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

by Mary Campisi

  “He doesn’t know anybody here,” Juliette said. “Does he?”

  Cynthia shrugged, her gaze eyes narrowing around the question. “I don’t think so.” Pause. “But I’m going to change that. Very soon.”

  Should Maggie warn Grant that Cynthia Carlisle had plans for him that probably included wedding invitations down the road? Why did the woman think she had right of first refusal on every man who entered this town? It was ridiculous; she was ridiculous. Grant Richot could fix dinner for whomever he wanted, and it was none of this woman’s business.

  “He’ll fall all over you,” Juliette Shaw said, her voice cotton-candy gooey with praise. “How do you plan to meet him?”

  How did Cynthia plan to meet Grant? Maggie made a few notations in the woman’s chart, wished she could add pain in the butt.

  “When have you known me to shy away from a true challenge?” A slow smile crept over the woman’s lips. “Or an opportunity. He’s a doctor, and not just any doctor, but a neurosurgeon.”

  Cynthia’s cheering section gushed over that one. “Wow. That’s like a brain doctor who operates in people’s heads, right?”

  “Absolutely.” The smile spread, turned possessive.

  “But there’s something wrong with his hand. How can he operate?”

  He doesn’t operate anymore; he hasn’t since the accident. Do you know he had a wife who died in that crash? Do you know he lost the ability to do what he loves? Do you know anything about the man or do you just think he’s a good-looking guy with an M.D. after his name?

  Cynthia’s next words said she didn’t care if Grant Richot could operate or not, as long as he was available. To her. “Maybe that’s why he’s here. Maybe he got a huge settlement and consults or writes medical books.” Her green eyes grew bright, her voice soft. “And maybe he needs someone to make him feel better, worthy.” Pause, a breathy whisper. “And maybe I’m that person.”

  ***

  Grant had no idea if William liked steak or twice-baked potatoes, let alone grilled asparagus, but he was pretty sure the boy would go for a cream puff, the only part of the meal he hadn’t prepared. Still, it was one more opportunity to interact with his son, and Grant wasn’t going to miss it. There was so much he didn’t know about William, years and a lifetime of experiences he’d missed, same with Maggie. But if she’d give him a chance, that could all change. All he needed was time with them so she could see he wasn’t the self-centered, goal-obsessed man he’d once been. Now he only had one goal: get a second chance with Maggie and his son.

  Grant rang the Finnegans’ doorbell and seconds later, the door swung open. William grinned and eyed the bag in Grant’s hand. “You said you’d be here in twenty minutes and I clocked you pulling up the drive in nineteen.” His blue eyes widened. “How’d you do that? Mom says twenty minutes and it’s forty-five.”

  “Practice.” He laughed and stepped inside. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She had to stop by Uncle Jack and Aunt Dolly’s for strawberry jelly.” He licked his lips. “Aunt Dolly made a whole batch last night. If you want, I’ll see if Mom will give you one.”

  “Uh, sure.” He’d take anything from Maggie right now—jelly, a smile, a kiss… “So, how are you doing with the cast?” Grant glanced at the neon-green cast covering his forearm to the top of his hand. “Looks like a lot of people signed it.”

  “Yeah.” He held up his arm so Grant could get a better view. “I color-coded it. Relatives are red, friends are blue. Neighbors are green. People I kinda know from church and around town stuff are purple.” He eyed Grant, said, “I guess you’re a blue. Let me get a marker so you can sign my cast, okay?”

  Grant was still thinking about the blue-marker friend status William had given him when Maggie called a few hours later.

  “Thank you for the lovely meal,” she said, her voice pulling him in, making him wish he were sitting next to her right now. “Your skills in the kitchen put me to shame.”

  He laughed. “Cooking calms me down. I flip on music, pour a glass of wine, and experiment. If I’m in a bad mood or trying to figure out a problem, twenty minutes in the kitchen clears my head and the bad mood.”

