Grave Risk Page 7

“You made that sacrifice because of your unique ability to love,” Rex said, as if he’d read something of her thoughts in her expression—much as he used to do. “Few people I know have that ability.”

  The sudden gentleness in his tone undercut her momentum. She paused and looked at him, and felt an unwanted pang of regret.

  What if they hadn’t broken the engagement?

  Chapter Ten

  Fawn was halfway between the dock and the street when she saw a familiar head of blond hair poking up over the railing of the pastel-blue gazebo. The tiny structure was surrounded by a riot of red and yellow flowers held in place by a bricked flower bed. It was Fawn’s favorite gazebo.

  She stepped to the small, round picnic shelter and paused. “Sheena?”

  The woman raised her head and peered over the railing.

  “How’re you doing?” Fawn asked. Sheena looked as if she hadn’t slept much. She had such a sensitive nature, and events like Edith’s death and the awful experience Saturday would have left her upset for days. Kind of like Blaze, Fawn guessed.

  Sheena shook her head. “I couldn’t go, you know.”

  “To the funeral? I know. I didn’t see you there. Your parents were there, though, and it was a packed house.”

  Sheena nodded, her gaze returning to the surface of the lake, where a flock of wild geese came in for a noisy landing.

  Fawn stepped up into the gazebo and sat down next to her friend on the wooden bench. “Hey, are you okay?”

  Sheena hugged herself, still staring out across the lake, the water now momentarily gray under the shadow of a passing thunderhead. A fitting day for a funeral, Fawn thought.

  “How’d you do it?” Sheena asked, still staring at the lake. “You seem to…I don’t know…handle things so well. I mean, I know what you went through.” She didn’t look at Fawn, but shuddered. “Your mom disowned you, and yet you’re happy.”

  “Sure I am.” Fawn gestured around them. “Look at this great town we live in. And Karah Lee and Bertie practically smother me with love. Even Taylor treats me like a favorite niece.” Though she wondered how long that would last after the wedding. Sure, Taylor was a good guy and all that, but still…

  “You’re not bitter.” Sheena did look at her then, lowering her voice, though no one could hear them. “I heard you were…that your stepfather…”

  Fawn sighed. Even though she was making peace with her past, she still had trouble talking about it sometimes. “Raped me?”

  “Yes. That’s just so horrible.”

  “But it isn’t something that’s happening now. You can live with a lot of things when you can convince yourself it’s over. It isn’t like I’m going to crumble.”

  “But your own stepfather,” Sheena said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “My mother could really pick ’em.”

  “And then when you ran away to Las Vegas, you had to…you know…support yourself by…” Sheena’s face flushed.

  “Man, oh, man, a girl can’t keep anything a secret around here,” Fawn said.

  “You mean you really did that?”

  “I was a hooker. Yeah.” Fawn ignored the shocked expression on her friend’s face. People freaked way too easily about some stuff. “It isn’t like I’m one now, you know.”

  “Uh, no. Of course not.”

  “I was starving on the street, and I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I figured if somebody was going to take advantage of my body, I might as well make a living with it.”

  “What was it like?”

  “You don’t want to know. It was like the worst nightmare a person could have.”

  Sheena stared at the lake in silence for another moment, then glanced toward Fawn again. “Do you still think about it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Is it still horrible?”

  “Once in a while I wake up screaming at night. When that happens, Karah Lee sets up a cot in my room and sleeps near me.”

  Sheena stared at her, eyes filled with sympathy. “How do you stand it?”

  “I’ve got help. I know I’m loved, and I make sure to fill my mind with things in the present and the future, not things from the past. If I focus on the good things and remember the Bible verse Bertie likes to quote to me, then I can do okay.”

  “What verse?”

  “It’s from Philippians. The part that talks about how we should focus on whatever things are true, honest, pure, lovely and of good report. That means if you try not to think about ugly stuff, it doesn’t work. So I have to keep my mind filled with good things, and there’ll be no room to think about the bad.”

  Sheena nodded gravely. “That’s sensible. I like that. So you can change the direction of your life if you just focus on the right things and forget about the rest?”

  Fawn frowned. “Well, yeah. I guess. Except, I can’t do it on my own. If I didn’t have Someone to pray to, then I couldn’t escape my past. I had to get to the point where I felt so badly about my past that I was ready to give it all to Jesus. He took it, and now when I try to take a dip back into the cesspool of my past, I just give it back to Jesus. He always takes it.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Sheena said.

  “It isn’t. Not always. But the Bible’s full of good commonsense directions about cutting through the bad stuff. Of course, it’s also full of other stuff that I can’t even begin to understand.”

  “The Bible’s always been so confusing when I tried to read it,” Sheena said.

  “I think it takes time to learn everything. Especially for someone like me. I’ve got so many things going on at once that I can’t always focus like I should.”

  Again, Sheena transferred her attention to the lake, as if it were a refuge for her mind.

  “Sheena, have you ever been…you know…taken advantage of?”

