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“Yes, and now Paul has lost me. Because I can’t be with him after this, Diana. I just can’t. If that makes me uncompromising, then so be it. This baby deserves better. I deserve better.”
Her shoulders slump with disappointment. “That’s too bad. Because I hate thinking of that baby growing up without a father.”
“A divorce won’t change the fact that this baby is Paul’s. And I’m not saying I’m cutting him out of our lives completely, just that I can’t be married to him anymore.”
She gives a swirl to her tea, watching the way the liquid spins around her cup. “What I meant is, it’s hard enough to raise a child, but doing so on your own is a special brand of difficult. The midnight feedings, the constant worry. The money.” She sips, watching me over the lip of her teacup. “Babies are so very expensive.”
Her tone is parked in Neutral, but her words still hit me wrong, like jumping into the lake before the sun has had a chance to warm up the water. “I don’t plan on asking Paul for anything more than what I’m entitled to according to the prenup, if that’s what you’re fishing for. Child support and health care, at least until the baby is born. That’s all I want.”
“Of course you are entitled to those things. I wasn’t implying anything otherwise. But you should know that this case is going to trial, and people will be watching. In fact, they’re already watching, and they’ve seen how you’ve moved out of Paul’s house and into some rickety trailer. You can’t raise this baby in a trailer.”
A hot flash of indignation, but I manage to keep it out of my tone. “Plenty of people raise babies in trailers. My mother did. Not very well, but that had nothing to do with the trailer. The point is, a baby doesn’t care where it lives as long as it’s loved and cared for.”
Diana tries very hard not to roll her eyes. “What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to struggle.”
It takes a few seconds for her meaning to sink in, and then I laugh out loud at the irony. After all these months trying to chase me away, after all the ways she’s cut and stabbed and poked at my feelings, now she wants me to stay.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to stand by my man. No, no, wait. It’s more than that. You want me to waddle around town with my big belly on display so people will look at me and feel sorry for Paul. You want us to sit behind him at the trial so the jurors will think we’re a united front.” I place both hands on the table and lean in. “You want to pay me to stay.”
“Not you, dear. The baby. A trust fund in his or her name, with you as the administrator. Enough so that you can buy a house of your own, take care of your child and never have to work again.” She settles her cup back onto the saucer and sinks back in her chair. “Think of it as a sort of insurance. You do this one little thing for me, and I’ll make sure you’re set up for life.”
I blink at her in disbelief, in horror. “That’s not insurance. It’s a bribe.”
“Be smart, Charlie. I’m offering you security, a future without money worries.”
“Seriously, lady. You have lost your ever lovin’ mind. I don’t want your money. I don’t want Paul’s. All I want is to get off this crazy train and go back to my side of the hill, where people might not have as much but at least they’re not killers—”
The words die in my throat because it hits me then. The thing Diana said before, about Jax and the costume jewelry. I close my eyes and struggle to recall the missing pieces Micah rattled off in the kitchen that morning with Chet and Paul and Chief Hunt and Diana. She was there. She heard it, too.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Diana says, but I ignore her.
A pair of golden hoops. A pearl bracelet and a watch. A ruby-and-diamond ring that once belonged to Sienna’s grandmother. That’s what Micah said. He told us to keep it quiet, too, that the police weren’t releasing the list of jewelry to the media.
I open my eyes, and she’s watching me. “How did you know about Sienna’s jewelry being costume?”
Diana frowns. “What are you talking about? Micah said—”
“Micah told us what pieces he was looking for, but he never said the jewelry was fake. And even if it was, he’s not the kind of guy who would have known the difference. Even if he held the pieces in his hand, he wouldn’t have recognized gold from gold plate, or that those stones in her grandmother’s ring were colored chips of glass.”
There’s a voice in my head telling me to leave it, to leave this house and never look back. But my heart is pounding, my skin tingling with realization, and I never could let things lie.
I lean forward in my chair. “Butyouwould.”
Diana, who insists on only the best. Who once paid a jewelry designer to pour pure twenty-four-karat gold into three identical wax molds and engrave the town’s coordinates on the back. Who had not one man she loved to protect from the truth coming out, but two. Jax is family, she just told me. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for him.
Her whole body changes in that instant of understanding. Everything about her hardens—her eyes, her mouth, her expression. I sit there for a moment, watching her scramble for her game face, but she doesn’t quite get there. And it’s too late. I’ve already seen it. I already heard.
She tucks a hank of hair behind an ear, fidgets. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”
“You do know what this means, right? Jax has an alibi. He was twelve miles away at the time of Sienna’s death, and three people heard Micah deny killing her, right before he admitted to killing Bobby. Why would he admit to one and not the other?”
Diana doesn’t answer. The only sound is a clock ticking in another room and a light snore coming from the fur ball on her lap. She stares at me and I stare at her, but she doesn’t say a word.
“This means all signs point to Paul. Your beloved son, the last of the three with both motive and opportunity. You’re really going to let him go to prison for something he didn’t do?”
She waves off my words with a hand. “It’ll never come to that. I’ve already retained the best defense attorney in the South, who assures me Paul won’t get much jail time, if any. And they can’t prove something that never happened. Whatever evidence the police have on him for Sienna’s death is purely circumstantial.” But she doesn’t sound very certain.
“You people are bonkers. Do you know that?” My rising tone wakes the dog, who jumps to its feet on Diana’s lap, yipping. She slides a hand around its snout like a muzzle. I was crazy to think this woman would ever accept me into her family, just like I’d be crazy to let a murderer anywhere near my child. “There’s not enough money in the world to make me want to stay in this family. You’re unhinged.”