“No. No. But he’s not a little boy now, and his father—”
“Nathan’s father. Not Nathan.”
A sob choked out, then another. “He took her away from me.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.” Kirby gathered Jo close. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
As Jo wept in her arms, Kirby knew this storm was only the beginning.
***
IT took an hour before she could think again. She sipped the hot, sweet tea Kirby made her. The sick panic had flowed away in a wash of grief. Now, for a moment, the grief was almost as soothing as the tea.
“I knew she was dead. Part of me always knew, from the time it happened. I would dream of her. As I got older I pushed the dreams away, but they would always come back. And they only got stronger.”
“You loved her. Now, as horrible as things are, you know she didn’t leave you.”
“I can’t find comfort in that yet. I wanted to hurt Nathan. Physically, emotionally, in every possible way to cause him pain. And I did.”
“Do you think that’s an abnormal reaction? Jo, give yourself a break.”
“I’m trying to. I nearly cracked again. I would have if you hadn’t been there.”
“But I was.” Kirby squeezed Jo’s hand. “And you’re stronger than you think. Strong enough to get through this.”
“I have to be.” She drank more tea, then set the cup down. “I have to go back to Nathan’s.”
“You don’t have to do anything tonight but get some rest.”
“No, I never asked why or how or ...” She shut her eyes. “I have to have the answers. I don’t think I can live with this until I have the answers. When I go to my family, I have to know it all.”
“You could go to them now, I’ll go with you. You could ask the questions together.”
“I have to do it alone. I’m at the center of this, Kirby.” Jo’s head throbbed nastily. When she opened her eyes they were brutally dark in a colorless face. “I’m in love with the man whose father murdered my mother.”
***
WHEN Kirby dropped her off at Nathan’s cottage, Jo could see his silhouette through the screen door. She wondered if either of them would ever do a harder thing in their lives than facing the past and each other.
He said nothing as she climbed the steps, but opened the door, stepped back to let her in. He’d thought he would never see her again, and he wasn’t sure whether that would have been harder to live with, or if seeing her like this—pale and stricken—was worse.
“I need to ask you . . . I need to know.”
“I’ll tell you what I can.”
She rubbed her hands together so that the small pain of her scratched palms would keep her centered. “Did they—were they involved?”
“No.” He wanted to turn away but forced himself to face the pain in her eyes. “There was nothing like that between them. Even in the journal, he wrote that she was devoted to her family. To her children, her husband. Jo—”
“But he wanted there to be. He wanted her.” She opened her hands. “They fought? There was an accident.” Her breath shuddered, and the words were a plea. “It was an accident.”
“No. God.” It was worse, he thought, by every second that passed it grew worse. “He knew her habits. He studied them. She used to walk, at night, around the gardens.”
“She . . . she loved the flowers at night.” The dream she’d had the night they’d found Susan Peters spun back into her mind. “She loved the white ones especially. She loved the smells and the quiet. She called it her alone time.”
“He chose the night,” Nathan continued. “He put a sleeping pill into my mother’s wine so she ... so she wouldn’t know he’d been gone. Everything he did he documented step by step in his journal. He wrote that he waited for Annabelle at the edge of the forest to the west of the house.” It was killing him by degrees to say it, to look into Jo’s face and say it. “He knocked her unconscious and took her into the forest. He had everything set up. He’d already set up his lights, his tripod. It wasn’t an accident. It was planned. It was premeditated. It was deliberate.”
“But why?” She had to sit. On legs stiff and brittle as twigs, she stumbled to a chair. “I remember him. He was kind to me. And patient. Daddy took him fishing. And Mama would make him pecan pie now and then because he was fond of it.” She made a helpless sound, then pressed her fingers to her lips to hold it back. “Oh, God, you want me to believe he murdered her for no reason?”
