“They were having an affair,” Caroline repeated, trying not to laugh. The man was out of his mind. Hunter had always seemed oblivious to Rain’s obvious charms. And even in the unlikely event that he and Rain had been involved, what difference did it make to her now? She was no longer Hunter’s wife. Other women were no longer her problem. Diana was the one Jerrod should be talking to. Hunter was her headache now.
The waiter set a breadbasket on their table. “Try the olive bread,” Jerrod instructed her. “It’s the best in the city.” He took a slice and slathered it with butter. “I really thought you knew about it, or at the very least suspected.”
“When exactly did this affair supposedly take place?”
“Fifteen years ago.”
Caroline felt a numbness begin to worm its way into the pit of her stomach. “Fifteen years ago?”
“And there’s no ‘supposing’ about it. Rain admitted to the whole sordid thing. Frankly, I think she was relieved to finally get it off her chest. A chest that, I have to admit, I shall dearly miss.”
Caroline felt the numbness starting to spread throughout her body. She’d known that Hunter had been cheating on her repeatedly in the aftermath of Samantha’s disappearance, but she’d never in her wildest dreams thought one of those affairs might be with Rain. “You mean after he got back from Mexico?”
“After. Before. During.” Jerrod popped the piece of olive bread in his mouth and chewed vigorously.
The numbness took root in Caroline’s lungs. She couldn’t breathe. “Wait. You’re saying they were sleeping together while we were in Rosarito?”
“Happy anniversary.” He raised his glass in a toast, then immediately set it back on the table. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be glib. You don’t deserve that. You were clearly as duped as I was.”
“And Rain just blurted all this out?”
“Blurted out a lot more than that. As I said, I think she was relieved to finally come clean.”
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“That while we were in Mexico, she and Hunter were together whenever they had the chance, that they’d even snuck away during your anniversary dinner, that they were going at it hot and heavy while your husband was supposedly checking on Samantha…”
A strangled cry escaped Caroline’s lips.
“I wasn’t going to tell you. Water under the bridge and all that. What possible good would your knowing this do after all this time? But with all the recent stuff in the news, I couldn’t get you out of my head. I know it doesn’t change anything, but I guess I thought you had the right to know.”
Caroline jumped to her feet. “I have to go.”
“What? No, wait. You haven’t eaten. I thought we might go for a walk on the beach later, maybe take in a movie…”
Caroline stared at him in disbelief. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, running from the patio.
Jerrod might be right about Hunter and Rain, but if what he said was true, he was wrong about it not changing anything.
It changed everything.
The phone was ringing, interrupting a nightmare in which Caroline was being pursued down a dark corridor by a man wearing a hockey mask and brandishing a large butcher knife. “Shit,” she cried, sitting up in bed and trying to orient herself to her surroundings. She was in her room, in her bed, the odor of stale popcorn hanging in the air like cheap cologne. It was dark, except for the light coming from the TV on the opposite wall. On the screen, a terrified young woman was being chased through a cornfield by a knife-wielding lunatic. The digital clock beside her bed read 1:35.
“Fright Night will continue in a moment,” announced the disembodied voice from the TV as Caroline muted the sound and reached for the phone, her heart pounding, her adrenaline pumping. Being chased by a knife-wielding psychopath was never a good thing; phone calls in the middle of the night were almost as bad.
“Hello?”
“You better get over here,” Hunter said.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Michelle. She’s…”
“Oh, God.”
“Take it easy,” her ex-husband said, his voice instantly softening. “She’s fine.”
Caroline’s mind struggled to focus, to arrange the events of the evening in some sort of order. It was Saturday night; Michelle was at a party; Caroline had spent the night alone, watching horror movies in bed, a bowl of homemade popcorn in her lap. At some point during the nonstop carnage, she’d obviously fallen asleep. Michelle had just as obviously missed her one o’clock curfew. What was she doing at Hunter’s apartment?
“I don’t understand,” Caroline said, her brain unable to make sense of the situation, her head threatening to explode.
“She’s drunk.”
“What?”
“You’d better get over here.”
Caroline glanced down at her butter-stained nightgown, then back at the clock. It was late. She was in bed. Michelle was unharmed. The fact that her fifteen-year-old daughter had been drinking was worrisome, but it wasn’t exactly a medical emergency. “Can’t she just stay there tonight? I’ll come get her first thing in the morning.”