Vengeance to the Max (41 page)

When she opened her lids, her lashes were wet, but no moisture dripped to her cheeks. “I didn’t see it then, but I see it now. I never let myself be a kid. I never let myself see I was the same as that twelve-year-old. Even though there was a year’s difference. I got rid of the baby because he told me to. Because I was a child and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Cameron fell feather-light across her body. Nothing more than a scent, a breeze, a taste of the peppermints he’d chewed when he couldn’t smoke, he
was
there for her.

“That wasn’t a dream I had the other night. It was the truth I never wanted to see. It was about my uncle and the nights he came to my room. It wasn’t about Wendy, but it’s why she and I were connected even without you.”

It was the connection with all the others, too, Bethany, Tiffany, Angela. Her past. Their past.

“So I will tell Witt when the moment’s right.” Once, that would have been a lie to get Cameron off her case. It had now become a promise, to herself more than him. “I’ll tell him everything I refused to tell you.”

“You refused even to remember it.”

Their sentences were punctuated by long silences. “That was the difference for us, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. But you know the truth now. That’s all I wanted. Today you’ve gone further. You’ve accepted it without blaming yourself. I’m proud of you. I believe you when you say you’ll tell him.”

A bird chirped in a nearby tree. A single drop of rain slid down her cheek.

“Why didn’t you kill BJ?”

How to put into words something she’d just come to realize? Words were all she would have to offer Witt when the time came. “I’m not like Bud. I’m not like my uncle. I always thought I was.” She chewed her bottom lip. “But even after I let them kill the baby, I was never like him. Bud or my uncle. I ... had emotion about it. Bud felt nothing. Killing had been a way for him to keep on being ... what he was.” Dew soaked through the seat of Sutter’s jeans. But somehow the wet cool feel of it didn’t seep inside Max. “So I didn’t kill Bud because I’m not a murderer. Not last night. And not when I was thirteen.”

He sighed with the wind. It was what he’d waited all these years to hear.

She looked down at her hand amid the green blades of grass. Her wedding ring sparkled with an inner light. In slow motion, she raised her hand. With shaking fingers, she removed the ring, tugging it over the joint when it stuck. “You’ve been waiting for me to ask you to go, haven’t you?”

“Yes, my love.”

She leaned forward and placed the ring at the base of his headstone. A vein beat at her temple. “It’s long past time for me to let go.” She closed her eyes. Tears leaked beneath her lids. “But I’m going to miss you so.”

“You’ll be okay, Max.”

Pressing the metal into the dirt, she watched it disappear into the soil. “I’m okay now.” Her nose began to run. She sniffed. “Thank you for staying long enough to make sure I was.”

“Love him. With everything in you. It’s not a betrayal to me.”

She thought of Witt, the dimple in his chin, the softness of his buzz cut, and the intensity in his blue eyes. “Leave it to me, Cameron. I
can
love. Even if I’m afraid.”

“You’ll never stop being afraid.”

“No. But if you never have to battle your own fears, there’s no struggle. And no victory.”

“Sounds like something wise I’d say.”

“Maybe you have and this is the first time I’ve listened.”

He was silent so long she thought he’d left. But his peppermint scent clung to her and with her eyes closed, she felt his density as if he were more than dust.

“I’m sorry I never told you about my past, Max. I blamed you for not opening up to me, but I never truly opened up for you. I should have told you how Cordelia’s disappearance affected my life. My mother. She just mentally went away, pretended Cordelia was never born. I think that’s why I always ragged on you to face your past. Because I was afraid you’d shut me out like Cordelia and my mother did, keeping secrets, pretending bad things hadn’t happened. Both of us were guilty of keeping secrets, but I never took responsibility for my part.”

It all made sense. Together, their pasts had taken away their chance for a future. How ... sad. So freaking sad.

“Do you want me to find Cordelia and give her a proper burial?”

“Her body couldn’t rest in a place she loved more. Let it be now, my love. But thank you.”

She didn’t know what else to say or ask. They were so close to saying good-bye that her mouth wouldn’t move.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I was having an affair?”

She lay down in the wet grass, her fingers tasting the texture of it, the thickness of the blades, the damp earth it sprang from. “Two days ago, it might have mattered. Two years ago, for sure. But today?” She shook her head against the carpet of green, tasting dew on her lips. “Today it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about Izzie’s letters. I don’t care what she wrote in your yearbook. I don’t care if there were other women. I never thought you deserved to die that night, no matter what crossed my mind in that split second. I can’t fix that thought. I can’t fix what happened between us back then. I can only tell you that I love you. I always have and I always will no matter the pain we caused each other when you were alive. Or when you were dead.” A wayward leaf crackled beneath her cheek. “I love you enough to let you go.”

“Don’t forget me.”

“I’ll miss you with all my heart.”

A tick of silence, then, “Going to buy a DVD player, Max?”

Symbolism. She laughed despite the pain of it. “Yeah, I think so. Maybe Witt will like
Lost Horizon
. I’ll actually buy the DVD.”

