Page 46 of Deadly Little Scandals
“At first,”Aunt Olivia said firmly.
There was a long pause.“No matter where the money came from, we agreed about buying the stock, Olivia.”
“That’s the thing, John. We agreed about exercising your options, but when I compared the public filings to our balance transfers, every single time you convinced me to fund a stock buy, you took a little off the top. And by a little, I mean a very large sum.”
“I’m not talking about this.”
“Yes, you are.”Now, Aunt Olivia didn’t sound pleasant at all. Her voice was low enough that I wondered if John David had been hidingunderthe bed in order to get audio as good as he had. Either that, or he’d purchased some pretty high-tech spy equipment off the internet.“It’s one thing for you to have your fun between the sheets, though I confess that I’ve always found your choice of paramour rather…odd.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about Ana.”
My gaze darted from the phone back up to Lily. Her dark brown eyes were intent and smoldering. She wouldn’t—maybe couldn’t—look at me.
“You’ve been giving her money. And I’m stupid—so stupid—that I didn’t know it until now.”
“You’re very, very stupid,”J.D. said, his voice every bit as low as his wife’s.“And you don’t get to say a word to me about any money that I might or might not have given to Ana.”
After that, the audio cut out. Lily still wouldn’t look at me. I sat down beside her on the bed, my own mind reeling.
“She knew, Sawyer.” Lily shook her head, like that might make what she was saying less true, like she was waiting for me to tell her that she was jumping to conclusions, when she very clearly wasn’t. “Mama already knew about Ana, and she didn’t care.”
How much of the anguish Lily had been through in the past two weeks was out of guilt, for what we’d discovered? For the fact that because of us, her mother had learned the truth, too?
“She cared that he was paying her.” I said that so that Lily didn’t have to.
“I thought…” Lily didn’t finish that sentence. Instead, she scrolled through the audio files and selected another one to play.
“I want a divorce.”This time, there were no clues on the tape about where the conversation was taking place—or where John David might have been hidden when his father issued that statement.
“Of course you do.”Aunt Olivia didn’t sound particularly fussed.“But, J.D., honey, we can’t always get what we want. Some of us take our commitments seriously. Some of us don’t make promises unless we’re dead set on keeping them.”
I had a feeling—a very vague one—that there might have been more than one meaning to those words. Her husband’s next statement did nothing to weaken that particular bit of intuition.
“Let me go. Olivia, please…”
“Nice manners from a man who’s cheating on his wife.”She’d taken the gloves off more quickly this time.
The second she did, he lost it, at low volume.“You blackmailed me into marrying you in the first place!”
“What?” I said out loud to Lily. She didn’t act like she’d heard me at all.
“I was young,”her father continued on the tape,“and I was scared, and I let you.”
“But now you’re done? Suddenly, you don’t care if the truth comes out?”
“For God’s sake, it was an accident!”
I managed not to sayWhat was an accident?out loud, but only just.
“You won’t tell anyone what happened,”J.D. was saying now.“You have as much to lose as I do if the truth about that body comes out.”
The mention of the body sent an electric chill down my spine. I told myself that I must have misheard.
“Did you ever even try to love me?”Aunt Olivia asked on the recording, her voice quiet and rawer than I’d ever heard it.“I have been nothing but a good wife to you and a wonderful mother to Lily and John David. Even you have to give me that.”
“You love our children. If I had any doubts whatsoever on that score, I wouldn’t have kept up this charade for as long as I have.”
The admission didn’t seem to calm her. If anything, it had the opposite effect.“That’s all it ever was to you? A charade? When are you going to understand that I’m better for you than she ever was?”
