The First Wife

“Like the fact that in the two years I’ve known you, you haven’t been on a single date.”

“Come on, Manchester. It’s a new world out there. One where a woman doesn’t need to have a man to be complete.”

“No, but she doesn’t generally need to avoid them, either.”

“I’ve been busy getting a magazine off the ground, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“You stay busy, and yet you’re the most isolated person I know. You have a lot of acquaintances, a lot of people who look up to you and care for you, but none, that I know of, other than me, with whom you’re really close. You help them, but who helps you?”

“I’ve always been a bit of a loner. And a nurturer. I know what I want and that’s okay.” She knew herself. Liked herself. Was overall happy with who she was and where she was in her life. “There’s nothing wrong with being different as long as you’re happy that way. Look at my mom.”

Jane’s parents hadn’t been married. Brad not only knew the story, he’d met her mother once.

Her dad, a professional military man, had traveled constantly, moved all over the world, and her mother, a small-town girl, hadn’t been able to sign on for that kind of life. They’d continued to love each other, to see each other occasionally, until he’d been killed in the Gulf War when Jane was twelve.

Later, her mom married a local man, a single father with one son a few years younger than Jane. Her husband had eventually retired from the manufacturing firm where he’d worked all his life and taken her to Alaska to live with him on a fishing boat. Jane heard from them a few times a year, when they were in port.

The important thing was, they were happy. They’d all been happy.

“Besides, you’re one to talk. I don’t see any real relationships in your life, either. And I’m not calling you abused.”

“I hurt a sweet woman very badly,” Brad reminded her. “I can’t even think about getting serious with anyone unless I’m positive that I can give her my whole heart.”

Jane stared at him. “So you do want to marry again someday?” She’d been worried about him. Worried he was going to waste his life on one-night stands. Which would have been fine if it made him happy, but it didn’t seem to. He tried too hard to stay busy—as though he was outrunning his dissatisfaction.

Brad’s mother had been killed in a car accident when he’d still been too young to remember her. And his father had passed away four years before, from a massive heart attack.

Aside from a few distant cousins, he was alone in the world.

“I want a family, sure,” he said. “But not unless I meet someone I know I can love forever.”

So maybe his constant dating was more than she’d realized. Maybe he was searching…

“Do you think that really happens?” Jane asked, curious—and also relieved to be talking about something besides her.

“I like to believe it can,” he said and then sent her a grin. “I’m certainly doing extensive research on the topic.”

That was more like the Brad she knew. “Well, spare me the details, but do tell if you find a definitive answer.”

And then, just like that, his face grew serious once again. “I’m more interested in finding answers for you, right now,” he said. “I’m concerned about you, Jane.”

“And I’m telling you there’s no reason to be. The phone call shocked me today. I need some time to get used to the idea of having been a bigamist’s wife. But I’m fine. Really.”

“Okay, but I want you to think about something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Durango’s number one profile characteristic of an abused woman.”

The list was posted in the main gathering room at the shelter. Jane knew it by heart.

And at the top:

She lives in denial.

Damn him.

CHAPTER TWO

BRAD WASN’T SURE why he was pushing so hard. The whole reason he and Jane were good together, the one thing that had allowed their unusual friendship to work, was the lack of expectation for more than either wanted to give.

They cared about each other, they were open to soul-deep confidences, to emotional intimacy, but they didn’t require it of each other. And they never got personal, physically.

Other than that time she’d had the flu and he’d taken care of her.

And the lump. Brad had been in the shower and found a lump in his prostate. He’d called Jane first, his doctor second. And a day later she’d treated him to drinks at their favorite neighborhood pub to toast his perfectly normal good health.

As he recalled, she’d laughingly left him to it that night when he’d spotted a red-haired beauty sitting alone at the bar….

With so much unsaid between them, they sat on their picnic blanket silently staring out over a land that didn’t really hint at all the danger that lurked in the world. Not that Brad spent a lot of time pondering life’s dangers. He knew the dangers would find them without their help.

What they needed to figure out was how to be happy regardless of the dangers.

Jane was eating a strawberry; juice dripped off her lower lip. Funny, he’d never noticed how full her lips were…

Maybe he should stick to figuring out how, on Monday, he was going to fight a client’s husband for the support she deserved after having put up with his emotional abuse for more than twenty years.

“You’re wrong, you know?”

“About what?”

“About me being abused.”

Brad met Jane’s gaze and saw that she meant it. So why didn’t he believe her?

“After the tennis incident…I wasn’t sure. The doctor made such a big deal of the direction of the blow. He said that James would’ve had to pull his elbow back into my nose to have broken it the way he did, not going forward for a shot as he claimed.”

“How did it seem to you?”

Jane’s pause unsettled him. He dealt with similar silences too often. With intelligent, strong women who’d been so emotionally broken down that they second-guessed themselves in spite of their abilities.

“I honestly couldn’t say.” He wished her words surprised him. “One minute I was standing there, the next minute I was on the ground in the most excruciating pain I’d ever known. My head was pounding so hard I couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see.”

“Did you tell the police you didn’t know what happened?”

“Not at the time. I was too out of it. I just went with what James told me had happened. But a few days later, after James and I went back to work, I kept thinking about how angry he’d been, and what the doctor had said. The doubts set in. James left for a graduate study trip and while he was gone I went to the Victim Witness office in town, just in case I was reading things wrong. Since their sole purpose is victim support, I figured they’d know if I needed help. I told them everything. They said that there was no evidence of abuse.”

“Even with what the police and doctor had said? Even with your doubts?”