by Nora Roberts
They were both too much alone.
She walked quietly. He never heard her, but when her shadow fell over him, he turned his head. She said nothing, but laid the spray of lilacs she carried beneath the marble marker. On a sigh, she knelt.
In silence they listened to the wind in the high grass, and the distant purr of the tractor.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked her.
“No.” Gently, she brushed a hand over the soft grass that covered their son. “He was beautiful, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” He felt the tears well up and fought them back. It had been a long time since he’d wept here. “He looked so much like you.
“He had the best of each of us.” Her voice quiet, she sat back on her heels. Like Brian, she looked toward the hills. They had changed so little in all these years. Life continued. That was the hardest lesson she had learned. “He was so bright, so full of life. He had your smile, Bri. Yours and Emma’s.”
“He was always happy. Whenever I think of him I remember that.”
“My biggest fear was that I would forget somehow, that his face, and his memory, would fade with time. But it hasn’t. I remember how he laughed, how it would just roll out of him. I’ve never heard a prettier sound. I loved him too much, Bri.”
“You can’t love too much.”
“Yes, you can.” She fell silent for a time. A cow began to low. Oddly, the sound made her smile. “Do you think it’s just lost? That everything he was and might have been just vanished, just went away when he died?”
“No.” He looked at her then. “No, I don’t.”
His answer made all the difference. “I did at first. Perhaps that’s why I lost myself for so long. It hurt so much to think that all that beauty and joy had been here for such a short time. But then I knew that wasn’t true. He’s still alive in my heart. And in yours.”
He looked away, toward the distant, shadowed hills. “There are times I want to forget. Times I do whatever I can to forget. It’s the worst kind of hell to outlive your own child.”
“When you do, you know nothing that happens to you will ever be as painful. We had him for two years, Bri. That’s what I like to remember. You were a wonderful father.” She reached out for him, took his hands. When his fingers tightened on hers, she held on. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t share that pain with you the way I shared the joy. I was selfish with it, as if holding it to myself would make it only mine. But it’s ours, the way he was ours.”
He said nothing. Tears were clogging his throat. Understanding, she turned to him. Holding each other, they sat in silence as the sun rose higher and dried the dew on the tall grass.
“I should never have left you,” he murmured.
“We left each other.”
“Why?” He tightened his grip. “Why?”
“I’ve thought about it so many times. I think we couldn’t bear to be happy. That we felt, or I did, that if we could be happy after he was gone, it would be like dishonoring him. It was wrong.”
“Bev.” He turned his face into her hair. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I won’t.”
They walked, hands linked, back to the farmhouse. The sun shone bright through the windows as they went upstairs. They undressed each other, stopping only for long, quiet kisses, gentle caresses.
He wasn’t the young man who had once loved her. Nor was she the same woman. They were more patient now. They didn’t tumble onto the bed, but lowered slowly, knowing each moment was precious when so many had been lost.
And yet, though they had changed, their bodies moved easily together. When she reached for him the years seemed to vanish. With his mouth pressed against her throat, he drew in the familiar scent, the familiar taste.
Even as passion built, they glided along its edges, unwilling to be ruled by it as they once had been. Her lips curved as she ran a hand through his hair. As her body heated she sighed as much in contentment as desire. With her eyes half closed, she let her hands run over him, remembering every angle, every plane of his body. Passion, released, flowed into them like a fine wine.
She welcomed him, opening and arching. When they joined, she wept. Bringing his mouth to her, she tasted his tears mixed with her own.
Later, they lay quiet, her head tucked in the curve of his shoulder. She wondered that it should be so easy, and feel so right. It had been nearly twenty years. Half of her life had been spent apart from him. Yet they were here, bodies damp from loving. She could feel his heart thud under the palm of her hand.
“It’s so much like it used to be,” he said, echoing her thoughts. “And yet it’s so different.”
“I didn’t want this to happen. All this time I’ve worked so hard to stay away from you.” She lifted her head, looked in his eyes. “I never wanted to love this much again.”
“It’s only ever been right with you. Don’t ask me to let you go again. I wouldn’t make it this time.”
She brushed his hair, with its first few sprinkles of gray, away from his brow. “I was always afraid that you didn’t really need me, certainly not the way I needed you.”
“You were wrong.”
“Yes, I know I was.” She lowered her head to kiss him. “We’ve wasted a lot of time, Bri. I’d like you to come home.”
They stayed the night there, in the old bed, talking, making love. It was late when the phone rang. Brian answered it only because there was no other way to end the interruption.
“Hello.”
“Brian McAvoy?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is Michael Kesselring. I’ve been trying to track you down.”
“Kesselring.” He regretted saying the name the moment Bev stiffened beside him. “What is it?”
“It’s Emma.”
“Emma?” He sat up quickly, mouth dry as dust. Bev’s hand was on his shoulder, squeezing. “Has something happened to her?”
Michael knew from experience it was best to say it all quickly, but he had a difficult time forming the words. “She’s in the hospital, here in L.A. She’s—”
“An accident? Has she had an accident?”
