“I do. No.” She shook her head hard. “I don’t know if I do anymore. Not after this.”
He gave her a small shake. “All I did was try to understand you.”
“You had me investigated.”
“You were lying to me,” he said flatly. “I knew it. You’ve admitted you were.”
“So that makes it okay?”
“No.” His tight grip eased. Regret altered the lines of his rough-hewn face. “I screwed up big-time. I let my fears get to me. Can’t you understand that?”
She hurt too much to be understanding. “You’ve managed to do to me the one thing I most feared.”
“God.” He tugged her forward until her stiff body collided with his. “You asked me once if you’d ruined everything. Now I have to ask you. Did I?”
“Don’t you see?” She tore herself away again. “It doesn’t matter! If I have to go, I have to go. There’s no future for us. What good would it do for me to say I forgive you?”
“Don’t go.” His voice was raw. “Stay with me, Allie. Marry me. Love me. If you take my name, it’ll be yours for the rest of your life. I swear it.”
“Don’t do this to me,” she whispered. “How can I let Mom go by herself? I’m all she has. She needs me.”
He shook his head. “Allie, you’re an adult. She’s had you longer than most parents have their children. What if we’d met a year ago, gotten married, and then I’d wanted to move back to Chicago? Would you have refused to go because your mother is here?”
“It’s not the same.” She wished it was, wished it could be. “Don’t you see? If that had happened, Mom and I could have talked regularly. We could have visited. If this happens, she’ll lose me completely.” She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. “I’ll lose her,” Allie finished with quiet desperation.
His body jerked. He said nothing for a moment. “That’s your answer?” he said finally. “If it comes down to it, you’re telling me you choose her?”
“This is your fault,” Allie cried passionately.
“Your mother has never done anything careless or stupid that hurt you?”
Allie felt as if her feet were stuck to the canyon floor as the deadly wall of water bore down on her. There was no hope of her riding it to safety.
Her throat was so tight she could barely speak. “She stole my life from me because she wanted to do something noble. She never even noticed what she’d done.”
Staring at the past, she scarcely noticed his flinch.
“Is that why you’re willing to pack up and go again, Allie?” The devastation and anger were on his side now, and she couldn’t miss them. Nolan’s eyes burned as he stared at her. “Because this life, the one with me, will never be good enough?” He slammed a fist against the back of her upholstered chair, rocking it.
“I’m wasting my time, aren’t I? You want back what you had when you were thirteen, and I sure as hell wasn’t part of it, was I?” A harsh sound escaped his throat. “Guess I got my answer. Hope you like your next life.”
Aghast, Allie watched him stalk to the door. “No! It’s not like that.”
He didn’t even slow down. The door quivered in its frame when he slammed it behind him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NOLAN HAD MADE Sean’s favorite dinner. He wasn’t very hungry himself, but he watched as Sean slurped spaghetti into his mouth, shoveled in garlic bread and generally consumed enough food to have fed three or four normal people.
The kid managed to talk during a good deal of the meal, too, but Nolan refrained from issuing a lecture on not talking when your mouth was full. He was too grateful not to have to say much himself.
“Are you done with your torpedo thing?” Sean asked as he polished his plate with a last scrap of bread.
“No, I’ve been too busy with other work.”
“You don’t seem to be in a very good mood.”
And he’d tried damned hard to hide his mood. Apparently he wasn’t much of an actor.
“I guess not,” he admitted. “Allie and I have hit a bad patch. I kind of think we’re over.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He pushed back his chair and started clearing the dirty dishes.
“But...did you do something?”
Punched by anguish, all he could do was lock his knees and stand there so he didn’t stagger, hands full of dishes. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, when he could speak at all. “You could say that.”
“What...?”
“I can’t tell you, Sean. She’s got some stuff going on I didn’t understand. I screwed up. Sometimes saying you’re sorry is good enough, sometimes it isn’t. This is one of the times when it isn’t.”
“Wow.” The teenager rose to his feet. “That’s a bummer.”
A bummer. In a different mood, he might have laughed. A bummer was missing an important shot in a game. Not being able to find a parking spot, so you ended up walking ten blocks in the rain. Hurting the woman he loved, losing her, that fell into an entirely different category.
So did finding out that what she called love was too shallow to qualify in his book.
Not fair, he told himself after escaping to the kitchen, as he scraped a good deal of his dinner into the garbage bin.
There was no doubt that she did love her mother. Maybe it wasn’t reasonable for him to think he could compete given that he and she had only known each other for a couple of months.
And that he’d just broken her trust in him with a solid swing of his mallet. He’d seen fine chunks of stone shatter and fall apart in exactly the same way when he’d been careless.
“There’s nothing you can do?” Sean asked behind him.
“I don’t think so.” He rinsed off a plate and put it on the rack in the dishwasher.
“You’re sure?”
“Damn it, butt out!” he snarled.
It took all of about ten seconds for chagrin to kick in, but when he turned he found himself alone in the kitchen. He slapped his hand down on the countertop hard enough to sting, not nearly punishment enough.
You’re sure?
No, he thought. No, he wasn’t sure.
