The First Wife (10 page)

“We were lovers. At his house, there’s a room he keeps locked. He said he used it
for storage, but I knew he was lying. I caught him in there once, he closed the door
before I could see much. But—”

“What?” Bailey prodded. “Tell me, please.”

“I got a peek inside. A board with diagrams and photos. There were pictures of True.”
She paused. “And one of Logan. At the center of the board.”

Pictures of True. A picture of Logan. At the center.
For a moment, Bailey felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “Did you ask him about it?
What did he say?”

“I pretended I didn’t see anything. But it really freaked me out.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know for sure, but … I think he’s trying to build a case against Logan.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A case proving that Logan not only killed True, but is also responsible for the women
who’ve gone missing.”

Bailey felt sick. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s Billy Ray. Crazy.”

“He can’t have proof Logan did that. Because he didn’t. I know he didn’t.”

Bailey heard the frantic edge in her voice and struggled to control it. “If he really
did have evidence, he’d have used it a long time ago.”

“He won’t quit trying. He’s obsessed. I just … thought you should know.”

Bailey knew she should respond, thank her. Instead, she stood. “I need to be getting
back to the farm.”

Stephanie reached up and grabbed her hand. “It hasn’t been easy for Logan. He takes
so much on himself. Responsibility for everything from his mother’s murder to his
brother’s suicide.” She shook her head. “Just love him, Bailey. That’s what he needs
from you.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

For a long time after she exited the hospital, Bailey sat in her vehicle, engine running,
thoughts whirling. Logan’s mother murdered? A brother who committed suicide? She pictured
the boy from the photographs at Henry’s and shuddered. No wonder he didn’t speak much
of the past. No wonder he was guarded to the point of secretive.

True’s desertion. Another betrayal. The horrible rumors. Being investigated by the
police.

“Death follows him. It follows that family.”

Not death. Tragedy. How unfair to point at Logan that way. He was the victim, not
a perpetrator. One of the victims. Raine was another. Anyone all this sadness had
touched.

Her, too, now that she loved him.

Tears stung her eyes.
“Just love him. That’s what he needs from you.”

Bailey rested her head against the seat back. But how did she love someone she didn’t
know? Who kept so much of himself locked away?

She could be
in
love with him, but it wasn’t the same as love in the transformative sense, where
two people became as one. Sharing everything. Leaning on each other for everything.

In sickness and in health.

Until death do us part.

The chirp-chirp of a car’s auto lock came from the car beside her. A man and a woman
arriving. Bailey realized she was crying and sat up, pretending to be searching for
something in her purse on the passenger-side seat.

She felt the couple’s curious gazes, and knew they probably thought someone she loved
was ill. That she had been visiting. Or saying good-bye.

Maybe she should. Say good-bye. Leave Logan and Abbott Farm behind. He’d kept so much
from her. Deliberately. His choice. If she stripped it down, took away all the romance,
the sex and sunrises, he had deceived her. Manipulated her, stolen
her
right to make an informed decision about marriage to him.

Bailey wiped the tears from her cheeks. She wanted to be angry. Indignant. That would
be so much more palatable than this hurt. This feeling of betrayal.

She could confront him. Demand he tell her everything, spill his guts. Or else.

She let out a long breath. She’d find no satisfaction in that. She wanted him to fully
trust her. To let her in, without tears or ultimatums.

The way she had him. She had told him about her father leaving, her mother’s illness
and the toll caring for her had taken. She’d shared her hopes and dreams, her fears.
Before they’d left the island. Before I do. Before, before, before.

What he had shared with her would fill a teacup.

But she loved him anyway. She had tied her life to his, had chosen to believe their
fairy tale. For better or worse, crazy or not.

Happily ever after.

She could believe enough for the both of them.

Bailey straightened. She wouldn’t let their love slip away. She would love him hard
enough, completely enough, to burrow through his defenses.

But she needed help. Someone who knew everything about him and his past. Who understood
and loved him. Two people came to mind. One whose loyalty made him tight-lipped, the
other whose emotional instability made her dangerous.