“Try
Bullitt
. He’ll appreciate the chase.”

The sense of his voice inside her head faded with each word. His weight lifted from her body. She might have floated away with the incredible lightness. Terror seized her chest, then eased. She willed it to ease.

Tears bathed her face, tears she’d refused to shed for him, tears that would release him. Silent tears that soothed and cleansed.

When they stopped, the scent of peppermints had vanished.

Cameron was gone.

Max woke to the scent of rain in the air and Witt’s unsophisticated yet totally male aftershave. She didn’t open her eyes nor wipe the evidence of her tears from the side of her nose or her temples.

“How’d you know where I was?”

She heard him sigh. “Truck just seemed to drive itself. Like it had a mind of its own.”

Or ghostly guidance.

“I should change before we go to meet your lawyer friend.”

“You’re not gonna need one now.” That was all he said, offering nothing as to whether Bud’s body had been found, if Dennis had run to the roof, or if the police thought she had something to do with it all. He’d said enough to let her know she was safe. He’d tell her the rest eventually. After they talked about the important stuff.

“I’d like to help Ladybird cook.” She cringed at the thought of overcooked turkey.

“She’s cooked a turkey before.”

With her eyes closed, her brows shot up. “A
real
one?”

“A real one.” He paused. “It was a few years ago.”

“I hear another story in there. What happened?”

“Burned it.”

“How can you burn a turkey?” Overcook it until it was dry as shoe leather, yes, but burn it?

“Forgot to put it in the oven on time, and since she didn’t want dinner to be late...” He stopped with a dramatic pause.

“What did she do?” She chanced a glance at him.

His back against Cameron’s headstone, Witt rested his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs. “Put it on broil to make up the time.”

Max smiled. Ladybird would have made a great grandmother, but you wouldn’t want to leave your kids alone with her.

Kids.

“I can’t have children.” She stated it though they’d never talked of marriage or a future.

He didn’t rush to answer, the weight of consideration in the length of his silence. “I don’t need kids in my life.”

“But you divorced your wife because she had an abortion.”

“She lied. She didn’t give me the right to choose.”

“But you wouldn’t have let her kill it if you’d known.”

“No. The baby was innocent. I would have protected it no matter what.”

Still, he would understand her own crime. He would understand she’d been a child herself. “I’ve lied to you about a lot of things, too.”

“There’s a degree of lying. You know the difference I’m talking about.”

He meant the quality of the lie and the reason it was made. Yeah, there was a difference. “Because I can’t have kids, I’m taking away any choice you have in the future.”

“You’re giving me the choice to walk away now if it’s something I can’t live with.”

That sounded reasonable. “I have secrets, things I’ve done, things I’m ashamed of.” Her uncle, her baby, the men she’d been with, too many men.

“So do I.”

“What if I never have the courage to tell you all my secrets?”

“You’ve the courage to tell me they exist. The rest will come.” God. Using full sentences and all the nouns, he knew all the right words to give her. So serious, but not pissed.

His belief in her would
make
the rest come. “I’m not normal,” she told him.

“I know. You’re psychic, you see ghosts—”

“I talk to them, I can’t see them, and it’s only one.” It only
was
one. “And you know what I mean. I’m not an easy, open person.”

“I’m not looking for normal or easy. I’m looking for you.”

Oh God. “What about—”

His voice cut her off. “You interrogating me or something?”

“I’m trying to feel you out.”

“There’s better ways of feeling me out, sweetheart.”

His knees creaked as he rose, leaves crackled beneath his shoes, then came the warmth of him within touching distance. She opened her eyes to find him stretched out beside her, his head propped on his hand, his blue eyes gray in the overcast.

“Only one thing matters, Max.”

They lay facing each other beside Cameron’s grave. “What?”

“Can you let your husband go?”

She propped herself on her elbow, too, and put her left hand flat on the ground. A band of white skin ringed her finger. Cameron’s essence pulsed through the earth, but she knew it was a figment of her imagination. “He’s already gone.”

Witt put his palm over her heart. “Is he gone from here?”

She blinked, took a deep breath and told him the truth regardless of the cost. “He’ll never be gone from my heart, Witt. If I could cut him out, I wouldn’t be who I am. And you wouldn’t love me.” She put her hand over his. “But there’s more than enough room for you in there.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rippling, then he touched her cheek with fingertips and wiped the moisture from her skin.

“I love you, Witt,” she whispered, liking the sound in the cool gray morning. “He would have stayed, but I asked him to go. Without all the things you’ve taught me, I don’t think I would have had the courage.”

He closed his eyes. His fingers stilled.

“You’re not a stand-in. I chose life over death. You over him.”

“But if he was alive, Max? Who would you chose?”

She cupped his cheek in her palm and forced him to meet her gaze, just as he had forced her so many times to see things she didn’t want to see. “I would choose what we have now over what I had with Cameron then. I’m different with you. You make me different. You make me better than I was.”

He rubbed her fingers over his eyelashes, then kissed her fingertips. “About time you figured that out.”