Free Come Home by Lisa Scottoline Page A

was?”
    “She’s wrong, honey.” Jill shook her head. “People say and think strange things in grief. She’s too upset to think straight. They both are.”
    Megan sniffled. “I know you didn’t cheat on him, Mom.”
    “I didn’t. I never would.”
    “I know, you’re honest.” Megan managed a weepy smile. “You don’t let me sign your name to anything, ever. Even absence notes.”
    Jill smiled.
    “Did he cheat on you ?”
    Jill sighed, inwardly. A couple of tourists got up from a nearby table. “I’m not sure we should get into this here and now, honey.”
    “Mom, I can take it. I’m not a baby.”
    “Frankly, it’s not your business. Or Abby’s. Or anybody’s but mine.” Jill wanted to stand her ground. It wouldn’t help for Megan to know more, and it was too emotionally charged a day. “I had to divorce him, and I did, and we’re better for it.”
    “Mom, tell me, please?” Megan leaned forward, putting her hands on the table, palms down. “William told Abby and Victoria. He thought they could handle it.”
    “William lied to Abby and Victoria.”
    “Trust me, Mom. Trust me enough to tell me.”
    “It’s not a matter of trust.” Jill tried to shift gears. “I wish we would use this day, and the fact that he’s gone, to put this chapter behind us and go forward.”
    “We can’t go to the next step until we understand this one.”
    Jill blinked. Either Megan had read that somewhere, or she was getting smarter.
    “You told me that, last week. When you were helping me with equations. You said you can’t go to the next step until you understand the last one.” Megan leaned over, bearing down. “Now tell me what happened. Why did you and William really break up?”
    Jill felt her resolve weaken. She spotted their waitress, coming toward them with their meals. “Hold on.”
    “Here we go, ladies,” the waitress said, setting salads in front of them, filling the air with the tang of balsamic dressing. They both thanked her, and Jill waited for her to leave before she spoke.
    “Honey, I don’t know if he cheated, and it really doesn’t matter to me.”
    Megan’s eyes flared. “Of course it does. It should. ”
    “Let’s keep the drama to a minimum,” Jill said, though she doubted it was possible. Mothers and daughters were automatic drama, and if you add dead ex-husbands, it rose to operatic levels.
    “So what went wrong?”
    “We were happy for a while, but then the trouble started, and I didn’t notice it at first. I ignored things, like symptoms you minimize when you don’t want to change your initial diagnosis. Classic confirmation bias.”
    Megan nodded, used to medical analogies by now.
    “You remember William, right? What was he like, to you?”
    “Fun. Silly. He liked to do things.” Megan smiled. “Like when he got the bouncy house, and the trampoline.”
    “And the red convertible. Remember that day? He took you all for rides?”
    “Right. The Mustang.” Megan smiled more broadly, and Jill hoped she hadn’t made a mistake, having her recall such happy times, but that was the point.
    “Well, somebody had to pay for all that. William made money, but not as much as I did, and he wanted that lifestyle. He wanted to buy cars and trampolines, whatever he wanted, you name it.”
    Megan frowned. “So what’s wrong with that?”
    “Nothing, but he began to run up huge credit bills and wanted to take loans against the house. I’m not a big spender, and married people are supposed to agree on things.” Jill tried to explain, but it was impossible to explain divorce to a teenage girl, with a head full of The Bachelor. “He wanted more money, so he was always investing in things. He wanted to buy into a biotech start-up, and when I gave him that, he wanted to buy a title insurance company. He was all over the place.”
    “So it was only about money?”
    “Not only about that, but money matters.”
    “He was trying to follow his dream, Mom.”
    “Not exactly.”