Johnston - Heartbeat (22 page)

“I’d only been in the emergency room a matter of moments when they wheeled Woody out of a treatment room on his way to surgery,” Maggie said. “His face . . . . ”

She moaned, and Jack said, “Don’t, Maggie. No more.”

“His face was . . . unrecognizable,” she grated out. “I guess I went a little crazy then.”

Who wouldn’t have?
Jack thought. “Maggie,” he said in the softest voice he had ever used with her. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill your family, they—”

Her head whipped around to face him as she snatched her hand out of his. “You don’t know everything, Jack. You don’t know everything!”

“What more is there?” he demanded as he pulled into the parking lot of the Shady Oaks Nursing Home and abruptly cut the engine. He grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her toward him. “So you weren’t watching your kids every minute. What parent does? It was all a series of tragic
accidents,
Maggie! Victoria’s wrong to blame you—”

“I wished them all dead!” she cried. “Don’t you see? I wished them dead, and then they were!”

“What?”

Before he could stop her, she shoved the truck door open, and ran.

Jack caught up to her among the moss-laden live oaks for which the nursing home had been named. He snagged her around the waist with one hand and pulled her to him, grabbing a handful of her hair and angling her face to-ward him. “Maggie. Maggie, talk to me! Ex-plain.”

“Don’t you see,” she said, staring at him through tear-drenched eyes. “It
is
my fault. All of it. I wished them dead, and God answered my prayers.”

She dropped her forehead against his chest, her body sagging in defeat. He let his hand slide through her hair and tightened his arms around her, holding her upright.

“Oh, Jack, I didn’t mean it. I never meant it! If I could take it all back. . . . ”

“Maggie, Maggie . . .” He could see the anguish on her face, but he had no idea how to comfort her. “What did you do that was so wrong you’ve needed to pay for it with ten years of your life?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes and one spilled over. “I made an awful wish, and it came true,” she said sadly.

“An
awful
wish?”

“I wished I hadn’t married Woody, because nothing turned out as I had dreamed it would. I wished I didn’t have my twin sons, because they had kept me from going back to law school. I felt trapped in my marriage, and I wished I could start all over again without Woody and the twins.”

She looked up at Jack and said, “Don’t you see? I wished them gone . . . and then they were.”

This was the terrible secret that had kept her life barren, Jack realized. This was the reason she had cut herself off from men, from any chance of another involvement that might lead to another husband and family. Maggie had wished one family away, so she didn’t deserve another.

Jack thrust his hands into the golden hair on either side of Maggie’s face and forced her to look up at him. “You’re not to blame for any of it, Maggie. Do you hear me? You’re not to blame.”

“I wished them gone!”

“That’s not what caused them to go,” he said fiercely. “It was fate, or karma, or just their time to leave.” He didn’t know what he could say to make her believe him. Deep in-side he knew that wishing someone dead didn’t kill them. Otherwise, his mother would have died long before she had. And wishing someone alive didn’t keep them that way, either. Otherwise, a gap-toothed little girl would be finishing kindergarten in June.

“Let it go, Maggie.” Jack pressed reassuring kisses on her forehead, on her cheeks, and finally on her mouth. Her lips remained stiff and unyielding, so he kept on kissing her. Small, soft kisses that begged her to trust him. “We all do second-guessing about the things we wish we’d done differently,” he said.

“But my wish was granted!” Maggie said. “It’s my fault, Jack. I didn’t wish them dead, but I wished them gone. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“No, Maggie. No, it’s not.” Jack held her close and rocked her.

Who hadn’t played that mental “what if” game at one time or another? It could have been him in her shoes. How many times had he wished his father were alive and his mother had died instead? Yet when she was finally gone, he’d been desolated. How much worse, Jack thought, to have your wish granted the instant you made it . . . and with such devastating consequences.

Jack kissed Maggie, pressing his lips to hers insistently, feeling the last of her resistance give way as she finally surrendered. He let his tongue slip into her mouth, offering comfort . . . and something more.

“It’s time to let yourself love again, Maggie,” he murmured.

She leaned back and searched his face. “That’s a strange thing for you to say, Jack. If I did let myself love you, would you be willing to love me back?”

Jack’s heart picked up a beat as his “fightor-flight” instinct kicked in. He let her go and took a step back. “How did we get on this subject?”

