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“But he didn’t love me enough to stay faithful,” she muttered. “And a few hours later, he died, no doubt still hearing the last words I said to him.”
“Last words,” Egan said, not making it a question, but Alana answered it as one, anyway.
“I told himgo to hell, you cheating son of a bitch.” Her voice was barely a whisper, and she repeated the rest of it from over her shoulder as she walked away from him.“Go straight to hell, Jack Davidson.”
CHAPTER SIX
ALANADIDN’TOFTENallow herself to wallow in the past because she’d learned the hard way that wallowing just sucked her down lower and lower. When memories of Jack, his cheating and her last words to him came slamming into her like an entire fleet of semitrucks, she usually tried to throw herself into work. Or did some online retail therapy. Heck, even virtual dating.
She wasn’t doing any of those things now.
Nope. She had rescheduled her de-stashing appointment with Effie and Maybell. Had rescheduled all her other appointments today as well, and was sitting on the sofa in her house with all the blinds closed. Instead of a proper lunch, she was eating rocky road ice cream straight from the half-gallon carton with a spoon she normally reserved for serving mashed potatoes and such. One of those little teaspoons just hadn’t seemed indulgent enough for her mood.
The TV was on and streaming the second movie of aJurassic Parkmarathon. They weren’t what anyone would call comfort movies, but Alana figured there wasn’t much hope in any movie being able to console her so she’d allowed Netflix to choose with its Surprise Me option.
While the dinosaurs chased people and roared enough to shake the TV, Alana just let the tears come. Again, that was normally something she tried to keep in check only because crying jags required long recoveries, but everything inside her was whirling in a tight ball of that insatiable guilt and regret.
She’d already played the what-if stuff. What if she’d never looked at the credit card bill? What if she’d waited until Jack was home to talk to him about it? What if she’d sent him an email, which he likely wouldn’t have seen for a day or two? What if? What if? What if?
Without the phone call and Jack’s confession of an affair, without her screaming obscenities at him, he might not have felt the need to go see his old pal, Egan. Jack might have stayed put at whatever military site or station where he’d been waiting to respond to whatever mission came up. Heck, he might have even stayed with the woman he’d been cheating with.
Yes, even that would have been preferable to him being dead.
Mercy, this hurt. Reliving the what-ifs and replaying everything that’d happened from the time of her phone call rant to the military officers showing up at her door early the next morning to notify her of Jack’s death.
She could replay the notification, too, the slowly spoken words of the colonel from the local base who’d never met Jack but had had the misfortune of being the bearer of such heart-crushing news. He’d brought a minister and a nurse with him, and the pair had kept their attention pinned on her, no doubt ready to jump in if either of their services were required.
But there’d been no such requirements.
Because Alana hadn’t been able to speak, scream, pass out or have any other extreme outward reaction. No words had come. Only the silent tears.
Ironically, Colleen had been with her for that because she’d dropped by to check on her since Alana hadn’t responded to any of Loralee’s or her texts. By then, Alana had known about Colleen leaving Egan. She hadn’t, however, known that her sister had been having an affair as well, and in those moments before the dreaded knock at her door, Alana had been about to launch into spilling all about her cheating husband. But she hadn’t gotten the chance. The notification had stopped her words.
And her world.
After that, everything was a sickening, throbbing ache that left her, rightfully so, an emotional mess.
Alana hated, hated, hated that she couldn’t just be pissed off at a cheating husband. That he wasn’t alive for them to hash it out face-to-face and for them to find some kind of resolution that wouldn’t make her feel as if she were being eaten alive. Their marriage almost certainly wouldn’t have survived since she would have never been able to trust him again. But if Jack were alive, then she would just be a cynical divorcée with trust issues and not a screwed-up widow who didn’t deserve the pity that so many people doled out to her.
Her phone rang, and she scowled at the interruption. And then frowned when she saw her sister’s name on the screen. It was rare for Colleen to call her, and the timing was eerie since she’d just been thinking about her.
Alana instantly got a bad thought, that maybe Egan had called Colleen and asked her to check on her. After all, he was the only person who’d witnessed her recent meltdown.
But she couldn’t imagine Egan doing something like that.
If he were genuinely worried about her, he would have either checked on her himself or braved a call to Loralee to do that. Loralee and he weren’t buds by any stretch of the imagination, but it would take more of an imagination stretch for there to be a scenario where he’d call his ex-wife.
Even though she didn’t want to talk to anyone, Alana took the call in case this was some kind of emergency, but she put it on speaker so she could continue to eat the rocky road.
“Alana,” her sister greeted, and then Colleen stopped, no doubt because at that exact moment, a T. rex and a velociraptor got into a deafening confrontation. Colleen continued after a moment, but Alana missed a good chunk of what she said before Alana muted the TV. “...okay?” Colleen finished up.
“Sorry,” Alana muttered. “Just watching a movie.”
Colleen stayed silent, probably because she was wondering why the heck Alana was doing that on a workday. “Uh, is everything okay?” she asked, which was likely a repeat of what she’d said earlier.
“Okay enough,” Alana lied. “I just needed a little downtime. Is everything okay with you?” After all, it was a workday for Colleen, too, and since her sister was a lawyer for a nonprofit in Dallas, she would have probably been at her office.
“Yes, I’m fine.” There was nothing in her voice to indicate otherwise, either, and the concern Alana had had just seconds before vanished. “I’m calling because I heard about the life celebration for Jack.”
