Unbreak My Heart (37 page)

"I can't believe he's here."

"I'll take you to him. Later," Allie promised. "Tell me what you did."

"We scraped together some money and came back here. We were about a mile from the house when Rich saw us. He looked furious, and I was so scared of him. I decided it was too much of a risk—to come back. So Mitch and I just took off, and Rich must have followed us somehow. Or maybe he knew where we were all along. I don't know. I always felt like he was out there, watching me, to make sure I wasn't going to make trouble for him by telling anyone what he'd done or by claiming my baby was his.

"A few days later, we were back in Macon. My friend Meg—the real Margaret Addison—was with me. I was coming out of the clinic when I thought I saw Rich. We just took off. I was so scared. And then the storm hit. It was awful. The rain was coming down so hard, we could hardly see. The wind was blowing. I didn't even see the car coming. It was so big and so fast. It rammed us, and I screamed, and we started sliding. The next thing I knew, we were in the water."

"So he did try to kill you," Allie said.

Megan nodded. "I was more worried about Rich than anything else. I got out of the car and made it to the bank. I grabbed onto a tree branch that hung out over the water. I don't know if he meant to kill us or just to scare us, but I heard a car back up. It stopped on the side of the road, and a man got out. There was a flash of lightning, and I saw his face. It was Rich.

"I didn't even think of Meg at first. I was too scared of him. It wasn't until he got back in his car and left that I panicked and realized I hadn't seen her since the car went into the water. By then, it was too late. I looked for her, but the water was cold, and it was moving so fast. I never saw her again." Megan's voice shook. "I'm not really clear on what happened next. A couple of cars came along and stopped. One of them was the doctor I knew from the free clinic, a man named Jim. He wrapped me up in a blanket and made me sit down inside a car, out of the rain. He and a couple of guys went into the water after Meg, but it was too late. They couldn't find her.

"The police showed up, and I was still sitting in Jim's car. When the police came over to question me, they assumed I was just someone who'd come along and seen the car and stopped to try to help. I begged Jim not to say anything else. I told him I couldn't go back home, that the man who raped me was there. That I was scared, and I had to protect my baby.

"He helped me get into a home for teenage mothers in Alabama," she said. "The police identified the body in the creek as mine, and it just seemed right. Meg didn't have anyone. The only person left who cared about her was her grandmother, and when her grandmother died, she ran away. And when Meg died, I became her. It's not even that hard, at least not on paper. You can find books on how to do it. They tell you to find someone who's about your age who died, and assume her identity, and I already had someone's identity.

"I almost gave Casey up. I wanted so much more for him than I could give him, but when it came time to sign the papers... He was all I had left in the world, and I wanted him, even though..."

"Rich raped you?"

"Some people might call it that today. Back then... There was no term that really applied. I was sneaking out to see him. I let him kiss me, but he wanted more than that, and he didn't listen when I told him no. Afterward, he got up and went right on, like nothing happened. Like I wanted it, and I liked it. Like he was entitled to have sex with me if he wanted to."

"It was rape," Allie said.

"It took me a long time to understand that. At the time, it was more like a date gone bad, and I felt like I was as much to blame as he was. He was so nice to me in the beginning, Allie. He acted like he really liked me. Nobody had ever treated me like that. Nobody ever made me feel special. And that one night, he just started kissing me, and he wouldn't stop. He'd been drinking, and he was so much stronger than I was. All of a sudden, he was like a stranger. I kept thinking I was going to wake up, and it would all be a nightmare. He said girls didn't like sex the first time. That we'd do it again and again, and eventually, I'd like it.

"I was terrified of him. He was right next door, and his father was a judge. I knew he'd never be arrested, much less go to jail for what he'd done. So I hid the bruises, and I kept to myself. I tried to stay out of his way. But he caught me two more times, and I swear he enjoyed it," she said. "I never said a word to anyone until I hadn't had my period in two months, and when I told Mom and Dad, they didn't believe me. My own father told me that he wasn't my father and he didn't want me in his house any longer. So I left. I didn't want Rich to have anything to do with the baby. I didn't want Casey to ever know."

