Stranger in the Lake(87)
“I see.” She pauses to twist some honey around a polished silver spoon, then drops it into her tea. “You should know that these past twenty years have been torture for Paul. I know my son. I saw how he suffered after Katherine. He was convinced her death was the universe’s way of punishing him for what happened to Bobby. Paul didn’t want to lie to you, but he’d already lost one wife because he told her the truth. He couldn’t go through that again.”
Resentment swells, both at her words and her puffed-up tone. Something didn’t just happen to Bobby. Three drunken idiots drove him into a lake and left him for dead, and Paul’s suffering can’t wipe away his guilt. But Diana has always been her son’s greatest defender. She’s always had blinders on where he and Jax are concerned.
My eyes, however, are wide open.
“But Paul did lie. He swore he wasn’t keeping any secrets from me, when really he was sitting on a big one. And now four people are dead. And okay, so maybe Paul didn’t technically kill them, but he had a hand in their deaths. He should have come clean after Bobby, but instead he doubled down. He should have confessed that very night.”
I believe this with everything I am. Murder and you are a murderer. Lie and you are a liar. This is how the world works. Loyalty to an old friend, even one you love like a brother, can’t wipe away the fact you were accessory to a crime.
Diana shakes her head. “But it wasn’t just anyone he was keeping quiet for, dear. It was Jax. The boy who risked his life to pull Paul from a sinking car. With the facts he was working with at the time, it felt like a fair trade. Paul’s life for his silence.”
“What about loyalty to me? I mean, granted, I didn’t think to include the word in our wedding vows, but I kind of thought love and honor and cherish covered all the bases. Isn’t loyalty implied?”
“Yes, Charlotte, but—”
“I already told you. It’s Charlie.”
Diana sighs, a quick burst of impatient air. “Charlie. But please try to think about it from Paul’s point of view. Jax chose Paul. He let another man die so Paul could live. There is nothing Paul wouldn’t do for Jax. Nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Jax is family.”
Emphasis on the family, as if that explains everything. And for Diana, I suppose it does. All that time I spent feeling like an outsider proves that I need more than a marriage certificate to crack that Keller nut. I need something I don’t have, something I’ll never have, especially since I am no longer willing to try. This person I tried so hard to become, this dream I worked so hard to attain, it doesn’t fit me anymore.
She looks out the window, to the trees and the lake and the rolling hills on the other side, and her forehead crumples with new lines. “I mean, honestly. The second I heard that woman’s jewelry went missing, I knew that it couldn’t have been Jax. What would he want with some cheap costume pieces, anyway? He has no need for money, and he’s not that conniving. Jax is a good man.”
“He managed to keep a skeleton buried for twenty years. Clearly, he’s no saint.”
Her gaze, still defensive and hard, whips to mine. “Yes, and you can see what that did to him. Jax has paid deeply for his hand in Bobby’s death, and so has Paul. Both of them have lost so much.”
The image of Paul’s face flashes, fierce and proud and happy as he watched me make my way down the aisle, and my heart pinches with the memory. My whole life stretched out before me that day. The life I wanted. The life I thought I deserved with a handsome husband, a pretty home, a bank account overflowing with cash. If only I had looked more closely at the man behind the offer.
“Yes, and now Paul has lost me. Because I can’t be with him after this, Diana. I just can’t. If that makes me uncompromising, then so be it. This baby deserves better. I deserve better.”
Her shoulders slump with disappointment. “That’s too bad. Because I hate thinking of that baby growing up without a father.”
“A divorce won’t change the fact that this baby is Paul’s. And I’m not saying I’m cutting him out of our lives completely, just that I can’t be married to him anymore.”
She gives a swirl to her tea, watching the way the liquid spins around her cup. “What I meant is, it’s hard enough to raise a child, but doing so on your own is a special brand of difficult. The midnight feedings, the constant worry. The money.” She sips, watching me over the lip of her teacup. “Babies are so very expensive.”
Her tone is parked in Neutral, but her words still hit me wrong, like jumping into the lake before the sun has had a chance to warm up the water. “I don’t plan on asking Paul for anything more than what I’m entitled to according to the prenup, if that’s what you’re fishing for. Child support and health care, at least until the baby is born. That’s all I want.”
“Of course you are entitled to those things. I wasn’t implying anything otherwise. But you should know that this case is going to trial, and people will be watching. In fact, they’re already watching, and they’ve seen how you’ve moved out of Paul’s house and into some rickety trailer. You can’t raise this baby in a trailer.”
A hot flash of indignation, but I manage to keep it out of my tone. “Plenty of people raise babies in trailers. My mother did. Not very well, but that had nothing to do with the trailer. The point is, a baby doesn’t care where it lives as long as it’s loved and cared for.”