A Family for Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And when she’d married Shawn?

  Again, she’d been so sure.

  The water pounded down.

  Listen to your heart.

  She was trying. Oh, God, she was trying. What was Fate trying to tell her? When would she know for sure? Would she ever know?

  Did she want to know?

  She stared at the blade hanging within reach.

  Listen to your heart.

  Sobs racked her body. Taking her breath. Hurting her ribs.

  Sinking down to the shower floor, feeling the water beating down upon her, cleansing her, Cara’s heart cried out for Simon.

  * * *

  “CARA?” WHEN SHE first heard his voice, she thought she was imagining it.

  “Cara!”

  The door to the bathroom hit the wall with force, and before she could react—if indeed she could react—the shower curtain was flung open.

  “Cara!” Simon reached for her, his head and back blocking the water. She welcomed the respite from the icy cold, shivering.

  She was in his arms, snuggled up against the warmth of his chest when she became self-conscious about her nudity. He’d grabbed a towel, lifting a knee to balance her on his thigh as he did so, getting the towel around her shoulders, her back. Then he carried her out to the couch.

  He shouldn’t put her there. She was wet.

  He sat with her on his lap, getting himself wet, using the towel to dry her off.

  “Did you slip? What hurts?” he asked.

  It was only then that she realized he was a doctor to the rescue again. Feeling incredibly stupid, embarrassed and slightly out of her mind, she sat up. Gathered the towel more tightly around herself, hiding her nudity as best she could.

  “I d-didn’t s-slip,” she said, hiccupping. Leftover evidence of the tears she’d been shedding. She wanted to explain why she’d been huddled on the shower floor letting the icy water pelt her skin, but couldn’t.

  She didn’t know why. Because she hadn’t had what it took to get up and turn off the water. To get out and dry herself off.

  Afraid to trust herself to stand just yet, she slid off his lap and into the corner of the couch, pulling the blanket off the back of it with her. In the warmer days, he’d put the blanket away with his sheets every morning. Now that the afternoon air was chilled, he left the blanket for her to use while she read.

  Her teeth were chattering.

  “What’s going on?” He leaned over her. Reached into the blanket to find her wrist.

  Waiting for him to finish with her pulse, to let go of her, Cara counted the drops falling off her hair and sliding down her back.

  Apparently satisfied that she wasn’t on her deathbed, he stayed close. His eyes were wide and filled with concern she didn’t deserve and couldn’t return, no matter how much of her heart belonged to him.

  “I can’t do it anymore, Simon.” She got the words out without a stutter, but still shivered inside her blanket.

  “Do what?”

  “Any of this. Staying here. Living with it. Trying to figure it out.” She’d given up. And it had gotten her...naked on a couch with a good man wasting his time because of her.

  “What is ‘it’?” He spoke slowly. Because she’d gone addle brained? Or because he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear whatever was coming?

  “I...did something. Something bad.” She couldn’t tell him she’d killed someone. If he knew, he’d be guilty of harboring a criminal.

  She’d killed someone.

  She’d killed someone?

  The thought that had just slipped out settled upon her. Clearly. As though it had always been there. She couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been. Had she known and just been lying to herself?

  She’d killed someone. She didn’t ask who. Didn’t look any deeper into the brutal recesses of her mind at the moment. She just sat with the truth. Accepting what was.

  Relief mingled with horror. It was almost as though she were sitting above herself, looking down. Watching her life from a distance.

  She was a murderer?

  She was a murderer! That was why they’d been on the run.

  Shawn had told her so.

  It came back to her, as she sat here in the cabin, shivering, with Simon beside her. She remembered hearing Shawn’s voice through a haze of pain. She’d been in the van. Their van? She couldn’t be sure. But he’d been there, wiping her face with a cool cloth. Giving her something for the pain in her head. She hadn’t wanted it, but he’d put it in her mouth, held her jaw shut until she swallowed. Helping her, he’d said. Telling her that he’d always be there for her. That he was getting her to safety and would stand by her. Telling her she’d never be alone.

  That was how he’d done it. That was how he’d gotten her to leave her father for him. He’d promised her she’d never be alone again.

  The thought rose unbidden. She stared at Simon.

  He must have spoken. She hadn’t made out the words.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  She shook her head. That part was still fuzzy. But she owed it to him to...

  Closing her eyes, Cara thought of that last day. Out eating with Joy. The man who held the door. She thought of her home. The spot on the living room carpet where Joy had dropped a bottle of nail polish remover.

  Cara had told Shawn that she’d done it. He’d shrugged it off with a kiss and a statement about them needing new carpet anyway.

  Mary had stepped on that spot...

  “Cara?”

  “I...” Opening her eyes, she looked at him. “I’m trying to remember...”

  “You don’t remember.”

  She shook her head. Had a flash of fear—was he going to finally get angry with her?

