“I’ll take care of it later,” he said. “It’s too wet at the moment.”
She just nodded.
“So tell me about your husband,” he said.
Something more than a gentle suggestion was evident in his words. Her back bristled slightly, and then she shrugged. “What is there to say?” she said. “I married him because I loved him, and we were happy for a time, and then we weren’t.”
Silence. “Well, that’s an interesting analysis,” he said. “How did he die?”
“I told you. He drove off a cliff.”
“Come on. Tell me the rest of it.”
“Pancreatic cancer,” she said abruptly. “He changed in his last few months. The treatment kept him functioning fairly well up until the end, but he was a changed man once he got a terminal diagnosis.”
“And?”
She gave a broken laugh. “Bitter, angry, frustrated, depressed. I think his love turned to hate.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess that’s the other side to a terminal illness a lot of people don’t discuss. So often they can’t make peace with dying. And take it out on those around them. Then there’s that whole survivor-guilt thing.”
She studied him for a long moment. “I hadn’t considered that, but I guess that’s partly what was going on.”
Once again he turned and looked at her, his gaze direct but understanding. “Is that why you weren’t happy at the end?”
She stared down at her hands. “If you’ll be around town much, you’ll hear the rumors, so I might as well tell you. He kind of went nuts. One of the things Charlie did in the last few months after the terminal diagnosis was particularly difficult.” She took a deep breath before going on. “He decided he didn’t want to miss out on anything anymore.” Her voice fell silent.
He just waited until she could go on.
She took another deep breath, and this time shuddered a bit. “What he felt he’d missed out on was being with other women.” She stared at Weston as she said it, watching his gaze widen. “That wasn’t something I would have expected. I didn’t find out right away. He was completely unapologetic when I did. So all these women around town he had his last hurrah with—it’s mortifying. I ran into one at the grocery store this week. But there are at least half a dozen more.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s a pretty shitty deal.”
“I think it was also his way of getting back at me,” she said softly. “As a punishment for being healthy. Punishment for not dying, like he was.” Her lips crooked up at the corner as she watched Weston shake his head in disbelief.
“I don’t care what his damn reason was,” he said. “Dying of cancer is terrible, I get that. But you don’t have to drag everybody else through the muck just because you’re on your way out.”
“I never would have thought Charlie would be the kind to do that,” she said, “so the betrayal was that much more shocking.”
“And, of course, you stood by him the whole time, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing at first,” she said. “And honestly, he’d gotten so unpredictable, it was easier when he was away from the house. Eventually it became clear it wouldn’t be all that long before he was gone, or at least bedridden, and it was hard enough dealing with Sari and my own conflicting emotions, without having to figure out a way to move out and to get us set up again. We’d already moved once, when we had to sell the house we’d bought to pay for his treatments. In a way it all became a waiting game. And I hate to say it, but I was waiting for him to die.”
“He didn’t deserve you. The fact that you stuck by him is huge. I can’t believe he did that to you.”
“I’m no better,” she said. “I stayed and kept the little we had left after the medical bills came out of the sales proceeds because I knew he wouldn’t be here much longer. I’m not very proud of myself for that.”
“You were married, so everything was yours together,” he said. “He was dying, and he couldn’t take anything with him. Even if you had moved out, no judge in the world would fight you over taking a few possessions. I presume you had wills?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he left everything to me, just as my will left everything to him.”
“Which is normal in a marriage, so I don’t think he cared so much about making sure you didn’t have anything at the end, as much as making sure he got to enjoy whatever time he had left for himself. Which is pretty selfish.”
“Maybe selfish but, in some ways, understandable,” she said softly. “It didn’t do much for my self-confidence, or for my own grieving process, because it brought in a whole lot of other elements, including a wish he would die sooner, so I didn’t have to deal with any more of his affairs.”
“How many?”
“Eight that I know of,” she said. “Maybe nine, if Angel isn’t lying. Could be more. I don’t want to know if there is. This has been hard enough.”
“Jesus. That’s horrible.”
“More than horrible,” she said, but she could feel a deep sigh rumbling through her ribs and up every neck bone before finally releasing.
He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe you needed to let that go too.”
“Maybe,” she said in a more cheerful voice. “I didn’t realize how much I’d been hanging on to it. Something about Trudy chattering away her fake condolences at the grocery store the other day really bothered me, and I couldn’t keep it to myself another minute. I actually called her out on it.”
“I’m sorry I missed that,” he said with a twitch of his lips. “I’m sure you created quite a scene.”
“I’m not a scene-creating type of woman,” she said
