During a commercial there was an awkward silence, which I filled by telling her something I hadn’t thought I would get a chance to tell her. “Caro left me three of her father’s cars in her will. Said she wanted me to sell them and use the money for nursing school.”
“That’s amazing. And not surprising that she would do that. She really thought the world of you.”
I cleared my throat, a little embarrassed. I had been surprised to get the summons to attend the reading of the will. And then shocked to find out the value of the gift she’d given me.
“I was kind of surprised that she didn’t leave something to you,” I said. I had half expected to see Jane at the reading. “A piece of jewelry or something.”
Jane shook her head. Her hair had grown since I’d brought her the Vette, now brushing her shoulders. “I wasn’t. It would have hurt Betsy, I think. I know Caro cared for me, but at the end of the day, she wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her kids.”
I was going to say something to that, but the interview came back on and we watched the rest of it in silence.
“You were good,” I said to Jane when the screen returned to Amanda Teller sitting in a chair back in the studio. “I thought—”
“Shhh, I want to hear this part.” I raised a brow at her for shushing me, but just took another sip of beer and turned my attention back to the television.
“Shortly after Caroline Stratton’s funeral, I received a call from Jane Winters asking if she could speak to me again. Here now is that conversation.”
I turned to Jane, dread filling me. “What did you—”
“Shhh,” she said again, adding in a hand motion this time. Her eyes were glued to the TV.
Oh shit, after Caro died Jane probably figured fuck it and decided to tell Amanda Teller exactly what she thought of dear old dad. Which was fine—I couldn’t give a shit about Joe Stratton’s political career. And in some ways Jane’s life would be easier if his political ambitions bit the dust here and now. But I knew that to burn a bridge that large would put Jane in a major hot spot with Grayson Spaulding. One dude you did not want to cross.
“Jane, I understand you were at Caroline’s funeral?” Amanda Teller asked Jane on screen. They were in a studio, and I wondered if Jane had gone to New York to do this.
“Yes, I was. It was, of course, very sad. But it was also a lovely celebration of her life. A chance for her friends and family to come together and share their stories and memories. Caro would have liked it.”
Okay, so far so good. She wasn’t saying “my dad’s a douche” right out of the gate.
“And then you called me. Why is that Jane—what do you want to say that you couldn’t while Joe and Caroline were beside you?”
Beside me Jane fidgeted, while Jane on the screen sat up straight, put her shoulders back and said, “We talked a lot about family and integrity that day. And at the time, they seemed like different topics to me. But now, after the funeral, they seem so intertwined.”
Teller leaned forward, hungry for whatever scoop Jane was about to hand her. “How so?”
“Well, like in my father’s case. Did he act with integrity back when he met my mother and I was born? No. And that cost him the love of his life in Caroline. Has he since tried to make it right and act in everyone’s best interest? I think so. We all make mistakes. We all wish we could have a do-over.”
“But don’t you think integrity is at the very fiber of a person? That if you didn’t have it then, you don’t have it later?”
Jane pretended to mull that over, but I was willing to bet she knew exactly what she was going to say. “Not necessarily. In my father’s case, I think it was losing Caroline that made him reassess his life and priorities, and from that came a new sense of responsibility, and integrity.” Teller nodded, and was about to ask something else when Jane continued, “Like with my boyfriend, he’s only twenty-one, but he has the strongest sense of integrity I know. Maybe not in some areas, but with the people he cares about, he would do whatever it took to help them out, even to the detriment of our relationship. He drives me mad sometimes, but I love him very much, and it’s admirable, so I stand by him. And that’s kind of like how my father…”
The interview went on for another minute or two, then went back to Teller alone in the studio signing off. I didn’t catch what Jane said at the end, some kind of tying it all back to her father, but my brain stopped working when she said that she loved her boyfriend and stood by him. The screen went dark, and I turned to see the remote in Jane’s hand, and her eyes on me.
Based on her expression—both apprehensive and curious—the shield was definitely down.
I knew how she felt—I had no defenses against what she’d said about loving me. My shield had been shattered. Had been shattered by Jane from day one. What she said wouldn’t be a big deal to anyone else watching it. But to me? To me, she’d just given me the world.
“You added absolutely nothing to that interview in the eyes of everybody but me,” I said cautiously. I didn’t want the shield being thrown back up.
“I know.”
“Why did she even run it?”
She placed the remote on the coffee table and took a sip from her beer. “She thought I was going to dish dirt. When it was over, she didn’t want to run it, but I promised her first interview rights for the next three years if she aired it.”
“You’re kidding? And she said yes?”
Jane shrugged. “Nobody knows if Joe will win or not, but she probably figures if I’m in the limelight, then, knowing me, I’ll probably have some meltdown here or there, and she gets first crack at me. It was a risk she was willing to take.”
