She supposed that later, eventually, she’d call to give her mother the news. Somebody would be glad. Not happy—Linnea had come to realize that Mom never really was. This would be more in the nature of an acidly pleased “See, I was right and you were wrong” moment. Linnea didn’t want to tell her, but how could she not without keeping Hanna from her grandparents?
Sometimes she thought that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but not right now. Hanna had lost so much. And Mom was better with her than she was with Linnea, perhaps because Hanna was Finn’s child.
Knowing that hurt, too. Everything hurt these days: seeing herself so painfully true, thinking about her mother and aching to ask why, living with Hanna’s new grief and—worst of all—imagining years of these child exchanges with Matt, loving him, watching him lose any interest in her.
When I could have had him.
Except, without love, she wouldn’t ever really have, would she?
As if protecting herself from blows, she curled into a fetal position on her bed and cried until she ran out of tears.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MATT SAT IN HIS CAR OUTSIDE Linnea’s house, fighting for the will to get out and walk up to her door. This was killing him.
He anticipated seeing Linnea, and he dreaded it. Every damn time, he’d think, maybe today her face would soften with a smile for him. Maybe the strain would evaporate, as if it had never been, and they’d find themselves talking easily. Maybe one of these times she’d suggest they go kick a soccer ball around and, in circling to the beginning, he would have another chance.
Uh-huh. Maybe that would make it worse. Because her easy friendship wasn’t enough. Would never be enough.
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat. At least today he was invited in. Linnea was having a birthday party for Hanna, one of two; the other, of course, was at her grandparents’ house, and he was emphatically not invited to that one. So today, for the next hour, say, he would have his chance to sneak under Linnea’s guard.
A month had passed since she’d broken off their engagement. She had been, as always, generous when he asked for time with Hanna, who had spent three of the intervening four weekends with him. He’d taken her out for pizza two Wednesdays in a row. He’d even sat beside Linnea in the school cafeteria transformed into an auditorium for the entire student body to demonstrate their musical skills for their proud parents. The youngest grades had sung, one class had played kazoos, the fifth-grade band played their cacophonous first concert for their parents. He and Linnea had managed to chat, civil adults that they were, and Hanna’s joy afterward at finding them together had made him sick to his stomach.
He had moments when he thought he should contest custody now, not wait for Finn’s trial. He couldn’t walk away from Hanna, but they couldn’t go on the way they were, either.
He couldn’t.
But, of course, if Hanna lived with him, her aunt Linnea would have visitation rights, and he’d still have to see her. That, and live with having devastated her by snatching the one person he knew she loved.
The only positive news was that a date had been set for the trial, and a far sooner one than Matt had been led to expect. The son of a bitch would face a judge and jury only six months after killing Tess, rather than the year or more that seemed to be the norm. The unusual dispatch had been Finn’s doing, not the prosecutor’s; still arrogant, he assumed he’d walk out of that courtroom free and clear, having been judged innocent, and take up his life where he’d left off.
Without Tess, of course, but Matt couldn’t imagine that his brother-in-law mourned Tess at all. Even in his own mind, Finn undoubtedly blamed the whole disaster on her. After all, nothing was ever his fault.
Matt intended to be present every goddamn day of that trial. He wanted the jury to see his rage. He was all Tess had had, and except for taking care of Hanna, this was the last thing he could do for her. He’d accepted his job on the proviso that he be able to take a leave when the trial began.
Finally, with a groan, Matt made himself grab the wrapped gift he’d brought and get out. Earlier, Linnea had taken Hanna and the three friends she’d chosen to invite to see a movie. He was here for the cake and ice cream and presents.
He’d no sooner let the brass knocker fall on Linnea’s front door than Hanna flung open the door. Wearing brand-new jeans embroidered with pink unicorns and a fluffy pink sweater over a white turtleneck, she was buzzing with birthday excitement. He didn’t remember Tess ever being so girlie, but maybe he was forgetting.
