Can't Help Falling

by Kara Isaac

  Allie sat across from her, but where she expected to see judgment and condemnation reflected in her green eyes, Emelia only saw concern.

  “I’m so sorry about your wedding.”

  Allie batted her words away with one hand. “What are you even talking about? We’re married. The reception is almost finished. The only thing you ruined was the inappropriate-in-front-of-children kiss Jackson was spiriting me outside for. And there will be plenty of those in his future.”

  The girl was either the most serene bride Emelia had ever met, or she was seriously hopped up on the love drug, sitting with the girl accused of killing her friend’s cousin like they were talking about the weather.

  “So are you Mia or Emelia?”

  Emelia let out a wry smile. “Both. Emelia is my name. Mia was what I wrote under as a reporter.”

  “Caldwell?”

  “My mother’s maiden name.”

  “Huh.” Allie didn’t say anything more. Just sat there, staring at the stars as if she had all the time in the world. Or was a Michelangelo statue. The only thing that gave her away was a slight shiver in the moonlight.

  “Want to tell me what just happened?” Allie’s tone was casual. Anyone else would have been burning up with curiosity, already pumping her for all the details.

  “How do you do that? Make it sound like you really don’t care one way or the other?”

  “Oh, I care. I also know what it’s like to have a hurt so deep that just talking about it feels like ripping open the wound again. When Victor called you Mia, I could see on your face that you do too.”

  “I never, ever meant to hurt her. If I’d had any idea . . .” Emelia’s voice trailed off. It wasn’t entirely true. She may not have meant to hurt Anita, but no one could become the kind of reporter she’d been without knowing the impact they could have on people’s lives.

  “Anita had been unwell for a long time.” Allie shifted in her seat.

  “Did you know her?”

  “I met her once when she was back here visiting. In passing. I’d just arrived in England. It was a month or so before she died.” Allie drummed her fingers on the table for a few seconds, thinking. “She came to a quiz night at the pub. She’d had too much to drink. One second she was flying high, the next crying her heart out. Peter mentioned later on she’d had addiction issues since she was a teenager. Had been in and out of rehab for years, but the family had managed to keep it quiet. Protected her wholesome image. I remember thinking that you could have all the beauty, brains, and money in the world, but it really didn’t matter if you were hooked on booze, or drugs, or whatever your vice might be.”

  “I wasn’t even there that night because of her. It was just pure chance that she was there. I’d heard a rumor that CeCe McCall might be there.” But the A-list starlet was nowhere to be seen when Emelia had arrived.

  She took a deep breath. “Anita was in the VIP room.”

  The scene she would never forget. She could still close her eyes and hear the thump of the bass in the song that was playing, the darkness splintered by the strobe light, the crush of bodies, alcohol on people’s breath, guys getting closer to her than required as they squeezed past. And then there Anita was, snorting up a line of cocaine that was being cut for her by Victor. No different from half the room. Almost everyone snorted, swallowed, or shot something in those rich partycircles.

  “It wouldn’t have been a story if she was anyone else. But when you’re engaged to an heir to billions who’s a famous antidrug campaigner and you’ve been sold as his straitlaced fiancée who’s committed to clean living and yoga? That’s a story.” Especially when you were in possession of a high-tech camera that could take a photo in the dreariest of nightclubs and turn it as clear as day.

  “Two days later, the front page of the Star Tribune was my photo of her snorting cocaine through a hundred-dollar bill. The day after that, Logan announced the end of their engagement, and the morning after that she was dead.” The girl had enough booze and pills in her system to take out an NFL linebacker. The speed at which everything had unfolded still, almost a year later, left Emelia dizzy.

  “No one knew whether to call it a tragic accident or suicide. I didn’t go in to work for three days. When I returned, there was an email from Anita from hours before she died. All it said was, ‘This should make you happy. See you on the other side.’ ”

  Against her boss’s wishes, Emelia had turned it over to the police. Then she’d quit. Then she’d decided to come here, figuring she might as well use the one thing her mother had left her—British citizenship—to run away, to try reinventing herself.

  “So. There you have it. She’s dead because of me.”

  Allie propped her elbows on the table between them and leaned forward. “No. She’s dead because she had a lot of issues. She’s dead because she decided to make some poor decisions. You can’t take her choices onto you. Sure, your story didn’t help, but she was heading for disaster when I met her. If it wasn’t your story, it would’ve been something else.”

  “Or it might not have been. She might’ve gotten some help. Sorted herself out. She was only twenty-four. Plenty of people make bad decisions in their twenties and turn out to be fine.”

  “Or she might’ve walked out of another nightclub one night smashed out of her mind, gotten into her car, and plowed into an innocent family. Ever think about that? Ever wonder who might be alive right now because you did expose her?”

  Emelia stared at Allie, struck dumb. The thought had never crossed her mind, the idea that the horrible events that had led to Anita’s taking her life might have preempted something even worse. It bounced around her brain, trying to find a place to settle, but it was too crazy.

