“I remembered—with a little help from Kane.”
“I knew it.” As she snapped it out, Malorys face went bright with anger. “I knew he was behind this.”
“Hold on. He took me on a trip down memory lane. That makes him a son of a bitch, but it doesnt change the facts.” God, she was tired. She just wanted to be left alone to paint the walls. Paint away the ache and fatigue. “H
e didnt change what happened or make it worse. He didnt have to. I just knew that after seeing it again, feeling it again, I was making a mistake.”
“Why is it a mistake to love a decent man?”
“Because he doesnt love me.” She yanked the band out of her hair, as if doing so would relieve the headache simmering at the base of her skull. “Because hes going to leave as soon as hes done here. Because the more Im with him, the deeper in I get, and I cant control how I feel the way I thought I could. I cant be with him and not be in love with him.”
“Did you ask how he felt?”
“No. And you know what? I just wasnt up to hearing the old „I care about you routine. Sue me.”
No one spoke for a moment. There was only the sound of Danas labored breathing, the hum of the paint machine, and the steady buzz of the sander from the other side of the house.
“You hurt him.” Malory stepped over, flicked off the machine. “Maybe his feelings arent as simple and weak as you think. The man I saw this morning had been cut straight down to the bone. If you wanted payback, Dana, you got it.”
She whirled around, vibrant with fury, trembling with insult. The roller fell out of her hand and left a dull gold smear on the drop cloth. “For Christs sake, what do you take me for? Do you think Ive been sleeping with him just so I could kick him out and get back some of my own?”
“No, I dont. Im just thinking, if you really want that smooth stretch of road, you dont get it by running somebody else into a ditch, then leaving him there bleeding.”
Dana heaved the hair band to the floor and wished viciously she had something more satisfying to throw. “Youve got some goddamn nerve.”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“This is my fucking spin on the wheel, Malory. I dont need you or anyone else telling me who to let into my life, or who to close out.”
“Seems to me thats just what youre letting Kane do. He had a direction he wanted you to take, andypure going right along with it. Youre not even asking yourself why he gave you the push.”
“So now I should stay with Jordan because of the key? Youre lecturing me about my own life, my own decisions, so I wont risk screwing up your deal?”
Malory drew a long breath. It wasnt the time for her to lose her temper, or, she decided, to blame Dana for losing hers. “If you believe that, you dont know me, and more, you dont know what it is youve agreed to do. So you can keep on painting, and congratulating yourself for avoiding all those bumps in the road, or you can stop being a coward and settle this with Jordan.”
Finished, Malory started out. “He shouldnt be hard to find,” she called back. “He told Flynn he was going to see his mother this morning.”
Chapter Sixteen
HE brought her carnations. Tulips had been her favorite, but it was the wrong season. Still, shed liked simple flowers the best. Tulips and daffodils, rambling roses and daisies. The carnations were simple, it seemed to him, and feminine in a soft, old-fashioned pink.
Shed have appreciated them, made a fuss, and put them in her good vase—the one her mother had given her some long ago Christmas.
He hadnt thought to buy anything to put them in, so the florists paper would have to do.
He hated the cemetery. All those stones and markers popping out of the ground like a crop of death in gray and white and black. All the names and dates inscribed on them were as much a reminder that no one beat fate in the end as a memorial to a lifetime.
Morbid thoughts, he supposed, but this was the place for them. The grass was bumpy and weedy, so the green was marred with brown patches where it had worn away, spindly where it hadnt been clipped close enough to the stones. Others had brought flowers to their dead, and some of the offerings were faded and withered. Some solved this remembrance of death by laying artificial blooms at the markers, but the bright colors struck him as false.
More lie, he thought, than tribute.
It was too windy here on the north end, and too cold, without the shelter of the small grove of trees to the east or the sunny rise just to the west.
Hed had the marker replaced a few years before with smooth white granite. Shed have considered that a foolish expense, but hed needed to do something.
It held her name. Susan Lee Hawke. And the span of her life, that short forty-six years. Beneath, in script, was the line hed paraphrased from Emily Dickinson.
Hope perches in the soul