An Accidental Woman (41 page)

“You could help with the wood.”

She shook her head. The frustration she felt had nothing to do with sugaring.

“Are you still angry at me for what I said?” he asked.

“I should be. For that and more.”

“What more?”

“Coming here. Making me think of everything I can't do. I used to feel like I could do anything I wanted.”

“Can't you?”

Rather than answering, she said, “I sit at home and watch Victoria. She tries things. Nothing stands in her way. She is fearless.”

“She's a cat. Cats don't think the way we do. They don't analyze things. They don't feel guilt or regret. Or fear.”

“Well, I do,” she muttered. “I'm afraid of
lots
of things.”

“Name one.”

“You.” Embarrassed by the confession, she rushed on. “My mom is seeing a shrink. I think I should, too.”

“You don't need one,” he said. “A good friend can serve the same purpose. It's not like you have deep-seated anxieties. Sometimes it's just a matter of having a forum to air out your thoughts. A friend can provide that.”

“So can a shrink.”

“A friend is cheaper. Besides, you don't need a shrink. You have me.”

Taking a side of his collar in each hand, she moaned, “You're the
problem.”

“Because I love you? That's crazy, Poppy.”

“That's why I need a shrink,” she said.

“A shrink would sit here with you until you hated the silence enough to blurt out your fears. I could show you how it works. We could do some role-playing, you and I—only I don't have very long. Not right now. I have to be back helping Micah. So let's cut to the chase.”
Everything about him gentled then, from his eyes to his voice to the hands that he placed on either side of her face. “I know about the accident, Poppy. I
know
about it. Imagine the very worst, and I know it. If you're thinking that I'll find out about it later and hate you, you're wrong. There's nothing you can say that can turn me off.”

Poppy could barely breathe. She didn't speak. Couldn't speak. He was calling her bluff, purely and simply.

“If it's a matter of forgiveness,” Griffin went on in that same gentle voice, “you have it, but it's not even needed. Shit happens. Want to hear about shit? Shit is when your oldest brother supplies drugs for your teenage sister, and everyone looks the other way.”

Poppy gasped. “Cindy?”

He nodded sadly. “So we acknowledge it years later, but only in whispers, two of us at a time, and only after the damage is done. James is living with his wife and three kids in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Cindy's long gone. He says she begged him for it, and, yeah, she was a rebel—yeah, she started with pot, and he had nothing to do with that—but then she got into the hard stuff, and he
was
involved.”

“He was
dealing?”
Poppy asked.

“No. But he had access. When she asked him for it, he got it. She kept asking, he kept getting. Things got worse and worse between her and the folks, worse and worse in her life until she was hooked, really messed up. Then all hell broke loose. She couldn't take it, so she ran. Who was at fault? My dad, for being so rigid and judgmental that none of us would approach him—me and the others for not doing something anyway—James, obviously, for giving her the stuff just to tweak the old man.” Griffin took a breath. “What James did involved malice. You?” With a quick shake of his head he returned to the subject at hand. “Even when I dream up the
worst
-case scenario, I don't see any malice on your part.”

Poppy was silent as she returned from the nightmare of Cindy Hughes's story to her own. No, no malice, she thought, just a gross irresponsibility that had caused a person's death.

“So that raises something else, says Griffin the shrink,” he teased in a way that told Poppy he was trying to make the truth easier to swallow. “That suggests the problem isn't really about me. You don't need me to forgive you for what happened that night. You need to forgive yourself.”

A thud of boots sounded on the front porch. Seconds later, Camille came through the door, arms laden with foil packs. Unaware that she was interrupting, she toed off her boots.

Then again, Poppy realized, Camille was fully aware of interrupting, just being tactfully nonchalant, as only she did so well. “They'll need help through the evening,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “I'm here for the duration.”

Poppy watched until she was out of sight and involved in distant conversation with Maida. Looking back at Griffin, she saw a surprising vulnerability.

“Tell me more about Cindy.”

He shook his head. He pointed at her. And he waited, waited until she couldn't stand the silence.

It took her all of two seconds. “What do you want me to do?” she whispered. But he wasn't giving her the answer she needed. He couldn't. She knew that.

Instead, quietly, he said, “Let me come home to you at night. I'll work
here with Micah as long as he needs me—and, for the record, it isn't about his forgiving me as much as me forgiving me, so I know whence I speak. But I don't want Little Bear late at night. I want you.”

She put her fingers to his mouth. Assuming everything he said was true—about the accident, about malice, about forgiveness—he definitely made things worse. He was a remarkable man, seemingly hers for the taking, but she didn't deserve him.

That said, she wasn't about to deny his request. She might be guilty of things she hadn't ever spoken aloud. But she wasn't stupid.

* * *

By the time he got to Poppy's each night, he was exhausted. Thursday night, he was also chilled. A light rain had fallen on and off during the day, no problem while they were tapping because the air remained warm, but come nighttime, when the temperature dropped, he felt even the small amount of dampness in his clothing. A hot shower was a must. Since he couldn't get that on Little Bear, he was particularly grateful that Poppy had agreed to his request.