"Megan, what are you going to tell Casey?"

"I don't know. I know what it's like to have someone lie to you about who your father is. But rape... How can I tell him that? How can I tell him the best thing in my life, the person I love more than anyone or anything, came to me through such an ugly act? And if I tell him that, do I tell him who did it? What if Casey doesn't even believe me? What if he wants to have a father so badly that he wants a relationship with Rich? It scares me to death. It scares me to think of what Rich might do, even now, to try to keep us quiet about what he did all those years ago."

They sat there for a moment.

Megan said, "I don't want to think about that now. I want to think about happy things. I want to know all about you. And Stephen? I saw the way he looks at you. God, if I was sixteen again and he looked at me like that, I would have melted right on the spot."

Allie laughed. Megan did, too.

"He knew how I felt about him," Megan said. "But he was so nice about it. He was a good friend to me that summer. I almost told him everything."

"I wonder what would have happened if you had?"

"I don't know. I try hard not to second-guess anything. There's no point. I made mistakes. I did things I regret, but I have Casey and my business, and I've managed to stay fairly happy most of the time. It's not perfect, but it's my life, and I like it. I'm certainly not going to waste my life feeling sorry for myself or feeling like a victim."

"Me, either," Allie said. "I think it took me longer than it did you to see that. But I finally made peace with it myself. With the whole mess. Later, after everything calms down, we have to talk about the house. Mom left it to me, but by rights, half of it should be yours—"

"Allie, I don't want any part of this house. If I hadn't had to come back here, to find Casey and to see you, I wouldn't have ever wanted to set foot inside these doors again. There are too many bad memories here for me."

"What if we made some good ones?"

"I don't think that's possible."

"I do." She quickly told her sister about her hopes for the shelter.

"It's something to think about." Megan looked around the room, a glint of tears in her eyes. "I spent some time in shelters. Some that were very good. Some that even made me think about trying to come back home."

"We could make it one of those," Allie said, her throat tight with tears. "You and me. Together. You'd know just what it needed to be, and I... Well, I have work to do, too. Stephen's insisting there are a dozen practical reasons it would never work. Not here. But if you and I were working together, I think somehow we could do it."

"Here? In Kentucky? You're going to stay?"

"I'm not sure."

"Are you and Stephen getting married?"

"No."

"You turned him down?"

"He hasn't asked," she said. "I don't know if he will."

"Of course he will. He's a good man, Allie."

"I know."

"And you're in love with him." Megan grinned.

"I think I am. It scares me. But I think I am."

* * *

Stephen came upstairs a few minutes later and something about the way he carried himself, the pinched, painful look on his face had Allie compelled to suddenly be by his side. She slid close, putting her arm around him, leaning into him, thinking this had to be so hard on him. His brother was a rapist, a murderer.

"I heard what you were saying," Stephen told Megan. "Trying to talk Allie into moving back to Alabama with you?"

"I haven't seen her in a long time," Megan said. "I miss her."

"So stay here with her," he said.

"We can't do that," Megan said.

"Of course you can."

"We have a home, Stephen. In Alabama."

"You have a family," he said. "In Kentucky."

"I have my reasons for staying away from Kentucky," Megan said. "I think you can guess what they are."

"You don't have to worry about Rich," he said softly.

"I'll always have to worry about Rich. He's always held all the power. He still does. Who's going to believe me, even now? DNA would prove he fathered my son, but it wouldn't prove he raped me or that he killed my friend fifteen years ago. It would still be my word against his, and I don't want to put myself or my son through the kind of fight it would take to bring your brother down."

"Megan, you don't have to fight him anymore."

"Of course I do—"

"He's dead," Stephen said.

"What?"

"He's dead."

