He couldn’t keep the bleakness out of his tone. He was bad news to those he cared about. Lisa. Dylan. Everyone.
She studied him through the darkness. “Why do you say that? Can you...tell me what happened to Marla’s sister?”
Wasn’t it enough that he had purged his soul the night before about Dylan? By some miracle, she told him she didn’t think he was to blame. He still didn’t believe her, but it felt wonderful to know she didn’t despise him for it.
Did she have to peer into every dark, ugly crevice of his past?
He didn’t want to tell her anything about that horrible time and the things he had done. He wanted to drive her straight to the airport and fly her back home to Haven Point, where his sins couldn’t touch her.
He couldn’t, of course. Marla had opened the door, had brushed some of the old ugliness on Julia and he had no choice now but to show her the rest.
This was so hard. He never talked about it. How could he find the words to explain his choices and their grim consequences?
Though he hadn’t really registered where he was driving, had merely turned aimlessly, he realized now that they had reached one of his favorite spots overlooking town, near the little park and bridge by Sweet Laurel Falls. Below them, the streets of Hope’s Crossing gleamed with festive lights and holiday decorations. He pulled the vehicle over to an overlook parking space so he could focus on the conversation and turned off the stereo.
The dashboard control lights cast a greenish, unearthly light on her features. She still looked lovely and sweet as she waited for him to begin, hands folded on her lap.
“Lisa and I started dated our last year of high school. We were...serious, I guess you could say. As serious as you can be when you’re that young. We talked about maybe getting married someday.”
It seemed childish and immature now, those dreams they had spun after football games and on long, lazy summer afternoons by the lake.
“Someday?”
“In the far distant future. I wasn’t in a hurry. I had dreams of flying, from the time I was young. I was completely focused on my goals.”
He sighed, thinking of all his mistakes. He shouldn’t have had a girlfriend in the first place. Not when he only wanted to graduate, go to college and finish his flight training.
A family was in his plans eventually, though at that time in his life, he couldn’t see anything except what was right in front of him.
“I cared about Lisa—as much as a stupid punk can care about a girl, I suppose. Things weren’t perfect, though. She had...problems. She was moody and high-strung. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m pretty sure she suffered from anxiety and possibly bipolar disorder, but at the time, I only knew our relationship could be rough.”
That was an understatement. Things could seem fine between them. They could be hiking or skiing or at a party with friends when suddenly she would implode and start screaming at him for no discernible reason, accusing him of smiling at another girl or thinking someone else was prettier than she was.
The next moment, she would be bawling her eyes out as if she’d just lost her favorite pet, and she would be all over him with her apologies.
They could cycle through a half-dozen emotions in ten minutes and as a guy with other things on his mind, he found it completely exhausting. He was always so relieved when it was time to go back to college.
“We dated for a while after school, until I was about twenty. That was when my mother lost her fight with cancer.”
She gazed at him, eyes drenched with compassion, and he wanted so much to lean into that comfort she offered so generously.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“It was a rough time. Mom was the center of our family. Our bedrock. With her gone, we all floundered.
“I was in my second year of college and busy with class and work and ROTC, and I couldn’t deal with Lisa and her moods, on top of losing my mom then, plus trying to help my dad out at home whenever I could. Over Christmas, I broke things off with her. I tried to do it gently, going on about bad timing and needing space to clear my head. I told her maybe we could pick up again when I was in a better place, but she knew it was over.”
He was quiet as the wind rattled the windows of his SUV. He had to tell her the rest, and he didn’t want to.
The straight course is usually a good way to plot a flight path.
His own words echoed in his head and he screwed his eyes shut for a moment then opened them and found his bearings. “That night—the night I broke things off—Lisa went home, dressed in the prom dress she wore when I took her to our senior prom and swallowed a bottle of antidepressants.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“I want to think it was just a cry for attention, that she wanted her parents or her sister or me to come in and find her so she could go get her stomach pumped or something. But she had been drinking, too, and the combination was too much. She lay down on her bed in her blue prom dress and never woke up.”
It had been hell on earth for Jamie. He had still been reeling from losing his mother weeks earlier, then had received this second blow. He had been consumed with guilt, had nearly left school and ROTC. If not for his family, he very well might have.
Lisa’s suicide had scarred him, had left him with a powerful fear of causing that depth of pain in someone else.
“How tragic and unnecessary,” Julia murmured.
“I know. She had promise. She wanted to be a nurse and a mom and dreamed of writing children’s books. She might have done all those things. If not for me.”
Julia shifted in the seat to face him. In the greenish light, he saw her lovely features twist with compassion. “You’re not responsible for the entire world, Jamie. This wasn’t your fault, any more than you were to blame for Dylan’s injuries.”
“Her family doesn’t think so. Marla never misses a chance to tell me it’s my fault.”
