Ruben didn’t sit again until I sat and handed him his own photograph. “This is your picture of Lucio.” The middle name he’d given the illegitimate child he’d thought was a boy. “The one you gave me a year and a half ago.”

He took the picture and frowned at it while I pulled Anne’s photo from the drawer of the end table between us. “Now look at this one. Do they look like the same child to you? Same room? Same outfit? Is that your baby?” And more importantly… “Is that ‘Tamara’?”

Ruben gaped at the picture, his eyes growing steadily wider. “Where did you get this?”

“Is that her?”

“Without a doubt.” His gaze was glued to Noelle’s face, smiling out at us from a moment frozen in time. “Where is she?”

“Dead,” I said, and his jaw tightened, the only outward sign of his displeasure, and I was surprised to realize that he still cared about her, even years later. “Your wife had her shot six years ago, about four months after this picture was taken.”

Ruben’s eyes closed, but he didn’t let go of the picture.

“Also, her name wasn’t Tamara Parker. It was Noelle Maddox.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked, staring at the picture again.

“Michaela told me she had ‘Tamara’ killed, as a conversational lead-in to her intent to do the same to me. As for the rest of it…I’m getting to that. But first, I really need to know something.”

“You’re answering questions, not asking them.” But for the first time since I’d met him, he sounded neither confrontational, manipulative nor controlling. He wasn’t trying to overpower me, make an example of me or get me out of my pants. And oddly enough, melancholy-Ruben was pretty damn creepy.

I could find nothing to blame for the change in him, other than seeing Elle again for the first time in years, and I really needed to understand why one of my best friends in the world would have voluntarily spent so much time with someone as vile and abusive as Ruben Cavazos. So…

“Did you love her? Not like you love Michaela.” If their twisted marriage could even be described in such terms. “Did you actually, really love Noelle, more than you love yourself?”

Ruben scowled, as if I was wasting his time. “That’s a pointless question.”

“It is not a pointless question. You cheated on your wife for the first time with Noelle. Surely that means something—your first infidelity. Did you love her?” Please. I need to know…

Ruben sat back in his chair, watching me like a shrink with a sadistic streak. “Are you jealous, Olivia?” But this time I recognized his misdirection for what it was—a defense mechanism. He was hiding from the truth.

“Hell no.” I bent to pick up the towel I’d dropped and scooped several fuzzy ice cubes back into it. “I’m searching for a shred of humanity in that shriveled tangle of arteries you call a heart.”

“Well, stop.” His scowl deepened. “It’s not there.”

But it was. It had to be. Elle wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to produce another human being with him if he didn’t treat her better than he treated…anyone else I’d ever seen him with, other than his daughter. But he wasn’t going to say it.

“Fine. Did you hit her?” I asked, approaching the issue from another angle. Surely he wouldn’t beat on someone he truly loved. And I wanted that to be Elle for more reasons than I could even list. I wanted Elle to have been in love at least once before she died. I wanted to know that Ruben hadn’t abused one of my best friends during the last years of her life. I wanted to know that she wouldn’t have put up with it, if he’d tried.

She wasn’t bound to him. If she had been, she could never have run from him.

“Did I hit her?”

“Don’t act like that’s not a reasonable question.” I put the icy towel on my bruised, swollen cheek for emphasis.

Ruben sighed. “Did I hit her…?” And this time he actually seemed to be contemplating the question. “Only once. When she told me she was leaving. I left to cool off and when I came back, she was gone.”

“Holy shit. She hurt you, so you struck out at her.” He had loved her. And he missed her.

Maybe he’d been different with Elle. Maybe she hadn’t even known what he was really like, if she never saw him in his own world. After all, they were together eight years ago. A lot could have changed since then.

That’s what Imyself anyway.

“Enough.” He glanced at the picture again. “Tell me about my son.”

I nodded. In addition to satisfying my curiosity, talking about Elle had put him in a much more malleable mood. “Okay, here’s the short version. Your son is actually a daughter. Her name is Hadley, she’s seven years old, and she’s both smart and beautiful.”

Ruben blinked at me. Then he leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t like games, Olivia.”

“Yes, you do. But this isn’t a game.”

Another blink. Then Ruben held up Anne’s photo and pointed to the baby. “That is a little boy.”

“No, that is a little girl in a blue baseball cap. Evidently gender-specific physical traits aren’t so clear at that age. At least, not with the diaper on.”

Ruben brought the picture closer to his face and stared at the baby. Then he compared it to the child in his own picture by staring at that one. And finally he met my gaze again. “So…you’re serious? I have another daughter?”