The Beautiful Daughters (34 page)

David wouldn't look at her. “What do you know about love?”

Harper was stunned speechless. Her blood ran cold, her heart thumped painfully in her chest. It sounded to her like a door closing, her faith splitting open on the rough fringe of a reality she didn't want to accept.

“That's not love,” she managed. “Hurting Adri has nothing to do with love.”

“And yet, you hurt her all the time, don't you? She just doesn't know it.”

“She will soon enough,” Harper said. She wasn't sure if she meant it or was bluffing. “I'm surprised Victoria hasn't enlightened her already.”

“My mother? You're kidding, right? Victoria never says anything about anything. Least of all anything of importance.” David winked at her. “We Galloways are good at turning a blind eye.”

“You're sick,” Harper whispered.

David seemed to wake at her proclamation. He grabbed her chin in his hand. “And you wanted this. I think you still do.”

“I did,” Harper said. “Up until this very moment.” And she jerked her head out of his grasp.

David shrugged. “We're ripe fruit, you and me. Perfect and stunning and desirable. But we don't last long, do we? Eventually, we rot.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Harper took a tiny step back, a tremor of fear raising the hair on her bare arms. David seemed beyond himself, angry and contemplative and yet somehow deeply sad. Depressed even. She didn't know who he was or how to reach him. Suddenly, her only objective was to bring him back. To get him off the cliff. Harper steeled herself and reached out a trembling hand to him. “Come on.
You're hungover. Are you still drunk? I shouldn't have taken you up here at all.”

“I'm not drunk.”

“Whatever. Just come. Please?”

David studied her outstretched hand for a moment. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Should I be?”

“Yes,” he said after a long moment. “Yes, I think you should be.”

Harper had been in some awful situations, had felt scared and alone and at risk, but nothing compared to that terrible moment on the top of a rock in BC with David Galloway before her. She had thought that she knew him, that she could pinpoint the things that had made him such a bad boy. An enchanting, excusable rebel who just needed the right kind of love to bring him back from the edge. She had believed herself the woman for the job, the perfect counterweight to his unique brand of instability. But she was so far out of her depth, it was downright terrifying.

“Please,” she whispered.

But David ignored her. “I should just end it all. Stop inflicting myself on other people.”

“David—”

He had already turned away from her. He was walking to the lip of the outcropping rock, looking over the edge as if the answer to every mystery was contained in the shifting water below.

“Don't be an idiot.” Harper took a few hurried steps after him, but there was a fine gravel over the surface, a million tiny pebbles that made her feet slip precariously. She caught herself, pulse pounding in her ears, and slowed down. Crept to the side where David stood, leaning over the precipice as if it was the most inviting thing in the world. “Back up,” she commanded, taking him by the hand.

“Or what?” David's arm slid around her waist, pulled her close. “Maybe I'll just ruin everything right now. Destroy both
our lives. What if I blew this whole thing sky-high and took you while Adri was watching? Right here.”

Over his shoulder, Harper spotted her. Adri was far away, but not so far that Harper couldn't see her friend's face turned toward them. The book was abandoned in her lap, the sunshine highlighting her cheeks as if nature itself had deigned to blush her. Even at a distance, Adri looked exquisite. Eyes wide, lips slightly parted in what Harper interpreted as shock.

David's hands were on her. His fingers clawing beneath the hem of her T-shirt and scraping against the warm skin beneath. She burned in the places he touched her, but it wasn't from desire.

“No!” Harper grabbed his wrist, but David was stronger. He twisted out of her grip and lunged for her again, yanking her tightly to him; she could feel his hot, ragged breath against her cheek. He snagged a handful of the waistband of her jeans and the button strained against the stiff fabric as he struggled with it.

“You wanted to tell her,” David hissed, warm and wet against her neck. “Let's show her.”

The thought skittered through Harper's mind that David didn't just want sex. In fact, she doubted this had anything to do with sex at all. It was an act of violence that would destroy everything once and for all. The games they played, the illusions they clung to. David was going to burn them all to ash.

When David leaned in again, his lips parted to kiss her or bite her or whisper more things that Harper didn't want to hear, she didn't think. She just gathered every ounce of strength she had left.

She pushed him away.

The silence was absolute. Adri stared at Harper, eyes round and unblinking, for several long moments, and then, impossibly, she laughed. It was a cold, mirthless sound. She said, “You did not push David.”

Harper didn't know how to respond. “Yes,” she stammered, “yes, I did.”

“I watched the whole thing.” Adri was getting louder by the second, her entire body facing Harper now as she tried to make her friend understand. “I wasn't reading that stupid book, and I watched you two from the very first second you climbed onto the top of that rock. I could tell you and David were fighting, and I was terrified when you went so close to the edge. But, Harper, I saw David hug you. And then I saw him step backwards.”

Harper was shaking her head. “No,” she whispered. “I pushed him. I pushed him away because he was going to . . . kiss me.”

Adri sat back suddenly, her face frozen. She seemed paralyzed for a few heartbeats, but she managed to squeeze her eyes shut before she said, “You were having an affair with him, weren't you.”

It wasn't a question, and Harper didn't answer it. She didn't have to. “Adri,” she breathed. “I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.”

Of course, a five-years-late apology was nowhere near enough, and Harper wasn't the least bit surprised when Adri threw open the truck door and slid out. Slammed it shut behind her before she took off toward the stable.

