“You brought it up,” she snapped. “But you never asked me. And I had to agree to keep you happy. My whole life is about making you happy.” She dropped her voice, a little sob creeping in. “But I just wasn’t ready, Evan. And I didn’t know how to tell you because you wanted a child so badly. You can’t even imagine how I felt, always having to walk that tightrope with you. I didn’t want to disappoint you. But I’m still not ready for a child, and I don’t want to adopt.”
His brain, which his colleagues always told him was so quick, couldn’t process her words. “But if you hadn’t miscarried,” he said slowly, trying to get the pieces of his life to add up to something that actually made sense, “we would already have a child. Three children.”
He could hear a clock ticking somewhere. Maybe it was inside his head, a time bomb seconds away from going off.
Then it exploded as Whitney said, “No, we wouldn’t.” She sighed, as though she wished he would simply connect the dots she’d laid out for him. “I made up the pregnancies and the miscarriages so you’d stop harping on me. What else was I supposed to do? You didn’t give me a choice. You wanted what you wanted without any consideration for me.”
She didn’t hang her head in guilt or shame. She didn’t even seem to recognize the horrific nature of the lies she’d told. The worst possible lies about the worst possible thing. The utter anguish she’d caused. And she’d been doing it for years. He’d never questioned her. Hell, he’d actually blamed himself.
Until, in one fell swoop, at two p.m. on this late fall Monday afternoon, the blindfold was ripped from his eyes.
Suddenly, he could see that every facial expression, every gesture, every smile, every tear she’d shed were all designed to manipulate him.
Struggling not to lose it, his voice was almost too measured as he asked, “Has anything you’ve ever told me been true?”
“Of course it has.” She rolled her eyes as if he were being ridiculous and overly dramatic. “You know I love you.”
Did he?
Five minutes ago, he would have accepted those three little words at face value, despite how difficult she’d been to live with for the past few years. But the last five minutes had changed everything.
“What else have you lied about?”
“Do you really want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” She threw down her words like a gauntlet.
“I do.” He’d said those same words to her at their wedding, but they held a vastly different meaning now.
“Fine.” She arched her brow as if she were doing him a huge favor by finally admitting the truth. “I don’t ever want children. And since you never asked me what I really wanted and kept forcing the whole baby thing on me, I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands and have my tubes tied.”He should have been shocked. He should have been furious. But in that moment, he was simply numb.
He couldn’t wrap his mind around the immensity of her lies. From the moment they’d met, she’d told him everything she thought he wanted to hear, even down to planning the family she now denied ever having wanted.
“Does Paige know?”
Why those were the words that came out of his mouth next, he couldn’t say. Maybe his brain was still trying to catch up with the last few minutes.
“Do you really think I would tell that little Goody-Two-Shoes anything? Especially since she’s always had her eye on you. I see the way she moons over you when she thinks I’m not looking. As if she’d ever have a prayer of stealing a man away from me. Her crush is so pathetic.”
“Get out.”
Of all the things to make him finally snap, it was the callous way she spoke of her sister that did it. Hearing Whitney disparage Paige—who had never hurt a soul—was the final straw.
Whitney stared at him, her lips parting in disbelief. “I know this must be coming as a bit of a shock to you right now—” She moved against him the way she’d done so many times before when she wanted something from him. “—but once you have a little time to think things through, you’ll see I did the right thing for us. We’ll be so much better without kids. Freer. Happier. In fact, since I’ve already got my bags packed, why don’t we go away together? Just the two of us. You’ll see how good it can be for us to be all alone, all day and all night.”
He pushed away from her, walked to the open front door, then signaled to the car and driver who were still there. He turned back to Whitney, the woman who was no longer his wife in anything but name. “Take your bags. I’ll have the rest of your things shipped to you. You can give your new address to my PA, because I won’t be taking your calls.”
She gaped at him, as if he were being horribly unfair. As if she didn’t understand the ruthlessness of what she’d done. Or maybe because she couldn’t believe, after all these years, that he’d finally seen right through to her rotted soul.
“You can’t throw me out of my own home without even talking about this.”
“We have talked. And now there’s nothing left to say.” He put her bags on the front step, and she had no choice but to follow. “Good-bye, Whitney.”
Less than two hours later, he’d gotten out as well, flying halfway around the world to get away from the memories.
And most especially from her.
* * *
Present day in Susan and Bob’s house…