The Girl in the Window (10 page)

The grief had been shocking, but whenever she’d started to feel lost, Matt had been there for her.

As she’d been there for him when he’d needed her, when his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

It had been astonishing to be needed, to be wanted. As much as she’d loved Matt’s mother – like Matt she’d been terribly kind – it had been so strange for Beth to be needed. To find that she had the strength to be there for Matt when he needed her… She hadn’t known she could do that.

Then her father had died and this house had become hers.

What the good lord giveth, the good lord taketh away.
Some woman had said that at Matt’s funeral. As if his death had been the price for her inheritance.

Those words had been stunning.

Beth couldn’t believe in a God that cruel. Or that people could.

Standing in her old bedroom, she wept openly, her head tipped back against the wall as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Daddy
.

She hadn’t known he’d died until the lawyers had come.

It was Matt she grieved for more, for the man who’d stood at her side all too briefly in good times and bad, not the one who’d sent her away.

Bowing her head, she wept all the tears they wouldn’t let her cry at Matt’s funeral, as if her years with Matt hadn’t counted because she hadn’t been married to him. Not yet.

She remembered the days lying beside him in bed, talking of the future. Those plans were dust. Nor could she grieve for him as a wife, because she hadn’t been one, not yet, although that promise had been made.

Slowly, Beth slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor and could wrap her arms around her knees to console herself.

Apparently there was some unspoken rule that you couldn’t grieve fiercely and deeply unless you were married. The mourning period was somehow different if you weren’t. Or so it seemed.

Yet it didn’t feel different.

It didn’t matter that they’d been together for three years, longer than some people were married. It wasn’t considered real until they’d actually been before a minister or judge no matter how real it had felt in her heart.

Apparently loving Matt hadn’t been enough.

It never was.

Matt had been coming to see her the day he was killed. She’d just learned of her inheritance of the house. Suddenly it looked as if all their dreams might be coming true.

They’d planned a dinner to celebrate because Matt loved her cooking.

She never considered herself a chef because to her it was just cooking, her legacy from Ruth, dead those past two years.

Cooking was what you did to welcome folks, to make them feel at home. They could call it hospitality services, but to Beth it was cooking and she was very good at it, a tribute to her foster mother, a legacy, something to carry on. For Ruth.

Beth had loved Ruth’s children, her foster brothers and sisters, but among all of them it had been Beth who’d carried on that tradition. It was she who’d been the cook.

So that was what she’d become.

And there had been Matt.

Sitting on the floor of what had been her old bedroom Beth tried to call him up in her mind, to summon a clear picture of his face, of the features she’d once loved so well, and couldn’t.

He was starting to leave her. She was losing him.

Bowing her head, she wept at the thought.

I’m so sorry
, she thought.

He deserved better.

Just the idea that she’d had to sacrifice him to gain her inheritance made her want to curse God or burn down the house.

It was madness, it was simply too cruel.

He’d been coming to meet her at their apartment for dinner.

She was going to meet him there once she had the keys.

They were going to have dinner and then they were going to come to the house. He was going to walk with her through it, through all the rooms she couldn’t face alone. Of all her foster siblings and friends, she’d only ever told Matt what had really happened. He’d been going with her to hold her hand so she could.

Her head against the wall, she sniffed, and her mouth twisted.

When she’d heard the sound of tires in the driveway that terrible day, somehow she’d known something was wrong. That whatever was coming was not just bad news, but terrible news. Fear had burned through her.

They’d knocked, but she hadn’t answered, she hadn’t wanted to know.

If she stayed still, just stayed still, it wouldn’t be true.

With the front door open the sheriff’s men had come in anyway, dark shadows standing in the doorway of the room that had once been her bedroom.

“I’m so sorry,” one of them said afterward.

After they’d delivered their terrible news.

Matt had been walking to their apartment by the county road because it wasn’t that far and their car was on the fritz. It sat in the garage until they could afford the parts because they were saving money. They were planning to open a bed and breakfast with a tiny restaurant attached, just a few tables, only open on weekends. She would run the restaurant and the B&B while Matt did accountant work on the side. He would manage the finances until the B&B was financially stable.

Someday they would expand. Maybe. If all went well.

Late into the night they’d discussed plans, curled up around each other.

They would find an old house and renovate it with the skills Matt was learning at his summer job in construction.

Handy at anything, Matt had been going to fix the car on the weekend rather than pay a mechanic for the labor.

So he’d been walking.

It was too easy for her to picture, knowing Matt as well as she had. As he’d walked he’d picked flowers to bring to her. He was like that, always doing small thoughtful things for her.

The driver of the car had been drunk.

Matt had had no place to run, had probably not even seen the car coming from behind him, save for that last moment. He’d been dead almost instantly they said. He hadn’t suffered, they said.

