Rachel Lee (9 page)

"Why not? Maybe it'll clear the air."

Hardy shook his head. "Nothing's going to clear the air, not after all this time."

Sitting back, he sipped his coffee and wondered what the hell he was doing sitting here with Joni Matlock. Then he wondered, as he always did, if he would have been sitting here with Joni under better circumstances if he'd broken up with Karen when he'd first noticed his attraction to Joni.

Probably not, he told himself. None of them had been old enough to sustain a long-term relationship. If Karen hadn't died, he would have broken up with her. Joni might have agreed to date him, but probably wouldn't--out of loyalty to her cousin. And except for the possibility that Karen would still be alive, nothing would have changed. Not really.

But what good did it do to ask himself these questions? All he could do was wish Karen hadn't been in the car with him that night. And wishes were worthless.

Joni's mood seemed to be rising as the sugar in her roll began to hit her system. She looked less worried and tired, and more like her old self. Finally she even smiled at him and said, "Okay, it was a stupid idea."

While he would be the first to admit that Joni too often acted on impulse, and that sometimes her reasons weren't the most sensible, he didn't like to hear her put herself down that way. Casting his mind back over the years, he could remember dozens, maybe hundreds, of times when she'd put herself down. It was kind of strange coming from a woman who, as far as he could tell, ought to be spoiled rotten. Witt and Hannah both doted on her to an extreme degree. Maybe that was why she was so impulsive.

But it didn't explain why she was so quick to call herself stupid. A woman who had a graduate degree in pharmacy shouldn't be thinking of herself that way.

He shifted in his chair and leaned over the table a little, on an impulse of his own asking her, "Why do you always call yourself stupid?

You're not stupid at all."

Her eyes were strangely haunted as they met his. "Maybe not," she said finally. "But I'm not the world's brightest bulb or I wouldn't keep getting into fixes like this. Well, I'll take what's coming to me.

Maybe it was a stupid idea, but I was trying to make things better. I guess I ought to be smart enough to realize that if twelve years isn't making it better, nothing else is likely to."

She pushed her roll aside and stared into her coffee cup. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled. "I hate to see people I care about hurting."

"We all do, Joni. But sometimes we've just got to let them hurt because there's nothing we can do. There's no way to make Witt stop hurting."

"But what about you?" she asked.

His heart turned over, and that was exactly what he didn't want to happen. Feeling a pull toward Joni was bad enough given the situation, but feeling any more was suicidal. Rising suddenly, he tossed a few bills on the table to cover their check. He picked up his coffee and looked down at her. "Been nice talking to you, Joni. But let's not make a practice of this. It's not good for anyone. Thanks for trying with Witt."

Then he turned and walked out, feeling her eyes on him every step of the way.

Born to hurt, that was what he was, he thought. Born to hurt everyone he knew.

He didn't make it but half a block before he ran into Sam Canfield.

They'd gotten friendly after Sam had moved to Whisper Creek a few years back to take a job as a deputy. Sam's wife had died a couple of years ago in a skiing accident, leaving Sam looking haggard and haunted.

Sam was a tall man, far leaner than he used to be, and since his wife's death, he seemed to have hunched in on himself. His face had taken on deep lines, and his gray eyes had lost their sparkle. Although he was only thirty-five, his dark hair had begun to show streaks of gray.

"Hey, buddy," Sam said, his voice dragging Hardy's head up from his gloomy study of the slippery sidewalk. "You look like the world's coming to an end."

"Nan." It was Hardy's usual response. He wasn't comfortable admitting that sometimes he would like to cut his own throat, or find a hole in reality that would allow him to just slip out, like the fire door in a theater. The idea sounded stupid even to him.

"Right," said Sam, who'd been around the block of life often enough to recognize that for what it was. "Got some time? I'm thinking about stopping at the cafe for lunch, and I don't mind telling you, I'm tired to death of eating alone."

Hardy was agreeable. He didn't have anything that pressing today, and his mother, who was feeling a little better, had begun to insist she could make her own lunches, thank you very much.

