I watched the horses in the patch over the cobblestone driveway. There were so many cars in the driveway you’d think they were lining up for a parade, with Cameron’s black Audi at the head. But there was no parade. And it was very quiet.
Guards could be seen throughout the property, if you knew where to look for them. But I kept my eyes trained on the horses. Most of them were far out in the pasture, avoiding the fuss. But two stood guard at the fence, keeping an eye on Meatball, who was trying to go say hello but his big head wouldn’t fit through the fence’s levers. So he sat and whined instead.
The wind picked up, and I hugged the shawl Carly had insisted on putting over my shoulders before I escaped to the porch. The breeze was warm and I was standing in the sun, yet I was still shivering. I felt like I had already lived a thousand lives, so I supposed the old-lady shawl was appropriate. Carly had wanted me to stay in bed, but Doctor Lorne ordered me to get back on my feet, to get some fresh air and stretch out. I needed time alone, time to think. So I followed the doctor’s orders.
When I heard the porch’s whitewashed floorboards creak behind me, I diverted my attention from the horses and saw Cameron approaching, Billy nestled in his arms. He was skin and bones, as though he had really been dead.
“I picked her up when she woke, but she fell back asleep,” he whispered, his eyes on Billy. She was mummy-wrapped in a million blankets. With only her chubby little face peeking through, she looked like a peapod. Carly’s fussing, I guessed.
“I thought she might be cold, so I put another blanket around her,” Cameron admitted, like he knew what I was thinking and needed to prove me wrong.
He looked up at me, but I kept my eyes on my beautiful baby girl, who was sleeping in her father’s arms. She looked peaceful, like she was exactly where she was always supposed to be. The fact that she and I almost didn’t make it, the fact that I had almost lost her, crossed my mind again. But I blocked this out before my imagination ran wild. She was here, with me, right now, and I would be forever grateful to Doctor Lorne. And forever grateful to Spider.
Cameron must have sensed I was itching to have her in my arms because he gently grabbed my elbow and helped me to the swing, handing me Billy as soon as I was seated. He then amassed the cushions from all the chairs. After building a fort of cushions around Billy and me, he sat down, swung my legs onto his, and swayed us back and forth on the swing.
Feeling his legs under mine made my heart twist in confusion. I could hardly bring myself to look at him. I longed to touch him, hold him tight, never let go. How many nights had I wished I could be with him just one more time?
But now, seeing him, being so near to him brought me so much pain. The pain of betrayal, of abandonment. I could hardly breathe. I never knew that I would be able to love and hate someone at the same time.
“You left us, Cameron,” I said. It was barely a sigh.
“I had no idea. I should have, would have never …” he started, then stopped. He swallowed hard and looked into my eyes, searching. “I didn’t know you were pregnant, Emmy. I didn’t know about Billy.”
“Sorry,” I snapped. “Let me rephrase that. You left me, Cameron. And I cried over you. Every night, for whole days at a time, for months after you died. After you supposedly died. How could you do that to a person you supposedly loved?”
“Love,” he corrected me. “Never loved, never supposedly. Love in the past, the present, and the always.” He kept his dark eyes on me. “To say I made the wrong choice, the wrong decision, is like saying the sun sets in the west. I’ll never forgive myself.”
We sat in silence, rocking slowly, Cameron’s hands resting on my ankles, as though we had been doing this for years.
“What happens now?” I finally asked him.
“I don’t know, Emmy,” he said, keeping us on a swaying rhythm. “But whatever happens, we’ll figure it out together.”
Together. I wondered what the future would hold. I wondered whether I would ever be able to forgive him for the agony he caused me. The pain. It was still there. The knife had been pulled out, but the wound continued to gush.
But I loved him. Undoubtedly. Fully.
Carly and Spider joined us on the porch. Carly pulled a chair up, trying to sit as close to Billy and me as she possibly could, and Spider leaned over the railing. He still had a bandage on his arm where Doctor Lorne had punctured his skin to get to the blood that was rare, the blood that was the same as mine.
