All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (23 page)

He seemed determined not to let go of his guilt. Lucy appreciated guilt; she thought it kept people humble, but she hated seeing him beat himself up for something so long ago that he could do nothing about now. “Well, the math is pretty simple. You’ve got three months between when the twins left and Meg was born, and no one saw anything, so Meg was more than two weeks early. Let’s say six weeks. Seven and a half months is a trigger point in a lot of pregnancies. That would put her at eighteen, maybe twenty weeks in June – she might have been able to hide it. She was taller than me, and it was her first. Things don’t show as fast with the first one.”

“She would have known, though, right?”

“Well, you hear about these women who swear they didn’t know they were pregnant, but they seem terminally stupid to me. Pregnancy isn’t an ant bite. It takes over your whole body. I’m sure she knew. She knew enough to tell Laurie so that they could run away a few days later.”

“She could tell Laura,” Richard seemed to be talking to himself, “but she couldn’t tell me.”

Lucy couldn’t stand it anymore. She hated seeing him look so tired and stressed. “Laurie could help her, Richard. You couldn’t. What on earth would you have done if she’d told you?”

He shut his eyes. “I don’t know. I would have figured something out.” He leaned against the pillar and looked at her wearily. “How in the name of God did I get myself into this mess?”

Lucy smiled at him. She really did adore her foster brother when he was like this, human and approachable, not cool and remote or on his high horse about something. “To quote two very wise people – you married the wrong girl. To quote me – you got involved with an even wronger girl.”

That forced a laugh from him. “Truer words… and now I’m involved with the wrongest of them all. Message received.” Except he didn’t think of Laura that way at all, and maybe she shouldn’t either. Maybe this was a course correction, destiny getting the right man and the right woman back on track. “Good news, Luce, you’re safe. I won’t make you number four.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Don’t flatter yourself, Ashmore. I wouldn’t have you on a silver platter.”

He laughed again, more easily this time. “Oh, keep the silver platter. You can toss my head on the ground…. We’ve got to get going. The caterers will show up soon, but – look, don’t try to fix this, understand? I don’t want you running around, talking to Laura, trying to make everything work out.”

“I’m a good go-between.”

“I don’t care. Who knows, you say something, she might bolt again. I don’t think she wants to, she likes being back here with us, but she’ll do anything to protect that child. She chose St. Bride as Meg’s father, and he seems to have been a good one. She won’t allow anyone to threaten that.” He looked at her hard. “I don’t need to have my paternity established, I don’t even need to have it discussed. My rights are neither here nor there. I’m invoking attorney-client privilege on
everything
, Luce. Don’t get involved.”

He had her there. “But if Meg looks like Mom—”

“We will all politely pretend not to notice.”

The stonewall was back in place. He’d had long practice, but, at least for a few minutes, he had let her in. She put her hand on his forearm. “Okay. I understand. But can I say I want you to be happy? If you want to marry her, you have my blessing?”

He rolled his eyes, tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, and started to escort her down the steps. “I have your blessing. Thanks. I can die a happy man.”

Chapter 7: Diana, Listing

I HATE LAWYERS.

I
hate
them.

I HATE THEM.

I hate Tom Maitland, who has always made it perfectly clear that he sees me first and foremost as his precious client’s lunatic wife, only a distant second or third as his wife’s lunatic sister. And I hate Tom because I’m sitting here looking at this petition, and I see his fingerprints all over it.

I hate that Jay Spencer that Laura hired to fight the subpoena. He’s the one who refused to let his firm take my side against Richard when he sued me for custody. Something about how Lucy worked for them and she was a potential witness, so of course they’d be representing her best interests, blah, blah, blah.

Whatever.

I hate Kevin, because he is fucking inefficient. You’d think he could have foreseen that,
of course
, Laura was going to go get herself the highest-priced lawyer in the area, because
of course
she can afford it and
of course
she won’t want to testify against her hero. Duh.

And right now, I sort of hate Lucy. Because she’s my sister and she is supposed to be on my side, but since Monday evening she’s made every excuse in the book not to talk to me.

She knew! She knew! Of course she knew. She knew, Monday at breakfast, what Mr. Perfect was planning to do. Hell, she probably had the papers in her briefcase.
Richard Patrick Ashmore, Bastard, vs. Diana Renée Abbott Ashmore, Girl Stupid Enough to Marry Him
. But of course Lucy can’t
talk
to me, because fucking Tom is his fucking attorney and she’s Tom’s fucking partner, and blah, blah, blah
client confidentiality
this and
I-can’t-discuss-this-with-you
that, and I
hate
lawyers.

But it’s so painful to hate Lucy. So I guess I’ll just hate the part of Lucy that’s a lawyer.

But, oh, Mr. Perfect. You lying, cheating, miserable rat bastard. You may not be a lawyer, but you are at the
top
of my hate list.

~•~

Julie knows nothing. Or, if she does, she’s not saying. I doubt she knows, anyway. No way is Richard Ashmore going to corrupt his little girl’s pristine mind with the sordid details of his personal life. I’m sure Julie has no idea that he can freaking go for hours (or could when he was sixteen) or that her saintly father once drilled her mother in her bedroom while her grandfather listened to some god-awful obscure opera downstairs.

