Unbreak My Heart (34 page)

Casey was here. He was convinced Megan Bennett was his mother. If there was any possibility it was true, Stephen had to check it out. He called his private investigator and fired off new instructions. He wanted to know if Casey was Megan Bennett's son, and he wanted to know if his brother had her killed.

Chapter 17

Allie was coming down the stairs the next morning when she sensed something behind her.

She didn't panic. Casey was in the attic, where they'd been working, and Stephen was working downstairs at the kitchen table today. He'd refused to leave her here alone last night after that ugly scene with his brother. She'd slept quite contentedly in his arms the entire night.

She'd been coming to find him when something on the stairs caught her attention, something odd. She turned around and found herself staring at a ray of sunshine that fell at an angle across the stairs. And then she sat down on the stairs, staring at her sister's room, the one place she still hadn't been.

Ever since she'd come back, she'd been most reluctant to go there, to even be on the staircase, she realized. Had something happened on the stairs?

The hair on the back of Allie's neck quivered. She felt sick to her stomach, felt weak and foolish and crazy. This made her feel so crazy.

She closed her eyes and thought she could hear her father's voice. Yelling. She thought she must have been sitting on the stairs like this, staring at sunlight playing on the polished wood and listening to him yelling.

Allie groaned. She wanted to see him again, even if it was just in her memory. Megan's image had been startlingly clear and seemingly so close, she could have reached out and touched her. Allie wanted one vivid image of her father to carry with her, as well. She knew where he was, too. In her sister's room.

Feeling like a heroine in a gothic novel, inexplicably drawn to danger, she slowly made her way up the stairs, the voices growing louder with each step she took. As she reached the top, something shattered in one of the rooms. It sounded like something had been flung against the wall.

"I won't have this,"
her father shouted.
"Not in my house, I won't."

"What do you mean you won't have it? You can't just wave your hand and make it go away. God, if it were that
easy..."

That was her mother's voice. She must be in the room, too.

"I mean I won't have her in my house. Not if she insists on being so unreasonable. On making up these outlandish lies,"
her father roared.

"John."
Her mother got very quiet.
"It's our house. Our family's home. You can't just put her out on the streets."

"This is my house, and I can do anything I damned well please, Janet. It seems you've forgotten that. And a lot of other things, too. Well, I haven't."

Allie winced. She'd never heard her father talk to her mother like that.

The door to her sister's room was flung open. Her father came striding through, her mother close behind. Allie heard her sister sobbing, pitiful, heart-wrenching sobs, but her eyes were fixed on her father. He looked so young and strong as he stood in the hallway, his face hard and impassive. His hair was dark like Megan's and longer than she remembered, and there were no harsh lines in his face, no bleak look in his eyes. Those, she remembered from the time after they'd lost Megan when grief had taken its toll on all of them. This was a different vision of her father.

Her mother grabbed her father by the arm and held on to him.
"You haven't forgotten anything, have you? All those years, you swore you loved me, that you loved our daughters. But that was a lie, too, wasn't it? You never forgave me, and you'll never forget."

"I tried,"
he said.
"I did my best by all of you. But there are some things a man can't forget. Especially when it's thrown back in his face like this."

"She says he forced her,"
Allie's mother said.
"Are you going to discount the word of your own daughter?"

"She's been sneaking out of this house to meet him for weeks. Does that sound like he forced her?"

They were arguing about the rape, Allie realized. Just as Richard Whittaker said, they hadn't believed Megan.

Her mother stood her ground.
"We don't know Megan was sneaking out to see him."

Did that mean they were dating? Allie remembered Stephen saying his brother was used to getting whatever he wanted, to taking it. Date rape? Had there even been such a term for it back then?

"Megan's in trouble, and she knows it,"
her father said.
"She'd say anything to try to make it look like it wasn't her fault."

Oh, no,
Allie thought. How could he do this? How could he doubt his own daughter?

"She said he forced her,"
her mother repeated.

"And you believe her? I wonder,"
he said coldly,
"did you think about saying the same thing about you and Tucker Barnes? I wonder if I would have forgiven you if you had. I wonder if I would have believed you."

Her mother went white. Allie felt as if her legs were going to give way, and she saw now that there was more. Oh, God, there was so much more she'd never known.

Her mother had tears in her eyes.
"I never lied to you. I never pushed you to marry me, John. You chose to. You said you loved me."

"I loved the woman I thought you were. The woman I wanted you to be."

"John, I am that woman. I've been that woman for all these years. We've built a life together. I've been happy here. Haven't you?"

"I've tried to forget,"
he said.
"Every day of my life I've tried. But every time I look at you, every
time..."

Her mother whispered urgently to him.
"What are you saying? That it's over? That you're going to leave us? That you want me to leave? What?"

"I don't know,"
her father said.

"I love you, John. All these years, I've loved you. You just couldn't let that be enough, could you? You just couldn't stop trying to make me pay for something that's been over for seventeen years."
Her mother seemed to crumple before her eyes.
"That's what you're saying, you know? Every time you throw this back in my face. Every time you slight Megan in some way, you're showing me that the last seventeen years we spent together don't count for anything."

