Lone Star Lonely (18 page)

He was scared, plain and simply scared.

He reached down, his hand trembling, and
stroked Kirsten’s hair away from her face. She opened her eyes. Met
his. Frowned slightly. “Adam?”

“I changed my mind,” he said, very softly,
barely above a whisper, as he studied her dark lashes and the way
they brushed her cheeks when she blinked up at him.

“What?” She blinked the sleep haze from her
eyes and sat up, leaning on her elbow. “Changed your mind about
what, Adam?”

He tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I don’t
want to know this secret you’ve been keeping. Don’t tell me,
Kirsty,” he whispered, voice choked, throat tight. “I just don’t
think I want to know anymore. Maybe I don’t need to know.”

She closed her eyes very slowly, left them
closed for a long moment, and drew a deep breath. “You need to
know,” she said slowly. “It’s taken me a while to figure it out,
but you do. And I need to tell you. I owe you the truth, Adam. You
were right last night when you said it was…the only way out for
me.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I was
afraid you’d say something like that.”

“It might just be the only way out for you,
too,” she said, looking into his eyes again. “The only way you can
let go of whatever it is you think you feel for me and move on with
your life.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t try to make
it easier by telling yourself I’m imagining what I feel for you,
Kirsten, because we both know that’s a lie.”

“Is it?” She sat up straighter, brushed hay
from her hair and reached for her discarded T-shirt. Her bare skin
amber in the morning light, she slowly covered herself, and Adam
sighed softly as he looked on. “That’s what my father told my
mother once, you know,” she went on. “I was a kid. Wasn’t supposed
to be hearing their arguments.” She laughed bitterly. “Do you know
how many parents think their kids aren’t hearing their arguments?
What do they think, the sense of hearing develops only during
adolescence?”

Sensing this subject was important, that this
meant a lot to her and maybe had something to do with the two of
them now, Adam moved closer, sat down on a bale of hay and let her
talk it through. He didn’t know where this was leading, was half
afraid to follow her there. But he didn’t think he had a choice.
“What were they fighting about?”

She shook her head. “It was awful. Dad’s
heart was so bad, even then. Somehow he’d found out that Mother had
done…something in the past. Before they were married. And he kept
saying that he loved her, that it didn’t matter to him, that all he
wanted from her was the truth.” Kirsten’s lips thinned. “So she
gave him the truth.”

He could see the remembered pain in her eyes.
They were wide, pupils dilated as she remembered. “I was ten. I
remember sitting on the stairs, with my hands wrapped around two of
the spindles in the railing, and my face peering between them. Mom
and Dad were just below, in the living room. He was pacing. She was
sitting as still as a statue in the rocking chair. Just like stone.
I’ll never forget her face. She knew. I could see that she knew
what would happen. It was going to make a difference to him. And I
remember, even though I was only ten years old, I sat there
thinking as hard as I could at her,
Don’t tell him, Mama.
Whatever it is, just don’t tell him
.’’

Sniffling, Kirsten lowered her head, so Adam
could no longer see her eyes.

“But she told him anyway, didn’t she?” he
asked.

Head turned away, Kirsten nodded. “She told
him anyway. She said she’d been with another man while she was
engaged to marry Daddy. She said this other man had got her
pregnant. And that when Daddy had believed she was spending a
summer in Europe, she’d actually been out of town, making
arrangements to get rid of the unwanted child.”

Adam reached out, touched her face. “She
aborted the baby?”

“I don’t know. Those were the words she used.
Cold words that sent a chill right up my spine. ‘
Get rid of
it
.’ She didn’t elaborate on what had become of…my unborn
sibling. She never got the chance, really.”

Swallowing against the dryness in his
throat—part of his reaction to seeing Kirsten relive such a painful
experience—Adam squeezed her hand briefly.

She nodded and went on. “It was obvious my
father had known parts of this already. I don’t know how he found
out, but I think he knew who the man was. I never heard the name,
just Daddy, muttering, swearing, calling the man a bastard, using
other words I had never heard him use before.”

