Eliza Starts a Rumor(78)

Luke wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I don’t know where the hell I’ve been. How could I have missed this? It’s crazy—now, looking back, I see it. I see it all. I feel like such a self-absorbed idiot.”

He put his head in his hands for a minute before making an attempt to shake it off. As if things weren’t bad enough, a car pulled up to the house carrying Eliza’s parents.

“Oh my God,” Mandy exclaimed. “This can’t be happening.”

“And yet there they are—the ice queen, Birdie Reinhart, and her spineless husband, Herb.” Mandy recognized that Luke was in no state to deal with his in-laws.

“OK, Luke, I think you should go check on your family and leave this to me.”

“You would do that?”

“I got it. Go.”

Luke made a run for it while Mandy approached the car.

It had been years since she had seen Eliza’s parents, and their faces both lit up at the sight of her. She hated to have to break their hearts, but this secret had been kept long enough.





CHAPTER 43





Alison


Alison and Olivia walked to their cars. They were tired and hungry and emotionally spent and Lily was being unusually fussy. They hugged goodbye without exchanging a single word. There was nothing to say.

The whole evening had been heartbreaking, especially, Alison thought, the tears from Eliza’s children. It always blew her mind how women have the ability to bury things away in order to survive. Never telling anyone for years and years—their mothers, their best friends, all in the dark; carrying the weight and the shame alone. Her own mother had been no different.

When she got into her car, she started to cry. She thought back to her conversations with Jackie on the bulletin board and with Jack in real life. She realized that the only person she wanted to talk to after this brutal night was him. She wanted to feel the safety she had when he hugged her at the fair, before it all came crashing down. For that brief moment she had felt something that she never had before.

She thought again of Jackie’s wayward dating advice: Follow your heart.

As she came upon Jack’s house, she filled with the anticipation of seeing him again. Zach was already asleep in his car seat, and she wrestled with what to do with him, one of those first-time parenting situations that always left her second-guessing herself. She went with taking him out in the car seat and grabbing her diaper bag, in case they were invited in. As soon as she got to the door, she wished she hadn’t. It felt presumptuous.

Her empty belly filled with nerves as she rang the bell. In her mind, he would probably apologize again upon seeing her. And this time she would accept it. Despite her hardened, law-honed tendencies, she trusted him. After the parade of god-awful men she had just experienced, Jack’s crimes felt more like misdemeanors. After several minutes passed, Alison felt a wave of disappointment. He wasn’t home.

She was about to give up when the driveway filled with the light of a car turning in.

Jana got out first and walked over to Alison, looking at her suspiciously. Between bearing witness to her father moping around after their last date, and being front and center for today’s discussion regarding Alison’s presumed love triangle, she was not a fan.

“Can I help you?” she said with an extra dose of teenage sass.

“Hi, yes, we met at the fair. I’m Alison Le.”

“I know who you are, thanks.”

Alison seriously considered running. This was not the welcome she had anticipated.

Jack walked up looking gorgeous in a cable-knit sweater and jeans. Her heart dropped at the sight of him. She didn’t remember ever feeling that way before. She smiled. He didn’t. He instructed Jana to go inside, and she did, slamming the door quite purposefully behind her, an action that quickly doused the warm feeling in Alison’s belly and replaced it with dread.

“Well, I guess your daughter hates me,” she said, wishing again that she had run.

“A little. She’s very overprotective of me and she knows I was down about blowing it with you.”

He said it in a way that emphasized the past tense.

“Well, you didn’t completely blow it,” she said with a cautious smile.

Alison grappled with what to say next. He didn’t.

“I saw the press conference, and at first I didn’t believe you were with that guy, but I realize now . . .” He paused and shook his head, in a way that made him seem so vulnerable and continued. “I may look like a strong, tough guy, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything close to what I did for you. I’m not the kind who would do well with one of those open relationships people do now. That’s not my style. Especially not one where your picture would be flashed in all the papers with the would-be mayor.”

“But I’m not with him. Not that way.”

He looked at her skeptically.

“Well, in what way are you with him?”

“We are nothing. He is Zach’s father. That’s it. I don’t like him that way.”

Jackie actually took a step back from her, his body language reeking of uncertainty. She felt an unfamiliar pull in her stomach, possibly desperation.

“I like you that way, though,” she said, hoping so badly to turn things around.