Truth and Justice - Fern Michaels Page 0,75
will never get over that or forgive her for it. It wasn’t the money, although things were tight, what with payment for his new truck.”
Bella took a deep breath. “When I couldn’t take it anymore I went to a lawyer and filed for divorce. I assumed Andy had had a change of heart and regretted our quickie marriage. Especially when the other wives I contacted told me that they had FaceTimed with their husbands at least once a week plus almost daily e-mails. I was making myself sick and could barely function, so I did what I thought I needed to do for my own well-being. The day I signed the divorce papers was the same day I found out that Andy had died. I tried finding Sara but had no luck. The army people had not had any success at that, either.
“Sara impersonated me and went to the clinic and helped herself to my eggs, and I guess she took the sperm donations, too. I didn’t know where those were. Andy never told me, and I didn’t ask. I don’t know why I didn’t ask. I think because it sounded so . . . so decadent.”
“We’ve been on Bella’s case for almost two weeks now. We’ve been searching for Andy’s sister with no success until last night, when we finally found out where she is. Right now we are doing our best to try to figure out how to handle the situation and deal with this. We brought Bella here because we think Sara is deranged. We all agreed she might try to harm Bella if she found out that Bella was looking into this whole mess. By the expression on your face, it looks to me like you’re still skeptical. You do know that Sara is not Andy’s blood sibling, right?” Nikki said.
“What? No! Andy never alluded to that. He just referred to Sara as his sister. He loved her like a sister from what I could tell. He constantly said how great she was, how he trusted her. He told me he didn’t think he could have gotten to where he was in his life without her and how grateful he was to her. The only thing that bothered him was she couldn’t seem to make a relationship last. Other than that, in his eyes, she was perfect. He said she was on to the next man and then another one, looking for Mr. Perfect. Like she was searching for the perfect man and couldn’t find him. He said he really couldn’t fault her for that because everyone was looking for the perfect life partner. Andy simply was not judgmental the way most of us are. This is just blowing my mind.
“If all you say is true, and I’m not really doubting you, I don’t understand how Andy could believe and love her the way he did and not see what she was all about. She would have to be damn near perfect to pull that off, and let me tell you, Andy Nolan was no fool. He was smart as a whip, top of every class we took, and we were together from the get-go. Even though I was older, it didn’t make a difference.”
Myra scoffed. “Some men are not particularly wise when it comes to women. They never look for some reason beyond the surface. What they see and hear is all they need to know for some reason. I don’t doubt for a moment that Andy was smart, but Sara Windsor was, I don’t want to say smarter, but she was calculating, manipulative, and downright sneaky. She wanted Andy for herself, but she was smart enough to know while Andy was what she wanted, she was not what Andy wanted. She had a plan and she made it work for her. The one thing she didn’t count on was Andy’s dying.”
“And she didn’t count on Andy’s finding Bella and falling in love,” Alexis added. “The tricks that had probably worked with other relationships Andy had had didn’t work in regard to Bella. From what we understand, Andy more or less stopped confiding in Sara, so Sara knew almost next to nothing about her. Sara had to hire private detectives to search her out. One of our people discovered that. Most of this is conjecture on our part, but conjecture or not, when you piece it together, it makes sense. Andy Nolan was Sara’s life. Period. End of story.”
Paul Montrose slapped at his head, his