My Secret Wife. Cathy Thacker Gillen

more troubled and distressed.

      “Then what could have happened?” Gabe asked in shared concern. “Who could have called her at the hospital and upset her so much she started to cry?”

      And what, Maggie wondered, could that person have said to Penny that would have caused Penny to pack a bag and walk out on her husband?

      Lane shrugged. His broad shoulders slumped in defeat. “I don’t know what’s going on with her the past couple of days,” Lane confessed emotionally. He looked at both Maggie and Gabe plaintively. “I mean, I know she’s been really sad about not being able to have a baby, and that infertility can make a woman whose biological clock is already ticking kind of crazy. But I’ve told her that I love her, that I’d be willing to adopt, or have a baby via test tube or whatever she wants.”

      “Maybe you should do that again, then,” Gabe said, just as earnestly. “Maybe she’s just trying to be selfless in leaving you.”

      “Maybe.” Lane stood. “Thanks. Both for the story tonight, and being a friend to me and Penny.”

      “Any time,” Gabe said.

      Lane Stringfield paused at the door, turned back to Gabe. “Listen, I’ve heard your mom is in town again—apparently for good.”

      “Right.”

      Lane forged on hopefully. “Any chance she’d consider hosting a local television show now that she’s left the network?”

      Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know. I gave up trying to predict what my mother would or wouldn’t do a long time ago. You’ll have to ask her.”

      “Will do,” Lane promised.

      Lane left and Gabe turned back to Maggie.

      Funny, Maggie thought. She’d thought she had a very good idea who Gabe was—the incessantly selfless Good Samaritan who busied himself helping one person after another. Now, having seen a flash of melancholy and pessimism in his personality as he talked with Lane, she wasn’t certain she knew him at all. She studied him openly. “The fact that the Stringfields might divorce really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

      “Yeah—maybe because I just never saw it coming for the two of them. They’ve been married for five years now. I’ve known Penny for just slightly longer. I attended their wedding and have been friends to both of them, and really feel they belong together.”

      “Then…?” Maggie asked, confused.

      Gabe shrugged. “I can’t explain Penny’s behavior any more than Lane can,” he told Maggie bluntly. “All I know for certain is that my own parents separated abruptly without any explanation and then ended up getting divorced. I don’t want to see the same thing happen to Penny and Lane, because I think they’d end up regretting it the same way my parents have.”

      “And yet,” Maggie observed quietly, “you took Penny in Sunday night, knowing how it would probably look to Lane and everyone else.”

      A muscle worked in Gabe’s cheek. He looked at Maggie, clearly resenting the implication. “She’s a friend. She showed up on my doorstep crying hysterically and telling me her marriage to Lane was over. What was I to do? Throw her out?”

      If that would’ve saved her marriage, Maggie thought, yes, that is exactly what you should have done, Gabe. But out loud, she said only, in a clear, polite tone, “You could have called Lane and heard his side of the story or let him know how upset his wife was and asked him to come over and talk things out with her.”

      Gabe scowled. “I didn’t want to make things any worse. And from the way Penny was acting, I thought Lane might have been cheating on her,” he admitted unhappily.

      “But you don’t think so now,” Maggie guessed.

      “No.” Gabe studied Maggie carefully, obviously wanting her opinion. “Do you?”