From This Day Forward (32 page)

"What are you talking about?" The blood seemed to drain from her body, and she waited in breathless silence.

"Yeah, now you're afraid. Maybe you're smarter than I gave you credit for."

"Who... who did you kill?"

"He was always bigger than me," Jason murmured, his gaze distant as if he'd left her and traveled back through time to his boyhood, "even to the last. I was a tall kid, but I was very skinny. It didn't matter. He was drunk. I pushed him. He fell and hit his head on the edge of an ax I'd been using earlier in the day. For a long time, I kept searching my memory, wondering if somehow subconsciously I'd put that ax there on purpose. I killed my own father."

"It was an accident," she said, her voice trembling.

"It doesn't matter. He's no less dead than he would have been had I killed him intentionally. My rage got control of me. That's why I came here, don't you understand? So I couldn't hurt anyone else!"

"No!" Caroline cried sharply. "You can lie to yourself, Jason, but not to me. You've hidden yourself away in this jungle to escape a world you don't understand. It's not hurting someone else that frightens you so much, it's being hurt."

"I don't have to listen to this!" He moved to leave again.

"Then run away again, Jason, it's what you do best!" He continued to walk away from her as if her words had no effect on him. Driven by desperation, she shouted, "You're a coward, Jason Sinclair!
You're afraid to care about anyone because you could be hurt."

"What do you know, really know, about me?" he asked, turning to glare at her. "Do you know what it's like to be hated by someone who's supposed to love and protect you? Do you know what it's like when even the place you live isn't safe? He'd come home drunk and fly into a rage about nothing—something I'd done or hadn't done or the way I looked at him. I never knew what would set him off. He'd beat me until I nearly blacked out. Sometimes I was afraid he'd never stop. If I tried to defend myself, it only made him madder."

She tried to touch him, but he shrugged her away.

"He hired me out to work in a sugar factory when I was eleven so I could supply him with money to buy whiskey and women. I didn't go to school. I'd work in that boiler room for fourteen hours a day, stoking the fires under the kettles or turning the handle so the sugar wouldn't stick and burn. If I got home later than he thought I should, he'd beat me. If I didn't bring home enough money, he'd beat me."

The beginnings of tears burned behind Caroline's eyes at the image his words evoked. "Jason, I wish I could take away your pain."

"Well, you can't," he said with a great sigh that seemed torn from his very soul. "You never could. It's my own hell."

"What did your mother do?"

"Do?" he asked with a laugh. "She hid and hoped he wouldn't get tired of beating me and turn on her."

"She didn't try to stop him?"

"Like I said, you don't understand. My father was a very big man, big and mean. No one messed with Cullen Sinclair. What could my mother have done to stop him?"

"I don't know, Jason," she said, absently caressing her swollen stomach. "I only know that if anyone did that to my child, I'd have to try and stop them."

Without warning, Jason grabbed her by the shoulders, his hands biting painfully into her flesh, his eyes glowing with fury.

"Don't you dare judge my mother! You don't know what it's like to be terrorized night and day. I tried to fight back once when I was thirteen and he broke my nose. Look at this," he said, releasing her and pulling his shirt sleeve back to reveal a small circular scar on his wrist. "See, my father smoked a cigar, and one night he got really mad and...."

Caroline felt as if she might faint or be physically ill. Her head reeled and nausea rose in her throat. "Stop, please."

"Damn it!" he growled between clenched teeth, shaking her roughly. "That's not the worst he did, Caroline. Should I describe the scars he put on my mother or what he did to my sister?"

The pain caused by his grip on her shoulders receded, replaced by a hollow, agonizing ache deep inside her. Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she tried to pull away, tried to flee from the bitter hurt in his voice and his uncompromising words. Finally he released her and she fell away, sobbing brokenly.

"You feel guilty because your sister killed herself and you couldn't stop her."

"Shut up," he snarled, but Caroline couldn't stop herself.

"You blame yourself," she went on, despite the mounting fury so plain in his features. "You couldn't even stop your father from hurting you."

"Shut up!"

"You hate yourself because you knew what was going on, and you were too afraid to try and stop him."

"Shut up!"

Caroline flinched, a gasp of horror welling up inside her as he drew back his hand and she closed her eyes, expecting to be struck, expecting the blow to knock her off her feet. Fear convulsed in her chest as she tried to brace herself for the pain. When it didn't come, she opened her eyes and saw her own horror reflected in his stunned eyes.

Jerking out of his grip, she backed away to the edge of the patio, then hurried as best she could toward her waiting cart.

She couldn't think straight, couldn't even contemplate what had just happened, not yet. She had to get away, that was all she knew. She had to get back to the house and... and...

Once settled into the cart, she shook out the reins and the horse bolted forward, jarring her, and the baby protested vehemently. A sob tore from her throat as she thought of the baby, her child. Was Jason like his father after all? Was he capable not only of harming her but of hurting their child as well?

For the first time she understood something of the unremitting terror that had been a part of Jason's childhood. She could flee back to the house, but there was no place to hide, no protector to run to because the one who was supposed to protect her had threatened her.

The pain Jason had carried in his heart all these years opened to her and she understood. And she also knew that she could not expose her child to that kind of life. She would not!

