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She nodded with her lids still shut.
“Was she a parent of one of your charges?”
This time she shook her head and opened her eyes. The look of misery in them gave him a good guess.
“She was one of the women your ex cheated with, wasn’t she?”
Willow shrugged. “I insisted that he break up with her or get out. At least that time, he agreed.”
“And she blamed you.”
Willow gripped her head in her hands. “This was all my fault. I should have told him to go be with her then, but I’d just found out I was pregnant, and I thought I needed him.”
Asher jerked his hands wide, his arms stinging again beneath the bandages.
“No, you’re wrong. None of this was your fault.” He lowered his hands, but he couldn’t keep from fisting them on top of the blanket. “And you never needed him. For anything.”
Until Spencer cleared his throat, Asher had forgotten he was even in the room.
“Mr. Hunter told the whole story, and it lines up with yours. Ms. Williams blamed Willow for Xavier ending the relationship. It didn’t seem to matter to her that they later divorced. She didn’t seem to be aware that he is deceased. She appeared shocked.”
“She did all those things to us because he broke it off with her?” Willow asked.
“I never said it made sense. She recruited Hunter for her plan of revenge. A technical genius who could do things like hack into the Department of Health Services website to file a bogus complaint and override the Clamor app’s security system to destroy a business.”
Asher shook his head. “After everything, can you believe that none of the suspicious incidents at your business were related to the equally strange ones affecting my family? Well, except for the switch.”
“Yeah. Except for that.”
Willow smiled, and then the expression seemed to drain from her face. She glanced at Spencer.
“Then what about the fire?”
“Hunter must have realized he was being used, and her pressuring him into it must have been the last straw for him. As poorly as the arson was executed, he must have wanted to be caught, so he could turn her in, too.”
Willow leaped to her feet, hugging herself as tightly as she had earlier. “He did it to get back at her? Didn’t he realize he could have killed my baby and my—”
She stopped herself and shot a glance first at Spencer and then at Asher.
He battled to keep a straight face and lost. “Your...?”
A pair of white running shoes appeared beneath the curtain, and soon a young nurse peeked around it. “Excuse me, Mrs. Merrill? Mrs. Hill told me I would find you here. We’re ready to move Luna into her room.”
Asher’s doctor appeared behind the nurse, her white coat hanging open, a chart in her hands. “This room is getting full. Too full.”
“I agree,” Spencer said as he stepped toward the opening in the curtain. “I was just on my way out, Doctor.”
The nurse gestured for Willow to follow her.
The doctor addressed Asher. “Now, that’s better. Let’s get you—”
Asher lifted a finger to ask her to wait.
“Willow? Hold up.”
She glanced back. “I have to get to Luna.”
“I know you do.”
