Dogwood Hill (9781460345795)

by Woods, Sherryl

  But now, with Aidan regarding her so hopefully, his voice laced with that now-familiar compassion and caring—the same emotions she knew had led to him giving Archie a home—she knew that perhaps it was finally time. It wouldn’t change how she felt about starting a new relationship, but maybe revealing the truth, sharing it with a friend, would ease the weight in her heart.

  “I loved my husband more than anything,” she began slowly, allowing herself to remember that. There had been good times, way back at the beginning. She’d deliberately buried most of those memories along with her husband.

  “Josh and I fell in love in high school,” she continued. “We were together all through college and got married a week after graduation. He went on to law school and I started teaching. He landed a job right away with a top law firm. I thought our life was just about perfect.”

  “It sounds as if it was,” Aidan said.

  “We’d even been talking about having a baby. Or maybe I’d been talking and he just hadn’t said no. Sometimes I didn’t listen, at least that’s what he told me that last night. And sometimes I saw only what I wanted to see, the perfect marriage. My family certainly saw it that way. To them, marrying Josh was the smartest thing I’d ever done.”

  She blinked back tears. “I guess that’s why I didn’t see it coming. We had this nice dinner. It was our fifth anniversary and I’d gone all out cooking things he loved. I’d bought an outrageously expensive bottle of champagne to celebrate. And then, over dessert—his favorite red velvet cake made from scratch—he told me.”

  Aidan frowned. “Told you what?”

  She gave him a chagrined look. “That he wanted a divorce. That he’d been seeing someone else for almost a year.” She gave Aidan a bewildered look. “A year, and I’d been oblivious to it. What kind of an idiot does that make me?”

  “He was the idiot!” Aidan said fiercely. “What kind of man makes an announcement like that out of the blue, especially during an anniversary celebration?”

  “The kind who’d apparently been waiting for me to catch him,” she said bitterly. “Like I said, I was happy and oblivious. I gather he’d been dropping clues. All those late nights at the office, whispered phone calls that he claimed were about business, even a couple of overnight trips. I trusted him absolutely. I just took his word that they were part of the job, a requirement for getting ahead and making partner.” She shook her head. “I was so blind and naive.”

  “You thought you were married to someone you could trust,” Aidan reminded her.

  “Well, obviously I was wrong about that. And he’d run out of patience with my naïveté, so he hit me with the news. There was no easing into it, just the hard cold facts. He was in love with someone else and they wanted to get married because she, she, was having his child.”

  Even now she could feel her heart breaking all over again at that. That woman was having the baby she’d wanted so desperately! She was sure that pain was still written all over her face, because Aidan looked as if he wanted to smash things.

  “God, it was so awful,” she told him. “It was as if I snapped mentally as the truth sank in. I told him to get out, right then, that I never wanted to see him again. It was the worst sort of betrayal I could imagine, and I’ll admit I was pretty irrational.”

  “I think you had a right to be,” Aidan said.

  His understanding was surprisingly soothing, but she didn’t deserve it.

  “Wait,” she warned. “The story doesn’t end there. I knew it was pouring rain, that the roads might be turning icy, but I couldn’t bear to look at Josh for another minute. He tried to reason with me. He said he didn’t want to leave me until I’d calmed down, but I didn’t see that happening anytime soon. I practically shoved him out the door.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks as she remembered what happened next. “A half hour later, a policeman came to the house. Josh had been going at a high rate of speed. His car had run off the road and hit a tree. He’d died instantly.”

  Shock spread across Aidan’s face. “That’s when he died? Right after you’d fought? Sweetheart, I am so sorry,” Aidan said.

  “I don’t deserve your sympathy,” she said.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “I sent him out there that night,” she said simply. “He died because of me.”

  “He died because he’d made a whole slew of stupid decisions and you justifiably called him on them. What happened after that was a tragic accident you couldn’t possibly have foreseen,” Aidan corrected.

  “I knew how bad the roads were,” she insisted, refusing to cut herself any slack. “There’d been warnings on the news. I’d seen them while I was cooking.”

  “I seriously doubt the local news was on your mind after hearing that your husband was involved with another woman and that she was carrying his child.”

  Liz still refused to let herself off the hook. “It was my fault,” she repeated stubbornly. It was a refrain that had run through her head every night since the accident.

  Aidan, bless him, didn’t look convinced. “Didn’t you say speed was involved? Were you in the car pressing down on the accelerator?”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts,” he said firmly. “The accident was not your fault. He was on the road alone. He saw the conditions firsthand. He could have slowed down or pulled over. Instead, he chose to speed up.”

  Liz sighed. It was comforting to hear him say the words, even if she couldn’t accept his quick defense of her actions that night.

