sound good.” Maggie pulled her legs up cross-legged on the sofa, grabbing a tissue from the box on the white painted end table.
“It won’t be easy to hear, but you need to know the truth.” Emily searched for the right words while every eye in the room was fixed on her. “There’s no easy way to say this—”
“So spit it out, already,” Camille directed, shifting in her seat.
“Calm down, Camille.” Isabel reached out and put her hand on Camille’s forearm. “Let Emily find her own words.”
“Sorry, I’m just a bundle of nerves,” Camille apologized, running her fingers through her short fiery locks.
“Emily?” Maggie muttered, her eyes growing large with alarm.
“Okay, here it goes.” Emily sucked in a deep breath. “You wanted to know what possible motive your son could have, well, Josh caught Lucas fooling around with Fiona at the engagement party.”
“Fiona?” Maggie gasped. “No! That couldn’t be. He loved me. He was going to marry me. That doesn’t make any sense at all.” She pulled an accent pillow in front of her and wrapped her arms around it, clinging tightly.
“I’m so sorry, Maggie. Josh said he ordered Lucas to come clean with you about Fiona, to break off the engagement within twenty-four hours, or he would tell you himself.”
“I thought she was my friend.” The tears began to flow once more. “I introduced her to Lucas.”
Emily scooted closer to Maggie and put an arm around her, as Maggie leaned into Emily and began to sob.
“I never liked that woman,” Isabel said, her eyes narrowing. “There always seemed to be something evil about her. Even at the presentation the other night, she seemed resentful that Lucas had proposed. Remember that, Em?”
“How come y’all never said anythin’ about that to me?” Maggie looked from Isabel to Emily, dabbing her eyes.
“She seemed a little jealous of the two of you at the welcome party, too,” Isabel added. “And didn’t you say, Em, you saw them together in the lounge at the Hilton Hotel a week or so ago?”
“Why am I the last to know?” Maggie bawled, throwing her hands in the air.
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know either,” Camille said to Maggie while scowling at their other two friends.
“We’re not saying they had sex, Maggie,” Emily tried to explain.
“You think they were havin’ sex?” Maggie queried. “We weren’t havin’ sex, but do y’all think they were?”
“We don’t know what they were doing, Maggs.” Emily rubbed her hand over Maggie’s shoulder. “Josh is the one who said he saw them fooling around, those were his words.”
“Fooling around, huh?” Maggie murmured, patting the tissue under her eyes. “I still don’t understand why y’all didn’t say one word about it to me.”
“They were just observations we made, we didn’t know anything for sure. And we certainly didn’t know they were playing around,” Emily tried to justify.
“You could have at least told me,” Camille pouted.
Isabel twisted in her chair to face Camille. “We didn’t tell you because we didn’t want Maggie to know until we were sure. Let’s face it, Cam, you’re not the best at keeping secrets.”
Camille frowned at the characterization.
“We just thought Fiona was attracted to Lucas, maybe had a little crush on him,” Isabel said.
“He was handsome and charming.” Emily had to give him that much. “If we had known something for certain, we would have come to you with it,” she assured Maggie, patting her hand. “Let’s get back to Josh, hmm?”
“Okay,” Maggie mumbled.
“When Josh found out Lucas hadn’t told you about Fiona, he went to Lucas’s office to confront him.”
“Oh, Emily, no,” Maggie whimpered.
“Josh confessed to me that he beat Lucas for what he did to you, but he swears Lucas was alive when he left,” Emily explained. “The cops have a security video showing Josh coming and going from the office building, and Josh admitted to them about the fist fight.”
“Why did he let the cops question him without his attorney?” Camille asked.
“Just looking at him, anyone could see he’d been in a fight,” Emily said.
Maggie took a long cleansing breath, gaining control over her sobs. She dried her eyes with the tissue and blew her nose. “Yesterday mornin’ when I got up, I saw Josh looked like he got in a fight, but the police showed up and arrested him before he got a chance to tell me what happened. Right away I called Alex and he headed down to the jail.”
“Doesn’t Josh get military representation?” Camille asked.
“Oh, I never even thought of that,” Maggie