16 Lighthouse Road - Debbie Macomber [46]
“All right.” She hated the idea of alarming her daughters, but they had a right to know their father had disappeared. Dear God, where could he be? Never in all the years they’d been married had Dan done anything like this. Something had to be very wrong.
“Have you given any more thought to where Dan might’ve gone?”
She had, but Grace found it hard to voice the words. “Lately…before Kelly announced she was pregnant, Dan’s been…” She didn’t know how to continue and struggled not to break into tears. “I think there might be another woman.”
“Dan? No way! He’s not the type.” Olivia shook her head adamantly. “Not Dan,” she repeated. “No way.”
Grace found it hard to believe herself. But unlikely though it seemed, the thought refused to leave her mind. “I realized a long time ago that we don’t have a perfect marriage, but lately it’s…it’s as though something’s changed in Dan. He’s different.” There, she’d said it, but putting into words exactly what was different about her husband proved far more difficult. She knew he was restless. He’d been moody for thirty years, ever since Vietnam, but lately the swings had been wider, more extreme. Whenever she tried to draw him out, get him to confide in her, Dan seemed to resent her effort. That had led Grace to wonder if there was someone else he was talking to, someone else he’d come to care about. The only time he’d been himself lately was when they’d heard Kelly’s wonderful news. After their daughter’s announcement, everything had been better—for a while. Now this.
“Dan just isn’t the kind of man who would cheat on you,” Olivia said in a confident voice.
“Do any of us really know our husbands?” Grace asked quietly. She didn’t mean to be cruel, but her friend had learned that lesson the hard way. Apparently Stan had met his current wife while commuting on the ferry to his job in Seattle. Grace didn’t think he’d been involved in an actual affair with Marge, but she’d offered a sympathetic ear after Jordan’s death and had helped Stan deal with the guilt and anger that followed. His relationship with Marge had been one of emotional rather than sexual intensity. It was the only thing that could explain how quickly he’d remarried.
Olivia didn’t answer right away. Carrying her mug, she paced the area in front of the sofa. “What makes you think Dan might be seeing someone else?”
Grace didn’t have any specific details. “It’s more of a gut feeling,” she said with a helpless shrug.
“Think back over the last six months. Has he taken special care with his appearance, attended meetings at odd times of the day or night?”
Her mind was a blank. “Uh…not that I recall.”
“Didn’t you say he went hunting last fall?”
Grace nodded. He’d taken up the sport after a long absence, and while it wasn’t something she could possibly like, she’d been grateful that he was showing interest in an activity other than watching TV. He’d left on a Friday afternoon in late October and returned on the Sunday evening. He’d spoken enthusiastically about his trek through the woods, more voluble than he’d been for quite a while.
“He went alone?” Olivia asked.
Dan hadn’t mentioned anyone else, but at the time Grace hadn’t thought of that as odd. He didn’t have a lot of friends and often preferred his own company.
“Did he bring home any game?”
“No.” But that made sense, too, since it’d been years since he’d gone hunting. Putting down her coffee, Grace frowned, remembering that weekend. “Are you suggesting he was with someone else?”
Olivia boldly met her look. “I wouldn’t know, but deep down I think you do.”
Perhaps she did. That free weekend had been wonderful for her. She’d spent a delightful two days with Maryellen and Kelly, shopping at an outlet mall in Oregon. It’d been their first “Mother-Daughter Getaway Weekend,” an event they hoped to repeat annually.
“He seemed…happy,” Grace murmured. He was so rarely in a good mood that it’d struck her as unusual. She couldn’t believe that a man would go from another woman’s bed and then home to his wife, without somehow betraying his guilt.