“Micah,” Poppy called softly from the door. “Cassie wants us to come.”
He rose, taking Star up again. “I can’t go. The girls and I have sap to boil.” Skirting the wheelchair, he set off for the kitchen with Star on his hip. Billy was there, eating a sandwich. Passing by, he said, “I’m firing up the evaporator.” He went through the back hall and had a hand on the door when Griffin’s voice stopped him.
“We have to meet with Heather.”
Micah looked back. “Be my guest.”
“Aidan’s coming.”
“Good.”
Poppy wheeled around Griffin. “You have to be there, Micah. It’s important.”
Micah wished Poppy was right. But he’d been there before, and Heather hadn’t talked. So what good was he on that score?
On this score, in the sugarhouse, with the girls, he had a purpose, a reason. “I have to work, Poppy. I can’t go racing up to West Eames. Sap’s running, sun’s shining. If I don’t do this, who will?”
“Me,” said Billy, coming up from behind Griffin. Standing now, he seemed taller than ever. “I can get it started. Let me use your phone, and I’ll get help. I’m not without friends in this town.”
Poppy wheeled close and said with quiet urgency, “How can you be angry, after what Aidan said?”
Micah didn’t have an answer, but he was certainly angry.
“We’re so close, so close,” she begged. “Cassie wants corroboration. She needs to hear the story from Heather. Don’t you?”
He did. That was all he’d wanted for days.
“Seeing Aidan could make it happen,” Poppy went on in that same pleading tone. “Cassie is counting on that. But if you’re not there, Heather might not care. She loves you, Micah. If ever she needed you, now’s the time.” She paused for a breath, then whispered, “She’s already afraid she’s lost you because you haven’t been to see her. Can’t you forgive her?”
He was spared having to answer by Star, who took his face with two little hands and turned it her way. “I helped Poppy make the sandwiches, and there’s tuna there. Momma loves tuna. Maybe if you bring her one, she’ll think of me?”
* * *
The room was small for five people, but Cassie insisted that all five were vital to Heather’s defense, so the guard showed them in. Micah stayed in the background, leaning against the wall, telling himself that he was only there for Star’s sake—until the door opened and Heather came in. When her silver eyes went right to his, he knew he was lying to himself. His heart ached the same way it had when she had first been taken away.Then she saw Aidan, and what little color she had drained away. She looked frantically at Cassie, who went to her, took her hands, and spoke softly.
* * *
Cassie was determined to succeed. Mark might accuse her of becoming too involved with her work to the exclusion of those she loved, but Heather was one of the latter. If there was ever a time when she could make a difference in a life, it was now.“I finally have a workable argument,” she told Heather. “With Aidan testifying about the abuse, we can make a case that you feared for your life.”
Heather sent Aidan a skeptical look, then whispered to Cassie, “There are other charges.”
“Flight to avoid prosecution? We can deal. Literally. I’ve done my homework. The DiCenza family prides itself on its image. They’ve spoken up long and loud about how terrible you are, and their words have gone unchallenged because you haven’t been there to speak for yourself. Things will be different if you decide to talk. They’ll hate what you say and, more important, they won’t want you quoted in the press. They’ll direct the assistant attorney general to plea bargain. Once they hear your side, they’ll want this settled quickly and quietly.”
“They have power. They can convict an innocent person.”
“Not this time. We have medical records. We have adoption records. We have Aidan.”
Heather glanced at him again, and, once more, whispered to Cassie, “Why now?”
The room was small. Her whisper carried.
Aidan answered. “Because they’re abusers, and not only physically. They abuse power, and that’s not right. Rob is dead. You have a good life. I don’t see what purpose they have in going after you now. You suffered. I know. I drove you to the hospital. Twice. And I did tell the old man. He said he was going to forget I said it and that I’d be best to do the same.”
“And you did!” Micah charged. “You kept your goddamned mouth shut when they accused her of murder!”