“Uncle Matt!” Hanna accepted his hug, then tugged him into the living room where the other little girls were giggling and a heap of unopened presents sat on the coffee table.
Linnea stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Matt, thank goodness. Will you give me a hand?”
He couldn’t seem to get over his reaction to her. Damn it, she was as sexy in chinos and a plain, aqua-blue turtleneck as she had been in a formfitting black cocktail dress and spike heels. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the surge of desire and followed her to the kitchen. At least she’d said thank goodness in connection with him.
Looking frazzled, she said, “Will you light the candles while I get the ice cream? If I carry the cake, will you take pictures? I want to be sure to get one of Hanna blowing out the candles.”
“Matches?” he asked, studying the cake with white frosting and pink and purple confetti.
“I just got them out…” Distracted, she turned in a circle, then pounced when she spotted them on the counter. “The camera—”
“Is here on the table.” He took the matches from her and lit the first one. “How was the movie?”
Carton of ice cream in hand, she grimaced. “Awful, actually, but they were happy.” Her eyes met his. “Ready?”
Trying hard to be unthreatening, he smiled agreeably, even as he marveled that he could. “Ready.”
The girls all squealed when Linnea appeared with the cake, the candles flickering as she walked. Matt snapped pictures, of her leading the birthday song as she set the cake on the coffee table, of Hanna’s glowing face as she made a wish. He caught her huge puff and her triumph when she blew out all seven candles.
He continued to watch Linnea covertly as she sliced cake and added scoops of vanilla ice cream, as she teased the girls and deftly swept away the plates when they’d eaten as much as they could. Wrapping paper flew, and Hanna appeared delighted with her haul of Barbie dolls, a plastic horse statue with flowing pink—what else?—mane and tail, glittery fingernail polish and a jewelry-making kit. Linnea’s smile for the girls was so natural, he ached for one aimed at him.
There would be more gifts from the grandparents and her father tomorrow, he knew. Lucky Linnea who got to do this twice. Or perhaps Grandma was baking the second cake. Matt wondered what Finn’s mood was, with opening day of his trial only weeks away. Matt hoped like hell that doubt was beginning to eat at his gut, maybe spiced with fear. He hoped Finn had ugly nightmares.
Eventually the doorbell started ringing as parents arrived to pick up their offspring. Linnea chattered and laughed with them, too, and with a mere touch on the shoulder had Hanna thanking her guests for coming and for the presents.
His welcome had run out, too, Matt realized. He wouldn’t abuse it, not with Linnea’s accusation that he overwhelmed her running in a nonstop loop in his memory. Hanna thanked him for his present and said wistfully that she wished he could come to Grandma and Granddad’s tomorrow, too.
“How come you never do?” she asked, her forehead crinkling. “You used to always be there at Christmas, and Grandma and Granddad were, too.”
He and Linnea exchanged a look. Hanna had never asked before, seeming to take for granted that the two sides of her family were isolated from one another.
“Ah…that was when your mom was alive. Having your mom and dad married made us all family.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Linnea jerk. His voice roughened. “It’s different now.”
; “Oh.” Puzzlement still showed on her face. “But even if Mommy—” She caught herself. “You’re still my uncle. Aren’t you?”
“That’s right.” God. How did he say I hate your father’s guts? And don’t think much of your grandparents, either?
Linnea said it before him, crouching to eye level. “Uncle Matt loved your mom. It’s hard for him, while your dad is accused of being the one who hurt her.”
“Oh.” Hanna looked down. “I heard Grandma and Dad talking. They said that after the…the…”
“Trial?” Linnea prompted gently.
“Uh-huh. The trial. They said everyone will know it wasn’t Daddy’s fault. And that I could live with him again.”
Rage ignited in his chest, a hell of a lot bigger flame than her birthday candles. He must have made an involuntary move, because Linnea flicked a warning glance at him.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked, in the same quiet, nonjudgmental voice.
