Part of her ached for the warm and comforting presence of his body, of his strong arms and gentle words. It’s going to be all right. Another part of her-the biggest part-shrank from those memories, the memories of her uninhibited self, of her body so pliant and willing in his sensitive hands, his beautiful, incredible mouth, their bodies twined together as one being.

How can I face him now? She recoiled from the thought.

Somehow, though, she found the strength to rise, to walk to the door and open it. Her legs felt strange, wobbly, as if she were using them for the first time after a long illness. Her heart lumbered in her chest with such violence she wondered how she could even stand. She wondered if she would throw up.

Trailing her fingers along the wall to steady herself, she moved down the silent hallway. The floor was cold on her bare feet. At the door to Eric’s room she closed her eyes…and summoning all her strength, raised her hand to knock. She knocked with one knuckle, then paused to listen. She knocked again, then quietly turned the knob and opened the door.

A moment later she was flying down the hallway, heart banging, pounding with the flat of her hand on Mike and Lucy’s bedroom door, all thought of stealth forgotten.

The creaking of the stairs warned her. She spun around, trembling, both hands behind her gripping the doorknob for support as Mike and Lucy came toward her, close together, leaning on each other, looking years older, suddenly, and terribly sad.

“Is Emily with you?” she gasped, knowing the answer.

“They’re gone,” Mike said gently. He held something toward her-a folded sheet of paper, and she saw that Lucy was holding a similar one in her hands, this one unfolded. Her face was shiny wet with tears. “Eric’s gone, Devon. He left this for you.”

Chapter 16

“‘D on’t blame Devon…’?” Lucy read from the paper in her hands. Aroused and bristling with outrage, she reached for Devon’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “As if we would. Our own son-how could he think such a thing?”

Mike’s arm, lying in a comforting way across the back of Lucy’s chair, tightened momentarily around her shoulders. “I don’t think he knew the whole story,” he told her in a private sort of way. “He was so young when he left, we hadn’t told him.” His face was gray with regret.

“You should blame me.” Devon’s voice was gray, too-flat and dull. “It’s my fault-all of it. If I had only-”

“No.” Mike’s quiet eyes searched for hers, commanded their full attention, and for the first time she saw his son in them. Her throat filled again with the tears she hadn’t been able to shed. “You’re a victim, as much as anyone. More than anyone.”

Devon stolidly shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“No, dear,” said Lucy, “it’s you who doesn’t understand.”

They were sitting at the kitchen table, still cheery in its Christmas dressing, Lucy and Mike close together on one side, Devon at the end, coffee cups in front of them more for warming hands than drinking. Outside, a gloomy dawn was breaking. It had begun to snow again.

Lucy looked at Mike, who nodded. Her eyes came back to Devon’s and she began to speak in a halting way that was most unlike her usual blunt and forthright manner. “Devon, this isn’t the first time our family’s had to deal with this kind of tragedy. Chris-my brother Earl’s wife-you met her yesterday-had a childhood very similar to yours. Only she wasn’t able to block it out, the way you did. Her way of escaping was to get married, when she was just sixteen, to an older man who abused her, too…in a different way. When she left him, he stalked her, and would have killed her if my brother hadn’t gotten there in time.” She paused, cast glistening eyes toward her husband and drew a breath. “So you see, dear, we do understand.”

No, Devon thought as she gazed down at the small brown hand holding so tightly, so confidently to hers, you don’t. Devon, please don’t leave me… The truth was something that could never be understood, or forgiven.

Too exhausted to argue, she gently removed her hand from Lucy’s and picked up her coffee mug. “I’d better get packed…”

“Oh, Devon,” Lucy cried in dismay, “you don’t have to go. Not so soon.”

“I need to get back. There are some things I have to do.”

“But, if Eric should contact us-”

“He won’t-not for ‘a while.’ He says so in his letter.” What did that mean, a while? Days, weeks, years? She pushed back from the table and stood up. “If he does, you can tell him there’s not going to be any challenge to his custody of Emily. My parents will be withdrawing their suit.” She added grimly, “I’ll see to that.”

She turned and walked out of the warm, bright kitchen for the last time, leaving behind a silence broken only by the sound of Lucy blowing her nose.

