That was the past. Hadn’t she paid the price all these years?
She found it hideously ironic that the only good thing to come out of the severe brain injury she suffered in the accident had been that the cloud of soul-stealing depression had lifted.
She had traded one problem for about two dozen more.
Luke stood beside the door, unyielding and rigid as one of the oak trees growing outside. She wanted to yell at him, to fight and argue and pound her fist against his chest until he let her see her children. She couldn’t. The harsh truth was, he was exactly right. She had lost any right to even call herself a mother.
“What...what am I supposed to do in the meantime in a...house with no furniture?”
“There’s furniture. The kitchen table is still here and one of the bedrooms is furnished. You can use the sofa there that the kids and I decided not to move to the new house. It’s only one night. In the morning, we can meet with the attorney and clear everything up. Then I’ll pay for your flight back to Oregon.”
He wanted her gone. That was clear enough. Their reunion was less than twenty-four hours old and he couldn’t bear to have her around.
Once, he had loved her with all his heart. He used to whisper that she was everything he’d ever wanted, like his birthday and Christmas and the Fourth of July all wrapped into one person.
That was a long time ago. So much water had traveled under their bridge.
“All right.” What else could she say?
“There should be food in the refrigerator. Megan said she dropped a few things off for you so you don’t starve.”
“That’s...decent of her.”
She wasn’t sure where the sarcasm came from. Maybe it was her alternative to breaking into sobs.
Luke gave her a sharp look. “It is. Believe me. Meg doesn’t want you here. None of us do. If it were up to me, you would have stayed gone. I’ve known where you were for months but didn’t come after you. That option to leave you alone is gone now. I need to clear my name. That is the one and only reason you’re here, not for some joyful reunion with the kids, where you get to act like nothing has happened.”
His words were a sobering reminder of everything he’d been through. Her husband and children had suffered because of her. She had a chance to make it right, at least when it came to keeping him out of jail over the holidays. He was right. That was the only reason she was here.
She had been in limbo since her memory started to return, living for those times when she was able to come back and watch her family from a distance. The visits weren’t healthy. She knew that. Maybe it was time for her to make a complete break. Though the idea of never seeing any of them again made her feel as if the house were falling down around her, perhaps it would be better for all of them if she helped Luke clear his name and then walked away for the last time.
“Fair enough. I...guess I’ll see you in the morning, then. What time will you be here?”
“The earlier the better. Around eight.”
She wanted to tell him to hug the children extra tightly for their mother but caught the words before they could escape.
After he left, she wanted to sink down into the middle of the floor and cry.
The house seemed so forlorn and empty without Luke and their children in it. She remembered the day they left the escrow company after they closed on the house, before they were even married.
The world had seemed joyous and bright and full of possibilities.
When they heard this little house beside the river had gone on the market, they had been so thrilled. It had been in a sorry state, a historic three-bedroom starter home built of logs and rock from the river without much charm or style. The best part had been the location, with spectacular views across the river to the Redemption Mountains.
She had lived here alone before their wedding, and she, Luke and her parents had worked together to fix it up. With his contractor skills, he had added the front porch, the shutters, the little glassed-in sunroom on the back where she had loved to sit in the afternoons.
They had worked together, laughed together, dreamed together here in this little house.
She walked through the house, stopping to look in Cassie’s room. They had painted it together after Elizabeth’s parents died, a pale lavender with white trim. It had been so very difficult to ready a nursery when her world had been rocked by losing her parents only months earlier, but she had thought having her daughter would help bring joy and light into her world again amid the darkness of her grief.
Instead, she seemed to slip further into the morass, feeling wholly inadequate as a mother and longing more than anything that her own mother could be there to help her.
She had started to climb out of it by the time Cassie was about three or four months old. Things had been better, she knew they had.
She had even started to feel...happy again. That was the reason she had wanted another child. If one child increased her happiness, two might even help her feel normal again.
Instead, the postpartum depression that hit her after Bridger had been debilitating. She remembered being so jealous of other women she knew at church or in the community who seemed to handle all the challenges of motherhood with ease. She hadn’t been one of them. She had lived in a constant state of exhaustion and inadequacy.
Her face felt cold and it took a moment to realize she was crying, tears dripping down her cheeks.
She wiped at them with her sleeve, upset at herself.
She couldn’t go back. That way was blocked by pain and suffering and regret. That was the one overriding lesson she had learned over the past seven years.
The only option available for her was to put one shaky foot in front of the other and do her best to make it through another day.
Chapter Six
He was a coldhearted bastard, just like his father had been.
Luke drove away from the home on Riverbend Road with an ugly taste in his mouth and the grim awareness that he had been an ass.
You lost any rights where Bridger and Cassie are concerned when you walked away from us. I won’t let you break their hearts again.
