When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

  “If you’ve changed your mind—”

  “No. No, I haven’t changed my mind. I just . . . didn’t expect to hear back so soon. It’s barely been a week.”

  “I told you, my guy has connections.”

  “Oh . . . right.” Christy-Lynn pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “I’m not sure doing this over the phone is a good idea, especially with you at work. Come by the cabin after you close up.”

  Christy-Lynn felt her stomach clench, like the sensation you got when you looked down from the top of the Ferris wheel and realized just how far the drop was. He wouldn’t tell her over the phone? What had he found out?

  “Is it that bad?”

  “I just think it would be better if we do it in person, when you’ll have time to process.”

  “All right then. I’ll see you as soon as I lock up.”

  It was nearly seven by the time she pulled into Wade’s driveway. He was already at the door when she stepped onto the porch, a kitchen towel over one shoulder, a wooden spoon in his hand. “I thought you forgot about me.”

  “Sorry. We had a few last-minute customers, and then there was a ton of stuff to reshelve.” The mingled aromas of garlic and oregano enveloped her as she followed him inside. “Oh no, I’m screwing up your dinner again.”

  “Our dinner. Please tell me you like spaghetti.”

  “I love spaghetti, but I didn’t come to eat. I can come back, really.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re here, and there’s enough to feed a small army. Besides, we’re not discussing anything until you’ve been fed.” He turned, heading back to the kitchen. “If you get any thinner, you’re going to disappear on me completely, which would stink since I think we’re actually on the verge of becoming friends.”

  Christy-Lynn found herself grinning. When had he become charming? “So I’m being blackmailed?”

  “Precisely.”

  She had no choice but to follow him to the kitchen where a pot of sauce bubbled on the stove. She watched as he dropped his spoon in then lifted it out for a taste. “I think I might just have pulled it off.”

  “I thought you only tackled things you could cook on the grill.”

  “Well, I cheated a little. I started with the bottled stuff, then doctored it up. But I think it’s pretty good. The salad’s made. All I need to do is throw the pasta in to boil.”

  Christy-Lynn eyed him warily. He was too cheerful, too chatty. It set off warning bells in her head. “Is this your way of softening whatever you’re about to tell me? A high-carb meal?”

  “Actually, it’s my way of avoiding work. My writing day pretty much sucked, so I thought I’d try my hand at cooking instead.”

  Christy-Lynn wandered to the small bistro table in the corner as he wrestled with a box of vermicelli. His Mac was there and open, a Word document up on the screen. She had just begun to read the opening lines of chapter eighteen when Wade snaked an arm past her and lowered the screen.

  “Please don’t read that.”

  “Sorry. Force of habit. The editor in me, I guess. I should have known you’d be the protective type. A lot of men are.”

  “More like the embarrassed type,” he corrected with a scowl. “Not one of my better efforts, I’m afraid. In fact, I meant to delete the whole scene.”

  “It isn’t as easy as it looks, is it?”

  “What?”

  “Writing the great American novel.”

  “I take it that’s a shot about my lack of reverence for your husband’s work?”

  “No. Just an observation. You did call him a hack though, which is a pretty harsh thing to say to a man who’s cranked out a dozen bestsellers.”

  “Cranked being the operative word.”

  Christy-Lynn bit back her initial response, confused by a knee-jerk need to defend Stephen despite the validity of Wade’s criticism. Habit, she supposed. Or misplaced loyalty. Like the night she had unloaded on him in the bar at the Omni.

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? Can’t we just drop it?”

  Wade gave the pasta a quick stir then set down his spoon. “I just think if you’re going to put a hundred thousand words on paper, you should take the time to choose the right ones, instead of just grabbing the ones on the bottom shelf. Writing should be about quality not quantity.”

  “I agree with that. In fact, I tell my writers the same thing. But there’s a lot less time to reach for those top-shelf words when you’re writing to contract. Deadlines are real, and if you want to keep getting paid to write books, you treat them as sacred. It’s a matter of finding the line between efficiency and integrity and then walking it. It’s tricky.”

  “Did Stephen walk that line?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think your husband cared about integrity?”

  Christy-Lynn stared at him, wondering if she’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Are we talking about writing or something else?”

  “I’m talking about both—about everything. Integrity isn’t something you have in some parts of your life and not in others. You either have it, or you don’t. I’m asking if you think Stephen did.”

  Christy-Lynn was both startled and confused by the intensity in his tone. “Under the circumstances, I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask.”

  “You were married to him. That makes you the perfect person to ask.”

  “I can tell you he was dedicated to his career, that he worked all the time and never missed a deadline. He started every morning at five and worked past midnight a lot of nights. Sometimes he’d even go off and check into a hotel somewhere so he could—” She stopped midsentence, letting the words trail away. “Except he wasn’t working, was he? He was with her.”

  Wade dropped his gaze to the floor. “I didn’t mean to dredge up—”

  “Your pasta’s about to boil over,” she said flatly, cutting him off and effectively ending the conversation. The sooner they got through dinner, the sooner she would have her answers.