Snowflakes settled onto Devon’s curls as she lifted her overnighter into the back seat of the Lincoln and slammed the door. It had been snowing all morning, not a howling blizzard, but fat, lovely flakes-Christmas card snow, Devon thought as she brushed the spun-sugar accumulation from the windshield-nothing the big Lincoln’s all-weather tires couldn’t handle.

Her hands, gloveless as usual, began to ache, and she stared down at her cold-reddened hand, at the bandage on her index finger. “It’s not a Christmas card. Don’t you know it’s cold out there?” Is this what it’s going to be like? she wondered. For the rest of my life, hearing his voice…remembering…

She turned from the car as the dogs came barking from their den under the porch. Shielding her eyes from drifting snowflakes, she watched a car, an unfamiliar dark SUV, churn its way up the lane in four-wheel-drive. It stopped a short distance away, its windows reflecting back a pale sky and the charcoal tracings of tree branches. The driver’s door opened, and a man got out.

Devon put out a hand, groping blindly for support; finding none, she swayed, then steadied herself.

“Forgot your hat again, I see.” His voice was nothing like the tender, gentle voice in her memory. It was harsh, and tortured her ears like sandpaper on raw nerves.

She didn’t know what-or even if she answered him. As if in a dream she lifted a hand and touched her hair, and was surprised at the cold wetness of snow on her fingers. She’d forgotten the cold. Her face burned with heat; her heart thundered, filling every part of her with its echoes.

His narrowed eyes shifted from her to the Lincoln and back again. One hand went out to grip the car’s doorhandle, as if to physically prevent it from moving from that spot. “Thank God I got here in time.” His voice, still a growl, held a different urgency now. “I couldn’t go-I can’t let you leave-”

“Where’s Emily?” Devon found her voice at last.

“In a safe house. She’s in good hands. Devon-I have to talk to you. There’s something I have to tell-”

“Wait-I have to tell you something-” The rest caught in her throat as he grabbed her roughly by the arm.

“We can talk in the barn,” he grated, walking rapidly through fresh-fallen snow, towing her like a broken tether.

“Eric, wait.” She pulled back, throwing all her weight and determination into resisting him, and he turned to look at her in scowling surprise. She jerked her arm from his grasp and gulped in cold, wet air as if it were an elixir to give her strength. Dry-mouthed and breathless anyway, she gasped, “Please listen to me-you don’t have to run. You don’t have to take her away. I’m not going to fight you, Eric. I’m going to make my parents give up their claim. Do you understand? You can keep her. Emily’s yours…”

He’d gone utterly still. Even after her voice had run down and faded to nothing he didn’t move, even to release the faint whisper of sound. “You remembered…”

“Yes.” Her voice, tight with control, sounded clipped and hard. “Yes, Eric, I remembered. Everything. You were right-”

Suddenly, shockingly, his face seemed to crumple, and he threw up both hands to cover it, trying to hide it from her. After what seemed like forever, his hands moved out and upward to rake through his hair. He drew in air in a long sniff, then released it in a rush and a whispered, “Ah…God.” Bringing bright, red-rimmed eyes back to hers, he touched her arm and said thickly, “Come with me, Devon…please? We have to talk.”

She didn’t want to. More than anything, she wanted to run away, crawl into a hole, a dark quiet place, and hide. She was tired of emotions, tired of pain.

As she turned to go with Eric, Devon threw one brief look back toward the porch steps, where Mike and Lucy stood weeping with their arms wrapped tightly around each other-each, it appeared, keeping the other from following.

He didn’t know how to begin, how to say to her what he’d come with such terrible urgency to say. What had seemed so simple and clear to him when he’d rehearsed it in the car now seemed neither, and the words themselves the most difficult he’d ever spoken.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to begin. He’d barely got the barn door closed and latched before Devon whirled on him.

“How could you do that to them?” she demanded in a fury, whispering though there was no one but him to hear her. “Don’t you know you almost broke their hearts?”

What about you? he wanted to ask. Did my going do anything to your heart?

What he said to her, turning from her so he wouldn’t have to see her icy eyes and pale, frozen face, was an almost surly, “I came back, didn’t I?”

“Why did you?” Her voice broke and he jerked back to her, but not before she had spun away, hiding her face from him. “You’d made it, free and clear. Your letter said you weren’t coming back. So I’ll ask you again.” It was her courtroom lawyer’s voice. “Why did you?”