“Excuse me?”
“That you’re eating for two.”
She tried to hide her dismay, but saw by his expression that she’d failed. “Don’t be mad. I stopped by the hospital, he had just found out. He … was out of his mind with worry. And had no one else to talk to.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you were there for him.”
“And you,” he said. “I’m here for you, too, you know.”
Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked against them. “Damn hormones.”
He laughed. “How’re you feeling?”
“Except for the tears, puking and headaches, I’m great.”
“That’ll all pass, though. Right?”
“It better.” She spooned another big bite of brownie and ice cream into her mouth. “At last,” she said around her mouthful, “I can eat like a man.”
He shook his head, that charming grin returning. “I’ve got a confession to make.” He looked sheepish. “I knew you were baking brownies, that’s why I came up here. I have a particular weakness for them.”
She laughed. “Were they worth the subterfuge?”
“Absolutely.” He spooned up another bite. “They’re amazing. The best I’ve ever had.”
“That would make my mom really happy.” She didn’t want to linger on that thought and moved quickly on. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. But it might cost you a brownie to go.”
“You’ve got it. But only one.”
He laughed, nodded and took a bite.
“Why aren’t you married?”
He almost choked on the mouthful.
“You must have gotten that question before?”
He cleared his throat. “Only from old ladies at weddings.”
“And now, friends’ pregnant wives.”
He eyed her, amused. “Why do you want to know? You got a friend to fix me up with?”
“Maybe.” She arched an eyebrow in question.
“Right girl never came along.”
“Never?”
“There was one girl, but it didn’t work out.”
“Where’d you meet her?”
“LSU.”
She scraped the last of the melted cream from her bowl. “Why didn’t it work out?”
“Two brownies.”
She looked up.
“It’ll cost you two.”
“Deal.”
“She wasn’t interested in farm life.”
“This isn’t exactly a farm.”
“She didn’t want to live in the country and said she didn’t want to come home to a man who smelled like a barn and had dirt under his fingernails.”
An ugly edge had crept into his voice, and Bailey realized the woman had hurt him deeply.
He looked away. When he continued, the edge was gone. “I was an Ag student, what did she expect?”
“What was her name?”
“Why? Do you think you might recognize her?”
She had struck a nerve, she realized, and reached across the table and touched his hand. “Forgive me, Paul. I don’t know what’s come over me, being so nosy.”
He grimaced. “No, forgive me. After all these years, you’d think I wouldn’t be so sensitive about it.”
“She doesn’t sound like she was a very nice person.”
“She wasn’t, I realize that now.” He looked at her hand on his, then back up at her. “But you know how young love is.”
“Blind?” she said awkwardly, drawing her hand back.
“And hormonal.” He stood and carried his bowl to the sink. “I suppose I should get back to the horses.”
Silence fell between them. He cleared his throat. “Can I offer you some friendly advice?”
“Sure.”
“After True left, Raine packed up everything that had been hers, everything she’d touched that marked this as her home. But all that was left was a shell. Of this place”—he motioned with his hand—“and of Logan. Until you. Logan’s happy again. Fill this house up with the two of you, with your children and theirs.”
A lump of tears settled in her throat. She swallowed against them.
“Let everything else go, Bailey. All of it. Questions and doubt. What anybody else thinks. You know what’s real. You do.”
Yes, she thought as he walked away. Once she’d recovered her lost memories, they would move on. Focus on their marriage, their family. Everything else would take its rightful place as nothing.
Until then, the hole was too big and too dark, filled with nothing but a red shoe.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Tuesday, April 22
3:20 P.M.
After Paul left, the quiet thundered down on Bailey. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop wondering: Had the shoe she and Tony unearthed been a right, not a left?
Her memory could be wrong. It probably was. Considering the events of the past days, why should she trust her memory? It was laughable. Even so, that shoe didn’t make sense to her.
She brought her hand to her belly, to their baby, growing there inside her. What were her options, right now?
Think, Bailey. Sort it out. Facts from fears.
Fact. Tony had unearthed a ladies shoe—or a pair—from the swimming hole on Abbott Farm property.
She was afraid it had belonged to True. And if not True, one of the other young women who had gone missing from Wholesome over the years. Why? Because Billy Ray believed Abbott Farm was where all the bodies were buried.
She brought the heels of her hands to her eyes. Because he believed Logan was a killer. The man was obsessed with the notion. Because he’d been in love with True.
And from that tiny seed, her fears had grown, multiplied and spiraled out of control.
Bailey pulled in a deep, steadying breath. Time to take control back. She could eliminate one of her fears quickly, by learning True’s shoe size.
She checked her watch. The way she figured it, she had an hour, tops, before Logan returned home. In that time, she could do a quick search of the bedroom closets and snoop around the attic a bit. Paul said Raine had taken care of True’s things for Logan. She could have donated them, as Bailey had her mother’s. Or, perhaps, in a symbolic gesture, hauled them to the dump.
But maybe not. Maybe they’d gone no farther than the attic. It was worth a shot.