Our Wicked Lies by Gledé Kabongo (story read aloud TXT) 📗

“I do consider you a friend, Rina.” Alicia smiled. “I wouldn’t have asked you over if I didn’t.”

“Good,” Rina said, satisfied with her friend’s answer. “His name is Wesley George. I’ll ask David for his information and text you the details later on tonight.”

CHAPTER 26

Eliot hadn’t been able to get Alicia’s attention once at the dinner table that night. She’d been talkative with the girls but had not said a single word to him since she served the shrimp-and-angel-hair pasta with greens. He’d noticed she hadn’t touched her food, either as she was too busy talking to the girls. But whenever one of his daughters tried to draw him into the conversation, she’d switch the subject to something else that had nothing to do with him.

Eliot was confident that she hadn’t found out about his pregnant mistress, but Alicia’s behavior was unusual. He’d made sure to wipe clean any email communication between him and Faith from his computer and had deleted Nathan Hunt from his cell phone contact list. He’d even purchased a burner phone and asked Faith to use it exclusively now since he shut down email communication with her. At the time, he’d thought an email draft folder was safe. With the setup he had going, there would be no messages going back and forth over the internet. Faith had the login details to his email account and would leave her messages in the folder. He would respond the same way. Well, that had been the plan.

He stuck his fork into a shrimp—probably with a little more muscle than necessary—and forced himself to eat. Alicia was an excellent cook, but tonight the food offered no pleasure to his taste buds, no burst of texture, flavor, or aroma. His mind churned continuously, searching for a permanent solution to the Faith conundrum. A collision of his two worlds would be catastrophic. Plans for his life, both in the present and the future, would go up in flames.

The sun was setting on his career at Tillerson Brenner, as well. Twenty-one years he’d given the firm, but he’d decided that it was time to move on. One of the two Massachusetts Senate seats would be up for grabs in a little over a year, and he intended to be well positioned to have a successful run. That meant convincing Alicia to make the transition from corporate to political wife. He knew she’d make the switch with the efficiency and elegance she always did with big life changes, as they split their time between Washington, DC, and home, here in Weston.

However, it also meant that he couldn’t afford any scandals. If history was any indication, nothing sank a political campaign faster than a candidate who cheated and got his mistress pregnant. Don’t forget you threatened to kill her if she told Alicia about the affair. Voters might frown upon a would-be-murderer candidate.

As dinner came to a close, Eliot leaned forward and whispered to his wife, “Are you okay, baby?” He didn’t want to alarm the girls.

For a microsecond in time, he saw something resembling resentment flicker in Alicia’s usually gentle brown eyes. Then it was gone.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” he said with conviction. He looked at his daughters. “Could you excuse your mother and me for a moment?”

Marston and Lily looked at each other before scrambling from the table and exiting the kitchen. Eliot scooted into the seat next to his wife and reached out to touch her forearm. She recoiled. Something was terribly wrong.

“Alicia, you’re not fine. What is it? Tell me. I can help you.”

“Why are you so concerned that something is wrong? Did you do something wrong?”

He flinched. “You’re not acting like yourself. You don’t even want me to touch you.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, thinking about my mother. Marston graduating and leaving home in three months. Doubts about my future, whether I can pull off this returning-to-school thing. It’s a lot to handle. Emotionally draining, I’d say.”

“Baby, that’s what I’m here for, to help you through anything,” he soothed. “I can’t take away the pain of losing your mother, and as for Marston leaving home, I’m afraid, too, but she’s growing up so fast. We have to let go. And don’t doubt yourself about returning to school. You’ll do great.”

“I guess you’re right.”

He wasn’t sure his little pep talk had any effect. He had always been an expert at reading her, but this new Alicia was putting up walls and he had no clue why. If she had discovered the affair, she would have raised hell with him by now. His wife was a sweet lady, but when pushed too far, her rage turned into a hurricane, and she did things no one thought her capable of. Though he would never admit it, he was afraid of her when she got that way.

It took every ounce of her strength to hold it together, not spill her guts and confront him as the pain ate her alive. Every day without release, without telling him that she knew everything, was another day the stinging betrayal wound its way around her heart, her soul, her spirit, choking the life out of her.

His affair with Faith had tainted everything—her confidence that she was enough for him, the belief their marriage would last until they each took their last breath. She hated him for making her face the harsh reality that nothing lasted forever. She hated him for stealing her peace of mind, for making her feel fragile and insecure.

“Stop worrying so much, baby. Everything will be fine.”

Baby. He had tainted that moniker, too. The first time he’d called her baby, she’d turned into a mushy, gooey mess.

It was a couple of months into their relationship. He’d come by the restaurant to pick her up at the end of her shift, but it was so busy that night, she’d ended up working overtime. He’d waited patiently in the parking lot. She