Cooper walks over to the kitchen table, pulls out a chair, and sits down in it. “When did you get this letter?” he asks, taking the towel from around his neck.
“About a week before Tania and I got married,” Jordan says. “I’m telling you, I thought this guy was just another crazy fan! Tania’s never been married.” He laughs, but nervously. “She’d have told me, right? How could she not have told me?”
“My guess? Because she’s never been divorced,” Cooper says.
“Cooper—” I look worriedly at Jordan.
“He’s a grown man, Heather,” Cooper says. “Even if he doesn’t look like one in that bathrobe.”
“It’s a genuine samurai warrior—” Jordan begins to ex-plain.
“Shut up,” Cooper says. “I couldn’t find any record of Tania being divorced from this guy, but she’s been paying him ten grand a month. If I had to guess? It’s not alimony. She’s been paying straight-up blackmail to this guy for him to keep his mouth shut so you wouldn’t find out she’s still married to him. That’s how much she loves you.”
I glare at Cooper, wondering what’s happened to his code of ethics. It’s not like him to betray the privacy of a client.
On the other hand, this isn’t just any client. Tania is family.
“I’m not surprised either,” Cooper says. “What else was she supposed to do? It wasn’t like she could turn to you, her loving husband, for support. You’d simply put it in the Crazy File.”
“Cooper,” I say again. I don’t approve of the way Jordan’s handled the situation, but I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. He’s led a privileged life, allowing his parents to do everything for him, and has never had to deal with anything like this before. “Come on. He didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know that someone threatened to cause his pregnant wife ‘a world of hurt’?” Cooper snaps, his eyes flashing. “Yes, he did, Heather. And if someone did that to you, I would not put it in my Crazy File. I would go crazy on that person.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Jordan asks, looking from one to the other of us. His expression is queasy. “Are you two—?”
“Hate to give you all the bad news in one night, bro,” Cooper says, leaning over to clap a hand to his brother’s shoulder. “But the answer is yes.”
Jordan lets out an expletive, then stares unseeingly at Owen, who has strolled into the kitchen and is stretching luxuriously in the middle of the floor. “So you two are together. And I’m . . . what? A polygamist? Like that guy on TV?”
“The correct term, when it’s a woman with more than one husband, is polyandrist, not polygamist,” Cooper says. “And no, you’re not. Tania is. You’re just an idiot.”
Jordan’s face disappears into his hands once more—only this time it stays there. I see his shoulders begin to shake. He’s weeping.
I send Cooper a look of disbelief. Really? You had to make your brother cry?
Cooper shakes his head at me and leans back in his chair, his arms folded, refusing to utter a single word of sympathy.
“It isn’t entirely your fault, Jordan,” I get up and say, going to Jordan’s side and laying my hands on his shoulders. “Nor is it Tania’s. Gary Hall has been terrorizing her. She was probably too traumatized to file for a divorce.”
This only seems to make him weep harder. Cooper, unimpressed, reaches down to stroke Owen under the chin.
“And I think she might not entirely trust authority figures,” I add desperately, “and she might not have been in the best state of mind when the two of you decided to get married to make the right judgment calls. There was a lot of pressure on you both—”
Jordan finally lifts his head.
“Cooper’s right,” he says. “I am an idiot.”
“Finally,” Cooper says with a nod. “The first step is admitting it. The second step is deciding what you’re going to do about it.”
Jordan wipes his face with the wide sleeve of his robe. “A samurai,” he says after some consideration, “would find this guy and kill him.”
Cooper suppresses a smile. “You’re headed in the right direction,” he says. “But ‘Turn him over to the authorities’ is the correct answer.”
“Jordan?”
The voice is sweetly soft and comes from the kitchen doorway. We all turn toward it, startled. None of us heard Tania approach, and no wonder, considering she’s in her bare feet, wearing only one of my many Sugar Rush T-shirts. Though both Baby and Lucy followed her, we even failed to hear the click of the dogs’ claws on the hardwood floors.
“Tania,” Jordan says, standing up. His jaw has gone slack. “I . . . I . . .” He appears at a loss for words.
Tania’s gaze darts toward me, her eyes filling with tears. “You told him?” she cries, so hurt you’d have thought I’d stabbed her in the heart.
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I swear, Tania, he figured it out all on his—”
“Christ, Jordan,” Cooper says angrily. “Tell her the truth.”
“Tania.” Jordan staggers out from behind the table, the sleeves of his samurai robe falling over his hands as he holds them out in supplication to his wife. “Baby. It’s all my fault. He wrote to me too—”
Tania’s voice breaks. “He did?”
Jordan nods. “He did, baby. But I didn’t do the right thing. I know that now. I should have been there for you. You never should have had to go through this alone.”
“I thought you’d hate me,” Tania says with a sob.
“Tania,” Jordan says with a sob of his own, “how could you ever think such a thing? You’re my angel.”
Tania takes two staggering steps forward and ends up being enveloped in Jordan’s arms, disappearing into the multicolored silks of his robe. Jordan buries his face in her tousled curls, and the two of them stand together weeping beneath the kitchen greenhouse windows, the lights of Fischer Hall twinkling in the distance. The Hallmark moment is only somewhat ruined when Baby finds Lucy’s dog bowl and begins to crunch noisily on its contents.
“It’s all right, girl,” I say, scratching Lucy’s ears. “You’ve been a very good hostess.”