  “You, in a bad mood? I didn’t think Grant Richot let himself get in a mood.” Humor filtered her words. “And if he did, he would never admit it.”

  “Ah, that was the old Grant. That guy really was a jerk, wasn’t he?”

  “Only sometimes.”

  Was she actually teasing him? The thought put him in a very good mood, and he wanted more of it. “Did William eat the asparagus?”

  “He did. Actually, it’s one of his favorites. My mother got him started early, said he needed to get used to the taste because fancy restaurants always served asparagus.”

  Grant pictured Lorraine Finnegan’s red head nodding at her grandson as she doled out instructions on etiquette and decorum. “Your mother is one interesting woman.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  He didn’t miss the frustration or the resignation in her voice. “Family dynamics are tricky, aren’t they? I can get everybody else to listen to me, but my sister does her own thing, even when I lay out the reasons why she shouldn’t do what she’s considering. Doesn’t matter. She does it anyway and then comes to me to clean up the mess.”

  “I never had a sibling,” she said with a sigh. “Wished I did for the longest time, but…that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Why didn’t you have another child?” The question slipped out before he could pull it back. That was the problem with speaking to Maggie on the phone instead of face to face; it was easier to say what was on his mind without worrying about his expression—or hers. “I’m sorry, that was out of line.” There was a long pause, and he half expected she’d hang up, but she didn’t. Instead, she answered him.

  “We tried, but…it never happened. And then David got sick.”

  “I really am sorry.” When he’d hired the investigator to check her out, Grant figured the report would come back listing her as married with a few kids. He did not expect to find her a widow, mother of one—his child. The conclusion that William shared his DNA had come with mathematical analysis of dates and the boy’s age, along with a photo of his child. No denying that boy, though it surprised him no one else in town thought that. But maybe they’d had no reason to look beyond the blond hair and blue eyes that were similar to David Cartwright’s.

  “Can I ask you something?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure.”

  “When you got married, were you planning to have a family?”

  The question squeezed his chest, brought back the pain of losing Jennifer. “We were planning to talk about it on our honeymoon,” he said. “We’d been so busy, we didn’t take time to schedule our five-and ten-year goals. Jennifer was a pediatrician and had only been in practice two years, but we wanted to add children to the mix. Our honeymoon was supposed to give us enough down time to come up with a plan.” He paused, drew in a deep breath. “But that didn’t happen.”

  “I’m sorry.” The sincerity in her voice made his chest ache. “At least I had time to prepare. You didn’t even have that.”

  No, he hadn’t. His wife and his profession had been stripped from him in that car accident. “It was not a good time in my life.” That was a true understatement. If not for his father and Leslie helping him through his grief, who knew what he might have done? Grant pushed the thought away and said, “Will you tell me what happened when you left college and came back home? How you got David to believe William was his child?”

  Maggie didn’t answer, the silence spreading between them, creating distance and more questions. When he thought she’d refuse his questions, she spoke. “David was too trusting, and I took advantage of that trust.” Her voice dipped, spilled regret. “We started dating in high school and on and off in college. He always thought we’d end up together, made plans and timelines, but he never pushed. It wasn’t his style.” She paused and he waited for
her to add Like you, but she didn’t. “When I met you, David and I were taking a break, had been for over eight months, but he still called twice a week to check in and see if I needed anything. He mailed me care packages once a month: cough drops, small packages of tissues, mints, batteries, pretzels, boxes of macaroni and cheese. Random items that said he was thinking about me.”

  Random. Interesting word. “Considerate guy,” Grant said. David Cartwright sounded like he was sending a care package to his mother in a senior center instead of a taking-a-break girlfriend.

  “He was. Very.”

  “So…” He didn’t want the details of what a wonderful guy David Cartwright had been. All he wanted were enough facts to bridge the gap between pregnant with another man’s child to Hey, I’m pregnant with your child. How much time were they talking about before she hopped into the would-be daddy’s bed? Two weeks after she left school? Three? Not more than four, he’d bet his degrees on that. “You quit school and headed back here. What did you tell your mother?”

