Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  Maggie suddenly realized she had unraveled so much of the string that Jack’s leather seat was falling apart at the seam. She let go of the rippled black string and took a shuddering breath.11 I yelled for Brian to let go.”

  “To let go of his brother? To let him drown?”

  She nodded jerkily. “I wanted one of them to live,” she said, her throat aching. “I didn’t want to lose them both.” She took a hitching breath. “But my son . . . my brave, loyal son shouted, ‘I can’t let go, Mom. Stan will go under.’”

  Oh, God. It was so cold where she stood, watching her sons about to die. Her skin was gooseflesh, her lips were blue. And her heart was frozen solid.

  Maggie made a soft, keening sound and felt Jack’s warm, strong hand close over hers. If only someone had been there that day, someone strong enough to save her sons. But Woody had been at work.

  Anger bubbled and boiled inside Maggie, anger that had been simmering for years, anger that had never been expressed because its target—Woody—was dead. Why weren’t you there, Woody? Why did you leave me alone? What happened to our marvelous fairy tale? What happened to all our dreams?

  Woody hadn’t needed to go to work so early. He could have stayed at home longer with her and the boys. If Woody had been there, he could have helped rescue their sons. She wouldn’t have been forced to make all the decisions herself. And if Woody hadn’t been able to save Brian and Stan, he could at least have shared the guilt she had felt all these years for letting them both drown.

  “Maggie? Are you all right?” Jack asked.

  She swiped at her tears with the heel of her free hand. Jack held on to the other one and wouldn’t let go when she tugged to free it. He was tenacious, she would give him that. Just like Brian.

  “Even when I begged him, Brian wouldn’t let go,” she said, angry at her son, too, for being so damned noble. She had selfishly wanted him to live. It wasn’t fair to blame her son for loving his brother enough to cling to him past life. But she did.

  “I stood watching Brian being pulled under the ice, screaming for him to let go of Stanley. But he held on until Stan’s weight finally pulled him under, too.”

  “Jesus. You must have felt so helpless.”

  How did he know? she wondered. It was exactly what she’d felt.

  “I’m sure you did everything you could,” he said quietly.

  “I’ve told myself that a million times,” Maggie said with a shake of her head. “But in those few precious seconds when something might have been done . . . I did nothing.”

  She turned to Jack and saw her pain reflected in his eyes. “It all happened so fast. Stanley sank like a stone and dragged Brian right in under the ice behind him. And they were just . . . gone.”

  She tried again to pull free of Jack’s hold, but he said, “Let me help you, Maggie.”

  She stopped struggling, but her heart was pounding. She ached for her lost sons. “It’s too late, Jack.”

  She had stood paralyzed while her sons were drowning. Shame as fresh and raw as what she’d felt that day washed over her as blood rushed from her chest to her neck and up across her cheeks leaving them awash with a guilty flush.

  “What did you do after they went under?” Jack asked when she didn’t continue.

  I screamed. I begged God to save my sons. But God wasn’t listening.

  “I spread myself out on the ice as wide as I could and inched myself toward the hole where they’d gone under. It took forever to get there, because the ice kept cracking.”

  She remembered how she had shivered with cold and fear until she’d thought she would shake the ice apart. How the damned unforgiving ice had crackled around her, threatening to break apart and tumble her into the cold black depths of the pond. How the sharp ice crystals had scraped her bare hands and arms, drawing blood as she clawed her w ay across it on her belly.

  “One of the strings on the hood of Brian’s jacket had caught on the ice, but my hands were so stiff and numb, it was hard to grab hold of it.” Her shoulder muscles had knotted with excruciating pain as she used the thin cord to pull her son back from a watery grave.

  Jack felt his insides clutch. He was there with Maggie, standing in the frigid wind with gooseflesh on his bare arms, his heart in his throat. He tried to imagine the presence of mind it had taken for her to lie down rather than to try walking onto the ice. The courage it had taken to slide out onto the brittle surface, knowing that if she fell through the ice, she would likely drown as well. He looked at her with awed respect. How many other women would have managed to do as much?

