“Two minutes. Maybe three.”
Heat rose in Dev’s stomach at what sounded like it had to be a lie.
“You’re the spitting image of me at a certain age,” Don went on. “There was one point—years ago—when I suspected, but I let it lie.”
“Why?” Dev demanded, his baser instincts getting the better of him as something deep inside spouted off without permission. “What kind of man who suspects he might have a child decides to stay away?”
“A selfish one. A man who held hope that the love of his life would take him back one day.”
It was a cryptic non-answer. Dev was about to tell him just that when Donovan Packard sighed and asked, “What do you already know?”
But Dev wanted the whole story—not an interrogation, a confession. “Assume that I know nothing.”
Packard raised his hand to grab the back of his neck. Dev tried to ignore the fact that he often made the same gesture. He needed to hear what was to come.
“Like I said, Josie was the love of my life. But loving a woman is complicated if it doesn’t come at the right time. I was older. And married. And I’d lied to everyone in town about my circumstances—things that seemed innocent enough at the time. They related to my own problems that I didn’t think anyone needed to know. Only, I didn’t anticipate at the beginning how tethered I would become to this place. I didn’t expect the things I lied about would matter when I told them early on.”
Only to signal that he was listening, Dev nodded, but he couldn’t help becoming distracted. He couldn’t help that Don’s story made him think of Shea, and to wonder what story she’d told herself about her lies.
“Go on,” Dev implored, wanting him to get to the important part—the part where he suspected but did nothing. Dev wanted to see how he planned to justify that.
“I realized early on that I wanted to be with Josie,” Don continued. “My plan was to marry her, but there were chess pieces to move. I needed to divorce my wife. Don Jr. was six at that point and there was another one on the way. It was damned-near impossible that the baby my wife was expecting was mine. I spent so much time in Sapling during those years and we were having marital problems. I had to be careful about sorting out that piece, because I’d been unfaithful too. It was gearing up to be a messy divorce, and I knew I needed to tread lightly.”
“Did you ever tell my mother about your wife?” Dev quizzed, wanting to compare his version of the story with Trudy’s, some part of him wanting to catch the man in a lie.
“No,” he answered. “I’m ashamed to say I didn’t. I was too busy figuring it all out—thinking through how it could be with your mother and also be a father to Don Jr. in New York. And I wanted to do it quietly. If I sullied my own reputation, the worse it would be for her.”
Dev rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Damn, but he was tired. And this was a lot to take in.
“And just what were you telling my mom while you were thinking things through?” Dev wasn’t proud of using air quotes. But that was just the state of mind he was in.
Donovan looked regretful. “Josie knew I wanted to propose. We talked all the time about the rest of our lives—about traveling the world and having kids and settling back down in Sapling. The truth is, I fell in love with this place. It’s still one of my favorite places in the world. I still think about the life we would have had if my wife hadn’t shown up to surprise me that day.”
Now it was Don whose voice was laced with sarcasm.
“I take it her visit wasn’t a surprise?” Dev guessed.
“More like an ambush.” Don’s voice was dark. “She’d figured things out, about me and Josie. There was one moment—when we were all in the same room together—when I could’ve come clean to them both. But the second I saw my wife, I knew why she’d come. It wasn’t to confront her cheating husband and it sure as hell wasn’t a pleasure trip. For her, it was desperation, and hedging her bets.
“She wanted to intimidate Josie just in case things didn’t work out between she and her lover; and she might have wanted to preserve our marriage to