  Long pause. “I said classes were tough and I wasn’t doing well.”

  Now that was not the truth. The Maggie Finnegan he knew could keep up with him in the grades department. It must have been tough to pretend around that one. “And she believed it?” How could anyone who knew Maggie believe her capable of flunking out?

  “She did. David offered to tutor me so I could get my grades up and go back, but…”

  But you tutored him instead, right into fatherhood. “Never happened?”

  “No. When I told him I was pregnant, that changed things.”

  Bet it did.

  “Between the wedding and then getting ready for William, it took a year to get back to school.” She paused, shrugged. “Community college stuffed between my new life.”

  Was that sadness in her voice? Resignation? “Didn’t anybody think it was odd that you married a guy you weren’t even really dating anymore?”

  He didn’t miss the sharpness in her voice poking his brain. “When you’re pregnant, the reason’s pretty clear.”

  To whom? People who didn’t wonder what was below the surface? If he’d looked closer, he might have seen the tie between Jack Wheyton and Audra before he made a fool of himself. “What about his family? They must have been surprised when you turned up pregnant.”

  “There was just his mother, and she died six months after we were married. She was so excited about being a grandmother, but…”

  His parents both died never knowing they had a grandchild. There was sadness in that, one that he wished were different. “That must have been difficult.”

  “She was sick for a long time. Bad heart. David was hoping she’d live to hold William, at least she’d have that, but she didn’t make it. You’re never really prepared for it, even when you tell yourself you are. When you walk in the house the first time and their chair’s empty, it hits you.”

  “Yes. It does.” Years of seeing his mother suffer with multiple sclerosis, and then one day, she was gone. He rationalized that she was in a better place where she could stand up straight and walk, maybe dance. The pain of loss had dulled, but it remained in the corner of his soul, capable of recall at any moment.

  “I’m sorry about your wife and your father.”

  Grant heard the compassion, mixed with another emotion. Sadness? Longing? “Thank you.” And then, “Were you happy, Maggie?” This is what he really wanted to know.

  Two-second hesitation followed by a breathy “I was.”

  Whisper-soft words, open for interpretation or misinterpretation. Had there been a pause after those words, as though she wanted to continue but forced herself to stop? I was, but not like it could have been with you. Or I was, not deliriously so, but I was happy. Maybe even I was and I wasn’t.

  Chapter 8

  God might punish her for taking advantage of another’s weakness, but Bree could not help herself. She had to hear more about the affair, and if Leslie Maurice was of a mind to spill details, then who was Bree to stop her? Weren’t the tears and talking a way to handle grief and move on after the loss of a loved one? That’s what Father Reisanski told her when he came to the house the day after Brody’s death. So, why couldn’t she use that same mantra on Brody’s mistress? Seemed logical, and all Bree needed was a tiny excuse to tell herself she was helping the woman, even as she pried for details, dates, conversations, that left no doubt he’d found a new “one and only.”

  “I would have driven to Magdalena,” Leslie said, handing Bree chopsticks and her plate of chicken lo mein. “It’s not like I have anybody waiting for me like you do, with the kids and all.” Her full lips pulled into a frown, seconds before she said in a voice soaked in desperation, “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  I would drive three hundred miles to see where my husband played house with you. Bree forced a smile, shook her head. “Of course not.” Renova was a twenty-five-minute drive and when she’d told her parents she was meeting a friend for dinner, they’d been more than eager to watch the girls. They’d figured out the “friend” wasn’t Gina, Tess, or Christine, and from the way her daddy looked at her long and hard, more curious than disapproving, she knew he thought she was meeting a man. Goodness, did the entire world think women could not breathe their own oxygen without a man in the vicinity?

  Leslie scooped brown rice on her plate and dumped half the container of chicken and broccoli on top of it. “Chinese is one of my favorites. Love it.”

