” She whimpered, her voice a mix of pain and sadness. “Why does every man hurt me?”

  Bree wanted to ask if the men had all been married, but she didn’t. “I think we have a lot to talk about,” was all she said. Oh yes, she’d bide her time and the answers would flow. Before the woman left, Bree would have the lowdown on the how, the when, the where, and everything in between what her dead husband and his cheating self had done. All. Of. It. But the woman’s next words made her realize she had no idea what that meant or the pain it would cause.

  “He wrote me a poem. Said it was just for me.”

  “A poem?” Bree stepped back, clutched the edge of the counter. “What kind of poem?”

  “He called it ‘The Promise.’”

  It was the admission of the poem that shredded Bree’s love, set it on fire, and turned it to ashes. The bastard had given the poem to his lover, said he’d written it for her! Damn Brody Kinkaid and all the years she’d spent believing she was his one and only. Had there been other one and onlys? How many? Leslie Maurice seemed fragile, and the more lies the woman learned about her “one and only,” the more fragile she became. What was it about men who preyed on women like Bree and Leslie? Maybe the real question should be, what was it about women who went after loser liars like Brody Kinkaid? Did women like them want to believe in “happily ever after” so much that the dream was more important than the person? Fill in the blank with a man, any man, and if you love him enough, all will be well?

  Was that crazy or what?

  And yet, hadn’t Bree done that for years—made excuses for Brody, catered to him, boosted his huge ego, created an environment that encouraged and permitted him to simply exist because he was Brody Kinkaid? Yes, she had. But she’d grown tired of it, disenchanted even, and losing the baby was a wake-up call.

  Maybe it had been Brody’s, too. Maybe he’d realized she wasn’t going to follow him any longer without asking questions and expecting answers. It was the answers he’d ignored, because he had none other than the fact that this was how he saw life, his life, and he expected his wife to see it the same way. Or what? He’d find someone who would? Yes, she’d bet that was exactly it.

  Bree studied Leslie Maurice, took in her beauty, meshed in such fragileness it was painful to witness. Every word the woman spoke about the future Brody had promised her made Bree more determined to erase the memories she’d shared with that two-timing bastard. The more details she had, the more she could erase him from her soul. “Tell me more,” Bree said, motioning her dead husband’s mistress toward the living room. “I want to hear all of it.”

  ***

  “Damn you, Brody Kinkaid! How dare you cheat on me? I did everything for you.” Bree swiped at a tear, stared at the dusty mound of dirt and withered roses covering his grave. “I gave up my body to birth your babies, quit community college because you said you wanted your wife at home. I made you that dang macaroni and triple cheese recipe of your mother’s that had enough cheese in it to make a person gag. Gosh darn it, I made you better than you were. Who do you think defended you when you couldn’t go back to college? Everybody knew you’d flunked out, but they listened to my tales about losing your scholarship money as if the story were the absolute truth. They knew better, so did I. And when you got booted from the auxiliary fire department because you didn’t follow the rules, nobody said a word when I told them you were too busy at work to continue with it.” She picked up a clump of dirt, flung it on his grave. “Did you think we were all stupid? That you were too sly for us? It was my family people respected, not yours with your whiny mother and you, the spoiled baby who cried to his mama when he didn’t get his way.” Tears slipped down Bree’s cheeks, to her chin, onto her pink T-shirt. “All those dang blue almonds I ate. For you! For the boy you wanted.” She glared at the grave as if she could see six feet below, into the casket, to his face. “You know what? I don’t even like Jordan almonds. What do you think of that? Huh? What the heck do you think of that?”

  Bree looked up, glanced around to make sure no one was witnessing her near meltdown. The area was quiet, calm, a place for mourners to spend time with their loved ones. Or not. Maybe it was a place for the living to force the dead to atone for their sins. “How dare you let me believe I was the problem? That I had to give up my job and convince Daddy to give it to you? And then what? Were you going to take over like some big shot and pretend you didn’t have a mistress on the side? As if Daddy wouldn’t have pulled out his rifle and neutered you right there on the spot. He would have, you know it.” Of course her father wouldn’t have actually done it, but it felt good to say he would. “Your girlfriend said you told her about Charlie Blacksworth, how you and he weren’t that different. What in the world did that mean? Were you planning to have a secret family with her, all the while married to me? Don’t you dare think you’re like Christine’s father because you aren’t, not even your little pinkie.” She knelt on the ground, leaned over Brody’s grave, and squeezed clumps of dirt and dried roses, hard, harder, pretending they were her dead husband’s neck. “Die, you bastard, die.”

