“He loved someone else,” Elise said simply. “He married me because our mothers have been best friends since college, and my father gave Kent a job and a house and...”
She was crying and Olivia guessed that she’d done a lot of that.
“I’m sorry.” Elise sat up straight. “I don’t mean to dump my problems on you. You’re so perfect and elegant, while my life is as sordid as something on 20/20.”
“Doesn’t that show deal with murders?”
“I’m sure Kent has thought about that with me,” Elise muttered. Olivia looked at her in alarm.
“I’m kidding. Kent would never kill me. If he did, Dad would probably fire him. Maybe. And if I wasn’t his cover, Kent wouldn’t get to screw around with Carmen. And who would he present to the world without me? I’m the image he wants people to see. Not the gardener’s sister.”
“Ah,” Olivia said. “Carmen gets the passion while you get the ladies’ luncheons that further your husband’s career.”
Elise groaned. “I’m twenty-five years old and already I’m a cliché.” Olivia couldn’t help laughing.
“It’s not funny.” Elise sniffed. “Well, maybe it is a little.” She gave a bit of a smile, then buried her face in her hands. “What am I going to do? I don’t know how to solve this.”
Olivia took Elise’s hands in hers and looked at her. “We’re going to fix this. There are many lawyers in my husband’s family and we’ll set all of them on this. They’ll be like wolves going after lambs. How does that sound?”
“Can I go after Carmen too? She came to my wedding. I felt so sorry for her because she kept throwing up. I knew she was pregnant, but I had no idea my husband was the father.”
“She didn’t, by chance, have a girl, did she?”
Elise’s pretty eyes widened. “She did. How do you know that?” She jerked her hands out of Olivia’s grasp. “You aren’t with them, are you? Did you—?”
“No,” Olivia said calmly. “But it appears that you and I have some things in common. Alan, my late husband, has a daughter named Alana. She was born four years after we were married. I worked six days a week running the appliance stores that put Alana through college.”
“Oh,” Elise said. “I’ve put on dozens of dinner parties for Kent’s clients. Every morning he gave me a list of things to do for him. I spent my life in a car as I ran errands for him. And it was all so he’d have more time to spend with Carmen.”
“Alan told me he was playing golf. He was so passionate about the game that he went on several trips to play on fabulous courses. It wasn’t until he was dying that I found out that he didn’t even own a set of clubs.”
Elise let out a full laugh, then leaned back on her arms. “My husband complained about how much I spent on groceries, but he was buying Escada for Carmen.”
Olivia leaned back beside her. “Alan bought a vacation house for us. It was a cute little place just fifty miles away in the mountains. But every time we planned to go, he came down with some illness. I found out that his girlfriend and daughter lived there.”
It was Elise’s turn. “While I was locked away, my parents came to visit and I said I knew that they’d known about Carmen all along. Guess what they said?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“My mother said, ‘Darling, Kent couldn’t marry the gardener’s sister, now could he? She’d probably serve tacos at a dinner party. How would Kent’s career progress with a wife like that?’”
Olivia blinked at the coldness of Elise’s parents and she couldn’t top it. But giving sympathy might make Elise feel worse. “I don’t know about you, but I love tacos.”
“Me too.” Elise was smiling as she sat up. “Thank you. You’re making me feel better.” She looked around. “What is this place?”
Maybe it was having just shared confidences, or maybe it was because Elise had called her elegant, but Olivia told the truth. “It’s where my husband and I made mad, passionate, all-consuming love back in the summer of 1970. When the caretaker came after us with a shotgun, Kit and I climbed over the stone wall in our birthday suits and escaped.”
Elise looked at her for a moment, eyes wide. “I wish I could have an adventure like that. But Kent saves everything for Carmen. I’m the one who picks up his dry cleaning.”
Olivia smiled. “It was an adventure, and a bit dangerous. But back then, I would have followed him anywhere.”
“Even past firearms.” Elise sighed. “That’s what I want. A man who’d brave a shotgun for me.”
Olivia looked serious. “I bet if you broke into the dry cleaners at night, there’d be all kinds of guns involved.”
Elise laughed. “You are making me feel better! You think we should go back and see if Ray is starving or not?”
“It’s funny about men. They’re only helpless when they’re sure someone who will wait on them is nearby.”