Honor, the daughter of a lawyer, translated, ‘Your dad paid them off.’
Again, the laugh. ‘You know better than to use words like pay off, babe. I made the victim whole again. Or, rather, my dad did. At first he said I’d just have to serve my jail time but when hesaw me all caged up like that, the old man finally came through.’ Then he added, deliberately, ‘Of course, you never saw how miserable I was in jail, crawling the walls and hating the entire world.’
She ignored the barb. ‘Your poor dad. That must have nearly wiped him out.’
A sharp breath. ‘I’ve paid him back a little already. But, you know, I needed to keep enough money back to come chasing after my wife and I haven’t had a pay cheque in a while. You made things pretty tight, disappearing like that.’
She settled her back on the wooden slats, cool now the last of the sun was dipping into the sea. ‘You’ve cleared out our savings account and you’re here after my severance cheque?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ But he didn’t deny it, either. More softly, ‘I came to find you, babe. I miss you. And I’m not giving up on you.’
She made her voice soft. ‘I’m sorry, Stef. But you have to. I told you, when you got yourself put in jail.’
‘You sure did. Right around the same time that your ring came whizzing through the air.’ His elbows were planted on his knees, hands hanging loose, as relaxed as if this was a summer Sunday out by the lake. ‘What you omitted to mention was you were going to sublet our apartment, store our furniture and dump all my gear in the loft over my dad’s garage.’
She hugged her knees against the ocean chill rolling up over the cliff. ‘If you’d been released on time, the tenants would have been out of the apartment. Whether you moved your gear back in would have been your decision.’
Slowly, he nodded. ‘And would your stuff be in there, too?’
She stared. ‘No. Itold you.’
Silence. Then, ‘You’re really that mad at me? Shit.’ He let out a long sigh that seemed to come right up from his boots. He glanced at the bungalow’s front door. ‘Would you mind tellingme what we’re doing sitting out here in the dark and the cold when your rental’s right there?’
The bungalow was her refuge. Damned if she was going to take what she was running away from right in there with her. ‘I think you need to find yourself a room somewhere.’
‘Are you shacked up with that guy?’
‘He doesn’t live here, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Her voice shook, though she told it sternly not to.
‘I don’t know, Honor.Isthat what I’m asking? Or am I asking you whether you and him are having sex?’ He paused. His voice hardened. ‘I guess I don’t have to ask. The way he had your ass in his hands and his tongue down your throat pretty much tells me all I need to know.’
‘Well, then.’ Honor hated hurting Stef, no matter what he’d done; marriages begun with joy shouldn’t end in pain. But it was beginning to seem as if there was no other way.
He shook his head. For the first time his voice softened and he sounded more like the Stef that Honor used to love. ‘I would never have believed that you’d cheat on me.’
She didn’t try to explain that she saw it more as leaving him than cheating on him. ‘And I would never have believed you’d become a criminal. So neither of us got what we signed up for.’
He snorted. ‘Babe! I’m not a criminal. It was a prank. You know about me and pranks. Youknow.’
Weariness settled heavy hands on her shoulders. ‘Stef, identity theft is a felony in the state of Connecticut. You used someone else’s credit card details to buy a shit load of embarrassing stuff for the guy.’
He couldn’t quite hide the laughter in his voice. ‘Exactly.For the guy.Billie’s boyfriend. It all went straight to his address, so how is that theft? It was a prank, not a crime — I’m not a criminal — I’m a prankinal.’
‘You know damned well—!’ Automatically, Honor prepared to explain how it was immaterial where the goods went; it was buying with Billie’s boyfriend’s credit card that was the issue. But she clamped her lips shut on the hot words. An argument was just what Stef wanted. He’d make her laugh and cajole her by saying it was just a joke. Funny. Ha ha. Everybody ought to be able to take a joke. Jokes were Stef’s way of dealing with everything. Even when she could see from his eyes that he was really hurting.
She took a breath. Let it out. Slow. Slow down, Honor. Keep calm. ‘OK, so you’re a prankinal. Here’s the thing, Stef — you’re the only person in the world that recognises the word. Yourprankgot you 180 days in county.
‘And that wasn’t nice for me. The good people of Hamilton Drives didn’t want their investments handled by the hands that had been given in marriage to an inmate. And half the town thought you’d just made a fool of yourself over Billie and the other half thought you were actually sleeping with her.’
Stef shrugged it off. ‘That didn’t happen between me and Billie.’
‘Before all this happened, whether you did or whether you didn’t would have been important.’
He frowned. ‘So it’s not important, now?’
‘Why you chose to punish Billie’s boyfriend so thoroughly has always been a mystery. The fact is that you did. I don’t know if you did what you did for Billie but, sure as hell, it wasn’t for me. I’m just the poor fool who suffered.’
He inched closer, until he could lay his hand on hers, warm and remembered. Yet no longer familiar. ‘So, you cheated on me. You had to get back at me. I think I understand that. It’s a hard thing for me to get over, but I will get over it.’ His voice was a plea, trying hard to make her see things his way. ‘Same wayyou’ll get over me doing jail time. I guess we’ll have to find a way to forgive each other.’
