Sterling's Reasons (19 page)
Long moments later, they walked to the couch. He took her arm from around him and held her hand. They sat beside each other and Sterling put her other 148
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hand over their joined ones. It was then he saw the tears on her face. He wiped them away with his fingers and he kissed her lightly.
He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the floor, weary. He rested his head on the back of the couch “I kept in voice contact with Red most of the time, but we were all moving so fast. Somewhere along the line, I was running alone. A relay of fire came from just inside this building. By this time I was mad and scared and just downright determined this creep was coming down before he killed another cop. I saw him move to slide inside the doorway and I raised my gun, beaded in, and squeezed off.”
Fresh tears filled her eyes as she watched the pain pierce across Joe’s face.
“So I killed the cop.” His voice was lifeless. “I had no way of knowing Red had gotten ahead of us somehow. But it was my responsibility to know, for sure, who I was pulling the trigger on. I killed my friend. I don’t remember much after that. There was blood on my hands for a long time. I guess it’ll always be there.”
He stared down at them now.
She raised the hand she held between both her own and kissed it. “It was an accident, Joe. An accident. Everyone knows that. Everyone but you. You have to come to terms with it.”
“That easy, is it? I’m glad to hear it. Red had a family, damn it, a wife, kids, brothers and sisters, nephews. I have no one. He brought happiness to many other people. There are a lot of people mourning him.” He swore viciously, helplessly. “It should have been me. I wouldn’t have been missed.”
He rose to pour himself another drink. She waited until he was settled beside her again. “Don’t be mad at me, Joe. I’m just trying to help.”
He shook his head. “No one and nothing can help.”
“Yes. I can. You have to let go of it and go on. I’m here now, Joe, and you’ll never be alone again. Never have to keep this all inside you where it will fester
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till it kills you, too. Life isn’t always easy, always fair. You know that. Tragedies are a fact. People suffer them every day. I guess if there were no bad times, you’d never be able to recognize the good times.”
Exasperated, he looked at her. “You sound like you’re an expert on life, and look at you. You run through it doing goofy things and bouncing from one thing to the other.”
Even though there was a tenderness in his voice, his attitude angered her. It was time for him to know. “You think you’re the only one in this great, big, whole wide world who has ever been responsible for someone else’s death?
Well, think again. I killed two people.”
He shot his cigarette into the ashtray and mashed it out. Putting his glass on the end table, he half turned in his seat to look at her. “Don’t play games with me, Sterling. I don’t like games.”
“I had a husband and a son. Jerry and Timmy. Five years ago they were killed in a plane crash.” She looked him straight in the eye, hoping she could find the courage to say all she had to say without crying. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“Jerry was a pilot. We owned a Cessna 172. He and Timmy liked to fish at Manos Lake in Michigan. So they would fly up for the weekend occasionally and camp and fish and bond, as Jerry called it.” She felt the smile that crept along her mouth at the memory of watching them together.
“That morning I drove them to the airport. The weather was excellent for flying. Timmy was jumping up and down with excitement and begging me to come with them. I don’t like to fish, and I liked the idea of them spending time alone together, so I said no. I should have gone. Then I would be with them now.”
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Joe said nothing, just moved closer and pulled her to him, leaving his arm around her. A coldness gripped his heart. Her words were cutting to his very soul, twisting his gut, leaving him feeling helpless and grasping for something, anything.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, she continued. “I was standing out on the tarmac watching Jerry go through his preflight when I suddenly had this chill and a flash of the plane going down. I moved toward Jerry to…to what I don’t know—talk him out of it or just touch him to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
Timmy climbed into the plane and pressed his excited little face against the window. He had his teddy bear under his arm. He was only four. He was waving to me and saying, ‘Come on, Mommy, come on. I’ll put the worm on for you.’ I waved to him and promised him maybe next time.”
