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They didn’t drive her home. They drove her, instead, to another huge estate in Naperville, about thirty miles west of Chicago. The home was so far back from the street that they had to travel up a long, winding driveway to make it to the house.

Max was seated up front in the SUV alongside the driver. Bobby was on the middle row alongside Joy. Michael Iverson was driving Joy’s Lexus behind them.

Joy looked at Bobby. “Who lives here?”

Bobby felt sad for Joy. She hardly knew the man she’d just married. “Your husband owns it, Joy.”

“William owns this?”

Bobby exhaled. “I’m afraid so, yes.”

Joy shook her head. She should not have been surprised, given how little she knew about William, but she was. She had no idea that he owned another house just thirty minutes away from their home. She had no idea when he said he had to go to Canada he was going to screw some politician. She had no idea! Which only reinforced her deep-seated concern that she might not know her husband at all.

Not that there wasn’t signs, she thought, as they got out of the SUV. He had all of those so-called lady friends long before they got married. And Tess heard around the office that he had a lady friend in every town imaginable. Every country too. She even said he didn’t once upon a time have those friends. What she’d heard was that he had them still. Despite his marriage to Joy. Despite Joy altogether.

Why would she have married a man so different from her?

She’d rather be still waiting tables at Maylene’s than to feel this kind of pain.

But she kept it together. She wasn’t about to let William or anybody else see her crying and proving their point that she was too young to be with a man like William, as she made her way up the steps of the cottage-style stone house and into its front doors.

The butler and caretaker who opened the doors escorted her down a long corridor to a room at the end of the hall. She noticed that Bobby and Max remained up front, and the butler, as soon he stopped her at the door, left her alone too. It was as if they wanted no parts of the situation she found herself in. They wanted no parts of that confrontation.

But Joy wasn’t there to confront anybody. She wanted the truth. Just the truth! And if the truth was what it was reported to be, she was out of there. It was over. She could tolerate a lot of things, and had tolerated a lot of things in her relationships with these men, but cheating wasn’t one of them.

But every single man she had ever been with turned out to be a cheater.

She thought William was different.

When she opened the door and looked inside, she saw that it was a bedroom with a parlor inside of it. Not nearly as big as their bedroom in Chicago, but still big. And William was seated on the sofa across the room, his legs folded, his arms resting in his lap. He looked awful, she thought.

“Close the door, Joy.”

She didn’t realize she hadn’t closed it already. That was how hard she was staring at him. She closed it. And then she walked over to him and sat down in the chair.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“No.”

Then William got down to business. He unfolded his legs and leaned forward. “The story wasn’t supposed to break until tomorrow. My plan was to tell you before that happened. I got back in town as quickly as I could. For you to have to hear about it online? For that I am truly sorry.”

Joy couldn’t believe he just said that. “That’s what you’re apologizing for?”

“Excuse me?”

Joy was livid. “What about us, William! Who gives a shit about how I found out? Why did you do that to us? How could you ruin our marriage like that?”

William was confused. “Our marriage has nothing to do with this. There were no us when I had that affair with Diana.”

Now Joy was confused.

“And don’t talk to me about the historic implications of her candidacy either. I had no idea she would be running for prime minister. She had just become an MP. I had no idea.”

Then he ran his hands through his hair. “I’m devastated that she’ll more than likely have to drop out of the race. I never would have . . .”

But Joy was still back at the beginning. When he said there was no us. “How could you say there was no us?” she asked him. “That reporter said you slept with that woman two weeks ago, William.”

William looked at her. “That’s absurd!”