  They ate out on the deck or at least attempted to. Thirty minutes in, Christy-Lynn gave up the pretense and pushed back her plate. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m just not hungry.” It was the truth. She was too keyed up to eat. In fact, she wasn’t sure she had tasted a single bite of what was on her plate. “I’m sorry. You went to all this trouble, and I’m being rude.”

  “Forget it. It gave me a chance to eat off real plates instead of wolfing down my food over the sink. That’s what guys do, by the way, when they live all alone in the woods. They turn into cavemen.”

  “Do you actually like living up here all by yourself?”

  He leaned back in his chair, propping a leg on the corner of the table. “Never really thought about it. It is what it is, I guess.”

  Christy-Lynn squinted one eye against the sun as she continued to study him. His answer had been just a little too nonchalant to be convincing. “I don’t think I knew you were married the first time we met, but I seem to remember there being a woman with you—sleek, brunette, very glam.”

  “Simone.”

  “What happened there?”

  “I think the question you’re looking for is, Who happened?”

  “There was someone else?”

  “Someone elses,” he corrected drily. “Plural. She was ambitious. I’ll give her that. But not very good at covering her tracks. To be honest, I think she stopped bothering. When I finally confronted her, she told me she was glad I knew, that I’d become a self-righteous bore, and she didn’t know why she ever married me.”

  Christy-Lynn winced, a mingled pang of pity and guilt. It had never occurred to her that he might have suffered a few heartaches of his own. Or that when he spoke about infidelity he was speaking from experience. “I suppose it would be hard to save any marriage after that.”

  He eyed her grimly. “The phrase
‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ comes to mind.” He reached past his water and grabbed his beer instead, draining it in one long swallow. “It was inevitable, I suppose. We weren’t a couple. We were a team. Work was what we had. Maybe all we had. When I left Week in Review that was gone. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve come to terms with it.”

  She studied him a moment, the tight lines around his mouth, the rapid tick that had begun to pulse at his temple. “Have you?”

  He looked away, but not before a shadow darkened his face. “I thought we were supposed to be talking about Stephen.”

  Wade’s words felt like a glass of icy water poured down her back. She pulled in a lung full of air, then pushed it back out very slowly, hands braced on the arms of her chair. “Yes, we are. So let’s have it.”

  “Her name was Honey Rawlings.”

  Christy-Lynn sat very still, letting the name play over in her head, and for one terrible moment, she was back in the morgue, staring down at the chalk-white face from her nightmares, beautiful and bloodless. Honey.

  “Did your . . . source happen to mention how they met?”

  “I’m afraid not. But we do know she was from West Virginia—a little spit of a town called Riddlesville.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and laid it open on the table. “It appears she still has family there. A grandmother named Loretta, and a brother, the honorable Reverend Ray Rawlings. We did manage to find an address for the grandmother, but if either of them has a phone, it isn’t listed. Not sure if that’s new since the accident or not. It could be, though. Apparently the family’s a bit sensitive about Honey’s involvement with a married man. The brother has threatened to sue the entire state of Maine if his sister’s name ever leaks in connection with your husband’s, which is why I’m guessing the police have been so tight-lipped.”

  Christy-Lynn stared at the scribbled notes—Honey Rawlings of Riddlesville, West Virginia. She had expected to feel . . . something. Relief. Closure. Anything. But Wade was right. Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. Still, he had done what he promised.

  “I don’t know how to thank you. I was—”

  “There’s more.”

  Christy-Lynn leaned back in her chair, waiting.

  “Your contact at the station, the detective friend of Stephen’s—”

  “Connelly.”

  “Yes, Connelly. He was the leak. Apparently, he talked one of the maintenance guys from the morgue into snapping some shots of Honey with his phone. Word on the street is they each netted five figures. Hence, the detective’s so-called early retirement.”

  Christy-Lynn shook her head, still trying to digest the news. He claimed to be Stephen’s friend, and the whole time he was lecturing her about policies and procedures he’d been scheming to make a buck off the death of her husband.

  “So that’s it? He’s just allowed to retire?”

  “My guess is he was told to clean out his desk and allowed to slink off to Florida like the reptile he is. And just like that, it all goes away.”

  Christy-Lynn shook her head, disgusted. Another body blow, and one more thing that wasn’t what it seemed. Suddenly she was exhausted, too tired or disillusioned to vent the frustration roiling in her chest. “Is that all?”

  Wade seemed surprised by the question. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I was hoping your guy might have learned when it started or how they met.”

  “Sorry. If you want those kinds of details, you’re going to have to talk to her family. He did do all the standard legwork though, ran the usual searches through Factiva and Lexis, even talked to one of his guys.”

  “One of his guys?”

  “An investigator. At least that’s what he calls them. A little shady, but they aren’t shy when it comes to turning over rocks.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No arrests. No public records. Sketchy work history—waitressing mostly, a stint at the local grocer. He did manage to dig up an old yearbook photo from Riddlesville High, which he e-mailed to me if you really want it, but that was the extent of it. It would appear Miss Rawlings kept a pretty low profile before hitching her wagon to Stephen’s.”

