Rare and Precious Things (12 page)

ETHAN
took us straight to the flat from our lunch at Indigo. Both of us quiet on the ride home. I wondered what he thought about the whole thing, but I didn’t really want to discuss it with him. He read me well. He didn’t ask any questions or make any demands. My man just took me home and let me be.

This was Dr. Roswell territory for sure.

Ethan was working in his office when my phone rang. I knew who it was before I ever checked. “Hello, Mom.”

“Sweetheart, did you see the news about Lance?”

“Yes.”

“And how are you feeling about it?”

I took a very deep breath and was very grateful that my mother lived in San Francisco and we were separated by an ocean, because I quickly figured out where this conversation was heading, and I didn’t like it. “I’m feeling like I don’t want to hear his name, or see his picture, or hear about his father running for Vice President, or knowing that it will be everywhere in the news—”

“—Brynne, listen to me. Senator Oakley will want you to go and visit Lance in a show of support and ties to your friendship, and since you live in London I think you should consider—”

“No! There is no way in hell, Mom! Have you lost your mind?”

Silence.
I could picture her lips pursing in measured frustration with me.

“No, Brynne, I have not lost my mind. I am thinking of you and trying to make you see that for the good of your happiness and future peace of mind you should go and make a visit
to an old family friend.”

“How can you ask
that of me, Mother? You want me to go visit the man who hurt me and made a video that nearly destroyed me? You want me to do this? Why? Because his dad is running for Vice President and it will look great for our family to be connected to his family? Is that…why?” It hurt me to ask the question, but I had to know. I hoped she could tell me if it was true. I doubted it, though. The tears I wanted to cry didn’t come. Instead my heart hardened a little more toward the woman who’d given me life. She claimed to love me, but I didn’t believe it anymore.

“No, Brynne. I’m only thinking of you and worried that distancing yourself from this
opportunity to let go of the past…is a mistake.”

“
Let the past go?” Now, this was what you call being blindsided right there. Just bashed to hell, with no warning, whatsoever, of the impending hit about to rip you in two. I found myself reeling in pain and shock, in total suspended disbelief, before I managed to find my voice again. “How could that be, Mom? You—you think I should go visit him in the hospital and pretend he didn’t rape me, and let his friends abuse me on that pool table? I—I should
forgive
him?”

“I do, sweetheart. Let the past go, and you can move on with your life.
It’s not helping you to hold onto it.”

Now the tears were coming.

My mother couldn’t love me. There was no way she did. I had to suck in a gasping breath at the sharp pain that pierced my heart.

“No, Mom.” My voiced cracked as I spoke, but the words were true, and she would understand my meaning. “I wish Daddy was here to help me. He loved me. Dad loved me. You know
how I know that, Mom? Because he would
never
ask me to do what you just asked of me!”

I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I hung up on her instead and resisted the urge to throw my phone against the wall. As I stood in our bedroom
, I was unable to do much more than breathe in and out steadily. I felt curiously numb, and strong.

This would be true if there weren’t tears streaming down my face.

The muscled arms of my husband came around me from behind and pulled me into his body. I brought my hands up to hold onto his arms and…just lost it.

“Ethan—sh
e—she said I should go and v-visit Lance and f-forgive him…” The flooding tears had wet my face to the point where I couldn’t even see. “She—she thinks that it will help me to let go of my bad experi—”

“Shh, hush.” He turned me around and held me
against his chest, the welcome scent of him enveloping my senses, and so very comforting to me in my wretched state. “I know,” he crooned. “I overheard some of what you said. You don’t have to go anywhere, baby. You don’t have to see anyone that you don’t want to see. Or speak to anyone you don’t want to speak to.”

“I—I can’t believe she asked me to do
th-that…I miss my dad…” I trailed off, my blubbering gaining momentum with every new tear that leaked out of me, until Ethan took over the unpleasant task of trying to settle me down.

“
To bed you go. This is not good for you or our child, and you’re lying down now.” He led me over to our bed and sat me on the side of it. He bent down to take off my shoes, working silently but efficiently, maneuvering me into bed in under a minute. He loomed over me, bringing his face very close. “You can tell me everything if you like, but I want you off your feet and resting when you do. You’re exhausted and upset, and that’s just fucking wrong.” His actions were gentle, but the tone of his voice was anything but. He was also sporting a frown that showed me just how angry he was about the situation. And at my mother. The two of them had absolutely no chance of ever being friends. I scoffed inwardly.
Don’t kid yourself. You’re not even friends with her.

A
fter bringing me a cool washcloth to clean my face, and a glass of water, he joined me in bed. Keeping very quiet, Ethan comforted me, spooning his big body behind mine, petting my hair over and over, and listened to me replay the conversation with my mother in all its garish detail.

