Tell Me True (9 page)

THINGS HAD SETTLED
down with Bridgette and she agreed to join us for a dinner at the Davenports, something none of us were particularly looking forward to, especially with Jon's murder still hanging over our heads.

We picked Bridgette
up first and arrived at the Davenports’ at eight, bearing a bottle of expensive wine. The staff served a catered meal of fried swordfish and Greek salad, and we mostly ate in silence with Bridgette making a few unsuccessful attempts at small talk. During dessert, while we sipped on wine, Mrs. Davenport—I still couldn't get used to calling her Louise—asked us about children. "When do you plan to start giving us grandchildren?" she asked, not unkindly. Still, the question made me nervous.

"We haven't talked too much about that, yet," I said. I wanted kids in a theoretical sort of way, but I wasn't ready to start having them. I had too much to do with my life first.

Mr. Davenport scowled at his wife and then locked eyes with Ash. "Of course, you'll have to name your first born son Ashton Davenport. And you," he said to me, "will be taking the Davenport name."

Ash shook his head. "
Catelyn is hyphenating to keep her own name. And we are definitely not having another Ashton Davenport. Our children will have their own identities and will not be shackled with a father who is so arrogant and self-absorbed that he would expect his son to become his photocopy."

Before the two men could explode at each other, Bridgette spoke
up in a small voice. "What about the name Jon?"

The room deflated
and Ash squeezed my hand under the table. Even Mr. Davenport had the grace to back down and shut up.

"You should have a baby now," Bridgette said. "Then I'll get to be an aunty. You'd both make wonderful parents. No child would ever be more loved."

I smiled at her. "Thank you. I'm glad you think we'd be good at it. But I still have law school to finish and a career to start. I'm not sure this is the right time."

She frowned, a strand of white-blond hair falling over her face. "You don't think you can do both? Lots of women are able to have a career and a baby. Besides, you have a husband who can be home a lot with the baby."

I looked at Ash and wondered what he was thinking. We'd talked about kids lightly, as in we both wanted one or two some time in the distant future, but we hadn't worked out the logistics of who would stay home with them and how that would work. We had time for that. We wanted to get married and enjoy some time with just the two of us first.

Walking around the table
, the waiter offered us refills on the wine, perhaps eager to cheer things up. Bridgette covered her glass in response. "Still working on the first one."

"I'd like more please," I said, hoping to drown out thoughts of Jon.

Ash told the waiter to leave the bottle. He always seemed to get drunk around his parents.

As we ate in silence,
Ash's cell phone rang and he excused himself from the table, his pie untouched and his wine glass empty. When he returned, he looked worried. "Last time I talked to my P.I., he said he might be onto something with Jon's death."

We all waited to hear what that something was.

"But now I can't reach him. I just got a call confirming what I feared. Jim is missing."

"MY DAD HATES
Jon," Bridgette said as she stared into the serene lake we stood in front of. "He told me to break up with him. Threatened me. Yelled.” She paused and tried to slow her breathing. "It was bad, Catelyn. Really bad. Like, maybe he'll disown me bad." Bridgette threw a stone in the lake, making it skip a few paces before it fell into the water, casting ripples around it as it sank.

I tried to send my stone into skipping mode, but it went straight to sinking mode. "They're your parents. They love you. No matter how mad your dad gets, he's not going to disown you." At least, I didn't think he would. "I can't imagine disowning my daughter for any reason."

She threw another perfect stone skipping across the lake and I sighed and just tossed mine in, knowing I'd never get mine to skip.

"I could never do that to any child of mine either, but my dad, he was just so irate. I've never seen him like that. I think he really might.
I think he actually hates Jon so much that if I stay with him, I will lose my family."

I considered my next words carefully as a breeze swept my hair off my neck and cooled me. Closing my eyes, with the feel of the sun on my face, I tried to put myself in her shoes, but I couldn't. I didn't have a family to lose. "Sometimes you just have to make your own choices and stand by them. Sometimes it's better to rip the bandage off and if you're going to lose someone, lose them, rather than hovering in that space of uncertainty."

I turned to look at my friend. "But you're going to have to decide who's more important to you. And then you're going to have to be ready to face the consequences of that choice. But don't be blind to what you are choosing. And to whom you are choosing."

We walked a bit more down the lake, each lost in our own thoughts, when we found an injured bird by the water. It was a blue
jay and was bleeding.

"It's going to die," Bridge said with sadness. "Should we try to make it more comfortable?"

I thought about what I would want if I were the bird. Then I reached down, broke its neck and put it out of its misery.

DETECTIVE GRAY SHOWED
up at our house that night, waking us both.

We came downstairs sleepy-eyed and still a little tipsy from
drinking too much wine at the Davenports’ house. Gray invited himself in and sat down in the living room, pulling out a notebook and turning to a fresh page. "I need to ask you both some questions about Jim. I understand he was a private investigator that often worked for you?"

Ash nodded. "Yes."

"And what did you have him working on now?"

"What is this about?"
I asked.