  “The bottom line is that two days later, I buried my husband and no one ever knew the truth, that he’d been leaving me that night. Nobody ever questioned that I wanted a small family-only funeral. They chalked it up to grief and let me have my way. The truth was, though, that I was terrified this other woman would show up if there was any announcement in the paper. I had no idea what I would do if that happened. I was terrified of making a scene.”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “To this day I don’t know if his parents know about the woman, if they know that they have a grandchild by now. Our parents knew each other, but they weren’t close. After the funeral I don’t think they were ever in touch. They’ve barely said two words to me since then. His mother called once to ask how I was doing, but I think she sensed that there were things I hadn’t revealed. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Or maybe she knew and felt pity for me.”

  Liz shrugged at the way one huge part of her life had just vanished that night, not just Josh, but an extended family, even friends who’d been more his than theirs.

  “It’s hard to imagine that no one said anything,” Aidan said. “That no one warned you.”

  “My sisters certainly would have, if they’d known,” she agreed. “But even after I told them this morning about the cheating, they didn’t mention anything about a baby. Either the Marches don’t know they have a grandchild or it’s been handled very discreetly. The woman was a colleague at the law firm. I’m sure they closed ranks to protect her. That’s one of the blessings of being in a big city. It’s easier to keep secrets.”

  Aidan squeezed her hands. “I am so sorry, Liz. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for you.”

  “No, you can’t. Acting like the bereaved widow was horrible. It still is. I’m living this terrible lie. What kind of person would I be if I admitted that I hated my husband for what he’d done? So I pretend we had this loving marriage right up until the end.”

  “It’s not a pretense, at least not for you,” Aidan corrected. “Up until that night, he’d been the love of your life. Just because you’d learned about his betrayal doesn’t mean that you haven’t been mourning him, or at least what you thought you’d had together.”

  “But I’ve been deceiving people all this time, because it was too hard to face the truth, that my husband had betrayed me. I’
ve been keeping up appearances, just the way he would have if the tables had been turned. Ironic, isn’t it, since that was one of the things I liked least about him.”

  “Whether it was out of some misguided sense of guilt or out of love, maybe you felt you owed it to his memory,” Aidan suggested.

  She regarded him wryly. “That sounds very noble. I’m afraid it was something else, though.”

  “Such as?”

  “I just didn’t want people to know I wasn’t good enough for him,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  Aidan looked shocked by her words. “Oh, sweetheart, a man doesn’t cheat because the woman in his life isn’t good enough. He cheats because he’s a jerk who likes knowing he’s still attractive. It’s about his ego.”

  “Have you ever cheated?” she asked. Because she was watching him so closely, she thought she detected a faint hesitation before he replied.

  “Never,” he said, his voice firm. “I’ve broken off relationships, but I can honestly say I’ve never cheated on a woman I’ve been seeing.”

  Liz should have felt reassured by his words. And if it hadn’t been for that momentary hesitation she would have been. There was a story behind that, a warning that even though she was feeling closer to Aidan right this minute than she had to anyone for a very long time, it would be dangerous to trust him. She might have shared her most shameful secrets with him, but he’d shared none of his. While she’d missed all the obvious signs of lying and cheating with her husband, she was smarter and more suspicious now. She’d never ignore what wasn’t said again.

  19

  Aidan didn’t want to leave Liz alone, no matter what she said. He finally understood the burden she’d kept secret from all of her friends, the reason she’d so determinedly kept him at a distance.

  Now, though, all that mattered was trying to make her see that she wasn’t responsible for the way that horrible night had ended. She was clearly wrung out from all the revelations she’d shared. It physically pained him to see the unwarranted guilt she was carrying around. He understood that his absolution wasn’t what she needed. She needed to let herself off the hook. Until she was able to do that, she was destined to live in this dark place, punishing herself for something that had never been her fault.

  “Aidan, you should probably go,” she said, that familiar distance back in her voice. “I care about you, more than I wanted to, more than I should have, but at least now you understand why there can’t be anything between us. It’s not about you. It’s all about me.”

  “It’s at least a little bit about me,” he said. “Your husband was hiding things, important things, so secrets are obviously a big deal for you. And you’ve figured out that I haven’t been 100 percent forthcoming with you. I can see why that would trigger all sorts of alarms for you.”

  She regarded him with surprise. He had a feeling it wasn’t because there were things he hadn’t shared, but because he’d admitted to as much.

  He gave her a rueful look. “Given everything you just told me, I totally get why you’d be suspicious of any man who came into your life, especially one you suspected was being less than candid.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment. “If I’m ever going to trust anyone again, there can’t be any secrets between us, not even little ones that probably wouldn’t matter to most people.” She regarded him wistfully. “Yours aren’t little, though, are they?”

  He shook his head. His was huge. In fact, his whole identity wasn’t what anyone in this town thought it to be, at least not entirely. He was still Anna Mitchell’s son, but there was so much more to it.

  “That’s what I mean,” she said. “I know better than anyone what sort of damage that can do.”

