Wreckage (37 page)

“Swear to me that we won’t touch that mess until at least ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his firm torso.

Jerry chuckled, kissing her on the nose. “As long as you promise you’ll let me help. It’s a big job for one person, learned that the hard way.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, pushing open the door to their bedroom, “it’s going to be a whole family thing, and whether they like it or not, the boys are going to help too. Time’s flying by. They’ll be out of the house, living on their own, before we know it.”

“Oh yes,” Jerry joked, following her in. “Yale called, Josh is in. Full ride and everything.”

“Great news!” Lillian laughed, flopping down on the bed, kicking off her tight heels. “But he’d better wait till he hears back from Harvard before he makes his final decision.”

Jerry pulled off his belt and set it on the top of the dresser, then did the same with his watch. Untucking his blue polo from the top of his jeans, he sat down beside her to untie his Nikes. The bed squeaked and sunk just far enough that their shoulders touched. She let her head settle onto his shoulder.

“You did great tonight,” he said, dropping his shoe to the floor with a thump.

“Everyone had a good time, didn’t they?”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Jerry whispered, bumping the top of her head with his. “Seeing Dave must’ve been rough.”

She bit her lip. Why did they have to talk about Dave right now? They hadn’t talked about him in a long time and it had been a good thing. This night was hard enough without being reminded of all the half-truths and bold-faced lies she told every day. She always had to lie about Dave, so even hearing his name made a pit of nervous guilt fill her midsection.

“It wasn’t great but it’s getting easier,” she sighed. It was true; it was much easier to think about him now. Plus she hoped Jerry would drop it if she showed she was over
him
.

His hand crawled over the sage-and-white flowered bedspread to claim her hand. Her wedding ring, a plain shiny band just waiting for all those beautiful unavoidable scratches, dug into the top of her finger when he gave it a squeeze. Something about his silence was unfamiliar.

“That baby was cute, right?” Jerry asked, the subject suddenly changing.

Dave and Beth’s baby. Of course, that’s what this was about. Was he going to offer to have another baby, like he did every few months? Or perhaps he was playing the game of human lie detector, testing for some underlying jealousy hidden inside of her.

“He was beautiful,” she answered, as blandly as she could, making sure her hand neither gripped his too hard nor loosened too much.

“Um,” he stalled again, staring at a marinara stain on her jeans that had started to peel up. “Did he look like his brother?”

“Brother?” Had Jerry lost his memory that easily? “Dave and Beth don’t have any other children, you know that.”

He nodded. “I was talking about Paul.”

The name sent a thrill through her but hearing the way Jerry said it made her instantly afraid. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” He didn’t break eye contact.

She’d been lying about Paul so long it took half a second to understand what Jerry was saying.

“Oh my goodness . . .” she managed to say, her mouth opened in shock, “. . . you know.”

She should’ve played it cool. She should’ve repeated the lie, but the way he said it made her realize Jerry would no longer believe her lies. This scared her so much she wanted to run.

“How?” she said, surprised he was still holding her hand. “How did you find out?”

“I’ve known the whole time.” He almost smiled. “They told me in the hospital, while you were unconscious. I was your next of kin. I made all your medical decisions. When they told me you’d recently had a baby, I told them they were mistaken. Then”—he looked down as he relived this memory—“I saw the way Dave asked about you and spent every moment by your side. It was easy to put together what the doctors were saying and what I witnessed.”

This was the moment she’d been dreading, someone finding out the truth about her and Dave, about Paul. It haunted her nights so she couldn’t sleep and sat on her shoulders during the day so she couldn’t be happy, she couldn’t be normal, because someone might get close enough to find out.

“Oh, Jerry, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me,” she pleaded, pulling his hand to her chest, against her heart.

He nodded, the corner of his mouth pulling up a millimeter. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

“You should’ve told me you knew, Jerry. Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know how badly I wanted to tell you? But I thought I’d lose you and the boys. I thought you’d hate me.”

