In an effort to be polite, I take a cookie from the tray and place it on a napkin without taking a bite. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I promise we won’t stay long.”
Peter casts anxious looks in Agent Shaw’s direction as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. It’s not lost on methat everyone in the room seems to be ready to get this visit over with.
Janice brushes imaginary lint off her pants. “I’m surprised you wanted to speak with us given your…history…with Sutton.”
“You’re referring to her affair with my husband.”
Candidness isn’t something people come to expect from someone in my position, so I completely understand why my response makes Peter choke on the coffee he’s just taken a large sip of. Janice, who looks more like her daughter than I realized, nods.
“Yes. The affair. I want you to know Sutton was incredibly ashamed of her actions.”
When the news broke, Aubrey did everything he could to keep me away from Sutton. I was fine with that because I had no true desire to share space with her again. Because of that, I never got to find out whether Sutton was actually sorry for fucking my husband. Nothing about her presence on social media after leaving the campaign suggested remorse, but I could see her doing or saying things to her parents that would make them believe otherwise. She wouldn’t have had to work hard at it.
Parents always want to see the best in their kids.
“Does that mean she was no longer sleeping with my husband?”
This isn’t the first time they’ve fielded this question. Every single interviewer they’ve sat down with has wanted to know the same thing. Each time, they’ve stated that Sutton’s relationship with Aubrey ended when she left his employ. There’s never been an ounce of hesitance to their delivery, but this time, it’s there in the guilt creasing the corners of Peter’s eyes and the resolve weaved throughout Janice’s sigh as she slides to the edge of her seat, prepared to level with me.
Peter places a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Jan, we signed those papers.”
She shrugs him off. “We also agreed to speak with her. What was the point of having her come all this way if we weren’t going to tell her the truth, Pete?”
“You signed an NDA? But you’ve been speaking with the press.”
Peter takes his hand from Janice’s shoulder and links their fingers together, squeezing hard. “They said we can talk about Sutton as much as we want, but Aubrey is off limits.”
“Who?”
“They didn’t give us names,” Janice says, using her free hand to drop cubes of sugar into her mug. “Just showed up on our door the day after Sutton died with paperwork for us to sign and a check for doing so.”
I wrack my brain for possibilities, but the truth is it could have been anyone. Aubrey has an extensive network of people at his disposal, and I’m sure he deploys them without so much as a second thought. There’s a likely chance he doesn’t even know who came to Kentucky to silence the Ellsworths. Knowing trying to figure it out would be a waste of my time, I turn the conversation back to the original topic.
“So, the relationship hadn’t ended.”
Suspicion swirls in Janice’s irises. “You really didn’t know?”
It’s as close to verbal confirmation as I’m going to get, but it’s more than enough. My heart rate increases slightly as all the reasons Aubrey might want Sutton dead rush through my brain. I started crafting the list of possible motives the day I found out she was gone—threats to go public and demands for money to stay silent or a secret pregnancy were my first choices—but none of them worked if I couldn’t prove they were still seeing each other.
“No,” I say once it becomes clear my silence is making this so much more awkward. “I had no idea.”
“Shewassorry,” Peter declares, attempting to defend his daughter’s honor. “I could see the way it weighed on her. All the sneaking around and lying and hiding. I told her she deserved better than an adulterer, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Janice’s hand shakes as she brings her coffee to her lips. “She was in love. You know how intoxicating it is to be caught in the snare of Aubrey’s affection…or at least you did once.”
I take a bite of the cookie I’ve been holding for a while now. It’s a little on the crisp side, so crumbs sprinkle onto my lap as I laugh at her attempt to insult me even though the affection she’s bragging about her daughter receiving are likely the reason she’s dead.
“You’re right. It not hard to imagine how someone like Sutton could be ensnared by a man like Aubrey.”
“Someone like Sutton,” she repeats. “What do you mean by that? What exactly are you insinuating about my daughter, Mrs. Taylor?”
Leaning forward, I set my napkin and half-eaten cookie on the coffee table. “It’s not an insinuation, Mrs. Ellsworth. My personal belief is that women who sleep with married men grow up viewing other women as competition. Affairs aren’t about love for them. They’re acts of dominance, attempts to best women who are nothing more than surrogates for the mother who treated them as an opponent from the day they were born. If I had to guess, Sutton’s inability to leave Aubrey’s bed probably had more to do with who he is than the quality of his affection. After all, I’m sure none of the men you’ve fucked have possessed nuclear codes.”
Agent Morgan hides a laugh in an unconvincing cough as Janice’s face turns red.
“You dare to sit in my home and speak that way about me, my daughter,our relationship?!”
“You started this catty exchange, Mrs. Ellsworth, all I’ve done is finish it.”