Megan gasped. Allie did, too. She moved to stand in front of Stephen, putting her palm against his cheek, making him look at her. He seemed truly stunned and hurt and for once, not quite sure of himself.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He was upset after we talked." Stephen laughed bitterly. "Upset is an understatement where Rich is concerned. Out of control. In a rage. Maybe because he thought he was going to get caught, that he'd finally have to pay for one of the wrongs he'd committed. Maybe he'd finally gotten himself into a mess our father couldn't fix. I don't know. I suppose we'll never know. But he had too much to drink and never made it home. Turns out he drove his car off one of those big bridges off I-64 near Frankfort and went into the river. They just found his car about an hour ago. He was inside. He won't be hurting you or anyone else anymore."

Shocked, Allie slid both her arms around Stephen and held on tight. He stood stiffly in her embrace, breathing hard and trembling. Megan left at some point, and Allie felt tears filling her eyes. Stephen had been so good to her when everything was falling apart around her, and now he was hurting.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "What can I do?"

"I don't think there's anything anyone else can do, and I have to go. I have to call my parents. I have to go to his wife. She... I know she loved him at one time, even if she probably came to hate him as much as I did over the years. But he was her husband, and they have two little girls. Two beautiful little girls."

"You don't have to do this alone," Allie said. "Let me help you. The way you've helped me. I wouldn't have survived the past few days without you, Stephen. I love you."

"Don't say that." He tried to pull away from her. When she wouldn't let him go, he took her hands and pried them loose.

Puzzled, she said, "I wasn't supposed to fall in love with you?"

"I don't deserve that, Allie."

"Of course you do—"

"No, I don't," he insisted. "And I can't talk about this now, all right?"

"Talk about what?"

"Any of this," he said bleakly. "There's no pretense left inside of me. There's nothing."

It was her first inkling that something was going on besides the fact that his brother was dead. She backed away from him. Not sure she wanted to hear any more.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I am so sorry."

Allie started to cry. She couldn't have said where the tears came from, or what warned her how very close to disaster they were in this moment. But there it was. Intuition, or maybe what she could see in his eyes. His painfully sad eyes. Nothing left inside of him, he'd said. Nothing.

Not even for her?

"I don't understand."

"Allie, I haven't told you everything," he said bleakly.

"You kept things from me. Things you suspected, things you feared. I know that. You told me that," she said, trying to make excuses for him now. It was so ridiculous. She found she couldn't help herself. She knew all about catastrophes, about everything in her life changing in an instant. Megan seemingly dying. Allie's mother taking her away. And now Stephen, the man she loved. They were one step away from disaster. She knew it.

She was scared, backing away from him, when he said, "I lied to you."

"No," she whispered.

"I wanted to tell you. I promised myself, the first moment I could, I would, and I suppose this is it. I don't have any words to make this easier. I couldn't put together a coherent thought right now. Not that it matters. There aren't any words."

"I don't understand at all," she whispered.

"I know. I always thought when this moment came, I would stand here one more time and say there were things I hadn't told you, that I still hadn't lied to you. But it's just not true, Allie. I've been lying."

"All along?" she choked out.

He nodded. "I knew you were coming back here. My father knew, and he told me. He was worried about what you were going to do, about what you were going to find out. He wanted someone to keep an eye on you, and he wanted you gone as quickly as possible."

Allie stared at him as if she truly didn't know him. He'd told her that all along.
You don't know me.
And she hadn't believed him. He'd told her she'd regret making love to him, too, and she hadn't believed that, either. Turns out, he was right. Stephen was always right.

"You've been spying on me?" she said when she could put together the words. "You've been reporting back to your father about me?"

He nodded.

She nearly doubled over from the pain that knifed through her, through her stomach, her heart, her lungs. A glutton for punishment, she whispered, "What else?"

"I had someone digging into your background, your financial records, your employment records and your mother's, before you ever got here. I knew you couldn't afford to keep the house, and I thought I'd make it easy for you to leave by offering to buy the house from you."