Jerry shook his head. “I don’t hate you. I didn’t even hate you back then. I kept waiting for you to tell me. When you didn’t, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I was too afraid you’d run off with Dave.” That angry vein in his head started to swell. That meant his blood pressure was on the rise.

Lillian traced her cool fingers along the pounding vein. Under her touch, it started to slow. “If you forgave me,” she asked gently, “why did you wait so long to say anything?”

“Because once we came home and all those news shows and reporters started to hound us, I finally saw why the lie was so important. If you told them about Dave and the baby, if we had to listen to it being talked about and judged on the screens of millions of viewers throughout the world, it would’ve killed our family.” He kissed her palm before she reached around his neck, rubbing the short delicate hair that tapered off before the top of his collar. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“I had a very long time to think about it.”

“You could’ve told me,” Jerry said.

“I’m glad you know,” she said before pulling him the last few inches to where their lips could meet in a short but tender kiss before Jerry held her away, his hands on either shoulder.

“You can’t lie to me anymore. Promise,” he pleaded.

“Never again.” When the words left her mouth it was like a giant weight lifting.

Jerry put space between himself and Lillian, leaning against one of the bedposts. “Then I think you have something to tell me, don’t you?” When he crossed his arms, Lillian was confused.

What further confession could he want? She had a lot of details to fill in but it seemed he had the gist. She’d had an affair with another man and had his child. She’d lied about this fact. The only other secret of any great significance was . . .

“How did you find out I killed Kent?” The words tripped out. If someone besides Dave told Jerry the truth, that meant her lies could no longer keep her safe.

“You did what?” he asked.

“Killed Kent, stabbed him, whatever. Who else knows?” She jumped to her feet . . . She had to call Dave. He’d be in as much trouble as she was.

“Lillian, I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about.”

“You can’t represent me, can you?” She crossed to her closet and pulled an empty suitcase from the top shelf. “You know someone good. Right, Jer? Or I could leave the country for a while.” Throwing it on the bed she ran to her underwear drawer and started tossing every last bra inside.

He was by her side instantly, grabbing her elbow, shaking her just enough to break through her panic. “What’re you doing, Lillian? I didn’t say you killed
anyone
.”

“But you said you wanted to know my other secret.”

“I was talking about you visiting Dave in LA,” he said, her overreaction scaring away the harshness. “
You
killed Kent?” Jerry took a step back. Now she’d done it.

“He was insane, Jerry, totally bonkers. He was always touching me, trying to do things. He found me alone once and tried to . . . He was going to . . .”

“Wait. He tried to rape you?” He was almost yelling. Lillian was afraid he’d wake the kids. “Why the HELL didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t, Jerry. I
killed
him. I didn’t want to make you an accomplice after the fact or whatever that was. You’d go to jail too. You could get disbarred.”

“It sounds to me like it was self-defense.” His lawyer brain was working.

“I don’t know, Jerry. Dave tried to stop him and Kent was going to kill him so I . . . I stabbed him in the back.” She bit her lip, waiting for the disgust she knew was coming. “I’m a murderer.”

“That’s not murder.” Jerry touched her lips with his fingertip, compassion written in the wrinkles on his forehead. “Does anyone else know? Besides Dave?”

Lillian was surprised at the softness in his voice. “No. We lied, remember?”

“Good.” He stared at her, silent for a moment. “What about the rape? Did he hurt you?”

She blew out a shaky breath. “He hurt me but he didn’t rape me, if that’s what you’re asking. Hey, Jer.” She took his hand. “I’m okay. We can talk about this later but right now I want to know what you meant about Dave and me in LA.”

“Oh, that.” He shoved the suitcase off the bed and placed her down as though she were a fragile piece of china that might shatter. “Dave. LA.”

Lillian glimpsed herself in the mirror on the other side of the room. Her hair was growing, finally, and almost touched her shoulders; dark lines of mascara-stained tears snaked down her face. She wiped them with her fingers before grabbing the edge of the bedspread. Dave in LA. Easier than Kent but not by much.

