Olivia couldn’t make him see that Alan was a different type of person. He wasn’t as strong as Kit. And Alan hadn’t had the advantages that Kit had. Nothing she said made him understand.
She rang the doorbell, then waited, her heart pounding. When Willie came to the door, Olivia was pleasantly surprised. Willie no longer looked like she’d never done an exercise in her life. She was trim and had on makeup and her hair was soft and sleek. She was in her late sixties now but she looked good.
“Olivia Montgomery!” Willie said. “How nice to see you! How’s your family?”
“Fine. And yours?” She was trying to dredge up what she knew from her two roads of memory. Willie and Alan. Willie and her contractor husband. Willie and... “Alana is your daughter. And you’re Kevin’s stepmother.”
“Oh heavens! What’s he done now? He didn’t try to sell you anything, did he? Sorry. Where are my manners? I just made some iced tea. Come in and have some.”
Willie’s kitchen was pretty and bright and clean, and they sat at the little breakfast table with frosty glasses of tea.
“Now...” Willie said, letting Olivia know she was ready to hear whatever she had to say.
“I know we don’t know each other very well, but—”
“Don’t you remember that I met Alan through you? That you invited me to that appliance sale?”
Olivia remembered it well but she didn’t get them together. “Diane—”
Willie laughed. “That’s right. You and the man you married locked Alan and Diane in that closet together. I thought that was really funny. When Mr. Trumbull opened it, they were kissing. I thought what a great guy Alan was to turn something bad into good. He married Diane and after she died...” Willie shrugged.
“You were there.”
Willie’s face changed. “To my great loss.” She got up to get some cookies. “Have some. I can’t eat any as I gain weight just smelling them.”
“You married Alan?” Olivia encouraged.
“Yes, I married the lazy jerk.” Willie waved her hand. “I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but after what I went through with that man I can say anything. But you don’t want to hear about that.”
“I do!” Olivia said. “I want to hear every word.”
“See this?” Willie motioned to her huge, new house. “This is what a man is supposed to provide for a woman. A home.” She wiggled her left hand to show a big diamond ring. “This is what he’s supposed to give her. But Alan didn’t do anything. He was a parasite! You’ll never believe this, but he expected me to do all the work of running that appliance store. And his mother was just like him. They were like twin sci-fi creatures that latched on and tried to suck all the juice out of me.”
She grabbed the sides of her hair and pulled. “It still makes me so angry I want to scream.” She let go of her hair. “Alan came up with grandiose schemes of more stores and how he was going to do all the work. So his mother bought a store, then Alan went off to play golf. One time I got really angry and demanded that he show me his golf clubs. The bastard didn’t have any. I’m not sure but I think he was having an affair and he expected me to support him and his mistress!” She leaned forward. “Right after our daughter was born, I got out!” Willie grimaced. “When I think of that man! Do you know how he met his third wife?”
She didn’t wait for Olivia to answer. “Alan had a girl who worked in the office. She was really good with numbers and people. A real find. One day he came to me—by that time I was working for my current husband—and said he wanted Alana for the day. I thought that was weird since he didn’t pay much attention to her, but I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Olivia said softly, eyes wide.
“Alan took our daughter to work and did his helpless act. He was soooo good at that. You ever know a man who did that?”
“Yes,” Olivia said. “Intimately.”
“So anyway, Alan told her I was a lazy ex-wife and he had no one to help him, et cetera. Six months later they were married. She divorced him two years after that. I know all this because she came to me to apologize for all the bad things she’d thought about me.”
“It wasn’t me,” Olivia whispered.
“You?” Willie said. “You can’t mean you and Alan. I can’t imagine you would ever fall for a do-nothing like Alan Trumbull.”
“Only if I had a trauma in my life so horrible that it made me feel like I deserved to be treated badly.”
Willie looked at her for a moment. “That’s right. You’re a psychologist, aren’t you? Maybe I should make an appointment and talk about how bad Alan made me feel. He had me believing I didn’t deserve more than he gave me—which wasn’t much of anything.”
“What happened to Kevin?”
“Poor kid. He’s very much like his father. Married a couple of times, but they didn’t last long. No kids.”
“Was one of them a girl named Hildy?”
“Wow! You’ve got a good memory. He dated a big girl named Hildy when he was in his twenties. But by that time the appliance stores were failing. When she dumped Kevin, he was real upset about it. Personally, I think she wanted a man with money.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Wasn’t she in that play you guys put on last year? That was great! I can’t believe you got two big-name movie stars here to little Summer Hill. You want some more tea?”
Olivia stood up. “I want to go see my home,” she said. “I want to remember all the good. And most of all, I want to forgive myself.”
Willie was looking at her as though she wasn’t quite sane. “Sure. I’ll show you out.”
As Olivia got into her car, all she could think was that Alan’s misery wasn’t her fault! Her ability to do things, to manage multiple appliance stores, to run a house, take care of a difficult child, all of it were things he wanted. But he’d made her feel...
Olivia had to pull over to the side of the road to bury her face in her hands and let herself cry. But it was a good cry, one of relief. She had carried so much guilt in her! During all those years she was married to Alan, she’d felt that she’d ruined his life. If she hadn’t gone after him, he would have found a sweet girl like Willie. They would have been a family and been happy.
But that wasn’t true! Alan got the woman he’d loved for so many years—but without Olivia supporting them by working six days a week, they weren’t happy. Willie said Alan was a parasite. But wasn’t that what Willie was too? The only thing she’d said about the husband she had now was that he could provide her with a good house and rings for her fingers.
Olivia looked out the windshield. She’d tried hard to give people what they said they wanted. Alan said he wanted more stores, more of her being a wife to him. By that he meant running the house as well as the stores. Taking care of Kevin, rescuing Kevin, trying to make Alan feel like a man.
Olivia began to smile. Willie was right in that Olivia would never have fallen for a man like Alan. He and his stores had been her punishment for the guilt she felt at losing her daughter.
But that hadn’t happened! For a moment, she closed her eyes and remembered seeing her beautiful daughter grow up. Tisha had been a quiet child who loved being with her parents wherever they went. For years, they were a happy threesome, content to follow Kit around the world. He’d come home and tell them they were to move to Yemen—or Dubai or Morocco.
Usually somewhere in the Middle East, as that was Kit’s area of expertise. He’d leave it to his wife and daughter to pack up and move. It was what Rowan said had been dumped on his mother and she couldn’t handle it. But Olivia had loved it!