I had died. When Cameron brought me to Doctor Lorne, I didn’t have a pulse, or so Doctor Lorne had explained to me. I had just lost too much blood. They told Cameron that I was probably not going to make it. Doctor Lorne had saved Billy, though, and he had saved me. But most of all, Spider, his blood, had saved me from death, and it would run through my veins. In the end, Spider and I were going to be forever linked. Serendipity.
A car came tearing through the driveway, and Griff jumped out of the passenger side before Tiny even had a chance to fully stop. I couldn’t even think about what I was going to say to him.
My eyes went back down to check on the hot bundle in my arms.
Meatball limped to Griff, and they made their way to the porch.
And Billy slept while the horses neighed in the pasture.
Where do we go from here? I wondered.
Who the hell knows? I answered myself.
But whatever happened, we were in this together.
For Billy.
CAMERON’S EPILOGUE
BILLY
A woman in love with a man who only rejects her could just about be the most dangerous thing on the planet. I used to think this, foolishly. Until I had a daughter.
The love of a father for his little girl?
It’s a weapon of mass destruction.
It’s something you just don’t fuck with.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my husband for being my Cameron inspiration, sans the drugs and violence and bloodshed. Okay, maybe not so much like Cameron—rather, my love inspiration.
Thank you to my kids for napping in the afternoon so that Mommy could finish this book, and to my mom and dad for being nothing like Isabelle and Burt Sheppard.
To Sophie Normand: if it weren’t for all those fall-head-over-heels relationships and subsequent inevitable broken hearts, this book would have never come to be. We laughed, we cried, we cried some more, we laughed again. We grew up eventually.
A special thank you to Alan Bower. Alan has changed the lives (in a good way) of so many self-published authors out there (I know—I googled him). There aren’t many people in the world who can look beyond the ugly words (mine) of a first-time author (me) and see the story. There are even fewer people who listen to the readers, appreciate the passion they have for a book. Alan, you have done so much for Crow’s Row. You make me hope that someday, if I keep working at it, I won’t cringe every time I reread something I wrote.
Thank you to my editors, Elizabeth Day and Cheri Madison, for using kid gloves in telling me that Scare Crow still needed a lot of work and for being the reader that nightmares are made of. And thank you to iUniverse and Author Solutions: when everyone turned Crow’s Row down, you were there to ensure that Cam and Emmy’s story would be shared with the world and not just end up at the bottom of my closet with the rest of the things I don’t know what to do with.
Now, to the fans of Crow’s Row. Where do I start? You guys are crazy. You drive me crazy. I appreciate your offers to babysit my children so that I can write, though there were times when I thought that if I didn’t finish Scare Crow, one of you was going to come to my house, hopefully make my kids dinner, and chain me to my computer until I was done. Let’s face it: if it weren’t for your constant hounding (in a loving and encouraging way, of course), I would have never finished Scare Crow. Cameron and Emily’s story would have stopped after Crow’s Row, and it would still be gnawing away at all of us. I hope that you liked Scare Crow. I hope that I did justice to Cam and Emmy’s st
ory. Otherwise, I’m afraid for my life.
Table of Contents
SCARE CROW
COPYRIGHT
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE: EMILY
CHAPTER TWO: CAMERON
CHAPTER THREE: EMILY
CHAPTER FOUR: CAMERON
CHAPTER FIVE: EMMY
CHAPTER SIX: CAMERON
CHAPTER SEVEN: EMMY
CHAPTER EIGHT: CAMERON
CHAPTER NINE: EMMY
CHAPTER TEN: CAMERON
CHAPTER 11: EMILY
CHAPTER 12: CAMERON
CHAPTER 13: EMILY
CHAPTER 14: CAMERON
CHAPTER 15: EMILY
CHAPTER 16: CAMERON
CHAPTER 17: EMILY
CHAPTER 18: CAMERON
CHAPTER 19: EMILY
CHAPTER 20: CAMERON
EMILY’S EPILOGUE
CAMERON’S EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Scare Crow Page 32