Truth be told, he couldn't have made it to Little Bear if his life had depended on it. The days were just too exhausting. That also meant he wasn't much good for anything when he climbed in beside Poppy. He was bone-tired, and he was up with first light to go back and help Micah tap the rest of the trees.

But nice things happened between first light and Micah. Griffin had never felt as compatible with a woman as he did, physically, with Poppy.
He didn't ask about the accident anymore. She had to work that out for herself. Nor did he talk about Cindy. He wanted to make better use of their little time together.

The drizzle continued on Friday, often little more than a mist. It didn't fall hard enough to stop the tapping, nor was the air cold enough to stop the sap flow. The moisture simply made the snow on the ground more dense and their clothing more uncomfortable.

Come Saturday morning, when they woke up to more of the same, he would have given anything just to stay in bed with Poppy. But sugar maples knew nothing about weekends. Nor did they care about rain. When the sap ran, it ran, and it had to be processed. Griffin was invested enough in the season by now—and trained solely by Micah—not to want sap sitting in a storage tank any longer than necessary. Besides, there were still trees to tap. With a little luck, they would finish the last of the slopes before noon. That, in itself, was cause for showing up to work.

An even better cause presented itself that day. They arrived down from the sugarbush for lunch, ready to fire up the evaporator for an afternoon of sugarmaking, when a nondescript car pulled in. One look at it, and Micah swore under his breath. But Griffin knew the car wasn't FBI. He recognized the man behind the wheel as Aidan Greene.

I don't have time for this,
the sugarmaker thought.
I gotta work.
But the man who had been head over heels in love with Heather didn't move.

His heart pounded as Aidan approached, though he wasn't what Micah had expected. Micah had expected power. He had expected arrogance and savvy. This man was dressed well enough; he looked comfortably citified and clean. But nothing about him suggested privilege. He looked tired and wan. Hollow. Even apprehensive.

Griffin met him halfway and extended a hand. “I'd have picked you up at the airport if you'd called.”

“I didn't know I was coming,” Aidan said. “Didn't know I'd make it all the way here. A guy in the general store in town told me where you were.” He shot Micah a glance.

Micah couldn't get himself to go forward. If he acknowledged Aidan's existence, he had to detest the fact that the man had taken this long to speak up.

“That surly guy is Micah,” Griffin advised. “He's having trouble with all this, so if he lacks graciousness, we have to forgive him. Can we go inside?” he asked Micah.

I don't have time for this,
the sugarmaker thought again.
I have sap to boil.
But Micah nodded. He would rather they talk in his own house than somewhere else. Here, at least, he had a semblance of control.

He went in through the kitchen, thinking that the back door was just fine for Aidan Greene; besides, the man ought to see how they lived. This home wasn't a mansion in Sacramento. There was no butler, no maid, no cook. If there was drip from their clothes, it would dry on the floor.

Poppy, with her short hair, bare face, and fleece vest, was at the table with the girls. They had just finished lunch. A platter of sandwiches awaited the men.

Micah couldn't eat a thing, and told Poppy as much with a look.

Griffin and Aidan followed him through the kitchen. He heard Poppy offer them food, heard them refuse everything but coffee, heard her say something to the girls, but by this time he was hearing too many other little voices to make out what she said. He was hearing all the things that had been spoken in the days since Heather's arrest—all the speculation, the wondering, the supposing, the guessing. He wasn't sure he was ready for the answers. He wasn't sure he ever would be.

He didn't offer anyone a seat in the living room, and graciousness had nothing to do with it. This wasn't a tea party. It was a moment of reckoning. He looked out the front window, trying to find comfort in the land that he owned, trying to take a full, deep breath, failing on both counts. His breathing remained shallow, and his heart continued to pound.

Turning to face the room, he leaned against the wall by the window, folded his arms, stared at Aidan, and waited.

Aidan was draping his coat on a ladder-back chair. He looked up, seeming relieved when Poppy wheeled in with coffee. “Headache,” he murmured under his breath as he reached for the coffee and took several desperate sips.

Poppy parked near the sofa, clearly staying. Micah figured she had a right. After the girls and him, she was the one most deeply affected by Heather's secret past.

When Micah was thinking he didn't know where to begin, Griffin said to Aidan, “You were determined not to talk when I was in Minneapolis. What changed your mind?”

Aidan put his mug to his mouth for another sip. When he lowered the cup, he stared at the coffee. “You made a remark about my becoming a counselor, and you were right. I am a do-gooder—always was, even as a kid. That was why Rob loved having me around. I did and felt all the things he was supposed to do and feel. Teaming up with me helped his image.”

“Why did he need help?” Griffin asked. “He was a DiCenza. The family is famously charitable.”

Aidan shot him a dry look. “When you have as much money as the DiCenzas, you have to do something with it or you end up giving it all to Uncle Sam. Charlie DiCenza would choke to death before he did that. All his talk about being against big government? He didn't mind big government, per se. It was a great place to get jobs for his friends. He just didn't want to be the one to pay for it. The DiCenza Foundation was created primarily as a tax deduction. The charitable image was a side benefit. In that sense, the Foundation killed two birds with one stone.”

“Did you know all this back then?”