  The question obviously startled Sheena, and she looked back at Fawn. “No, not me. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened to me. My parents are kind of overprotective.”

  Fawn didn’t bother to comment about that understatement. She didn’t feel they’d done Sheena any favors.

  “I know someone who was raped once, though,” Sheena said softly.

  “Somebody from here? Right here in Hideaway?”

  Sheena nodded. “She never got over it. That one incident changed her whole life.”

  “It doesn’t have to. If you want, I could talk to her about it. Let her know there’s more to life than brooding about something she can’t do anything about.”

  Sheena thought about it for a minute. “She wouldn’t talk to you about it, but maybe if I could tell her that verse you quoted? Would you write it down for me?”

  “If you have a Bible, I’ll write down where to find it and you can look it up.”

  Sheena’s expression went blank, and Fawn realized that Sheena probably wouldn’t know where to find Philippians. If not for Bertie and Karah Lee harping at Fawn to read her Bible this past year, she wouldn’t know, either.

  Fawn pulled out her small scratch pad, in which she kept her lists for the wedding plans and computer programs for the bed and breakfast. She wrote the words she had quoted. It was a rough draft, but the message was there.

  What did people do who didn’t know about the love Jesus had for them? What would she have done last year—what would she be doing now—if someone hadn’t taken her in and told her about the comfort and love and goodness that could fill her life?

  She would probably still be filled with anger and resentment—even hatred for those people who had hurt her. And that hatred could have cut her off from the very God who now gave her peace.

  What a horrible way some people lived. If only they knew what she knew.

  Jill walked in silence beside Rex for about half a block. The warmth of the day was eased, somewhat, by the thunderhead that seemed to hover overhead. Blue sky surrounded the clouds, but for the moment the sun’s light was shielded from them. She was glad. Summer’s oppressive heat could often c
reep deeply into September, and sometimes even October.

  She glanced again at Rex’s profile. Her initial attraction over two decades ago had not been to Rex Fairfield’s appearance, but to his intensity, his passion for treating patients as human beings and not ailing body parts.

  He had also been kind to nurses, aides, janitors, secretaries, clerks. He’d been kind to her. In a world where Jill had seen a few residents and attendings behave as if they were divinities, Rex had been a refreshing exception.

  Now she really looked at him. His forehead was a smidgen higher than it had been when she knew him, his dark hair now salted with gray. His short, trim beard and mustache—a new feature since she’d last seen him—were salted a little more liberally than his hair. He still had those kind gray eyes, with quite a few more lines around them to add character.

  Okay, so he was good-looking. But the most prominent characteristic that had attracted her to him then had been patience. He’d always taken the time for explanations to patients, to families and caretakers. He’d been patient with Jill’s mistakes when she was the newest student nurse in the hospital.

  Rex had always been the embodiment of patience when their friendship was first deepening into something more. That hadn’t changed until after their engagement. When they were first engaged, she’d loved being the object of his adoration. Later, it became too confining, especially after their conflicts about her obligations at home.

  “My sister was who she was, Rex,” she said at last, this time more softly, realizing that she still found herself very attracted to this man who had suddenly reappeared in her life. “She made wrong decisions about her life because she didn’t have someone wiser to help her with those decisions. Had I been more available, maybe she would have made better choices.”

  “You can’t blame yourself—”

  “You don’t know what I can and cannot do.” She was sharper now. He still had the ability to disturb her thoughts.

  “You’re right,” he muttered. “What I meant to say was that if you have a brain in your head, you’ll know better than to blame yourself for the circumstances in your life at that time.”

  She blinked at him in surprise. “This is something new with you. When we were engaged, you weren’t good about saying what you thought until everything built up and exploded.” She remembered a couple of heated arguments. “If only we had known how to fight without being destructive.”

  “You’re right, of course. I’ve found that counseling really does change things,” he said. “That, and the motivation I felt to prevent a family from splattering against the rocks.”

  She heard the desolation in his voice. Obviously, that family had splattered. “I didn’t know you had children.”

  “Two stepsons. I don’t think I could love them any more if they were my own flesh and blood.”

  “Do you see them?”

  He was silent for a moment, and she realized she had invaded a painful space. “Right now we’re talking about your family situation,” he said.

  “Oh, so it’s okay to expose my failings to the light of day, but not yours?”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, more deeply than they used to. “Did I say you had failings? If I even implied that, I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. Of course, you’re perfect.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad we agree about that.”

  His smile widened into a grin. Jill had always loved that grin.

  But he sobered all too soon. “I don’t get to see my stepsons as much as I would like, and I think they would like to see me more, as well. But since I’m only the stepfather, I don’t have much choice about it.”

  “That’s got to be painful.”

  “It is.”

  “Was the divorce bitter?” she asked.

  “I tried to make sure it was as amicable as possible for the sake of the boys.”

  “What’s your ex-wife’s name?”

  “Margret. Spelled the way Ann Margret spells her name.”

