The color drained from Hunter’s face, like milk from a straw. He raised his hands in surrender. “I just want you to calm down and lower your voice. I’m prepared to discuss this…”
“You’re prepared to discuss this?” Caroline repeated incredulously. “After fifteen years, you’re prepared to discuss this?”
“Come into the living room. We’ll sit down, talk about this like two rational adults.” He motioned toward the large sun-filled room on his right.
Caroline almost laughed as she followed him into the tastefully furnished living room whose wall of front windows overlooked the ocean. Did he know how ridiculous he sounded? Didn’t he realize she’d ceased being a rational adult fifteen years ago? She sank into the overstuffed pillows of the aubergine velvet sofa. He remained on his feet, hovering over the gold brocade armchair to her left.
“What is it, exactly, that you think you know?”
“I know you were fucking Rain…”
“Do you think you could stop using that word…?”
“No, I don’t fucking think I can stop using that fucking word,” Caroline told him, watching him wince. “It’s a good word. A great word. And I don’t fucking think I know anything. I know, for a fucking fact, that you were fucking Rain Bolton. You’re not really going to try to deny it, are you?”
Hunter looked on the verge of doing just that, then thought better of it. “All right. Fine. Yes. I had an affair with Rain. But that was after we got back from Mexico, when you didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Liar!” Caroline snapped.
“Caroline…”
“I spoke to Jerrod Bolton today. He called me, told me that Rain had confessed the whole thing. They’re getting a divorce, by the way. You can be very proud of yourself.”
Hunter sank into the armchair, said nothing.
“You made me think it was my fault, that you were leaving me because you couldn’t live with the blame you saw in my eyes every day. That it was my coldness that drove you into the arms of other women. When the truth was that you’d been sleeping with other women all along. Before we went to Rosarito. After we came home. While we were there.”
“Okay. Okay. You win. I’m a total shit. Is that what you want to hear me say?”
“I already know you’re a shit. I don’t need you to tell me,” Caroline shot back. She pushed her hair away from her face, shaking her head with the memory of their last night together. “When I think of how I begged you, pleaded with you to stay, promised you that things would be different if you’d just give me another chance…”
“You didn’t want that. Not really. We both knew that. We both knew it was over, that it had been over for two years.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t understand what possible good can come of talking about this now.”
“You really don’t get it?”
“If it’s an apology you’re after…”
“I don’t want your damned apology.”
“Then what do you want?”
Caroline ignored the question. “You were sleeping with Rain,” she reiterated.
Once again Hunter raised his hands in surrender. “Yes. I believe that fact has already been stipulated to.”
“And you were sleeping with her while we were in Rosarito.”
“Yes.”
“On the night of our tenth anniversary.”
“Yes, dammit.”
“No swearing, please,” Caroline said, because she couldn’t help herself. “And you were with her when you were supposedly checking on our children.”
“You and I had been taking turns checking them every half hour, for God’s sake. You’d just been up there. You said they were fine.”
“They were fine,” Caroline said angrily. Was he implying otherwise?
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Hunter stared up at the bleached wooden beams that stretched across the high ceiling, as if he half expected an answer might be buried in their grain.
“I want you to tell me why you kept this a secret for fifteen years, why you didn’t say anything when the police asked you…”
“What was I going to tell them, Caroline? That I hadn’t actually checked on my kids because I was busy screwing my friend’s wife?”
“Yes,” Caroline said. “That’s exactly what you should have told them.”
“How would that have helped? Think about it. Our baby was gone. You were hysterical. The last thing you needed to hear was that I was being unfaithful. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t hurt you that way…”
“Don’t you dare try to pull that kind of crap with me. Not now. I’m not buying it anymore. You weren’t thinking about my feelings or what I needed. What I needed was the truth. This wasn’t about me. It was about you. All about you.”
“Okay. Have it your way. It was all about me. I just don’t understand what difference rehashing this makes now. It doesn’t change what happened then.”