All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (11 page)

She didn’t trust herself to say anything. She’d waited for him since she’d opened the door to the process server, torn between fury and fear. She felt sick at heart – she was at risk, Meg was at risk, and her fledgling bond with Richard was at risk.

And he had deceived her. That made her sickest of all.

How could he have kept this from her? He’d known, he must have, before he ever came back to her Friday night. He’d taken her away for the weekend, introduced her to his world, made the most tender love to her she’d ever known in her life, opened his heart to her.
We stand together
, but not, apparently, when it came to telling her that her sister had subpoenaed her to testify against him.

Lucy had known too. She had admitted as much when Laura had called to ask for advice.
I couldn’t tell you. I’m bound by client confidentiality.
Lucy couldn’t help her, because Richard was her client and Laura was now the witness called against him.
I’ll find you a lawyer
, was all Lucy could promise.
First thing in the morning. Don’t worry, Laurie.

But she couldn’t help but worry. She felt betrayed by both Richard and Lucy; neither of them had trusted her enough to warn her or even think she was grown up enough to handle the truth.

She was always going to be little Laura Abbott to them.

“Laura?” Richard appeared at the side of the flagstone terrace, a tall shadow in the late evening darkness. “What are you doing out here? Didn’t you hear me?”

She sounded rusty and strained to her ears. “I just wanted to sit outside for a while.”

He came over to her, and she saw through the filtered light from the kitchen annex that he looked weary and drained. He had his suit jacket slung over his shoulder; his tie was loosened and the top shirt button undone. He leaned down to brush a kiss across her lips, and surely he felt her lack of response. She avoided his questioning look, but, when he motioned to her to move over, she shifted so that he could sit down beside her.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, as they had so many times in their past, and for a few minutes, he respected her need for distance, letting the silence lie between them. Laura felt his body touching hers, warm and secure, inviting her to lean on him and lay all her problems in his hands. She wanted to howl.
He
was her problem, he and his disastrous marriage, he and the wife he should have divorced years ago, long before she ever came back.

She’d wondered how they would cope with the real world – now, without warning, the real world was upon them.

She noticed a small paper bag at his feet next to his briefcase. “What’s that?”

Richard glanced over at her. “Coffee.”

That startled her into a normal response. “Coffee? Why?”

“Because all you have in your kitchen is instant.” She heard the amusement in his voice. “I’ll keep some over here so I can have a decent cup of coffee.”

She turned to look at him, and her cheek brushed against his shoulder. “Is that a hint?”

He turned towards her, and now she saw a faint smile through the dusk. He put his hand warm and flat against her back. “Could be. It’s been a long day.”

His touch soothed away some of her tension. She buried her face in her hands. “Mine too.”

“I know. Lucy left me a message. I’m sorry, Laura.”

At his words, her shoulders lost their rigidity, and she felt her anger start to seep away. She still couldn’t look at him. “Di subpoenaed me to testify about you and Francie.”

“Tom faxed me the notice last Friday.”

So he wasn’t trying to hide that he’d known about it the whole weekend. If she was keeping secrets from him, he was keeping just as many from her. “Then you knew before—” she swallowed hard— “you came back Friday night.”

He was silent for a moment, and then she heard him sigh. “I see what’s going on. Yes, I did, but – you can’t seriously think that’s why I came back to you.”

She lifted her face from her hands. “Richard—”

“No,” he interrupted, “stop whatever you’re thinking. You know better than that, Laura. You know me better than that. You can’t possibly—”

“Do not even
think
about calling me dumb.”

He sounded irritated. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I was going to say that I hope you have more faith in yourself – and in me – than to think I’d make love to you to keep you from testifying. Forget the subpoena, Laura. Nothing’s going to happen. I don’t know what Diana’s game is, but I can promise you that, as of this evening, she has bigger problems than this.”

Laura turned her head to look at him. “Like what?”

“That’s what I came over here to tell you about.” Richard swatted at the air. “Look,” he said, and his voice gentled, “can we go inside? The mosquitoes are out in force, and I want some coffee. I’ve been on the go since six this morning. We’ll talk about the subpoena, but let’s do it in some comfort.”

She said lowly, “I don’t want to testify. This isn’t fair of Di. She shouldn’t expect me to do this.”

“You are not going to. Let’s get inside.”

He rose to his feet and then extended his hand to help her up, but, instead of letting her go, he pulled her loosely against him until she dropped her resistance and put her arms around his waist. Max threw himself against Richard’s legs in ecstasy at the return of his hero.

“Traitor cat,” Laura said with mock resentment. “I feed him, and he fawns all over you.”

Richard looked down at her levelly. “You are a goose,” he said. “You’ve got this all backwards, my lady Cat. The real mystery isn’t why I came back, but instead why
you’re
with
me
. All you’re going to get from being with me is a lot of trouble from your sister.” He stopped and looked down at Max. “Damn it, he’s shedding fur all over these pants—”

“Shhh.” Laura opened the back door. “Don’t listen to him, Max. He’s just cranky because he needs a caffeine fix.”

Inside, the cool air brushed their faces. Laura pushed the subpoena towards Richard and set a late-night dinner out for Max before her cat could deposit the rest of his fur on Richard’s suit. He worked beside her, setting the kettle on for her tea, measuring the ground beans into the coffee maker, pulling down mugs from the cupboard. How comfortable it felt, the two of them, working side by side, performing these small domestic tasks – no, she wasn’t going to succumb to what-might-have-been. The subpoena had been a rude awakening. Eleven years of separation or not, Richard still had a wife with an interest in his past and a desire for revenge.

And she not only knew about that past now, but she had the most compelling evidence of all in her daughter.

