No, it can’t be. Cal is a fixer, the kind of man who makes others’ problems his own. Besides, he told me that he and Alice were trying to have a baby. A man who’d step out on his wife at a time like that…
He’d be more than a sociopath.
“You’re a liar,” I say, but my voice is shaking, and she knows she’s gotten to me. She knows.
“Not about this,” she says. Her voice is steady, her gaze intent and victorious. But I don’t believe her. Mostly. Inside of me, doubt quivers like underset Jell-O, because I can’t help but remember that the other steadfast man in my life had proven himself sour too.
A little voice whispers that maybe I’m just a shitty judge of character.
Even if I am, I’m not wrong about her.
“And are you threatening to spread this lie if I move forward with publishing the article?” I ask.
I doubt she’ll be stupid enough to make such a threat on my recording, but people have done stupider things. She has done stupider things. It took me all of a couple of days to discover her story was more full of holes than Swiss cheese. The only reason no one found out sooner was because no one looked.
“No,” she says. “It’s enough for me that you know.”
But the prim line of her mouth says it’s not, and an awful wave of intuition crests through me.
“Because he told you his story, and you reciprocated. He’s got the goods on you too.”
Her answer is to take another bite of chicken. Specks of sauce fly across the table, and I flinch despite myself.
“Maybe,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll keep quiet forever.”
I doubt she could if she tried, unless what he has on her is really bad. Actually, on second thought, what he has on her is almost certainly really bad.
She makes a finger pistol and fires it at me.
“Nice,” I say. “Have fun with the press attention, psycho.” I end the recording and pocket my phone. But my heart is pounding, and when I get to my feet I’m not sure they’ll hold me.
They just need to hold me until I get to the car. A few steps. I can do it.
It must have taken her a while to swallow that last mouthful, because I’m on my way out when she calls out, “People will always think of me first when they think of the Bad Luck Club.”
Ah, the old no press is bad press argument.
I turn to look at her, compelled by some force I don’t fully understand. Even now, with my heart bruised and my mind battered, with this doubt jiggling inside of me, part of me wants to defend Cal. To protect him.
“No, they won’t. But it’ll get a lot more attention than it ever would have because of your lies. So I guess they have you to thank for that.”
It’s not until I get to my borrowed Prius that I let myself fall apart.
Driving home, tears fall down my cheeks and almost blind me, and I can’t help but think of Alice. Is this how she felt, the day it happened? Did she leave so blinded by sadness and rage she couldn’t drive?
Did Cal really betray her in the way Augusta suggested?
I can’t believe it. I can’t.
But that little voice inside me, the insidious one I want to silence, suggests that I don’t believe it because I don’t want to.
I know one thing for certain: Cal has a secret.
It’s time to ask him for it.
It’s five thirty when I get home, and I’m still so wound up, I can’t sit still. So I take Ein and Chaco for a walk, both of them whining and pawing at me like I’m a wounded thing.
I am.
I feel like one of those chicken wings Augusta was batting around.
I could ask Cal where he is. I could drive to see him. But I decide against it, both because I’m in no state to drive again and because I need this time by myself to process what’s happening inside of me.
By the time his truck pulls in, the dogs are shut inside the house, and my tears have dried. My heart is pounding a sickening beat in my chest, and I feel like everything inside me is being squeezed.
I feel the way I did after my parents died.
He’s grinning when he gets out of the car, and it strikes me, errantly, that his smiles are so much lighter and freer and more frequent than they were just last week.
I did that, partly.
He’s beautiful, from his sun-gilded hair to his broad shoulders and tapered waist, and those strong hands and arms that can shape wood or make a woman moan. For one wild second, I consider telling him nothing about this afternoon. She may have been lying about all of it. She was definitely lying or exaggerating about some of it. Why ruin everything over a probable lie?
Why let her win?
“Molly,” he calls, his expression dropping the moment he gets a better look at me.
Then he’s running over, something like panic on his face. He reaches for me, but I take a step back. It’s not because I don’t want him to hold me—I do—but because I know if he touches me, if he puts those glorious, clever hands on me, I won’t be able to say anything. And I can’t go any longer without saying anything.
I want more than anything for her to be wrong, but I can’t make it so out of wanting.
I need to know the truth.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice almost frantic. “Are your sisters okay?” His head whips around wildly. “Is this about the dogs?”
“Nothing like that,” I say. “I met with Augusta today.”
Shock widens his eyes. Then his expression becomes shuttered.
“I asked you not to do that,” he says, for all the world like I lied to him. Like he didn’t listen to my story about my father and not breathe a word about his own sordid tale.
It’s not true. It can’t be.
“The editor said I had to reach out to her for a comment, and she wanted to meet,” I snap. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“What did she say?” he asks, his voice quavering. “What did she say to you?”
“She said you cheated on your wife and then she found out about it and was so upset she…” My voice breaks at the look in his eyes—the heartache and the guilt, so much guilt. Would he feel this guilty if it weren’t true?
“She…had her accident,” I finish. “Is it true?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cal
The truth hurts. Sometimes clichés exist for a reason.
—Augusta Glower, Bad Luck Club
Panic cinches my chest, and I’m light-headed as I struggle to take a breath.
This is my worst nightmare come true.
I stare at Molly, my heart breaking all over again. The familiar sting of betrayal cuts deep. “You know that Augusta is a liar and manipulator, and you asked her about my past?”
Tears have filled Molly’s eyes, but they’re dried by a flash of fire. “Why the hell aren’t you denying it?”
A lump fills my throat, and my disappointment is nearly suffocating. I slowly shake my head.
She believes Augusta. Or at least she believes it’s possible. I’ve spent so many years considering myself a murderer, or as good as, and now the one woman I’ve actually wanted to open up to is telling me, in so many words, that she sees me the same way.