“She was gone,” Aidan argued. “There was no trial. She escaped. She made a better life. My crime wasn’t in keeping quiet then; it was in letting things go so far now. I’ll have to live with that. But it’s not too late to change the outcome.”
Heather seemed to be holding her breath.
Cassie pressed her case. “Rob’s mother is the point of vulnerability. Rob was her baby; she won’t want his name dragged through the mud. And then there’s the child.” When Heather’s eyes flew to Micah, Cassie gave her hands a shake to bring her gaze back. “Rob’s mother is devout. She won’t want word coming out that her son wanted to abort his own child.”
“He said it wasn’t his,” Heather said in little more than a whisper.
“Tests can prove that it was.”
“How? Without the baby? I don’t know where she is.”
“We can find her, Heather. Trust me on this.”
“She’ll hate me for what I did.”
“No one hates you for what you did then. We just hate you for what you’re doing now, ” Cassie said, but with a smile to soften the words. “The Heather we know is strong. She is able. She is dedicated and determined, but this Heather, the one in this jail, hasn’t been like that. We want our old Heather back. She’s the one we love.”
“But—”
“None of us is perfect. Your silence—this silence—is inexcusable. Anything else, we can forgive.”
Again, Heather’s eyes went to Micah. This time they stayed.
* * *
Poppy was listening to every word, focusing on Heather without blinking, sending the strongest message she could that Heather should speak, tell all, defend herself. When Heather looked at Micah, though, Poppy glanced at Griffin.His eyes were waiting.
Do you really know? she asked.
He gave a tiny nod.
And forgive?
He nodded again, then raised both brows. What about you? Do you forgive?
Poppy could forgive Heather. She could forgive Micah for being angry and Griffin for causing the whole mess in the first place. She could forgive her mother for being a perfectionist and Lily for being too beautiful for her own good and Rose for being a prig. Forgiving herself was harder.
* * *
Micah didn’t hear much of what Cassie said at the end. He was too busy remembering all that had been good about his life with Heather, all that he still wanted. Yes, he did want it, especially when she looked at him the way she was looking now, as though he was the center of her universe, as though what he said mattered more than anything anyone else said, as though his love was the only thing she had ever truly wanted.Anger? What was anger but a passing emotion, a misunderstanding, a failure to communicate? It had no lasting place in a long, full life, a life spent with someone you love.
“This is what we need,” Cassie was saying, “but Aidan’s word alone won’t do it. You were the only one in the car that night. You have to tell us what happened.”
All the while Cassie talked, Heather looked at Micah. Her eyes were filled with fear, intensifying the ache he felt inside. Suddenly the wall he leaned against was cold and hard. Moving away from it, he wrapped his hands around her neck and tipped her chin up with both thumbs.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, “in your words.”
She lingered for a last minute, searching his face. Everything about him screamed, Tell me. I need to know. I love you. That won’t change. She must have heard, because she closed her hands on his wr
ists and held tight.
The words came in a woeful rush. “I didn’t want to date him. I mean, I did, because someone like me dating someone like him was a dream come true, but it couldn’t work. I knew that. We were too different. When I told him so, he kept saying that it was all right, that he loved me, that we needed to keep our relationship secret until just the right time, and then he’d tell the world. ‘Tell the world.’ Those were the words he used, like he really was proud of us.”
“But he hit you,” Micah said with his thumb on the scar at the corner of her mouth.
“When he drank. He always apologized for the drink, and for the hitting, and I loved him, or loved the dream. Then I got pregnant and things fell apart. He was furious. He said the baby couldn’t be his. He said he always used a condom.”
“Did he?”
“When he was sober. But it was his. I wasn’t with anyone else. And I didn’t demand that he marry me. I just wanted him to help me keep the baby.” Her voice fell to a whisper. Her eyes welled with longing. “I wanted her. I wanted her so much.”
“Were you arguing about the baby that night?”
