Unlawfull Alliances
Page 24
“She loved me,” he said on a whisper. “She told me she did. And my eyes. She loved my blue eyes.”
Yes. They reminded her of the one man she had allowed herself to love. “Daniel Walters has blue eyes,” I said.
My husband dared to look up at me as I stood motionless across the room from him. “She needed me. She really needed me.” He almost smiled at the memory. “It felt good being needed, protecting her. But in the end, I failed her, didn’t I? He got to her. He destroyed her.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to take Matt’s baseball bat from the hall closet and hit him with it, keep hitting him with it. But the truth was, there was nothing I could do to punish him any more than he was punishing himself. He would have to live with the guilt of his part in Amy’s death.
“I could never have left you for her, Jenny. Never.” Was that supposed to be some kind of consolation? “I couldn’t be myself with her. Not really.”
“Sounds like a healthy relationship to me,” I said, fully aware that the sarcasm was a defense mechanism so that I didn’t have to feel. I blinked and tears filled my eyes It was okay to be vulnerable. “Why couldn’t you be yourself?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“She wanted a man who would always be strong. I tried to be that for her. She needed that.”
“No, what she needed was to find the strength within herself.”
He nodded, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his shirt. “You’re right.”
“How did—how did your affair start?”
“I guess I was in the right place at the right time.”
Or the wrong place, the wrong time.
“I found her in tears at the club. She’d had a fight with Anthony. She wanted out of the relationship. Even before she and I— But he wouldn’t let her out.”
“Was that what happened that night at your office party, when I found her crying in the women’s room? Had she had a fight with Anthony that night too?”
Joe nodded. “Yes, only it was worse. She told him she would divorce Scott and leave, but he threatened to make sure Scott got the baby. He said no court in Hell would let her keep her child, as unstable as she was. He would have found a way to have her declared an unfit mother.” As he finished speaking, his eyes met mine again. He stood up and came across the room to where I was standing. “I don’t want to lose you, Jenny.”
“It’s too late, Joe. It’s way too late.” The relief I felt when I spoke those words was incredible. Had I wanted this, even helped create it?
“We can work through it together. I’ll make it up to you. I still love you, Jenny.”
Was this similar to the conversation Jim and Dana had had? When he finally told her of his affair, she had forgiven him. She knew he loved her, and she loved him. But there was a difference.
Words ran through my mind, words to invoke guilt and pain and more guilt, but I didn’t speak them. I didn’t need to. He had enough to last him a lifetime, between betraying his wife and failing to protect his lover.
“It’s not only about your betrayal, Joe. It’s a lot more than that. Right now you feel like a stranger to me.” I didn’t know if that would change. What disturbed me the most was that he had not had the courage or the decency to come forward with the information he knew about Amy’s murder. To protect himself, he had remained silent.
And why not? He was safe. Anthony had killed Jake Holbrook, believing and letting everyone else believe that he was the other man in Amy’s life. The only people besides the murderer who could expose the truth had died. Except Joe.
“Jenny—”
I took a step away from him, more than an arm’s distance, or a violin’s length. “She did us a favor, really. She forced us to look at our marriage, our relationship.” He started to protest, but I put up a hand to stop him—the gesture he had used so often with me. “No. It’s time we face the truth, Joe.”
“Please, Jenny. We can work this out. We’ll get help, counseling. Whatever you want. I’ll do anything . . . ”
But I had stopped listening. My thoughts had moved off into the future, into a daydream of a beautiful old house on an island, not too far away.
* * *
“I still can’t imagine her with him,” Scott said.
I could relate. Only the him I was thinking of was different from Scott’s. I had stopped off to say good-bye, and to tell him to come visit when he needed to get away.
He shook his head as if to clear it of his thoughts. “Why, Jenny? Why did she choose my father—Anthony—over me?” His sigh was ragged before he answered his own question. “I guess I was right. I was too weak for her, wasn’t I?”
“No. You’re the strong one, not Anthony. It takes a great deal of strength and courage to allow yourself to feel.”
We sat together in silence for a while.
“What will you do now?” I asked him.
He shrugged, cuddling his son just a little closer, and said, “Go on with my life.” He smiled at me. “How about you, Jenny?”
“I think I’ll create a new one.”
I knew I would have to find a place of forgiveness in my heart. That is where the healing begins. But first, for a while, I would let myself feel the pain and the anger.
I left Scott’s and headed for Meredith’s. I found her in the studio, throwing a vase. She didn’t stop. She looked up and smiled and nodded at my favorite wheel, but I shook my head. She abandoned the vase, turned off the wheel, wiped her hands on her apron, and came over to where I was standing.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re here to tell me something I don’t want to hear?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Are you sure, Jenny? There’s no way you can work it out?”
I shook my head. “It’s time to stop holding on to who we were in the past and let ourselves become who we are now.”
Why had it taken me so long to realize this? And why had it taken me so long to see the truth? I suppose it had something to do with that all too familiar denial. The irony of this did not escape me.
“I’ll miss you,” Meredith said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
“I know. But when you tire of city life and want to let down your hair just a little bit, you’ll come visit me on the island. And I’ll be down here quite a bit. My son and my father are here. And my friend.”
We hugged good-bye. I didn’t mind the clay on my jeans and tie-dyed shirt. I didn’t mind it at all.
* * *
“Jenny, are you there?” blasted through my answering machine. I hurried into the den and picked up the phone that I had left until last to pack. I was smiling. I had known it was Charlie on the first ring. Now that the blinders were off and I had pulled myself out of denial, I had a feeling my intuition would be less muddled and more trustworthy.
“Hey, Charlie. I’m just on my way out. I’m hoping to catch an early ferry over to the island.”
“Will you be all right, luv?”
“I think so.”
“Anything you want me to tell the bairns when I see them?”
“That I love them. Very much. Are you sure you want to break the news to them, Charlie? Joe said he would call them.”
“I think it’s better in person, from an objective party.”
“I agree, but I’m not sure I’d call you objective.”
He laughed his husky and familiar laugh, then said, “I tried to like him, Jenny, I really did.”
“I know that. And I appreciate it.”
“By the way, I talked to Malcolm a few minutes ago. He just arrived back in town.”
“Did you tell him about Joe and me?”
“Aye, I did.”
“What did he say?” What was this? The student not wanting disapproval from her professor, even a professor from twenty years ago? Conditioning dies hard.
“To tell you the truth, Malcolm didn’t seem all that surprised. Said he never did see how a McNair and a Campbell could get
along.”
I laughed. It felt good. Charlie was right. I needed more laughter in my life. “Sounds like MacGregor.”
“Aye, and he says you owe him a dinner. Is that so?”
“He’s the one who owes me the dinner. I just agreed to go. But he’ll have to come to the island if he wants to make good on my promise.”
“Somehow I don’t think that will be a problem, Jenny darlin’, no problem at all.”
– THE END –
Felicity Nisbet is a native Californian, but when she moved to an island in the Pacific Northwest she fell in love with rainy days and the island lifestyle of reading and writing by candlelight and depending on a woodstove during power outages. She also writes children’s books, contemporary fiction, and adult romances.
The Jenny McNair
Cozy Mystery Series
Book #1 - Unlawful Alliances
Book #2 - Winnie’s Web
Book #3 - Three Dog Island
Book #4 - Saving Sharkey