“What about the whys?”

She shrugged. “He was a man. She was a woman. The why speaks for itself.”

“And the girl? Iris?”

“Inevitable, I suppose.”

He looked at her, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “So that’s it? You’re ready to just . . . move on?”

“Yes.”

Wade raked a hand through his hair, wondering who she was trying to convince, herself or him. “Look, I know I’ve been telling you to stop torturing yourself, but I didn’t mean like this. You can’t just pretend you don’t have feelings if you do.”

Christy-Lynn tossed down her fork with a clatter. “Of course I have feelings. But what am I supposed to do with them? There’s no way to walk it back, is there? No way to put the genie back in the bottle. No one to even rail at since Stephen’s dead. There’s just this little girl with no parents!”

The words rang sharply off the walls of the kitchen, shimmering hotly in the small space. Wade watched her, startled and uncertain as she went very still, head lowered, a hand pressed to her mouth. She was shaking visibly. Eventually, she opened her eyes. He pushed back his plate and folded his arms on the edge of the table.

“What happened today, Christy-Lynn?”

Her eyes slid away, looking everywhere but at him. “He wanted her,” she said softly.

“Honey?”

Her eyes drifted back to his, weary and full of sadness. “Iris. Honey considered . . . not having her, but Stephen changed her mind. I wasn’t expecting that.” She wiped the sleeve of her robe across her eyes, then bounced out of her chair. “Coffee?”

Wade blinked at her, startled by the abrupt change of subject, and by a newly improved view of her left shoulder. He dragged his eyes away to check his watch. “Sure. Why not? I’m basically immune to caffeine at this point.”

He watched as she scooped coffee into the basket, his professional sonar pinging off the charts. He could feel the carefully checked emotions, tamped down good and tight but bubbling hard beneath the surface. Anger mixed with confusion wrapped in betrayal. But there was something else too, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

She returned to the table a few moments later and handed him a mug. “Sugar only, right?”

She had tightened the belt of her robe so that her shoulder was no longer exposed. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. “You’ve been paying attention. I’m flattered.”

“You’ve been drinking coffee in my café for two months now.”

“True enough. Now sit.”

He was surprised when she actually dropped back into her chair without protest, her mug cradled between her palms.

“What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?”

“We didn’t have kids,” she said simply.

Wade looked at her over the rim of his mug. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. “How is that relevant?”

“It just is.”

He waited, watching as she blew on her coffee, then sipped slowly. She was still stalling, tossing out lame responses, but she was getting there.

“I was the one who didn’t want kids.”

“And Stephen did?”

“If he did, he never said so. We talked about it before we got married—about not doing the family thing—and he seemed fine with it, maybe even a little relieved. But he could have changed his mind. Some men do.”

Wade sat with the words a moment, mentally tugging at several loose threads. “You’re saying if you’d had a baby Stephen wouldn’t have cheated?”

She shrugged. “They say a man with kids is less likely to cheat because he has more to feel guilty about.”

Wade paused midsip, stunned by what he’d just heard. “That may just be the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Guys who cheat don’t do it because they’re dying to be family men, Christy-Lynn. They do it because they’re alley cats.”

“What about you? Did you want . . . my God, I never even thought to ask. Do you have kids?”

“No. But I wanted them eventually. I mean that’s part of it, right—raising a family? But our lives were so crazy. That’s one of the reasons I wanted off the media merry-go-round. I wanted to slow things down, see what else life had to offer. Simone had other plans. No way was she slowing down to change diapers.”

“You could have though,” Christy-Lynn pointed out. “You could have been a stay-at-home dad.”

“And I would have. I was ready for a change. But that wasn’t the life Simone signed up for. We never had the conversation before we got married. I guess she thought I felt the same way she did about the job. She loved the sleuthing, camping out in front of some guy’s apartment in hopes that he’d sneak out for cigarettes or a newspaper, and then bam. Full-scale ambush.”

“Yes, I know the drill.”

“Sorry, I forgot. I used to think she was just dedicated, you know? Change-the-world dedicated. But as time went on, I saw another side of her, a darker side. The chase, the constant adrenaline rush. It became like a drug for her, and I didn’t want any part of that. Which is why I eventually walked away. Stephen could have done the same if he wasn’t happy. Instead, he snuck around behind your back and fathered a child with another woman, a daughter you still wouldn’t know about if he hadn’t driven off a bridge with a half-naked woman in his car.”