He said goodbye and disappeared inside, and Maggie dropped back down on the sofa, even closer to Jo Ellen.
“Please don’t gloat,” Jo muttered, dropping her head. “Please don’t.”
“Oh, Jo.” Maggie put both arms around her and gave her a tight squeeze. “I’m not gloating. I’m as confused as you are and,believe it or not, I fully understand your pain. It’s okay to cry when you find out you didn’t know your husband at all.”
As if all she needed was permission, Jo Ellen gave in to a long, sad sob of profound disappointment, confusion, and loss.
“Artie,” Jo Ellen said at last, her voice thick. “My sweet Artie.”
“Just because he turned this Cotton character in to the FBI doesn’t mean he was involved with him,” Maggie said, trying to reassure her. “The man was practically a saint. Maybe he wanted retribution for Roger’s incarceration.”
“But he never told me!” she moaned. “That’s the worst part…not knowing any of this for all these years.”
Maggie nodded. “It’s a lie by omission and makes you question everything.”
“Yes!” Finally, she stood, but looked like her legs couldn’t even hold her as she walked to the railing to look out to the Gulf. “I thought I knew him better than anyone in the world. We were married for fifty years, for goodness sake. And he never breathed a word. Never once.”
Maggie sighed. “We married men who kept secrets from us.”
“And forced us to make promises not to talk to each other.” She whipped around. “What didn’t they want us to find out? Why separate us? I thought it was because Roger was…you know…”
“A criminal,” Maggie supplied. “Maybe they both were.”
Jo Ellen pressed the heels of her hands into her forehead. “Or Artie was an undercover agent? How is that even remotely possible?”
“Seriously,” Maggie said with a dry laugh. “The man was hardly James Bond.”
“But who was he? Why didn’t I know?” Tears threatened and she didn’t bother to blink them away. They spilled over, running down her cheeks.
Maggie’s heart rolled around in guilt, shame, and remorse. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, standing up to step closer to Jo. “I’m sorry Roger was a bad influence on your highly moral and principled husband. Artie was a good man and he loved you.”
Suddenly, Jo Ellen pulled her into a hug so fierce it nearly knocked the breath from her lungs.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” Jo Ellen hissed fiercely. “Not for any of this. You had nothing to do with it, and you are my friend.”
“Were,” Maggie corrected softly.
“No, Mags. Are. You are my friend! Those two men can just…well, I’d say drop dead, but they did already.”
Maggie laughed and they finally pulled apart. Jo Ellen wiped her eyes with her hands.
“We can’t tell my girls,” she blurted out. “Please promise me that. Not now, not before the celebration. Tessa, especially, would be devastated. Kate, too.”
“I’ll honor what you ask of me,” Maggie replied. “But I won’t lie to my kids. And I won’t…” She swallowed, realizing how much salt it would throw in Jo Ellen’s wound if Maggie were to reiterate her refusal to attend Artie’s ash-throwing thing.
But she wasn’t going. Period, end of story. Not in a million years would she risk Roger’s wrath from the Great Beyond by celebrating the life of the man who put her husband in prison. And others.
“You won’t what?” Jo Ellen pressed.
“I won’t tell your girls,” she finished. “We’ll let them remember their father the way they need to.”
Jo Ellen nodded, but her shoulders sagged under the weight of it all. Maggie felt exactly the same.
If someone had told Lacey a few months ago that she’d be driving through the rural back roads of Florida with a great-looking NFL player in a car that cost more than her college tuition, she would have laughed at them.
And if they’d have told her that somewhere in the past few weeks—after spending hours together at the Summer House, on the beach, out and about in Destin, and generally side by side—that this fake relationship would slip into kind of real?
Whoa. She’d have told that person to lay off the rom-coms.