His head seemed to clear. For all his hurt, he couldn’t see letting Allie go without trying something, anything, to keep her. To convince her that she could trust him.
“Shit,” he said aloud, and reached for his phone to call his sister. Good excuse to put off apologizing to Sean.
* * *
HIGH ON ALL the excitement, Allie’s mother phoned with regular updates.
The U.S. Marshal had spoken to Nolan, who didn’t believe he’d ever told the P.I. where he lived. Most of their transactions had taken place online. The only solid clue would have been the area code for Nolan’s mobile phone, which happened to be 206 for Seattle rather than 360 for the rural northwest part of the state.
Nolan was forwarding the report with specifics that the investigator had prepared for him. The marshal’s office wanted to pin down everything the P.I. had done so as to determine whether there had been any other activity beyond what he had generated.
“They’re pleased Nolan is being so cooperative,” Mom reported.
In another phone call, she told Allie that so far, all indications were that the private investigator was ethical. With nearly the next breath, she added that she had partially packed, in case the move came suddenly. “I hope you’ve done the same,” she said.
Allie went home that evening and looked around her small apartment. What would she take? Leave? She was dismayed to realize how little she actually owned. A few pieces of artwork, but none that were very expensive; furniture she liked, but which could easily be replaced; clothes, of course, but even there she didn’t have a huge wardrobe. She didn’t share the passion many women felt for shoes or jewelry or shopping in general. Some books, but she mostly used the library.
Her gaze reluctantly settled on the quilt frame. Would she be allowed to take one? She wouldn’t be able to own a quilt shop, but there
was no reason she couldn’t continue to quilt and even sell her quilts.
In sudden panic she thought of the quilts hanging at the shop. She couldn’t leave them behind. She couldn’t! Tomorrow she’d bring them all home, in case. Of course, people would ask about the empty spaces on the wall, but she’d think of an explanation.
In the next second, Allie sagged into her chair. Why was she thinking about things? Every single thing she owned, even the quilts she’d lovingly hand-stitched, could be replaced. Things didn’t matter—people did. Nolan did.
Mom did.
Oh, God, oh, God, what am I going to do? she asked herself for the thousandth time. She wondered what her father and brother would tell her to do, if she was able to talk to them. But in the end, she knew her choice wasn’t the same as theirs had been. Neither had stayed behind because there had been a person he couldn’t bear to leave.
What if her vacillating had killed what Nolan felt for her? Even knowing how angry she was, even after she had walked away from him, he’d come back to ask her again to marry him. But, remembering the expression on his face when he left the last time, Allie knew he wouldn’t be back this time.
It was up to her now.
* * *
NOLAN STOOD IN the middle of his workshop and knew he wouldn’t be safe using power tools today. Looking around, he asked himself how he’d feel if he had to leave this workshop and everything it meant to him behind.
Was that what dancing had been for Allie, young as she was? Had it been the only thing she could imagine doing with her life? Had she felt as if she were meant to tie on toe shoes, train and suffer until she could fly?
From the minute Nolan had handled his first chunk of raw stone, he’d been fascinated. What if I was being forced to choose between this and a life with Allie?
I wouldn’t even hesitate, he realized with a strangely lightened heart. I could be satisfied doing something else. Carpentry, maybe. I could carve in wood. I could be happy, if I had Allie and Sean.
Would Allie have to give up quilting if she relocated with her mother? She’d lost so damn much already. He remembered her talking about how splintered she felt: Chloe, who was angry; Laura, bewildered and tongue-tied; Allie, who wasn’t allowed to acknowledge her other selves.
She had sounded so bleak when she said, Somehow I have to put myself back together, and I have no idea how.
What if Allie Wright, too, became another self she had to deny? He was part of this life, which would cease to exist for her.
When she was given a new background, would she be able to remember it? Would she even try, or would she give up?
Nolan felt a painful cramping in his chest. Would she ever be able to put herself back together?
My fault. I caused this.
I need to find a way to fix it.
Anna hadn’t been any help. Of course, he hadn’t been able to tell her the whole story. He’d admitted to having Allie’s background investigated and told his sister that Allie had found out.
“I can’t imagine a woman forgiving that,” Anna had said flatly. “Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve carried this thing with Mom a little too far?”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Sure it does, but not the same way.” The silence suggested she was thinking. “I don’t know why that is. I coped by deciding I wasn’t going to be anything like her.”
Nolan had had one of those lightbulb moments. “And I coped by deciding I wasn’t going to be anything like Dad.”
“Well, duh,” his sister said.
Call him dim-witted, but he’d never framed it in those terms before. I decided I would never tolerate lies. I would never gloss them over or enable someone else’s lies. Above all else, I would never lie to the people I love.
He’d known all that. He just hadn’t recognized that he was more outraged by the choices the man he called Dad had made than the ones his mother had made. For Anna, the reverse had been true.
“I’ve been...blindly rebelling,” he admitted to his sister. “The thing that kills me is, I knew Allie. I knew I could trust her, but I didn’t let myself.”
Like Sean, Anna had asked whether it was too late. He still didn’t know the answer.
How do I fix this?
