Lone Wolfe (25 page)

 
          
Dread
pooled in Mollie’s stomach, ate away at her courage and conviction like the
most corrosive acid. ‘You’re leaving?’

 
          
‘Yes.’
He met her gaze with his own bland stare. ‘You always knew that, Mollie. I’m
leaving, and so are you. The estate goes on the market next week. You
are
almost done the gardens, aren’t
you?’

 
          
She
swallowed. ‘Yes, but—’

 
          
‘But?’
Jacob prompted. He did not sound very interested.

 
          
‘You
could have yours too,’ Mollie blurted. Desperation fuelled her words so she
barely knew what she was saying. ‘
Your
happily ever
after. You could have it … with me.’

 
          
The
ensuing silence, Mollie thought, was worse than anything Jacob could have said.
He just stared at her until she felt like the gap-toothed, tousle-haired tomboy
she’d always been, peeking through the hedges.
Unseen,
invisible.
At least, she
wished
she was invisible now, based on the incredulous way Jacob was looking at her.

 
          
‘Of
course no one’s happy all the time,’ she continued shakily, knowing that no
matter how humiliating or horrible this was, she had to see it through. ‘I
wouldn’t expect us to be. But we could take the joys and sorrows
together—sharing them.’ She sounded like a greeting card. Swallowing, she tried
again, in the only way she knew how. The only way left to her. ‘I love you,
Jacob.’

 
          
‘No,
you don’t.’ He spoke flatly, with such finality that Mollie blinked.

 
          
‘Yes,
I do.’ Were they actually going to
argue
about it? ‘Trust me, I know I do.’

 
          
Jacob
let out a sharp bark of laughter that ended on a quiet, ragged note. ‘You don’t
love me, Mollie, because you don’t
know
me.’

 
          
‘I
tried to believe that,’ Mollie told him. Her confidence was growing, amazingly.
She felt it come back like wind into a sail, buoying her hope. At least he
hadn’t told her that he didn’t love her.
Yet.
‘I told
myself that, because it was easier.
Safer.
But I do
know you, Jacob. I know what is important, what is true—’

 
          
‘No,’
Jacob cut her off, his voice sharp with anger. ‘You don’t.’

 
          
She
took a step closer to him. She could feel the anger and even the hurt coming
off him in hot, pulsating waves. Yet instead of scaring her, it made her sad.
Enough
.
Enough of this sorrow and heartache, this endless guilt and
despair.
That time was past. She looked up at him, her eyes wide,
her
face calm. ‘Why don’t you want me to love you, Jacob?’

 
          
‘This
is a pointless conversation …’

 
          
‘Or
is it that you’re afraid I won’t love you if I discover who you truly are? This
terrible secret you have?’ Mollie didn’t know where she found the words; they
came from a deep place inside her, spilling out, as only truth could. She took
another step towards him and laid a hand on his arm, as gentle as a breeze, and
waited.

 
          
‘I
know you won’t,’ Jacob said in a low voice.

 
          
‘Tell
me.’ Mollie tightened her hand on his arm. ‘Tell me why you left all those
years ago. Tell me what is so terrible, that I’m not supposed to know or
understand.’

 
          
‘I
can’t—’

 
          
‘Why not?’
Mollie challenged. ‘Is it because I might hate
you? Why should that matter, if you don’t love me and you’re leaving anyway?
You never have to see me again. Why should you care what I think?’

 
          
‘I’m
not as heartless as that,’ Jacob told her quietly. The corner of his mouth
turned up in the smallest, saddest of smiles. ‘I’ve spent most of my life
observing the people I love from a distance.
A very great
distance.’
He gestured to the folder still on the desk. ‘I wrote those
letters because I wanted to have a connection with my brothers and sister. I
never posted them because I couldn’t bear them to think less of me, even from
far away. The memory of their love for me was what sustained me for so long.’

 
          
‘And
you think the memory of my love for you will sustain you?’ Mollie finished.
‘Why do you have to be such a martyr?’ And then, to her surprise, she was
suddenly angry. And she let it show. ‘Tell me, Jacob, do you love me?’

 
          
He
looked startled, but he didn’t avoid the question. He didn’t even avert his
eyes. ‘Yes.’

 
          
Mollie
wanted to groan. Or scream. She also wanted to sing with joy. ‘Then why did you
just tell me you were leaving? Why can’t we work through this, Jacob? Whatever
it is? Isn’t that what love is all about?
Trust
?
‘

 
          
‘It’s
not you I don’t trust,’ Jacob said quietly. ‘It’s me.’

 
          
‘You
don’t trust yourself?’ Mollie repeated blankly. She trusted Jacob so utterly
the very thought was bewildering.
‘Why?’

 
          
Jacob
didn’t speak for a long, tense moment. The silence ticked on,
tautening
the very air. The wind rustled the papers on the
desk again. Mollie didn’t say anything.
Didn’t move.
She just waited.

