“I really don’t think I need to see your personal—”
“Oh, you definitely do,” Holly said, taking her hand and leading her through the doors.
Despite Holly’s calm, almost curatorial air, Jessica’s nerves felt like arcing electrical wires.
A sitting room served as an antechamber to the master bedroom, with doors and hallways leading to the adjoining rooms that made up the private wing. It was all certainly remarkable in its grandeur, as Jessica expected. The decor was elegant and flawlessly appointed—just like everything else in the house.
And then Jessica noticed the nightstands.
Specifically, what was on top of them. On one side, a pair of glasses rested on an e-reader in a pale-pink leather case next to a bottle of hand cream. On the other were a tube of lip balm—Kiehl’s, the brand Jon swore by—and a bestselling book offering a new theory about dinosaur extinction. A book she’d given him herself after the museum visits of their Chicago staycation. He’d told her he was reading it in stolen moments of business travel.
“Jack told you we were separated,” Holly said, noting her sharp intake of breath. “Yet he’s lived here the whole time you’ve been involved.”
Jessica resisted the urge to rush over and open the book to check for the XO, Jessica she’d written inside. “I knew he stayed here sometimes—so he could be with the kids. He told me you have separate living spaces.”
“There’s never been a night when Jack’s been home that he didn’t sleep in our bed. Although he does sometimes nap on the couch in his home office.”
Holly pointed her down a short corridor toward an open door. Jessica forced herself to take a look.
Unlike his glassed-in office at Cancura, which was sleek, modern, and unusually neat, this one contained an oak desk and matching credenza, a leather club chair, and an oversize sectional with dark-blue velvet upholstery that was nearly identical to the couch he’d rented for the apartment.
“You’re here today because you have questions,” Holly stated. “Questions you felt Jack wouldn’t answer truthfully.”
Jessica nodded dumbly.
“Which then made you wonder if there were other things he wasn’t being truthful about,” continued Holly.
“Yes.”
“For example, whether he really was the poor, misunderstood victim in a troubled relationship. How am I doing so far?”
“He said you were mentally ill,” said Jessica, needing to stop the interrogation, wanting to defend herself. “He told me he was trying to have you institutionalized.”
“What?” Holly turned pale and sank onto an upholstered bench.
“Every time he left me to see you, he said it was because you were manic, fighting with your kids, making threats. He even had a nickname for you: Annie Wilkes.”
Holly looked at her uncomprehendingly.
“Kathy Bates’s character from Misery. The psycho who breaks James Caan’s ankles with a sledgehammer to trap him in her home.”
Recognition came into her eyes, and Holly groaned.
“I’m so sorry,” Jessica said, remembering how she’d laughed when he said it.
Holly looked up. “What did he tell you on New Year’s Eve, when he left me to be with you?”
Jessica swallowed, remembering the calm and collected Holly she’d met that evening. How, like always, she’d bought Jon’s version of events.
“He told me you were having a break with reality. That you thought you were still married.”
“But we are married,” said Holly simply. “When he picked a fight on New Year’s Eve, it seemed to come out of nowhere. The next day he told me he slept at the corporate apartment by Millennium Park.”
Head spinning, Jessica had to tell her. “He was with me. But we’re married. We got married in Mexico.”
As she said it, Jessica felt her own tears start to fall. Realizing that either everything was true or none of it was.
“I’ll be making arrangements to have his things moved to your place,” Holly said, tears now streaming down her face. “The sooner the better.”
“I . . . I don’t even know where he is right now, exactly,” Jessica stammered. “He’s in the desert somewhere.”
Holly seemed to regain command of her voice. “Those intensive inpatient therapy programs are always somewhere warm. Apparently, treatment for sex addiction—excuse me, low self-esteem and infidelity—requires an ideal climate.”
Jessica steadied herself on the wall. “He told you that?”
“Who knows what’s really true?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
LARK
Bringing new people on board alters your risk-reward ratio.
—“How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth,” a TED Talk by Jon M. Wright
Uncharacteristically, Trip was in no hurry to leave Palm Springs. Claiming their hike had inspired him, he’d begun looking into other activities, from riding the aerial tramway to visiting the art museum. As she watched him methodically researching options on his laptop, Lark felt like she was peeking behind the curtain to see the hard work behind his seeming spontaneity. It was endearing and she loved it. She also loved the time he was spending with her. The long, uninterrupted hours of time together felt like an early wedding gift and a happy preview of their life as a married couple.
Only now she was the one itching to leave. Because Larkspur Games was calling. With a new hire needing direction and only Callie to provide it, Lark felt like she’d already been gone from the office too long.
“This is a bit of a role reversal, isn’t it?” he joked, looking disappointed when she told him.
She kissed him. “We’re both hard workers, which is why we understand each other so well.”
“Damn straight,” he said.
As he closed his browser, she noticed that he had more tabs open than she’d thought possible, each of them so tiny it was impossible to see what website it was from. Her big-plans fiancé definitely kept a lot of things in his head at once.
Trip glanced at his watch and grimaced. “If we leave now, we’ll be just in time for rush hour.”
“Perfect,” said Lark, smiling.
An hour later they were driving into the setting sun with visors down and sunglasses on. It was time to spring her surprise.
“It’s time you met Kalani and Leroy Robinson,
