She showered and dressed with a leaden heart. While she was pulling on a white cotton skirt that would keep her cool on another hot day, her eyes suddenly widened in panic. She had told Caroline Lasher that she would meet her this morning at the library for their first piano lesson. How could she face Christian’s mother after what had happened between her and her son last night? She thought of trying to contact Mrs. Lasher to cancel, but had already struck down the thought before it was fully formed. It was too rude to cancel this late. Besides, she didn’t have her number. And Megan would be damned if she was going to call Christian for any reason after he’d walked out on her last night.
Later in church, Megan tried to focus on Father Gregory’s sermon, but her mind kept wandering to thoughts and images of Christian. She flushed hotly as she unintentionally replayed moments of their lovemaking last night. As she sat in the holy confines of St. Catherine’s, surely some of the things that Christian had whispered so hotly in her ear last night should seem irreverent and sinful.
But they didn’t. Christian’s words only seemed honest and wrenched straight from his soul.
An unsettling prickle on her bared neck made Megan turn to the back of the church. Her eyes were drawn to him as surely as a magnet would unerringly find one piece of iron in a pile of wood. He was staring at her through heavily-lidded eyes from the last empty pew in the church.
Megan’s first reaction was concern. Christian wore a casual light blue button-down shirt that gave the impression of being thrown on over his nakedness before he’d stalked restlessly out of his loft. His hair was tousled and finger combed, at best. One strong arm was draped carelessly over the back of the pew. His expression was hard, impenetrable. But Megan sensed his exhaustion even from this distance. She recalled his statement about being unable to sleep without her. Surely he had just been exaggerating about that to make an excuse for his outlandish midnight raids.
Hadn’t he?
One thing was for sure. His church attendance was an anomaly. Christian may have attended St. Catherine’s regularly as a child, but she knew for a fact that he hadn’t returned for a service in years, probably for more than a decade.
She turned around distractedly when her fellow parishioners stood. Her lips and tongue formed the words of the hymn clumsily. As she sat down again after an excruciating wait of several minutes, Megan glanced over her shoulder. But the last pew was empty.
She dreaded seeing Caroline Lasher later that morning. When she saw her warm smile of greeting as she waited for Megan in the lobby of the library, however, some of her heaviness drifted away naturally. Caroline was a lovely, generous woman who Megan would have been appreciative to know under any circumstances. She returned the older woman’s hug.
Caroline and Christian shared the same eyes, with the one exception being that Caroline’s gaze was gentler, less incising than her son’s. But as Caroline bade Megan to sit down on the piano bench in the private music room and sat next to her in a chair, Megan realized that she saw every bit as clearly as Christian.
“Something is wrong, isn’t it, Megan?”
Megan opened her mouth to form the automatic denial that had been entrenched into her response repertoire since she was three years old. But when her eyes met Caroline’s compassionate gaze, her lower lip trembled. Something in Caroline’s eyes seemed to grant her permission to speak the truth instead of carrying an unspoken plea for assurance that everything was just fine.
Megan was horrified to feel tears flood her eyes. When she saw Caroline’s calm acceptance of them, though, she muttered brokenly through a storm of emotion that crashed over her.
“Christian and I…he’s…I didn’t know about his career with Lasher Down until last night. I knew he was a musician, but…saw him unexpectedly at the concert last night, and…accused him of being a liar and being manipulative, and even worse things…and afterwards…”
Much to her mortification, Megan sobbed uncontrollably with grief. She grasped at Caroline’s outstretched hand like it was a life preserver thrown to her in a choppy sea.
“I know you know about what happened to me…about Henry Nightingale. Christian told me you know. It’s not all that I am, Caroline. I can’t even remember it. But it’s formed me, too. It’s left me unsure about men…inexperienced…awkward. And you know Christian…he’s everything I’m not. It won’t work out between him and me. It’s just too…”
“Too what?” Caroline prompted patiently when Megan’s voice broke.
“Unlikely. Strange…”
“And?”
“Right,” Megan whispered as fresh tears spilled over her cheeks.
Caroline transferred over to the piano bench next to Megan. She hugged her.
“Some of the most beautiful things in existence are strange and unlikely,” Caroline said with a small smile a moment later. “That’s what makes them so beautiful, because they’re rare, something to be cherished.”
She looked up into Caroline’s compassionate gaze. She understood exactly what the older woman meant…and that brought a new dread.
“I made him so angry. When I found out that he knew about my past, I felt so vulnerable…and mad, too. Mad that he was starting to treat me like everyone else, like I would shatter at the wrong word. Last night, I accused him of things that I didn’t even believe, just to stop him from looking at me like I was a fragile child…”
She paused as the reality of her words crashed into her awareness. She’d made Christian look at her with something other than concern, all right. She’d baited him until his anger and desire snuffed out his caution. Had that been her unconscious desire all along?
And she had accused him of being manipulative?
“Megan, what did Christian tell you about Henry Nightingale?”
She blinked in surprise at the question. “He didn’t tell me anything about it, except that my sister Hilary had cornered him and forced him to listen to the whole story. Christian didn’t know about my past before my sister did that.”
Caroline shook her head thoughtfully. “He may not have known specifically about you, but I’d swear that he has some memories of Henry Nightingale. Maybe he couldn’t recall the details or the names until Hilary mentioned them, but part of him knew the truth. There was just too much of an emotional aura…an upheaval in the whole community for Christian to have been left completely ignorant.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that families like mine suffered to the degree that yours did,” Caroline continued. “But such a crime sent shock waves into the parish, and they must have struck at the children hard, undoubtedly in ways that a child couldn’t fully understand or articulate. Henry Nightingale likely came to equate danger and evil in many a neighborhood child’s mind during that time period—quite literally the monster under the bed.”