Rounding a curve in the path, Caroline drew back on the reins, slowing the horse to a walk. She was out of sight of the
beneficio,
and Jason hadn't come after her. Her body ached from the bouncing, jolting ride she'd just experienced, and she knew she couldn't keep it up all the way back to the house. For the sake of the baby, if not her own, she had to take her time. Besides, there were things to think about, decisions to be made. Whatever else happened, no matter how badly it hurt, she had to get away from this place.

Chapter Seventeen

Caroline watched as
the
muddy
riverbank littered with the corpses of trees moved slowly past. A lone heron searched the shallows for food, while tiny surface fish churned the water in the middle of the river, their silver bodies flickering brightly in the sunlight.

She gasped and ran a hand over her distended stomach. Bracing herself, she waited for the next movement, but the child inside her grew still once again. Smiling into the brilliant sunlight, she remembered the first time she'd felt the fluttering. Then it had been as faint as the butterflies she experienced as a child whenever she rode the train from New Orleans to Memphis with her father. But over the months, the movements had grown stronger, more unsettling.

She knew from her medical training that an active baby in the womb meant a better chance that it
would be born healthy, and she prayed that would be the case. She couldn't even contemplate the possibility that the baby she carried so close to her heart might not be perfect.

Something primitive and a bit frightening had taken control of her body. And as disturbing as the idea might be, it was also incredibly thrilling. Changes took place inside her every day, changes in her shape, her appetite, her energy reserves—changes over which she had no control, no choice. And the ultimate change would come when her body, acting on its own volition, expelled this child from her womb and
into the world. What a terrify
ingly savage thing!

"We'll get through it, you and I," Caroline whispered, caressing her rounded abdomen, pushing the stark fear out of her mind.

Tears threatened her control as the weight of loneliness crashed in upon her. She'd had no one to talk to about her joys and fears, no one but Ines, who had never experienced pregnancy. The other women on the
fazenda
had given advice and gifts, but for the most part they were strangers to her, acquaintances at best.

At first, she'd wanted to share her growing awareness of the life inside her with Jason, to make plans, to wonder together what their child would be like. Their child—hers and Jason's. But Jason had been so aloof, so distant, as if by ignoring her condition he could make it disappear.

Now she understood so many things. Jason was right. She hadn't considered the depths of the emotional scars such a childhood would leave—until that day at the
beneficio.

For more than a month now, she'd been reliving their last argument over and over in her mind. She'd contemplated Jason's revelations and considered how the things that had happened to him had shaped him into the man he was today.

She released a wretched sigh. He'd become a wraith during the past month, a phantom. From time to time she'd feel a prickling of sensation that told her he was nearby, but she never actually saw him.

Not sure what to say to him, she'd allowed him to withdraw. They both needed some time to sort out all the things that had passed between them. Perhaps they just couldn't live together.

He wanted this child; she'd seen the yearning in his eyes when he'd let down his guard. And yet, when she'd taken his hand and placed it on her stomach, he'd pulled away from her as if he couldn't bear to touch her, as if the very thought terrified him.

What did it matter now? She would not live the fearful life Jason and his family had endured, and she would not allow her child to do so either. She'd tried to reach him, tried every way she knew, and she'd failed. He had finally won. And so today she had boarded the mail boat as it docked at Jason's pier and sailed away, removing herself and her baby to safety.

Sniffing loudly, she went over her plan again in her mind. Within three weeks, she would be safely in Manaus. She'd wire Melanie for money. She hated to do so, but Melanie was her only hope, her only friend. She had enough money to survive in Manaus for a while, but time was not her ally. She would be able to go no farther before the baby was born.

Perhaps it had all worked out for the best, in some strange, unexpected way, she thought, as she watched the shore move swiftly past, the mail boat carrying her farther and farther away from her heart. She'd been so afraid of having this baby alone in the wilderness, now at least she would be in a city. Surely she would be able to locate a doctor.

If only...

Oh, she could go mad dwelling on the if onlys. If only she'd had more time.... If only she hadn't forced him into a corner time and again.... If only she'd allowed Jason to be Jason instead of trying to mold him into what she wanted him to be.

Caroline gazed around in dismay. She'
d been so
deep in thought
,
she hadn't noticed how dark the hazy afternoon sky had become. On all sides, the walls of vegetation receded into shadows. The cold slate-blue sky went suddenly purple and the boat's captain steered the craft toward the almost indiscernible bank to their left.

One crew member walked toward her across the deck as the rain began to fall, slowly at first, the violence of the storm increasing with every passing second. She reached the cover of the striped canopy just in time, just as the man she knew only as
Juao
reached her.

"The captain knows of a cabin where we can wait out the storm," he told her in impeccable English, his tone apologetic, his dark, bushy brows drawing together in a frown of regret.

As
Juao
bowed to her and moved toward the front of the boat, Caroline clung to one of the poles that held the awning in place. The boat pitched in the suddenly violent river. She could barely see in front of her now, and the savage pounding of the rain and the stench of sodden leaves and earth ravaged her senses, causing her to yearn for the safety of her rooms at
the
fazenda
.