But Harper had come too far to play shy now. She hopped out of the truck and jogged after Adri's narrow form. “I've never been more sorry for anything in my life!” she called, anxious to make Adri listen, to make her understand. “I've spent the last five years hating myself for what I did to you—to us. Everything that has happened from the moment I kissed David until now has been a downward spiral that—”

Adri whirled around and caught Harper by the shoulders. Harper hadn't realized she was following so closely, and she was both surprised by the strength in Adri's slender hands and a little scared of what the smaller woman might do. “I knew about the affair,” Adri admitted, pinching Harper's upper arms until numbness seeped into her elbows and beyond. “Or at least, I
guessed. It's one of the reasons I suggested you take David on your little hike to the top of the cliff.”

“One of the reasons?” Harper parroted, lamely.

“I wanted him to go. I wanted you both to go. I needed a minute to breathe.”

“But—”

“Look, Harper, I'll be the first to admit I was naive.” Adri let her hands fall to her sides. Searched Harper's face helplessly. “And I was blinded by what I thought was love. But I knew things were going sour. I knew that David had feelings for you.”

Harper shook her head. “He loved you, Adri.”

“No, he didn't.”

“Yes, he—”

“Just stop.” Adri put up both of her hands as if she could physically prevent Harper from saying another word. “I was engaged to him, remember? I knew him. David Galloway didn't love me.” She turned around and walked away. Several long strides and she was at the pasture fence, her fingers wrapped around the uppermost board as she called the horses to her with a soft click of her tongue.

Harper was rooted to the earth. She didn't know whether to be depressed or encouraged that Adri had known the truth all along. Did that make things easier? Did it nullify all the angst, the myriad of worries that she had once associated with confronting Adri about her relationship with David?

“In a way, it didn't matter,” Adri said when Harper finally found her feet and made her way to the fence. “I was caught up in it all. The wedding, the improbable marriage, the perfect life. I wanted David Galloway before I even knew who he was. I wanted a fairy tale.”

“Don't we all,” Harper murmured, but Adri acted as if she hadn't said anything.

“I hate myself for pretending when I could have changed everything—everything—by just admitting that I had fallen out of love, too.” Adri paused for a moment, gathering herself, it
seemed. “I hated him,” she finally admitted, an edge of defiance in her voice. “I hated him for what he did to me. When he fell, I was free.”

And there it was between them, the truth that they had tried so hard to ignore. The realization that his hand against her, his fist, his mouth, his words, were more than sticks and stones. It hurt, all of it. But even more, it changed her and fractured love and shifted things deep inside so that the person she had been was buried beneath the weight of all that happened. Harper didn't know how to comfort her sister, how to admit, “I know.” But she understood that purpled skin or photos that betrayed in the most irrevocable, elemental way, were wounds inflicted by bitter weapons. Adri and Harper were soldiers. They had seen war.

Harper sighed. “Oh, Adri.” She had been wrung dry by the events of the last twelve hours—maybe the last nine years—and at the end of all of her fears, she found that she wasn't so much scared as she was exhausted. Coming clean felt like letting go, and though it pained her to know that Adri was hurting, in a way Harper felt freer, lighter than she had in years. Never mind the horrible muck of the place where they found themselves, the telling and the regret and the blame, or the fact that if (when?) Sawyer was caught he'd take his revenge and shout the truth to the whole wide world. Because whether or not Adri was willing to admit it, Harper knew what she knew. She had felt David's chest beneath her hands. Its gaping absence when he fell.

“You don't believe me, do you?” Adri was saying.

Harper blinked, came to. She had heard every word, but all at once she wasn't sure that she had been listening. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I'm telling you that it's my fault.” Adri's voice cracked on the last two words, and although it didn't seem she had any tears left to cry, she was blanched white, and Harper put out a hand to steady her.

“What are you talking about?” Harper asked. “None of this is your fault. None of it.”

“You're wrong,” Adri whimpered, shaking her head from side to side, looking as if she was trying to dislodge the thoughts that plagued her. “You're so wrong, Harper. It's all my fault because I knew that he was suicidal. I knew, and I didn't stop him. I didn't save him.”

Harper shushed her friend. “Don't be silly. David wasn't suicidal.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Fine. He was. But he didn't jump.”

“Yes, he did. And when he hit the water, I let him drown.” Adri was staring at the fence post blindly, and as Harper came closer she clutched at her clothes, her hands. A blind woman feeling for sight. “I could have saved him,” she said. “But he hurt me. And I was so, so angry at him. I let him drown.”

Harper stroked Adri's blood-stiffened hair. “That's not true,” she said, lacing her voice with as much calm, as much comfort as she could muster. “David didn't drown, Adri. He was dead the instant he hit the water. The force of the fall, the way he landed . . . No one could have survived it.”

But Adri wouldn't hear it. “I just sat there. I watched it all happen.”

“That's not how—”

“I was a registered nurse. I could have done something. But you were there for him,” Adri broke in. “You climbed down from the cliff while I sat paralyzed in the lawn chair. You waded into the water and pulled him out. You held him for hours. Until the helicopter came.”

Dazed, Harper floundered for words. Tried to speak but couldn't, then tried again. It was no use. Nothing she could say would set things right. The earth was hung askew. She didn't know where to begin.

They sat in silence for a minute or two until Harper finally gathered her wits. She summoned the fortitude to take Adri's
chin in her hand. “Look at me,” she commanded with far more authority than she felt. “Adri, honey, look at me.”

She did. For several long seconds, the two former best friends locked eyes. Everything they had loved and lost, all the hope they had forfeited and the years that came between were contained in the breadth and depth and width of their gaze. “Adri,” Harper said, “I need you to listen to me. You're remembering it wrong.”