wasn’t absolutely sure whether Char and Dad and Gray and Ben really did think she’d defended herself the only way she could, or whether they were just saying that because there was no going back from what she’d done and they were determined to reassure her.
What would she have done if she hadn’t had the gun beneath the pillow?
Screamed and thrown herself off the bed. Grabbed for a weapon, any weapon. The chair, perhaps, or she would have likely kept the baseball bat close at hand.
Would she have made it off the bed, if the force of the bullets slamming into his chest hadn’t slowed Rory’s momentum? Shivering, shivering, she didn’t know.
She kept replaying it, from the moment she heard the shush of something brushing the wall outside her room. What could she have done differently? But it was too late to change anything. Tonight, she had killed. She’d chosen to shoot dead the man she had once believed she loved. The man she’d married.
What about your wedding vows? Do you ever think about what you promised?
She curled into as small a ball as she could manage, hugging herself. Yes! she wanted to scream. How could she forget them?
But Rory had made promises, too. He was supposed to cherish her, and he hadn’t. He’d hurt her, over and over. Terrified her, stalked her, assaulted Char. Faith wanted, oh, she wanted so much, to believe she’d been right to defend herself in such a final way.
But what if it was all bluster? The time he had almost killed her, his fists rising and falling, slamming into her until she was like Raggedy Ann, bouncing and flopping, her consciousness seeping away, that time he had been in a towering rage. He’d lost all control. He’d wept the next day, she had been told, and said over and over, “I never meant to hurt her. I never meant it.” Slipping into her house tonight had been planned, which was different. Yes, he’d punched Char the other time, and even lashed out with the knife and cut her, but Charlotte was Charlotte, taunting him. Tonight, he’d had a plan. He had been moving in silence, in the cloak of darkness. What if he had intended only to sit on the edge of the bed, leaning close until an awareness of the mattress dipping awakened her. He might have touched the tip of the knife to her throat while he whispered of his anger. He might have left her eventually, with perhaps a last, near soundless reminder that he could come back any time, that no mere locks would keep him out. That she was his.
Faith shook harder. Her teeth chattered now.
Oh God oh God. She couldn’t have kept living like that, waiting for him to come back. Even if she’d fled to Phoenix or Tampa Bay, the way she’d sometimes imagined, he could have followed her.
He had no right, she told herself fiercely. She would almost rather have died than go on that way, fear hunched beneath her breastbone and rising to clog in her throat. She simply couldn’t have borne it.
It was his fault. All his fault that she’d had to kill him.
But she was the one who had to live with it.
Sleep was not going to come to Faith, not now, when only the lamplight held off the darkness, and not later, when the pale light of dawn crept around the edges of the blinds.
How can I ever sleep again? she asked herself, and didn’t know the answer.
TELLING A MOTHER that her son had been shot dead was a hell of a way to start a morning. Especially when Ben hadn’t made it back to bed last night.
He wasn’t surprised when Michelle Hardesty collapsed, wailing. He had to catch her and half carry her to the chintz sofa in the front room of the ranch-style house where she’d raised Rory, her only child.
Thinking that she’d done a helluva bad job didn’t keep him from feeling pity. He’d seen enough grief to guess that losing a child might be the worst thing that could happen to a person. Ben had known a cop whose sixteen-year-old daughter had been killed by a drunk driver. Thirty years later, Noah’s face still changed when he saw a girl that age. The grief had still been there, and would remain, undulled, for the rest of his life.
Ben was eventually able to determine that she had a sister in Mt. Vernon, whom he called. She was able, thank God, to come immediately, although he had to wait the half hour it took her to drive there. She took over kindly and efficiently. When he left, she was rocking her sister in her arms and murmuring, “Oh, Chelle. I’m sorry. So sorry. That’s it, cry. It’ll do you good.
Cry.”
Profoundly relieved to have escaped, Ben got in his car but didn’t start the engine right away. He’d need to come back and talk to her, see if she might be more forthcoming about her son’s whereabouts this past six weeks once she got over the shock. He knew damn well she’d been hearing from Rory. Defiance had made her chin jut when she lied to him every time he had talked to her.
Yeah, he’d be back, but he would have to give her a day or two. Maybe longer. The only urgency now was inside Ben.
He’d try talking to the sister, too, he decided. Maybe they confided in each other. Maybe she knew where her nephew had been lurking since he drove away from his job and apartment in West Fork. With a little luck, she wouldn’t be as eager to excuse his behavior.
But he wouldn’t be able to tackle Fay Bishop for a day or two, either, since her sister would need her.
His eyes were gritty and a headache rose up his spinal column to wrap his skull. There wasn’t anything else for him to do right now. With a homicide case, he might have attended the autopsy, but cause of death was no mystery here.
The biggest mystery had been how Rory had gotten to the farm; his truck was nowhere to be found. A couple of hours ago, however, they’d discovered a car that turned out to be stolen. It had been left in a turnoff designed for farm tractors a few hundred yards down the highway. Easy walk for Rory.
Ben’s stomach was roiling. He’d get something to eat to settle it, he decided, and then he would go see Faith.
Had she slept at all?
Knowing the answer, he grunted. He remembered too well the hellish doubts and second-guesses that had kept him awake the two times in his career he’d had to shoot to kill. He’d been vindicated in both cases, but that hadn’t kept him from trying to figure out what he could have done differently. Violent death was always ugly. Even cops and soldiers were haunted by what they saw and what they’d done. A pretty kindergarten teacher who’d never wanted anything but to stay in her hometown and raise a family with her husband was ill-equipped to live with the sight of violence. He dreaded finding out what the act of killing would do to her.
With a sigh he started the car. A few minutes later, when he walked into Clara’s Café, conversations stopped and everyone, waitresses and customers alike, turned to look at him. Oh, hell, he thought. Word of last night’s happenings at the Russell farm had obviously spread like wildfire. Plus, here he was unshaven, wearing jeans and yesterday’s T-shirt, his sockless feet in athletic shoes, when people were used to see him wearing his crisp blue uniform.
Should have gone with the drive-through at McDonald’s instead. Or just gone home. His cupboards were pretty bare right now—he ate out a lot—but he could have found something.
He gave a vague nod of general acknowledgment and showed himself to the first empty booth he saw, the middle-aged waitress following with the coffeepot and a menu. He scanned it while she poured, and ordered immediately in hopes of hurrying things along. If only he could render himself invisible.
“Chief Wheeler.” The hearty voice belonged to Harvey Dexter, chiropractor, current president of the West Fork Chamber of Commerce and, to Ben’s private dismay, member of the city council. Dexter had stopped at Ben’s booth, his gaze deeply concerned. The look was one he’d perfected, probably a stock in trade when he contemplated his patients’ neck and back problems. Sixtyish, graying but fit, he also exuded good health, likely another necessity in his trade. “Heard we had a real tragedy last night,” he said.