“About nine years too late,” he growled. “For the love of Christ, Hattie, even if this is true—”
“It is. Do you honestly think I would leave my kids with Zena and drive out here as part of some kind of scam?” She sighed and looked away from the shock on his face. “I honestly thought you knew me better than that.”
“Seems I don’t know you at all.” She looked back at him to find him scrutinizing her. “So you’re trying to tell me that now, finally, you’ve had a change of heart, that you’re . . . I don’t know, doing something altruistic by letting me know that I’m the father of eight-year-old twins I thought were my brother’s.”
“That’s the way it is.”
Throwing his hands up, he asked, “So now that I know your version of the truth, did you think that . . . I don’t know, you and I and the girls, we could be some happy little family, that Mallory and McKenzie would start calling me ‘Daddy’?”
“Of course not.” She flushed. “I haven’t told the girls and I don’t intend to now, unless you want to make a case of it.”
His eyes slitted suspiciously.
“Don’t worry, Cade, as I said, I’m not looking for anything from you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Her heart squeezed a bit because deep down, the truth was that she did want something for the girls. She wanted them to know their father, to feel the strength of a good man’s arms to comfort them when they were hurt, the stern love and guidance from a father that they’d missed. She, as a mother, would like the solid support of the man who’d sired her children, but then she couldn’t expect it.
“I messed up,” she admitted. “Big time. I didn’t tell Bart about us until after the problems with conceiving, and then he was . . . well, beyond pissed. At me. And rightfully so. I was engaged to him when it happened. However, the girls always had a father who was there for them. Bart loved them as if they were his biological kids. His feelings for them never wavered. Not a bit.”
“What about his feelings for you?” Cade demanded, his anger palpable. “How fucked up were they?”
“He made it crystal clear how he felt about me, about what I’d done. How I’d betrayed him and couldn’t be trusted and never loved him and on and on. I deserved it, I guess, didn’t have much of a defense. He even accused me of never loving him, which wasn’t true, but no amount of denial was good enough. He thought he was my third choice after you and Dan, and he made it all crystal clear, even accused me of wanting to sleep with Zed too.” She shuddered at the memory, at the storm in her husband’s face, the outright disgust and repulsion at her. She’d thought he might strike her, or spit on her, the way his hands had balled and his teeth had shown, but he’d turned and smashed his hand through the wall of their bedroom, blasting a hole in the wallboard and knocking the family portrait off the wall. “He moved out of the bedroom that night and we never slept together again.”
“Wow.” He shook his head.
“Yeah.” She remembered those months, the tension in their house, the angry looks, sullen moods, monosyllabic answers to her questions. Bart had completely iced her out and had never let her forget for a second that she’d betrayed him. She’d suggested counseling, then when that hadn’t flown, a temporary separation or cooling-off period, anything to repair the rift between them. Bart, ever more despondent, had refused, his fury and humiliation seething just under the surface. Day-to-day life had become impossible, to the point that Hattie avoided being in the same room with him. While he seemed to revel in his newfound role of victim and martyr, she’d come to resent her part as an evil twenty-first-century Jezebel.
“Doesn’t seem to be any other way to see things.” Ignoring the envelope, Cade added, “So, after spilling your guts because you were forced to, and him turning his back on you, a few months later you walked out.”
“Essentially,” she admitted, unable to explain how difficult her marriage had become. “Things were never perfect between Bart and me, but the truth of the girls’ paternity put a bigger strain on the marriage. I just wanted to work things out, but it wasn’t going to happen.”
“You wanted to work things out?”
“Yes, but it was too late. The wall between us was insurmountable. He wouldn’t go to a marriage counselor or a psychologist or a psychiatrist, even though he was obviously suffering from depression and the marriage was unraveling.”
“So you just up and left him.”
“You can twist this any way you want, but Bart wasn’t willing to work on the marriage. Even though they were young, the girls were picking up that something was wrong, and I couldn’t lie to them any longer, or pretend that everything was fine, so, yes, I gave him an ultimatum: Get help or get out.”
Cade’s jaw tightened and she thought he was going to lambast her again. Well, fine. She’d said what she had to say and could leave with a clear conscience. She turned for the door, but his voice stopped her.
“I’m not blaming you,” Cade said nearly inaudibly.
“Coulda fooled me.”
“No.” Scowling, he looked up to the rafters, then shook his head, as if he’d been searching for answers in the cold crossbeams and had come up with nothing. “I guess I want to, but I can’t. You’re right,” he said, his voice low, a muscle working at his temple, near the thin scar still visible on his cheek. “It wasn’t just you. I was there too. I should have stopped it, but . . .” He let out a disgusted puff of air. “I just wanted you so damned bad that I didn’t care about Bart. That’s a fact. I didn’t care that you were engaged, that what we were doing was right out of some bad movie.” Regret tugged at the corners of his mouth, reflected darkly in his eyes. “You could have told me before.”
“And what would have changed?” she asked.
His look was long and penetrating. “For one thing,” he said, “Bart might still be alive.”
Chapter 22
Pescoli glanced at the clock on her cluttered desk and told herself she could take five minutes to call Santana. They hadn’t really spoken since he’d offered her the ring, only a quick text or message to check in. He, too, was disturbed about what was happening, and their only communication these days was about Grayson. Nothing further had been said about his proposal, but time was passing and sooner or later, she would have to face him.
Picking up her cell, she dialed and waited, but he didn’t pick up, so she was forced to leave a message. “Hey, it’s me. Thought we should get together. It’s, uh, been a while.” That wasn’t quite true. He’d given her the ring on Christmas Eve, and she’d seen him briefly at the hospital, but it still felt like forever since they’d been together. “Give me a call.” She hung up and stared at the phone, wondering why this was so hard. Why had she become such a commitment-phobe? Two rocky marriages didn’t necessarily mean that she would have another. Right?