  Christy-Lynn stared down at the spaghetti congealing on her plate as she absorbed the information, trying to make sense of her disappointment. Wade had been right. She’d been kidding herself, thinking a name would be enough. She wanted more, needed more. But what exactly? Did she even know?

  “Sorry,” Wade said, interrupting her thoughts. “That last crack was indelicate.”

  “Yes, but factual. It seems your friend was very thorough. I was just hoping—” She paused, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I was hoping.”

  “The things you want to know aren’t something a reporter or PI is going to be able to get at. No one will. You understand that, right?”

  Christy-Lynn picked up the page of notes, running a finger thoughtfully along one of its creases. “I could talk to the grandmother—to Loretta.”

  “Christy-Lynn . . .”

  “She’s a woman. She’ll understand me needing to know.”

  “No. She won’t. Her loss is different than yours. She lost a granddaughter, not a philandering husband.”

  Christy-Lynn folded the paper and laid it in her lap. “I just want the dream to stop.”

  Wade said nothing for a moment, as if weighing his next words very carefully. “Before, it was just her name. Now it’s where they met and how long ago. There’s a point where wanting to know becomes something else, Christy-Lynn.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I know. I know. It’s crazy.”

  “No. Not crazy. But painful. And not just for you. The woman just lost her granddaughter. Think about how you’d feel in her shoes.”

  “It’s not like I’d be badgering her. We’d just . . . talk.”

  “Woman to woman, you mean?”

  There was no mistaking his sarcasm. Christy-Lynn stood and moved to the railing. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. Because we talked about this when you first came to me. I told you I needed to be sure you weren’t going to use whatever you found out to cause trouble. And here you are, thinking about doing exactly that.”

  Christy-Lynn turned to face him. “Yes, here I am. And I meant what I said. This isn’t about causing trouble. It’s about a ghost—a woman whose name I don’t know, whose face I see every time I close my eyes.”

  “I understand the pain you must be feeling. What I don’t understand is how you think what you’re talking about is going to fix any of it? Stephen’s dead. Honey’s dead. And you’re here in Sweetwater, starting a new life. Maybe that needs to be enough.”

  She forced her eyes to his, her throat burning with the effort it took not to tear up. “What if it isn’t?”

  “Did you love him?”

  “What?”

  “Before all this—did you love Stephen?”

  Christy-Lynn’s mouth worked soundlessly, sensing a trap in the question. “He was my husband,” she said finally.

  “So a ring, a piece of paper? That’s love?”

  “It was a commitment.” She shifted her gaze toward the lake where a pair of egrets waded near shore. “Or it was supposed to be.”

  “It takes two people to make a commitment work, Christy-Lynn.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Are you going to contact Loretta Rawlings?”

  She thought about the question. He was right. Of course he was right. About all of it. So why couldn’t she let it go? “I don’t know,” she answered finally. “I know you think I shouldn’t, and you’re probably right, but I need some time.”

  “Time for what?”

  She looked at him then, shaking her head. “I don’t know that either.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sweetwater, Virginia

  May 18, 2017

  It had taken Christy-Lynn more than a week to make h
er decision. A week of grappling with her conscience, of weighing a wife’s right to know against a grandmother’s right to grieve in private, of struggling with her promise to Wade.

  Honey Rawlings.

  She had waited for the stab of jealousy the first time she heard the name, had braced for the squeeze in her chest, the heaviness in the pit of her stomach, the things any red-blooded wife should feel. But it hadn’t come. Instead, she’d felt only an obsessive curiosity. And shame that she had been so blind, so gullible, so unplugged from her own marriage.

  Had Stephen really been that good at covering his tracks, or had she simply stopped paying attention? She cringed as she recalled Wade’s point-blank question. Did you love him? Her response couldn’t have been more tepid if they’d been talking about her mailman.

  It was hard to deny that their marriage had lost some of its spark over the last few years. As the demands of Stephen’s career took center stage, their lives had intersected less and less, until they seemed to have little to talk about. Toward the end, even their sex life had become more about habit than passion. But that was normal, wasn’t it? For things to settle into predictable patterns, for the sameness to set in?

  The truth was it had been the sameness she most enjoyed about her life with Stephen, the sense of stability that came with knowing every morning when she opened her eyes exactly what the day would hold. But they had also enjoyed a lifestyle she could never have imagined growing up—money in the bank, a stunning home, travel, and a fashionable social circle. She had never stopped to wonder if it was enough for Stephen.

  And that was why she was going to West Virginia, to learn what the missing piece might be. Because a sparse background check and a high school yearbook photo weren’t enough. And because her own attempts at online sleuthing had turned up even less. But then they would. As Wade had pointed out, the things she wanted to know weren’t likely to show up on a Google search. She had no idea what she’d find when she got to Riddlesville or what she hoped to come away with when she left. Answers, perhaps. Closure, hopefully. And a way forward.

  She had arranged store coverage for the next three days and was already packed, but now, as she popped in to make sure Tamara and Aileen had gotten the doors open without any hitches, she couldn’t help wondering if the trip to West Virginia was a mistake.