She had looked stunned and devastated at his declaration but what choice did he have? He had to protect the kids. They were his priority. They didn’t need the emotional tumult of having her wander in and out of their lives when she felt like it. She had abandoned them and she didn’t deserve another chance.
It was harder than he might have expected to tamp down his anger, now that he had spent hours in her company.
In contrast to their old house, the log home he had spent the last year building glowed with warmth from every window. Megan must be there.
He walked inside, his shoulders tight from the drive and a headache brewing at his temples, and was immediately greeted by the kids’ dog, Finn, a sweet-natured, curly-haired mutt from the shelter he suspected was a mix of yellow Lab and miniature poodle.
Something delicious was cooking on the stove—vegetable soup, if he had to guess—and Megan sat at the kitchen table with her laptop open.
She looked up with a smile. “Hi. You made it. I was worried about you.”
“The roads weren’t as bad, once we hit the state line. Thanks for pinch-hitting for me with the kids. I know I didn’t give you much choice.”
“I didn’t mind. I don’t see them as often as I would like anyway during the school year. They were a welcome distraction, I promise.”
He knew she had a lot on her plate, with an absent fiancé and a wedding to plan.
“Are you hungry?” Megan asked. “I made minestrone soup in the slow cooker. It’s ready whenever, if you want it.”
His stomach grumbled, reminding him breakfast had been hours ago at the Riverside Inn. “Soup sounds good. Thanks.” He ladled some into a bowl, then sat down at the table. “Did you find out anything
more about Bridger and his fight?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Your son is stubborn. I have no idea where he gets that. He’s still not talking, at least to me. You might have better luck wriggling it out of him.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Luke took a spoonful of soup, feeling immediately comforted by the rich tomato-and-vegetable concoction that reminded him of the meals his stepmother used to make.
“Go ahead and keep working. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
“I was just finishing when you came in. I used the few minutes of quiet here to catch up on my email. For the first time in weeks, I think my inbox is under control. For today, anyway.”
“Any word from our favorite FBI agent?”
He regretted the question when he saw her mouth tighten. “No. Nothing. I’m discovering I’m not very good at the waiting game.”
Elliot, an FBI agent now in the Boise office, had been working undercover for the last month, unreachable. That state of affairs was hard on Megan but had implications for Luke as well. If Elliot were around, he might have been able to talk some sense into the new district attorney and clear up the entire thing. Elliot was one of the few who knew the truth.
“He was supposed to be done last week but I have to assume there’s been some delay with the arrests. I’m keeping my fingers crossed he will be here for Christmas.”
Maybe it was time for Elliot to leave the FBI business and focus exclusively on the true crime books he penned in his off hours. His latest book was still on bestseller lists, months after its release.
“What else has been going on while I’ve been gone?” He had only been away from Haven Point for thirty-six hours yet it felt like a lifetime.
“Oh no. That’s not going to work. You’re as bad as your son at avoiding questions. You can try to distract me all you want but you won’t be able to get out of telling me everything. So, Elizabeth. What is she like now? What does she have to say for herself?”
Luke swallowed another spoonful of soup before he answered. He didn’t want to talk about his soon-to-be ex-wife at all but didn’t know how to avoid it. If anyone deserved information, it was Megan. Without her and Elliot’s efforts over the summer to locate his wife and clear his name, he would still fear Elizabeth was dead.
“What explanation did she give?” Megan pressed. “Obviously nothing would excuse her actions, but I keep hoping she had some good reason to stay away. Witness protection or something. Or maybe she was abducted by aliens.”
Luke shifted, unwilling to tell his sister he still had no idea why Elizabeth had left him or why she had stayed away for so long. They had exchanged very few words for the entire journey, none of them meaningful. “Like I told her, I don’t want to know. She can tell the district attorney tomorrow.”
“Seriously? You didn’t ask?”
“Her reasons don’t really matter, do they? The result is what’s important. She left. That’s all I need to know. She didn’t want to be married to me anymore. She didn’t want to be a mother to two of the most amazing kids on the planet. Nothing she could tell me would change that.”
Megan shook her head in disbelief. “I do not understand you.”
Big surprise there. Luke didn’t understand himself. He didn’t want to think he was a coward, but he had a feeling there was no other explanation for his reluctance to at least ask her during their long hours of driving together.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know all the ways he had failed Elizabeth during their marriage. It was far easier to blame her than take some of that responsibility onto himself.
His reluctance was probably also the reason he hadn’t gone after her the moment Elliot had provided him with her name and address months ago at Megan’s first art show opening for her brilliant photography.
He would know soon enough. He could no longer avoid the truth, once it was out there.
He set down his spoon, his appetite suddenly gone. “That was delicious. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I made it earlier today, after you asked me to take something over to the Riverbend Road house.”
