Kristin Hannah's Family Matters 4-Book Bundle: Angel Falls, Between Sisters, The Things We Do for Love, Magic Hour (144 page)

Julia couldn’t go there. Not to the imagining it place.

No leave Girl, Jewlee.

She opened the car door and stepped out into the falling snow, barely feeling the cold.

She walked up the steps, going from snow to wet wood, and opened the front door. The light and warmth hit her first. Then she saw Alice, curled up in Max’s lap. At Julia’s entrance, she looked up and grinned.

“Jewlee!” she squealed, sliding out of Max’s arms and running for Julia.

She picked the little girl up, held her tightly. “Hey, little one.” She tried to smile. Hopefully it didn’t look as brittle as it felt.

Alice frowned up at her. “Sad?”

“Happy to be home,” Julia said.

Relief shone in Alice’s eyes. She hugged Julia again and kissed her neck.

Ellie came up behind them and smoothed Alice’s hair. “Hey girlie-girl.”

“Hi LEllie,” she said in a muffled, happy voice.

Max was standing now. Firelight backlit him; the brightness made his face appear shadowed. “Julia?” he said. There was no mistaking the concern in his voice.

It almost undid her. She sidestepped his touch, trying to make it look like an accident, but she saw that he wasn’t fooled. Of course he wasn’t. She didn’t know much about Max, but she knew this: he recognized heartache, understood its taste and feel and texture. And he saw it now on her face. There was no way for her to hide it, not with Alice in her arms and George Azelle’s envelope in her coat pocket.

If Max touched her now, she’d cry, and she didn’t want that. God knew, she would need strength for what was to come.

“He wants her back.”

The sad understanding in Max’s eyes was almost more than she could bear. He moved slowly toward her. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he said, “I’ll wait up for you.”

“But—”

“It doesn’t matter when. Come over when you can. You’ll need me.”

She couldn’t deny that.

“I’ll wait up for you,” he said again; this time he didn’t wait for a response. He said good-bye to each of them and left.

Silence swept in behind him.

“Max bye-bye,” Alice said. “No Jewlee leave?”

Julia swallowed hard, feeling the sting of tears. She clung fiercely to Alice. “I won’t leave you, Alice,” she said, praying it would be true.

For the rest of the evening Julia moved in a fog. Alice seemed to sense that something was wrong. She shadowed Julia even more closely than usual.

By nine o’clock they were both exhausted. Julia gave the little girl a bath, braided her hair, and tucked her into bed. Snuggling in close on the narrow mattress, she tried to read a bedtime story, but the words kept blurring before her eyes.

“Jewlee sad?” Alice said repeatedly, her small face scrunched into a frown.

“I’m fine,” Julia said, closing the book and kissing the girl good-night. “I love you,” she whispered against the soft baby-scented cheek.

“Stay,” Alice murmured, her eyes heavy.

“No. It’s nighttime. Alice sleeps now.”

Alice nodded and popped her thumb in her mouth.

Julia stared down at the girl.

My girl.

An ache blossomed in her chest. She turned away from the bed and went downstairs.

Ellie sat at the kitchen table, reading through a stack of papers. The dogs lay on the floor beside her, uncharacteristically docile. “The court said—”

Julia lifted a hand as if to ward off a blow. “I can’t talk about it right now. I need some … time. Will you watch her?”

“Of course.”

Julia went to the kitchen, grabbed the car keys and her purse. Every step seemed to jostle her bones. It felt as if she were held together with old Scotch tape. “Good-bye. I’ll be back soon.”

Outside, she drew in a deep, shaky breath. The night smelled of wet wood and new snow and the coming night. It wasn’t until she was almost to the car that she realized she’d forgotten her coat.

Freezing, she drove to Max’s house. The heat came on just as she turned into his driveway.

By the time she crossed the white yard and reached the porch steps, he was there, on the deck, waiting for her. Pale light spilled through an open window and cast him in a beautiful golden glow.

She felt a powerful jolt at the sight of him. It came from somewhere deep inside of her, past muscle and bone, a place that was normally still. Coming home; that was how it felt.

She climbed the steps toward him. He started to say something else, but she didn’t want to hear his words, his voice, his questions. They would be concrete, somehow, too heavy. She couldn’t carry any more weight right now.

