In Your Dreams (Blue Heron #4)(77)

“Jack?” Hadley said, her voice small.

“Get out,” he said.

“You can’t deny that you’ve been—”

“Get out.”

“I know you want me to apolo—”

He turned to her, and she must’ve seen something in his face, because she shrank back and scurried into the house.

A few minutes later, Hadley dragged two suitcases and Princess Anastasia out to her car. The nasty cat scratched her hand, and Hadley jerked back, always surprised that the spoiled creature hated her. She turned to Jack, clutching her wounded hand like it had just been partially amputated.

“Jack, if you’d just—”

“Shut up, Hadley.”

Her mouth dropped open. “There’s no call to be rude.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Get the hell out of here.”

She finally did.

He watched her drive all the way down the road that led to Lake Shore, and, long after her little car disappeared up the road (toward Dandelion Hill, he couldn’t help noticing), he stood in the falling snow, empty and stunned and furious all at once, the smell of lighter fluid thick in his throat.

Two days later, Hadley came up to talk. And here was where it got interesting.

Seemed as though maybe Oliver didn’t want more than a little afternoon delight. Choosing her words very carefully, Hadley told Jack that she’d “been tempted” but had been just about to stop Oliver because she would “never risk their marriage” or “break a commandment.”

“We’re done, Hadley,” he said.

She sat there for a minute, and her eyes filled with tears. Self-pity more than grief, he was sure. “Are you going to tell anyone why?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.” He hadn’t yet. Not even his father, though Dad was aware that something was off. And hell. In a small town like this, there were no secrets. He wouldn’t have to tell.

She moved in with Oliver. The rumor mill said he hadn’t particularly wanted a live-in girlfriend, but she was there nonetheless.

A few weeks later, Bill Boudreau sent him a note saying he was very sorry to hear things weren’t working out, and Jack remembered that conversation, that subtle warning Bill—and Frankie—had given him.

He’d always thought he was a pretty smart guy. An advanced degree in chemistry from an Ivy League school, right? But it seemed he was pretty f**king stupid just the same.

Hadley asked for ten grand in exchange for an uncontested divorce, and Jack paid it. One lump sum and nothing else. She made noise about laying claim to the house and her “investment” in it, but apparently her father talked her out of it. Throughout it all, she insisted that she hadn’t been unfaithful, despite what Jack had seen, and his discovery that there was no book club...all those nights out when he’d been so happy his wife was making friends had been spent with Oliver.

New York state law said they had to be separated for six months before their divorce could be finalized, so Jack sat back and waited. Worked. Went home. Repeat.

One thing Hadley hadn’t foreseen—cheating on Jack made her a pariah. The one time she and Oliver went into O’Rourke’s, Colleen, who’d practically grown up in the Holland house, told them to get lost. When Hadley sputtered and gasped, Connor opened the door and told them they had three seconds to leave before he would ask Levi Cooper (also present) to escort them out. This was gleefully reported to Jack by Prudence, who only belatedly heard him ask her not to tell him about it.

He couldn’t avoid the gossip. Gerard Chartier, a firefighter-paramedic who saw Jack often on ambulance runs, told him that Oliver and Hadley were seen arguing at the antiques store. Honor said she’d run into Hadley, and she’d seemed absolutely manic, bouncing around the grocery store like a bee trying to get out of a car. At the Crooked Lake Spring Fling Wine Tasting, Oliver showed up to represent Dandelion Hill, but Hadley was nowhere in sight.

And then, three months after Hadley had left, on a night when the owl family had decided to serenade Jack as he sat on the deck with Lazarus, his phone rang.

It was Hadley, her voice a stunned whisper. “Jack, I don’t know who else to call. I can’t...I can’t wake Oliver up. I’m not sure he’s breathing.”

He told her to call 911 and said he’d be right over.

It was three o’clock in the morning.

But Hadley didn’t have anyone else. Frankie was an hour away at least.

So Jack went to Dandelion Hill and drove Hadley to the hospital, following the ambulance, then waiting in the relentless lights of the E.R. with his not-quite ex-wife. Got her a bottle of water from the vending machine, and when her cold hand slipped into his, he let it stay.

And when the doctor came out and said they’d done all they could, but unfortunately the patient didn’t make it, he put his arms around Hadley and held her as she shook.

Oliver’s parents came to town, heartbroken and furious at finding a gold digger living in their son’s house; they kicked her out. She called him once more, her voice subdued and small, saying she didn’t have any money (the ten grand must’ve slipped through her fingers like fog). Her father was furious with her, she couldn’t ask her sisters for anything and all she was asking was if she could stay with him until after Oliver’s funeral.

He said no. But he paid for her room and meals at the Black Swan B&B.