“Not me. I wasn’t going to say anything. I was working. But he kept seeking me out and following me around, and he kept drinking. He started calling me names, loudly, so I finally went off with him to try to calm him down. He wanted to know if I’d aborted the baby yet, and when I said I hadn’t, he said he’d do it for me.”
Micah felt sick. “Do it?”
“Kick me. He said he could kick the baby out, and he started pushingme, pushing me back away from other people. When I turned and ran, he followed.”
Micah could see the pain in her eyes and wanted to end it, stop her. She was only saying what Aidan had. Still she needed to go on. They had to get it all out, because Aidan’s story only went so far.
“Then what happened?”
Her eyes filled with tears, as words that had been locked inside for so long poured out. “I believed him. I believed that he would kick me and kill the baby. I couldn’t let that happen. So I ran between the cars on the field and got to my own, because the only thing I could think was that I had to get away. I started to drive, and it was dark. I got to an open part of the field, and I remember thinking I was almost there, almost free, so I went faster. I had no idea he’d race out in front of the car.” She had started to shake. “I didn’t know he was dead. I figured that he was protected because he was loosey-goosey drunk. And because he was a DiCenza. DiCenzas didn’t die. They didn’t even get hurt.”
“But you ran.”
“He was a DiCenza. He could have ended up with a concussion, and they’d have come after me. They’d have sent me to prison and taken my baby. Yes, I ran, and when I learned that he was dead, I kept running. It nearly killed me to give the baby up, but I wanted her to be safe. Then I came to Lake Henry, and I found you and the girls, and I just . . . just pushed all of that unhappiness out of my mind. When you do that, when you push it all out, you can pretend it never happened. Ninety percent of the time, that was how I felt.”
“And the other ten percent?” Micah asked.
“That was when you talked about marriage and kids, and I heard it.”
“Heard it?”
“The thud of his body against the car. I hear it sometimes, so loud and relentless, and then I realize it’s my heart. I’ll never forget that sound. It’s an awful sound, Micah, and then when you find out that it represents the end of a life . . . if it hadn’t been for the baby I might have ended my own. I can’t conceive of killing someone.”
“There’s our argument,” Cassie announced.
“They won’t believe me,” Heather told Micah.
He looked at Aidan. “Is what she said consistent with what you witnessed?”
Aidan nodded. “He was drunk. He threatened her.”
Cassie asked, “And you’ll testify to that?”
“Yes.”
Heather’s hands tightened on Micah’s wrists. “I don’t want to go back there. You don’t know the power they have.”
No, Micah didn’t. He had been privileged to spend his life with more decent people than the DiCenzas. He had a feeling that if he could mend a few bridges, those decent people would rally around Heather once they heard all this, which wasn’t to say that things would be easy. There would be headlines now. Heather would have to return to California, and God knew what faced her there.
He did know one thing, though. When she went, she wouldn’t be alone.
* * *
Poppy wanted to celebrate. She knew that Cassie still had a lot of work to do if she was to get Heather the best possible deal before she returned to California, and then there was the matter of the child. They had to locate her if the threat of DNA testing was to hold water. But in that afternoon, they had come so much further than they previously had been, that Poppy felt giddy. She felt optimistic. She felt brave. That was what she told Victoria when she returned to the house, after she had taken over the phones, answered a few curious calls, made a few exuberant ones of her own. She still had energy to spare, so she went to the exercise room.
“I do feel brave,” she told the cat, and promptly picked the orange bundle of fur up off her lap, set her gently on the floor, and went to the wall. She took the braces down, held them, turned them. She even went so far as to bend over and place one against her leg.
Then she heard the sound of a snowmobile on the lake and went to the wall of windows. A headlight cut through the fast-fading day. She watched the machine with its helmeted driver, knowing exactly who itwas. Dropping the brace, she wheeled out to the main room and opened the deck door just as he parked the machine. She moved aside to let him in.
Removing the helmet, he grinned. “Hey.”