She touched a finger to his lips. “Take me to bed, Max.”

He stared down at her, and for a moment—just that—she saw the man behind the smile, the man who knew a thing or two about loss. “Are you sure?”

“You’re wasting time. Alice—” Her voice broke this time. She had to force a smile. “… might have a nightmare. I can’t be gone long.”

He swept her into his arms and carried her up the stairs. She clung to him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. Seconds later they were in his room. She slid out of his arms and took a step backward. Though distance was the last thing she wanted right now, she felt awkward. Undone somehow.

She unbuttoned her shirt, let it fall to the floor. Her bra followed.

They stood there, separated by inches and yet worlds apart, undressing. Finally, both naked, they looked at each other.

When he reached for her, she said nothing, barely even breathed. He circled his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her to him. Off balance, she stumbled a bit, fell into his chest.

He kissed her slowly, with a gentleness that was both surprising and short-lived. She reached up for him, coiled her arms around him, stroking his skin, wanting him closer, closer.

It flashed through her mind to push him away, to change her mind, say,
Stop; I was wrong, you’ll break my heart,
but her fear lasted no longer than an instant. Passion twisted it into something else. They moved to the bed. In a distant part of her mind she saw that he was pushing his clothes aside, making a bower of rumpled white sheeting for their bodies, and then she was on the bed with him, beneath him, her hands desperate against his bare, hot skin. She was breathing so hard and fast she felt dizzy; his name slipped from her mouth to his. Neither one of them heard it. His hands pushed past her defenses, drove her down, past pleasure and into a kind of pain and back to pleasure again. As if from far away, she heard him rip open a condom package; then her hands were on him, stroking it into place.

He groaned and covered her body with his, moving against her until she couldn’t think of anything, could only
feel.

When he entered her, with a thrust that went straight to the core of her, she cried out, terrified for a moment that she’d lost herself in all this need.

When it was over, he held her close and kissed her again. It was long and slow and gentle, and it made her want to cry.

“You’re a good man, Max Cerrasin,” she said throatily.

“I used to be.”

She drew back just enough to look at him. In the pale light from a single lamp, she saw now what she’d refused to admit before, even to herself: she’d been lost from the moment she saw him, certainly from their first kiss. She hadn’t merely stepped into love; she’d tumbled headlong, like her beloved Alice, down the rabbit hole to a place where nothing made sense. It didn’t matter now whether he loved her back. What mattered was the love itself, this feeling of connecting with another heart. She could see, too, that he was worried. They’d come to a place that neither had quite expected, and there was no way to know how it would end. In the past—hell, yesterday—that would have frightened her. She’d learned a lot today. “Yesterday I was worried about a lot of things. Today I know what matters.”

“Alice.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “And you.”

Max lay beside her, holding her naked body close, and stared up at the ceiling. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. He wanted to spend the night with Julia, to wake up beside her, to kiss her good-morning and talk about whatever came to mind.

In ordinary times that might have been possible; these were far from ordinary times. A part of her was breaking apart right now; she was holding herself together by sheer force of will.

He rolled onto his side and looked down at her. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, tracing her full lower lip with his finger.

“You, too,” she said with a smile. Her nose brushed his chin. When she smiled, her pale green eyes made him think of misty rain-forest mornings. Cool and deep and somehow magical.

“You’re turning me into a romantic,” he said.

“Then you already were one.”

He smiled at that. “You shrinks always know what to say, don’t you?”

She stared at him a long time before she answered. “Don’t lie to me, Max. That’s all I ask, okay? Don’t pretend to feel something if you don’t.”

“I’ve never pretended with you, Julia.”

“Then tell me something real.”

“Like?”

She glanced over at the bureau along the wall. There were several framed pictures displayed. Images from his life Before. “Like about your marriage.”

“Her name was Susan O’Connell. We met in college. I loved her from the first moment I saw her.”

“Until?”

He looked away for a second, then realized it was useless. Her keen eyes saw everything; certainly, he couldn’t hide this pain by looking away. “Believe me, now isn’t the right time for this conversation.”

“Will there be a time for it?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

She kissed him gently, then drew back. “I better go. Alice has trouble sleeping. She’ll panic if she wakes and I’m gone.” As she said the girl’s name, her voice wavered.

