A Year of You (43 page)

***

The caress of rain on her cheek woke her. Thirsty and dirty, she sat up, surprised to find herself in a hole. The hole was deeper than she remembered, but then again, right before she passed out she swore the bark of the tree was writhing like hard gray worms. It was good, though. She’d made progress.

To her horror, she realized she couldn’t stand up. Her legs were like jelly. She slid off the edge of the hole and plopped down into the mud. The water stung her healing surgical incisions.  She whacked her left elbow on the side of the hole and the pain that wracked her shoulder left her woozy and gasping for air.

“This ain’t going to stop me,” she whispered, using her good hand to scrap away dirt. She didn’t know what she was going to do if this was the wrong spot.

Rain pounded down on her back, soaking her. Mud formed around her until she was sitting in a waist-deep puddle. Still, she clawed through the dense muck.

Despair began to set in when she was up to her breasts in mud and still hadn’t found anything. She’d been digging in the wrong spot.
There wasn’t anyway she could do this all over again. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. She sobbed her frustration into the mud.


“I’m not giving up!” she cried to the hemorrhaging sky.

She struggled to her knees and plunged both arms into the muck once more, ignoring the grinding pain in her shoulder. She swept out both arms, embracing the muck. She screamed into the dirt.

“
Elaine!”

Sister. Blood calls to blood. Come on, sis, where are you? Let me find you. Let me take you home. Let me save you.

Her questing fingers touched something. Gritty and wet, she instantly identified it as fabric. She pulled and it ripped. “No!” She plunged back into the muck and accidentally sucked in a mouthful of foul water. Hacking and coughing, she turned her face away from the mud and reached further.

There. She got her hands around the object once more, and pulled it towards her. Muddy rainwater ran over the edge of the hole, showering her, but softening the dirt further. The torrential rain would drown her as it brought her family’s sin to light.

Keeping her left hand on the bundle, she cleared away dirt until she could tug it out completely.

Without a doubt, it was the body of the long-lost child, swaddled in a ragged, bug-eaten woven blanket. The rain began to let up.

Mattie pulled the bundle of bones into her lap and leaned back against the side of the pit. It was just over her head. The sun peered through the oak tree’s branches.

“I found you, Lainie.” Seemed natural to call her that. Long, tangled blonde hair hung out of the end of the bundle. Mattie gathered the hair into a thin tail and tucked it under the edge of the blanket. “I’m so sorry, baby girl.”

Birds chirped in the trees and a rowdy chorus of cicadas struck up a song. She closed her eyes and drifted away, lost in made-up memories of playing with her two little sisters. As she slipped further away, the little blonde girl grew up, her hair darkened, and she planned a nursery with her amazing husband. The belly she stroked was huge and firm, and life moved beneath her fingertips. Music filled her head, the strains of a song she loved dearly.

All the world is waiting for the sun.
He hummed, and she whispered the words to the song. Her song. Their song.

Mattie didn’t realize she wasn’t alone until the thunderous
bang
of a gun snatched her back to consciousness. The bullet plowed into the earth by her earth, kicking hot clods of dirt into her face. She clutched the body of her baby sister to her chest.

“You can’t have her,” she yelled at the blurry figure standing over the pit.

“I’ll take her and you.”

A distant shout distracted the woman. “Justine!”

West. West! Mattie stifled a soft sob. Tears mixed with the drying rain and mud on her face. She hugged the shrouded body even closer. She could finally give him his beloved Elaine. She could give him peace.

Justine raised the gun again, squinting as she aimed. As she fired, someone plowed into her from the side. The shot went wide, striking the tree overhead and showering Mattie with splinters of wood. She cowered against the wall of dirt, the musty bundle held tight. Something fell out of the folds of the blanket.

On the other side of the hole, a fight ensued. That wasn’t West. Mattie looked up, unable to rise, unwilling to rise. West jumped into the hole next to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. He was crying, his face red where it wasn’t bruised.

“Who?” she asked, trying to see over his shoulder before everything went black.

“Your father. The hospital called us about Justine and we knew--“ He kissed her muddy face and clutched her to his chest. Another gunshot sounded. West stiffened and squeezed her tighter. Slowly, He turned around.

