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“Yeah. She was really sick, too, with her pregnancy, so I asked my mom to check on her.” Roman shook his head at the memory. “It made Liz furious. She didn’t want to hear my mom’s advice when I should be the one who was with her. Liz was right. I didn’t see that in the moment, of course. My career was taking off, and I didn’t dare go on any sort of leave. I didn’t know how much that would cost me later.”
“It’s hard to know how our actions today will affect our future,” Cara said.
Roman’s hand tightened on hers. “Those were just bumps, though. Things that we got through, eventually. When Mia was born, I vowed to spend more time as a family. For the most part, I thought I was doing a decent job. I came home on most weekends even though I was blowing through plane tickets like they were movie theater tickets. Liz still resented me taking off again, each and every time.”
“She must have missed you.”
“I might have fooled myself into thinking that, but in reality, she didn’t want me to upset her routine,” Roman said, slowing his step. They’d come to a bench. He motioned for Cara to sit down.
They sat, which reduced some of the wind, and Roman continued. “Liz didn’t like it when Mia would cry at me leaving. She wanted Mia to choose her in everything.”
“Wow, how did you find that out?”
“It’s kind of a funny story,” Roman said. “Dark comedy, you know. Recently, around Thanksgiving, Mia was looking for one of her books, and I helped her search everywhere. Looking in boxes that hadn’t been opened since the move to Wyoming—as if that would have turned up a book she’d been reading the day before. And that’s when I found it.”
Cara’s gaze was on him. The blonde of her hair caught bits of sunlight, and her eyes were a brighter blue than the ocean beyond. “What did you find?”
“Liz’s journal.” He ran a hand through his hair, his palm sweaty, even though it was too cold for that. “At first I was stunned. I had no idea she’d kept a journal. Then I thought maybe it was something from her teenage years, but the dates were clearly marked. The journal covered bits and pieces of our whole marriage. And it seemed the only time she wrote in it was when she was mad at me for something.”
“Wow . . .” Cara’s eyes had widened.
“Yeah, tough to read, that’s for sure,” he said. “I almost didn’t read beyond the first page. But then I decided that it was my job to read the entire thing. To know my dead wife’s secret thoughts.”
Cara bit her lip. “What did you find out? You were the villain?”
The edge of Roman’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “I found out that she’d tried to get pregnant on purpose, and that she was keeping in touch with an old boyfriend.”
Cara flinched. “Holy . . . I don’t even know what to say.”
“I didn’t know what to think,” Roman said. It was hard to believe, even now. “I wanted to contact the guy and force a confession out of him. I wanted to find out if anything had happened between them. If they were seeing each other when she . . . died. But then I decided that too much time had passed. We’d both lost her, so what good would it do to know details that would only make me more upset?”
“And you barely found this journal in November?”
“Yeah, it was a catalyst for me cooling things off with Stacy.” Roman exhaled. “I went through a lot of emotions. The one good thing was that it left me feeling less guilty, I guess, about the divorce. It would have happened later if not then. The final couple of entries were full of how she’d been googling divorce attorneys and timelines. Almost as if she were trying to start a new life by a certain time.”
Cara tucked some blowing hair behind her ear. “That’s a lot to take in, Roman. Terrible, really.”
He swallowed. “Yeah. I was tempted to ask Mia if she knew a man who was friends with her mom. But Mia would have been pretty young.”
“You think this old boyfriend would have come around Mia?”
Roman was silent for a moment. “I do. There are things pointing to it that I didn’t realize at the time, of course. Maybe I made the excuse of Thayne leaving something in a weird place. I found a man’s razor in the bathroom by the kitchen once. Another time, I remember finding the AC turned way down, when Liz always had it turned up.”
Cara rubbed her hand over his. “I’m really sorry. That’s a lot to take in after what you’ve already been through.”
Roman nodded, but he wasn’t looking for sympathy. He was looking for understanding . . . and a new beginning. “Like I said, I made a lot of mistakes with Liz. Whether our marriage was doomed from the start or not, I was far from the attentive husband.”
“Maybe you suspected, deep down,” Cara said in a quiet voice. “Maybe you knew Liz wasn’t fully invested in you, and you stayed away from her to protect yourself. But Mia drew you back time and time again.”
Roman gazed at Cara for a long time. “That would certainly explain things and make me feel like less of a deadbeat husband.”
Cara shifted closer to him. She released his hand and slid her hands around his neck. “You’re not a deadbeat, Roman. Liz was a conniving woman. She did give you something beautiful, though—Mia. So let’s just focus on that.”
“You’re not worried about what her complaints were about me? That journal is full of them.”
Cara’s fingers brushed lightly along his neck. “Burn the journal, Roman. I don’t need to see it. I don’t care. We all go through stuff, and we all learn and change. The man I’m with right now is a good man. An honest man. And you’re also hot stuff. So I wouldn’t mind if you leaned a little toward me right now.”
Roman chuckled as relief pulsed through him. Was it really this easy? Confess all, then have Cara still want to take a chance with him? “I can definitely lean,” he whispered. “Does this also mean . . . you still want to be my girlfriend?”