Adam lowered his head and brought her hand to
his lips. He wanted to kiss away the remembered pain, but he knew
he couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Kirsten.”

“Daddy was devastated. He just kept pacing,
faster and faster, and I could see his face going pale, and then
ashen. I could tell that something horrible was happening to him.
The way he kept yanking at his collar. The way the sweat popped out
on his face. Mama got up, went to him, asked what was wrong. And
Daddy just rolled his eyes back in his head and sank to the
floor.”

“My God,” Adam whispered. “It was his first
heart attack, wasn’t it?”

Kirsten nodded. “He’d been seeing a
cardiologist. We knew his heart was bad. Until then, he’d only had
a few episodes of angina. But this…it was massive. It did a lot of
damage, and he never really recovered from it.”

Adam could see it all so vividly in his mind.
Kirsten, small, innocent, seeing her hero fall like that. Her face
peering from between the spindles on the stairway, big brown eyes
stricken as she witnessed a nightmare that would bring an adult to
tears.

“I ran to him,” she said, her voice having
gone softer than the smallest whisper. “I went a little crazy just
then, I think. I kept screaming, shaking him, crying. I was
hysterical. And I shouted things at my mother. Things I never
should have said. Things no child should ever say, or even think of
saying, to a parent. I told her I hated her. I told her that this
was all her fault, that if my father died, I would never forgive
her.”

Tears flowed silently from Kirsten’s eyes
now. Slow and shiny as glycerin, they slid down her cheeks.

“She called an ambulance for my father. And
took me with her to the hospital. And she stayed…all night, she
stayed. But the minute the doctors told us that Daddy was going to
live, she left us there. And I never saw her again.”

Adam lowered his head. Such heartache was
tough to get past, tough to deal with. Tougher not to, though. “And
you blamed yourself for her leaving? Blamed it on the things you
had said to her?”

Kirsten looked him in the eyes, and hers were
red and wet. “For a while. But I realize now it wasn’t entirely my
fault. It wasn’t even entirely
her
fault. She made a mistake
in her past, and then she hid it from the man she loved. She knew
what was going to happen when she told him the truth. She’d always
known. And all those years they had together, she must have
realized that sooner or later the day would come when she would
have to tell him. It must have eaten away at her soul every minute
of every day. I just never realized that…until it happened to
me.”

“Kirsten—”

“I didn’t sleep with another man, or have a
child I never told you about, Adam. What I did was far worse. Far
worse. And I know, just as my mother knew, that when I tell you—”
sighing, she lowered her head “—it’s going to change everything.
The way you look at me. The way you feel about me. Everything.”

Drawing a deep breath, Kirsten got to her
feet. She seemed to test her balance, then touched her fingertips
gingerly to her bandaged head.

“Is it hurting again?” Adam asked. Maybe to
delay the inevitable. To change the subject. He wanted to keep on
insisting that whatever she was about to say would make no
difference to him, but he was afraid now. So afraid…that maybe it
would.

“It’s a lot better than it was last night.”
She reached for her jeans, stepped into them and pulled them up.
Already he could feel the distance yawning wider between them. She
seemed to be putting it there. Deliberately.

He watched as she tucked her shirt carefully
into her jeans, then zipped and buttoned them. She pulled on the
denim shirt then, rolling the sleeves, straightening the collar.
Then she finger-combed her hair. Adam thought that, if she could,
maybe she would be slapping on a coat of makeup right now, and
hiding herself behind some expensive designer suit.

He wished they could go back to last night.
Make that time go on longer. Forever, maybe. He wished he didn’t
have to face this thing, because he’d never known Kirsten to
exaggerate. He wished he had a cup of coffee. Or, better yet, a
stiff drink.

She finished doing what she could with her
hair and went still. Nothing more to do. No more time to kill. She
stood there staring at him for a moment, as if drinking in the
sight of him. And then she looked away from him and closed her
eyes. Took a deep breath. When the words came, they were forced,
clipped and short.

“I was fourteen. No driver’s license. No
clue. I took Daddy’s car without permission. Went joyriding. There
was an accident. It was my fault.”

