the sofa, his fingers curled on its leather arm. “You don’t have to do this,” he told her quietly.
She nodded, but when she looked back at me, her eyes said she did. That look also held an apology, regret for what she had to say, fear that it would change everything, and it might. She might lose her son, her name, her job, her home. But not our friendship. Shanahan or not, that wasn’t in play. Needing her to know it, I joined her on the sofa, sitting close with a leg folded under me so that I faced her.
“Tell us,” I urged, and for a minute, seeing a last flash of panic in those copper eyes, I feared she might throw up again. But she stayed where she was, swallowed, and began.
She had met Carter Brandt eighteen years before. She was his massage therapist at a spa in Sedona, and the attraction was immediate. Later, when his dark side proved so dark that she wondered how she could have missed it, she blamed Sedona’s heady vibe of red rocks, pine forests, and spirituality. Carter snowed her. She thought they had a special connection. He was good-looking and charismatic, turning heads wherever he went. What woman wouldn’t be flattered that he chose her? she asked the men before returning helpless eyes to me.
“They wouldn’t understand,” I said softly and jiggled her wrist. “Go on.”
She took a quick drink, tucked the bottle between her hip and the sofa, and folded her hands in her lap. He liked her spark, she said. He liked her independence. Within the year, she had moved from Arizona to New Mexico to marry him, and, soon after, was pregnant. She hadn’t thought it would happen so soon, but his parents had been after him to have kids. Their business was a family one, and they needed promise of a next generation.
The Brandt family owned the largest car dealership consortium in the southwest. Despite being intimately involved with that, Carter built a separate source of power in politics. When he and Grace met, he was already a city councilor, although he kept a scrupulous finger in the automotive till. The dealerships he personally ran were the most productive; he used that fact to build connections beyond those of his family. This meant nights out, lots of nights out. Sometimes Grace was with him. Increasingly, she was not.
Soon after Chris was born, Carter was elected to the New Mexico House of Representatives. He had run as a successful businessman dedicated to honesty and transparency, buzzwords he knew resonated with voters, and he won by a healthy margin. Grace was at his side when he needed her, though she was starting to chafe at being “the little woman.” She wanted to go back to work. The spa ambiance offered a warmth and serenity she didn’t have at home. And Santa Fe was known for its spas.
Carter refused. He argued that she was the wife of a state representative, not to mention now belonging to one of the state’s most prominent families. Touching men’s bodies all day wouldn’t look good.
Little by little, other things about Grace started not looking good to him. She wasn’t good at political talk. She wasn’t good at hosting dinner parties. She wasn’t good at elegance. Her flair had become a liability, drawing attention away from him. And then there were her roots, about which his constituents often asked. She came from nothing. Her parents were working class, which hadn’t bothered him when they first met, but suddenly did.
“He told you this?” Ben asked.
“Well, I sure didn’t imagine it,” she shot at the window to which he’d returned. “Do I look that insecure?”
She actually did, tucked in her protective corner, though I’m not sure the men sensed it the way I did. Confidence could be applied like makeup. I knew this for fact.
Jay had been pacing but now stopped before her. “Verbal abuse?” he asked.
“Not at first,” she said and picked at a nail. “It started innocent, like, ‘Can you do something with your hair,’ or ‘Maybe not that sweater.’ Then it got worse, and it wasn’t only Carter. His sister got in the act”—she made air quotes—“to help me out. She’s a bitch in the best of times, which shopping with me was not. She kept choosing things that were totally not me then rolling her eyes at what I did want, like I was hopeless. Add that to all the nights he was out,