An Accidental Woman (43 page)

The words came in a woeful rush. “I didn't want to date him. I mean, I
did,
because someone like me dating someone like him was a dream come true, but it couldn't work. I knew that. We were too different. When I told him so, he kept saying that it was all right, that he loved me, that we needed to keep our relationship secret until just the right time, and then he'd tell the world. ‘Tell the world.' Those were the words he used, like he really was proud of us.”

“But he hit you,” Micah said with his thumb on the scar at the corner of her mouth.

“When he drank. He always apologized for the drink, and for the hitting, and I loved him, or loved the dream. Then I got pregnant and things fell apart. He was furious. He said the baby couldn't be his. He said he always used a condom.”

“Did he?”

“When he was sober. But it was his. I wasn't with anyone else. And I didn't demand that he marry me. I just wanted him to help me keep the baby.” Her voice fell to a whisper. Her eyes welled with longing. “I wanted her. I wanted her so much.”

“Were you arguing about the baby that night?”

“Not me. I wasn't going to say anything. I was working. But he kept seeking me out and following me around, and he kept drinking. He started calling me names, loudly, so I finally went off with him to try to calm him down. He wanted to know if I'd aborted the baby yet, and when I said I hadn't, he said he'd do it for me.”

Micah felt sick. “Do it?”

“Kick me. He said he could kick the baby out, and he started pushing
me, pushing me back away from other people. When I turned and ran, he followed.”

Micah could see the pain in her eyes and wanted to end it, stop her. She was only saying what Aidan had. Still she needed to go on. They had to get it all out, because Aidan's story only went so far.

“Then what happened?”

Her eyes filled with tears, as words that had been locked inside for so long poured out. “I believed him. I believed that he would kick me and kill the baby. I couldn't let that happen. So I ran between the cars on the field and got to my own, because the only thing I could think was that I had to get away. I started to drive, and it was dark. I got to an open part of the field, and I remember thinking I was almost there, almost free, so I went faster. I had no idea he'd race out in front of the car.” She had started to shake. “I didn't know he was dead. I figured that he was protected because he was loosey-goosey drunk. And because he was a DiCenza. DiCenzas didn't die. They didn't even get hurt.”

“But you ran.”

“He was a
DiCenza.
He could have ended up with a concussion, and they'd have come after me. They'd have sent me to prison and taken my baby. Yes, I ran, and when I learned that he was dead, I kept running. It nearly killed me to give the baby up, but I wanted her to be safe. Then I came to Lake Henry, and I found you and the girls, and I just . . . just pushed all of that unhappiness out of my mind. When you do that, when you push it all out, you can pretend it never happened. Ninety percent of the time, that was how I felt.”

“And the other ten percent?” Micah asked.

“That was when you talked about marriage and kids, and I heard it.”

“Heard it?”

“The thud of his body against the car. I hear it sometimes, so loud and relentless, and then I realize it's my heart. I'll never forget that sound. It's an awful sound, Micah, and then when you find out that it represents the end of a life . . . if it hadn't been for the baby I might have ended my own. I can't conceive of killing someone.”

“There's our argument,” Cassie announced.

“They won't believe me,” Heather told Micah.

He looked at Aidan. “Is what she said consistent with what you witnessed?”

Aidan nodded. “He was drunk. He threatened her.”

Cassie asked, “And you'll testify to that?”

“Yes.”

Heather's hands tightened on Micah's wrists. “I don't want to go back there. You don't know the power they have.”

No, Micah didn't. He had been privileged to spend his life with more decent people than the DiCenzas. He had a feeling that if he could mend a few bridges, those decent people would rally around Heather once they heard all this, which wasn't to say that things would be easy. There would be headlines now. Heather would have to return to California, and God knew what faced her there.

He did know one thing, though. When she went, she wouldn't be alone.

* * *

That was what she told Victoria when she returned to the house, after she had taken over the phones, answered a few curious calls, made a few exuberant ones of her own. She still had energy to spare, so she went to the exercise room.

“I do feel brave,” she told the cat, and promptly picked the orange bundle of fur up off her lap, set her gently on the floor, and went to the wall. She took the braces down, held them, turned them. She even went so far as to bend over and place one against her leg.

