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“Call him and ask.” To Elisa, that sounded like a reasonable way to handle the fallout.
Harris flipped his cell around in his hand but didn’t hit any buttons. “He just got engaged. My guess is that he had other plans this evening, like celebrating.”
Ugh. “Right.”
“I’m not sure when he got so secretive.”
That stopped Elisa. “Really?”
Harris shrugged. “I’m serious.”
His brain had to be misfiring. She tried to give him a little help. “He’s been known to keep secrets, especially about his private life.”
“What?” His frown slid away and his expression turned unreadable. “Oh, yeah.”
She tried to ignore that her husband just usedoh, yeahto excuse a communications blackout about a dead wife. She was beginning to think the way he just moved on, expecting no fallout, would haunt her forever.
“But he’d tell me. He always tells me things. Even things he doesn’t tell other people.” Harris sounded a little lost at the thought of being cut out.
The words punched into her. She really hoped Harris was wrong. Harris knowing about Josh’s real first wife and not talking was bad enough, and they still hadn’t had it out about that. Not the way they needed to. But the idea of him lying about Abby’s whereabouts... she couldn’t think about that horrifying possibility. If true, that would make him a different man from the one she married. A despicable one.
“So your problem with all of this”—knowing her use ofalllikely was broader than his—“is that he failed to confide in his big brother?”
Harris stopped fiddling around and looked at her straight on. “You’re saying that in a way that suggests you think I’m being a jerk.”
She decided not to push him now. “You’re in shock. We both are.”
They’d held it together in front of Nathan, but now Harris seemed to be the one unraveling. She didn’t feel much better.Rattled.That was the right word. In a few seconds, just by showing off her hand, Rachel had shaken everything Elisa thought she’d known.
Josh. Women. She didn’t understand the appeal. Rachel had tried to explain it, but for Elisa, his deadly track record with women far outweighed the fact he’d likely remember Valentine’s Day with a bouquet of flowers.
“Maybe I will call him.” Harris’s finger hovered over the cell phone until he put it down on the counter. “Forget it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
His insistence that Josh confided in him brought back the one topic they’d skipped over in all the excitement. “What did he say about Meredith?” she asked.
Harris hesitated, glancing over Elisa’s head into the family room where Nathan sat with his earphones on as he played some video game that involved smashing things. “He said the ‘Meredith issue’—his words—was a misunderstanding.”
“Does he know what the word ‘misunderstanding’means?”
“Elisa.”
“Harris.”
Harris shrugged. “Josh said there was some confusion, but he had other stuff going on and something he wanted to tell us, then he’d catch me up on the Meredith situation later.”
That was a lot to unpack but she was in the mood to do it. “So, and forgive me if I get the details mixed up, he told you he couldn’t talk about the former girlfriend he lied about, the one who he may or may not still be seeing, because he had to tell us that he was engaged to his current girlfriend?”
“It’s like you’re looking for things to be pissed off about when it comes to Josh.”
Harris’s entrenched denial ticked her off. “Or, and hear me out here, what he says is a moving target and no one could be expected to keep up.”
“I’m not taking the bait.”
“You think I’m trying to trip you up? The woman specifically told you she’d never met me. Lied to your face with me standing there.” Elisa still didn’t understand the motive behind the lie or how it helped any plans, those of Meredith or Josh.
Harris sighed at her. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“You don’t really have a choice.” She was done putting off conversations and tough talk. And she was about to tell him that when her cell buzzed on the counter.