 
          
‘I
remember the first time my father hit me,’ he finally said, his voice quiet,
calm, as if he was simply telling a story. ‘I was six years old. I’d come home
from school for Christmas, and I knew something was different. Wrong. Even the
little ones could feel it. My stepmother, Amber, Annabelle’s mother, had
died—of a drug overdose, I learned later—the year before. I thought my father
was sad because of that, and perhaps he was in his own way.’ He took a breath
and let it out slowly. ‘I wanted to comfort him. I knew he wasn’t like other
fathers, the way dads are
supposed
to
be, but as a child I kept trying to act like he was. I think I thought if I
acted that way, perhaps he would too.’ He gave her a fleeting smile, a
humourless curving of his lips. ‘But of course it didn’t. You can’t will things
into being. And I think, looking back, that my attempts to comfort him—to make
him seem normal—frustrated him. Perhaps he realised the magnitude of his own
failings.’ He paused. ‘That is a hard thing to bear.’

 
          
After
another pause he resumed his story. ‘In any case, that Christmas he was worse
than ever before.
Drunk most times, although it took me a
while to realise it.
It was as if …’ He stopped, searching for the words
that seemed to come from the very depths of his being. ‘It was as if he’d
surrendered to the worst part of himself, and allowed it … control.’

 
          
Mollie
made some inarticulate sound, as it all started to make such terrible sense.
Jacob’s determination to remain self-controlled.
His refusal to drink.
And he’d seen this all when he was
six.

 
          
‘We
had a series of temporary nannies to take care of us, and one morning the nanny
left without even telling my father. I can hardly blame her—we were a ragtag
bunch. Jack was four and Annabelle and Alex were barely two.’ He shook his
head, remembering. ‘Anyway, I went in search of my father, and found him in bed
with a bottle even though it was nearly noon. He was a mess. Weeping and raging
at turns.’ Jacob’s mouth twisted in memory. ‘In that moment I was so angry
because I knew he should be taking care of us and he wasn’t. At least with
Amber we’d had some kind of mother. I remember her being fun and loving, at
times. But William alone …’ He shook his head again. ‘So I took those whisky
bottles and dumped them in the sink. I was so full of self-righteous fury, much
good it did me. My father was unbelievably angry. I’d never seen him like that
before … he was incoherent with rage.

 
          
He
hit me then, and Lucas too, and we took it because we were too young and too
surprised to know what to do. He’d never hit us before.’

 
          
‘Oh,
Jacob …’

 
          
‘I
knew then how it would be,’ he finished flatly. ‘How it would always be. My
father may have had his good moments, when he played with us, or gave us
presents, but underneath I knew what he was. So did
he,
and he could never escape from it. Sometimes I pitied him.
Most
of the time I hated him.
And I always promised myself I would never,
ever be like him.’ He turned to face her, his expression bleak yet determined.

 
          
‘You’re
not like him, Jacob,’ Mollie whispered. ‘Not one bit.’

 
          
‘Yes,
I am,’ he returned flatly. ‘I am just like him. Sometimes I hide it better, and
most of the time I keep it under control.
But underneath?
Where it matters? We’re the same.’

 
          
He
spoke with such absolute conviction that Mollie wanted to cry, both for him and
herself. It was hopeless. He’d never be convinced he was different, or that he
was worth loving. ‘I don’t believe that,’ she told him in a choked voice. ‘I
don’t believe that at all.’

 
          
‘You
wanted to know the truth, Mollie, and now you have it.’

 
          
‘This
is your terrible secret?’ she demanded. ‘This
distorted,
guilt-ridden version of the past?’

 
          
‘There’s
more.’

 
          
‘Then
tell me,’ Mollie said, folding her arms.
‘Because I want to
hear it.’

 
          
‘What
do you want?’ Jacob snarled.
‘Examples?
A list of all
the times—’

 
          
‘Yes,’
she retorted. ‘Yes, I would. Just when were you so like your father, Jacob?
When you took care of your family? When you saved Annabelle—’

 
          
‘Saved
her?’ Jacob repeated in scathing
disbelief. ‘I raised my hand to her.’ Startled, Mollie’s mouth snapped shut,
and Jacob nodded as he saw her response. ‘I
raised
my hand
. I barely kept myself from hitting her, just as my father did. She
saw it. She saw my hand, and she saw the rage in my eyes, and she
cowered
from me.’ He drew in a
shuddering breath. ‘It was after … after everything. She’d come to find me with
tears in her eyes, because she needed someone to talk to. She was so lonely,
shut away in the
house,
and so young …’

 
          
‘So
were you,’ Mollie whispered. ‘You were only eighteen, Jacob.’

 
          
‘I
was old enough to know better,’ he returned savagely.
‘Old
enough to control myself.’

 
          
‘You
did control yourself.’

 
          
‘That
time.’ He looked at her bleakly.
‘That one time.
But I
knew there would be others, and who knows if I could control myself then? I
didn’t.’ There was a new, darker note in his voice now and Mollie felt a
tremble of fear ripple through her. Jacob saw it and knew what it was. He
nodded. ‘You’re right to be afraid of me.’

 
          
‘I’m
not afraid of you,’ Mollie returned hotly.
‘No matter what
you tell me now.’

 
          
‘All
right, then,’ Jacob said. His voice was like a terrible caress, a low, silky
whisper. ‘Here’s the truth, Mollie. Here’s what you don’t know. What nobody
knows.’ His eyes met hers, glinting blackly with
challenge,
and Mollie lifted her chin, ready for the worst.

 
          
‘The
night my father died,’ Jacob told her, his voice still a soft whisper that
coiled right around her heart and
squeezed
,
‘I was out at a party. I liked to go out to parties. Going out and getting
drunk was about the only respite I had.’