Page 32

Julia

Julia felt a dozen emotions in a matter of seconds. Anger. Sorrow. Disbelief. Then the rush of feelings gave way to pure shock.

While the amber tones of the liquid in front of Christian looked like maple syrup, the Maker’s Mark label made it evident the contents weren’t for pancakes and waffles.

Where Christian got his hands on a bottle of whiskey was a question for later.

She never kept anything stronger than wine in the house, and that only after years of Christian’s sobriety, when she could finally believe his assurances that he was comfortable having alcohol around.

Which raised the more pressing question: Why would he throw his sobriety out the window after all they’d been through?

An electric current coursed through her body and out of her mouth in one panicked, disbelieving yell: “Christian, what in God’s name are you doing?”

He barely moved. For a moment, Julia feared the worst—had he swallowed a handful of pills with his drink? Eventually, though, his hand went to the bottle, and she watched him pour another splash into his glass without so much as a glance in her direction.

Was this about the bank accounts—the passwords he had changed without informing her? Was there more going on than she realized? She never had the chance to confront him because of the chaos with Fiona. Now she was afraid to learn the truth.

“Christian!” she cried. “Answer me, what are you doing? You’re drinking!”

Finally, he looked at her, his eyes so red they were glowing. “Yeah, no shit. Do you want some?” The words slurred together— doyawannsum —as he teetered on his chair.

Julia stormed across the room and grabbed the bottle off the table, barely resisting the urge to club him over the head with it. Instead, she poured the contents into their ancient kitchen sink. She saw her life going down the drain along with the alcohol.

“I take that as no,” he slurred. “But you gonna regret that.”

Bad grammar. Barely able to hold his head up. He was blotto.

Julia thought she might pass out from the adrenaline rush, but collected herself enough to sit beside her husband.

He fixated on her with those awful bloodshot eyes, drooping with remorse. The smell emanating from him was potent, but it was still his face, the same mouth Julia had kissed thousands of times. Seeing him like this was both familiar and strange, an unwelcome visitor from the past.

She gripped the table’s edge to keep upright, but the room spun anyway, her world tilting at an unnatural angle.

“Christian, you need to tell me what is going on. Where did you get the whiskey, and more importantly, why are you drinking it?”

His hand unsteady, Christian slowly raised the glass to his lips and drank again. Julia didn’t have it in her to knock it away. Instead, she watched him finish the contents in one long gulp.

In the ensuing silence, a worst-case scenario occurred to her: he was about to confess to murdering Fiona. It would be Christian, her beloved husband, who would lead the police to the body. But no. That was insane. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t. Still, he hadn’t answered her.

Confronting a drunk with anger was as effective as debating people online. So she asked again, in a patient voice, tempering her fury by touching his hand.

His eyes were so wounded that she felt injured herself. Her face softened, giving Christian the security he needed to open up.

“I didn’t get it,” he said, as if she should know what he was talking about. “It didn’t come through.”

He picked up his phone from the table, staring at it morosely, as if the device had somehow betrayed him.

His face knotted up. Julia thought he might burst into tears, but instead his lips curled into a vicious snarl.

His forehead blanketed into deep creases, red splotches erupting on his neck and cheeks.

In one swift motion, he cocked his arm back and thrust it forward. The phone flew from his grasp, sailing across the room, where it slammed against the wall over the stove.

Julia jumped at the sound of the impact, but Christian didn’t flinch. Perhaps he’d wanted a more dramatic result, but the phone fell to the ground mostly intact, save for the splintered screen. Whatever he was trying to get out of his system hadn’t been purged, and Christian winced in agony.

“Christian—Jesus Christ. What didn’t come through?” Julia asked. “What is happening?”

“The loan,” he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. “We didn’t get the loan.”

“What loan?” Julia was baffled. They hadn’t sought any loan, none that she knew about. “Is that why you’ve been obsessively checking your phone? Were you waiting to hear from a bank? What on earth did you apply for? What kind of shit mess did you get us in?” Her anger was rising again.

“They said it was guaranteed. I was preapproved. That’s exactly what he told me. Pre… a… proved. What else does that mean?” He reached for the bottle, no longer there, and then tried to drink from the glass he’d already emptied.

Julia felt like she might explode. “Christian, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re really frightening me.”