Perhaps it had been the bright bunch of wildflowers in his hand that had drawn the driver’s eye they said in court.

The thought had been stunning, but what had been utterly shocking had been discovering that her grief didn’t matter.

Apparently promises weren’t enough. The two years she and Matt had been together didn’t matter and their engagement didn’t matter. Only marriage did. She couldn’t have loved him enough…in two years…four years…for the rest of her life. It only mattered to the rest of the world if that promise had been met and kept.

His family closed ranks. Somehow they blamed her, or at least it felt as if they did. If he hadn’t been going to see her…

In the face of their own grief, they had no room for hers. She wasn’t part of their family any more, wouldn’t be part of it.

Everything that had been his, theirs, no longer was. They hadn’t meant to be unkind she knew.

She hadn’t been supposed to grieve so much for her loss, after all they’d only been engaged, not married. But she did. Her heart had been like a stone in her chest, but in the face of all those eyes, she hadn’t dared to weep, even when it felt as if she would drown in her own unshed tears.

It didn’t seem to matter to anyone but her that her life suddenly had a hole in it where Matt had once been.

When the nightmares came there was no one to hold her in the darkness any more.

There was no one curled against her back, his legs tangled with hers, in the morning. No chest to lay her head on, his arm curled around her shoulders as she listened to his heartbeat.

Matt wouldn’t be standing in their bathroom brushing his teeth, his dark hair tousled, his eyes sleepy. Or sitting on the couch with her, both of them reading, her head propped on his thigh.

Those were the things she missed, those precious little moments. The scent of his skin, the feel of her arms around him, and his around hers, his head on her shoulder in the morning.

All their hopes, their dreams, had died with Matt, too.

She couldn’t live them for him. Or without him.

She’d been lost.

Her grief had been terrifying, the emptiness a gaping cavern inside her. At night she would pace the rooms, wandering from one to another. There were times she knew she cried, but she wasn’t even aware of it. She considered suicide. All that had kept her from it had been the thought of Ruth. Ruth would’ve been so mad at her.

Damn right I would be mad
.

A part of Beth knew Ruth wasn’t really there, but it felt like she was. She could almost see her, almost reach out and touch her. Thin, her reddish brown hair just a little frizzed with the heat and humidity, but pulled back neatly so it would be out of the way. A teacher, Ruth always looked proper, but not fussy.

Beth could almost feel Ruth’s eyes on her, her hand on her shoulder.

You don’t know what’s coming, baby
, Ruth said, more gently.
You don’t know what you might miss.

Then, once more, Ruth was gone, but not truly. Not forever, because a part of Ruth would be with her always.

Still, the fear was there, still with her. There was too much emotion. Beth didn’t know if she wanted to feel this much again. It was like a live thing inside her, that fear, crawling through her veins, turning her muscles to Jell-O. She didn’t know how to handle it, how to contain so much emotion. She wanted, and she was afraid.

Gazing around the empty bedroom, her breath hitching, she wished for someone to hold her. A shoulder to cry on.

There was Josh and she wanted him, she wanted it to be him, but there were ways in which he reminded her so much of Matt. They looked nothing alike, but their spirits were the same. It was there in his kindness, in his big heart, that generosity of spirit that some, but not all, men had.

It felt as if she was losing Matt to reach for Josh and she wanted to reach for Josh, but she didn’t want to lose Matt.

An imaginary hand stroked her hair, broad and strong. Not Ruth.

Matt.

Now she could ‘see’ him, clearly, in her mind’s eye. His tousled dark hair, his deep brown eyes, his face. Her heart ached. Her eyes burned. She bit her lip to keep the tears from falling.

You can’t lose me.

His voice came to her as clear as a bell. She’d always loved his voice, loved the sound of it.

As with Ruth, the sense of his presence was so strong, so sure.

I’m right here
, he said,
and I always will be. As I am with you. You’re not alone, love. Never alone. But you have to go on, baby. You have to go on. There’s a whole life out there for you. A life I can’t have, but you can still live. You have a right to be happy, Beth. You have a life, go live it
.

She could almost feel his hand on her hair, his kiss brush her forehead.

Then he was gone.

Josh looked out onto the bright, beautiful, summer morning, onto the light mist that lay over the cornfields. The sunlight was slowly burning the thin fog off. It would be hot and a little humid once again. This summer was turning out hotter and wetter than usual.

It was beautiful, though, the light soft, the fields brilliantly green and gold. The corn was coming in good; it liked this weather and was already higher than it should be this early in the season. He couldn’t complain about that.

Thoughts rattled around in his brain like marbles in a tin cup, but he waited for Beth, wondering if she’d come considering the way she’d left.

And afraid she wouldn’t.

He didn’t know why she’d left the way she had. It had stung.

It was such a beautiful day.

She was late.

The horse waited, too, standing in the center of the paddock, his head up and looking toward her house.