  ***

  Grant didn’t meet his son in any of the fifty or more scenarios h
e’d played through his head. William barreled into his life on a bicycle, skidding seconds before he almost crashed into the side of Grant’s car. He flew over the handlebars and landed on the blacktop in a mess of cries, blood, and ripped jeans. Grant threw the car in Park, jumped out, and raced toward him. “Are you hurt?” He ignored the dirt and gravel on the road as he knelt to examine the boy, his gaze flying to his head to check for trauma.

  William? Blond, blue-eyed, tanned, he was a miniature Grant. He’d bet William even had the same dimples when he smiled, which, of course, he wasn’t doing right now.

  “My arm,” the boy whimpered, trying to lift a scraped-up left arm that didn’t want to cooperate. “It hurts bad.”

  “Let me have a look.” Grant lifted William’s left arm, noted the awkward position and his inability to move it without assistance or wincing. He guessed the arm was broken, hoped it wouldn’t require more than a cast and physical therapy, but x-rays would have to determine the location of the break. “We need to get you to the hospital so you can get checked out. Can you call your mom?”

  His son winced and looked away. “She’s at work.”

  “Okay, can you get in touch with her?”

  He shrugged. “Can you call my grandma?”

  Why didn’t he want to call Maggie? This kid stuff was new territory, but he’d seen the way William looked away at the mention of his mother. “Sure, we’ll call your grandma. You can wait inside my house until she gets here.”

  The boy shook his head. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “Okay.” Smart kid. Grant was a stranger to William, and no matter how pure his intentions were, he was still a stranger. He helped the boy to his feet, wiped the dirt and stray gravel from his T-shirt and jeans. “I’m Grant, by the way.”

  William squinted, said, “I’m William.” And then, “You’re not from here, are you?”

  “No, I moved here from the Syracuse area.”

  “Oh.” He grabbed Grant’s arm, moved toward the driveway to the house with slow, cautious steps. “My dad had an uncle from there.”

  The words scratched Grant’s brain. “You don’t say.” He’d promised Maggie he would go slowly and he was not about to start pumping the boy for information on his “dad.”

  “You sure have a cool house.” Before he could respond, William said, “Grandma and I used to come down here when Herb was working and he’d let us walk around inside. I like the big tub and the rainfall shower.”

  “You were inside my house?” Who was Herb?

  “Only a few times.” He must have realized he shouldn’t have been because he stumbled over his next words and looked away. “I took my shoes off.”

  “Huh.” They made their way up the wide porch steps toward the matching rocking chairs. William sank into one and let out a long breath. The kid was in pain, but he was making a good effort to control it. Grant pulled out his cell phone, said, “What’s your grandma’s number?”

  Ten minutes and two lemonades later, Grant asked the question that had been nagging him. “Did you really check out my house?”

  William nodded, his cheeks red. “Herb said it isn’t half as big as Mr. Blacksworth’s but it’s got some high-end stuff you only see in magazines.”

  Mr. Blacksworth, as in Harry Blacksworth, owner of Harry’s Folly? He could picture the man living in an elaborate structure decked out with gadgets, electronics, and lots of chrome. “Who’s Herb?”

  “My grandma’s friend.” The boy studied the scrapes on his forearm.

  The grandma sounded nothing like Maggie, not her voice or her actions. The Maggie he knew would never invite herself into a stranger’s home for the sake of curiosity. But Lorraine Finnegan apparently didn’t have issues with boundaries. She’d insisted on speaking with him when William called to tell her about his accident and had gushed into the phone, a mix of curiosity and fear, the curiosity aimed at Grant, the fear at her grandson’s injury.

  “So, Herb the plumber was working on my house and you and your grandma came to check it out.” He looked up, raised a brow. “Do you know what trespassing is?”

  The white face said he did. “We had permission from Herb.”

  “Herb didn’t have the right to give you permission.” What kind of grandmother went roaming around in someone else’s house without their permission? And what was Herb, the boyfriend plumber, doing offering tours?

  “I’m sorry. Please don’t tell my mom.” Pause. “She’ll be angry and then she might not let me go to grandma’s unless she’s with me.”

