Amanda flipped through the pictures of her and Conrad on her phone, taking time to touch his face on every one. He’d said his “sister” Kate called him Conrad but he hated that name. He’d always wished that their mother, Teresa, would have called him by his middle name, Jonathan, but his father’s name was Jonathan James Steele, so he had to be Conrad.
She rolled over to the last picture of them together. Aunt Ellie had taken it in the shop right before he had to leave the last time she’d seen him. His smile was genuine, and his eyes were twinkling. Yes, Conrad loved her. He might not have divorced those other two women, but she would never believe those stories about Iris or about him bringing other women to the cabin. Iris had probably only loved him like a son. If he was here, Conrad could explain the women that Hattie thought she saw at the cabin. They were most likely clothing store owners that he was trying to cultivate to sell him their sale merchandise at the end of every season.
Are you an idiot? a voice in her head shouted. Strange, but it sounded exactly like her best friend, Bailey, who had served as maid of honor at Amanda’s wedding. You should be throwing a hissy at that bastard, not moonin’ around after him.
She sat up a little straighter. Bailey was in Germany, stationed there with her husband, who was in the service, and Amanda hadn’t told her about the situation. Still, that was exactly what she would say if she knew.
Just to be sure, she sent a text to Bailey: Call me when you have time. Lots I need to tell you.
The phone rang before she could lay it back on the table beside her. Amanda hit the screen and answered. “Bailey, what are you doing awake at this hour? It must be four o’clock in the morning there.”
“It is, but I’m having one of those sleepless nights. Catch me up,” Bailey said.
“Conrad was killed,” Amanda said and went on to tell her the rest of the story.
“I knew there was something hinky about that man. I wouldn’t say anything only because you were so much in love with him. He had shifty eyes and wandering hands. I steered clear of him. What a mess.”
“I thought you’d support me.” Amanda pouted.
“Support you, yes. Listen to you defend a son of a bitch like that, no, ma’am. You need to wake up and smell the coffee or the roses or whatever the hell it is that you smell when you wake up. Take a lesson from those other two you told me about. Get an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude or I’d-like-to-kill-him-again one, but stop feeling sorry for yourself and see him for what he was, and that’s a con man,” Bailey told her.
“He loved me,” Amanda declared.
“No, he did not. He didn’t love anything but the game,” Bailey shot right back. “I’m going to hang up now, and you think about the fairy tale you’re telling yourself and then think about the reality. Call me in a day or two when you figure out which one is really right. Good night.”
“’Night,” Amanda said, not bothering to hide her upset.
She hefted her weight off the lounge, stomped barefoot into the house, and went straight to her bedroom. She eased down on the bed and curled up around a pillow, pretending that it was Conrad’s back and he was there with her. A dozen pictures flashed through her mind, starting with the week she’d met him, the whirlwind romance, the small but pretty church wedding, the honeymoon in that very room, and then the shiny black casket at the graveside service.
Then the pretty things all disappeared and she could see a line of faceless women, all with numbers in their hands, lined up from the bedroom door, through the house, down all those steps and out to the lake. There was no counting the women that Conrad had slept with in this very bed. Her eyes popped open as reality hit her smack in the face. She slung the pillow across the room. Anger set in. She wanted to hit something, kick holes in the walls, burn down the cabin—anything to get the misery out of her heart.
“Damn him for doing this to me.”
Feeling as dirty, as if she’d been violated, she went straight to the bathroom and took a long, cool shower, washing her shoulder-length hair twice and lathering up her belly three times. “I will not name you after that man, my son. You’ll have a good strong Irish name, like Liam or maybe Desmond, and I will think of something else to tell you about your father. It won’t be that he was a hero. And you will not have any of his looks or ways. I’m your mother.”
She felt a little better once she finished and was dressed in a baggy T-shirt that came halfway to her knees. But when she went back into the bedroom, she could not make herself even sit on the bed. She paced around it a few times and finally turned her back, closed the door, and went to the living room, where she pulled the cushions from the sofa. She tossed them to one side and pulled out the hidden bed. It might not be comfortable, but it would be a place that Conrad had never used. Or was his name even Conrad? Maybe that wasn’t even the name on his birth certificate at all.