Page 13 of Her Dark Lies
Did Jack give his great-grandmother’s pearls to his first wife, too?
8
Dead Wives
I didn’t know, when I met Jack, the details of his life before me. I didn’t press him, and he didn’t offer. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I was just a girl in love. We existed that first month of our courtship in a kind of bubble, with eyes only for one another. And when he finally shared his story, I wasn’t deterred.
A month into our courtship, Jack took me to his brother Elliot’s wedding, where I met his family for the first time. They were as intriguing, smart, and lovely as he was. I guess my own prejudices about wealth and privilege made me assume the worst, but I found the Comptons as intensely fascinating and philanthropic as their son. Brice hadn’t exactly started Compton Computers in his garage—his money was inherited—but he’d grown it into a rival to Microsoft and Apple. Ana was editor emeritus ofEndless Journey, the travel magazine started by Jack’s grandmother. Elliot worked with Brice on the day-to-day running of the business. Jack, of course, was in charge of the Foundation, and the youngest, Tyler, was a doctor. The family’s most recent project of note was working with Bill Gates on getting universal sanitation to some of the poorer African nations, for heaven’s sake.
The Comptons were doing real work to make the world a better, safer place. They were warm, funny, and kind.
I was enchanted.
It didn’t hurt that Jack’s elegant mother, Ana, talked nonstop about my painting, the one Jack bought the night we met. She was having it hung in the lobby of their Manhattan office, where everyone would see it. She admired my talent. She wondered if I would be willing to discuss a series of pieces for their private collection.
Um...yes?
After Elliot’s wedding, I started getting commissions. Magazine features. I was painting like crazy, and people liked my work. It was surreal. I think anytime an artist has a modicum of success, you distrust it, as do the people around you. Too good to be true. What did you do to get it? Who did you blow?
In my case... I was blowing Jack Compton, and my career was on fire.
I had love. Success. And yes, for the first time, money. These are the elements of many dreams come true.
When he asked me to marry him, I couldn’t say yes quickly enough.
Jack completed me in ways no one had ever before. Not family. Not lovers. Not friends. He was the other half of my heart. He drove away all of my insecurities with his love.
There was only one thing, one tiny, bothersome issue that cast a shadow on my happiness.
Jack did not talk about his dead wife. Nor did anyone in his family.
It struck me as strange, in the beginning. There were no reminiscences, no regrets. Certainly, no comparisons. He sat me down one night after dinner, three weeks after Elliot’s wedding, said, “I have something to tell you,” and recited the facts.
He’d been married before, the marriage was a short one, and had happened a decade earlier. She died only a few weeks in. He didn’t like to discuss it, but felt I should know, considering the path we were clearly on.
Then he kissed me, and as we joined together, I realized what he was actually telling me. I didn’t see then the lack of intimacy of the admission, nor feel any sort of fear or warning. What I took away from the conversation was this: He’d just declared his intent. He was planning a future with me.
I overlooked the fact that he didn’t tell me how she’d died, nor did I ask. Not then, at least. It was all very mysterious and speaking about it was completely off-limits. It felt...dangerously romantic in a way. There was so much about him I did not know, and I clung to those mysteries like a child. I’d been disappointed by people so often in my life that I suppose I was just hoping he wouldn’t let me down.
No, in the beginning, none of it mattered to me. I’m a practical woman, logical to a fault sometimes. I was only eighteen when Jack was so briefly married, in the throes of my own cataclysmic life earthquakes that I had no desire to revisit. I didn’t see the story in the news. Even if I had somehow come across it, why would I care about some gazillionaire’s missing wife?
I’ve learned not to look back. Never. That way lies madness.
Jack and I had a long life ahead of us. He’d talk about Morgan if he wanted.
If I was that curious, there was always the internet. The Comptons were a very public family, after all.
Katie thought I was crazy not to press Jack for every little detail. When I refused, she dug up everything she could, invited me out for coffee under the pretense of a catch-up, sat me down at the Frothy Monkey, and forced me to listen. This is what I learned:
Jackson Compton met Morgan Fraser at a cocktail party in Tiburon, California, at the house of a famed literary agent, a stunning arts and crafts renovation across the bay from San Francisco. Their courtship was brief and glamorous. Jack was a party boy then, on the circuit, dating models and actresses, in the gossip columns all the time. Most eligible bachelor, all that. Feckless. Wealthy. Fun.
Morgan, a well-educated former foster child who studied computer science on scholarship at Stanford, was the exact opposite of the kind of woman Jackson Compton was attracted to, according to the salacious stories. There was nothing simple or easy about her. Her background was murky, her business interests bordered on the unethical, and she was clearly not interested in settling down.
But she was a stunner. Breathtakingly gorgeous. Beautiful, and brilliant. The night they met, she was out celebrating. She had secured the first round of venture capital for an eponymous IT company that was making waves with a nanotech microcamera that would eventually change the way the security industry handled smart home technology. Heady stuff. The Comptons bought out her company and made her a small fortune.
“See? He has a pattern of seducing women away from their passions,” Katie cried, getting even angrier when I laughed and told her I’d heard enough. She refused to stop, plowed ahead as if anything, anything, could change my mind.
I learned that after only a few months of dating, Jack and Morgan eloped. The move angered his parents, who felt he was too young to settle, and caused all the gossip magazines to launch covers with a grainy, out-of-focus telephoto shot of Morgan from behind in a slinky white dress that clung to her curves. It could have been anyone.