She shook her head to clear the tears forcing their way to the surface. “Jerry finished his check and then he walked over to me, gave me a quick kiss, and ruffled my hair. They both waved and threw me kisses, and I let them go. I watched them taxi to the runway and then I turned my back for good luck so I didn’t see the takeoff. God.” A sob was torn from her throat as the memory tore through her. “Then I turned back and waved them off.
I should have stopped them.” She admonished herself with a sharp cry. “I should have asked them to wait just one weekend. A weekend! Or I should have climbed in with them. I should have done something. Anything.” Her fists clenched at her sides.
“Instead I did nothing. Nothing but stand and watch as my life took off in front of me.”
Joe pressed her face against his neck as her breath shuddered from her. His shattered heart broke for her.
He was rattled. He was shaken to the very core. It plowed through him slowly. It all became so very crystal clear. This lady was barn-storming through
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life, driven by an unknown source, to keep from self-destructing. So much—
everything—had cruelly been ripped from her that she literally squeezed every ounce of pleasure from every twenty-four-hour-period that she possibly could.
“Sterling, people have premonitions all the time and they turn out to be nothing. You had no way of knowing anything would really happen to them.”
How quickly his perspective could change, he thought, as he watched her and wondered what words were suitable. Anything would sound shallow.
“Doesn’t help. I keep conjuring up pictures of Timmy’s face twisted in fear as the plane plunged toward the ground. I keep seeing Jerry’s face as he tried to right the plane and I imagine his terror of killing his son. Did Timmy hang on to that damn teddy bear all the way down, or was he, please God, curled up asleep on the seat and never knew?” Her voice wavered and he watched helplessly as she fought the overwhelming sadness. She couldn’t prevent the tears now.
Whenever she let her thoughts go this far, she couldn’t stop the pain.
“I should have gone with them. That way we’d all be wherever it is they are.
I want them back so bad. And I can’t have them. Ever.” She buried her face in his chest. He held her tightly and she could feel the tremble in his body.
“If you’d gone with them, you wouldn’t be here with me now. I wouldn’t like that.” He remembered her reaction that day. So this is why the child in Delaware had upset her.
She held onto him for dear life. “Red wouldn’t want you to suffer any more than Jerry would have wanted me to go with him. I know that. Maybe they’re all up there together watching us. Hoping we make it. And by God, we will, Joe. We will.” He saw the sparks fly from her eyes. She was angry now; determined.
“Life has become so precious to me. Yes, I probably come off as being a screwball to a lot of people, but I want to do everything, enjoy everything.
Maybe that way, my husband and son can, too. I know if I had died, I wouldn’t 152
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have wanted them to pull themselves into the grave with me. But I can’t help feeling it was my fault they took off that day. If I had insisted, Jerry would have stayed on the ground.” She was breathing heavily with emotion and exertion.
Big fat tears glistened in her eyes, magnifying her resolution.
“Come here, kid,” Joe murmured, and pulled her across his lap. “Rest your head on me. Don’t think about it anymore.”
“Hold me tight, Joe. I need you. More than you’ll ever know. We need each other.” She listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat.
He didn’t say anything. Emotions were whirling roughly around in his heart.
He’d been selfish. He’d never even considered that this bubbly, life-loving woman had known anguish. What she must have gone through, and all alone.
Maybe one of his problems was that he only thought of himself. She was changing that. He kissed the top of her head and pulled her closer to him. He didn’t want anything to ever hurt her again.
“Losing a child. Nothing, nothing could be worse. I can’t even imagine the pain.” He tightened his arms around her. His own tragedy seemed pale compared to hers. He had a bitter taste in his mouth.
She lay so quietly in his arms that he thought she had fallen asleep when her hand came up. She placed her fingers on his lips. He kissed them and she sighed and snuggled deeper into his arms. Pain merged with pain. Weariness joined weariness. But the simple closeness of their hearts and bodies began providing a slow, healing strength. He wouldn’t sleep yet, but he hoped she would. Joe reached to light a cigarette.