“Yes. We all did. But when you're young, you think you can jump on the bandwagon of a powerful entity and use it for your own ends. You don't realize that they've sunk their teeth into you until it's too late to shake them off. By then, they own you.”

“You shook them off.”

Aidan ran his tongue up on his teeth in a sign of distaste. “Not back then. I have a law degree. I got it straight from college. I had it the whole time the business with Rob and Lisa was going on. Rob was my friend, so I felt a loyalty to him, and the old man had that power. I really thought he was going to be elected vice president, in which case there might be a nice position for me in either the White House or as legal counsel to a congressional committee. I had this illusion that I could milk him for that, and then use the position to do some good.” He made a self-denigrating sound. “I was naive.”

“How so?” Griffin asked.

“Because I kept my mouth shut about Lisa and Rob, because I told the cops one thing when the truth was something else, I'd in essence perjured myself.” He waved a hand. “Oh, it wasn't official, but it was there in
my mind. I'd sold out. I was doing small-time legal stuff for the Foundation and suddenly I couldn't stomach it. I felt like a fraud. So I dropped out. Resurfacing as a counselor felt better, and the law degree didn't go to waste. The kids I work with have legal hassles. I plot their defense and feed it to their lawyer, who picks it up and follows through like it was his idea in the first place.”

Micah was feeling antsy. He had work to do. “Well, you're just a model citizen,” he said mockingly, “a bad guy gone good.”

Aidan stared at him. “I try.”

He stared back. “Now try something for Heather's sake. Try the truth.”

“She was a nice person.”

“She still is. Say something new.”

“She loved Rob DiCenza,” Aidan said.

That hurt. Micah knew Aidan had meant for it to. He backed off.

Griffin asked Aidan, “Did Rob love her?”

It was a minute before Aidan let out a breath and refocused on Griffin. “Rob wasn't capable of love as you and I know it. He was raised in a family where love was bartered—you do this for me, I do this for you. Most everything had a political purpose. Nothing was pure. Lisa's love was pure.”

“Did she set her sights on him, like the papers said?” Griffin asked.

“No. She wouldn't have done that. She wasn't sophisticated or self-confident enough. He was the one who went after her, not the other way around. She worked for the caterer that the DiCenza family used. They were always having parties, so she was over there twice a month. Rob was probably initially attracted to her
because
she tried to be distant, and he
loved
that she was poor. It drove old Charlie nuts. He liked the illusion of being a man of the people, but he was a social climber. He'd come from poor. He milked that fact for all it was worth—the old rags-to-riches-helps-rags story—but he didn't want his kids socializing with poor.”

“Did you know that Rob knocked her around?” Griffin asked.

Aidan studied his coffee again. “He said she mouthed off. That she deserved what she got.”

“Over and over again?”

Aidan shrugged. It was an admission.

“And you didn't do anything?” Micah asked tightly and held his ground when Aidan's eyes met his.

“Yes, I did something. I told him not to hurt her. I told him that someday one of his girls was going to go to the cops, and that once one talked, the others would follow suit. I told him he could see prison time. He laughed at me. He thought I was crazy.”

“What about the pregnancy?” Griffin asked.

Aidan looked away. “When she told him about it, he said that she was trying to trap him, that it wasn't his, that he'd pay for an abortion out of the goodness of his heart, but only because he liked her.”

“Was it his?” Micah asked. His Heather was a one-man woman. She didn't run around.

“How the hell should I know?” Aidan asked.

“Guess,” Griffin coaxed.

“It was his. She wasn't seeing anyone else. Like I said, she was in love.”

“Did she agree to get the abortion?”

“No. That was the problem.”

“Problem, as in source of dissension?”

“Yes.”

“Was she shaking him down for money, like the family says?”

“No. I doubt the thought of that ever entered her mind. She was too gentle, and also naive. Besides, she wouldn't have done anything to irritate him. She knew what his fists felt like. She kept hoping he'd soften and decide that he wanted the baby, too.”

“How do you know what she was hoping?” Micah asked.

Aidan held his gaze. “She told me.”

“She called you on the phone and just poured it all out?”

“She didn't have to call me on the phone. I was always around. I'd drive them on dates.”

“You were his chauffeur.”

“I prefer to say I was his designated driver. I was also his best friend. She thought I could convince him that it wouldn't be so bad having the baby and her.”

“Did you try?”

“There was no point. I knew how he felt. Like I said, Rob was incapable
of love. So I told her she could do better. I told her to just leave town, have the baby, and find another guy.”

Poppy spoke, her voice quiet, “In some regards, that's what she did.”

“Except that something happened in the ‘just leave town' stage,” Griffin said. “We're missing a page.” He looked at Aidan. “Were you there that night?”

Aidan stood straighter. “I was. That's in the record. But I wasn't in the men's room.”

“Did you see what happened?”

“It was dark.”

Micah reached the end of his leash. “Is that what you flew out here to tell us, that it was dark? This is my busy season, man. I've been at it since eight this morning, and I'll be at it until midnight. I can't waste my time pulling teeth. If you have something to say, now's the time. Otherwise, get out of my house.”

* * *