Her jaw was tight as she spoke. He could
almost feel her jaw clenching between the words. Was that all? An
accident? For just an instant a hint of relief began to ease his
knotted muscles, despite the tension in her voice, her stance, her
very breath. She stood so still, so rigidly. She was like a
sculpture. Like the way she’d described her mother. Golden stripes
of sunlight crisscrossed her body in the middle of the dusty,
hay-strewn barn. Her hair was loose and flowing. But she stood
utterly still. Venus in blue jeans. And for just that brief instant
he thought that was all, and that it wasn’t as bad as she’d made
him believe.

“Fourteen?” he heard himself ask. “This
terrible secret you’ve been keeping happened when you were only
fourteen?”

She nodded. “Joseph Cowan was in the car
behind me with that odd, quiet driver of his…Phillip Carr. The two
of them rushed me away from the scene before I really even got it
clear in my head what had happened. By the time I did, I was at the
estate.”

So stiff. Forcing the words out as fast as
she could, barely pausing for a breath. “You left the scene?” Adam
asked. She didn’t seem to hear him.

“Joseph said I should forget it had ever
happened. He and Phillip had checked on the people in the other
car, and they told me they were fine. Shaken up, too shaken to
remember me…what I was driving or…or anything else…but otherwise,
fine. Joseph said there was no harm done. That he and Phillip would
take care of everything. Inside a few hours, my father’s car had
been repaired. It was as if nothing had happened, and Joseph took
me home. And I thought it really was for the best.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why
would a man like Cowan want to help a fourteen-year-old kid cover
up an accident?’’

She glanced at Adam briefly. “He knew what he
was doing. He knew who I was, who my father was. He and my
father…they never got along. But I didn’t know any of that at the
time. I just agreed, did what he said. Because of my father…his
heart, you know…. I thought it would be better for him if I just
went along with Joseph’s plan and acted like none of it had ever
happened. I kept picturing myself telling him that I’d taken his
car out and caused an accident. Picturing his face going gray and
sweaty like it had four years before, when my mother had damned
near killed him with her confession….”

She finally stopped for a breath. Adam moved
closer to her. The relief he’d felt before was fading. Because she
wasn’t finished. He knew she wasn’t. The worst was yet to come. It
flickered like the flames of hell in her eyes. She was still
dreading the end.

“There…has to be more to it than that,” he
said softly.

She said nothing.

“Kirsten?”

She stared into his eyes for a long, tense
moment, and he could almost see her heart breaking. No. It had
already broken…a long, long time ago. He was only just now
identifying that change in her once lively eyes. “Tell me the
rest.”

She had to look away. Whatever it was, it was
bad enough that she couldn’t tell him while looking him in the
eye.

Dust mites danced in the sunbeams between
them. Like the small lies that had kept them apart all this
time.

“Joseph lied to me that day. I never knew.
Not until years later. After we’d moved here to Quinn, my daddy and
I. After I’d met you and fallen…fallen in love with you.” She bit
her lip. “I never learned what really happened on that stretch of
Highway 5 until our wedding day.”

Her words shook Adam to the marrow. But he
didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just stood still in the hay,
waiting.

“Joseph came to my house that day. Daddy had
suffered a minor episode with his heart the night before, and he
was resting at the hospital. I was shaken up about that. I hadn’t
called you yet to tell you about it, because Daddy had insisted I
not interrupt the bachelor party your brothers were throwing for
you over at La Cucaracha. I was about to call you, to tell you
about it. And that Daddy probably wouldn’t be able to come to our
wedding, but he was insisting we go on with it all the same. But
then Joseph came. Didn’t knock, just walked in. I was standing in
my bedroom in front of a triple mirror I’d bought just so I could
be sure I looked all right. I was wearing my wedding gown. I
looked….” A sigh stuttered from her lungs. “Oh, Adam, I wish you
could have seen me. Daddy was okay. His doctors had assured me it
had been a minor episode. And I was about to live out my fantasy. I
was more alive, standing there, wearing that gown, thinking of the
day ahead…than I’d ever been in my life. And far more than I have
been since.”