“When she told me that you killed her sister, I couldn’t believe it. I had all these terrible visions—a car crash, maybe, or even a small plane crash. That might have been logical. This, though. Suicide is completely illogical. That’s why it’s so terrible. This was something she chose to do. You are not responsible for her actions.”
“Those are easy words to say. Not so easy to believe. I broke up with her, knowing she was in a fragile place. Maybe I should have picked a better time to break up with her than the holidays. Or maybe I shouldn’t have broken up with her at all, should have tried to work it out.”
“Would you have continued to date her, even married her, simply because you couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her?”
Yeah. He might have, as ridiculous as that seemed in retrospect. He might have married her, and they both would have been miserable. They would have divorced young. He had no doubts about that. He wouldn’t have been able to live with her mood swings and her constant, wholly unwarranted accusations that he was unfaithful.
He gazed out the windows at the snowflakes twirling in patterns against the window.
He had lived with the guilt for so long, it felt as much a part of him as the small birthmark above his left hip and the scar on his chin from a gnarly bike crash when he was eight.
Maybe that’s why he had taken on guilt over Dylan’s injuries, too.
Rationally, he knew both were unwarranted, at least to the extent they haunted him.
Julia was right. Lisa had made her own choices. She had been an emotionally insecure, troubled young woman who probably needed intensive inpatient mental health counseling.
That didn’t change the fact that he had been self-absorbed and thoughtless.
He had known she was upset after he broke things off. He should have called her parents, her minister, her sister. Someone.
He had left a message for her mother, telling
her she might want to check in on Lisa. He hadn’t known her parents were out of town and that her mother hadn’t gotten his message until it was far too late.
As a result, Lisa—the pretty athletic cheerleader who had been homecoming queen—had died alone in her bedroom, in a pool of vomit.
The image haunted him along with others and left him inexpressibly sad.
“Marla’s not the only one who blames me. Her whole family does,” he said quietly. “Every year on the anniversary of her death, they call me. For sixteen years, they make sure I never forget what she might have become, if not for me.”
“That is unnecessarily cruel, and someone should tell them so,” she said.
He stared, taken by surprise at the hardness in her voice.
“They lost their child. They needed someone to blame.”
“It never should have been you, Jamie, and they have to know that. You can see that, can’t you? They’re pushing their own guilt off on to you. They lived with her. You didn’t. If her behavior was as irrational as you describe, her parents, her sister, should have been the ones to make sure she got the help she needed. They were her parents. Her mental health was their responsibility. They should never have blamed a grieving young man, barely out of his teens.”
For some ridiculous reason, emotion stung his throat at her compassion and concern for the heedless young man he had been. She hadn’t known him then, yet she was still ready to jump instantly to his defense.
He had never talked about this with anyone. Not even his brothers. Was there something significant to be found in the fact that he had trusted this to Julia?
“That’s why you decided to move to Haven Point with Aidan instead of coming home to Hope’s Crossing with the rest of your family,” she said after a moment, with dawning realization.
Nobody else understood that either.
He shrugged. “I didn’t want to make it harder for her parents or for Marla, having to see me around town all the time.”
Her chin trembled a little as she reached out and rested her hand on his. “You’re a good man, Jamie Caine.”
He let out a raw-sounding laugh. “You obviously weren’t listening to what I just told you, then.”
“I heard every word—and I heard nothing that would persuade me otherwise.”
He again felt that tight achiness in his throat. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to be someone else. The kind of man who would have the right to pull her close and kiss her, here in the shadowed intimacy of a car parked on an overlook.
He couldn’t do it.
He knew it was no coincidence that he only dated women who didn’t want or need anything from him but a good time.
No entanglements. Don’t break any hearts. Flirting is fine, anything more serious than that must be avoided at all costs.
That had been his modus operandi since Lisa’s suicide.
Julia was soft and sweet and serious, worlds away from that casual kind of woman.
He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anyone else.
He curled his fingers around the leather of the steering wheel, the only way he could keep from reaching for her.
“Now that I’ve spilled all my ugly secrets, I suppose we should head back to the inn. The boys will be wondering where we are.”
She gave him a long, careful look, and he wondered if she could sense the tumult inside him, the war between what he wanted and what was right.
“I hope they’re in bed by now,” she said. “It’s been a long day, and we’re flying home early.”
“That’s one good thing about flying your own plane. We can leave whenever we’re ready—or whenever Aidan and Eliza are ready, anyway.”
He checked for traffic, then pulled out. The snowy roads were quiet as he headed for Wild Iris House, all the while wishing he could have her and the boys to himself for one more day.
But something told him even that would never be enough.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“DID YOU HAVE a good time in Hope’s Crossing?”
Julia shifted her gaze from the cockpit—and the man at the controls of the plane—to find Eliza Caine studying her.