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Chapter Eleven
By the time he stretched to reach the ashtray and put out his cigarette, she was asleep. He listened to her relaxed breathing and smiled at the absence of perpetual motion.
It was funny how at night, when all was still, things seemed worse than they did in the daylight. Everything had seemed so much worse before this lady had come along. Was it possible that he could learn to live with this? Would other people let him live with it? He rubbed his hand over his eyes. He was tired. Tired all over.
Joe directed his gaze to the first, faint rays of light filtering through the windows. He didn’t know. He didn’t have the answers to anything and, frankly, he was very weary from the trying. He closed his eyes.
When he awakened, he was stretched full-length on the couch with a light coverlet over him. Sterling was nowhere in sight. Sitting on the edge of the couch, he rubbed his eyes and stretched. There was no sound of her in the cottage. Joe walked to the deck and looked out. There, on the very edge of the water, she sat, legs hugged to her and banded by her arms. Her chin rested on her knees.
She sat, staring out to sea, not moving. He recalled her words, remembered her pain. He slid the door open and walked out onto the deck.
The new morning sunshine glittered in her hair. The rays hovered over the calm ocean, glimmering like a jewel set in gold. He watched her a full five minutes. She would look out to sea and then turn her head back to study the
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waves at her toes. A gentle breeze lifted her hair and floated strands around her shoulders.
Somehow just looking at her eased his gut. He walked to the kitchen to prepare two cups of strong instant coffee. He set the cups on the counter and searched the cupboards for the jar. Plunking it down next to the phone, his gaze fell on the notepad.
The words jumped up at him and kicked him, hard. PROGRESS REPORT.
NEWSPAPERS. NEXT WEEK. He picked it up and looked at the words a long while. He felt his anger rising. Other words swam in his mind to mingle with the ones on the pad. Betrayal. Hoodwinked. The fact that he felt his newfound trust dissolving told him he hadn’t come to completely trust Sterling or his feelings for her.
So she was up to something after all. After everything, despite everything they shared in just a few short days, he’d been right. He had bared his soul to her last night, and she to him. It didn’t compute. Like pieces of a puzzle shuffled like cards, his thoughts flew in all directions and refused to fit together as they should.
He tore the page from the pad, rage making his movements jerky. He charged down the steps and onto the sand. She heard him and turned to look at him with a warm smile of greeting. It disappeared as soon as she saw the way his brows were pulled together. He glared at her, eyes sparking fire. She shaded hers from the glare of the sun as she turned to face him.
He stood over her in his jeans, barefoot, bare-chested, legs spread, and flapped a piece of paper at her. “Do you want to explain this?”
“What are you talking about? And who do you think you’re talking to?” The freshness of the morning had begun to restore her, replenish her strength. She resented his destruction of it. And for what? Having grown accustomed to his
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unpredictability, Sterling stood up and brushed sand from her bottom. “Hold it still so I can see what it is.” She snatched it from his hand.
“So?” She read the note and looked at him, turning her face from the glare of the sun.
“You’re still going to play dumb, huh? Well, I’m not. Progress report—
newspaper—next week? I was right all along. You’re here to do a story.”
How could he? How could he still doubt her after… But of course he was right, to a point. She fought to control her anger and be reasonable. “You…”
“Admit it! Damn it, just admit it. You were sent here. I was right. Talk to me,” he demanded, stepping closer to her. His voice lowered and she could hear the threat in his words. “Was making love with me part of your plan or did you just start to feel sorry for me and decide…” She swung at him but he caught her wrist, clamping his fingers tightly around her arm.
Wildfire sparked from her eyes and she bit her lip to keep from spitting words at him, words she couldn’t retract later. She calmed herself by taking a long, deep breath and spoke deliberately and quietly. “Let go of my arm, right now.”
Their eyes were locked on each other. Defiant, ominous, tempestuous. Both on guard and watchful, they stood a foot apart, one tall, dark, and menacing; the other small, fair, and daring.