Almost inaudibly, Hanna said, “I want to stay with you, Aunt Linnie. And Uncle Matt.”
“I’m hoping you can, honey.” Linnea kissed her cheek. “Now, say goodbye to Uncle Matt, then we’d better clean up the wrapping paper before Spooky decides to investigate and gets tangled in ribbon. Or samples the cake!”
A tiny giggle escaped Hanna. She hugged Matt, some tension still in her body, but her birthday ebullience returning, too.
“I love you,” he said.
She hugged him again, harder, and whispered urgently, “I love you, too, Uncle Matt.”
Letting her go was difficult. Here he was again, he thought bleakly, lurking around the edges of their lives.
Hanna headed to the living room. Linnea didn’t immediately follow.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For snapping a few pictures?”
“For not saying what you were thinking. You could taint Hanna’s feelings about her grandparents—and her dad even more!—but you haven’t.”
“She’s six years old.” He remembered the candles. “Seven now. All of this is traumatic enough for her.”
“Yes, but you have reason to be terribly angry.” Her eyes searched him, as if in perplexity. “It tells me you really do love her.”
Abruptly pissed, he said, “You thought I didn’t?”
“No.” She made an abortive gesture. “No, I know you did. It’s just…Most people I know wouldn’t have let that stop them.”
Her mother and brother, she meant. Her father…who knew? Linnea judged based on her family, logically enough. How, he wondered, not for the first time, had she ended up so different from any of them?
“I won’t use her.”
She gave him a funny, crooked smile, and he thought he saw a sheen of tears in her eyes. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt, once, to say thank you.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said, frowning. “You’re so good with her. For her. It’s because of you that she’s emerging from her grief and confusion. I should be thanking you, not the other way around.”
“She needs us both.”
He spread his hands in agreement. If he’d opened his mouth, he would have said, There’s a way she could have us both—24/7. She knew it, was backing away with some alarm, as if she hadn’t anticipated this turn of the conversation.
“I’d better get to cleaning up.”
He nodded and turned away.
She was closing the door behind him when she said, “Matt?”
He paused.
“You know Finn’s trial starts on the twenty-seventh?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be going?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, letting some of his anger leak into his voice. “You?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “I don’t know. I’m sure Mom and Dad will be.”
“I’ll do my best to avoid them.” He could promise that much.
Linnea only nodded, said goodbye and shut the door.
He’d give a great deal to know whether her feelings about the upcoming trial were mixed at all. Did Linnea love her brother? Maybe foolishly, he’d assumed not. She’d said enough things to make him sure she didn’t like Finn. But love was way more complicated. They’d grown up together, presumably played together, squabbled together, like any other siblings. Yeah, he realized, not happy with his own conclusion, she almost had to be confused, her determination to protect Hanna at odds with instinctive loyalty to family.
He hoped she had someone she could talk to. He wished that someone was him. Not that he could be neutral. But for her sake, like Hanna’s, he’d have done his damnedest to give her what she needed.
Matt was slammed by an unpleasant thought. Had he tried, when they were engaged? Or had he been focused entirely on what he needed?
He didn’t like the answer.
LINNEA ATTENDED THE opening day of her brother’s trial, sitting beside her parents behind Finn and his phalanx of attorneys. Matt arrived as she was sitting down. He gave her, then her parents, an ironic tip of his head before he sat behind the prosecutor, who turned around to speak to him.
Cheeks burning, Linnea stared straight ahead. She hated being here, dressed up as though this were a job interview, but really so she could play her part in saying to the jury, See what a lovely family Finn has? How absurd to say he could be a murderer.
Finn had greeted them all with big smiles and hugs. Linnea stood stiff in his embrace. Her stomach churned, and she had a dizzying moment of…something rather like film being double exposed. Her big brother, patiently talking her down from a tree she’d climbed only to impress him with her daring. What an odd image to come to her now—his face tilted up, what seemed terrifyingly far below her—his voice steady and calm.