Maggie dared glance at him. “You’re the one who suggested I start loving someone. I just wondered if you meant you.”

He tugged his hat back down, so it shadowed his eyes. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“All right, Jack. You do that. Here’s a little something to help you think.”

She lifted up on her tiptoes, put a hand around his nape, and drew his head down so her lips could meet his. She kissed him like she meant it, with her mouth and her tongue and her whole body pressing into his. Jack grabbed her and held on tight as she rubbed herself against him. He was breathing hard, busy yanking her shirt out of her trousers, when Maggie caught his wrists. ” Not here,” she said breathlessly, reminding him where they were.

She backed up abruptly, but he saw from her flushed cheeks and her lambent eyes that she wasn’t in much better shape than he was.

“I have a present for Brian in my bag in the truck,” she said as she backed away from him.

Jack followed after her. “I still have some unanswered questions, Maggie.”

“Ask them, and I’ll see if I’ve got answers.” She opened the truck door, reached into the bag that held her swimming clothes wrapped in a towel, and pulled out a purple-and-white stuffed rabbit wearing a yellow bow around its neck.

She held it up to Jack, hopped it toward him in mid-air, and said, “What do you think?”

“It’s a stuffed rabbit.”

She grinned. “Your perception amazes me.”

“It’s cute,” he conceded. And a warning to him, he realized, in case he hadn’t already gotten the message, of the personal baggage that came along with Maggie. She was still dealing with a lot of pain and anger, and she felt a tremendous burden of guilt over what had happened to her husband and sons.

His gut instinct told him none of that had turned her into a killer. But he’d been wrong before. And who else besides Maggie would be grieving every year on the anniversary of all those deaths in Minnesota?

Victoria.

Jack felt like he’d been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer. Why hadn’t he thought of Victoria as a suspect before? She had as much motive as Maggie, and opportunity, at least as far as the San Antonio murder was concerned. As for whether she’d been in the vicinity of Dallas and Houston when the other deaths had occurred . . . He’d have to do some checking.

“How much does Victoria know about the story you’ve just told me?” Jack asked, as they headed to the entrance to Shady Oaks.

“When I first saw her at the hospital in Minnesota, in the chapel, I blurted out everything. You can imagine her reaction.”

Jack could. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Victoria told me she’d never forgive me for the deaths of her grandsons, for Woody’s accident, or for the stroke Richard suffered on the flight to Minnesota. I had no idea how really distraught she was that day, how angry and vindictive, until nine months later.”

Jack pushed an errant curl behind Maggie’s ear. “What happened nine months later?”

“That was when I learned Uncle Porter had sent Victoria to the chapel that day in April to tell me Brian had been resuscitated, and that the doctors held out some hope he would recover. Instead, when I asked her what word there was of Brian, she told me he was dead—that I’d killed him as surely as I’d killed the rest of my family.”

“It’s hard to believe anyone could be so cruel,” Jack muttered.

Maggie smiled bitterly. “After Victoria’s announcement, I went crazy. When I was admitted to the mental ward at the hospital, Victoria took charge of Brian and had him moved to Texas, arguing with Uncle Porter that I would be in no shape to care for him anytime soon. No one ever told me my son was alive. They all assumed I knew it.”

Jack was astounded by what he was hearing. “But the funeral—”

“I was in the hospital when my family was buried. I never went to the cemetery later, for reasons that should be obvious.”

“You mean no one ever contacted you to tell you Brian was still alive?”

Maggie shook her head.

“What about the medical bills?”

“Uncle Porter took care of everything. And I refused to see anyone. It wasn’t until Brian woke up and began recuperating that Uncle Porter came to Minnesota to see if I could be retrieved from among the damned. He was incredulous, as you can imagine, when he learned that Victoria had told me Brian was dead. And absolutely
furious
with Victoria.”

“How did you feel when you learned your son was alive?”

Maggie made a small sound in her throat, a cry of pain that Jack felt in his gut.

“I was so drunk at the time . . . I thought I was hallucinating everything.” She looked at Jack with an expression of wonder in her eyes that she must have worn that long ago day. “When I realized Brian was really alive, my stomach churned and . . . and I threw up,” she admitted ruefully.