“I appreciate that, especially because I know you would probably rather give her dead slugs and poison apples.”
Megan laughed. “I thought about it. Believe me. But we’re trying to get you cleared of killing your wife. It wouldn’t help our cause if I actually tried to follow through on what people have accused you of doing for years.”
Those accusations had hurt, especially at first. He remembered how horrible it had been the first time he’d been questioned by the police in her disappearance. John Bailey, Elliot’s father and the police chief at the time, seemed to have done a thorough job of investigating. He’d even turned his investigation over to the county sheriff’s office for their scrutiny. Nobody had ever found proof that Luke had done anything to his wife, but that, of course, hadn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning.
“By this time tomorrow, this will all be over. We can put the past behind us and start moving forward.”
Worry creased Megan’s forehead. “I hope so. I’m afraid clearing your name won’t be a slam dunk. In some people’s eyes, you’ve been the villain in this play for seven years.”
“I don’t care how people view me. I just don’t want them to drag the kids into it.”
He knew it was too late for that. He was fairly certain Bridger’s fight had something to do with him and the persistent belief in some people around town that he had killed his wife.
Before Megan could answer, the front door burst open and Cassie and Bridger came running in, shedding coats and backpacks along the way.
“Dad! You’re home!” Cassie exclaimed. She rushed to him and threw her arms around him as if he’d been stuck on a mountaintop somewhere for weeks.
At nearly ten, she was becoming a young woman. She had her mother’s blond hair and mouth but Luke’s green eyes. In another few years, he would be fighting off the boys. For now, she was still his little girl.
“I missed you,” Bridger said. “Where did you go?”
He hugged his son. “Hey, bud. I missed you, too. I had some business to take care of out of town. Sorry I didn’t give you a little more advance notice.”
On the rare times he traveled out of town for business, he tried to give the children fair warning about the details of his trips. He wanted to think neither of them suffered abandonment issues after their mother left but knew that was probably naive of him.
At the advice of one of her teachers, Cassie had undergone a few months of counseling some years earlier when she was having trouble making friends. They learned she didn’t trust people easily. As she grew older, that seemed to have resolved, for the most part. He did his best to provide them with a loving, warm home life but knew it probably wasn’t enough to erase the scars from not having their mother.
He had never wanted to tell them his suspicions that she had killed herself. They didn’t ask about Elizabeth often, but when they did, he had only told them she had been sick, that she went away to get help and he wasn’t sure what happened to her after that.
It seemed a wholly inadequate explanation, one more fumbling effort in his parenting repertoire, but was the best he could come up with.
“It’s okay,” Cassie said now. “We had fun with Aunt Megan.”
“We went to church and then we made snickerdoodles,” Bridger said.
“Did you have one?” Cassie asked.
“No. I haven’t seen any cookies.” He narrowed his gaze at his sister. “Why didn’t I know we had cookies? Have you been holding out on me?”
“Maybe I wanted them all to myself,” his sister teased. “I know how you are with cookies.”
She removed a container out of the cupboard and pulled back the lid to reveal snickerdoodles dusted with cinnamon sugar.
“Ooh. My favorite.”
<
br /> “That’s why we made them,” Megan said. “I wanted to make sugar cookies but your children insisted you would enjoy snickerdoodles more.”
“That’s why I have the most amazing kids in the world,” he said, smiling at both of them before taking one of the cookies out and biting into it.
Cassie and Bridger were amazing—smart and funny and kind. Both were growing up to become decent people and it was up to him as their father to protect them, even if the person who posed the biggest threat to their emotional well-being right now was their mother.
* * *
After throwing off the groove with his unexpected trip to Oregon, Luke decided not to ask Bridger about the altercation he had had until after homework was done, they had eaten dinner and cleaned the kitchen and were settling down for bed. Some discussions were better one-on-one anyway.
They had a few routines by now. The kids showered and then they would settle in the great room of their house to read one of the books out of their Christmas collection or a chapter in the middle-grade novel they were all enjoying together.
Luke had to fight his own exhaustion from his long two days but managed to make it through the story and send Cassie on to bed. After making sure Bridger had brushed his teeth and settled into bed, Luke straightened the covers and sat on the chair next to him.
“So. Aunt Megan tells me you got into an argument yesterday after Sunday school.”
Bridger released a big sigh, as if he had been waiting for this moment since Luke arrived home.
“She told you,” he said, sounding betrayed.
“Yeah. Of course she told me. Did you think I wouldn’t want to know that my son has been fighting in church?”
“I only hit Jedediah once. Okay, twice.”
“That was two times too many, son, unless he was hurting someone else and you had to stop him.”
Coming Home for Christmas Page 7