When he met her eyes, they were filled with tears. But dammit, she knew he was crying for himself. Shame radiated off him. He turned away from her because he couldn’t bear the indignity, and that gesture alone told her all she needed to know. The news was bad. Really bad.

“I’ve lost it all,” he blurted out. “I thought I had it under control, Jules, I really did. One more loan, that’s all I needed…

Then I could have shuffled the money around until business picked up.

I was right there. I had it all figured out.

Fuck!” He slammed his fist against the table, then grimaced, swallowing hard as if he’d downed another burning shot of whiskey. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Of all the words that drunkenly spilled from his mouth, Julia focused on the three most important ones.

“What do you mean, lost it all? ” Mounting pressure in her chest painfully squeezed at her heart. Unable to breathe, she felt her whole world caving in. It was like being buried under a crush of bodies, a mishmash of all the creditors who’d been hounding her for months.

It had been Julia’s greatest fear—that Christian would move so fast and recklessly that her hard-charging husband would forget when to apply the brakes.

His explanations and excuses wouldn’t matter.

The final result would still be the same: the twisted wreckage of their lives would be scattered about, and the black box that held all of Christian’s horrible choices would reveal precisely how he’d brought them down.

Lost it all.

“The loan was supposed to pay off the line of credit. I maxed it out, but now I’ve defaulted.”

“Christian, what line of credit? I don’t understand.” God, talking to a drunk was like trying to follow a bouncing ball.

“The HELOC,” he finally spit out.

HELOC. Got it. Home equity line of credit. Making progress . But this made no sense. Christian couldn’t get one of those without her signing it too, since her name was also on the deed to the house.

As that thought came to her, another struck, this one so unsettling that Julia nearly had an out-of-body experience. She envisioned herself strangling her husband, her hands wrapped tightly around his throat, squeezing the life out of him.

Their primary residence was available for a line of credit only with her authorization, but the lake house was held in a trust, along with other cash assets, and Christian was the trustee.

They’d set it up that way because they’d lumped an inheritance from Christian’s family with her assets to safeguard these resources for Taylor down the road.

At the time, picking Christian as the trustee had seemed like the most sensible choice. He was the finance guy.

A wave of nausea rose. “Christian, what about the money? We had money in that trust.”

“Long gone,” he said.

Her whole body trembled. “The HELOC—which house did you use for that?” But she knew—of course she knew.

“Tell me you didn’t just lose my family’s lake house. Tell me, you son of a bitch.”

Christian crumpled in his chair, the final admission like a weight he could no longer shoulder. His obvious remorse meant little to Julia at this point.

“ How could you?” she shouted, her cheeks burning. “You took out a line of credit on my family home without consulting me first?”

“I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

“Damn straight, I wouldn’t,” she snapped.

“I just needed a cash infusion to keep the business alive until things turned around. And then I would pay off the other loan, and we’d be fine. You wouldn’t have even known about it. The projections looked so good. It was low risk. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Jules.”

She hated him using her nickname. It made her skin crawl.

Now the call from the Purdy School made much more sense. She couldn’t believe it. In all their life, despite all the drinking, the affair, and his streak of poor choices, she’d never even considered that he could do something this deceitful and hurtful.

“What have you done to us, Christian?” she said.

“Please forgive me, Jules.”

Julia coughed out a disbelieving laugh. “Forgive you? Christian, I can’t stand the sight of you.”

“Please, I’ll figure this out, I promise. I love you so, so much.” His desperation only made Julia feel more out of control. Her entire body thrummed with fury.

“I am beyond devastated,” she said. “I am so angry I’m scaring myself.

This is a betrayal on a whole different level than what you did before.

I certainly can’t address this when you’re drunk, and I don’t want to see you after you sober up, either.

This might be my last two weeks on this lake for my entire life, and I don’t want you here anymore.

You make me so sick I could scream. You can sleep in the guest room.

And keep away from Taylor. I don’t want her finding out right now that you tossed your sobriety and my home in the trash.

After you sleep it off, you can get in your precious Land Rover and get the hell out of here. ”

Without giving Christian a chance to respond, Julia stormed out of the kitchen. She could hardly hold back the tears that poured out as soon as she reached the bedroom, where she slammed the door and locked it behind her.