She heard herself say, “I don’t have any papers. Why does Di think I do?”

Richard carried his coffee over to the trestle table and held out a chair for her. “Actually,” he said when she sat down, “you may have something and you don’t know it.”

“I don’t have anything,” said Laura. “If you’re thinking about those tapes—” Francie’s foray into the world of erotic fiction. She shuddered. “All her stuff is in storage. I can’t imagine those tapes would be good after all these years.”

“Not the tapes.” He shook his head. “I got rid of those years ago. No, what you may have is a burgundy book with gold lettering on the front – it’s her flight log, and I signed and dated every lesson as her instructor. It completely slipped my mind until I was filling out my flight log yesterday. I’m certain she took it with her. No one ever mentioned it. Did you see something like that?” He looked at her and exhaled. “Yes, I see you did.”

She’d seen that book every weekend during the final spring of Francie’s life. “Cam signed it when he gave her lessons in ’91. I know exactly where it is.” From the look on his face, that was not welcome news. “But it’s okay, really it is! It’s in storage with the rest of her stuff.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Richard said flatly. “Read the wording. If it’s in your control—”

She touched his arm. “But it’s not, that’s just it! After—” she took a breath and plunged ahead as his eyes shadowed— “after Francie died, I was sick for a while, so Cam had his admin pack up her stuff and rent a storage space. I never had the key. He always kept it in his desk drawer. Everything is probably still there – I’m certain he never gave it another thought.”

He drew a breath and said patiently, “You don’t understand. You’re his heir, so I assume you inherited the furniture. That’s what this whole brouhaha about the piano is about, isn’t it? That means the desk, and its drawers, and its contents, belong to you. So, yes, you do control it.” She started to speak, and he overrode her. “Listen, Laura, I’m no lawyer, but I’ve dealt with subpoenas for years. Architects get dragged into lawsuits all the time. You may be a thousand miles away, but the desk and its contents are still in your control.”

“But that’s
it
, Richard!” She smiled triumphantly. “I wrote an email tonight giving Mark the desk. I thought it was his all along. It belonged to their father at the bank. How was I to know? I haven’t thought about that key for years. Mark wrote me this plaintive email about how I could take every stick of furniture and would I please let him keep that one thing – why are you laughing?”

“Oh, God.” He covered his eyes with his hand. “I can just imagine Kevin Stone’s reaction to the timing of your transfer of that desk. Well, here’s the good news. On the face of it – my signing that flight log was no more incriminating than your husband signing it. It links her to me, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because you’re not going to testify.”

He acted as if he had a magic wand to make it all disappear. “Lucy said she couldn’t help me, since she’s your lawyer. So she’s going to talk to a friend of hers and see if he’ll represent me.”

He nodded. “She told me. It’s fine that you’re getting a lawyer, but I promise you that you won’t need one.”

Laura was getting tired of those words. “You keep saying that. How can you make this go away?”

Richard reached into his briefcase, pulled out a blue-backed sheaf of papers, and put it in her hands.

“I filed for divorce this afternoon,” he said. “Diana was served at the Tavern this evening.”

If he’d meant to knock the breath out of her, he succeeded. She stared at him in shock. She must have imagined his words; he hadn’t said what she thought she’d heard. He hadn’t stepped off the precipice so abruptly; he hadn’t tossed away eighteen years of marriage – miserable years, but, still, eighteen – for her. He hadn’t decided to cut the love of his life out of his life for her.

But he had. He’d laid the petition in her hands in the same way that Max liked to bring her his dead bug trophies. Maybe, she thought hysterically, he wanted her to pat him on the head and tell him what a good boy he was.

He was divorcing Diana.

“Why?” she whispered.

He paused for a moment. “It’s time.”

She nodded, dazed, and looked down at the petition.
Richard Patrick Ashmore, Complainant, vs. Diana Renée Abbott Ashmore, Defendant
…. Plain words on a paper. Eighteen years of marriage, the end of the fairy tale, right here in her hand. She bit her lip and felt tears bathing her eyes. Stupid to cry, she hadn’t even cried when the FedEx package had arrived in London with Cam’s divorce petition, but no fairy tale had ended there. No Prince Charming had danced with his Sleeping Beauty at City Hall in San Francisco.

She paged through the petition, unseeing. He said nothing, he justified nothing. He merely waited while she absorbed the reality that in her hands lay the end of one dream and – no, she wouldn’t think it, wouldn’t wonder if it could be the beginning of another. This was a tragedy. Two people who’d been in love beyond all thought were finally admitting that their love had come up short, that they hadn’t well lost the world for each other.

She handed the petition back to him. Without a word, he put it back in his briefcase.

He said evenly, “This will take some time – a year or so. I don’t know how long it takes in Texas, but here in Virginia, it takes several months even when the parties agree. I don’t expect that she’ll cooperate at first.”

Laura pulled together her scattered thoughts. Diana must be devastated right now. Being served papers must have come as a shock. “How – do you know – how is Di taking this?”

He paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Judging from the incoherent message she left on my cell – not well.”

“Oh, my God.” Laura buried her face in her hands. “Poor Di.”

This was probably not the reaction he was looking for. “Diana is going to be all right. Please believe that. This is the best thing for us both. It’s time she and I let each other go.”

“Richard – she thinks you are mated for life. She told me so.”

He sounded startled. “When did she say that?”

“Last Friday when – when I was driving her home from the hospital. She asked me—” Laura stopped, and then said slowly, “She asked me if I’d give her an affidavit about Francie, and I said no. She said it didn’t matter anyway, so I guess she was thinking about the subpoena. She said she used to worry you’d divorce her, but maybe you felt the same way she did, that you were mated for life.”