Gull Harbor (14 page)

“Thanks, but I think you may be biased. I’ll get it right eventually though. How was your morning?”

She filled him in on her lack of progress. “It’s so frustrating,” she finished, blowing out a breath.

“What can I do to help?” He rolled his chair toward her and gestured for her sit down.

“Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, I guess,” she said, dropping into the chair.

He shot her a wicked grin. “I could interpret that in a number of ways. You might want to be more specific.”

“Very funny. I meant, please continue being supportive. It occurred to me recently that I’ve been here for two months, and I really don’t have any friends, aside from you and Dan.”

“A lot of the locals have lived here all their lives,” Max said with a shrug. “They already know most everyone; they’re not looking for new friends.”

“Plus I’m the crazy lady who talks to ghosts.”

“Yeah, that probably doesn’t help, to be honest. Sorry, babe,” he added, leaning against his desk.

“I’m used to it. Mediumship isn’t the kind of career that comes with a lot of social benefits. We don’t even have an office Christmas party,” she joked.

It wasn’t the most hilarious thing she’d ever said, but she expected at least a smile. Instead, he studied her, his expression betraying some kind of internal struggle. Her heart tripped nervously as she waited for him to speak.

“Did you check your e-mail today?” he finally asked.

She let out the breath she’d been unconsciously holding. “What?”

“Did you have any…unusual e-mails in the last twenty-four hours?”

The odd question made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. “Why do you ask?” She wrapped her arms around her chest protectively, steeling herself.

Sighing, he pushed himself away from the desk and paced across the small room. “I know I still owe you an explanation. And I’m going to give you one, this afternoon. I just need to know if you’ve had any unexpected correspondence.”

“No, I haven’t. But now you’re scaring me.”

Placing his hands on the armrests of the chair, he leaned down to look directly into her eyes. “Claire, listen to me,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “We don’t have to go down this road at all. Just say the word, and we can close the door on the past and just focus on the future. Can you live with that?”

Could she? Once upon a time, he’d been the person she trusted most in the world. But his betrayal of that trust had changed her, and not for the better. He’d left, abandoning her as if she were some troublesome pet he no longer wanted, shattering her heart into a million pieces. The resulting agony had followed her around for five years, preventing her from becoming involved in any type of meaningful relationship.

So the answer was no. She couldn’t allow him to just sweep the past under a rug so that they could continue sleeping together as if nothing bad had ever happened.

“No. I can handle the truth. I’m not sure I can ever fully trust you unless I know what really happened.”

He nodded, the spark of hope in his eyes growing dim. “Okay. I’ll come by your place around 3:00 this afternoon, if that’s all right.”

“Okay,” she mumbled, touching her fingers to her temple. The pain in her head had returned with a vengeance.

Cupping her chin in his hand, he lifted her face gently. “Hey,” he said softly. “Please don’t worry. I…” He hesitated, then brought his lips to hers in a heart-wrenching kiss that left her trembling. “I’ll see you around 3:00.”

****

She sat on a swing and watched a white bird float on the surface of Mill Pond. Rocking herself gently with her toe, she glanced at her watch. One o’clock. Time was both crawling and speeding by. She’d been unable to concentrate on anything while she waited for 3:00 to roll around, so she’d walked the trails around the lake.

In two hours she was going to find out why Max had discarded her all those years ago. She should be happy, or at least relieved. But she only felt an ominous fear; it churned in her belly like sour milk. She knew in her heart, without a doubt, that whatever Max had to say would not be good.

And the other sad truth was that her presence here had forced his hand. If she hadn’t shown up in his town, if their bodies hadn’t been so determined to be reunited, the past probably would have stayed buried forever.

“He came back for you on his own,” she reminded herself softly, lifting her face to the afternoon sun. But he’d seen her kissing Keith, and that had apparently been enough to change his mind. Maybe he’d assumed she was fine, or even better off without him.

