Truly Married
Authors: Phyllis Halldorson
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Truly Married
Phyllis Halldorson
Contents
Chapter One
S
haron Lachlan shivered and pulled her quilted parka snugly around her as she huddled behind the steering wheel of her new red Corvette. The car had been a present from her husband, Fergus, on the occasion of her twenty-third birthday last August.
Was it a gift of love? Or of guilt?
She shook her head as though to dislodge the unwelcome but persistent suspicion that had nagged at her since morning, when she’d received the third anonymous note.
Although it was only a little past six on this cold November evening, the darkness was total, broken by neither moon nor stars in the heavy cloud-covered sky. The only illumination came from an insufficient number of street lamps and the light that spilled out the windows of the neat older homes nestled behind rows of huge elm trees lining the curbs of this staid middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago.
She was thankful for the dark. It sheltered both her and her car from the prying glances of passersby. Or, more precisely, from Fergus Lachlan, who most certainly would recognize her.
Sharon shivered again and rubbed her arms with her gloved hands. The waiting seemed interminable. Dare she start the engine so she could turn on the heater?
If she did it would call attention to the fact that the car was parked at the curb, occupied.
She decided against it, and focused on the second house up the street from her. No lights brightened its windows, but surely its occupant, Ms. Elaine Odbert, attorney-at-law, would arrive home soon. That is, if the note Sharon had received in the mail this morning could be believed.
But why should she believe it, any more than she’d believed the other two she’d received earlier?
In spite of her resolution not to dwell on them, her mind dredged up the first one as clearly as if she had it in front of her. It had arrived at the apartment on a sunny Tuesday in mid-September. She remembered the day because she was leaving the building to go to the hospital where she did volunteer work every Tuesday afternoon.
As she’d passed the bank of mailboxes she’d stopped to check theirs, and found it filled with envelopes. As usual, most of them had been bills, pleas for money from various charities and advertisements, but as she’d sorted through them one had caught her eye because it was different. A plain white envelope addressed to Mrs. Fergus Lachlan, but with no return address.
Curious, she’d ripped it open and found a folded piece of typing paper. There was no greeting, closure, or signature, and the one line message was typed in capitals. “YOU’D BETTER CHECK OUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR HUSBAND AND ELAINE ODBERT.”
Sharon had been more startled than shaken. Fergus and another woman? Impossible! No! Fergus loved her, and she adored him. Of course, their marriage had had its ups and downs. Fergus acted more like a father than a husband toward her. He tended to be bossy and overprotective, and she often got fed up and overreacted. She knew she should do a better job of controlling her temper, but she was just getting her wings, so to speak, as an independent woman and his habit of making decisions without consulting her was maddening.
Sharon knew that Elaine Odbert was the newest member of Newberry, Everingham and Jessup, the law firm where Fergus was making a name for himself as a rising young defense attorney. She’d even greeted Ms. Odbert a couple of times when she’d gone to the office to meet Fergus for lunch. The woman was thirtysomething and nice looking but not the seductive type.
Sharon had torn up the offending missive and scattered it in the nearest trash can as she’d walked out the door. She wasn’t going to upset him with that kind of garbage. She couldn’t deny that she and Fergus quarreled a lot, but the making up was sheer ecstasy.
Now her reverie was broken by headlights coming slowly down the street toward her, and she snapped to attention. Maybe this was Elaine. In spite of her determination to give no credence to those poison-pen notes her stomach muscles knotted. Damn! So much for her faith in her husband.
She should have destroyed the third note the same as she had the other two and ignored it, but her self-confidence in her own judgment, and even her trust in Fergus’s integrity, had been whittled away by the repeated insinuations. If she ever got her hands on the creep who wrote them she’d throttle him.
Somehow she always thought of the troublemaker as a man. Someone who worked at the firm and was jealous of Fergus’s success. A rival hoping to extract a petty revenge for being left behind in the competitive climb to the top.
Sharon drew a deep breath as the headlights neared Elaine’s driveway, then let it out as the car drove on past and turned in at a house at the other end of the block.
Her relief was maddening. She should have been disappointed that it wasn’t Elaine coming home unaccompanied so that Sharon could prove to herself that her husband wasn’t carrying on with the woman.
A rush of self-disgust nearly overwhelmed her. She shouldn’t have to prove that Fergus was an honorable man. She’d never doubted it until those insidious notes kept coming.
The second one had arrived in October. If it had been packaged the same way as the first had been she probably would have burned it unopened, but this one came in a beige square envelope postmarked from Oak Park, Illinois, the suburb of Chicago where Sharon had been born and raised.
Although her parents were dead, and she had no brothers or sisters, she still had friends there. She’d assumed the envelope was from one of them.
It hadn’t been. Inside she’d found a note card with a reproduction of a Homer Winslow painting on the front and a message again typed in capitals.
She couldn’t remember exactly how it was worded, but it had been one paragraph informing her that because she’d ignored the first note, her husband and Ms. Odbert were now lovers.
Sharon had fought off a chill of foreboding. Why was someone tormenting her this way? Could there possibly be any truth in these vicious missives? No, she couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that! She’d set a match to it in the fireplace and watched it burn, but the feeling of apprehension continued.