  Aidan understood that from personal experience, though he wished he didn’t. “I see exactly where you’re coming from. I’ve lived with a lot of secrets in my lifetime, not mine, but around me. Things I didn’t discover until recently, in fact. It changes the way we feel about the people we’re supposed to be closest to.” He thought of his mother and how much she’d kept from him—and from Thomas—and how it was affecting their lives to this very day.

  “If you know that, then how can you expect me to ignore the fact that there are things you’re not telling me?” Liz asked. “I don’t want to wake up someday and realize the man I’m with is practically a stranger.”

  “I can’t ask you to ignore anything,” he conceded with regret. “I will ask you to be patient, though. I want to tell you everything, but I’m not able to.”

  She frowned at that. “What’s preventing you? Or is that just a convenient excuse because you don’t really want to be open and honest? Are you afraid people will think less of you if these secrets come out?” Her expression turned wry. “I know a whole lot about that. It’s the reason I’ve kept quiet. Not even Bree has heard the story I told you.”

  “She’d be on your side, the same way I am,” he assured her.

  “I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  Aidan understood her hesitance and her reluctance to believe in him. He could hear how flimsy it sounded to simply say he wasn’t at liberty to talk about his secrets. If he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t buy it, either.

  “Will it help if I promise that you’ll be the first person to know everything as soon as I can talk about it?” he asked. He thought of the initial blood test report. “Everything will be resolved soon, maybe even as early as tomorrow.”

  She looked genuinely torn, as if she desperately wanted to have faith in him, but feared that she’d be burned yet again by trusting the wrong man.

  “Not good enough,” she said at last. “I think you should go. And maybe we shouldn’t spend any more time together for a while.”

  Aidan would have asked how long, but he already knew the answer. She didn’t want him around until he was ready to disclose everything he’d been holding back. Even then such a big secret might be more than she could handle. He could hardly hold that against her. There were plenty of days when he had no idea how to live with the truth himself.

  He nodded and stood up. Before getting Archie’s leash and calling to the dog, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Liz’s forehead.

  “This isn’t over,” he vowed. “Not by a long shot.”

  She gave him a sad look that spoke volumes. “I think it is.”

  And then she turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to see him leave. Archie whined as Aidan tugged him toward the door. Even the dog seemed to sense that something had shifted here tonight, and not in a good way.

  * * *

  To Aidan’s dismay, Thomas called him first thing on Monday morning to report that the blood test had been inconclusive. It hadn’t ruled Thomas out as Aidan’s father, but only the full DNA analysis on the swabs taken by the lab could prove definitively if they were father and son. Or not.

  “I know we were both hoping for answers, but maybe this delay is good news,” Aidan suggested, though he had a hard time believing that himself, not with his relationship with Liz hanging in the balance. “It means you haven’t been ruled out as my father.”

  “It actually is good news,” Thomas said.

  Aidan was startled by his ready agreement. “You think so, too?”

  “Shocking, isn’t it, after my initial reaction?”

  Aidan could almost imagine the smile as Thomas said those words. “What’s changed?”

  “Well, for whatever it’s worth, I’m coming to grips with the idea that I have a grown son,” Thomas explained. He hesitated, then said, “I know we weren’t going to speak of this to anyone until the results are in, but my wife has already guessed. She says it’s impossible to miss that you’re an O’Brien.”

  Aidan was stunned, not because they’d talked about it, but because Connie saw what Thomas had refused to accept. “She believes me? And
is she okay with the news?”

  Thomas laughed. “Here’s the thing you should know about my wife. She’s tough. She raised a daughter mostly on her own. She took a long time coming around when we first started seeing each other. She’d done okay by herself. I was older. I was twice divorced. I was an O’Brien, which you may have seen by now can be a blessing and a curse. I was only slightly more amenable to the idea of taking another risk on marriage. Her daughter pretty much hated me. Well, not me, but having to compete for her mom’s attention and love. It almost broke my wife’s heart. I think the fact that Jenny and I have reconciled our differences has made her see families in a whole new light. Biological connections aren’t the only ones that matter.”

  Aidan had a feeling there might be a lesson in the story for him. “What turned things around? I mean in terms of winning her over with all those hurdles you faced?”

  “We got out of our own way and focused on the fact that we’d fallen in love. If there’s one thing O’Briens believe in, it’s the power of love and family. I might have failed at two marriages, but as Mick likes to point out, they were to the wrong women. Good women, both of them, but wrong for me. When the right one comes along, a smart man doesn’t turn his back on her, no matter what obstacles might lie in the path.”

  He hesitated, then added quietly, “Looking back with twenty-twenty hindsight, I think your mother could have been the right one, but I met her at the wrong time in my life.”

  “I’ve tried to imagine you together,” Aidan admitted. “I can see it, too. I wish I’d had the chance to see the two of you together just once.”

  “Aidan, you have no idea how much I regret that we all missed out on so much. Keep in mind, though, that I was pretty self-absorbed and driven back then. Still am, to some degree, but I’ve put some balance into my life, realigned my priorities, so to speak. I’d like to think I might have done the same back then, if I’d been given the chance.”