This Could Be Us (Skyland, #2)(26)

“Is that what you think I do with my days? Shop and get facials?”

“I know you don’t work. I do that, so if you could just let me do my job and take care of you and the girls the way I see fit, we’ll be fine.”

“You don’t think what I do is work? Cleaning, cooking, organizing, driving, taking care of our children. All tasks people pay to have done for them. Is it not a job because I do it for my family? Did you think all these years you were the only one working just because you left the house every morning?”

“Oh, God, Sol. I don’t have time for this feminist bullshit tirade. I know you have some things you do to stay busy, but I’m talking—”

“To stay busy? There aren’t enough hours in the day for all I do, and you think I’m looking for ways to ‘stay busy’? Was I staying busy when I worked at the hotel’s front desk during the day and cleaned rooms at night, seven months pregnant, so you could focus on your MBA? Was that just staying busy?”

“That’s ancient history. Focus. We need to deal with now.”

So it’s we when he needs something and all about him every other minute of the day.

“I have to go,” I say abruptly, not sure I can take another minute of his bullshit and disrespect.

“Where are you going? I still have some time.”

“Sorry. I have shopping and extravagant lunches scheduled before picking your daughters up from school.”

“Dammit, Sol, this is no time to get self-righteous. I’m trying to speak as plainly as I can.”

“The time to speak plainly was before you did this stupid shit and expected me to fall in line. To be your accessory.” I rub the back of my neck, where tension has been building for the last two days. “Look, whatever. I’ll check with Brunson to see if we are any closer to getting you out of there. Not for you, Edward, but for the girls. They want you home. We’ll deal with what happens once this goes to trial.”

“I won’t…” He clears his throat. “I won’t be making bail.”

“They haven’t put a lien on the house yet. I can try to—”

“There won’t be any bail,” he says as if it’s an admission.

“Edward, let me try to—”

“They’ve deemed me a flight risk, Sol. No bail.”

“Why would they think that? How—”

“I didn’t want to tell you unless it became necessary because I knew you wouldn’t understand, but they found out about a plane ticket I purchased.”

“Plane ticket?” I ask with the still quiet that occurs before an explosion. The ground slides beneath my feet. The world tips and I don’t know when my life will be upright again. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I knew Cross was closing in on me. I panicked and bought a plane ticket, just as an insurance policy in case I needed to get out of the country to a place they couldn’t reach me.”

“And leave me and your children here with no money, no house, no car, and the FBI considering me a suspect?”

“I never planned to use it,” he says in a defensive rush. “I just needed an escape route if it became necessary.”

“And where were you not planning to go, exactly?”

“Bali. They don’t have an extradition treaty with the US.”

“Wow. You had it all planned out, down to sending us to live with your mother, who can’t stand me.”

“Just lay low and don’t ruin this. We’ll come out richer than you can imagine if you just hold down what you know and leave what you don’t know alone. You and the girls mean everything to me.”

“Right. That’s why you bought one ticket to Bali that I didn’t even know about. I can tell how desperate you were to spend your remaining days with your family.”

“I love you,” he says, desperation leaking through his composure. “I did this for you.”

“Bullshit.” If I have to listen to one more word out of his lying mouth, I might fight my way through this phone and down his throat. “I gotta go.”

“Remember what I said,” he adds hurriedly. “Don’t tell them anything. Let this play out.”

I hang up without saying goodbye and flop back on the bed. Closing my eyes, I replay the call, fighting the urge to scream. There’s a little time before I have to get the girls from school. A little time here alone, where I don’t have to pretend everything is fine or that it’s all going to work out.

I used some of the cash I had on hand to get gas. I have the groceries Judah sent. Dr. Morgan has given me a little grace to figure out Lottie and Inez’s tuition, but the FBI will be back, and it will start applying more pressure the longer it takes to find the money Edward stole.

I need to be cautious, but I want to be bold. I want to be honest, but lying seems to be the thing that will protect us. I’m tossed in every direction and going nowhere. Hot tears leak from my eyes and slide into my hairline.

I miss Mami.

It’s not a constant ache anymore, the grief, the immeasurable loss of someone who is absolutely irreplaceable. Mami passed a few years after my father, and the compounded devastation was almost unbearable. Necessity compelled me to keep going. My daughters needed me. My husband needed me, though he seems to have forgotten that I played any significant role in his success. My mother was never Edward’s biggest fan, but when I got pregnant soon after I graduated from Cornell and we decided to marry, my parents supported the decision. She never spoke against him, but I would catch her watching him sometimes with a wariness usually reserved for strangers. I didn’t ask her then what she saw. Maybe I was afraid of the answer. Afraid the path I had chosen was the wrong one. That he was the wrong one.