Page 21 of False Evidence
Curt was a straight arrow. He would do everything by the book, but he’d also believe her. Help her. She just needed to figure out how she could get his private phone number or a message to him.
Erica was best friends with his wife, Mara. But calling Erica was out.
JT had his number, certainly. But was it safe to call JT?
Her gut said he was safe, but her heart said something different.
She let out a heavy sigh and tossed aside the covers. She would take a shower and then go for another hike. She had miles upon miles of forest to explore. It was her prison, but it was also her salvation.
There’d been a light dusting of snow in the night. It would melt quickly in the morning sun, but a real storm was forecast for this afternoon. If Alexandra wanted to go to the nearest town and find a phone, she would need to do it before noon, as the storm was expected in the midafternoon.
She was terrified of showing her face in public, but also scared of getting snowed in without reaching out. Maybe Curt could stop CPS from taking Gemma away—if that was something the police would try to do for leverage to get her to turn herself in.
But what if she was recognized and arrested? Or, more likely, shot on sight by an angry officer?
She should have left Maryland. Not that cops in other states would like her any more than they did in Maryland, but at least in West Virginia or Pennsylvania, they might be less vigilant?
She set out for her walk. Mindful of her footprints in the snow, she stepped in bare dirt or in patches where the snow was thinnest or most likely to melt in the sun.
She wouldn’t take any chances.
She walked uphill to the top of the ridge, remembering romantic walks with JT in this same forest. The first time she’d had sex against a tree was on this property. The last time too, come to think of it.
They hadn’t visited this property after the time they’d been here and JT’s father had shown up with his mistress. It had been eight days before their planned New Year’s Eve wedding, exactly eleven years ago.
She hadn’t known about the senator’s many affairs and had been more than a little shocked that JT knew and condoned his father’s actions.
It had been a critical time in their relationship, with the wedding so close. JT had made his views on children clear, and she’d been prepared to accept that. After all, she respected his views—she would never force fatherhood on him any more than she believed motherhood should be forced upon a woman. Nor did he need to give a reason he wished to remain childless. People who wanted children were never asked to explain themselves. Everyone’s choices were valid.
So she’d had to make the decision for herself. Would she be content with JT and only JT?
Then she learned the love of her life was complicit in covering up his father’s cheating.
Alexandra had grown close to Lisa ever since the Christmas Eve when they first met. JT had seemed close to her too. If he was fine with his father cheating, it was easy to assume he had a similar moral compass when it came to his own relationships.
But the tipping point came when she discovered—on the very same day—JT’s political plans were not in the distant future. No. He intended to run for Congress in a matter of weeks.
She’d known from the start—she’d been theonlyperson who knew aside from Joseph Talon—that JT intended to follow his father into politics. She’d stared at the big diamond on her finger, the countdown of days until the wedding in single digits, and saw a bleak future for herself. Second to JT’s political ambitions. Probably even, eventually, to a mistress.
It was easy to see herself in the same role as Lisa Talon, childless, loveless, second fiddle to everything that was important to JT.
Still, Alexandra loved JT enough that she might have accepted that fate if he’d agreed to having a child together. But he’d refused. He hadn’t understood how his father’s affairs and his own looming ambition had chilled her to the core. He’d thought she was reneging on their agreement—on the prenup she’d signed without hesitation.
She’d tried to make him understand how his father’s affairs and his decision to run without telling her his plans had changed their agreement. But he’d accused her of using his father’s secrets to turn the screws for more money.
She’d seen a new side to JT, one she’d never imagined existed, and in Lisa Talon, Alexandra saw her future and felt sick.
She made her decision on Christmas Eve, after they’d returned to the city because their pre-wedding getaway at the mountain cabin had been spoiled by Joe and his mistress. In the DC hotel where they were supposed to marry a week later, she’d removed the two-carat diamond from her finger and set it on the table.“You think this is all I want from you? Fine. You can have it. Enjoy the honeymoon without me.”
She then turned and walked out the door. That night, she drove to Kendall’s apartment in Bethesda, where she cried on her friend’s shoulders for a month.
Kendall had been the best friend imaginable, holding her while she cried. For a year, Alexandra had stayed strong, seeing JT only long enough to get her belongings back from the townhouse he’d bought for them to share in DC while she was in school.
He lived in New York most of the time anyway, so not much beyond her address had changed. Letting JT back in after the broken engagement had been a slippery slope. Soft and smooth, like the snowflakes that drifted gently down as she walked through the woods.
The problem was—and for years it continued to be—that Alexandra hadn’t called off the wedding because she didn’t love him. It had been so easy to slip back into bed with him. To be broken up but still sleep together.
They had incompatible goals. She had grad school to finish. Then postdoc. Her life would never be in New York, and while he talked about moving his base of operations to the DC area, he never made the change.