Then she heard the sound of a snowmobile on the lake and went to the wall of windows. A headlight cut through the fast-fading day. She watched the machine with its helmeted driver, knowing exactly who it
was. Dropping the brace, she wheeled out to the main room and opened the deck door just as he parked the machine. She moved aside to let him in.

Removing the helmet, he grinned. “Hey.”

She grinned back, helpless to resist. He was adorable with his auburn hair all mussed and his cheeks red. He was enjoying the lake in winter; that pleased her. “Hey, yourself.”

“We did good today.”

She nodded.

“So I'm here to take you for a ride.”

“Micah dismissed you early?”

His grin widened. “Billy had his friend, Amos, there. You know, old guy from Cotter Cove, grew up working a sugarbush there? They didn't need us. Micah hung around fueling the fire with the girls, but I was superfluous.”

“Superfluous?”

“Couldn't have been happier. So come on. Let's go for a ride.”

She did know what he was feeling. There was a light-headedness that came with the sudden easing of a weight. But she didn't do snowmobiles anymore. “It's getting dark.”

“Do you know the visibility on those things, once the headlight reflects on the snow?”

She did. She knew everything about “those things.”

“Maybe another time,” she said.

“I want to take you to Little Bear.”

“It's raining,” she tried, but he had an answer for that, too.

“Not now, it isn't. It's barely misting. Billy told me to use his snowmobile, so I thought we'd do dinner out there. I picked up chili at Charlie's. You love Charlie's chili.”

Poppy eyed the machine. “I can't go on that.”

“Is it a matter of distrust?”

“No. Bad memories.”

“Maybe it's time we made some new ones.”

On principle, she could buy that. But the timing was off. She wasn't ready.

“Come on, Poppy,” Griffin coaxed. “It was stormy that night. What happened had nothing to do with booze. It could have happened to the best of drivers.”

The last of Poppy's smile, the last of her indulgence faded away. She sat back in her chair. “How did you learn about this? Who did you talk with?”

“If I tell, will you come for a ride?”

“Yes.”

“I read the police file. It's a matter of public record.”

“Who'd you talk with?”

“You. Just you.”

“I don't talk about the accident.”

“That's right. I put two and two together, and you confirmed it.”

She had failed to deny it, that was what she had done. Feeling trapped, she wheeled around and returned to the weight room. She heard the thud of his boots as he kicked them off, then the sound of stockinged feet following her in. With her back to him, she said, “I don't have any more right to go out on a snowmobile than I have to walk or get married or have kids.”

“So sin again,” he said, and before she knew what he was up to, he had one of her arms after the other in her parka. Seconds before he lifted her in his arms, he dropped her hat in her lap. “Put it on,” he directed as he strode toward the other room.

“I don't want to do this, Griffin,” she said, feeling more than a little unease as he stepped back into his boots. “It's getting dark. Snowmobiles scare me. I want my chair.” The cold hit her face when he opened the door, but it was eased moments later when he slid a helmet over her head.

Straddling the snowmobile, he set her sidesaddle before him and pulled on his own helmet. Only then did he pause. He raised both faceplates. His eyes gentled. “Tell me you don't want to do this. If you truly don't, I'll take you back inside.”

If he hadn't given her the choice, Poppy might have refused him. She was an adult. She was her own person. She saw no reason why she should be railroaded into
anything,
let alone something that was emotionally disturbing for her. But emotions ran two ways. Yes, being on a
snowmobile for the first time since the accident brought back memories—but, oddly, the bad ones were vague. Far clearer were the good ones—the excitement, the sense of daring, even the nip of the cold.

She didn't want to go back inside. It was a night to celebrate. This was fitting.

* * *

There was a quiet intimacy as they sat there on the porch. Cushioned by it, Poppy wanted to ask when he was returning to Princeton. He would go, she knew. He would get tired of this.

She couldn't go to Princeton. Well, she could, but she didn't want to. She loved Lake Henry. She loved her life here. She loved the people, the smallness, the sense of control. Here she was, on an island, totally dependent for mobility on Griffin, yet she didn't mind. She couldn't imagine feeling as comfortable in the city.

In the end, that intimacy notwithstanding, she didn't ask him when he was returning, because she didn't want to hear the answer. But she thought about it when she woke up in the middle of the night as he tossed a log on the fire, and she thought about it a few hours after that, woken this time by sleet on the roof.