But Raine loved him the way only a sister who had suffered the same blows could.

Of course, Raine. Although it might take a miracle.

Bailey punched “Home” into her GPS; the system directed her to
“proceed to the highlighted route.”

Good advice, she thought. And exactly her plan. She shifted the Range Rover into gear.

*   *   *

The sun had begun its final descent as Bailey made her way up the drive to Raine’s
cottage and studio. The landscape was wild and lovely, very much like the woman. Several
pieces of abstract sculpture adorned the green spaces near the buildings—one of which
was lyrical, with colorful pieces that caught the light and spun in the wind like
pinwheels. Bailey detested the other two on sight—muscular and somehow threatening,
like New Age gargoyles.

She parked in front of the two buildings. It wasn’t difficult to pick the house from
the studio—the house looked like many of the cottages Bailey had seen around town,
with a wide front porch and Victorian trim; the other was modern and minimalist, incongruent
with the natural setting.

Lights burned inside the latter, and pasting a friendly smile on her face, she approached.
Raine opened the door before Bailey knocked. She wore a painter’s apron, decorated
with what looked to be a lifetime of paint; shorts and a T-shirt under the apron.
Latex gloves, also smeared with paint, covered her hands.

Her eyebrows drew down into a frown. “This is a surprise.”

“Hello, Raine.” Bailey handed her the bottle of wine she had purloined from Logan’s
wine closet. “I hoped we could visit.”

Raine looked at the bottle’s label, then back up at her. One corner of her mouth lifted
in amusement. “You chose well. Just hope Logan doesn’t miss it.”

She moved aside and Bailey stepped into the studio, little more than a large box with
windows and a vaulted ceiling, a half-dozen fans suspended from its rafters. The smell
of the oil paint and turpentine stung her nose, though it wasn’t overpowering. Obviously
Raine had taken care to install good ventilation.

Bailey moved her gaze over the space. Color and texture, light and dark, line and
shape. Surrounding her, on every wall and easel, stacked in vertical racks were the
most grotesque paintings she had ever seen.

“They’re awful, aren’t they?”

“No, of course not.” Bailey meant it. They were powerful. And powerfully disturbing.
Dark, violent and raw.

“I’m not a favorite of interior designers.”

“Which pleases you.”

It wasn’t a question, but Raine answered anyway. “Art is supposed to arouse emotion.
Stimulate thought. Not lull one into a well-coordinated stupor.”

“I get that.”

“Do you?”

“Despite what you might think of your brother’s choice, Raine, I’m neither stupid
nor completely uncultured. And this may shock you, but there are even art museums
in Nebraska.”

Raine laughed. “You do have fire. I’m not sure it’s enough for the long haul, but
it’ll make for interesting viewing.”

“Such cynicism. Don’t you believe in love?”

“Careful, darling sister-in-law, you’ll make me puke.”

Bailey watched as she crossed to a workbench, removed her gloves and retrieved a corkscrew.
“This is way too good of a wine for a Tuesday afternoon, but let’s live dangerously.”

She expertly extracted the cork, then poured some into two colorful plastic cups.
“Mardi Gras cups,” she said as she handed her one. “They throw them from the floats.
Cheers.”

Bailey studied the cartoon-like image on hers, of a bearded man wearing a crown of
grapevines.

“Krewe of Bacchus,” Raine offered. “God of wine and revelry. Appropriate, don’t you
think?”

Bailey took a sip, although the last thing she felt like drinking on a warm afternoon
was red wine.

“Do you like it?” Raine asked.

“It’s delicious.”

“It should be. Street value is about two-fifty.”

Bailey almost choked. Raine laughed. “The perfect butter-me-up gift. I did say you’d
chosen well.”

Bailey set down her cup and returned to her question from a moment ago. “You never
answered, do you believe in love?”

“The romantic version? Death do us part and all that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“Obviously.”

“How lucky you are to be such an innocent.” Raine crossed to the sink and donned another
pair of gloves, these brand-new. The kind TV detectives wore.

“Which answers my question,” Bailey said.

“I’m afraid so.”

