If I were a Hollywood producer, I’d hire her right fucking now. My mind begins cataloguing the last six years that I’ve known her. What was real? What parts of my life can I look back on and know were honest?
I let her hand go. I can’t take one more second of touching her. “Right, so we need to sort through the information the investigator needs. He thinks he’s close to a breakthrough, sweetheart.” Bile threatens as I let that endearment pass through my lips. But I’m closer than I’ve been in a long time. I just need to push myself a little harder.
She takes a deep breath and nods. “What does he need?”
“Did you have a chance to think about those things I asked you the other day?”
Nodding, she says, “I think I was with Alanis the Monday before Mum died. It’s hard to remember that far back, but pretty much every Monday we spent together shopping.”
Her best friend.
The friend who uncovered the truth.
The woman I owe so much to for putting an end to the lies.
“And do you remember if you took the car to that carwash?”
“No, never. The only car wash I’ve ever used is the one you and I went to together. But I still don’t understand why he thinks this information is relevant.”
I want to sag with relief that she finally gave me this information. However, I hold myself together. “I don’t know, but he made it clear it was important.”
She frowns. “Is that all he wants to know? It doesn’t seem right that he’s only asking those questions.”
My carefully held together patience frays. “I told you, I don’t know,” I snap.
Jolene recoils and I swear silently. I need to keep her onside in case the detective demands more information. Raking my fingers through my hair, I mutter, “Sorry.”
She doesn’t respond, but the expression on her face settles back into acceptance.
We sit in another few minutes of tortured silence. The minutes drag by, and I feel like I’ve been sitting here for hours rather than the short time I have been.
Finally, she cuts through the quiet. “We can get us back on track, right?”
I swallow down my distaste. “Yes.”
“I know it will take time, but I’ll be different.” She’s talking as if it’s a given she’s leaving this place.
So many words sit on the tip of my tongue as I think back to the marriage we lived through. I don’t dare speak them, though. I doubt I will ever say them to her because the minute I can give up this charade is the minute I’m wiping Jolene completely from my life. I don’t care that she’s the mother of my child; I’ll do everything in my power to stop her poison from touching him.
I sit through another twenty minutes of hell before I finally tell her I have to get back to Sean. It’s not until I’m sitting in my car that I realise she didn’t once ask about her son.
* * *
Two hours later, I knock on Callie’s front door and lean against the doorjamb. My gut swirls with apprehension. I was a bastard to her this morning, and I need to make it right between us.
The door flings open, and I’m met with a gust of Taylor Swift and Callie dressed in yoga pants and a tight, flimsy T-shirt. She lifts her face to mine with a smile. “Luke.”
I take a deep breath. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for this over the last two hours. I’m sure I’ll never be able to prepare myself enough to revisit the past, but I know Callie, and she’ll push until she gets what she wants. “All I ever wanted in life was to be an architect and to build the family I never had. I thought I had both, and now I have neither. And as much as my wife lied to me the whole time we were together, I lied to myself just as much about our marriage. Sometimes, the past isn’t worth going back over, Callie, but if it’s what you need, I’ll give it to you.”
“I don’t need it all at once, Luke. We can do this at your pace.”
“If we do that you’ll never get anything.”
She sucks her bottom lip in and bites it. “Let me turn Taylor off and we can talk,” she says as she steps aside for me to enter.
I follow her into the lounge room and wait for her to switch the music off. Once we’re in silence, she sits on the couch, and I join her.
Smiling, she asks, “Why did you want to be an architect?”
“Some of my favourite memories growing up are of when Tyler and I had this one particular nanny. She had this love of bridges. I was about nine, and I remember her taking us to different bridges and her pointing out the things she loved about them. She also loved architecture, and we spent hours looking at books of different buildings. She’s the reason.”
“I love that. I wish I’d had someone like that in my life—someone who introduced me to things.”
I frown. “Your parents didn’t?”
“No, Dad was always working, and Mum tended to give her attention to my sister more than me. It’s why I turned to writing. I discovered I could make up my own world and give my characters the happiness I wanted in my own life.” She pauses and then with a cheeky grin, adds, “That, and I could also hurt the ones I wanted.”
“So, you used words to channel your pain,” I murmur.