"Your P.I. has
gone missing, and I'm trying to find him. You both were close to him, and people close to the two of you often go missing or end up dead. So it seemed a safe place to start."

"He was trying to find out about Jon's murder
and who might be threatening to kill Ash," I said. "You know, doing your job."

"Did he find anything useful?"

I was about to say that he had, but Ash cut me off. "No, nothing."

The detective looked from Ash to me and then sighed and closed his notebook. "You know my number if you happen to remember anything else. Let me know if he turns up, okay?"

We walked him to the door and Ash held it open for him. "Of course. Good night, detective."

Once we were alone, Ash poured himself a drink and offered me one, but I declined. "Why didn't you want him knowing that
Jim had found something?"

"Because we didn't know what he found, so that information wouldn't have done them any good and might have led them down the wrong trail."

The way he said this made me pause. "Ash, what did you have Jim doing when he called about that lead?"

Ash looked at me, his dark eyes unreadable. "He was following you."

I TRIED TO
get out of a bachelorette party. Of course, Bridgette would hear none of it. I suggested a quiet dinner at a nice restaurant. And so
of course
we ended up at a male strip club.

We had front row seats to the
“raunchiest ranchers in town.” Cowboys in assless chaps danced around the stage pulling off bits of their clothes to reveal ever more chiseled, waxed and oiled skin. I found it all comically horrifying and we couldn't stop laughing as Bridgette shoved dollar bills into their cock straps.

"Ash would die if he knew I was here," I said as I sucked down something that was far too sweet and didn't taste nearly alcoholic enough, which meant it would kick my ass.

She batted away my concern with a wave of her manicured hand. "I told him. He thought it was great. He just said to make sure they didn't get too frisky with you."

I guffawed. "I can't believe he was okay with this."

Bridge shrugged and sipped her clear drink. "He trusts you."

Her face turned serious as she looked at me. "Just, don't ever ruin that trust, okay? Don't ever cheat on him. He loves you and it would break him. Cheating is just… it's the worst thing you can do to someone you love. It's unforgivable."

My mouth went dry and for a minute I thought she somehow found out about Jon. If that were the case, though, we'd be having a very different conversation right now.

I wondered if her recent distance from her parents and their fighting had anything to do with cheating, but a cowboy shoved his bits in my face and I forgot to ask.

I drank more and was lured into a stumbling drunkeness I wasn't expecting. As Bridgette walked me out and called a cab, I petted her blond hair. "You're so pretty."

She laughed. "You're so drunk. Lush."

"I'm allowed, it's my almost wedding day."

"It is. And you are. Come on, I got us a hotel tonight."

I nodded and rested my head on her shoulder once we were in the cab. "Bridge?"

"Yeah?"

"What would you do if you caught Jon cheating?"

"I'd hurt Jon. Bad," she said in a quiet and serious voice. "And then I'd kill the bitch he was with."

MY WEDDING DAY
arrived. Again. The thrill of the event was dampened by the loss of Jon. None of us could entirely erase the sound of his car blowing up as we prepared to walk down the aisle together. None of us could fill the hole left by the loss of the best man. But we tried to embrace the joys the day gave us.

We'd relocated the wedding to an intimate garden near Harvard. We wanted a location not tainted by the events of Jon's murder. We would have a small reception after, with cake and
champagne, then a larger reception that night on the Davenport yacht.

I spent time that morning alone
, pushing down my feelings about my brother-in-law, about his life and death and the impact it had on my life and on the lives of those I loved. And then I let my heart feel only love as Ash took my arm and we walked down the aisle together.

A string quartet played something beautiful, a song I didn't know but had picked at random with Ash.

Birds from a nearby tree joined in, filling the sky with their voices as we took small steps closer and closer to our destiny. Our future.

Only our closest friends and family were in attendance this time. Bridgette had scrambled to replace my dress with something similar. We had flowers, a cake, music.

None of it mattered.

All that mattered was the man next to me.

I was about to become Catelyn Travis-Davenport. I was about to tie my life to the most amazing man I'd ever known. I was about to change my life forever.

Ash squeezed my elbow and I looked up at him with tears in my eyes. "I love you," I told him as we approached the alt
ar.

"I love you
, too," he said.

The words and music all blurred together as I stared at Ash, his beautiful eyes penetrating and loving, speaking promises only I could hear, embracing me in a love only I could feel.

When I said, "I do," my voice choked from the well of emotions building inside me. Joy. So much joy. So much love.

When he said
, "I do," his voice boomed strong and deep, but a tear welled in his eye and I knew he felt the depth of emotion present in this space.

I remembered the heat from the flame as we each took a candle that represented us separately and lit one that re
presented us as one.

I remembered the feel of Ash's lips on mine as he kissed me for the first time as my husband.

I remembered the scent of jasmine as we walked back up the aisle hand-in-hand, husband and wife, to the cheers of our friends and family.

I remembered the taste of vanilla as we fed each other a slice of wedding cake.

And I remembered the look on Ash's face when Detective Gray walked over to us with two other officers, handcuffs in hand, and arrested my husband for murder.