When I was finally finished
, he asked me a question. His tone changing from one of comfort and gentleness to one much firmer and serious. “Brynne, have you ever told your mother about what happened with Karl Westman?”

“No, you said
never to speak about him to anyone.”

“And you’ve told her nothing?”

“No, Ethan, not one word. I never even mentioned him to Dr. Roswell.”

“
Good. That’s good.” He continued to rub my head and trail fingers through my hair for a minute before he said, “Baby, I know this is hard to bring up, and to think about, but nobody can ever know about what happened with Westman the night he took you. Never. You have to take that experience and just put it away into a part of your mind as if it never happened.”

“I-I know. Because they killed him
, didn’t they? Senator Oakley’s people had Karl killed because he was trying to blackmail them and holding the video as collateral over them, right?”

He kept rubbing my head with his strong fingers massaging my scalp through my hair. It felt
divine, and was in such contrast to the unpleasant topic we were discussing. “I think that’s very close to what happened, although there’ll never be any proof or evidence to show it. His body will never be found. Westman has been wiped off the face of the earth.”

I nodded. I couldn’
t really express my feelings, but I got it. Ethan’s choice of words hit me right in the heart.
Wiped off the face of the earth
. Because that’s what had happened to my dad. Gone. No longer here for me. No more hearing the love for me in his voice when we talked.

And the reason he was gone,
all went back to something I had allowed to happen years ago. Consequences of my actions. Lance was in there too, yes, but it was my decision that made his evil deeds possible. I went to the party. I got drunk and didn’t respect my body. I was used and abused, and let the experience take me over to the point I was willing to just go out of this life.
Pathetic.
But in the end, it was my father’s life that was sacrificed.

“What are you thinking?” he asked
me in a soft voice, for the second time today.

“About how I miss my dad
,” I blurted, my emotions so raw I felt another crying jag coming on strong.

“Baby…” Ethan put his hand on my belly and started rubbing. The gesture was very sweet but it just made me long for my dad
even more.

The words started tumbling out of me and I couldn’t stop them.
“Today we went to the doctors and saw pictures of our baby. If Daddy was still here I would have shared with him, and he would have wanted to listen…and be excited about being a grandpa. I would have shown him the pictures—he would have wanted to know how I was feeling—I just miss him so much…” I paused for a breath. “I can’t talk to him now, and I can’t talk to my mother, either. I have nobody... I feel like an orphan—” I finally broke, silently this time, but no less emotionally painful, in sharing my grief about something that would hurt for a very long time.

Ethan felt my silent sobbing shudders, but his response was
simply to hold me a little tighter, showing me that even with my great loss, I still had him. The rubbing on my belly must have gotten a little stronger too, because that’s when it happened.

A fluttery little
tickle from inside my womb. A brush alongside the front of my belly that reminded me of the beat of butterfly wings. I froze, and covered over Ethan’s hand with my own, pressing on the spot where I’d felt it.

“What?” he asked worriedly.
“Are you hurting—”

“
I felt our baby. Moving around inside me. Like butterfly wings flapping.”
Like a message from an angel.

He kept his hand on me, probably hoping he could feel what I was feeling but I doubted it was possible quite yet.
As we lay in bed together worrying about bad things that couldn’t be changed, I realized something very important. I would never make it through this without Ethan. His strength pulled me through the hard parts.

Ethan
never let me give up.

The words that came out of his mouth next, showed me just how much I had been blessed
when he’d found me, regardless of my losses.

“I love you,” he lulled at my ear, “and this little person loves you
…so much.” He splayed his fingers wide, swirling them over my stomach in a show of affectionate possession when he told me the last part. “He’s there watching. Your father. He loves you from another place now, but his love is still there, Brynne, and it always will be.”

OAKLEY
didn’t waste even a day in reaching out. I’d thought a few days before the request came through. But, no, I suppose not. The Senator didn’t have much in the way of time to work with. The US election was less than a month away, and time stopped for no man. I’d played out the scenario in my mind as soon as I saw the news report in the restaurant at lunch. That cocksucker was going to use his son’s war injury to propel his running mate into the presidential seat. And it was going to work.

The call came through on my mobile while I was smoking my one cig for the night.

“Blackstone.”

“Yeah.
What do you want?”

“I want insurance that puts the past to rest once and for all.”

“Of course you want insurance. We all want it. How do you propose for that to happen, Senator?” I dreaded whatever he might suggest. Probably because I had an inkling for what it might be. The earlier call from Brynne’s mum was a good fucking clue.

“A simple
showing of support to an old family friend should do it. Hospital visit. Media will be taken care of.”