“Before you start, that visit wasn’t what you think it was,” she said with a giant sniff, aware that she sounded like an incoherent idiot. She wiped her face, beyond caring that the blobs of mascara soaked into the white fabric. How she ever thought white a good color for anything in a house with kids, she’d never know.

“I know it wasn’t.” He climbed on the bed in front of her. He wasn’t horrified, even though he’d just found out his wife was a murderer. “I had you followed.”

“Followed?” Her mouth fell open. “Like by a detective?”

“I think they call themselves private investigators, but yeah, whatever you call them it means the same thing. I paid a man to follow you in LA and tell me what happened.” He rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “That sounds totally crazy when I say it out loud. You have to understand, I was insane with jealousy and certain that you were going to leave me any second. You’d think it’d be easier to accept that fact after living without you so long, but that made it harder.” His hand rested on her knee and she covered it with her own. “I’ll always love you.”

“I love you too, Jerry.” She let herself squeeze his hand affectionately before pleading. “I promised I wouldn’t tell. He’s kept his promises to me, I can’t break mine.”

Jerry didn’t want to hear it. He slapped at the duvet cover. “Stop, Lillian. Would you listen? You don’t have to tell, I figured it out, I have to admit”—he rubbed the angry vein on his forehead—“I was confused when the private investigator told me you two went to a fertility clinic. I couldn’t figure it out. I thought that meant you were planning on being together, having a family. That’s why I confronted you at the hotel.”

“But I picked you,” Lillian interrupted, leaning toward him till she could smell his cologne.

“I know. That threw me off. But I got this funny feeling when I talked to Beth and she told me how happy she and Dave were and how they were trying to start a family, and a strange thought stuck in my mind. Then, when I saw that baby tonight, it all made sense.” He tapped his temple. “That baby they were holding, that’s
your
baby, isn’t it?” His look was hard and sharp.

“He’s not my baby; he’s Dave and Beth’s baby.” He put two fingers on her lips.

“You promised no more lies, Lillian. The truth.”

She couldn’t find any other way out. “The truth?” she asked, slowly. “Yes. Genetically he’s my son.”

As soon as she handed over her last secret, she felt . . . free. She hadn’t realized the weight of her lies had been holding her down so hard she could barely move, and even with Jerry sitting in front of her, angry and judgmental, she felt like singing.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Jerry asked.

“No, Jerry, it doesn’t bother me. Beth’s sterile so it had to be a donor. They were going to use a donor egg from a stranger and the thought of that killed me. Dave was a wonderful father to Paul and he said Beth had changed. If he’s willing to forgive her, it must be true. I wanted to be the one to give them the chance to have some of the happiness we have with
our
boys. Plus, it helps me with missing Paul. I feel like a piece of him is living out there.”

“Does she know?”

Lillian shook her head. “She doesn’t know the identity of the donor.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Don’t you think she has the right to know?”

“The only reason Dave didn’t tell her is because I asked him not to.” She shrugged. “I thought it didn’t matter since the donor was going to be anonymous anyway.”

He seemed to consider her words for a second, looking small and too much like Josh for her to stay mad at him. She crawled across the bed and put her arms around him.

“I don’t know what to think about this whole baby thing.” He paused. “But I want you to know up front that, if it’s okay with Dave and Beth, you can see him, Lillian. I won’t keep you from your baby. I promise,” Jerry whispered into the crease of her neck. She rubbed his back. “You must think I’m a monster if you thought you had to hide all this from me.”

“I thought I was protecting you, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

He nodded into her shoulder and then kissed it before holding her face in his hands; a little sniffle and some red around the eyes were the only sign he’d been emotional.

“We have a long night ahead. I want the whole story. The real one.” He grabbed her iPhone off the bureau to his right. “And I think it’s time that you call Dave and Beth.”

“I can call Dave? Are you sure?” Lillian was stunned. She didn’t know what changed inside her husband but she felt guilty she’d never thought him possible of it.

“Positive.” He kissed her mouth before walking away, punching a few buttons on his phone to call the takeout place he still had on speed dial from his single-dad days. “Kung pao chicken?”