“No, she was beaten pretty badly. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Beaten? Emma’s been beaten? I don’t understand.”
“The doctors are working on her. They tell me she’s going to be okay, but she’s going to need you.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Bev was already up and pulling on her clothes. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She’s in the hospital in L.A.” He swore, fumbling with the buttons of his shin.
“Here.” Quickly, Bev did them up. “She’s going to be all right, Bri. Emma’s tougher than she looks.”
He could only nod and take a moment to hold her against him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was dark. There was pain, a dreamy, distant pain that drifted sluggishly through her body. Like a warm red ocean it seemed to cover her, weigh her down, so that she was trapped away from air and light. Emma tried to rise above it, to sink below it, but couldn’t seem to outmaneuver the dull ache. She found she could accept that. But not the dark, not the quiet.
She struggled to move. There was panic when she realized she didn’t know if she was standing or sitting or lying down. She couldn’t feel her arms or legs, just that nagging, somehow fluid ache. She tried to speak, to call out to someone, anyone. In her mind she screamed, but no one answered.
She knew she had been hurt. All too well she could remember the way Drew had looked at her. He’d been waiting for her. He might still be there, watching her, waiting in the dark. This time he would …
But maybe she was already dead.
She felt more than pain now. She felt anger. She didn’t want to die. Moaning in frustration she strained, using all her strength and will, just to open her eyes. They might have been sewn closed for all the control she had over them.
A
hand brushed her hair. She sensed it, just the whisper of a touch that rammed screaming panic against the pain.
“Rest, Emma. It’s all right now. You have to rest.”
Not Drew. Neither the voice nor the touch was Drew’s.
“You’re safe now. I promise.”
Michael. She wanted to say his name, grateful not to be alone in the dark. To be alive. Then a dark red wave rolled in and covered her.
She drifted in and out for most of the night. Michael knew the doctors had said she would sleep straight through. But it was fear that had her fighting off the sedatives. He could feel it pumping out of her each time she surfaced.
He talked to her, repeating the same assurances hour after hour. His voice, or the words, seemed to calm her. So he sat, and watched, and held her hand.
He wanted to do something more. None of his training or his years on the force had taught him this kind of patience. To sit helplessly by while the woman he loved waged her own silent battle. Her lovely, elegant face was broken and bandaged. Her slim, soft body, bruised and battered.
They said she wouldn’t die. There would be pain, physical and emotional, but she would live. The extent of the trauma could only be judged later. And he could only wait. And regret.
He should have pushed her. Michael cursed himself over and over as he listened to her deep, drugged breathing. If he had applied the right pressure at the right time, he could have convinced her to tell him just how bad things had been for her. He was a cop, for God’s sake. He knew how to get information.
But he had backed away. Wanting to give her time, and privacy. Christ. Privacy. He rubbed his hands over his face. He’d given her privacy when she’d belonged in protective custody. He’d given her time when he should have had the New York cops issue a warrant.
Because he hadn’t done his job, because he’d let his feelings get in the way, she was lying in the hospital.
He left her only once, when Marianne and Johnno arrived from New York.
“Michael.” Johnno gave him a quick nod of recognition and kept a hand on Marianne’s shoulder. “What happened?”
Michael rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. The lights in the corridor blinded him. “Larimer. Looks like he got into her room at the hotel.”
“Oh God.” Marianne clutched the little stuffed dog. “How bad?”
“Bad enough.” An afterimage of Emma sprawled on the hotel carpet flashed into his brain. “He broke three of her ribs, dislocated her shoulder. She’s got some bruised internal organs, I don’t know how many contusions and lacerations. And her face … They don’t think she’s going to need any extensive surgery.”
Jaw clenched, Johnno stared at the closed door. “Where is the bastard?”
“Dead.”
“Good. We want to see her.”
Michael knew that the doctors were annoyed enough with him, but he’d used his badge to persuade them to let him sit in her room. “You two go ahead. I’ll clear it with the nurse and wait for you in the lounge.” Like Johnno, he stared at the closed door. “They’ve got her sedated.”
He gave them time, loitering over a cup of coffee in the visitor’s lounge, going over every movement of his day to try to see if there was one thing he could have done differently. It was always timing, he thought wearily. If he had broken in the door five minutes earlier it might have changed everything.
He stood again when he saw them come in. Marianne’s eyes were red, but he didn’t think she would fall apart. She took the chair Michael vacated. “I shouldn’t have left her here by herself.”
“It’s not your fault,” Johnno told her.
“No, it’s not my fault. But I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
Ignoring the signs, Johnno pulled out a cigarette. Once it was lighted, he handed it to Marianne. “Marianne filled me in on what’s been going on during the flight over. I assume you’re aware that Latimer’s been abusing Emma for more than a year.”
Michael crushed the empty Styrofoam cup with his fingers. “I don’t know the details. I’ll take Emma’s statement as soon as she’s up to it.”
“Statement.” Marianne looked up. “Why does she have to make a statement?”
“It’s procedure.” He glanced back toward Emma’s door. “Just routine.”
