same connection anymore, do we? You’re not drinking with me, and I can see that you’re wondering why I had to come in the middle of the night.”
She tried to be diplomatic. “Don’t take it personally. Things have really changed for me, but it means a lot that you wanted to get together.”
Julia clasped her hands together on the table and looked at them. “I actually needed to tell you something.”
“So you said. What’s going on?”
“I owe you an apology. A really big one.” Julia’s knuckles whitened, and her voice shook. “I guess it’s one of the biggest apologies I’ve owed anybody in my life. Robert—my therapist—insisted I needed to talk to you as part of my healing. At first I resisted, but when he wouldn’t let it go, I realized he was right. I had to do this in person if I could.”
Molly frowned. “Okay, just spit it out. What’s wrong?”
Julia’s reddened gaze lifted to meet hers. “I’m the one who slept with Austin.”
For a moment the words didn’t sink in. Then Molly shook her head sharply. “You were the other woman? You always said you detested him.”
“I did!” Julia swiped at her nose and sniffled. “He was an asshole. He was never good enough for you.”
Molly’s stomach lurched. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Julia barked out another wild, unsteady laugh. “That’s par for the course. Nothing I’ve done over the past few years has made much sense. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. He was going to cheat on you anyway, and I said it was just sex. Nasty sex, the kind you don’t ask your h-husband for, not when you’re a mother and your husband is chronically short on sleep from working too much and your five-year-old boy sleeps across the hall, and God, this is coming out all wrong.”
“Unbelievable,” Molly muttered.
The purple panties would have looked good on Julia, with her petite, rounded figure, pale skin, and dark hair. Remembering how Molly had found the panties that afternoon brought back an echo of the sharp, desolate pain.
Julia had been the one in her bed, cheating with her husband.
Tears spilled down Julia’s pale cheeks. “I am so, so sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. I never meant to hurt you. None of it was ever about you, at least not until the end.”
“You always did say you envied us.” Molly felt herself grow distant, as if she were watching herself talking with Julia from a great distance.
Julia eagerly latched on to that sentence. “That’s exactly it. It all got tangled together in my messed-up head. I felt trapped in my marriage, and I always needed to be available for Drew, and I never found time for myself. That turned into looking for ways to escape. I began drinking too much. I still drink too much. Then, after a few months, the affair started to make me feel sick. I thought I could keep it separate from our friendship, but I couldn’t. You deserved better. You deserved to know.”
“It lasted a few months?” It took a few moments before she could speak again. “And instead of facing up to what you did, you pretended to lose your panties so I would find out that way.”
She felt like an idiot. All the supposition she had gone through when she had held that imaginary conversation with Austin’s mistress. She had been right on some things, but mostly she had been wrong. Austin had acted against his “type,” and she had never once suspected Julia.
Julia wiped her cheeks and searched Molly’s face. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking or feeling right now.”
Mindful of how thin motel walls were, she bit out quietly, “How do you think I feel? I’m over what Austin did. That’s old news. But you did that in my bed, and you met for me lunch afterward. I was gutted that week. You looked me in the eye, and you never said a goddamn word. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I know.” Julia started crying again. “I just didn’t want to lose you.”
“You know what I keep hearing you say? It was always about what you wanted, what you needed.” Breathing hard, Molly stared at Julia until the other woman’s gaze fell. She said, almost conversationally, “I’m tired of people trying to take things that don’t belong to them.”
Austin and Julia with their infidelities. The witch who had done so much damage to Josiah and others.
Julia straightened. “Just because I’m ready to apologize