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“Are there rumors that Thomas was cheating?”
“You know the cops are trying to figure out if someone helped him pull it off. That’s all.”
“Yeah…”
“It’s that same old story. They assume there must have been a woman.”
“Maybe there was.” It made sense. Max had theorized that Thomas wasn’t running away from Chloe, he was running from his mother. But maybe he was running to someone instead. Her heart beat harder. “You know what? I think they’re right. I think he was cheating.”
“You can’t listen to them. Think of all the ridiculous things they’ve said about you.”
“But it doesn’t make sense otherwise. I wasn’t really that bad. I wasn’t! So if he wasn’t running from me, he must’ve been running to something. Someone.”
Jenn’s hands clutched the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles showed like bones with no skin drawn over them.
“Is this what you didn’t want to tell me?”
Jenn’s head jerked up half an inch, but she didn’t look at Chloe. “What?”
“That there are rumors he was cheating?”
“These people will say anything, print anything!”
Chloe crossed her arms and slipped down in her seat to spoil any photographs the paparazzi would try to take from behind. “It feels right, though. I wonder how long he was cheating. That fucking asshole.”
“Chloe, don’t. The simplest explanation is usually the truth, right? Thomas spent his whole life under his mother’s thumb. He started dating you because he liked you, but then I think he took you to meet his mother and it exploded in his face. You said you were the first girlfriend of his that she ever liked, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he was stuck then, wasn’t he? She liked you. She wanted him to marry you. Hell, I’ll bet she even helped him pick out the ring.”
Chloe squirmed. “She may have mentioned something about that.”
“Thomas got swept up. Maybe he kind of wanted to marry you, but he felt like he was being pushed along by an unstoppable force.”
That hurt a little, but hadn’t she felt that herself? Not so much because of his mother, though her enthusiastic approval of the match had been a kind of pressure. Mostly Chloe had felt swept along by her own plans for life. She’d wanted to get married and have kids. She’d wanted to get away from her cramped, quiet apartment and move into a nice house with a nice man. Thomas had seemed good enough. So she’d moved in with him, and then it had been time to get married, hadn’t it?
Jesus. She’d thought he was good enough. What kind of love was that?
“Thomas panicked,” Jenn said. “He freaked out and did something stupid.”
“How could I have been so blind? It couldn’t have been spur of the moment. It took some planning. Our life was a lie. Did I ever know anything about him? Was he even a decent guy?”
Jenn sighed, her shoulders slumping a bit. “He was funny. And thoughtful. He wasn’t a monster and you weren’t blind.”
“I was a little blind.”
“Okay, a little. But he didn’t kill anyone.”
“Wow,” Chloe huffed. “Your standards for my love life are pretty low, Jenn.”
“I just mean… He was desperate to get away, but all the flight experts agree that he deliberately crashed the plane into a completely unpopulated area. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. Not even you, really. He just wanted to disappear.”
Chloe nodded. There were holes in that theory, but it felt true. He’d thought he was sparing her some sort of shame. Boy, had that backfired.
Jenn flashed an anxious look in the rearview mirror. No doubt they were leading a caravan down the narrow road that led out of the swampy coast and into the heart of Virginia Beach.