James rose from the ground, muddy, wet, and bloody. But he held the gun, and Justine stayed down. “I’m sorry,” he said over the sound of rain
plinking
down from the treetops.

“Dad,” Mattie whispered. James heard her and nodded.

He lifted the gun, put it to his head.

“No,” West croaked. “Mr. McKendrick, no.”

“Take care of Em, West.”

Bang
.

West cried out and buried his face in Mattie’s hair. Hard sobs shook his sturdy frame. While he cried against her shoulder, red and blue flashes lit the dead orchard in a riot of color. Pounding footsteps squelched through the mud.

Mattie closed her eyes and almost dozed off. She remember she had something in her hand. Raising it to the wan daylight shining through the thick clouds, she realized she was holding a bracelet.

A name formed by delicate golden wire lifted a thousand pounds from her shoulders.

Justine
.

Chapter Thirty-One

“She must have pulled it off when Justine--“

Strangled her
. West couldn’t bring himself to say it. The medical examiner determined that’s how the five year old had died. There was enough tissue left to determine her throat had been crushed and her neck fractured. The necklace was locked up in an evidence locker somewhere, but it haunted him. Justine always wore that necklace when they were children.

Mattie sat on a lounge on the porch, watching the ocean. “Dolphins,” she said, pointing. Three distant shapes leapt out of the water near the horizon.  She didn’t want to talk about anything that had happened. Not yet.

Her doctors said to give her time. The nightmares tapered off, occurring only once or twice a week instead of every single night, every single time she closed her eyes. He’d signed his land over to Jose, done with that desperate attempt to hang on to the McKendrick’s and Elaine, and moved them to a small house on the beach, grateful for the incomprehensibly large check Ruth Ellen’s laywer delivered a few days after all the charges had been dropped against Mattie. The light was starting to come back in her eyes. She laughed more, and didn’t insist on hiding inside the new house so much.

She used some of the money to pay to bury her father, give Elaine the burial she deserved, and to pay off Emeline’s condo. The huge mansion was for sale. After his death, everything McKendrick had been hiding came to light. His fortune was wiped out in days. Em still hadn’t forgiven Mattie and wouldn’t speak to her. Mattie didn’t push it and let West deal with her. Despite her nasty attitude, Mattie set up a comfortably-padded bank account for the girl, and promised to deposit more, once Ruth Ellen died and the trust funds were available.

He sat down on the lounge next to his wife. The scars from her surgeries were bright pink, vivid against her pale skin. Her left arm was in a sling, her hand casted all the way to her elbow to allow the shattered bones in her fingers and hand to heal. The one on her cheek wasn’t as bad as they’d feared it would be. The surgeons she could finally afford had done an excellent job fixing the damage.

She smiled at him and reached out for his hand. Two months had passed since he carried her out of the pit in the orchard. West grinned back and squeezed her fingers. He brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them. One by one, he kissed her fingertips, her palm, her wrist. He kissed the length of her arm, across her shoulder, her throat.

She sighed and turned her head, giving her access to the sensitive spot beneath the corner of her jaw. Her hand cupped the back of his neck, pulling him closer. “If you don’t kiss me, West, I’m going to explode.”

He indulged her, tasting the fruit juice she’d been sipping on her lips. Laughing softly, she pushed him back and straddled him. Her eyes blazed, and part of West’s heart leapt with joy.  “I missed you,” he whispered. It had been so long since he’d seen the ferocious side of her, the fiery passion that had sucked him in, body and soul, to begin with.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” she leaned down and kissed him again, grinding against him. She bit his earlobe. He hissed and pulled her down firmly against his cock. “Hey, you only have six months left.”

West smirked. He pushed urged her back, then worked the fly of his jeans open and freed himself from his boxers. After a quick chance to make sure their closest neighbors weren’t getting a free show, she kicked off her bikini bottoms and lowered herself onto his erect cock. They both gasped.

“You’re amazing,” he said, barely able to breathe when she started to work her body up and down. Hands on her hips, he helped her find the perfect rhythm. “I don’t want a year of you, Mattie.”

She paused and looked down at him, one eyebrow cocked.

He gave her hips a hard squeeze. “I want a hundred years of you.”

I hope you enjoyed
A Year of You
. Please leave a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or wherever you purchased this book. Reviews are vital to an author!

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