“Uncle Porter promised me that if I quit drinking, he’d take care of all Brian’s medical bills, pay my way through law school, and help me get a job so I could take care of my son on my own. I had a second chance . . . if I could only get sober and stay that way.”

Jack looked at Maggie now, at her clear, beautiful eyes and tender mouth, at her lithe, graceful body, and tried to imagine her as the sodden, vomiting drunk she had described. It was impossible.

The image that came to mind instead was his mother. She’d had a chance to sober up, too, for the sake of her child. Captain Buckelew had offered to keep Jack while Jean Kittrick went to a treatment center in San Antonio. His mother had refused.
Not at all like Maggie,
Jack thought. When Maggie’s chance had come, she’d grabbed at it with both hands.

They might both have been drunks, but the similarity ended there, Jack realized. Maggie had some inner source of strength his mother had lacked. More love for her child? Or more guilt, maybe? It didn’t really matter why or how she had found her way to sobriety. Jack was just very glad she had.

“How did Victoria react when you finally retrieved your son?” Jack asked.

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “When I showed up wanting my son back, she threatened to abscond with Brian and hide him where I couldn’t find him. Uncle Porter was having none of that. In fact, he’s the one who suggested I put Brian somewhere safe, somewhere Victoria wouldn’t be able to get to him. I owe Uncle Porter a great deal,” Maggie said. And he’d extracted his pound of flesh in payment.

“It’s hard to believe that in ten years Victoria’s never been able to locate Brian,” Jack said. “It seems to me it would be easy for her to hire someone
to
follow you and—”

“If she wanted badly enough
to
know where he is, she could find him,” Maggie agreed. “In fact, she did find him about a year after I came back to Texas.”

“What happened?”

Maggie paused at the steps to the nursing home with her back
to
him. Jack could see she was trying hard not to cry. “Maggie?”

She turned and met his gaze, her beautiful eyes floating in tears. “Victoria was repelled by the sight of him. She wanted
to
know if Brian’s limbs were always going to tremble like that and if he’d always be so uncoordinated and whether he was always going
to
be in a wheelchair. When she found out the limitations of his recovery . . . when she realized Brian would never be . . . perfect . . . again, she turned her back on him and walked away.”

Jack felt enraged for Maggie’s sake and for Brian’s. “If she doesn’t want to be near him, why the continued secrecy?”

“Uncle Porter insisted upon it,” Maggie said. “He said that until Victoria was willing to accept her grandson as he was, she didn’t deserve to see him. And since I haven’t yet repaid Uncle Porter everything I owe him, he still makes all those decisions.

“But as you’ve seen, Victoria never misses a chance to throw it in my face that she isn’t ’allowed’ to visit her grandchild. Not that she would, even if she could!”

The door to the Shady Oaks Nursing Home opened and Victoria Wainwright stepped out. “Hello, Margaret. Luckily for my grandson, someone remembered to visit him on Easter Sunday.”

Chapter 14

“What are you doing here, Victoria?” Maggie demanded, stepping in front of the older woman to keep her from moving any farther down the wooden stairs. Maggie was aware of Jack standing behind her, knew he was there if she needed him, but was glad he didn’t interfere. Victoria was her problem.

“I told you, I was visiting my grandson.” Victoria reached up with white-gloved hands to adjust a spectacular Easter bonnet—decorated with exquisite ribbons and sleek feathers—that matched a suit in robin’s-egg blue. She looked cool, comfortable, and composed, despite the awkward situation and the afternoon heat. “What on earth have you got in your hand?” Victoria asked, pointing to the stuffed rabbit Maggie held by its cottontail.

“It’s a gift for Brian,” Maggie said, twisting her wrist so Victoria could see what she held.

“He’s a little old for a purple rabbit, don’t you think?”

Maggie stared Victoria down. They both knew Brian’s biological age had no correlation to his mental age. Maggie started to ask how Victoria had talked the nurses into letting her see Brian, then realized the nursing staff had changed several times in the years since she had last mentioned that her mother-in-law was not allowed
to
see Brian unless Maggie was there. Victoria hadn’t shown any interest in Brian for so long, Maggie hadn’t anticipated this visit. It was alarming-frightening-to think Victoria could have walked in and kidnapped Brian today without her being any the wiser.