She’d been far from fine that last year of school; she’d been hanging on out of sheer necessity. After spending an unbearable summer with her father, she’d realized the only way to get out from under his control was to finish college—whether he was willing to pay for her senior year or not. And he wasn’t, once she informed him that she would not be applying to law school.

She had applied for school loans and financial aid and made it through. Her future would be different from the one she and Max had planned, but it wouldn’t be dictated by her father. That goal was something she clung to during the times she felt she couldn’t possibly go on.

Leaning her head against the swing’s chain, she closed her eyes against the pain. The memories were now making a full-blown assault, battering down her carefully-constructed defenses. Her mind traveled back to Max’s graduation—the last day they’d spent together, until fate brought her to Gull Harbor.

She’d sat with his family and watched him cross the stage and accept his diploma. They’d all gone out for a celebratory dinner: Claire, Max, his mother, and Max’s younger brother and sister. Then she and Max had returned to her single dorm room, where Max had gazed at her with a strange, sad look of longing before tumbling her into bed.

He’d made love to her with a fierce passion, as though desperate to consume her. Hours later he’d awoken her and made love to her again, gently and tenderly. Afterwards, he’d held her tightly in the small bed, locking their bodies together. She’d laughed as he sang her favorite song in her ear, reminding him that she had final exams in the morning.

He was gone when she woke up. But she had two exams to get through, so she hadn’t begun to worry until later that evening. When her calls went unanswered, she hurried off campus to the house he lived in with Keith and three other friends.

His room was empty. She stared at it uncomprehendingly. Then she went to find Keith, but he wasn’t there; like her, he was a junior, in the midst of finals week. She found another housemate, who shuffled into the kitchen and handed her an envelope stuck to the fridge. Her name was written on it, in his handwriting. She gripped the countertop as the edges of her vision turned gray.

Clutching the unopened envelope, she walked back to her dorm on numb legs. In the privacy of her room, she read the two lonely words:
I’m sorry
. No tears came—the shock was too great. How could he do this to her? This had to be a mistake, a misunderstanding.

She considered calling his mother as the days went by with no further contact from Max. But what would be the point? He’d left her the note. He knew her cell phone number. This was obviously how he wanted things to end.

Once she’d accepted that she’d been dumped in the worst way possible, the shock had worn off. A terrible combination of depression and anger had taken hold of her, and it had never quite let go. Five years later, the pain still haunted her. And now she was finally going to get an explanation for what he’d put her through.

She stood up with a sigh, giving the empty swing a final push. There had to be more productive things to do than this. She corralled the heartbreaking memories, shoving them behind a mental barricade. She had a feeling they’d be out again before too long.

Chapter 19

Claire heard the motorcycle approaching as she was cleaning the master bedroom. Folding the last pair of shorts, she laid it on the neat pile and shut the drawer. Hopefully the Llewellyns wouldn’t mind that she was straightening the chaos that Maria had left. It had given her a task other than worrying to focus on for the last two hours.

Max was standing in the living room when she came around the corner. “Hey,” he said softly.

She couldn’t bear to go near him. Instead she circled around him and settled herself on the end of the couch. “Tell me,” she said, folding her legs up on the small cushion.

“Okay.” He blew out a breath and sat across from her. “A few days before graduation, your father called me.”

“My father?” she asked, confused.

“Yes. He asked me to come see him at his office. I thought…well, with the timing, I thought maybe he was going to offer me congratulations, or advice of some sort. I was about to graduate with honors from a prestigious university that someone with my background normally couldn’t afford. Somehow I thought that would matter to him.”

“Go on,” she said dully. Her abdomen twisted with cramps, and she pressed her hands to her stomach.

He nodded. “If you remember, my mom was involved in a huge legal battle at that time. She was fighting Roy, her ex-husband, for custody of my brother and sister.”

“I remember.”

