“Well, it obviously doesn’t matter much,” she countered. He peeked up at her, caught her narrowing her eyes at the granite counter. She shook her head as if suddenly overcome by a fresh bout of frustration. “You have some nerve.” Her eyes flashed, imploring him to give her one good reason, one good excuse as to why he’d throw them into such turmoil. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? It’s always about you.”
“It’s about us. About getting back to where we once were.” It was as close as he could come to saying what he meant.
Caroline went silent. Her expression became an odd mix of vulnerability and indignation. She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. The overhead light cast shadows that veiled her eyes. For a flash of a second, she looked like that once-upon-a-time girl, the one he so desperately missed. The floodlights caught the strawberry hue of her blond hair, the faint smattering of freckles God had sprinkled across her cheeks like cosmic constellations. He couldn’t maintain eye contact, not when she was glowering at him like that. Lucas turned his attention away.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
It meant everything; where they used to be financially before things went belly-up, and also as a couple, loving and laughing and happy rather than the way they were now—stray cats hissing and swatting at each other if one got too close. And then there was Kurt. But the way Caroline was standing right then, her arms crossed over her chest, peering down her nose, it made Lucas wonder if what used to be could ever be again. Sometimes people change, she’d once told him. There’s no going back. They’re different forever, a doppelg?nger of their former self.
“I talked to John about it,” he said. “He thinks it’s a good idea.” Except that was a lie. Lucas’s literary agent, John Cormick, had stared out at him from across a manuscript-cluttered desk with a blank expression on his face. When Lucas opened his messenger bag and dug out the letter he’d received from Washington State’s maximum-security prison, John’s blank stare bloomed into disbelief. He’d snatched the letter out of Lucas’s hand and read it once, twice, three times for good measure while Lucas looked on with crushing anticipation. He could already see his agent’s reaction in his head; John would look up with eyes blazing, his face awash with a stunning sense of revelation. My God! he’d say. It’s like you’ve won the lottery, Lou. It’s like someone found Willy Wonka’s golden ticket and dropped it into your lap. But all John responded with was trepidation. Because the notorious Jeffrey Halcomb didn’t talk to reporters. And he certainly didn’t talk to two-bit crime writers who hadn’t had a hit in over a decade.
“Yeah, sure. John thinks everything is a good idea,” Caroline said. Her words were clipped, impatient. “You could tell him you’re thinking about writing a book on suicide, tell him you’re going to jump off a cliff for research, and John Cormick will say, ‘Wow, Lucas, that’s a great idea! Why don’t you do that and we’ll set up a call for next week, see how it all pans out.’ ”
“You could at least lend a little support,” he muttered.
Caroline’s blue eyes blazed. Her freckles faded beneath the flush of her cheeks. She shoved piecey strands of hair behind her ears and gave him an incredulous stare. “Really?” She exhaled a harsh laugh, the kind that made the hair on the back of his neck bristle, assuring him he had said the most unacceptably offensive thing. “Because I haven’t backed you up for long enough, right, Lucas?” Lucas, not Lou. “I haven’t spent the last decade telling you that everything will work out? Or maybe I haven’t killed myself with overtime; I couldn’t even spend last Thanksgiving with my parents because I had to haul myself back into the office to meet a deadline.”
A deadline? Maybe. A holiday screw against a high-rise office window? Most likely.
“Which part of that was me not lending a little support? Because I guess I’m just too damn stupid to figure it out.”
She was a liar. An adulteress. A provocateur. For a flash of a second, he wanted to slam his hands against the counter and scream every ugly accusation to let her know he wasn’t that stupid. He knew. He’d known all along. And yet, he still loved her despite her betrayal, still wanted things to go back to the way they had once been despite her false heart.
The last ten years had been tough on them both. He and John would have the same conversation every six months: It isn’t you, bud, it’s the genre. We’re in a slump, but things will pick up. True crime didn’t sell the way it used to—certainly not the way it had the year Virginia was born, when Lucas was so busy juggling a new baby girl and a state-by-state book tour that he had to gasp for breath between radio interviews and morning talk shows.
Good Morning America.
Today.
Good Day LA.
Now Jeanie was pushing thirteen, Caroline was barely keeping them afloat as a joint venture broker, and Lucas was still a writer. The difference was that he was no longer sitting on the New York Times bestseller list and he was afraid to look at his royalty statements. He blindly deleted them from his inbox, because staring at numbers with a sense of dread and disappointment didn’t make them grow. He’d learned that the hard way, while packing up boxes and selling the house in Port Washington to move to Queens.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You’re right. One hundred percent. You’ve been my biggest advocate, my rock.”
She flicked her gaze up at him, giving him a cut the bullshit look. “So what, then? I should just roll over again, right? Give in, tell you that this is all okay, that you suggesting we up and move clear across the country and leave everything behind is a fair request because I’m your rock.” Another bitter, eye-rolling laugh.