he doesn’t look like a guy that takes orders from anyone, even you.”
“Don’t worry about my husband. I’ll handle him.”
That was easy for her to say. The engine rumbled, and a look over her shoulder showed no sign of Mr. Carter. “We will just drive back to the house,” Sadie said. “We went on the hard roads, and if I push it much more today, I’m going to get in trouble.”
There were times when Sadie pushed the edge of her mother’s and brothers’ patience, but disobeying a man like Dr. Carter just tempted trouble.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LIBBY
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Bluestone, Virginia
There was always a good reason not to fill in the blank. Libby had gotten home from the wedding around one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Blissfully exhausted, she had fallen onto the couch and slept until three. Energized, she showered and changed into a relaxed-fit top and black linen pants.
She had plenty of time before she was supposed to leave for Woodmont, so she contemplated checking out the shed stocked with her old photography equipment. If that did not suit, she could get a jump on some of the photo editing or even go through the trove of papers in her father’s desk.
Instead, Libby made herself a cup of coffee and then settled back on the living room couch. Reaching for her phone, she scrolled through her Instagram account, reviewing the pictures she had posted from the wedding and smiling as she read the comments from several of the wedding guests.
Libby could have stopped there and left well enough alone. But she pulled up Jeremy’s page and found herself staring at the couple’s smiling faces as they posed in front of the courthouse, holding up their marriage license. Their megawatt smiles beamed on the screen. The license blocked Monica’s tummy, but Libby could see that Monica’s face was nicely rounded and her breasts fuller. If only Jeremy had been a little fatter or less pulled together.
“Happy. Fat. Happy. Fatter.”
The words rolled over and over in her head like a mantra as she scrolled back in time. In April, the two were standing at a country estate that looked a great deal like Woodmont. He had his arm around her, and both were holding up cans of soda.
Jeremy had given up wine and beer all three times she had been pregnant. It had been a solidarity move, showing more than telling that they were in this parenting thing together. He had held her hair back during her bouts of morning sickness. He had never complained when she had asked him to buy mint chocolate chip ice cream at eleven o’clock at night. He had been there for her. Her rock.
And now he was there for Monica. And their soon-to-be baby.
Libby had done everything she could think of to make her pregnancy work. There had been dozens of lists of what to do and not do, and she had dutifully followed each every day. She had resisted the urge to list potential disasters detailing all that could go wrong with her baby. She had been determined to stay positive.
Sitting up straighter, she tossed the phone aside. It was almost five o’clock, and she had promised Elaine she would stop by her place. She still was not sure why Elaine was looping her into this gathering, but the idea of mingling with strangers had far greater appeal than cyberstalking Jeremy.
She climbed the stairs. She always kept the doors to her parents’ old room and her father’s office closed. It made it easier to pretend she was just here for the weekend and that any second now she would have to get in her car and drive back to her real life.
Since she had moved back in early January, she had not gone in her father’s study. Her father had prepaid his housekeeper, Lou Ann, to clean the house every two weeks, and she could tell by the sharp scent of lemon polish that Lou Ann dutifully cleaned without exception.
So when she opened the door to her father’s office, she was not surprised to see the polished, clean surface of her father’s desk.
Stepping into the room, she could not miss the freshly painted walls.
“Dad, why are you having the inside of the house painted?” It had been one of a dozen visits she had made to his hospital bedside during the last eight weeks of his life. If she was not shooting or editing, she was with her dad.