Come Home: a novel Part 7

"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. Cla.s.sic confirmation bias."

Megan nodded, used to medical a.n.a.logies 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 t.i.tle 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." Jill wasn't surprised by Megan's defending William, because she always did, which was why these conversations were no-win. "It's not 'follow your dream,' like American Idol. You can follow your dream, but you have to be practical, too."

"So he couldn't afford to pay for his dream."

"No, he didn't really have a dream. His only dream was being rich, and that doesn't count as a dream. That's just plain greed."

Megan blinked.

"Pretty soon I could see a pattern, and I knew it would never end. No matter how much money I gave him, it would never be enough. If I let him, he would bankrupt me."

Megan frowned. "So that's it? That's all?"

Jill felt her chest tighten. "One day he asked me for a lot of money, for another business venture."

"How much did he want?"

"$325,000."

"Wow." Megan's eyes flared, though Jill knew she had no idea how much or how little that was. If it was as much as an iPhone, it was a lot.

"I said no." Jill wouldn't tell her that the money William asked for had belonged to Megan. It was her inheritance, since Gray's parents had established a small trust for her after his death. Gray hadn't had any life insurance; they both thought he was too young to die, and in fact, he was. "And when I said no, he asked me to take out a loan for it, and I refused. Then he did something that broke the camel's back."

"What?"

Jill hesitated, but maybe it was time. "He used to come to the office at night and bring you. He'd wait for me, and you'd play with the toys in the waiting room, then we'd go out to dinner."

"I remember, it was fun."

"I thought he came by to see me, but he didn't. It turned out that he was stealing from my office."

Megan's lips flattened, and Jill could see hurt flicker across her face.

"Petty cash went missing, and drug samples. It took us a long time to notice, because we weren't talking to each other about it, with all the work we had to do. He did it in small amounts, especially the pads."

"He took pads? Like school supplies?"

"No, prescription pads. People sell them to other people so they can get prescription drugs, illegally."

"Really?"

"Yes. You can get as much as fifty dollars for a blank prescription, and they're usually bought by people addicted to pain meds, like Oxycontin and Vicodin. We didn't know who was stealing ours, but it was William."

Megan fell silent, wounded, for William, and Jill kicked herself for starting the story. She decided not to tell Megan about the money William had taken from her purse, or his trick of using her ATM card before she was even awake, withdrawing amounts too small to notice, until too late.

"You okay, sweetie?" Jill reached across the table and rested her hand on top of Megan's.

"How do you know he stole the pads? You could have been wrong."

Jill sighed inwardly. "No, actually, we caught him in the act."

"Really?" Megan asked, hushed.

"He was caught in the bas.e.m.e.nt, taking old pads out of the box. We left them down there, out of the locked cabinet, to catch the bad guy. We even set up a hidden video camera, which was my idea. I never thought the bad guy would be my own husband."

Megan set down her fork, stricken.

"It was a terrible thing he did, embarra.s.sing to me, and worse, it could have ruined me and all of the docs in our group. My colleagues, my friends. We could've lost our licenses."

"He didn't have to go to jail, did he?"

"No." Jill felt touched, and saddened, that Megan was still concerned for William. "The group didn't report it, out of kindness to me, but I had to leave the practice and I paid back every penny he took. I was lucky to get work anywhere else, after all the gossip. That's why I took the job at Pembey Family. They were the only ones who made an offer."

Megan blinked. "Do you think he cheated on you?"

"I don't know, and I don't care."

"Really, Mom?"

"Really." Jill squared her shoulders. She didn't bother to explain that the betrayal was worse. The deception was worse. That she hadn't known what was going on under her own roof, under her very nose, that was worse. "I want to be with a man I can trust and believe in. So I took some time alone, and finally met Sam. End of story. Or beginning."

Megan c.o.c.ked her head, mulling it over. "I think William had a dream, but it wasn't the dream you wanted."

