The First Wife. Tara Quinn Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ you tell her you would testify?”

      “Yes.” And then she quickly added, “But I don’t know what good I’m going to be. It’s not like I expected something like this. I’m in total shock. The James I thought I knew was weak and selfish, but he wasn’t a murderer.”

      “Very few people have any idea someone they loved is capable of murder,” Brad said, taking her hand in another unusual show of physical support. Something she rarely needed.

      She let him link her fingers with his and held on.

      “I come up against it again and again,” he was saying. “The shock. The disbelief. You know this as well as I do. With all of the articles Twenty-Something has done, your volunteer work and the editorials you’ve written, you’re as much an expert on domestic abuse as I am. I’m sure you can quote statistics.”

      Probably. Being the CEO of a start-up magazine focusing on issues facing today’s young women did have its benefits. And what she hadn’t gleaned from her work on Twenty-Something, she’d learned through her years of volunteering.

      Domestic abuse. Brad’s words, couched in generalities, lay between them. She’d told Brad her ex-husband had been unfaithful. His infidelity had been the reason for their divorce.

      She’d told him the truth. At least, as much of it as she’d known.

      “Sheila Grant told me this morning that James is a bigamist. And that I’m one of his victims.”

      A victim. Jane hated the sound of that. The feel of it. As though she’d been branded.

      Brad leaned back, staring at her. “You’re still married?”

      “No!” Shaking her head, she squeezed his hand. And still didn’t let go. She’d been hanging out with Brad for a couple of years now and this was the first time they’d held hands. “My divorce is perfectly legal,” she said. “But it hadn’t happened yet when he married Lee Anne. He wasn’t just having an affair with her—he’d taken her to Vegas and married her.”

      “Then, he wasn’t really married to her at all.”

      “Apparently he’d asked her for a church wedding, complete with an Ohio marriage license, after our divorce, still without telling her about his first marriage. It was for their anniversary. He told her the Vegas wedding didn’t feel legitimate enough.”

      “What a guy.”

      “Yeah and it gets worse. He married a third time, about eighteen months ago.”

      “Let me guess, he didn’t bother divorcing Lee Anne first.”

      “Right.”

      Brad frowned, taking on the look she’d seen him wear in the courtroom. His thinking face. “If he doesn’t want her around anymore, why not just divorce her?”

      Jane relayed what Sheila Grant had told her about the triangle in Chandler, Ohio. Some supposition. Some not. Brad seemed to agree with the prosecutor’s blackmail theories, but Jane didn’t know what to think. The whole thing—James being a bigamist, her not knowing that her husband was lying to her in such a fundamental way—was just too unbelievable.

      A lot of men could pull off an illicit relationship on the side. But a second marriage? And she hadn’t even suspected?

      Where was the strong, capable woman who’d been given the chance to head up a new national magazine? Who stood at the head of a Chicago boardroom and justified spending thousands of dollars on copy and cover art, layout and gloss? Who, in her spare time, helped vulnerable women find their feet?

      Could the real Jane Hamilton please stand up? A mental version of the old television show To Tell the Truth played in her brain. Or should that be, Could the real Mrs. James Todd please stand up?

      She was spiraling out of control. Didn’t know herself. Didn’t know what—

      “Did he hit you, Jane?”

      Brad’s softly spoken question broke through her internal torment.

      “No! Of course not.” She’d have known what to do about that.

      They stood there, peering into each other’s eyes. She tried to smile at the man who’d become such an important part of her life.

      “But he hurt you.”

      Of course he had. He’d been unfaithful to her. He’d been her mentor. Her professor. And then her friend and lover and husband. She’d looked up to him. Learned so much from him. And…

      Was she really so pathetic that she’d overlooked enough lies that he’d been able to hide a second family? Had she been that desperate to keep James in her life?

      Brad was watching her and the idea of him seeing her as a helpless victim felt far too threatening.

      For no reason. Her sense of self-worth came from within.

      Still she broke away and dropped down to the blanket. She held the container with the fruit they hadn’t yet eaten, but didn’t open it.

      “I wasn’t abused.” The constriction in Jane’s throat lessened. “There were a couple of accidents that were blown out of proportion. That’s all. Sheila Grant got hold of some old police reports.”

      Brad sat down beside her, his long frame seeming to take up far more of the blanket than it had earlier.

      “You called the police?”

      She shook her head. “I told you, they were accidents. Which the doctor in the emergency room felt compelled to report. The police asked some questions, and they left. No charges were filed.” Holding the container of fresh strawberries in her lap, she glanced up at him. “God knows, I appreciate the law that requires medical personnel to notify police whenever they see something that suggests abuse, but in my case, those calls just caused a lot of embarrassment. James was a professor at the local university. Well liked. Respected. He was not a wife beater.”

      Brad’s expression remained completely focused. “Do you have any idea why Ms. Grant would be interested in the reports?”

      “Apparently they were filed with suspicion.”

      “Meaning that while no one was charged, the investigating officer wasn’t convinced a crime hadn’t been committed.”

      Right. So Sheila Grant had explained, though that morning had been the first Jane had heard of any suspicion.

      “What happened? Tell me about the accidents.”

      “I fell down the stairs once and before you say anything, yes, I’m positive I tripped. James did not push me, though the doctor, and the cop, too, for that matter, kept trying to get me to say he did.”

      “So James was there.”

      “Yes, we were going downstairs together. And no, we weren’t fighting.”

      His head slightly lowered, Brad watched her with a sideways glance. “And you’re sure there’s no way he pushed you.”

      “It СКАЧАТЬ