  Allie ran a hand through her hair, grimacing as she hit a bobby pin. “Here’s the thing. You’ll never know which it would’ve been. Probably neither. Probably something completely different. But you can’t carry Anita around with you for the rest of your life. You have to forgive yourself for your part. As brutal as it sounds, she is dead. But you are not. If you carry this around with you your whole life, this takes out two people, not one.”

  “How did you get so wise?”

  Allie smiled wryly. “By making some really, really bad choices. But here’s the thing, Em. God can find a way to redeem even the worst of choices, if you let Him. If I hadn’t made mine, I never would have met Jackson. If Jackson hadn’t made his, he never would have met me.”

  “You really think God cares about you that much?”

  “I know He does.”

  Emelia turned the concept over in her mind, trying to reconcile this idea of a God who could take the worst things in your life and use them to lead you to something good. But she couldn’t. It clashed so deeply with the God she thought existed. If there was one at all. The one who’d left her abandoned as a little girl. Who’d let her get cheated out of her dream career. Who’d never done anything for her. Everything she had was something she’d achieved for herself. “Peter hates me.”

  “He sure might think he does right now. But he doesn’t. He will be deeply hurt. Anita was like the little sister he never had. He was distraught when she died. It hasn’t even been a year.”

  “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “You probably can’t.”

  Truer words were never stated. Emelia glanced to her right and saw Jackson standing just inside the patio doors, waiting for his bride. She tilted her head in his direction. “You need to go.”

  Allie looked over her shoulder, and her face lit up even as she said, “It’s okay, he can wait.”

  “No! Go!”

  Allie gave her a long look. “You going to be okay? Call me if you need anything. Anything.”

  Emelia managed a half-convincing laugh. “I’ll be fine. I am not going to call you on your honeymoon!”

  Allie got to her feet, silk rustling around her. “I love my husband, but three weeks of talking to just each other will drive us both batty. I giv
e us three days before one of us is annoyed about the other squeezing the toothpaste wrong.” She leaned down to give Emelia a brief hug as she passed by. “I’ll see you when I get back. Hang in there. You never know what might happen.” And then she was gone in a whirl of cream and a hint of floral perfume.

  You never know what might happen. Well, it would take a miracle to make things right with Peter. And miracles never happened. Especially not for her.

  Forty

  EMELIA WALKED INTO THE OFFICE, everything aching from a sleepless night. In her purse sat her resignation letter. Neatly typed and dated. It was over.

  Entering her office for the last time, she strode around her desk and put her bag down. She hadn’t even bothered to bring a box. For the most part the room was as bare and impersonal as it had been the day she arrived. Opening the bottom desk drawer, she fished out a spare pair of heels and pantyhose she’d kept there for emergencies. Moving to the middle drawer, she grabbed a couple cans of tuna. Finally the top drawer. Two packs of gum and a couple of her own pens.

  That was it. All she had to show for the entirety of the seven months she’d worked at SpringBoard. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a fat folder that she’d spent all of Sunday working on. Inside it, sheets of A4 detailed everything anyone would need to know about the ball.

  The hard stuff was done. Anyone with half a brain could follow her checklist over the next two months for the tasks that remained.

  It would probably be Peter. Flipping open the cover, she uncapped a black pen, poised it over the page, and paused. Sighing. She put the cap back on. There was nothing she could say that would change anything. Everything she needed to know had been written across his face on Saturday night.

  “Write a novel over the weekend?” Elizabeth leaned against the doorway.

  One look at her steady, knowing eyes was all the confirmation she required. “I need to give you this.” Emelia plucked the envelope out of her purse and walked around the desk, holding it in front of her.

  Elizabeth looked at it but didn’t take it. “Why don’t we talk first. In my office.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

  Emelia followed her heels as they clicked down the corridor. Walking into Elizabeth’s office, she saw they weren’t alone. John Simons, the chair of the board, sat in a second chair that had been brought in.

  The door closed behind Elizabeth like a jail cell.

  “So.” The older man leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach. “Would you prefer to be called Mia or Emelia?”

  “Emelia, sir.”

  She looked to where Elizabeth had settled herself behind her desk. Emelia still held the envelope in her hand. She offered it to Mr. Simons.

  He also just looked at it. “What’s that?”

  “My resignation, sir. Effective immediately.”

  “We don’t want it.”

  He could not have shocked Emelia more if he’d taken a cattle prod to her. “You don’t?”

  “We don’t,” Elizabeth confirmed.

  “But I lied and I . . .” She trailed off.

  “Did you actually lie? Or did you just not tell us the whole truth?”

  “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. I knew you wouldn’t hire me if I did.”

  John nodded. “And you’re right.” He leaned forward, his chair creaking. “Peter called me yesterday morning. I’ll be honest, when I heard what he had to say, my first instinct was to sack you on the spot. But Elizabeth and I had a long conversation last night and there was one question that we kept coming back to.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I read that SpringBoard was hemorrhaging donors. I just . . . I had to help.”

  “And we decided we want you to finish what you started.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Emelia.” Elizabeth spoke the words softly. “Anita would want you to do it.”