  “I... I’ve been...ever since I woke up here... I get flashes... I’ve been getting more and more of them...like my dad...”

  “You didn’t remember your dad?” He sounded really concerned now. “You’ve been having memory lapses and you’re only just now telling me about them?”

  His intense stare, the way his seemed to stop on every inch of her face, zeroing in on one eye and then another, distracted her from the emotions tangling her up inside.

  “I remember my dad,” she told him. “I remember exactly what I’ve been remembering for the past ten years. All the things he did that hurt me, all the things that I didn’t understand and assigned motivations to that probably weren’t accurate. What I didn’t remember, I think because I pushed them too deeply inside, were the good things. And some of the worst things, too...” Like the morning her father had told her that her mom had passed away the night before. He hadn’t come to get her at the time, though he’d known she was still awake.

  He’d waited until morning.

  At the time, she’d found his action to be cruel and insensitive. Had screamed at him that he didn’t care about her at all. That he’d wanted to hog her mother for himself. Shame spread through her with the memory. When, looking back, thinking like a mother, wanting to protect a child, she could see that maybe he’d just wanted her to get a good night’s sleep. To face the horrible news in daylight, not darkness.

  His expression changing from all business to one of a more intimate nature, Simon put a hand on the blanket, cocooning her.

  She shivered.

  “Shawn has always told me how selfish I am,” she said. Simon needed to know. To protect himself. “It was always all about me, he said.”

  The memories of her father certainly looked that way. He’d just lost a wife. Was left alone with a hormonal, emotional, angry teenaged daughter to raise. It had to have been a daunting task.

  Could he have done better at it? Should he have?

  Maybe. Probably should have stayed home, at least. Spent some time
with her. Let her stay in the home that was filled with memories of love and family. The home that was the only security she’d ever known...

  But she had a feeling he’d done his best.

  “He’s right,” she said now. “I have always thought of myself...”

  Simon’s lips pursed. “So...when you...as a fifteen-to seventeen-year-old kid, gave up everything to look after your mother...that was about you...how?”

  “Shawn says I did it for myself, to comfort myself, to cling to my mom, making her tend to me and my emotions even when she was suffering. And that I robbed others of the chance to have their own close minutes with her.” How could some memories be so suddenly clear while others were still behind a haze of pain?

  “How would he know that? Did he know her?”

  “No.”

  “So...why did you marry him? Knowing he thought that way?”

  “I didn’t know.” His questions threw more confusion into the jumble in her mind.

  She was a murderer.

  Oh, God. What did she do with that?

  “He didn’t say things like that to me back then,” she said now. “He just always told me how much he loved me. He just always promised that I’d never be alone again...”

  A memory surfaced. Shawn making that promise. On the beach in Florida, the night he’d asked her to run away with him to California—telling her that the only way she was going to be free from the pain her father continuously caused her was to get him out of her life. And Shawn making that promise in the back of the van where they’d been staying some weeks ago, too.

  He’d promised she’d never be alone, and then, when he thought she was dying, he’d broken that promise. He’d dumped her on the side of the road, thrown her driver’s license on top of her and left her there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SIMON WASN’T SURE exactly when it hit him that the moment he’d been waiting for—the one where Cara was ready to move on—had arrived. Busy easing his concern that she’d hurt herself, and then that she was suffering confusion from a possible brain bleed, he’d been a little late in getting to the real cause of her distress.

  Hearing the water running long after the hot water would have given out, he’d gone to the bathroom door. Had knocked. Called out to her. Eventually, he’d tried the knob and found the door unlocked.

  That was when he heard her sobs.

  Hauling her naked out of the shower had wiped away all professionalism for a moment or two. Not because of the nudity but because it was Cara. The second he’d felt the icy water on his back as he reached for her, he’d known for certain that he was in love with her.

  He’d had to get beyond all that to figure out what was going on.

  She’d reached her breaking point.

  “I just... I can’t bear being this person who made her mother’s last months even harder...”

  When tears fell, she wiped them away, impatiently. Angrily, even, as though they didn’t deserve to exist.

  “As a surgeon who has witnessed, first hand, families going through the long-term loss of a loved one, I would think that having you close was the biggest blessing you could have given to her.”

  Simon didn’t choose his words. They seemed to choose him. “From what you’ve said about her, being your mother had to have been one of the best parts of her life. You being there with her... It was a continuation of the close relationship she’d built with you since the day you were born.”

  Mouth open, Cara stared at him, as though assessing every syllable he spoke. He could no more speak the truth of what had transpired the last months of her mother’s life than Shawn Amos could. But, in his opinion, his scenario rang with a lot more truth than the one she was harboring.

  “I was incredibly selfish when it came to my father,” she said, just when he was hoping that she was seeing the truth of his words, after having run them through her memories of those months. “I sure wasn’t thinking of him when I cut him off...”