  “Mine, too.” Brody hated Chinese food, said he didn’t like the way the vegetables tasted slimy on his tongue, and there wasn’t enough meat to fill a man’s belly. And because he didn’t like it, they didn’t eat it, even though Bree had a hankering for it once a month and had to sneak out to lunch with Christine to get it. Why had she let that dang man control so much of her life? What to eat, what to wear, what not to wear, where to work, how to think… She glanced at Leslie, who nibbled on an eggroll, her expression a mix of sadness and loss. Bree did not want to admit it, but she’d slap money down that Leslie had loved Brody, or the man he pretended to be. And who the heck was that? Before she stopped poking around in Leslie and Brody’s affair, she’d know exactly who that was.

  “Do you think this is weird, us being friends?”

  Bree glanced up from her plate. Dang, but she’d never been good with chopsticks. If that cheating husband of hers had agreed to try Chinese instead of grumping about it, she’d have learned the trick to them. But, oh no, not Mr. Grumpy I-have-to-have-it-my-way. Had he complained to Leslie about his dislike for Chinese, too, or was he suddenly fine with it? That’s what she’d like to know and that’s what she was going to find out. “Did Brody eat Chinese?”

  “What?”

  Why did Leslie have to be so beautiful, like a hibiscus flower opening in the tropical heat? Bold, tempting, intoxicating. And then there was Bree, who felt like a coneflower next to her. Tall, gangly, sturdy. Bree clutched the chopsticks in her hand and repeated, “Did Brody eat Chinese?”

  “Oh.” The woman’s sleek brows pinched together. “He did. Yes.” She nodded. “General Tso’s chicken and a shrimp roll were his favorites.”

  “Huh.” Bree tossed the chopsticks on the table, snatched a fork and dug into the lo mein. “Guess his tastes changed.” She stuffed a hunk of chicken in her mouth, chewed. Guess his taste in women changed, too. Or maybe his tastes hadn’t changed, maybe his body had aged, but his brain and the “business below his belt” hadn’t.

  “I wish I’d met you before.” Leslie’s voice dipped to pure pitiful. “Then I would have seen what you were really like.”

  Bree could not keep her mouth zipped. “But would you have still slept with him?”

  “No! I would not have.” Her blue eyes sparkled with tears. “Honest. I really am sorry.”

  Honest. Sorry. Leslie did sound like she meant it. Maybe she and Bree were the ones who’d been played, and maybe Brody Kinkaid was the all-time player. “It’s okay,” Bree found herself sayin
g, surprised she actually meant it. She should hate this woman, want to rip out every strand of hair, and call her ten kinds of names. But she didn’t. Leslie Maurice had issues, emotional ones that made her easy prey for someone like Brody. Bree had never thought him capable of taking advantage of a person’s weaknesses, but he’d done it with Leslie. In some ways, he’d done it with Bree. Hadn’t she been unsure of herself, doubted her academic abilities, and depended on her husband for guidance? Yes, she had, but she’d been so young, and he’d ridden in on that white horse to save her, make her his queen….his one and only.

  And when she didn’t need rescuing anymore, he got on his white horse and found another “one and only.” Had there been others? Her brain sizzled with the possibility. She could try to find out, but how exactly would she do that? Question every woman, aged twenty-two to forty, married and single, living in a twenty-mile radius of Magdalena? But what if the woman lived twenty-three miles away or had been a one-night stand when Brody went to the stock car races with his buddies? What then? She would drive herself mad with wondering and still never know the truth. It was buried in the grave with her husband’s soon-to-be decaying body, but even if he were still breathing the same air as she was, how would she know if what fell out of his mouth was true? Once a liar, always a liar is what her mama told her from the time she was seven and got caught stealing jelly beans from the self-serve candy section of Sal’s Market. Oh, she’d denied it, but the blue tongue didn’t lie. Bree had the truth staring back at her now in the form of Leslie Maurice, a beautiful, fragile woman with more problems than a seventh-grade math book. What did it matter if Brody had cheated on her with one woman or ten? He’d broken their vows and ruined their happily-ever-after. Blast that man to everlasting hell.