  “I finally dragged Brian out of the water,” Maggie said, “but the surface began to break away around us. I was afraid both of us would go under if I didn’t get us out of there.”

  It was her excuse, Jack realized, for why she hadn’t stayed to hunt for Stanley. “You couldn’t save them both, Maggie.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “I should have done more. Something!”

  “What else could you have done?” he argued. “It wouldn’t have helped Brian if you’d drowned yourself.”

  “I wish I had!” she cried. “Oh, God, I wish I had.”

  He squeezed her hand so hard he feared he would break her bones, but it took that much pressure to get her attention. When she finally looked at him, he said, “I’m glad you didn’t die, Maggie. I’m glad you’re here with me now.”

  Jack stared down at the fragile female hand clasped in his own. Maggie hadn’t died with her sons, but she had stopped living. It was apparent in her barren apartment, in the lack of so much as a pet to keep her company. And she had stopped feeling because, as he knew now, feeling was too painful.

  Jack wanted to comfort her. Wanted to keep her company. Wanted to make her feel everything again . . . with him.

  When Maggie began talking, he realized the story wasn’t over yet. She held on tight to his hand and continued, “Brian was so cold, he wasn’t even shivering. He wasn’t breathing, either.”

  Jack lifted her hand as he brushed his knuckles gently, reassuringly across her cheek. “Go on, Maggie.”

  “I carried Brian to the house, but I have no idea how. The police said with all the water that had soaked into his clothes, he must have weighed close to a hundred pounds. I grabbed the phone to dial 911, but my girlfriend must have realized something was wrong and had already called. I could hear them at the door.

  “One paramedic went to work on Brian while I hurried the other out back to show him where to look for Stanley. Then I raced inside and called my husband.”

  She leaned her head against the seat and sighed. “I wonder sometimes if things would have been different if I’d taken the time to calm down before I called Woody. Once I got Brian out of the water, I kind of lost it.

  “I was blubbering so much on the phone with Woody, it’s a wonder he could under-stand what I was saying. He wanted to come home, but I told him to go directly to the hospital to be with Brian, while I waited for the dive team that was going to search for Stanley.”

  Jack heard in her voice the fact she hadn’t expected to find Stanley alive.

  “It took two men thirty minutes to find him,” she said quietly. “His Timberwolves scarf had caught on a rotten log at the bottom of the pond.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie.” Jack pulled her hand onto his thigh and held it there.

  Jack swerved onto the New Braunfels exit off I-35, grateful to be out of the worst of the traffic and onto the small-town streets shaded by live oak and pecan trees. “Where to now?” he asked.

  “Not far,” Maggie said, giving directions. “Only another five minutes.”

  Jack hoped that was enough time for her to finish her story. He wanted it all said, so she could let it go and answer the rest of his questions, like why Victoria Wainwright was not allowed to visit her grandson. And why Porter Cobb was now calling the shots.

  “When I got to the hospital, I was surprised that Woody hadn’t gotten there before me. Of course, none of the
efforts to resuscitate Stanley had worked. When I asked about Brian, nobody could tell me anything, because there had been a terrible car accident and everyone was working on the victim.”

  Jack felt a chill run down his spine. “It was Woody, wasn’t it?”

  He watched Maggie swallow painfully before simply nodding. Her blue eyes were as bleak as he’d ever seen them.

  “An eyewitness said Woody was going too fast to make the turn onto the hospital road. When he finally braked, he caught an icy patch and skidded right into a tree. He was thrown through the windshield.”

  Jack saw why Victoria might blame Maggie for her son’s death, since Maggie had called Woody out onto the road. But she wasn’t responsible for Woody’s reckless driving.

  “I’d only been in the emergency room a matter of moments when they wheeled Woody out of a treatment room on his way to surgery,” Maggie said. “His face . . . . ”

  She moaned, and Jack said, “Don’t, Maggie. No more.”