  So, Maggie didn’t know about her mother’s snooping. Had the grandma pulled something like this before? He wanted to ask, but the boy winced, whether in pain or because he knew he was in trouble was hard to say. “Why were you riding by my house today? Do you live nearby?” Of course, he knew the Cartwright house was on the other side of town, but he couldn’t let on about that or he’d be the one trying to dig out a plausible explanation.

  William shrugged, dipped his head. “I like the hill near your house, and there’s not a lot of traffic.” He lowered his voice, shrugged again. “I was trying to make my bike sound like a motorcycle.”

  “What?”

  He inched his blue gaze to Grant’s. “If you put a baseball card in the spoke of your wheel and get it going fast enough, it kind of sounds like a motorcycle.”

  “Oh.” And then, “Huh.”

  “I put four on. Uncle Jack says you need at least two to get any real sound, but you have to have speed with it. That’s what I was working on—the speed.”

  “No helmet, either. And you weren’t paying attention.” Grant paused, rubbed his jaw. “I’ll bet you were too busy listening for the sound to see me.”

  The boy’s head bobbed up and down. “I was. I could hear the sound change when I picked up speed, and I think I almost had it.”

  Grant could pretend he didn’t know what the boy was talking about, but the truth was, he did know, had tried similar experiments when he was that age. “If you’re going to run tests with moving objects, you have to stay alert to your surroundings at all times. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  An hour later, Grant sat in the waiting area with Lorraine Finnegan while William and Maggie saw the doctor. If there’d been a lineup of age-appropriate women, he’d never have selected this one as Maggie’s mother. A fireball in snug jeans, clouds of perfume, and red. Lots of red: red hair, red lips, red earrings, red high-heeled sandals. But it wasn’t just the woman’s appearance and her shout-out bold look-at-me attitude that eclipsed Maggie’s quiet beauty. Lorraine Finnegan was over-the-top period: voice, laugh, mannerisms, even what she said, which was interesting on its own. Maggie’s mother was a fountain of information, starting with details on a wedding that took place recently between a couple that almost didn’t end up together. According to Lorraine, the woman had left her soon-to-be husband at the altar in their hometown, something to do with trust and distrust. The man ended up here, staying at the Heart Sent Bed and Breakfast, which Lorraine said was a must-see place, especially the honeymoon suite with its bed scattered with rose petals. Nothing like it, she said. The woman said a lot of things, her short red hair a perfect match for her nails and lipstick. She told him about the granddaughter of one of the town’s most influential men, who was ready to deliver a baby, and no father in sight. Grant didn’t have to do more than give an occasional nod for her to continue the information dump.

  “I never had to worry about that with my Maggie.” She clucked her tongue, crossed her arms over her red and orange polka-dot top. “She always did exactly what was expected of her, though once in a while I almost wished she’d hadn’t.”

  He should not ask any personal questions about Maggie, but this was the perfect opportunity and her mother was all but pouring the data in his lap. “I’m sorry about her husband.”

  “Tragic. What a sweet, sweet man and so young.” She slid him a look, her blue eyes shiny behind the heavy eyeliner. “But she’s so young
to be all alone, and spending time with a child is not the same as spending time with an adult, now, is it?”

  Grant cleared his throat, fought the heat creeping up his neck to his cheeks. “No, it isn’t.”

  “So, tell me about you, and why you were talking to my daughter the other day at Lina’s Café. Don’t think I didn’t see you because I did. I don’t miss a thing, even though my daughter thinks I do.”

  “We were just talking.”

  “Ah. There’s talking and then there’s talking. You know what I mean?” Those full lips pulled into a wide smile. “One talking is simply being polite, but not interested in digging further into the words or the person.” That smile spread. “But the other?” A throaty laugh. “That’s the one that says the niceties but is already pushing past them trying to get to the person, deepen the connection.” She eyed him with a mix of curiosity and accusation. “Which sort of talking were you doing, Dr. Richot?”

  She asked the question as if she already knew but wanted to make sure he knew, too. Grant cleared his throat, avoided the question. “Call me Grant.”

  “Okay.” More curiosity and a lot of humor spilling from those lips. “Grant. And you can call me Lorraine. Now that we’ve established that, how did you meet Maggie?”

  He’d bet his new house she’d already asked Maggie this same question and wanted to compare her daughter’s answer with his. Looking for holes, of which there would be many. He’d spent half his life avoiding questions he didn’t want to answer, even ones he posed to himself. Deflection was the key. Grant gave her the smile women could never resist and said, “William told me you and he checked out my house, said your friend Herb let you in?”