“Before you hang up, there’s something I thought you should know.”
End the call,I command myself, but I’m frozen suddenly. I hear her clear her throat.
“Just so you have all the facts at your disposal, Logan and I actually gowaayback as a couple. We had our first fling when I worked for him eleven years ago.”
Her words are a hard punch to my gut—because, deep down, I sense she must be telling the truth. With a fumbling hand, I tap the red button.
So Logan’s infidelity hadn’t simply been about grief. He’d had his fling with Lisa three years before Mel died. And that means there were probably others throughout our two-decade marriage.
I married a bad boy, convincing myself I’d tamed him, when that was never the case.
Logan and I say little on the drive to police headquarters. I expect a tongue-lashing from Halligan, but I don’t really care. As for Lisa’s revelation, I’ve tucked that away in my mind with other things that don’t matter anymore.
We learn when we arrive that Halligan is off for the day, and another detective ends up taking my statement. Though he stresses, like Halligan did, that I need to let the police do their job, he also thanks me for my help. Detective Halligan, he says, will follow up with us in the next day or two.
Once we’re back in the car, Logan checks his phone and finds a text from Jack.
“He’s back in the city,” he says, “but he’s read the story.”
“I feel a little guilty about thinking the worst of him.”
“Yeah, but maybe you don’t get to the truth without first thinking the worst about everyone. And like you said, he was probably trying to make sure we didn’t do any damage to his blossoming career.”
We’re quiet again on the way back to Cartersville, Logan perhaps wondering what I’m going to tell him now that we have the police out of the way, and me forming the words in my head. When we reach the inn, I ask if he’ll come to my room for a bit.
“Sure,” he says, an eyebrow cocked.
Once I’ve closed the door, I advance into the room and then turn to face him.
“I want to address what you said earlier,” I say.
“Good.”
“Well, maybenotgood. Because though what you said really moved me, Logan, I have to say no. And I think that, in time, you’d see that a no was best for you as well.”
He shakes his head, looking taken aback. “It won’t be.”
“Logan, it wouldn’t work between us. For starters, though it might not have seemed obvious the other night, I love my partner, and I assume you love Lisa, too. Plus, there’s no reason to think it would be good for us again. We might feel slightly giddy at first, but that surely wouldn’t last, and we’d lose some of the strides we’ve each made dealing with our grief. It would always be in the room with us.”
He throws up his hands in frustration. “But how will we know if we don’t try?”
“Because this doesn’t need an experiment. You said you want your old life back, and I’ve missed that life, too. But there isn’t any way to reclaim it. That life died when Mel did.”
I don’t mention what I’ve learned from Lisa. Because why give her the satisfaction of thinking she foiled something—and why bother calling Logan out at this stage of the game?
Anyway, it’s all beside the point. Though I felt briefly elated at hearing Logan say he yearned for a life with me again, it’s Bas I want. If he lets that happen.
And there’s something else I’ve come to understand now, beyond the scope of Logan’s philandering. Though he never once made me feel bad about the easy rapport he had with Mel compared to my fraught one, being with him this week has brought so much of that back to me, turned it from a bruise that hurts only when touched to a steady, throbbing ache. I don’t want any more reminders.
He’s pacing now, massaging the back of his neck in that way of his.
“Will you at least think about it overnight?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, but what I’ll do—and what I hope you’ll do, too—is be grateful for parts of these past few days. The scholarships you donated are incredible, and so is theMuseoffice, and I’m really happy I had the chance to participate a little. Plus, we got to be here for thearrest of the person who most likely killed Mel, and support each other through it. And though I can take some credit for the arrest, I kept digging because you honored my doubts.”
Logan starts to speak, but I raise my hand.
“And last but hardly least,” I say, “we got to say goodbye to each other in a loving way, without any of the ugliness from seven years ago.”
