Page 32 of The Replacement Wife

“No siblings or grandparents around to help, and her mom held on a bit tight. Suffocated her. I’m not a therapist but Lauren’s mom seemed to resent the choices she’d made and the life she had, and all of that fell on Lauren.” He lifted his head. “Lauren’s need to get out and Josh’s need to find stability likely pushed them together. They had time to get to know each other and see but were rushing it, as if whatever they felt for each other would vanish if they didn’t jump on it.”

Young. In love. Elisa got it. Now she wanted to hear the rest. All the stalling made her patience short-circuit. “Harris, please.”

“Give me a second.” He shot her a side glance. “Her death isn’t an easy thing to talk about.”

“You never have, so I guess not.”

He sat up straight again but didn’t look at her. “They’d been married a little less than a year. Both were in college.” His halting voice spoke to how difficult it was for him to talk about this. “We all went on a camping trip. Lauren and Josh. Me and Patricia. A woman I was, um, dating.”

Another secret. Elisa thought she knew all of the names ofhis former girlfriends. Apparently not. “We’ll circle back to this never-before-mentioned Patricia. Keep going.”

“Everything was fine. The first night went great. We hiked and camped out by the fire.” A slight smile came and went. “The next night Josh came to our tent. It was about two in the morning. He was yelling and said he’d gotten up to go to the bathroom and Lauren was gone.”

The word echoed through Elisa. “Gone?”

“He went looking and found her...” Harris closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “She was in the lake. The police said she knocked her head and either fell into the water or was out of it and wandered down there.”

Knocked her head?“That sounds ridiculous.”

She reached out and put a hand on his. The move was less about comforting him and more about getting him to look at her.

When he finally did his mouth had fallen into a flat line. “You weren’t there.”

“But you were.” She couldn’t get over that fact. He’d gone to bed and Lauren was alive. Hours later—dead. Did he really not question what happened in between?

“I’m telling you it was an accident. Josh was—”

“Inconsolable.” She thought back to the way he fell apart at the hospital as he listened to the news about Candace, apparently his second wife and not his first. Now Elisa knew he’d had practice grieving a dead wife.

“Yeah, I’ve seen the act.” She stood up because right then she didn’t want to be near Harris. The idea that he didn’tquestion that story or wonder when a second of Josh’s wives died just a few years later . . . her mind refused to process all of it.

“It wasn’t an act, Elisa.”

There was snap to his voice that sent her temper spiking. “You don’t get to be pissed off, Harris. You hid all of this from me.”

He sighed as he took her hand and looked up at her from the bed. “I did and I’m sorry. Look, I know it sounds terrible. Two women.”

“That’s a lot of bad luck.” An unbelievable amount.

“But he’s my brother. Hell, I helped raise him. I couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone, let alone his wife and—”

“No.” She wasn’t ready to be appeased or to forgive. For God’s sake, two dead wives. That was not the kind of information he could skip over then excuse.

“Why not tell me?” she asked because she couldn’t come up with a single rational explanation for his leaving out this huge bit of family history.

“That whole thing, that night and the days after, was so fucking terrible.” He held her hand in both of his. Traced his finger over her palm. “Seeing her messed me up. Seeing her floating...”

Elisa didn’t want to know that part. No more death talk because she couldn’t handle it. “But why hide the truth from me?”

“When Lauren died, I worried Josh would fall apart.” Harris stood up, never breaking his hold on Elisa. “I was desperate. I got him to a therapist. She said after our parents’ deaths Josh might not be able to handle what happened toLauren, so I got him to talk with her. I tried to bring up her death, but he didn’t want to discuss Lauren with me. After a while it got easier for me not to try.”

“You erased her. Both of you did.” Elisa realized she didn’t even know Lauren’s last name.

“No, never that.”

“Harris, you have to see how this sounds fantastical. His first wife dies during a hiking trip. His second dies on the stairs in their house. His fiancée, who should have been wife number three, disappears.” All those women and no one—not even the police—seemed to care. Detective Burroughs, the one detective who should have stepped up and spoken for Candace and pushed for more information on Lauren, was too busy protecting Josh to get justice for either woman. Elisa had no idea why local police didn’t care about the repetitive losses, but she intended to ask, this time armed with more background information. “Do you really not see why I’m upset?”

“That’s the other reason I didn’t tell you, especially after Candace. I didn’t want you to find out about Josh’s history, about Lauren, then draw comparisons that weren’t fair to him.”

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