“But you’ll do it,” Johnno put in. “I wouldn’t want her to have to talk to a stranger.”
“I’ll take the statement.”
With the ash growing long on her cigarette, Marianne studied him. He’d more than lived up to the promise in the newspaper picture of ten years before. At the moment, he looked tense and exhausted, dark shadows under his eyes lines of strain beside them. Despite them, she judged him as a man to be depended upon. Whatever Emma had said to the contrary, Michael Kessel-ring looked precisely like Marianne’s image of a cop.
“Did you kill Drew?”
He shifted his gaze and met her eyes. More than anything he could remember, he wished he could have said yes. “No. I was too late.”
“Who did?”
“Emma.”
“Oh Jesus,” was all Johnno said.
“Look, I don’t like leaving her alone,” Michael said. “I’m going in to sit with her. You might want to check into a hotel, get some rest.”
“We’ll stay.” Marianne reached up to take Johnno’s hand. “We can take turns sitting with her.”
With a nod, Michael went back into Emma’s room.
She surfaced at dawn. The light, dim as it was, relieved her. There had been so many dreams, so many strange dreams through the night. Most of them vanished, midnight mirages that slipped away in the sunlight. But she knew she’d had the nightmare again. Almost, she could hear the echo of music and the swish of shadows.
She struggled to throw off sleep, annoyed at first by the heaviness in her limbs. It was frustrating that she could only open one eye. She lifted a hand, found the bandage, and remembered.
Panic. It filled her lungs like smoke, almost choking her. She turned her head, and saw Michael. He was slumped in the chair beside her bed, his chin on his chest. One of his hands covered one of hers. She had only to move her fingers to have him jerking awake.
“Hey.” He smiled, tightening his fingers around hers and bringing them to his lips. His voice was rough with fatigue. “Good morning.”
“How …” She closed her eye again, impatient with the thin whisper. “How long?”
“You just slept through the night, that’s all. Any pain?”
She had pain, and plenty of it. But she shook her head. It made her believe she was alive. “It happened, didn’t it? All of it?”
“It’s over.” Wanting the comfort almost as much as he needed to give it, he kept her hand against his cheek. “I’m going to go get the nurse. They wanted to know when you woke up.”
“Michael. Did I kill him?”
He took a moment. Her face was bruised and bandaged. He’d seen worse, but not often. Yet her hand held steady on his. She’d been battered, but she wasn’t defeated. “Yes. For the rest of my life I’ll regret that you beat me to it.”
Her eye closed, but she kept her hand firm around his. There had to be something inside her, something besides the thin rivers of pain and drugged fatigue. “I don’t know what to feel. There doesn’t seem to be anything, no grief, no relief, no regret. I only feel hollowed out.”
He knew what it was to hold a weapon in your hand, to aim, to fire at another human being. In the line of duty. In self-defense. Yet no matter how urgent, how vital the cause, it haunted you.
“You did the only thing you could do. That’s all you have to remember. Don’t worry about the rest now.”
“He had such a lovely voice. I fell in love with it. I wish I knew why it had to be this way.”
He had no comfort, and no answers.
Michael left her to the nurse and went to the lounge where Marianne was drowsing against Johnno’s shoulder. The room was done in nice pastels, designed, he supposed, to che
er and relax the friends and family who could only sit and wait. There was a color television bracketed to the wall. It was chattering discreetly. A table was set up with pots of water on hot plates and baskets of instant coffee packets and tea bags. There were two telephones at either end of the room and a generous supply of magazines.
“She’s awake.”
“Awake?” Marianne shot up instantly. “How is she?”
“She’s okay.” Michael poured another cup of coffee, stirring the instant powder without interest. “She remembers what happened, and she’s dealing with it. The nurse is with her, and they’re paging the doctor. You should be able to see her pretty soon.”
They all fell silent when Emma’s picture flashed on the television screen. The report was brisk and brutally concise, interspersed with shots of both Emma and Drew. There was a quick stand-up with the desk clerk of the hotel, and with two of the witnesses who had heard the disturbance and called security.
A middle-aged man, balding and flushed with excitement, spoke into the mike. Michael remembered shoving him aside before he had broken in the door.
“I only know there was a lot of crashing around. And she was screaming, begging him to stop. It sounded pretty bad so I beat on the door myself. I had the room next door. Then the cops came. One of them broke in the door. It was only for a second, but I could see a woman sprawled on the rug, bleeding. She had a gun and she fired it. She kept right on shooting until she ran out of bullets.”
Michael was swearing as he strode over to the phone.
On the screen, the news switched to a live remote outside the hospital. The reporter, solemn-faced, announced that Emma McAvoy Latimer was in guarded condition.
“Look,” Michael snapped into the phone. “I don’t give a damn. You hold them off awhile. I want a uniform outside her door twenty-four hours, to keep out any reporters who try to get in to see her. I’ll make a statement myself this afternoon.”
“You won’t be able to stop it,” Johnno said when Michael slammed the phone down.
“I can hold them off for a while.”