You Don't Know Me (23 page)

Sure, she’d probably fled out of a desire to protect them, but . . .

But she hadn’t believed in him enough to trust that he’d protect her, stick by her. Which meant she’d been lying to him about that, too, for years.

For better or worse—yeah, right.

He sat there, listening to his heart thump. Glanced at the clock.

Then he picked up the phone, his hands shaking just a little. His call to her cell went to voice mail.

Maybe she had it turned off.

He set the phone back on the mount. Stood. Took a breath.

So this was what it came to. He stared at their mussed bed, usually so perfectly made up every morning by his wife. Today the sheets lay in a tangle, evidence of a restless sleep—if she’d slept at all—and their turbulent morning.

He wanted to rip them off the bed. To throw them in a ball across the room.

Instead, he found himself hopping back to the bathroom. He opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed a box of Band-Aids.

He sat on the toilet to affix one over the wound.

Then, getting up, he limped back into the bedroom, his thoughts strangely quiet.

She’d left him.

With this mess she’d created of their lives.

He took the covers, pulling them up, then smoothed the comforter over the top. Tossed the pillows—maybe a little too hard—at the head.

Nathan turned and left the room, pausing at the edge of the family room. Droplets of blood embedded the Berber carpet, so recently laid. They’d saved every penny for a year for this carpet, and Annalise had waited until the yearly sale, picking out exactly the stain-resistant variety she needed.

Going to the kitchen sink, he grabbed an old ice cream bucket from under it and filled it with hot water and some Pine-Sol.

He didn’t care that it scalded his hands as he plunged a rag into the water, then began to attack the stains. He scrubbed each one, practically wearing away the carpet in his effort.

He’d shot at his son and his wife had left him.

The water turned metallic, roughened his hands.

This was Annalise’s fault. If she’d just trusted him—and not only today, but at the beginning, the very beginning . . .

And she said she believed in him. “‘You can do anything, Nathan. You’re my hero,’” he mimicked. He knocked the bucket, and the bloody water sloshed out onto the other side, the clean carpet, soaking it through.

Perfect.

Worse, he could still see his bloody steps.

So much for stain-resistant.

He hefted the bucket back to the sink and poured out the bloody water, rinsing the bucket and adding fresh, scalding water.

He’d get the stains out. The carpet would be good as new.

And if she wanted to do this on her own, if she wanted to abandon him . . . She’d gotten them into this mess; she could just take it with her out of town. Out of their lives.

He yanked the bucket from the sink with so much force that the water sloshed down his legs. He cursed, for the second time today—see, she was turning him into a person he didn’t even know—and carried it to the family room. His legs burned with the heat of the water, and he couldn’t even feel his hands as he squeezed out the rag and then decided to just pour the water onto the stains. It saturated them, flooded out beyond the borders into clean carpet.

He kept scrubbing, moving again to each one. “I didn’t marry Deidre O’Reilly, thank you very much.”

“Nathan?”

He startled, jerked back, hitting the bucket. It turned over but Nathan ignored it, instead staring up at John Christiansen. The man wore his EMS jacket, concern on his face. “Who are you talking to?”

Nathan ground back a word and turned to rescue the bucket. “No one. Myself. The idiot cleaning up his wife’s mess.”

John turned and went to the kitchen without speaking. He returned a moment later with a wad of towels. He threw them on the carpet, over the water, and began to step on them.

Nathan climbed to his feet. He was soaked through—his pants, his shirt. They were starting to chafe.

“I was on my way to the school for CPR class, thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to grab some coffee first. Uh . . . what’s going on?” John raised an eyebrow, his gaze scanning over Nathan, landing on the bandaged foot, then the broken picture frame. Finally on the hole Nathan’s shot left in the wall. “Everything okay here?”

Nathan scooped up the bucket, biting back a “Does it
look
okay?” Instead he said, “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are. Clearly.”

“John—” He wanted to round on the man, to put his anger somewhere.

John held up his hand. “I’m on your team here. What happened?”

Nathan stared at the towels soaking up the blood and water. “Annalise has left me; that’s what happened.”

“I doubt that.”

“Really, she’s left me.”

“She wouldn’t do that, Nathan. She loves you; she loves her kids. There hasn’t been a time I’ve known you that she wasn’t bragging on them or glowing about her husband. She didn’t
leave
you.”

“You don’t know Annalise.”