She would have told Fergus about it, but he was in Washington that week pleading a case before the Supreme Court and she hadn’t wanted to discuss it on the phone. By the time he’d arrived back home she’d calmed down and realized that by destroying both notes she had no evidence to back up her story.
Not that he wouldn’t have taken her word for it, but she couldn’t bring herself to confront him. She’d tried to deny the doubts that made her so cowardly, but finally decided to wait and see if the writer would continue his insidious campaign before she took any action.
Still, the nagging doubts had persisted, and she’d found herself questioning Fergus when he would call to say he would be working late, or when he had to go into the office on a weekend.
But she’d taken herself firmly in hand after she’d picked up the phone one Sunday afternoon and actually dialed his office number to see if he’d answer. Fortunately she’d caught herself in time and slammed the phone down before it rang at the other end.
She’d been ashamed for letting an anonymous tipster cause her to doubt her husband, and had firmly put it out of her mind.
Sharon shifted uncomfortably. It was really cold now. She could see her breath, and it was clouding up the windshield. She was either going to have to roll down the window or turn on the heater so she could see out.
It was really no contest. No way was she going to open the window and let the cold wind off the lake blow in on her.
She turned on the engine and the heater and again settled back to wait. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute. If something didn’t happen in the next quarter hour she was going home. That’s where she should have stayed in the first place!
The third note had been delivered by messenger just a few hours ago. It was encased in a white business envelope, an exact duplicate of the first one she’d received. Obviously the sender had been confident that he’d planted enough suspicion in her mind to assure her opening it even though she knew it was more of the same vicious lie. She’d played right into his hand.
Reaching for her purse on the seat beside her she rummaged through it in the dark until she came up with the envelope and a penlight she always carried. Quickly extracting the piece of typing paper, she unfolded it and reread the typed message by the dim light of the tiny flashlight.
I TRIED TO HELP YOU, BUT YOU IGNORED MY WARNINGS. NOW YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR YOUR ARROGANCE. ELAINE ODBERT AND FERGUS LACHLAN HAVE RESIGNED FROM THE FIRM AND ARE MAKING PLANS TO ELOPE THIS EVENING. IF YOU WANT TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR HUSBAND YOU’D BETTER BE AT THE ODBERT HOME WHEN ELAINE AND FERGUS RETURN THERE FROM WORK. SURELY YOU AREN’T GOING TO HIDE YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND AND LET THAT BASTARD TREAT YOU SO SHABBILY. THE ADDRESS IS—
Sharon didn’t have to reread the address. It was branded into her brain.
The writer had assumed right. The earlier warnings had planted the malignant seed of doubt in her mind, and by the time the last one arrived she’d been compelled to read it.
Neither could she blithely discount this letter as she had the others, though God knows she’d tried. She’d told herself that Fergus would never be unfaithful to her. He loved her, but even if he hadn’t he was too moral a man to take a mistress when he had a wife.
But that line of thinking led her into a truth she’d preferred not to face. The inescapable fact that she had been the aggressor in their courtship, and in their decision to marry.
She’d seduced him, although he hadn’t put up much of a fight. He had been upset, though, when he discovered, too late to stop, that she was a virgin.
She’d been raised with moral standards, too, but she’d fallen in love with Fergus Lachlan, brilliant young attorney, the first day she’d met him. He’d also been attracted to her then. He’d told her as much.
Had she trapped him into a marriage he hadn’t really wanted because he felt guilty about taking a nineteen-year-old girl’s virginity?
No! She couldn’t believe that. Although he was ten years older and possibly thought he should have exerted more control, she was the one who’d come on to him, and she hadn’t told him ahead of time that it would be her first sexual experience.
If there was blame it was hers, but what could be so wrong about two consenting adults making love?
Besides, in the three years they’d been married he’d never indicated that he was really unhappy. Oh sure, they quarreled a lot, but it was only because she objected to him taking charge of her life and not giving her space to grow and make her own decisions, or mistakes if that was the case. And there’d always been those passionate reunions when they’d both said they were sorry just before they rocketed to the stars.
Most of the time they were still lovers in every sense of the word. They laughed together, played together, sometimes even cried together, and in bed they were sheer magic.
Another set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street in front of her, and this time the front of the garage at the house she was watching lit up and the door opened as the car swung into the driveway. Although she was too far away to identify the driver, Sharon could see that it was a woman and she was alone before the vehicle glided into the garage and the door closed behind it.
This time the relief Sharon felt was joyously welcome. She sank back against the seat and let out the breath she’d been holding. The self-appointed informant had been wrong! Fergus wasn’t with Ms. Odbert. He really did have to work late as he’d told Sharon on the phone when he’d called her earlier in the day.
It was that message from him, seeming to confirm the letter’s evil accusation, that had toppled her off the fence she’d been straddling and frightened her into checking up on him.
How could she have had so little faith in a man she loved as much as she loved her husband?
The lights went on in the Odbert house, and Sharon couldn’t wait to get away from there. Although she doubted that she could bring herself to tell Fergus about this episode, she could try to make up for it by being especially loving when he did get home.