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Cal hesitated; then after giving Ian an evil glare, he opened the front door and slammed it behind him, which was probably the most emotion I’d ever seen from Cal—unless you counted his reaction to the joke bandit.
Ian came the rest of the way down the steps. “What’s wrong?”
I peered into his face, searching for something, I’m not sure what. A scarlet M didn’t magically appear on the foreheads of murderers. More’s the pity. It would make law enforcement so much easier.
“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” I asked.
“Find out what?”
“That your wife isn’t dead.”
He jerked as if I’d slapped him. “You ran a check on me?”
“You told me to.”
“My credentials.”
I shrugged. “Two for the price of one.”
“It isn’t what you think.”
“You mean I haven’t slept with another woman’s husband?”
I hadn’t realized when I’d quipped that I wasn’t sick yet just how prophetic my words would be. Nausea rolled through me. I’d seen enough domestic disputes, enough ruined families, to swear I’d never be a part of that. But here I was.
“I haven’t been a husband for five years. I know she’s dead.”
“How can you know?”
“She was gone without a trace. She didn’t come back; she didn’t write; she didn’t call. People don’t drop off the face of the earth like that in this
day and age.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
The Jäger-Suchers were experts at making people disappear. I wondered if Ian’s wife had been the victim of some kind of monster. Another question for the great and powerful Dr. Hanover.
“I thought you were mourning her. That—” My voice broke; I was horrified. I’d thought he was coming back to life because of me. I’d known this man was going to hurt me, but I hadn’t expected it so soon.
“I was,” he said. “I am. I loved her and she—” He stopped, cursed, shoved his hand through his still-damp hair. “She left me. She didn’t love me enough. Do you know how that feels?”
I did. My mother had left. She hadn’t loved me enough. I still looked for her in every dark-haired, green-eyed woman who passed through Lake Bluff.
I clenched my hands into fists against the twinge of sympathy that swirled through my chest. Just because I understood his anguish didn’t mean I could, or should, forgive him. He’d lied, or at least misled me over what “gone” meant. I guess I could have asked more questions, but wasn’t that considered rude when dealing with a dead wife, even when she wasn’t dead? The lines on rude had always been a little unclear to me.
“Get out.” I knew that was rude, but I didn’t care.
“Grace—”
I narrowed my eyes, and he clamped his lips shut, then walked to the back door, slid his feet into his sandals, and left.
I felt a twinge when his car started, when I heard his tires crunch on gravel. There’d been something between us, something that could have become a whole lot more.
If he hadn’t had a wife.
I kicked the door. I was late for work. What else was new?
I ran upstairs, tore the covers off the bed, and tossed them into the clothes chute. I couldn’t sleep on sheets that smelled of him. Even now the minty fragrance lingered. I’d have to burn candles in here for an hour before I could bear to lie down and rest.