John frowned. “I’ve known Annalise nearly as long as you have.”

“No, you don’t get it. Neither one of us knows Annalise. She’s not who she says she is.” Nathan heard a warning in the back of his head, but frankly, he couldn’t bear another moment carrying these secrets. How had Annalise done it for twenty years? “Her name is really Deidre O’Reilly, and she’s been in the Witness Security Program since she came to Deep Haven.”

Nathan gave himself points for reacting better than John, who stared at him as if he’d spoken Portuguese.

“Yes. She’s lied to us all these years. Lied to me. Evidently she’s been hiding from some drug lord who is now on the loose and hunting her down.”

“Nathan—”

“Oh, it gets better. Uncle Frank?
Not
her uncle. Feel free to sit down because Uncle Frank is really her WitSec agent and is here to
move her and our entire family
.”

John did sit down.

“Meanwhile, he’s been dating my mother, who I think has fallen for him. Need a paper bag yet? Because I’m just getting started. My mother . . . has . . . cancer.”

He delivered that as best he could, hoping the words wouldn’t touch him; he’d been dodging them since the moment she—or rather, Frank—confessed it.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh yeah, life is super fun in the Decker house right now. Especially for Colleen because apparently her boyfriend was here the other night in her room.”

“What?”

Good man—John found his feet, looked like he might be willing to go tear the boy limb from limb for Nathan.

“Yeah. I had dinner with him last night. Thought he was a nice kid. Shook his hand. I should have ripped it from his body.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I wouldn’t know because Annalise didn’t breathe a word about it. Just another secret she’s kept from me. And you didn’t get the best part . . . Who put this hole in the wall and nearly killed my eleven-year-old? Me. I nearly shot my son, John.” He shook his head, walked to the window. “I sat up all night like an idiot with my dad’s old .22 in my lap, and this morning when Henry walked in, I woke up, jerked, and the gun went off.” He felt his voice begin to crack, his chest tighten. “By the grace of God, Henry isn’t dead right now.”

He felt nauseous, had to bend over, grab his knees. Breathe. He could barely hear his own voice over the thunder of his heart. “So when I say that Annalise left me, believe me, I’m not kidding. She ran from me, from this mess, and I pray she takes it with her and lets us all live in peace.”

He closed his eyes, trying to lay hold of his words, to bring them into a place where he could mean them.

At the moment, he hated no one more than himself. “How did I let this happen? How did this get so bad?”

“Sit down, Nathan. You look like you’re going to keel over.”

Nathan felt a hand on his shoulder, shrugged it off, but managed to sink into his recliner. No, not there. He moved over to the sofa. Hid his face in his hands.

“I feel like I’m walking onto the football field thirty years ago, into the mess my father made. Seeing the destruction of his decisions, his mistakes, and now I gotta live in the debris.” Nathan ran his hands behind his neck. “A huge part of me wants to just say . . . good riddance. Let her go. Forget about Annalise—or Deidre—and salvage what we have left.”

He closed his eyes. Salvage what they had left. Like his mother had done. He’d done fine without a father—his children could learn to live without their mother.

What choice did they have?

“So you’re going to give up. Walk away. Do what your father did.”

Nathan looked up at John, who had his hands in his pockets. Made for an easy tackle if he wanted. “I’m not my father. Besides, I’m not the one doing the leaving.”

“Yeah, you are, Nathan. You’re turning in your equipment, just like football. And maybe you didn’t betray your wife, but you’re doing it again—letting what someone else did sideline you instead of fighting for what you want.”

“This isn’t football. This is our lives, John. This is twenty years of deceit. Please, no more football metaphors.”

“Okay, fine. Here’s the truth. When you married Annalise, you married her past—her good and bad past—as well as her future. You agreed to the whole package when you said, ‘I do.’”

“I don’t even know the person I married. If she’s not who she said she was when I married her, are my vows even valid?”

He hadn’t thought of that before, and suddenly it scared him how easily that excuse fell into place. He’d never married Annalise . . . because she didn’t exist. God couldn’t hold a divorce against him when he’d
never married her
, right?

“You’re hearing a lie, Nate. Annalise
is
the person you married. It doesn’t matter what her name was. You married her heart, her soul, her mind, her body, and have been loving her for twenty years. So she didn’t tell you all her secrets—did you tell her about the time you got wasted at homecoming and were arrested for indecent exposure?”