  Emelia looked at her kind eyes. “Really?”

  “She, more than anyone else, believed in second chances. She had her struggles but she was kind and generous. She would want you to have your second chance.”

  A tear tripped over Emelia’s cheek.

  “But you need to know something. Even if the ball is a huge success, even if you achieve what you came here to do, I don’t think you’re going to find the atonement you’re looking for here.”

  Forty-One

  EMELIA FINGERED THE SHIP IN her hands, holding it carefully as she examined it from all angles. It seemed perfect. Apart from the hairline crack running around the middle of the boat that couldn’t be completely hidden, you’d never have known it was the same one that had shattered on Peter’s floor.

  She nestled it back into the padded box that sat on the passenger seat of Allie’s car and drew in a deep breath. This wasn’t a big deal. She was just going to leave it on Peter’s doorstep. She’d checked the schedule, and he would still be at the rowing club for a couple of hours teaching. There was no chance he’d be home. She’d never met his roommate, so if he happened to be there, she could just give him the box and run.

  She climbed out of the car and crossed to the passenger side. Reaching in, she picked up the box and closed the door with a swing of her hip.

  Up the path, put it down, and get back to the car. The whole thing should take less than thirty seconds. She strode up the path, climbed the six steps to the front door, and paused.

  She’d decided not to leave a note with it because, really, what was there left to say?

  She rested her head for a second on the front door, only for it to swing open at her touch. “Argh!” She stumbled forward over the stoop, the box crushed to her chest.

  Hands grabbed her elbows, steadying her.

  Please let it be anyone but him. Please let it be anyone but him.

  The fingers released her arms like they were hot coals. “What are you doing here?”

  Of course it was. She chanced a glance up. “You look horrible.” It was true. He was even whiter than usual, never good for a redhead, with glazed eyes and a sheen across his forehead. “Are you okay?”

  “Thanks.” Even though he’d let go of her arms, the box was still wedged between them. “I have the flu. I heard footsteps and thought you were my Panadol and Gatorade delivery.

  “What are you—” His words ended as he saw into the box. “Is that my . . .” He trailed off as he studied the boat, then leaned down to look more closely.

  “I didn’t think you’d be home. I was just planning to leave it on your doorstep.” She pushed the box toward his torso so he was forced to take it, then stepped back.

  “I . . . don’t know what to say.” Placing the box on the hallway table beside them, he carefully lifted out the model and studied it. “How did you do this?”

  “I didn’t. But I found someone who could. It was precious to you, so I . . .” She trailed off too, unable to find words to bridge the distance her deceit had created.

  “Thank you.” His gaze softened for a second. “Um, I should probably put it back. My hands aren’t too steady at the moment.” He placed the boat back into its packaging before turning to face her again.

  “I’m sorry I ruined everything. I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry about Anita. More sorry than you could know.” The words tumbled out of her.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I should go.” She took a backward step toward the threshold.

  Feet pounded behind her. “Sorry I took so long. I ran into Brett in town—” An expletive. “What are you doing here?”

  Emelia closed her eyes for a moment. Seriously? Could she not catch a break? Not even when she was trying to do a good thing?

  Victor shouldered past her, pushing her into the door. Turning, he stood between her and Peter. “You’ve got some nerve coming here after what you did.”

  She was not taking this. She would silently take whatever Peter dished out, but she was not taking anything from Victor.

  “After what I did? Th
at’s a bit rich coming from you, of all people.”

  Victor flinched and turned a lighter shade. “You wrote the story. That’s what drove her to the edge.”

  “I didn’t know she had addiction issues. No clue about her being in and out of rehab. Unlike you. Great cousin you are.” She spat the word into his face.

  Over his shoulder she saw Peter’s face. Confused. Bewildered.

  Oh. Understanding hit. “He doesn’t know, does he?” She nodded her head at Peter.

  “What is she talking about?”

  “Nothing. You know you can’t trust a word Mia says.” Victor threw her name in with a sneer, but it was impossible to miss the desperation in his eyes.

  “It’s Emelia.” She said the words through gritted teeth.

  “What. Is. She. Talking. About.” Peter’s words came out staccato. Individual verbal bullets aimed at his brother.

  Emelia turned toward him. Poor guy. But since she had nothing to lose, she might as well tell him the whole ugly truth. “You want to hold me responsible for Anita’s death, I don’t blame you. I blame myself. But you might want to ask your brother who she was with that night. Who’s the owner of the hand in the photo that cut her line?”

  Who’s the owner of the hand in the photo that cut her line? Emelia’s words shot through Peter’s ears and into his heart like a laser.

  Worse. For everything she hadn’t told the truth about, he could tell by the look on her face that on this one thing—this one, life-changing thing—she was.

  Which meant . . . He grabbed Victor by his shoulder and swung him around. “You. Were. There.” He could barely get the words out through his clenched jaw.

  All the holes he had dug his brother out of. All the times he had taken the blame for him to try to keep his name in the clear. The lifetime’s worth of guilt Victor had heaped on him and he’d accepted, for the accident that had marred his brother’s face forever.