Fox River (20 page)

“He told me Christian came over a couple of nights ago to see me.”

Julia wanted to throw the clay at something. Instead she picked it up and began to slap it from hand to hand.

“Did you see him?” Maisy asked.

“He was here. Did I see him?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“We spoke. I was sitting outside in the dark. Not that it mattered to me. He came up behind me. He said he’d come to see you.”

“Where was Callie?”

“Inside.”

“You must have been afraid she’d come out and look for you.”

“She nearly did.”

“He’s going to see her soon, Julia. You’d better decide how you plan to handle it when he does.”

“He won’t be back, Maisy. He was…resentful and angry. He hates me. He won’t take a chance on seeing me again.”

“He knows you’re living here?”

“I don’t know what he knows!” Julia drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? For being angry that I won’t let this alone? Well, I can’t. Callie is my granddaughter, and Christian is her father.”

“Bard Warwick’s name is on the birth certificate. And that’s all anyone ever has to know.”

“Don’t you realize half the town has figured out who that child’s father is? The rumors began before she was born. She’s going to hear them one day. Christian will very soon.”

Julia felt a scream creeping up her throat. “Maisy, stop this. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“She’s growing more like him every day.”

“Stop it!”

“No, darn it. You stop it. You can’t make things go away because you don’t want to see them!”

The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of a mockingbird in a tree outside the window.

“Call me if you need something,” Maisy said at last. “Or call Jake. He should be in soon. I’m going out for a while.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find Christian. I can buy you a little time, but that’s the best I can do. He wants to see me, he can see me on his turf. But sooner or later he and Callie are going to be in the same place at the same time. And then we’ll all see how long it takes him to figure out she’s his daughter.”

“I won’t forgive you if you tell him.”

“Your father used to say things like that when he was angry. I hated it then, and I hate it now.”

Julia was too angry to apologize.

“Well, at least it’s clear whose daughter
you
are,” Maisy said.

Julia was left in the darkness with her mind darting in a thousand different directions. She slammed the clay on the table in front of her. Then she began to knead.

Maisy calmed down a little by the time she reached the front gate. But she wasn’t going to apologize. She loved her daughter, and, like every mother, she blamed herself for everything that went wrong in her child’s life. But there were things Julia simply had to face, and who better to tell her so?

She was afraid she might run into Callie and Jake on her way to the pickup, but they were nowhere in sight. She got in and turned the key. For once it started without a hitch.

Maisy took that as a good sign, a sign that the pickup was aching to be driven somewhere far away. Tomorrow she was going into town and trading the sucker in. She didn’t care what Jake thought. She had spent far too much of her life worrying about everything she did.

She was halfway to Claymore Park before she was calm enough to think straight.

She couldn’t tell Christian about Callie, nor had she ever had any intention of doing so. But neither was she going to warn him away from Ashbourne. She and Jake had not been blessed with children, but if they had been, she would have wanted a son like Christian. He was a strong, decent man who had been dealt a bad hand in the game of life. Now she wondered if he had finally succumbed to fate and become embittered and angry.

Who needed friends more than Christian?

Despite the evidence, the press coverage and local opinion, Maisy had never doubted Christian’s innocence. Her letters to him in prison had confirmed it again and again. She had met with Peter Claymore regularly to see how the appeals were progressing and offered Ashbourne money to help defray legal costs. Peter had refused her help, but he had kept her abreast of every development. She had done what little she could for Christian. But now there was nothing left to do except offer support.

She took the turnoff to Claymore Park and pulled into a spot near the stable, but she sat behind the wheel for several minutes, trying to think about what she could say and how she could let Christian know she cared. What could she tell him that wasn’t a lie?

She got out at last and smoothed her dress over her substantial hips.

“Maisy?”

Peter Claymore was coming out of the stable and seemed surprised to see her.

“Peter.” She held out her hand, and he took it and kissed her cheek.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to see Christian. Is he around?”

“He’s riding, but he should be back soon. I’m glad you came. It’s a lonely time for him.”

“I was just sorry I missed him the other night.”

“If you walk over that hill a little ways, you might see him.”

“I’ll do that.” Maisy patted her belly. “I need the exercise.”

“I remember when you were skinny as a rail. I like you this way just fine.”

“That’s the best thing about old friends. They’ll take you any way they can get you.”

“Have a nice walk.”

Peter started up to the house and Maisy up the hill. She was puffing by the time she got to the top. She did need exercise, and she did need to diet. She resolved to think about both if she survived this hike.

She could have waited there, but she hated standing still. Her life was a whirlwind of her own choosing. She understood why and how it had happened, but not quite how to set it right. Now she kept walking until she’d climbed another hill.

Not far in the distance, on the back of an enormous gray horse, a man was riding toward her, his back to a rosy horizon. Her breath caught in her throat. For a moment she simply stared as the ghost of Harry Ashbourne rode toward her in the twilight. Then she realized the man on the horse’s back was Christian.

Christian slowed as he saw her; then he sped up until he was only a few feet away. He dismounted, holding his horse’s reins, and his lips curved into a smile. “Maisy Fletcher.”

“Christian.” She moved toward him and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek before she stepped back. “There are no words to tell you how glad I am to see you.”