“What you don’t know is what happened before they were born. I told you that after my father died, she was inconsolable. And I…” He stood up and began pacing across the room, his handsome face haggard with pain. “I was too busy working through my own grief by engaging in as many destructive habits as I could find. Typical selfish teenage behavior.”

“You were hurting, too,” she pointed out. A part of her desperately wanted to get up and put her arms around him, to hold him tightly and whisper comforting words in his ear. But she was in a self-protective mode; the emotional barriers locked into place.

“Yes, I was, but I should have done more to help her. I knew how depressed she’d become. Then one day I came home, and I found her…in the garage. The car was on, and she was inside.”

A wave of nausea burned through her. “No.”

He nodded miserably. “She was still breathing, so I didn’t even stop to think about what I should do. I raced to open the garage and roll down the windows. And then I pushed her into the passenger seat and drove her to the hospital, even though I was only 15. They saved her, obviously. But she was admitted to the psych ward for several months. I had to go stay with my grandparents, out of state. At least that gave me the chance to get my shit together.”

“It sounds like you were a hero, Max.”

“Far from it,” he said with a bitter laugh. “If she had died, I never could have lived with myself. Anyway, she recovered, physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, she got remarried to a narcissistic asshole. But she and I agreed to never talk about the garage incident. Roy didn’t know, thank God.

“Your father found out, though,” he continued gravely. “Somehow he got a hold of her medical records. I guess it’s not hard when you’re a judge. He explained how the information might affect the custody battle if Roy and his lawyer knew about my mom’s suicide attempt.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed. She’d never doubted that her father would go to great lengths to get what he wanted. But the scenario Max was painting made him a monster. She wrapped her arms around her trembling body.

“Claire, you don’t look so good. Are you going to be okay?” He approached her carefully, crouching down to bring his face to her level.

She bit her lip and nodded. “Go on. I need to hear this.”

Max stood back up and resumed pacing. “He hinted that the records might end up in Roy’s hands. Or things could go a different way. He said he was friendly with the family court judge hearing my mom’s case. And he suggested that he could take that judge out to lunch, and explain to him what a wonderful parent my mother was. All I had to do was one simple thing.”

“Break up with me,” she finished for him.

“Yes. Break things off with you, leaving his involvement out of it, of course. I was to leave school immediately after graduation, and then leave town altogether. And obviously I was to have no further contact with you.”

The tears broke free, dripping down her cheeks and onto her legs. She glanced out the window as she wiped at her eyes. It didn’t seem right that the July sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky. A filthy gray drizzle, accompanied by a cold, biting wind, would be much more appropriate.

“And you agreed,” she said, unnecessarily. She could hear the nasty edge in her voice, but she couldn’t suppress the anger that was bubbling up inside her. The two men she had depended on the most had teamed up to betray her. It was disgusting.

“Claire, you have to understand…if my mom had lost her kids, she would have died. I had already failed her once. There was no way I could risk doing anything that would have put her custody case in jeopardy.”

“You should have confided in me. We could have figured it out together. But you didn’t trust me enough.”

He extended his arms in a pleading gesture, then curled his hands into fists. “I was terrified,” he said, blowing out a frustrated breath. “Your father wasn’t playing games—he meant what he said. And he kept reminding me that I wasn’t good enough for you. I mean, who was I to try to influence your future?”

“Who were you?” she asked incredulously. “The man I thought I loved. And who I thought loved me, and wanted to spend that future with me.” Rage had now completely replaced the despair, and that was good. Rage was easier to deal with. “If you had just told me, I would have kept the secret. We could have seen each other without him knowing. Or we could have stayed apart for a while, but at least I would have known why. You could have spared me all that pain!”

“I guess I was banking on the hope that you would trust enough in our love to know that something was wrong. That’s why I disappeared that way instead of actually breaking up with you. I came back to school to explain as soon as my mom was granted custody.”

“But you saw me with Keith and gave up.”

He winced as her words hung in the air. “I thought you had chosen Keith. And law school. So I assumed things were good between you and your father. You looked happy.”