Page 75 of A River of Crows

No, she told herself. Even if she knew Jay cheated, she wouldn’t have done anything differently. She’d never sleep with another woman’s husband, no matter the sparks that flew. And if she had, well, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to get pregnant. This Anna woman might have been trying to trap Jay.

When Caroline returned home, Jay was sprawled out on the couch watching a news program detailing the Bush/Dukakis debate from the night before. He jumped up when she walked in. “Hey baby,” he said, looking especially contrite. “Did you get the certificate?”

“Yes. There was a bit of a mix-up, but I got it.”

“Listen, if Ridge doesn’t want to play sports, it’s okay. Sorry I was a jerk about it. There’s just a lot of stress at work. Can you forgive me?”

Never. “We all have bad days,” she said coldly. “I’m sort of in the middle of one myself.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” Jay pulled her close to him.

Caroline remained stiff in his arms. He must have noticed because he leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. She didn’t kiss back.

He broke away from her, seemingly perplexed that she would still be angry with a kiss like that. He could be such an arrogant bastard sometimes. “And I’m sorry for what I said about you spending all your time at the creek,” he added, stroking her hair. “The opposite is true. But Sloan’s twelve now. She’s old enough to cook dinner and help around the house. That way, you can spend more time there. Treat it like a job, keep office hours, and I’ll support you however I can.”

How about by being faithful? Caroline thought. But she wasn’t brave enough to match her words with her internal dialogue. Couldn’t force Bradley’s name off of her tongue.

“Kids are at school.” Jay pressed his body against Caroline’s. “I’m here all day.”

Caroline pulled away. “I’ve got a headache.”

Jay pursed his lips. “Did you sleep crooked again? I can give you a neck massage; that might help.”

Caroline clenched her teeth. A massage. She understood what that meant. She wanted to tell him that there would be no massages, that there would be no post massages until he came clean about everything, but instead, she found herself agreeing.

As she lay on her stomach and Jay kneaded her shoulders, she allowed a few silent tears to fall onto her pillow. Why was she doing this? She should be confronting him. Maybe she just needed to feel close to him, needed to assure herself they still had a connection. That one night over ten years ago didn’t undo everything.

But when the massage ended and she rolled over, she only felt disgust. Disgust as he kissed her neck, disgust as he ran his hand down the side of her leg. Is this the way he’d touched Anna Elliott? Caroline looked into his eyes, such a brilliant blue. My Blue Jay, she used to call him. But now she understood he wasn’t a blue jay at all. Like crows, blue jays mated for life.

Caroline couldn’t stomach looking into his eyes, so she closed her own. Closed them tight enough to pretend it was Frank Brewer on top of her.

Jay left following dinner. He always did, but for the first time, Caroline wondered why. He wasn’t going to Beaumont or even Frisco. Tyler was less than an hour away. Why the rush to get on the road?

Did he just need to unwind before a busy day of knocking on doors, or was Anna Elliott meeting him at his hotel?

Caroline tried to distract herself by playing Uno with the kids, but during the third hand, she threw her cards down.

“What?” Sloan asked. “That bad a hand?”

Caroline stood up and slipped on her shoes. “Jay left his paperwork.”

“No, he didn’t. He had his briefcase.” Ridge laid down a wild card. “I change it to red.”

“It wasn’t in his briefcase.” Caroline spotted a manila envelope on the shelf under the phone. She knew it was empty, but they didn’t. “It’s in here,” she said, grabbing it.

“You’ll never catch him,” Sloan said. “He left like thirty minutes ago.”

It had been eighteen minutes, actually. Each one more torturous than the one before. “I’ll take it to his hotel then.”

Caroline called Doreen and repeated her made-up story. Sloan and Ridge would be fine alone for a few hours, but she didn’t want Ridge to be afraid.

Caroline grabbed her purse. “Doreen and Noah are coming over. Be good for her.”

Caroline was already in her car when Sloan charged out the front door, holding something in her hand. The envelope.

“Forget something?” Sloan asked in that know-it-all voice she said everything in nowadays.

Caroline took the empty envelope without saying a word to Sloan and peeled out of the driveway.

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