With a dazed look on her face, her mother turned and walked away. Her father stood at the top of the steps, looking stunned and shattered as well, and Megan went right on sobbing.

Allie sat there, miserable and alone and shaking. How could this be? So much anger, so much hatred in this house, and she hadn't known anything about it. How could she have been so blind? She had no doubt the scene really happened. She no longer cared how her past chose to reveal itself to her, just that she finally had the answers she was so sure she wanted.

It seemed Stephen was right. Now that the truth was coming out, she decided she liked her illusions just fine. That she had a nice, happy, loving family, that her sister's death caused an irrevocable wound between her father and her mother that simply would not heal, and that Allie was deprived of her father's love because of it. It was sad and unfair. But the truth...

God.
Her father hadn't loved her mother. And her mother... Her mother and Tucker Barnes. The man who'd come to the house the other day.

It was all so ugly. She couldn't imagine her father ever talking to her mother that way. Allie tried to tell herself he would have calmed down. They would have talked things out. Everything would have been okay, if Megan hadn't run away. If she hadn't died.

That had to be the reason her father felt so guilty. He and her mother argued. Megan ran away. He never forgave himself. Neither did her mother.

Suddenly the voices filled her head once again. Her father yelling, her sister sobbing. She found herself drawn to the scene, just as people stare at grizzly accidents on the roads. This was her family, falling apart at the seams. This was what she came back to understand, and the drama was playing out right in front of her, like a private performance of a play. She must have seen it all. All along, it had been inside of her. She'd simply been afraid to face it.

Her father was yelling when she looked in the room.
"You little slut! You're just like her. Just like your mother!"

"What?"
Megan said.

"Your mother. The little tramp!"

"What are you talking about?"
her sister said.

"You! I did the best I could by you, Megan, and this is how you repay me?"

"Repay you for what? You hate me. You always have, and I've always known,"
she cried.
"What did I do, Daddy? Before this? What did I do that was so bad you couldn't love me? I'm your daughter, dammit. How could you not love me?"

"You're not my daughter,"
he said bitterly.

Allie gasped, the breath leaving her body in a long, painful rush. Megan just stared, looking dazed and frightened, and her father had taken on that same pinched, painful look he wore the night Allie and her mother ran away.

She couldn't have heard him correctly. She waited for him to explain, for him to take back those ugly words, but he didn't.

"
It's the truth,"
he said bleakly.
"You're not my daughter. You never were."

Megan seemed to crumple onto the bed, stunned disbelief on her face. >From behind her, Allie heard her mother gasp and cry out to her father.
"How could you? How could you do that? How could you tear our family apart?"

"She's a lying little tramp, and I won't have her in my house anymore."

Suddenly Allie couldn't stand it anymore. She turned around and ran. Down the steps, out the front door.

God,
she hated this house.

She couldn't stay, she realized. She couldn't breathe here. She couldn't think.

"Allie?"

She turned around, and Stephen was there. He held her at arm's length and looked her over from head to toe, then hauled her into his arms.

"What's wrong?"

"I know what happened to Megan," she said. "I know everything now."

He pushed her face against his chest, his arms strong and unyielding as they held her to him, his body a solid mass of support for her. Nothing could hurt here her, she believed. Nothing could get to her when Stephen had her.

"My father said Megan wasn't his daughter," she said. "He called her a tramp, said she was just like my mother and that she wasn't his daughter, and he told my mother he'd never been able to forgive her for that. I thought we had been a wonderful, happy family, but we weren't. It was all a lie."

"Oh, Allie. I'm sorry."

"My mother always loved Megan more. I always knew that. I thought it was because she lost her. I tried so hard to take Megan's place, but it was never enough. I think now that Megan tried to do the same thing. I think she did everything she could to make my father love her, and nothing was enough. Because she wasn't his daughter, and when she was in trouble and scared, and she needed him, he turned his back on her."

"Allie," he whispered, stroking her hair.

"That's why Megan ran away. He didn't want her here anymore, and I bet she was scared to stay, scared to be right next door to your brother. Scared because no one believed he'd raped her. Scared of letting him have anything to do with her baby. So she left, and then she died. My mother could never forgive my father for that, and to punish him, she took me away."

Allie sank against Stephen, and let him hold her while she cried. Inside, she ached, in a way she never had before. She thought bitterly of a life spent trying to please a mother who could not be pleased after her favorite child died. The years she had spent needing her father, wanting him, but still buckling under to her mother's unwritten law that they have nothing to do with him. All the time she'd wasted.

"It's so much worse than I thought."

"I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry." Stephen's arms tightened around her. "You just remembered all of this?"

"Yes," she whispered. "No. It's... it's the house. Being in this house is making me crazy. It's like someone videotaped the whole scene and is playing it back inside my head."

"You must have seen it fifteen years ago," he said.

"I know." There was no other explanation. "And I think this was it. The last piece. I did it. I figured out the last piece."

She shuddered. Stephen held her tightly and, overwhelmed, she gave herself up to the sheer reassurance that came from being in his arms. The solid bulk of him, the strength, the warmth, the particularly appealing scent that clung to his skin—all were so familiar to her now, as was the way it seemed natural to turn to him at a time like this.