  “His face was . . . unrecognizable,” she grated out. “I guess I went a little crazy then.”

  Who wouldn’t have? Jack thought. “Maggie,” he said in the softest voice he had ever used with her. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill your family, they—”

  Her head whipped around to face him as she snatched her hand out of his. “You don’t know everything, Jack. You don’t know everything!”

  “What more is there?” he demanded as he pulled into the parking lot of the Shady Oaks Nursing Home and abruptly cut the engine. He grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her toward him. “So you weren’t watching your kids every minute. What parent does? It was all a series of tragic accidents, Maggie! Victoria’s wrong to blame you—”

  “I wished them all dead!” she cried. “Don’t you see? I wished them dead, and then they were!”

  “What?”

  Before he could stop her, she shoved the truck door open, and ran.

  Jack caught up to her among the moss-laden live oaks for which the nursing home had been named. He snagged her around the waist with one hand and pulled her to him, grabbing a handful of her hair and angling her face to-ward him. “Maggie. Maggie, talk to me! Ex-plain.”

  “Don’t you see,” she said, staring at him through tear-drenched eyes. “It is my fault. All of it. I wished them dead, and God answered my prayers.”

  She dropped her forehead against his chest, her body sagging in defeat. He let his hand slide through her hair and tightened his arms around her, holding her upright.

  “Oh, Jack, I didn’t mean it. I never meant it! If I could take it all back. . . . ”

  “Maggie, Maggie . . .” He could see the anguish on her face, but he had no idea how to comfort her. “What did you do that was so wrong you’ve needed to pay for it with ten years of your life?”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes and one spilled over. “I made an awful wish, and it came true,” she said sadly.

  “An awful wish?”

  “I wished I hadn’t married Woody, because nothing turned out as I had dreamed it would. I wished I didn’t have my twin sons, because they had kept me from going back to law school. I felt trapped in my marriage, and I wished I could start all over again without Woody and the twins.”

  She looked up at Jack and said, “Don’t you see? I wished them gone . . . and then they were.”

  This was the terrible secret that had kept her life barren, Jack realized. This was the reason she had cut herself off from men, from any chance of another involvement that might lead to another husband and family. Maggie had wished one family away, so she didn’t deserve another.

  Jack thrust his hands into the golden hair on either side of Maggie’s face and forced her to look up at him. “You’re not to blame for any of it, Maggie. Do you hear me? You’re not to blame.”

  “I wished them gone!”

  “That’s not what caused them to go,” he said fiercely. “It was fate, or karma, or just their time to leave.” He didn’t know what he could say to make her believe him. Deep in-side he knew that wishing someone dead didn’t kill them. Otherwise, his mother would have died long before she had. And wishing someone alive didn’t keep them that way, either. Otherwise, a gap-toothed little girl would be finishing kindergarten in June.

  “Let it go, Maggie.” Jack pressed reassuring kisses on her forehead, on her cheeks, and finally on her mouth. Her lips remained stiff and unyielding, so he kept on kissing her. Small, soft kisses that begged her to trust him. “We all do second-guessing about the things we wish we’d done differently,” he said.

  “But my wish was granted!” Maggie said. “It’s my fault, Jack. I didn’t wish them dead, but I wished them gone. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “No, Maggie. No, it’s not.” Jack held her close and rocked her.

  Who hadn’t played that mental “what if” game at one time or another? It could have been him in her shoes. How many times had he wished his father were alive and his mother had died instead? Yet when she was finally gone, he’d been desolated. How much worse, Jack thought, to have your wish granted the instant you made it . . . and with such devastating consequences.

  Jack kissed Maggie, pressing his lips to hers insistently, feeling the last of her resistance give way as she finally surrendered. He let his tongue slip into her mouth, offering comfort . . . and something more.

  “It’s time to let yourself love again, Maggie,” he murmured.

  She leaned back and searched his face. “That’s a strange thing for you to say, Jack. If I did let myself love you, would you be willing to love me back?”

