“What?”
“Lizzie came into the jewelry store when I was buying that charm for you. She asked if I was buying it for Emily. I said no, but I wouldn’t tell her who it was for. She was still in the store when I left.”
“You think she bought the same charm for herself?” Rachel wasn’t sure she believed all this, but she had never known Lucas to make up elaborate stories.
“Hell, I don’t know. But it sounds like something she’d do.”
“I still don’t understand why she told everyone you’d spent the night with her. What did she hope to gain, if it wasn’t true?”
“She thought she was doing me a favor. She came to me one afternoon and she said she’d already been to Packer. She’d heard that I told Packer I didn’t have an alibi, and so she’d provided me with one. She told him I’d lied to him to protect her reputation.”
“She thought you’d be so grateful to her that you’d date her again?”
“That’s exactly what she thought. I told her it wasn’t going to happen. I said I didn’t need her alibi, because I didn’t kill Roger. She refused to change her story. She said she would look like a fool if she did, and she begged me not to dispute it.”
“So you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted. “I didn’t want Lizzie lying for me, but I couldn’t make her stop. When I tried to explain where I really was, no one believed me. Some people thought I’d spent the night with Lizzie. The others maintained I’d killed your brother. I knew if anyone found out you and I had been seeing each other, there would be even more speculation that Roger and I had gotten into a fight, and that I’d pushed him off the bluff.”
“So you kept quiet.”
“I kept quiet,” he agreed flatly. “I neither confirmed nor denied Lizzie’s story. And I watched the townspeople pull even further away from my family, some of them even refusing to let their kids play with my little sister because they didn’t want any association with me. I hung around your house, trying to catch you alone for a minute, but someone was always there. And you didn’t come out of your house for weeks.”
“I was taking care of my mother. She had a breakdown of some sort and she wouldn’t let me or my grandmother out of her sight. People came to the house to bring us food and try to talk to us about the scandal—they kept speculating about you and Lizzie, wondering if she was telling the truth, or if you’d killed Roger and were using her to cover for you. I didn’t want to believe either possibility, but I was so confused. So overwhelmed by everything that had happened...”
“You were deliberately avoiding me, weren’t you?”
“I suppose I was,” she whispered. “The things Lizzie said... she made it sound so real. And it hurt me so badly to think that you and she...”
She swallowed. “You must have felt so alone during those weeks,” she mused, thinking for the first time how it must have been for Lucas. “Did you try to talk to your father? Tell him what had happened? Ask for his advice?”
“I tried. I told him what Roger had said to me before he died.”
Rachel swallowed. “You told your father Roger thought he was a murderer?”
“Yes. I asked if he’d had any knowledge that Roger had been hanging around our land, looking for evidence. If he had seen Roger the night he died.”
“What did he say?”
Lucas’s expression hardened. “He told me to get out of his house.”
“He threw you out? Just for asking questions?”
Lucas nodded. “He told me he didn’t like my implications and that he wasn’t answering any questions raised by a Jennings. When I tried to push for answers, he told me to leave.”
“That was the night you left town?”
He nodded again. “I tried to call you first. I thought you, if no one else, would believe me. I thought you could meet me, help me decide what to do next. You hung up on me.”
She remembered the call. She’d heard Lucas’s voice, and she had panicked, terrified that she would burst into tears and reveal everything. “My mother was in the room. I didn’t know what to say to you. She and my grandmother were still distraught with grief over Roger. I was upset about losing the brother I had never known well enough, and I was still reeling from what Lizzie had told me. I felt so betrayed.”
“You really thought I’d slept with her? After all the things I’d said to you that Saturday afternoon? All the promises I’d made to you?”
The hint of hurt in Lucas’s voice put Rachel on the defensive. “I didn’t know what else to think. Lizzie was so adamant about what had happened, and everyone told me you weren’t denying it. And, Lucas, she had shown me the charm.”
“She must have somehow found out you were the girl I’d been seeing. She must have wanted to come between us. I just can’t understand why you believed her.”
Rachel was finally able to jerk her hand from Lucas’s grasp. She jumped to her feet, staring down at him. “I was eighteen years old. I had lost my brother, and my family was falling apart. And Lizzie told me it had happened. She seemed so defiant about it. So smug...”