"Okay, we can agree to disagree on that one." Jill swallowed hard, knowing it was time to stop, if only to save Megan's feelings. The unsayable thing, the thing she was about to say next, the real truth of the matter, was that Jill didn't think William ever really loved her, he just married her for her money and to have a mother for his children. But if Jill told Megan that, then Megan would conclude that William had never really loved her, either, that he had only acted as if he had, that she had been used, too. And Jill sensed that Megan couldn't handle hearing that, despite her middle-school savvy. She was only thirteen, and inside, just a kid.

Megan was eyeing her. "What's your dream, Mom?"

Jill was happy to change the subject, and almost laughed with relief. "You," she answered.

Megan laughed, unexpectedly. "No, really."

"What? It's true. My dream is having a wonderful daughter, like you." Tears came to Jill's eyes, surprising even her, and she blinked them away. "I never dreamed I'd be so lucky. I don't know how I got so lucky."

"But for you, what's your dream? Like they say, your pa.s.sion?"

"Other than you?"

"Yes." Megan rolled her eyes, but Jill wouldn't let go.

"Honey, someday you'll understand this, but every mother's pa.s.sion is her children, and there's nothing wrong with that. People don't say it enough. I see it every day at work, in all the mothers doing everything they can to help their babies get well, in all the panicky calls and emails, in all the things mothers do for their kids." Jill thought of Padma and her three sons, and her own mother. "Women sacrifice every day for their children, and they love it. They do it without question, second nature. That's pa.s.sion."

Megan smiled, but still looked searching. "Okay, but before me. Before I was born, what was your pa.s.sion? Did you have a pa.s.sion then?"

Jill thought a minute. "Okay, well, I guess I would say that my pa.s.sion was helping kids. That's why I became a pediatrician. I'm a professional mother now."

Megan grinned. "Uh-oh. Watch out."

"I know, right?" Jill smiled at her, happy they were back on an even keel. "Let me ask you now. What's your pa.s.sion? What do you love doing?"

Megan frowned, slightly. "I don't know. Is that bad?"

"No, not at all. You're still young, and you'll know when you know. Like love, because it is a form of love. It could be swimming, or becoming a vet. You're great in the school plays, and your pa.s.sion can be acting or singing. That will be your life's work. Money isn't a life's work. Love is."

Megan sighed. "So what are you going to do about Abby?"

"What do you mean?" Jill had to switch gears.

"What if she's right that William was murdered?"

"She's not. The police say it's not murder, just a reaction to the drugs and alcohol. He had some whisky that night, and you can't mix those."

"I remember he liked whisky sometimes, he let me taste it. Ugh." Megan wrinkled her pretty nose. "I didn't know he took drugs, though. What drugs?"

"They found drugs for anxiety and painkillers."

"Was he on them when you guys were married?"

"No, I didn't think he was, but he was stealing samples and prescription pads. When I confronted him, he said he sold them, so I didn't think he was taking drugs himself. I was wrong, I guess."

"Were those the samples he stole?"

"No, he stole ADHD drugs, like Ritalin." Jill didn't have to explain because Megan knew about a scandal at the high school last year, with kids arrested for selling their Ritalin as a study drug.

"If you took those drugs with alcohol, do you get a heart attack?"

"Yes, you can." Jill picked up her fork and stabbed her salad. "It's possible, and it's not suspicious that they did."

Megan looked down at her food, untouched, and Jill could see she was struggling.

"Honey, this talk of drugs and murder is Abby's way of not accepting that William is gone. The police say it wasn't murder, and Victoria agrees."

Megan looked up, her eyes glistening again. "But I still wish you'd do what Abby wants. Help her figure it out."

"Why?" Jill asked, dismayed. "She's wrong. She doesn't know what she's talking about."

"Then help her figure that out, too. Don't you love her, anymore?"

"Yes, I do."

"She loves you, Mom. She always did. She acted like you were her real mom. She told me once, she doesn't even remember her real mom."

Jill didn't know what to say. Abby's real mother had died when she was only four, in a car accident. She'd had money, too, but Jill didn't want to go there, and this conversation was supposed to be about Megan. "Did that bother you?"