She thought of the comfort of strangers and started telling Julia about the night Cameron died. Only to fill the silence in her head. Only to get back at Cameron for letting that last question dangle unanswered. Bastard. She certainly wasn’t doing it because he’d told her to tell.
“We had a fight. A big fight. I can’t remember what it was about.” She clamped her lips shut on the lie, started over. “It was about children. He wanted them. I wasn’t ready.” She never would have been ready. She was barren, and the thought of adopting was too much. The awesome responsibility of motherhood chilled the blood in her veins. “I threw his cigarettes down the garbage disposal and ground them up. He went down to the corner 7-11 for more.” With the short, clipped sentences, Max didn’t feel anything as she spoke, because she refused to see the pictures that went with it.
“And that’s where he was shot.” There, she’d told. What more did Cameron want? She hadn’t mentioned that she’d seen it all. She hadn’t said the three men went after her when they were done with Cameron. They dragged her from the mini-mart, raped her, beat her, and left her for dead. But no, Max hadn’t told Julia that. She couldn’t give the other woman that much of an opening for deeper questions.
It was Julia’s turn to reach out. The woman’s fingers were cold, as cold as the only solace Cameron could offer.
“I’m sorry I asked, Max. You obviously blame yourself.” Soothing tone, that of the mother Max had lost.
Max blinked. She wanted to laugh. Blame herself? She’d blamed herself for every bad thing that happened since the day her mother died when she was eight years old. She took responsibility for none of the good. Another of the things she and Cameron argued about incessantly. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting maudlin. I hate that.”
“It’s only natural. You loved your husband very much.”
Max looked up. “Didn’t you?”
Julia drew in a deep breath. The mistiness returned to her eyes. “It’s a shock. It hurts that I won’t be able to discuss my day with him. But I won’t cry two years from now the way you do.”
Max immediately touched her cheek. Her fingers came away damp. “I’m not crying.” She had no explanation for what the moisture was.
Julia gave her a soft, knowing look. Max hated that spark of pity in the other woman’s eyes. Somewhere along the way, Julia had loved, loved and lost, and now she thought she knew everything there was to know about Max Starr.
“I’m not crying,” Max reiterated with an edge to her voice.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Let me put it another way. I will have no emotion two years from today. At least about Lance.” She folded her cocktail napkin over and over in half-inch pleats. “It isn’t really fair either. You see, Lance wasn’t a bad man.”
“Wasn’t he?” Good men didn’t obsess about other women and wouldn’t flaunt their affairs as Lance had done in Julia’s office. Like rubbing salt in a wound, even if he didn’t think Julia had an injury, he’d let Angela Rocket take him to the stars in a way that would cause Julia the most humiliation.
Maybe he’d gotten his just desserts dying as he did.
Contemplating her napkin, Julia tried to explain. “He took such good care of me, did anything I wanted, anything I asked.” Who was this woman trying to convince, herself or Max? And if this was an act for Max, exactly what was Julia trying to hide?
“Didn’t you ask him to go to your gala on Saturday night?”
Julia’s head came up, a startled look in her eyes. Perhaps frightened. “Yes, but...”
“Instead he was betraying you with another woman.” She stopped, let that sink in, then lunged forward with—“In your office”—feeling only a bit of a bitch after the deed was done.
Julia swallowed, closed her eyes and took a deep breath in much the same way Max did to calm herself. Then she opened her eyes. A hint of pain remained. “One should never have inappropriate expectations,” she murmured.
“I don’t think expecting fidelity in your marriage is inappropriate.”
Julia smiled, softly, sadly. “Maybe. But then maybe acceptance is what happens when you settle for something before you know what you really want.”
Max tipped her head. “I don’t really get what you mean.”
A full-throated laugh this time, still sad. “I know. I’m being enigmatic. I’m sorry.”
They stared at each other for five seconds, perhaps more, then Max broke into the silence with the question she’d wanted to ask all along. She figured she’d earned the right by baring her soul. “Did you kill your husband?”
Julia ran a hand through her hair. “Baxter hasn’t asked me that. Even the police haven’t asked outright.”