Husband by Choice

“Did she have a message for me?”

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As Chantel’s chin dropped, his gut got hard as rock. His friend looked over at him and he wanted to end the day. To wake up in the morning and start fresh, a married doctor with a two-year-old son and a wife who didn’t want their toddler in day care.

He’d play it differently. He’d tell Meri that she could keep Caleb with her if that was what she wanted. He’d trust her to raise their son into an emotionally healthy young man.

Chantel’s hand covered his, bringing his attention back to her. “She said to tell you that she didn’t need your help, Max. Or ours. She asked that you let her go.”

His chest burned.

And he sat down, a stabbed man with a big gaping wound.

* * *

“I HAVE SOME other news.”

Chantel’s voice broke into Max’s private hell. He’d promised Meri he could handle being married to a woman with an abusive ex in her past. And he wouldn’t put it past Meri to say whatever she thought she had to say for whatever reason she had to say it. She would not have left him, just to get away from him, without telling him. He would bet his life on it.

She would not have left Caleb just to go start a new life.

Something else was going on.

“Max, did you hear me? I have other news.”

Chantel sat down next to him. She was there to help him. He needed her. “What other news?”

“Steve Smith. He quit the force with a perfect record, but I talked to someone today—a person someone else had told me I might want to talk to—and this person intimated that Smith might have quit before his record could be tarnished.”

“He was in trouble?”

“From what I heard, an internal investigation was never opened, there’s no record of anything, but there was talk that one might have been opened if he’d stayed.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m getting this all second-and thirdhand, and cops don’t talk bad about their own to their own, let alone to someone they don’t know.”

“So how do you know there was talk?”

“A daughter of a woman who spoke at a Las Sendas library fund-raiser is a dispatcher in Las Vegas. She asked around.”

“What were you doing at a library fund-raiser?” For a second he was twenty-five again. Sitting in his living room with Jill and Chantel, having a glass of wine to take the edge off long hours at the hospital with no pay.

For just that second he wasn’t a man trying to assimilate facts about his wife that just wouldn’t come together. His head dropped to the back of the couch.

“I read books, Bennet,” Chantel said, with a small smirk, before growing serious once again. “Sandra, the dispatcher, put me in touch with a detective who she thought might be able to help me. I’m waiting to hear from her.”

He stared at the ceiling, looking for the energy he needed to get up in the morning, get his son out of bed, and tell Caleb, when he asked, as he inevitably would, that his mother wasn’t home yet. How long would it be before Caleb quit asking?

Chantel settled back, as well. It was late. It had been a long six days.

“Does this detective know you’re calling for personal reasons?”

“Yes.” She turned her head just as he turned his and they were facing each other, lying back against the couch.

Max sat up. “I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me at this point, but I know without a doubt that Steve is behind all of this,” he said, his thoughts finding clarity all on their own. “I can’t explain it to you. I can’t tell you why Meri is still in town, or why she didn’t ask for help. I can’t tell you why she didn’t come to me before she bolted. But I am absolutely certain that her ex-husband is behind it all. Find him and we’ll find our answers.”

“And what if those answers turn out to include the fact that Meredith no longer wants to be married to you?”