They sat facing each other in a corner booth. Sam ordered a turkey sandwich and salad. Hardy went for a burger and fries.

"I try to eat healthy," Sam remarked. "The problem is, it's a lot harder to do when you're living alone."

Hardy nodded, leaning back to let the waitress put mugs of coffee in front of the two of them. Sam, he thought, was looking better than he had a while back. Some of the gauntness that had appeared after his wife's death had filled out. But there was still a haunted look in his eyes from time to time. Hardy decided not to mention it. He was never quite sure how to deal with grief. Mention it? Ignore it so as not to reawaken it?

"I hear you bid on Witt's hotel."

Hardy's head snapped up. "You know, the grapevine in this town is unbelievable. Where'd you hear that?"

"From one of Witt's cronies. My guess would be he's been sounding off a little."

"Probably." Hardy shook his head and decided to drink some coffee before he answered. But with the cup halfway to his mouth, he paused.

"You know, this town is the damnedest place."

"That's one of the things I like about it," Sam remarked. He cradled his cup as if his hands were cold. "Something happens around here, damn near everyone knows who did it. Makes my job easy. On the other hand, everyone's going to know you were hanging out with Joni."

"I bet." Hardy flashed a smile, then sighed and sipped his coffee. "I thought going into the coop would be safe."

Sam shrugged. "I dunno. How many people saw you and Joni head in there?"

"Well, you did, apparently."

"I'm not saying a word about that anywhere. Soon as I measured the gossip rate around here, I figured a closed mouth was my best protection."

"Other folks don't feel the same." "Little enough to occupy them.

Work and talking about the neighbors is it. Most of it's not meanspirited, though. Just interested."

"Witt would have a cow."

Sam grinned. "Now, that's something you don't see every day."

Hardy laughed; he couldn't help it. Sam was putting things in perspective. "I'm worried about Joni, though. She loves that man like a father."

"Then don't be having coffee with her in broad daylight." Sam paused, sipped his coffee. The waitress came with their meals, asked if they needed anything else, then went back to the other customers. Sam cast his gaze around, apparently assessing the others.

Then he leaned across the table and said in a low voice that barely carried over the cacophony of the people talking and eating, "Maybe I recognize it because of my ... loss. But I've seen how you look at that woman, Hardy. From clear across the street. Like a man who wants something so bad he can hardly stand it."

Hardy's first reaction was shock. He couldn't believe he'd been so transparent. Worse, he didn't want to believe that the aching inside him was that strong. He'd spent twelve years avoiding Joni like the plague, and for damn good reason. The whole idea that he was carrying some stupid kind of torch made him rebel.

He opened his mouth to tell Sam he was imagining things, but the lie wouldn't come. He couldn't even tell it to himself anymore. Part of the reason he'd been avoiding Joni was because he was afraid of what would happen if they got too close. Sort of like matter and antimatter. One humongous uncontrolled explosion, and then .

nothing.

Because all he could be feeling was a yearning for a hope lost. He didn't even know Joni anymore.

"I don't need to do anything about it, Sam."

"Maybe not." Sam let the subject go and tucked into his lunch. Hardy followed suit, figuring that if they both had their mouths full they couldn't talk about anything uncomfortable.

But that didn't keep him from thinking uncomfortable thoughts. Later as he walked home, he wondered just how self-deluded he was.

The first words Witt said to Hannah as he stormed into her house were,

"Joni gave that bid package to Hardy, didn't she?"

Hannah didn't know how to reply to the certainty in his tone. She didn't want to outright lie, but she also wanted to protect her daughter. In the end she said nothing at all.

"Don't bother to deny it," Witt said as if she had tried. "I talked to all the architectural firms. None of them passed the package on. You and Joni were the only other people with access."

Hannah sat in the armchair and watched Witt pace a tight circle through the living and dining rooms. This house wasn't big enough for him, she thought irrelevantly. He dwarfed it, seemed confined by it. And right now he looked like a tiger pacing in a cage.

