The Other Wife. Shirley Jump

a vibrant color compared to my own plain brown ones—I couldn’t hate her. But damn it, I wanted to. It would have made the whole thing a lot more convenient.

      “I didn’t know,” she said, taking a step closer, lowering her voice. “Not until I read the obituary in the paper.”

      I decided to believe her. If he’d fooled me for fifteen years, surely he could have fooled her, too. A hundred questions filled my mind. But then his mother was reaching for me, wanting to introduce me to some distant cousin I’d never see again, so I gave the other wife a slight, dismissive nod, and slipped back into the perfect portrait of what everyone expected of me.

      Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her walk away, those crazy shoes sparkling in the muted light of the funeral parlor. We were members of the same club now, she and I.

      I hoped like hell I wasn’t going to find anyone else with a membership before this day was over.

      CHAPTER 2

      Somehow, I got through the wake without smearing Dave’s good name or shrieking like a lunatic. My sister Georgia, Dave’s brother Kevin, and Dave’s mom were all there, keeping me company in the line beside the casket. That was it for family. My parents had died when I was seventeen, my grandparents shortly thereafter. Dave’s father had passed away seven years ago from a heart attack, leaving Lillian to begin retirement as a widow.

      I went home the night of the wake and cleaned a house that didn’t need cleaning, organized closets that were already perfect and went through every pen in the house, scribbling the tips across an old magazine, looking for duds.

      For something to do, to keep me from thinking.

      At the funeral the next day, I did everything I was supposed to do. Laid a white rose on his casket before they lowered it into the ground, said thank you to everyone who offered their sympathies, turned down the offer of another casserole I wasn’t going to eat. After a funeral dinner hosted by the ladies of the same church that had married and now buried my husband, I sent my sister home, telling her I would be okay. I thought of trying to talk to Dave’s brother, to find out what he knew about this other woman, but right now, I wasn’t strong enough to handle one more thing.

      The other wife didn’t show at the funeral and for an hour or so I pretended I was the only woman in Dave’s life, that the words the pastor said about my late husband were true. “Good man…loving husband…devoted son.”

      At the end of the day, I slipped into the limo beside my mother-in-law to go back to the house Dave and I had bought a month ago.

      The house where we were going to start a family.

      He’d told me it would bring good luck, this change of residency. We’d been discussing the idea of kids for ten years, but I’d always had an excuse, a reason we should wait. I’d put him off and put him off, hoping that someday, Dave would just give up on the idea.

      But then, finally, after Christmas, I had relented, finally conceding my fight to add anything more complicated than a potted plant to our lives. Because I was thirty-seven and Dave forty, we’d gotten checkups to make sure nothing was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, the doctor had said. Dave had plenty of sperm to go around.

      I stifled a laugh in the back of the limo. He’d had plenty of sperm to go around, all right.

      My mother-in-law gave me a sharp glance, then let out a sigh. “Are you okay, Penny?”

      “Yeah.” As fine as I’m ever going to be after coming face-to-face with my husband’s extracurricular life. “Lillian, if you want to stay at my house for a few days—”

      “No. I’m going back to Florida, back home.” She averted her face, watching the pastel tones of spring pass by the window. “I’m best going through this on my own. Do you understand, honey?”

      She’d flown up as soon as I’d called her from the hospital and hadn’t left my side since. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some time away from this, to deal with her loss.

      “Yeah. I feel the same way.” Though I wanted to be alone for an entirely different reason, so I could sort out the mess of my husband’s life and figure out how I could have been so easily duped by the same man whose underwear I had washed every Saturday. How could I have been handling those Fruit of the Looms and never realized he was a cheater? A bigamist?

      A stranger?

      I reached out and clasped Lillian’s hand, giving it a squeeze. A tear ran down her face. She smiled at me, her eyes kind and worried. I’d always liked my mother-in-law, figuring I’d gotten awfully lucky to have married into a family where the normal jokes hadn’t applied. Considering my own parents had been the dysfunctional poster children for how not to parent, I had latched on to Lillian soon after meeting Dave.

      “Thanks for being here for me the last two days,” I said. “I needed the support.”

      “I needed you just as much, dear,” Lillian said, then sighed. “He’s gone for both of us.”

      And for someone else. I bit my tongue. “He would have hated this, you know. The big funeral. The music.”

      “The flowers.” Lillian laughed. “God, how Dave hated flowers at funerals. Said they were a waste of good landscaping plants.”

      I thought of the mums in our garage, the ones we’d planned on planting this weekend. He’d left me with a bunch of plants and a life half-done.

      In the space of a day, my life had been thrown into a shredder, taking with it what I had hoped for my future, what I believed about my past, and what I thought I knew about my heart.

      Talk about killing a whole bevy of birds with one stone. Dave’s death had pretty much wiped out a species.

      We pulled up in front of the house, the limo easing to a stop without even a squeak of the brakes.

      Through the car’s tinted windows, I saw her. Again. Like a bad nightmare I couldn’t get rid of. Sitting on the swing—the swing Dave had installed last month—on my front porch, waiting.

      “Who’s that?” Lillian asked. “I don’t think I saw her at the funeral.”

      “She’s a good friend of Dave’s.” I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not today. Maybe not ever. Heck, even I didn’t want the whole truth.

      “I’ll let you two visit,” Lillian said, giving me a final, comforting pat. “I want to go see Kevin again before I head to the airport.”

      Later, when I was ready, I’d corner Kevin and see what he knew. He and Dave had been close, going on annual fishing and hunting trips. He had to have told his older brother something.

      Then as soon as I solved this mystery—and dealt with any financial ramifications—I’d bury it all in the back of my mind and get back to my predictable days.

      It was the only way I knew how to deal.

      I got out of the limo, said goodbye to Lillian, then strode up my walkway, not looking at the newly mulched beds waiting for plants. Ignoring the freshly painted white picket fence, the new front door. Projects we’d done last weekend. Apparently my weekend with him since the one before he’d been in “Toronto.”

      A fresh wave of pain slammed into my chest. Toronto, Denver, Dallas—how many of those trips had been lies? And to think I’d packed his suitcase, even throwing in a sexy note once in a while, and one time, a pair of my panties, because I felt bad for him attending those boring insurance conventions and client meetings.

      I’d thought I was being so clever, such a perfect wife. Clearly, I hadn’t, not if my husband had gone out and found himself a spare.

      The other wife rose when I approached, still clutching that lace hanky. “I should have introduced myself,” she said, extending a hand. “Susan Rey—” She cut herself off before giving me my own last name. “Susan.”

      Susan.