  “And perhaps he wasn’t thinking enough of you when he buried himself in his work. When he moved you to a new neighborhood and left you there alone so much of the time. I think you were both doing the best you could. You’d lost an incredible woman, the world to both of you...”

  What did he know? He’d never been particularly close to his parents. They’d divorced when he was young. He’d been raised primarily by his mother, who’d remarried and had a second family in Tennessee. He and his dad touched base every couple of years. Neither of his parents knew about his current situation. He’d left them both messages that he was taking an extended vacation and would be in touch when he got back.

  “I’m weak, Simon,” Cara said now. “Shawn’s right about that. I ran out on my dad because he wasn’t taking care of me. I’ve relied on Shawn all these years. And now I’m hiding out with you...letting you take care of me.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t want to stay here. I gave you no choice.”

  There were some things he couldn’t know about Cara. He hadn’t known her long. Hadn’t been in her life to see the things she was talking about. But... “There are two sides to every story, Cara,” he told her now. “Instead of listening to Shawn’s side of your choices, see if you can find the other one.”

  She swallowed. Nodded. He felt like he might have just been dismissed. And couldn’t just let her go. Not without a better understanding.

  He was responsible for keeping her there. He had to be responsible to her.

  And then he needed her to go. She was getting to him in a way no one else had. Which meant she’d have more power than anyone else to get him to give up his quest to see. She’d be able to convince him not to believe that he would...without ever saying a word.

  “Tell me about the memories that have been coming back to you.” A shard of fear shot through him again as he recalled her earlier statement that memories were returning. Memory loss could be indicative of more severe brain damage.

  She’d never given any indication of memory loss. To the contrary, she’d seemed so lucid. Determinedly so.

  “It’s just little things...”

  “Not that little if you think you’ve done something bad.” He couldn’t imagine anything she could have done that would be unfixable. Whatever it might be, she wouldn’t have meant intentional harm by it. There wasn’t a mean bone in the woman’s body.

  She shivered again, and Simon stood. “I’m going to take you to your room, let you get some warm clothes on...” He had a wet shirt and damp pants to get out of, too. “And then we’ll sit and talk about it.” He wasn’t asking any more. They’d come too far for that.

  Cara must have sensed the change with them, as well. When he set her down in her room she thanked him and told him she’d be right out.

  He hoped she knew he was going to hold her to her word.

  * * *

  HE HAD HOT tea on the table for her. Some saltine crackers in case she was feeling at all nauseous. He’d changed into dry jeans and a different flannel shirt, and had had a firm talk with himself—all in the five minutes it had taken her to dress and join him in the cabin’s main room.

  The tea was on the table. She picked up her cup and carried it to the couch. He’d thrown another blanket over the back of it.

  He was fully prepared to push as hard as he had to get his answers. And then get her someplace where she could get the help she needed to be free of Shawn Amos. To start over.

  Without him.

  She was a woman who needed security. Her father had failed to give it. She’d lived with an abusive man for ten years because, in his own twisted way, he’d provided it.

  It stood to reason that she’d look to Simon, the man who’d insisted on rescuing her and keeping her safe, to provide it next.

  He couldn’t do that.

&nb
sp; It was a disservice to her to let her think, even for a second, that he could.

  He loved her too much to disappoint her.

  All things he planned to tell her as soon as he knew exactly what they were dealing with. He had to know where to take her.

  Simon had it planned. If she’d testify on her own behalf, he’d take her to the police. If she couldn’t, he’d take her to a shelter.

  Bottom line was, he was taking her.

  Their time together was over.

  With his own cup of tea in hand, he joined her on the couch. He wasn’t sitting in his chair. Wasn’t going to read that morning. Their daily routines had ended.

  Cara didn’t pick up the book on the end table next to her. Holding her cup on her lap, she leaned her head back. Closed her eyes.

  Watching the steadiness of that cup, using it as his compass, Simon sipped tea. And waited.

  After a minute or so, he thought about taking the cup out of her hand, running his thumb along her fingers. Intensely thankful at the moment that the bastard hadn’t broken those bones. Her hands had nursed her dying mother.

  Had cooked delicious meals for Simon.

  They gestured almost every time she spoke.

  “I remember screaming...”

  His gaze darted to her face—still slightly swollen on the one side, but Simon was no longer sure that the misshapen cheek was current or from some past injury. The rest of her features had settled into the face of a once-beautiful woman.

  A woman who could be beautiful again with enough rest and care. The scars were small, nothing he really even noticed anymore, except for times like now, when he was thinking about all that she’d endured.

  She remembered screaming. No more words came forth.

  “Who was screaming?” With as neutral a tone as he could manage he tried coaxing. Not wanting her to get lost in the hell in her mind, but rather to take him there with her.

  “I’m not sure. It’s feminine. I think me. I’m just not sure...”

  “Are there words?”

  She shook her head. “Just screaming. There’s this spot on the floor. Spilled nail polish remover.”