Nathan glared at him. “That was a childish prank in ninth grade. Not even a comparison here.”

John lifted a shoulder. “Full disclosure, pal. Skinny-dipping in Lake Superior might be a no deal for her.”

“Stop.”

“See, that’s my point. That’s not you. You wouldn’t do that now—and she’s not the person she was in her past. Annalise is who she’s been every day for twenty years. She loves you, Nathan. And God loves you both. He’s blessed you, and by His grace, you can fix this.”

Nathan didn’t move. “Don’t talk to me about God’s grace. I did this right, John. I kept my promises to my wife. I’ve been faithful; I’ve provided. I’ve tried to be a good husband. And what do I get? Lies. Where is God’s grace, God’s blessings, now? Where are my promises?”

“Your promises are found in staying the course. In obedience. In the
yes
and
amen
we say to God’s work in our lives, whatever it might be. That’s when God’s promises show up.”

Nathan shook his head.

“Don’t judge God’s love for you on your circumstances, Nathan. Judge it on what you know to be true. God loves you, and He’ll give you the strength to do what’s right. Just stay the course. That’s what God wants for you—everyday faith. Not . . .” John pointed at the wall.

Nathan followed his gaze to the jagged hole in the plaster. Cracks ran through the walls in a spiderweb away from the gash. But like so many other cracks in their house, he could repair this, plaster over it, repaint, make it look good as new. Even better. Stronger. And while their home might never be fancy, it would be . . . home.

And Nathan Decker knew the worth of a home.

He might not be a tough guy, might not know how to handle a gun, but as long as he had breath, he wasn’t going to let Annalise leave without a fight.

The clock in Tuck’s English class had ceased to function, the minute hand permanently stuck at 11:33.

Two minutes. Two grinding, jaw-breaking, stomach-churning minutes before Tuck could escape Mrs. Hallberg’s prattle about the relationship between Macbeth and Darth Vader—not a bad comparison if he were at all interested in learning about tragic heroes. But he needed to see Colleen. To pull her close, maybe give her a kiss.

And to confirm that, indeed, he’d had dinner with her family last night and no one brought him to trial, no one tried to execute him. No one even made him feel like he was the homeless guy eating Thanksgiving dinner at the table.

He had felt like one of them—a Decker. A member of her family. Like they might invite him back.

Oh, he was a fool, wasn’t he? To actually think that Mr. Decker had meant it when he shook his hand? To think that Mrs. Decker had forgiven him?

One minute.

He’d seen Colleen as she walked into school today, looking a little angry—as if she’d had another fight with her mother.

Please let it not be over him.

He’d tried to catch up with her, but the bell rang and she ducked into her English class.

She hadn’t answered his text either.

He’d have to meet her in the lunchroom. Thankfully, she hated Taco Tuesday, so he’d suggest they go down to the coffee shop or maybe over to the sandwich shop for lunch. Of course, that’s what busted them last week—their Taco Tuesday run and the brief tryst in the lighthouse parking lot. But things had turned around since last Tuesday.

This Tuesday, Mrs. Decker liked him. This Tuesday, he would ask Colleen out on a date for Friday night, and by Sunday, maybe he’d be watching football with the family.

Thirty seconds.

Mrs. Hallberg was writing the assignment on the board. He usually had to read it a few times before he could unscramble the letters. Now he stared at it, trying to decipher the page numbers correctly when finally—yes!—the bell rang.

Tuck grabbed his books—he’d figure out the assignment later—and flowed into the hall with the other students.

He dumped his books in his locker, then headed to the lunchroom. The jocks had linebackered to the front of the line, their girlfriends glued to their bodies.

A few of Colleen’s volleyball friends already filled their booth. She used to sit with them, but when she started dating Tuck, she’d joined him and a couple of her friends with boyfriends. He knew them—one played basketball; another was on the ski team. Not his friends, but he hadn’t that many anyway.

Tuck leaned against the door, pulled out his phone, scrolled down for a message from her. Nothing. He watched as the line filled. The smell of spicy ground beef and grease seasoned the lunchroom, along with the hum of conversation, punctuated by occasional shouts. Probably everyone was staring at him, so he scanned the room, then headed toward the volleyball table.

“Hey, Tucker,” Amelia Christiansen said as he approached. Her family owned a resort on Evergreen Lake. She was pretty enough with her dark hair, those green eyes.

“Hey. Have you seen Colleen?”

