To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,49

pursued our undergraduate and master’s degrees in business. She’d been brave enough never to question me about my mother’s death and to stay at my house with Erica and my dad, who defined eccentric. She was also the only one in my life who never called me by a nickname. I liked to think that meant she took me seriously.

I hugged her tight, then pulled back to assess the damage again. The most dreadful thought popped into my mind. “Isabelle, have you been”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“raped?”

She burst into laughter. “Oh, thank God you came. No, I have not.”

“Then what happened?”

A uniformed officer passed by us, glanced at Isabelle, and shook his head with a smile.

She looped her arm through mine. “Let’s go outside to your car, shall we?”

Once we settled comfortably in my bucket seats, she fussed with the rip in her skirt, trying to smooth the two raw edges together. “I did something really stupid. Promise not to tell even Ray.”

I thought of how much trouble that same promise to Cory had created. Then I went ahead and made it anyway.

Isabelle sucked in a deep breath. “This afternoon I decided to take time off to do some yard work with Jack. Put away the patio furniture for the winter, stuff like that. He’d been home all morning, and I had just gotten home and was going upstairs to get changed when the phone rang. I heard him tell someone that he’d come by, just like last time. Then he came upstairs to tell me he needed to get fertilizer for the grass. He took off. I got in the car and followed him.

“He went to another bed and breakfast, not too far from our house. I waited for him to come out. A half hour went by. I decided to park a ways down and peek in the windows to see if I could spot him. I went around the house, looking in all the windows. One room was a bedroom and two people were in the bed … ah … doing it. I couldn’t see their faces, but, of course, I thought it was Jack and another woman. I pressed my nose right up against the window.” She closed her eyes.

I tried to wait patiently. I couldn’t. “And?”

Her eyes flew open. “And it wasn’t him. It was some other couple. She saw me first and screamed. Then the guy saw me and leapt out of bed. And I saw … well … all of him. I tried to run, but I got caught in the shrubs. It slowed me down. By the time I got around to the driveway, a man had come out on the porch. Not the naked one. I think it was the owner. He came running after me. I got in my car and peeled out, but he must have gotten my license number because the police pulled me over a few blocks down the road. They arrested me for peeping. They fingerprinted me and everything. It was awful and embarrassing.”

A tear rolled down Isabelle’s cheek and dripped off her chin. She didn’t seem to notice.

I wanted to hug her again, but I was afraid she wouldn’t make it through the rest of her story.

She breathed deep again. “I explained what happened. I apologized up and down. I offered to pay for any damages to their shrubbery. The officer couldn’t keep a straight face. He left me sitting in the interrogation room for a while, then he came back and said no one wanted to press any charges. The officer said I could go home.

“My car was towed to impound. I asked for a ride over there. He refused. He said I should call my husband. He said we needed to talk and now would be the perfect time.”

She wrung her hands. “Oh, Jolene, I couldn’t call Jack. I’ve been arrested. I have an arrest record. What if my clients find out? What if they hear why I was arrested?”

I took her hands in mine, stilling them. “I don’t think anyone will find out, since you weren’t charged or arraigned. We can go get your car. It’ll be okay.”

Isabelle’s tears flowed freely. “I’m acting like a crazy person.”

I fumbled in my purse for tissues and handed them to her. “Love will do that to you.”

She blew her nose and dried her eyes. “I thought everything was going to be okay. Jack and I did it the other night. Twice. I thought