He nodded. “Weren’t you expecting me?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“You look, I don’t know…stunned. Have I changed that much?”

“To be honest, it was déjà vu. My first husband owned a horse that looked almost exactly like this one. For a moment I thought I was looking at his ghost.”

“You never met Night Ranger, did you? Ranger, this is Maisy Fletcher. My good friend.” He swept his hand toward Maisy as if he were really introducing them.

“So, this is the famous Night Ranger. Julia talked…”

He filled in the silence. “Yeah, she would have. But I guess I never rode him to your place. He wasn’t a pleasure horse. He was too valuable.”

“You look like you belong together.”

“I guess he’s mine now. Peter found him and bought him back for me. We’ve both been away too long, though. My legs feel like spaghetti, and he’s hesitant, like he’s not quite sure what to do.”

“You’ll find your way together.”

“Let’s walk back.” He led Ranger along the path she’d followed, and Maisy walked beside him.

“I hear you came by a few nights ago,” she said.

“I didn’t know Julia would be there.”

“She’s staying with us for a while.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised.

“It seemed best. She needs a lot of help, and I have the time. We’ve had to do a lot of adjusting. You never realize how much you depend on your eyes until you have someone living with you who can’t see.” Maisy realized she was babbling, saying more than she needed because she didn’t really know what to say.

“What do you mean, can’t see?”

“Didn’t you realize? She didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“She’s blind.”

She heard him draw a breath. “She fell off a horse a couple of weeks ago while she and her daughter were out riding together. She took a jump, the horse didn’t. She wasn’t injured, but when she came to, her eyesight was gone.”

He was silent, as if he was taking it in.

“No one seems to understand why it happened,” she went on. “They did test after test. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t see, except that she doesn’t. So now they think…”

“Think what?”

“That it’s psychological.”

“What do you think?”

“Our bodies can play tricks on us.”

“You don’t think this is some sort of medical mumbo jumbo? That they don’t know what happened, so they’re taking the easy way out?”

“She got excellent care, and the best specialists looked at her. There just doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.”

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“Sometimes things happen that don’t make any sense. Like you going to prison.”

He stopped. “I came over a few nights ago just to tell you how much I appreciated your letters.” He hesitated. “And to say I’m sorry I never wrote back.”

“Did you read them?”

“At first.” They started walking again. “Then I couldn’t read them. It’s hard to explain.”

“You don’t need to. I sent them because I wanted you to know I cared. I never said anything important. I probably don’t even have anything important to say.”

“They reminded me of a lot of things.”

“Julia…”

He grunted.

She knew he didn’t want to continue that line of discussion, but she’d already alienated her daughter tonight. She figured she might as well go for broke. “You can’t understand why Julia married Bard so soon after the trial, can you?”

“It’s not my place to understand. That was a long time ago.”

“She was shattered, Christian. Surely that makes sense to you. She lost Fidelity, then she lost you. Bard held her together, and in the end, he seemed like a refuge from all the pain.”

“This isn’t my business anymore. I’m sorry she’s blind. I really am. But none of it’s my concern.”

“You’ve never forgiven her for doubting you.”

She didn’t think he was going to answer, but he did after a long silence. “No, I never have. You didn’t doubt me. Peter never did. Robby knew I didn’t kill Fidelity. But Julia…”

“Julia wasn’t even twenty. She was young, but she stood by you, and she only wavered once—”

“Yeah. On the witness stand in front of God and country.”

“She’d been badgered by the prosecutor, Christian. She was under oath.”

“So she told the jury how angry I was at Fidelity that afternoon. And when the D. A. asked if I’d been mad enough to kill her, she didn’t deny it.”

“She was distraught. She didn’t know what to say or how to say it.”

“Maisy, some part of your daughter wondered if I had killed her best friend.”

“If you expected blind faith, then you chose the wrong woman. Julia always shakes the truth like a puppy shaking a rag doll, until all the stuffing comes flying out of it. The evidence was all on the prosecutor’s side. You were right there with the weapon in your hand. In his mind you had motive—”

“There is no motive good enough to kill another human being.”

“I could dispute that, but I won’t. The real miracle was that after all the pain she suffered, after all the facts had been laid out in front of her, Julia believed in you as strongly as she did.”

They reached the barn before he spoke again. “What happened to you in the last nine years, Maisy? You never used to speak your mind this way.”

“I’m making up for lost time.” Maisy put her hand on his arm. “I always thought of you as the son I couldn’t have. Don’t let bitterness destroy you, Christian. You’ve had a terrible chunk ripped out of your life, and you’ll never get it back. But let go of that as quickly as you can.”

“I just want to be left alone. I’m glad you came over tonight. You’ve been a good friend to me, and I’ll always be grateful. But right now I’m just going to try to get on with my life. I hope Julia gets on with hers. I hope her eyesight returns, but nothing about her is really my concern anymore.”

Maisy wondered how many hours Christian had lain awake in prison convincing himself of that.

And tonight, after Maisy had read to her and left Julia alone in the darkness, how many hours would Julia lie awake wondering how she was going to tell Christian that her life and her daughter
were
his concerns after all.