“Lower your left foot to the next branch, Linnie. Yes, like that, but a little to the right. It’s a good, solid…Yes! Okay, now your left hand. See that smaller branch, right by your shoulder?”
He hadn’t once demonstrated any exasperation with her. She thought he’d been genuinely scared that she’d fall. But somehow he had made her think she could do it. If she could get up, she could get down, and she had. He hadn’t even told Mom later.
But the other Finn, the handsome man sitting in front of her, was something else. He murmured to his defense attorney, anger in every rigid line of his body, his tone impatient because he must hate having to depend on someone else, someone he’d believe wasn’t his equal in ability. No one ever was. She saw the notes in front of him, saw his quick, irritated shake of the head deny some possible strategy because it wasn’t his.
She didn’t like being around that Finn, the controlling, manipulative man her big brother had become. She’d been on the receiving end of his temper enough times to believe he could have killed Tess. Linnea quailed, but Tess had always gone toe-to-toe with him, earning his respect but also enraging him. Oh, yes, if she said the wrong thing, he could have picked up that heavy coffee table and swung it at her. Not intending to kill her, no, Linnea didn’t believe that, but not considering any consequences, either. His entire life, Finn had slithered free of any unfortunate aftereffects of his own behavior.
Partly, she remembered, because he was such a good liar. He could radiate outraged sincerity.
And she was tacitly supporting him by sitting here.
Listening to the prosecutor’s opening statement was excruciating. It painted Finn as a serial abuser, claiming he’d sent Tess to the hospital before. Fury flashed on his face, and he wrote something for his attorney in slashing script so fierce, it must have penetrated to imprint the entire tablet of paper below the sheet he wrote on.
The prosecutor walked the jury through the awful fight that had led Finn to smash his wife’s skull, then described him in the aftermath—collected enough to place the coffee table upright and aligned so that it would look as if Tess had fallen into it, before he called 911.
The defense attorney stood in turn and described Tess as volatile, impulsive, often clumsy. Was it true tha
t she’d broken her arm and collarbone both in the past couple of years? he asked.
“Sure, but there’s never been any suggestion that her husband caused her injuries. This was a successful, strong-minded woman, yet not once did she so much as hint to doctors, friends or family that Finn had raised a hand to her.”
No, he told the jury, the prosecution was trying to support their flimsy case with unprovable insinuations. Finn and Tess had exchanged words. Finn, in his anger, had kicked the coffee table over. In a rage, his wife had flung herself at him but tripped on the rug and gone headfirst into the overturned coffee table. Distraught, Finn had knelt at her side and pushed the table away to minister to her.
“Yes,” the attorney said, prowling in front of the jury box, “Mr. Sorenson thinks he picked up the table and righted it while he waited for the police. It was…instinctive. One of those things you do while your mind is engaged in horror. He honestly doesn’t remember what he did during the ten minutes between his call and the first unit arriving.”
Linnea listened carefully. At the end, she thought, It sounds so plausible. And—with a chill under her breastbone—I don’t believe it. Any of it.
It seemed hard, suddenly, to breathe. Court was being recessed until morning, but she couldn’t stand to sit here for another minute. She had the sudden, awful realization that the press would likely be waiting to interview them outside the courthouse. It was Finn they wanted, but they’d expect quotes from his family members, too. What would she say?
Finn was turning to speak to them again, and on the other side of the courtroom she saw Matt standing and shrugging on his overcoat. To her mother, Linnea said, “I can’t stay, Mom. I have to get Hanna.” She fled before other spectators had a chance to crowd the aisle.
She heard her name being called behind her, but she kept going, her steps faster and faster. Down the hall, out of the courthouse, to the parking garage where she was nearly running. Inside her car, she locked the doors and sat gasping, not even understanding why she was so upset, only knowing she couldn’t come again, listen to the evidence being carefully laid out to prove her brother guilty, not only of rage so terrible he could kill, but also of cold-bloodedly lying ever since with no apparent cost to him.
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