Nolan looked at the clock hanging on the workshop wall and watched the second hand sweep inexorably around. The clock was literally ticking, he thought. Allie and her mother could be moved anytime. Tomorrow. Tonight.
No, not that fast. He knew a careful investigation was being conducted. The marshal’s office wasn’t eager to have to produce entirely new identities yet again for two women who’d already been moved once more than the original plan had called for. Nolan hadn’t asked questions and now wished he had.
Was the guy Allie’s mother put in prison still there, or had he served his term and walked out? If so, was anyone in law enforcement keeping an eye on him? Goddamn it, they’d know if he had died, wouldn’t they? Or committed yet another crime and been put away again, maybe for a life sentence? Would anybody else in the crime family really give a damn after all these years about the secretary who testified in the trial?
Surely to hell the government wouldn’t go to the expense of continuing to hide Cheryl Wright née Judy Nelson née... He didn’t remember the first name she’d been born with, if he’d ever heard it. He shook off the irrelevancy. Nobody would waste the money unless there was at least a remote possibility that she could still be a target.
He hoped the decision would be made not to move Allie’s mom—and Allie if she chose to go, too. But he had zero control over that decision.
I could try talking to Allie again. Getting on my knees and begging.
Had her father or brother begged her to stay behind last time? he got to wondering. Or had they shrugged and said, “Your choice”?
Nolan had a troubling thought. It was nice to think her father might have loved her enough to plead with her to stay with him rather than disappear with her mother. But ultimately, both parents had been selfish. No matter what choice Allie made, she was the one making the sacrifice. She’d lose her father...or she’d lose her mother.
This time, she’d lose the man she claimed to love...or she’d lose her mother. Once again, everyone in her life—everyone who claimed to love her—demanded she make the sacrifice.
Oh, hell and damnation, Nolan thought, appalled. There was a way he could offer to make the sacrifice so that she didn’t have to. And maybe he’d been tiptoeing toward it without even noticing. Why else had he asked himself which he’d choose, the work he loved or Allie?
Now the dilemma lay in front of him, as impossible to miss as a meteor that had just crashed through his workshop roof and lay burning in front of him.
Nobody had ever offered to give up everything for Allie. Not her mother, who had made the original decision for her own reasons, despite the cost her daughter, son and husband would pay. Not Allie’s father, who in divorcing his wife had left his daughter feeling abandoned even before he let her go forever. And certainly not her brother, who when the family divided chose Daddy’s side, leaving his quiet, wounded sister behind.
This, Nolan thought with the same sense of shock, is how I fix the disaster I created. This is how I make the words “I love you” have real meaning.
He tipped his head back and groaned. He could cut the bonds that linked him to his family, although knowing he’d never hear Anna’s voice again, knowing that she would always wonder what had happened to him, that would be hard.
But he could not abandon Sean, who had already lost everyone else he’d ever loved and trusted.
He couldn’t present himself to Allie and offer to pack up and go with her without first talking to Sean.
Which meant breaking the promise he’d made her. He had to tell Sean what was going on, and ask how he felt about starting all over. Again.
* * *
THE HIGH SCHOOL basketball season launched that evening with a junior varsity home game.
Nolan couldn’t be anywhere else but in the stands.
He stood and clapped with the rest of the crowd on the home side of the court when the boys ran out onto the court. Students whistled and stamped on the bleachers, creating thunder and making them shake. Nolan hardly noticed. He was thinking how young those boys looked. Skinny legs, big feet, zits. Tank tops bared thin bodies. Sean was actually one of the better-put-together of the group. A couple of the boys blushed and cast shy glances at the crowd. Being the center of attention must be new to them.
Sean’s head turned and he scanned the crowd. For a moment there was something achingly young and worried on his face. But when he spotted Nolan, he gave a huge grin. The relief and sheer pleasure in that grin did strange things to Nolan’s heart.
He hadn’t understood the impulse that made him take in the boy he had barely exchanged a few words with, but he supposed he’d thought he was doing something decent. What he hadn’t known was how quickly he would come to love this boy, no different than if he was his own.
His mind did an unsettling, sideways shift. It occurred to him he’d never believed Dad really did love him the same way he loved Jed, who was his own. Maybe he’d been wrong, he thought now. Maybe being a blood relation wasn’t actually that important.
I guess I should give him a call. Just to talk. Maybe it’s even time—past time—I forgive him.
The one thing he’d never let himself think about entered his head. What if Dad had left Mom when he found out she’d had an affair, or later when he realized their oldest son wasn’t his?
I wouldn’t have had a father, that’s what.
Would that really have been better? Because the truth was, his dad had been a damn good father. The best.
Once this is settled with Allie...I’ll call him while I still can.
Feeling some sense of peace, Nolan tuned in when the referee blew the whistle and the game started, Sean playing forward.
Nolan might have been prejudiced—okay, was prejudiced—but he thought Sean was, hands down, the best player out there. He rebounded aggressively, shut down every opposing player he defended and, by the final buzzer, had scored an impressive eighteen points. Fouled once, he stepped up to the free-throw line and dropped in two shots, cool as could be.
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