  “Did she try to be amicable?”

  He walked for a few seconds in silence, and she remembered his motto about speaking gently about someone, or not speaking at all.

  “I see. I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Thank you.” This time she could tell the smile was forced. “Now it’s your turn. We were talking about your family situation.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this a trade-off?”

  “It most certainly is.” He grinned and spread his hands. “See? I did learn something from the counseling sessions.”

  The lane grew steeper, and her steps slowed. “Our family has had a lot of tragedies in the past years. We’re still reeling from some of the aftershock.”

  “Noelle seems like a well-adjusted adult.”

  “She’s happily married, stable and mature, but I will always be there for her. That will never change, and I’ll never apologize for it.”

  “I don’t think you should ever apologize for caring for someone. Too many people lack the capability to care for anyone but themselves.”

  “You say that as if you’re talking about someone in particular,” she said.

  It was his turn to scowl at her.

  “If our mother had lived, she would have been there for Noelle,” Jill said. “But she wasn’t. I had no choice, and wouldn’t have done it differently had I been given the choice.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked at a pebble in front of his right foot. “What I’ve been trying to say, and doing a very poor job of it, is that I’m sorry I resented Noelle. It’s become obvious, since my divorce, that I don’t have the ability I once thought I did to communicate my thoughts clearly.” He sounded irritable, as if a sore spot had been jabbed too deeply.

  “It sounds as if you still resent your ex-wife.”

  “I think resent is too strong a word. I’m still frustrated by her. I’m trying not to blame her for our breakup. A divorce is almost always the result of the actions of two imperfect people, not just one.”

  “Just like us,” Jill said. “Both of us were at fault.”

  “In that situation I do blame myself more, because I didn’t communicate my thoughts as well as I should have. I have no excuse except that I was so involved in pursuing my career that I allowed my interpersonal relationship skills to slide.”

  “You sound like you’ve been reading too many books about relationships.”

  “I know, but it’s better than never trying to figure out what went wrong,” he said.

  “You weren’t the only one who made the decision.”

  “So, we were both immature.”

  She knew he was right.

  “I’ve worked hard to break some old habits, Jill. All of us have ingrained ways of dealing with situations that could probably be improved. You included.”

  “You’re saying I need counseling?”

  Back came the smile, tentative this time, as if concerned about her response. “I’m concerned that you will, out of a desire to help your family, lose out on the opportunities for happiness in your own life. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And I’m saying you still don’t understand. I think perhaps we did the best thing when we broke the engagement. You obviously still don’t grasp the concept of—”

  “You’re wrong.” He said it softly. “Had we worked through our problems then, I believe we could have had an amazing marriage.”

  Jill stopped breathing for a few seconds. How could she respond to a statement like that? Was he saying he wished they had gotten married?

  It would be too easy to dwell on twenty-two years of might-have-beens. That would just be painful. How would her life have been different had he been by her side? Or, if they had married, would her decision to return to Hideaway and protect Noelle have destroyed their marriage, as well?

  She glanced at him as they walked, and couldn’t help feeling he would have understood. Had he known everything that was going on in their li
ves, he would have been beside her, helping her with Noelle, with all the loss in her life.

  He still had those shoulders that had once seemed to her to be able to carry the world, though now she had the impression that he had attempted that very thing and discovered he couldn’t do it.

  “I grasp it so much better than I ever did before,” he said. “Your example of sacrifice kept me hopeful through some of the roughest times of my marriage.” This time he stopped and turned to her. His gaze was direct, and there wasn’t even a hint of a smile in his eyes now. “It helped to know that there was at least one person out there who knew how to give of herself with no expectation of reward.”

  She was touched. “You really mean that?”

  “I wouldn’t say it if I—”

  “I know. You always meant what you said.”

  “But now, as you’ve pointed out, Noelle is happy and settled. The tragedies will always be horrible memories for you, but they are in the past. You no longer need to make those same sacrifices over and over.”

  She shrugged and started walking again.

  “I’m concerned,” he went on, “that you will lose out on opportunities in your life because you give more of yourself than is necessary.”

  “Who’s to say what’s necessary?” she retorted. “I once sacrificed more than I felt was necessary, and in the end, it saved my sister’s life.”

  His eyes widened. “Are you going to tell me about that?”

  “It’s a very long story. She was in danger, and I was there.”

  “Is that danger past?”

  “Yes.” She looked at him, then frowned. “I think.” But she wasn’t sure if it truly was past, or if it had just come disguised in a different set of circumstances this time.

  He leaned toward her. “Jill, is something wrong? Is there some kind of trouble?”

  She hesitated, sorry she’d said anything. He was, after all, working with her employer. She had already relied too much on the sheriff and Tom. “No. Edith’s death has just shaken my sense of security. I have a tendency to be paranoid about safety. It’s a habit I developed years ago, and I’m not likely to change.”

  She knew he wouldn’t betray any of her confidences, but too many people already questioned her veracity.