“The courts will see you’re best for her.”

“The courts,” she said with a heavy sigh.

“You don’t believe they’ll do the right thing?”

“The truth is, I can’t think about all that right now. If I do, I’ll fall apart. For now, I’m going to focus on proving that he’s an unfit parent. One step at a time.”

“You’ll need me.”

The smile she gave him was slow and steady. It released something in his chest, made breathing easier somehow. “I certainly will.”

The night passed for Ellie in a river of black dreams and frightening images. When she woke—at dawn—she was edgy and nervous. The first thing she did was pull out the file. Already, she’d read the words so often she’d almost memorized them. In the last twenty-four hours she’d personally spoken to every single police office who’d worked the Azelle case. In addition, she’d spent nearly an hour on the phone with the best private detective in King County.

Every person she spoke to and every report she read said the same thing.

He was guilty.

And the state hadn’t proved it.

Ellie paced the living room. The dogs followed her everywhere, running into her every time she turned. They were upset by her energy. It was on
her
shoulders to prove that Azelle was a bad guy, an unfit parent, but so far all she could find was a layer of innuendo, a fog of accusation.

He was an adulterer; that was a fact. The only one she’d been able to nail down. Neighbors
thought
he hit his wife. Jurors
believed
he’d killed her, but on the basis of nothing concrete. And the media …

Every journalist she’d spoken to was certain he’d done it.
Guilty son of a bitch
was the label most often used to describe him. But not one story had uncovered previous bad acts. No drug charges, no DUI, not even a Drunk and Disorderly.

With a curse, she grabbed her files and left the house.

She drove straight to the Rain Drop. The diner was the only place open this early in the morning. As usual, it was full of loggers and fishermen and mill workers having breakfast before work. She stopped and talked to people in every booth as she made her way to the cash register.

Rosie Chicowski was behind the hostess desk, smoking a cigarette. Blue smoke spiraled upward, joined with the hazy cloud that was always there.

“Hey, Ellie, you’re in early,” she said, pulling the cigarette from her mouth and stabbing it out in the ashtray. Patrons had been smoking in the Rain Drop for fifty years. No state law was going to change that.

“I need some caffeine.”

Rosie laughed. “You got it. How about one of Barb’s marionberry muffins to go with it?”

“Thanks. Only one, though. Shoot me if I try to order another.”

“Flesh wound or kill yah?”

“Kill me.” Laughing, Ellie turned around, heading back for a booth in the empty nonsmoking section of the diner.

It was a moment before she saw him.

He sat sprawled across the burgundy vinyl booth, an empty coffee cup in front of him. He saw her and nodded.

Ellie walked over to him. “Mr. Azelle,” she said.

“Hello, Chief Barton.” He did not look pleased to see her. His gaze flicked over the heavy manila folder she carried.

“Can I join you? I have some questions to ask you.”

He sighed. “Of course you do.”

She sidled into the booth across from him. She looked at him, trying to really
see
him, but all she saw were tired eyes and deep frown lines. As she was marshaling her thoughts into a question, he said, “Three years.”

“Three years what?”

Leaning toward her, he looked deeply into her eyes. “I was in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. Hell, I didn’t even
know
about it. I thought Zo had left me for one of her lovers and taken our kid.” The intensity in his eyes was unnerving. “Imagine how it would feel to be convicted of something terrible—horrific—and put in a cage to rot. And why? Because you made bad choices and let passion rule your life. So I had affairs. So I lied to my wife and family about that. So I sent her flowers after a knock-down and drag-out fight. It doesn’t make me a killer.”

“The jury—”

“The
jury,
” he said with contempt. “They couldn’t see past my life. Every newspaper and TV station called me guilty within five minutes. No one even looked for Zo and Brit.
Two
eyewitnesses saw a strange van on
my
street the day my family went missing—and no one cared. The police didn’t even bother to search for a white guy in a yellow slicker and Batman baseball cap who drove a grayish Chevy van. When I offered money for information, they compared me to O.J. For the last month I’ve been waiting every day for the DNA analysis that would give my daughter back to me. I had to get a court order to compare her DNA to the blood found at the scene. And when I get it, I race up here … only to find that your sister is going to fight me for custody.”