Bailey reached for her cup. “Why do you dislike me?”

“I don’t like having people forced down my throat. And that’s exactly what Logan is
doing—again—and it pisses me off.”

Bailey tried another tack. “But you do want him to be happy?”

“Happiness is illusory.” Raine began to clean the paint off her brushes. “But, yes,
more than anything. More than my own happiness.”

“Then help me. That’s all I want.”

“Be the adoring little wife and he will be.”

“Why are you so mean?”

She laughed but didn’t look up. “I think that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re
wondering about all the things he won’t talk about? Why he won’t and how you can get
him to let you in?”

How had Raine known? Was she that transparent, or Logan that predictable?

“Only partly,” she said. “I really would like us to be friends.”

Raine snorted at that and Bailey went on. “Tell me about your other brother.”

“Roane?”

Bailey worked to keep her excitement from showing. His name had been Roane. “Yes.”

“Why?” She stopped and looked at her. “What does it matter if you know about my poor
dead twin? How will that make Logan happy?”

The two babies in the photograph at Henry’s. Twins. Raine and Roane.

“You said it yourself, I need to understand him. So I can help him.”

“Help him?” she repeated. “Change him, you mean.” She laughed. “Just let him be. Enjoy
your good fortune while you can.”

She was so very brittle, Bailey thought. And angry. It glittered in her eyes and vibrated
in her acid tone.

Bailey’s heart went out to her, for all the loss she had suffered. But it was her
husband she meant to save. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

But Bailey had a good idea what it meant, and she wasn’t about to let it pass. “I
love him,” she said again. “And I’m not going to stop loving him.”

“And to do that, you have to peel back the layers.” She finished with the brushes
and laid them out on a rack. “Peek under the rock and see what’s lurking there?”

She had begun moving around the studio as she spoke, touching this and that. She stopped
now and looked directly at Bailey. “You won’t like what you find.”

“You can’t scare me.”

“Oh, but I think I can.”

Raine took up her cup, sipping as she went from one painting in progress to the next.
Pausing a moment to study, then flitting on to the next. Genuine nervous energy? Bailey
wondered. Or artifice? Meant to prove how bizarre she was?

“You sound like someone else. ‘I
love
him,’” Raine mocked, refilling her cup. “‘I want him to be
happy
.’ We see how well that worked out.”

“True.”

“Of course True.” She stopped and looked at her again. “You even look like her. Not
as pretty, but similar.”

“I’ve seen pictures of her.”

“Really?” She looked surprised. “Where?”

“Henry’s.”

She nodded, expression becoming faraway. “True was beautiful. And sweet.” Longing
in her tone. An ache. “Like a butterfly. Too vulnerable for this shark tank.”

Raine laughed again, then shook her head. “She was ten years younger than Logan. You’re
ten years younger, as well. Why do you think he keeps marrying younger women?”

Bailey tried not to get her back up, tried to hide how offended she was. Raine had
gotten enough points this go-around. “It’s not that unusual,” Bailey said. “People
do it all the time.”

“Men,” Raine said. “More than women. For obvious reasons.”

“Logan isn’t just any man.”

“No, he’s not. And he could have anyone.” She stopped again. Pinned her with that
somehow feral gaze. “Why you?”

Bailey tried not to flinch. Unsuccessfully, she knew by the gleam that came into Raine’s
eyes.

“Bull’s-eye.” Smiling, Raine brought her glass to her lips. “You’re not a dumb woman,
at least.”

“And you’re not a nice one.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why you?”

“I have no idea. But you do. Or you think you do.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I can handle it.”

“Because young women are starry-eyed. And gullible. And fall so very easily into love.”

“We’re dumb, is that what you’re saying?”

“Some are. Not you. Impetuous maybe. A bit desperate.”

That last hurt, Bailey hoped she kept it from showing.

“Did he tell you that he kept True a secret from us, as well? Oh, I see by your expression
that he didn’t.” She smiled. “No worries, sweet Bailey, their courtship was quite
different. He didn’t fly off to a Caribbean island and come home with a wife.”