“No. Because I wanted to see you. To talk with you face-to-face.” His features tightened as if he was fighting an emotion he didn’t want me to see. “I miss you, Mellie. I miss you when we’re apart, even if we’re just down the hallway from each other. I miss you when you’re at work and I’m here. I miss you when I close my eyes.”
I reached out to collect Nola’s iPad, unable to look at Jack anymore if I had any hope of clinging to my resolve not to allow my feelings for him to overtake my righteous anger over him leaving me. Again. I completely believed that the punishment he’d delivered far exceeded whatever crime he believed I’d committed.
When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Can we talk?” He sat down on the bench.
“I thought we were.”
“I have some things I need to tell you. They might be hard to hear.”
I managed to keep breathing despite the sensation of my heart flying into my throat before sinking into my stomach. “All right.” I sat down next to him, placing the computer and iPad in the middle to physically distance myself from him. Despite everything, I wasn’t sure I could fully trust myself now that Jack was close enough to touch.
“You’re probably wondering why I was in DC.”
I gave him the look Nola gave me when asked if she’d left the size nine running shoes in the middle of the foyer. “Yes. That and about a dozen other things. But that’s a good place to start.”
“I went to meet an old Army friend of mine, Bobby Hannican. He’s a freelance journalist now as well as an author of a couple of books about well-known hoaxes and conspiracy theories. He’s the one who wrote the story in USA Today about the Hope Diamond and its possible twin.” He took a deep breath. “I was the one who fed him the idea.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, the recollection of where I’d seen the word “hoax” stealing my breath for a moment. It was in the title of whatever Jack was working on, which I’d seen on his laptop. Power, Greed, and Dirty Deeds: The Hoax That Felled a Criminal Family Dynasty. I sat up straighter. “And?”
“I needed to make sure that there really was no firm evidence to support the existence of such a diamond. That all the online chatter and theories are a lot like the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Interesting to think about but with no basis in reality.”
“And what did Bobby say?”
“He said there was a ninety-nine percent certainty that such a thing doesn’t exist.”
“But what about those people who do believe there’s another half of the Hope Diamond hidden somewhere? Like Blackbeard. Where are they getting their information?”
He rested his elbows on his knees and looked down at the ground. “That’s the thing, Mellie.” He drew in a deep breath before meeting my eyes. “I’m Blackbeard.”
I waited a full minute before saying anything, either for him to tell me he was joking or for any of it to make any sense. Finally, I said, “But why? I don’t understand. . . .”
He sat up, his eyes steady as he regarded me. “Can’t you guess?”
“No, Jack. I really can’t. Because you’ve been basically lying to me all this time—not to mention to all those people in those forums who seem to hang on Blackbeard’s every word.”
“Like Marc Longo.”
He paused as if expecting everything to suddenly make sense. But my anger pushed all of my brain cells aside, nearly erasing any coherent thought. “He’s an imbecile. Now tell me something I don’t already know.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve been waiting a long time to exact my revenge for everything that he’s done to me. To us. It blinded me to everything else in my life. I thought if I could bring him down by not just exposing his grandfather’s seedy and murderous past in a book, but also by exposing Marc and making him look like a fool for falling for a hoax manufactured by me, it would be the perfect revenge. At least until I realized the toll it was taking on you. And me. On our marriage.”
I stood, attempting to catch my breath, then sat back down, realizing that my legs were shaking. “I get lying to Marc. He deserves it. But why me, Jack? Why couldn’t you let me in on the secret?”
He rubbed his hands on his pants and sat up straight, avoiding my gaze. “Because . . .” He paused, considering his words. “Because I wanted to do this on my own, without your help. Without anyone’s help. I wanted to work on a project completely on my own to prove to myself that I still could, that I hadn’t lost that ‘special sauce for success’ that I’d once had.” I watched as his jaw worked beneath the beard stubble, grinding on the words. “I needed you to be proud of me.”
I sucked in my breath, any compassion, understanding, and love quickly overshadowed by a flash of red heat. Even though my father had told me almost the exact same thing, I still couldn’t believe that Jack had just dragged us both through hell because of his bruised male ego.
I looked at Jack, my mouth moving as I searched for any words that might come close to expressing how I felt. I closed my eyes so I could concentrate and find the right response, the precise thing I needed to say to explain an emotion that was like disbelief wrapped tightly around abject fury, but nothing seemed to fit. Remembering my bouts with therapy, I took four or five deep and calming breaths. Finally, I settled on the first thing that had come to me when he finished speaking. “You’re an idiot, Jack.”
He sat up, his look of surprise slowly fading into appreciation. “Do I get points for agreeing?” He gave me the grin that almost made me lose my resolve.
“A few,” I conceded. “How could you even think that I’m not proud of you, regardless of what you consider your successes and failures? I love you. And that means I support you through all the ups and downs of your career. I thought we were a team.”
I was too close to tears to continue speaking. He reached his hand over to cover mine, but I shook it off, too bewildered and angry to allow him to touch me and dilute everything I was feeling.
Very softly, he said, “We are a team. That’s why you’ve been feeding Suzy Dorf with ideas for her column to antagonize Marc. We’ve apparently been working with the same goal in mind. Just separately.”