All her exhaustion-inspired culinary potpourri required now was dessert. She was reaching for a cup containing layers of whipped cream and chocolate pudding—something she’d never even look at, under normal circumstances—when she spotted yet another familiar shopper. The tall, slim, fortyish blonde wore black pants, stylish flats, and a cashmere sweater.
Jessica dropped the pudding cup as Holly Wright stepped toward her.
Holly had decided she needed to talk to Jessica herself if she was going to get to the truth. Whether Jessica Meyers was indeed pursuing Jack or it was the other way around, she didn’t trust Jack to let Jessica know he was no longer available. That he had an ironclad responsibility to his wife and three children. Holly was finally allowing herself to think the word divorce—but she had to make sure it was on her terms, not Jack’s. She had no intention of allowing Jessica or anyone else to be the recipient of Jack’s attentions and gifts, or the family’s money.
But how and where to confront Jessica? Not at Cancura, for obvious reasons. Reluctantly, she had decided on the love nest, because she simply didn’t know where else to find her.
The day after Jack’s admission at the Hay Bale Ball, Holly had asked what he intended to do about Jessica and learned she’d been exiled to Munich while he “thought about how to handle things best for Cancura.” Next, she visited the office to bring him a surprise lunch—something she knew would aggravate him—where she casually queried Olivia about “our wonderful director of medical monitoring” and learned the date and general time of Jessica’s return.
Holly was waiting in an empty space behind the building with her engine running, thinking how little time it had taken for her to adapt to this new routine of surveillance and pursuit—even wondering wryly whether she should have been a private detective instead of a pediatrician—when Jessica’s sedan came down the alleyway, slowed, and then continued past without turning in.
Puzzled, Holly had followed her to a nearby Whole Foods before realizing that confronting Jessica in a grocery store was even better than at her building. There would be witnesses in case Jessica’s obsession with Jack was actually something dangerous. And the shock factor would be useful, too. Caught completely off guard, who knew what Jessica would confess?
But it was more crowded inside than Holly had expected, even on a weekend evening. As she prowled from aisle to aisle without catching sight of the attractive young woman with chestnut hair, she began to fear Jessica had already slipped out.
Her calm evaporated as she walked faster and faster. If Jessica left and made it back to her building, Holly would lose control over the situation. She pictured herself standing in the lobby, buzzing the intercom again and again while Jessica simply watched her on the camera over the door.
She was almost running by the time she reached the prepared-foods section. There, just across from the hot bar, reaching for something in a nearby cooler: Jessica.
Holly stopped suddenly, drawing the attention of Jessica, who dropped a dessert cup and yanked her hand back as if she’d been stung. Unlike their previous encounter in the bathroom, when Holly was calm, almost detached, she now felt like her nerves were sparking and smoking live wires.
“You’ve been having an affair with Jack,” she said, not at all the words she’d rehearsed. I think we have something we need to discuss.
Jessica straightened, smoothed her hair, and took a deep breath. She looked left and right as if searching for an escape route, putting one hand on her little grocery cart before letting it fall.
“Mrs.—Holly,” she said, “I don’t think this is the time or place for us to talk.”
“You don’t get to decide that. I do,” said Holly, taking a step closer.
Jessica shrank back. Holly had a fleeting sensation of the power she’d tasted the morning she asked Jack about Jessica. Then she saw a box of Jack’s favorite cereal in the cart and deflated again.
“I don’t know what you think is—”
“I just told you what I think, Jessica.”
“I know you’ve been under a lot of strain.”
That one set Holly back. She stopped, tried to laugh, and heard herself make a strange sound. Strain?
“What do you know about my strain?” she croaked.
“I know things have been difficult for a long time between you and Jack,” continued Jessica, eyeing her cart and seemingly deciding to abandon it as she took yet another step backward. “I know you care a lot about Ava, Paige, and Logan.”
Her children’s names came out of the woman’s mouth and struck her like blows, staggering her. Holly found it suddenly hard to breathe. Jack and Jessica’s pillow talk. About her?
“And you know this . . . how? Because Jack told you?”
“Jack . . . Jon . . . I know he loves all of you so much.”
And now Jessica was treating her as though she were a fragile child the truth would shatter.
“Because he tells you?” Holly demanded, her voice suddenly a screech that caused shoppers to turn their heads. People were watching. A man raising his phone—was he FaceTiming a friend or getting her on video? The grocery store had not been a good idea after all.
At least Jessica was trembling. At least she seemed afraid.
“Divorce is awful, even under the best circumstances,” she said haltingly.
Holly felt a sudden chill. “Why would you say that?”
“Because my parents. When I was still in grade school, they—”
“They split up and hurt you? If that’s the case, I have to wonder how you justify getting involved with a married man—a family man.”
“I would never do that,” Jessica protested. “Separated isn’t married.”
Holly’s head whirled with rage and bafflement. Jessica’s conviction seemed genuine. “He told you we were separated?”
Jessica glanced fearfully over her shoulder before nodding. “He told me it’s been hard for you to accept the way things are now.”
Holly, unsteady on