She grinned back, helpless to resist. He was adorable with his auburn hair all mussed and his cheeks red. He was enjoying the lake in winter; that pleased her. “Hey, yourself.”
“We did good today.”
She nodded.
“So I’m here to take you for a ride.”
“Micah dismissed you early?”
His grin widened. “Billy had his friend, Amos, there. You know, old guy from Cotter Cove, grew up working a sugarbush there? They didn’t need us. Micah hung around fueling the fire with the girls, but I was superfluous.”
“Superfluous?”
“Couldn’t have been happier. So come on. Let’s go for a ride.”
She did know what he was feeling. There was a light-headedness that came with the sudden easing of a weight. But she didn’t do snowmobiles anymore. “It’s getting dark.”
“Do you know the visibility on those things, once the headlight reflects on the snow?”
She did. She knew everything about “those things.”
“Maybe another time,” she said.
“I want to take you to Little Bear.”
“It’s raining,” she tried, but he had an answer for that, too.
“Not now, it isn’t. It’s barely misting. Billy told me to use his snowmobile, so I thought we’d do dinner out there. I picked up chili at Charlie’s. You love Charlie’s chili.”
Poppy eyed the machine. “I can’t go on that.”
“Is it a matter of distrust?”
“No. Bad memories.”
“Maybe it’s time we made some new ones.”
On principle, she could buy that. But the timing was off. She wasn’t ready.
“Come on, Poppy,” Griffin coaxed. “It was stormy that night. What happened had nothing to do with booze. It could have happened to the best of drivers.”
The last of Poppy’s smile, the last of her indulgence faded away. She sat back in her chair. “How did you learn about this? Who did you talk with?”
“If I tell, will you come for a ride?”
“Yes.”
“I read the police file. It’s a matter of public record.”
“Who’d you talk with?”
“You. Just you.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t talk about the accident.”
“That’s right. I put two and two together, and you confirmed it.”
She had failed to deny it, that was what she had done. Feeling trapped, she wheeled around and returned to the weight room. She heard the thud of his boots as he kicked them off, then the sound of stockinged feet following her in. With her back to him, she said, “I don’t have any more right to go out on a snowmobile than I have to walk or get married or have kids.”
“So sin again,” he said, and before she knew what he was up to, he had one of her arms after the other in her parka. Seconds before he lifted her in his arms, he dropped her hat in her lap. “Put it on,” he directed as he strode toward the other room.
“I don’t want to do this, Griffin,” she said, feeling more than a little unease as he stepped back into his boots. “It’s getting dark. Snowmobiles scare me. I want my chair.” The cold hit her face when he opened the door, but it was eased moments later when he slid a helmet over her head.
Straddling the snowmobile, he set her sidesaddle before him and pulled on his own helmet. Only then did he pause. He raised both faceplates. His eyes gentled. “Tell me you don’t want to do this. If you truly don’t, I’ll take you back inside.”
If he hadn’t given her the choice, Poppy might have refused him. She was an adult. She was her own person. She saw no reason why she should be railroaded into anything, let alone something that was emotionally disturbing for her. But emotions ran two ways. Yes, being on asnowmobile for the first time since the accident brought back memories—but, oddly, the bad ones were vague. Far clearer were the good ones—the excitement, the sense of daring, even the nip of the cold.
She didn’t want to go back inside. It was a night to celebrate. This was fitting.
* * *
Fitting barely described it. The ride out over the lake was exhilarating, dinner in front of the fire was charming, lovemaking in the afterglow was divine. She wasn’t wild about the bathroom facilities, but Griffin had thought that through and managed with commendable grace. The air was damp but surprisingly mild, so they stayed out a bit, wrapped in blankets under the porch overhang. There weren’t any stars and the moon was totally obscured. When the mist turned into a drizzle, and the drizzle turned into large, loose flakes of snow, the lake was stellar.There was a quiet intimacy as they sat there on the porch. Cushioned by it, Poppy wanted to ask when he was returning to Princeton. He would go, she knew. He would get tired of this.
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