"Why did she do this to me, Hannah? She knows what I think of Wingate."

"She didn't do anything to you. Hardy made a bid. You can ignore it."

He rounded on her. "She betrayed me."

Hannah, who rarely argued with anyone, and who usually had little to say about the folly of her fellow human beings, couldn't ignore that.

"That's going too far. You weren't betrayed." "No?" He glared at her. "How would you feel if she went behind your back to someone who killed your daughter."

"Witt, don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous. That boy is the reason my daughter is dead."

"You daughter is dead because of a drunken driver."

"She's dead because Hardy Wingate encouraged her to slip out at night with him!" Witt roared the words, and Hannah heard the windows rattle.

Another irrelevant thought slipped through her brain: time to caulk the windowpanes again.

This side of Witt appalled her a little, and worried her. She'd known him since she'd married his brother, and Witt wasn't prone to anger.

He was ordinarily a reasonably quiet, self-contained man, calm in situations that had others shouting. And the degree of his anger, after all this time, troubled her.

"Witt..." Hannah spoke quietly.

He paused in his pacing and looked at her. The redness of his eyes made her heart ache. "What?"

"I think Joni was trying to help."

"Help what?"

Hannah hesitated, still reluctant to offer opinions of this kind. But, she decided, Witt really needed to take a good long look at himself.

"To help you heal."

Witt practically gaped at her. "Help me heal? How the hell is this supposed to help me heal, for the love of God? She just ripped the wound wide open again."

"Think about that, Witt. She couldn't have ripped it open if it had been healed. And if you want to know what I think..."

"That would be refreshing," he said with a biting sarcasm that made her cheeks redden. "What I think is that your wound not only never healed, but is been festering for twelve years. And it's making you sick in your soul, Witt."

She was braced for an explosion, but it never came. For the longest time he didn't say a word. Then, finally, he sat in the other armchair and studied his hands.

"I've lost everyone, Hannah," he said quietly. "I lost my wife to cancer, I lost my brother to a mugger and I lost my daughter. I lived with the first two. I can't live with the last."

"I can see that."

"And it doesn't help me at all when my niece goes running around behind my back to the man who was responsible for Karen's death."

Hannah smothered a sigh, finally asking, "Tell me, Witt. Please explain this to me. Why do you hold Hardy responsible? Because all that happened was that he and Karen were in a car in the wrong place at the wrong time when a drunk came along. It's just like with Lewis, Witt. Lewis was in the wrong place at the wrong time when that mugger came across him. It's no different."

"It is different."

"That's what I don't understand."

He suddenly ran his fingers through his graying hair, then leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded drained.

"It's different. They were running around behind my back. Hardy was encouraging her to disobey me and run around behind my back."

The use of that phrase twice, after what he had said about Joni, chilled Hannah. The idea that he might be lumping her daughter in with Hardy frightened her more than anything ever had. And she wondered how she could prevent that.

"Karen," she said yet again, "chose to disobey you, Witt."

He shook his head and sat up straighter, looking at her. "Hardy Wingate was the only damn thing she ever disobeyed me about."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that."

Hannah shook her head, "Wilt, no parent ever knows all the things their kids do when they're not looking. Every child does things that their parents would be upset about if they knew. Joni's told me things about high school that, if I had known them at the time, I probably would have chained her in her bedroom."

The faintest flicker of humor appeared on Wilt's face, giving Hannah an instant of hope. But then il vanished and was replaced by something cold. "Hardy's influence," he said flatly. "He was a bad influence."

"Hardy wasn't involved in most of Joni's hijinks."

' "Then maybe she was the bad influence on Karen. Maybe she encouraged Karen to defy me."

"Will!" Hannah was appalled. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her heart began to beal painfully, and she' felt as if something inside her were crumbling. "Witt, no."

He jumped up from the chair and began pacing tight circles again.

"Whal am I supposed to think? Here I have proof that Joni's been running behind my back to Hardy. Why wouldn't I think she was a bad influence on Karen?"