I’m sure she knows freaking nothing about the Standing Stone of Ireland and how much it appreciates a certain – oh, how to put this delicately? –
oral
attention. Especially when his parents were entertaining Peggy’s parish priest in the great room and had no idea of what their perfect son was getting up to in his bedroom when he was supposed to be tutoring his girlfriend in chemistry.

Chemistry. Right.

Good Lord, the stupid things we did when we were young.

But
I
know.

He may present himself to the world now as the upright, oh so long-suffering spouse, but he can’t ever outrun his less-than-virtuous youth. Not while I draw breath.

So where the hell does he get off filing this thing? There’s someone else. There has to be. Some sweet, demure piece of fluff who thinks he invented air and who wants to hang off his arm, play lady of the manor, and pop out a couple of sons for him.

Whoever she is, she’s the opposite of me. He’s never going to take a chance again with a complicated woman. He’s never going to take a chance that the Chosen One, Part
Deux
, will someday have her fill of him and walk out the door.

Richard doesn’t go for sweet, demure, brainless, helpless little girls. But he’ll make himself settle for one, the second time around. He’ll do whatever he has to do to preserve Ashmore Park. He’ll do anything to avoid another debacle of a marriage that might weaken the foundation of the Ashmore dynasty.

He’ll do anything to avoid falling in love again. Ever.

~•~

My
Eureka!
moment came this afternoon. It came because (1) after more than two days of crying and drinking and re-reading that damn petition a thousand times, I’d had enough of my own company, (2) Lucy was MIA, and a good thing too, (3) Kevin was spending the day with “friends” (i.e., his wife, probably), (4) Laura was a pest and a snoop and a traitor, and seriously, why
shouldn’t
she tell all? and (5) I got down to my last bottle of Scotch, because I forgot to bring enough home from the tavern after Laura’s little ransacking episode last week.

My mind kept circling around that one thought:
He’s done it, he’s really done it. What the hell am I going to do?

~•~

I didn’t want to admit it, but divorce terrified me. It wasn’t so much the idea of not being married – hell, I hadn’t felt married in many, many moons. I didn’t feel married the day I stood in front of that judge and promised to love and cherish him forever, mentally crossing my fingers so I wouldn’t go to hell for lying. I sure as hell never felt married while I was living with him, or sleeping beside him, or signing
Diana Ashmore
on my checks.

Diana Ashmore
. Would he even allow me to keep my name?

And who would I be, if I wasn’t Diana Ashmore anymore? Not Diana Abbott. Not ever again. I’d married him to escape Diana Abbott.

I’d spent the last eleven years, ever since I’d moved out, trying to figure out who I was. But, when it came down to brass tacks, I didn’t know how to be anyone else except Diana Ashmore.

Mrs. Richard Ashmore. Mrs. Richard Fucking Ashmore.

I had to stop this. I had to stop him. No matter what he wanted, no matter what he was planning, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just turn me loose. I didn’t want to be married, heaven only knew I didn’t want to be married to
him
, but I couldn’t lose the connection. I didn’t think I could make it, standing on my own. I didn’t know how to survive, how to live.

I couldn’t be Diana by myself, because I didn’t know who Diana might turn out to be.

And, if Richard divorced me, I might lose more than just the connection to him. It made me sick to even think the words, because what if I lost Lucy? I might. I knew it was entirely possible she’d have to choose, and it terrified me to think she might choose him. She was an Ashmore, through and through, no matter what last name she was born with. She was his sister first.

I’d already lost Julie. Laura was never my sister to lose. I’d always had two people in my life I could count on, who were always there for me, no matter how badly I behaved, and now one of them was casting me away.

Lucy – she was all I had left.

What the hell am I going to do?

~•~

What I did was cry some more.

Finally, I was all cried out.

So I got to work.

I rustled up some aspirin for my hangover (at least Miss Laura was kind enough to leave me that).

Then I got out pen and paper.

~•~

Things I Hate About Richard Ashmore

1. He’s a self-righteous bastard.

2. He always has to have the last word.

3. He seriously thought I was going to play wife when we got married.

4. He never drops that cool courtesy.

5. He got the best of me even when I caught him red-handed.

6. He never slobs out like everyone else on the weekend.

7. He refolds the newspaper after he reads it.

8.

And then I couldn’t think of anything for #8. Because what could I say? I hated that he had reached the point in his life where he could say goodbye to our youth. I hated that he could move on from our marriage and try to find a better life, while I was still floundering around, trying to decide what I wanted to be if and when I ever got around to growing up. I hated that he was getting laid regularly and I was stuck with Kevin, who was dating me only as a stopgap until his wife took him back.

I added #8.

8. He’s never suffered enough for what he did.

I stared at #8 for a long time. And I thought. I thought about a lot of things. I imagined a lot of things. Richard with his face smashed in. Richard boiled in oil. Richard no longer such a fucking wonderful Mr. Perfect to the world.

And an idea came to mind.

So I started another list.

How I was going to stop him.

~•~

Making Richard Pay

1. Smash his face in.

2. Whittle the Standing Stone of Ireland down to a nub.

3. Get Julie to come live with me.

4. Take all his money.

5. Wreck his car.

6. Burn his house to the ground.