Page 98 of The Me I Left Behind

Maggie headed into the family room and grabbed her tablet from the coffee table. “I’m going to do a search. I need to know how she died.”

“Are you sure you want to dig into that now?” Julia followed her and sat beside her on the sofa. “We have to pick up the kids in an hour.”

Maggie pulled up the browser on her tablet. “Yes. I’m tired of being in the dark. I’m tired of a lot of things, actually—a dead wife here, a lover, and bonus kid there—and I want to get it all behind me. But right now, I need to know what happened tothiswoman.” She typed her name into the browser, then scanned the results. “Shit.”

“What?”

“There’s a lot of stuff here.”

Julia took the tablet. “Let me look at it first.”

Maggie grabbed it back. “No. You’ve been taking care of me for way too long. I will not fall apart by whatever I find.” Shesoftened her voice then. “Sorry, not trying to be bossy, but I need to do this. Why don’t you look in that tote?”

Julia gave her a grin. “Perfect. I’ll go do that.”

Maggie watched her head into Max’s old office, where they had stashed the “miscellaneous” tote, and she returned her attention to the tablet. There were pages of information about a Caroline McDowell from Decatur, Georgia—her family, her life, and her death—and the more she read, the more Maggie felt like she was stepping into a crime novel.

About twenty minutes later, Julia headed back into the family room. Maggie looked up.

“I think we need to go back to the storage unit before we pick up the kids. It’s close to the schools, isn’t it?”

“Not far.” Maggie glanced at the time. “We have time. What’s up?”

“Going through that tote of Caroline’s personal things… I don’t know why but it just felt too…odd, I think is the word. I can’t get past why Max kept all these things.”

Maggie agreed. Something had been niggling at her, as well. “What strikes me is the organization of the totes, the labeling, and so forth. That wasn’t Max. He wouldn’t sort through clothes and label the boxes like that, just to store them away.”

Julia stared off. “It’s kind of like she had already packed them up before she died. Right?”

“Exactly.” Maggie bit her lip. “Like, perhaps, she was packing things up to move?”

“Or leave him?” Julia added. “Shit. I don’t want to read too much into this because we are just speculating here… But maybe Caroline wasn’t so happy in the marriage and was preparing to divorce him?”

Maggie forced out a breath. “Perhaps. Which only adds to the other reason it feels so odd.”

“What is that?”

She locked gazes with Julia. “I’ve read enough about Caroline’s death to know that Max wasn’t an innocent bystander.”

Julia’s eyes widened. “You think Max killed her?”

Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. But not intentionally.”

“But if he knew she was planning to leave him….”

“I don’t know, Julia. I think he was at fault, and it was all covered up. Caroline died in a boating accident. Max was driving the boat, it was just the two of them, and he was drunk. Some people at the lake saw them arguing before they left the marina.”

“Sounds like a lawsuit to me.”

“That’s what I thought. It appears her family in Georgia challenged the decision that Max was not negligent, and has sued for pain and suffering, and so on. Then I found an article where Caroline’s parents abruptly dropped everything against him.”

“They settled.”

“Sounds like.”

“Max’s family has money. Right?”

“They are a very established North Carolina family, old money for sure. His grandfather was a Duke board trustee for years. His father is the CEO of the university medical center.”

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