Chapter 4

Josh

He believed her.

Dammit, he didn’t want to. Ever since she’d made the revelation back in his office, he’d been trying to reason what she was telling him, trying to justify and to make sense of it. But there was no sense, and no justification.

The man who had been like a brother to him, had been a wife beater.

Almost five years’ worth of memories swirled through his mind. Knowing what he did now, he wondered if he’d misjudged Samantha in other things, if he’d been unfair in his treatment of her. He’d always thought she was a gold digger. Yet here he was in her new house.

It wasn’t big and brash, shiny and sparkly as he’d imagined.

Jamie had told him that he himself had hated Tribeca, but because Sam loved it, he lived there to make her happy. Jamie had also said that her love of expensive cars and expensive decorations was almost bankrupting the family and yet here they were, in a dowdy house.

The only thing he could say about it, was that it was in a decent, safe neighborhood. But that was it. It was old and worn, and in need of a hell of a lot of repair work. Most of it, well, to be kind, looked like it belonged on the set of the Goldbergs!

As far as Josh was aware, and he was no follower of interior decoration trends, the 80s were not back in fashion.

Taking a heavy seat at the kitchen table, he watched as Samantha bustled around.

She moved with a grace, and an ease, that spoke of somebody who liked being in the kitchen. Yet another lie Josh had been fed by his best friend.

Before his very eyes, Samantha seemed to have transformed herself. And it wasn’t for his benefit. Not even at his most cynical could Josh believe that.

She was humming, for crying out loud. Humming! Gently, softly, under her breath. He doubted she knew he could even hear that much.

Then, there was the fact that she was more relaxed than he’d ever seen her in his presence. Considering the reason for her visit to him, he knew she was dealing with the kind of stress he’d never be able to understand, that of a mother’s love for her child.

And yet, there was a lightness to her, an ease that had never been there before. It was like being without Jamie had taken the weight of the world off her shoulders.

Erin was different too. Almost like a different child from the one Josh had known for years. Sure, he never hung around the kid that much. Where Erin was, Samantha was always nearby, and Josh had always made it a point to avoid her. She’d always irritated him in ways he’d found hard to explain.

But the truth was, Josh had always been sensitive to the tensions in the air.

It was one of the reasons why he was so damn successful. He could read a situation really well and know which steps to take. That was damn useful in a business meeting, where he could use that talent to ascertain if the company he was in the middle of buying out, were bullshitting about how low the bottom line was.

If, for all the time he’d known her, Samantha had been on edge, was it any wonder he’d judged her, and had found her wanting every single time?

Had he misread her unease around him? Had believed it was a kind of guilt when it had actually been fear?

Terror?

Trying to acclimate to a world where Jamie wasn’t who the man Josh had always believed him to be was harder than he could ever have imagined. And though he wished he could deny it, he couldn’t. Not when the transformation in his best friend’s widow and son was so gigantic.

Jamie was dead yet his family was happy without him.

What did that say about the man?

What did that say about Josh who had believed the lies, had only seen the mask Jamie wanted him to see?

He sat there, still shell-shocked, watching as she did something with the sweet potatoes, roasting them in a contraption that made a whooshing sound when she turned it on. Then, came the patties and salad fixings. She further astonished him by bringing out a bag of flour and swiftly preparing some flour tortillas that she prepared herself.

Who was this woman?

Had he ever known her?

After having rolled out the last of the dough, he watched her place the tortillas on a plate, then after covering them with a clean towel she retrieved from a drawer, she set them aside on the counter. The contraption cooking the potatoes started to beep, and she made a happy sound under her breath before murmuring, more to herself than him, “Perfect timing!”

She peered into the window of the machine, clucked her tongue with satisfaction, then retrieved the patties from under the grill. He watched as she moved around, getting dinner ready to plate up, and he knew he couldn’t withhold the words any longer. Knew that he had to put her mind at rest where this situation was concerned.

“I’ll help.”

He watched as tension invaded her, stiffening her muscles, making her movements jerky when they’d been smooth before. He couldn’t see her face, and she had her back to him, but it didn’t matter. He knew he’d interrupted, destroyed the happy place she’d found ever since she’d started cooking. Though he felt bad about that, he knew some of that tension was probably founded in relief.

That belief was confirmed when she whispered, “Thank you.”

Back in his office when she’d revealed Jamie’s parents had the mistaken belief they were having an affair, with the worst timing in the world, her babysitter had called and told her that they had a family emergency and that she had to leave. Like a flash, Samantha had been on her feet, telling the sitter to hold on for a few minutes while she arranged for one of their bodyguards to watch over Erin until she made it home.

Josh could have let her go, let her deal with the situation. But, and, he didn’t know why, he’d felt compelled to follow her. Maybe he needed confirmation. Visual feedback, almost.

And if that was what he wanted, he’d received it.

Any hope he’d had that there was some kind of mistake where Jamie was concerned, had been washed away the minute he’d seen his best friend’s wife and son in their natural environment. Without the stress Jamie had brought them, they were like different people.

Happier people.

Saddened by the lies Jamie had told the world, and knowing that anger would soon be a part of the grief he felt, Josh focused on anything but that.

He listened as Samantha called out, “Erin! Dinner is ready. Clean your hands, and come and sit at the table.”

Josh immediately heard the pounding of tiny feet as the small boy complied with his mother’s request. He doubted he’d been as well-behaved at Erin’s age with a box full of toys to play with.

“He didn’t even hesitate,” Josh remarked, amused by how swiftly Erin had obeyed.

She sucked in a shaky breath, and the noise was one he’d grown to be wary of since the meeting had begun. But she didn’t say anything, remained silent, just kept her face turned away from him so he couldn’t see her expression.

He knew he could have left it. Knew that by her silence she had no intention of saying another word on the subject, but like mosquito bites that he just couldn’t stop scratching, he had to know.

“Why? What are you not saying, Samantha?”

She half turned, then stopped. Tension invaded her limbs. She tilted her head so she could see him over her shoulder. The look in her eyes broke his heart. The sorrow buried within was enough to make his stomach clench.

“Jamie didn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Those seven words did more than make his stomach clench. “You said he never hit him.”

She flinched at the accusatory tone. “He didn’t. Not physically, anyway. He was just very exacting.”

Josh was becoming aware that Samantha had been desensitized to violence over the span of her marriage. Bearing that in mind, what did ‘very exacting’ actually mean?

Before he could ponder it too much, happy giggles sounded down the hallway as Erin raced in. The sound was exactly what he needed to hear to quench the mountain of guilt bearing down on him.

There was no way he couldn’t help Samantha. Not knowing what he did now. He didn’t care if Frank and Janice were upset by his intrusion into the situation, didn’t care if his presence confirmed the suspicions that he’d been having an affair all along with Samantha.

The only thing that mattered was ensuring that that little boy carried on giggling.