Oh, she hoped Eliza couldn’t read the turmoil of her emotions in her expression. She quickly schooled her features into what she hoped looked casual and polite.
“Everything has been lovely. The boys and I had a wonderful time, from the moment we arrived. I’ve always wanted to ski, and Clint and Davy both loved it. And of course the gala was magical.”
Until the last half hour, anyway, when a grieving sister had spilled her poison over the evening.
“Life back in Haven Point will seem rather staid after the excitement of this weekend.”
“I don’t think that’s possible, especially considering next weekend is the Lights on the Lake Festival and the week after is Christmas. The boys are going to be bouncing off the walls at all the excitement. Anyone who has children in her household will be lucky to get five minutes of sleep until after New Year’s.”
“You’re right about that,” Eliza said with a sigh.
“Mama. Mama. Mama.” As if to reinforce the point, the little boy in Eliza’s arms chanted the word and wriggled to be let down.
Liam Dermot Caine was just over a year old, but already seemed a little perpetual motion machine.
“What else is new? At least for you,” Julia said, with a smile at little Liam, who had to be the most adorable baby she knew.
“Are we going yet?” Davy asked from the row behind them.
“Not yet,” she answered.
“About five more minutes,” Jamie said from the cockpit without turning around. “I’ve got a few more preflight checks to go through before we can be on our way.”
The boy turned back to the travel game he was playing with Clint and Maddie.
Nobody else seemed at all nervous about the flight, all apparently seasoned veterans of air travel. This was only her second takeoff, and she could feel the anxiety building. To distract herself, she held her arms out to the wriggling boy in Eliza’s lap. “May I?” she asked.
Her friend looked grateful. “Please!”
Liam had always liked Julia, for reasons she didn’t quite understand. Most babies did. He launched himself at her, and Julia scooped him up with a little laugh.
“I don’t know how long he’ll stay happy,” Eliza said with a note of apology in her voice. “He needs a nap, which tends to make him cranky.”
“I totally understand, Liam,” Julia said. “I’m the exact same way.”
“Everybody still buckled up?” Jamie said from the front. “This is it.”
Julia made faces to Aidan and Eliza’s little boy while Jamie taxied toward the runway. She enjoyed watching the baby’s eyes go wide as the plane accelerated rapidly and then lifted up into the sky.
She could relate to that, too. There was something so astonishing about flying.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” she whispered to the boy, who giggled.
“Mom, did you bring any crayons? We want to color now,” Maddie said as the jet seemed to level off.
“I think I’ve got some in my bag. Let me see what I can find.”
While Eliza was busy scouring her cavernous bag, Julia rocked little Liam and hummed to him. His mother was right. He needed a nap. She could see his eyes begin to droop and feel his wriggling against her become less frequent.
She pulled a blanket over him, still rocking softly in her seat, and after about five minutes, his eyes closed completely and he seemed to sag against her.
Gazing down at his little features made her insides ache. She and Maksym had talked about children. He had wanted a round half dozen. She thought she would have been content with three or four. If things had turned
out differently, she might have been a mother several times over by now.
She would have been a good mother. Though she felt over her head with Davy and Clint, something told her that with a little more practice she would find the caretaking role far more comfortable.
She had some of the most important qualities in a mother—patience and a heart that wanted desperately to love.
The baby nestled against her, his little head tucked under her chin.
“I can take him for you, if your arms are tired,” Eliza said softly.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered. “I would be perfectly happy holding him all day.”
She may have dozed off herself—a few sleepless nights in a row could do that. When she opened her eyes some time later, she found Jamie gazing at her from the cockpit, wearing an odd expression that sent tingling heat through her.
She swallowed hard and shifted her gaze to find Eliza also watching her. Her friend’s expression was more clear. She looked unmistakably worried about something. Maybe Julia was holding the baby incorrectly. She readjusted him as Jamie spoke up.
“We should be landing in about ten minutes. Make sure your seat belts are buckled and tray tables are stowed. Et cetera. Et cetera.”
Liam stirred a little at his deep voice, though he didn’t awaken. She cuddled the baby closer, wishing they didn’t have to land, to return to real life.
The last forty-eight hours had been...earthshaking. She felt as if she were a different person than the timid woman who had climbed onto this very jet Friday.
She glanced at their pilot. He had barely exchanged two words with her after their lengthy discussion on the overlook. All through their drive back to the inn, then after they arrived to find the boys in bed, he seemed distracted, his mind a million miles away—or sixteen years, anyway.
Jamie’s story about Lisa had explained so much. It must have been a seminal moment in his life, losing his mother to cancer, then his girlfriend to suicide within a short, devastating window of time. How difficult it must have been for him, especially when he felt responsible for the death of one of them.
Sugar Pine Trail--A Small-Town Holiday Romance Page 21