“But then, they were united in their hatred of him,” Kate said. “It’s a kind of bonding. Too bad. Clive seems like a nice guy.”
“Asked you out yet?” Jack asked.
“Repeatedly.”
“If he—”
Sara cut him off. “What about Nadine?”
“We had a nice heart-to-heart. She said this place is making her remember the truth,” Jack said. “She told me about Sean and her.”
Kate and Sara leaned forward, ready to listen.
“Tell us every word,” Sarah said. “In detail.”
Sixteen
“Sean was a great lover,” Nadine said. “All those years of currying horses...” She raised her hands and moved them in a sensuous way. “He took his time. I’ve never...” She sighed. “No one since, if you know what I mean.”
Jack nodded. “Losing him... I can’t imagine how it hurt.”
Nadine took her time before replying. “At the time I thought I’d die. To have it all taken away in an instant... I didn’t know how to go on living. Willa had everyone’s attention because Clive had dumped her, so I was alone. They didn’t know about Sean and me.”
“It’s hard for me to see how you kept that a secret.”
Nadine shook her head. “It wasn’t easy. Damned Puck was everywhere. Sneaking here and there. But thanks to me, no one went to the cemetery house. Bertram was too cheap to hire a caretaker or to repair it. But that was good because it gave us a place to meet in secret. I came up with the idea of making people believe the house was haunted. Sean and I laughed as we set up the ghost equipment. We used the bathtub to—” She drifted away in memory of those days of the two of them together. Hands and soap and hot water.
Jack interrupted. “Puck found your hiding place.”
Nadine came back to the present. “She did. She seemed to have fallen through a door. Knocked it over. Sean was very upset. We met in the woods after that.”
“And in the chapel.”
She looked startled. “Ho
w do you know about that?”
“Just a guess. And you were going to have a baby,” he said softly.
She sighed. “I had been looking forward to telling Sean. Now that I’m older I see my stupidity, but back then, all I thought was ‘Now Sean can’t leave me.’”
“Did you believe he wanted to?”
“Yes and no. He’d said he couldn’t see how it would work between us. We were pretty sure that when we told my father he’d disown me. He used to be...” She looked away as tears came to her eyes. “This afternoon I have to choose his coffin.”
Jack put his hand over hers. “I’m sorry for all this. I liked the man.”
“Even though he tried to kill you?”
“Especially because he tried to kill me.”
For a moment, they smiled at each other in memory.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Nadine said. “Sean and me. I can see that now. We wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years—if that. Marriage is serious business. All he and I had was wonderful, fabulous sex. We looked at each other and clothes came off.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said.
Nadine didn’t smile. “When I was with him, I couldn’t see reality. He had a very quick temper. And he hated all of us.”