  Jack’s heart picked up a beat as his “fightor-flight” instinct kicked in. He let her go and took a step back. “How did we get on this subject?”

  Maggie dared glance at him. “You’re the one who suggested I start loving someone. I just wondered if you meant you.”

  He tugged his hat back down, so it shadowed his eyes. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “All right, Jack. You do that. Here’s a little something to help you think.”

  She lifted up on her tiptoes, put a hand around his nape, and drew his head down so her lips could meet his. She kissed him like she meant it, with her mouth and her tongue and her whole body pressing into his. Jack grabbed her and held on tight as she rubbed herself against him. He was breathing hard, busy yanking her shirt out of her trousers, when Maggie caught his wrists. ” Not here,” she said breathlessly, reminding him where they were.

  She backed up abruptly, but he saw from her flushed cheeks and her lambent eyes that she wasn’t in much better shape than he was.

  “I have a present for Brian in my bag in the truck,” she said as she backed away from him.

  Jack followed after her. “I still have some unanswered questions, Maggie.”

  “Ask them, and I’ll see if I’ve got answers.” She opened the truck door, reached into the bag that held her swimming clothes wrapped in a towel, and pulled out a purple-and-white stuffed rabbit wearing a yellow bow around its neck.

  She held it up to Jack, hopped it toward him in mid-air, and said, “What do you think?”

  “It’s a stuffed rabbit.”

  She grinned. “Your perception amazes me.”

  “It’s cute,” he conceded. And a warning to him, he realized, in case he hadn’t already gotten the message, of the personal baggage that came along with Maggie. She was still dealing with a lot of pain and anger, and she felt a tremendous burden of guilt over what had happened to her husband and sons.

  His gut instinct told him none of that had turned her into a killer. But he’d been wrong before. And who else besides Maggie would be grieving every year on the anniversary of all those deaths in Minnesota?

  Victoria.

  Jack felt like he’d been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer. Why hadn’t he thought of Victoria as a suspect before? She had as much motive as Maggie, and opportunity, at least as far as the San Antonio murder was concerned. As for whether she
’d been in the vicinity of Dallas and Houston when the other deaths had occurred . . . He’d have to do some checking.

  “How much does Victoria know about the story you’ve just told me?” Jack asked, as they headed to the entrance to Shady Oaks.

  “When I first saw her at the hospital in Minnesota, in the chapel, I blurted out everything. You can imagine her reaction.”

  Jack could. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “Victoria told me she’d never forgive me for the deaths of her grandsons, for Woody’s accident, or for the stroke Richard suffered on the flight to Minnesota. I had no idea how really distraught she was that day, how angry and vindictive, until nine months later.”

  Jack pushed an errant curl behind Maggie’s ear. “What happened nine months later?”

  “That was when I learned Uncle Porter had sent Victoria to the chapel that day in April to tell me Brian had been resuscitated, and that the doctors held out some hope he would recover. Instead, when I asked her what word there was of Brian, she told me he was dead—that I’d killed him as surely as I’d killed the rest of my family.”

  “It’s hard to believe anyone could be so cruel,” Jack muttered.

  Maggie smiled bitterly. “After Victoria’s announcement, I went crazy. When I was admitted to the mental ward at the hospital, Victoria took charge of Brian and had him moved to Texas, arguing with Uncle Porter that I would be in no shape to care for him anytime soon. No one ever told me my son was alive. They all assumed I knew it.”

  Jack was astounded by what he was hearing. “But the funeral—”

  “I was in the hospital when my family was buried. I never went to the cemetery later, for reasons that should be obvious.”

  “You mean no one ever contacted you to tell you Brian was still alive?”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “What about the medical bills?”

  “Uncle Porter took care of everything. And I refused to see anyone. It wasn’t until Brian woke up and began recuperating that Uncle Porter came to Minnesota to see if I could be retrieved from among the damned. He was incredulous, as you can imagine, when he learned that Victoria had told me Brian was dead. And absolutely furious with Victoria.”