“What about your family?Don’t you want to see them again?”
“I can’t.My father disowned me.”
“For what?”
“Leaving home, living in sin, and turning my back on the Lord.”She tried to distract him with a smile and changed the subject.“What’s the story with your father?Are you going to become a sheriff like him?”
“I don’t want to be like him.”
“Why is that?”
He massaged the nape of his neck, visibly uncomfortable.“The night you went out to dinner with my mother, she told me he abused her physically.”
“Oh,” she said in a quiet voice.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.She’s said things before that hinted at his violent nature.”
“Like what?”
“She told me she got sober when she was pregnant with Billy, and she realized she needed to get out of the relationship.Your dad wouldn’t let her go.”She glanced at Wade, gauging his reaction.“Do you remember that time?”
“I remember,” he said gruffly.
“Did you know she wanted to leave?”
“Not really.I was only eight or nine, and she didn’t confide in me.I could tell she was unhappy with my dad, and I knew she was devoted to Billy.She loved him in a way she never loved me.”
Meredith gaped at him in shock.“Why did you think that?Because she took better care of him?”
He drummed his fingertips against the steering wheel.“That was part of it.She was more affectionate with him.More attentive.She also married my dad because of me.I think she resented me for tying her down to him.”
“That’s unfair.You were innocent.”
He gave a stiff shrug.“She blames me for Billy’s death, too.She’s not rational.”
Meredith considered that.Wynona was a troubled woman with a traumatic past and a serious addiction.Meredith related to her and sympathized with her plight.She also understood Wade’s disillusionment.He’d been traumatized, too.It wasn’t called a vicious cycle for nothing.“Are you going to talk to her about Billy?”
“No.It would send her over the edge.”
Meredith fell silent.Wynona was already on a path of self-destruction, but Wade knew that.He’d come to Lost Lake to convince his mother to get help with her addiction.Meredith thought they needed to communicate about the past first.
Instead of offering this advice, she reached out to hold his hand.“I’m sorry.”
He accepted the gesture easily and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss it.The action was so tender, and so natural, it took her breath away.
“You smell like that soap,” he murmured.“It drives me crazy.”
She pulled her hand from his, flushing.She recalled every word he’d said the other night.The suggestive comments he’d made had been replaying in her mind on a constant loop.Now that they were together, she was unsure how to proceed with him.Her senses tingled with anticipation.
They arrived at the library a few minutes later.She climbed out of air-conditioned vehicle and into the heat of the noonday sun.It was at least eighty degrees already.She decided to duck into the computer lab while he did his work.
“I could use a research assistant,” he said, surprising her.
“A research assistant who can’t read?”
“You don’t have to read.I need someone to look at pictures in old yearbooks.I think John Doe was an athlete, with good enough grades to get into a respected university.I know he was over six feet tall, with light brown or blond hair.”