Ginny Iverson sat beside her, her blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail. “Yeah. I think she’s in the gym, working on her serve. She seemed pretty upset today in English, so Coach told her she could work out during fifth period.”

Upset. Maybe she
had
gotten into a fight with her mother. That sort of punched some of the breath from his lungs.

He pulled out his phone again.
R U OK?

C’mon, Colleen, answer.

But she didn’t text him back and he pushed his way out of the lunchroom, heading toward the gym.

He was just rounding the corner when Jason appeared out of the boys’ bathroom.

“Hey, Jason.” Tuck brushed past him but jerked back.

Jason’s hand had clamped him on the shoulder. “If you’re looking for my sister, stay away.” Jason spun him around, his eyes dark.

A hand crawled through Tuck’s gut, squeezed. “Why?”

“You two are done. Over.”

He shrugged off Jason’s hand. “Back off, dude.”

Jason stood there for a moment, his face tight. He wasn’t a big kid—spent most of his time spouting Shakespeare on the stage—but he had a presence about him as he stood in the hall, kids now walking past them, eyeing them.

No way did he need a fight here in the middle of the hallway. Tuck put up his hands. “Dude, I don’t know what this is about—”

“How about your midnight visit to my sister?”

“What—? Wait a second—”

Jason took a swing at him. Not close enough to connect, but the fist still grazed him enough for Tuck to jump back. “Dude!”

But Jason didn’t stop, came right up in his grill, gave him a push. Tuck went down, hit the floor, but bounced back up and circled him.

A few of the kids had stopped to watch.

Tuck kept his voice low. “Jason, it’s not what you think. Nothing happened.”

“You’re a dirtbag, Newman. You stay away from my sister.” Jason lunged at him again.

Tuck stepped aside, tripped him. Jason skidded into a bank of lockers.

More crowd appeared. He felt the words pulsing in the air.
Fight. Fight.

Tucker held up his hands. “You gotta calm down, dude.”

Jason hit his feet and charged. Tuck caught him around the waist as Jason slammed him into the other bank of lockers. He shoved Jason away, landing his hand into his breastbone, punching out his breath. Jason fell back, gasping.

Tuck scooted away. “What is your deal?”

“The deal is you keep your hands off my sister.” Jason had his hand on Tuck’s chest, his breath heaving.

Oh no. “You got it all wrong, man. I’m not sleeping with Colleen. In fact, I keep trying
not
to sleep with her. Try that on for size, jerk.”

Tucker heard a gasp, glanced behind him, and spied Colleen.

She stood in the hallway dressed in her workout gear, her face white. She hadn’t said a word in his defense. Hadn’t come out to rescue him. Another man stood behind her. A big man—Tuck thought it might be Amelia’s dad. He wore an official-looking jacket like he was an on-campus cop.

Well, they weren’t going to drag him away to detention without someone hearing the truth. He turned to Jason, letting the venom fill his voice. “Please. Everyone knows you’re getting it on with Harper Jacobsen. But it doesn’t matter, does it? You’re a Decker and you’re perfect. You can do no wrong. But when you’re a guy like me, no matter what you do, you can’t get a break. Guess what—I really liked your sister, and I was just trying to find her to make sure she was okay. Try to keep her out of trouble, will ya? You might need a leash.”

When he glanced at Colleen, he saw her jaw tighten as she looked away.

He sorta regretted those last words. Or maybe he regretted the entire thing—thinking that a girl like her might hang with him, thinking that he might belong in her family, that he could rewrite his rep.

He pushed past Colleen.

Amelia’s dad stood in his path. Tuck shot him the finger. “Move.”

He regretted that too, but that’s what they expected of him, and he liked to live up to expectations.

To his shock, the man stepped aside, staring at him with something of sadness in his expression. “Do what you know is right, Tucker,” he said loud enough for Tuck and the entire school to hear.

Yeah, well, he’d tried that route.

He nearly broke into a run as he stalked out of school, heading them off on the detention, the suspension. Maybe he’d never come back.

He pushed through the doors, not stopping until he reached the parking lot.

An old beater Honda, grimy from the road, sat at the curb, idling. He kept his head down but shot a glance at the guy inside. His eyes raked over Tuck, his mouth pursed, a layer of whiskers on his chin. And he had a tattoo that wound up around his neck all the way to his chin. Tucker snuck another peek at it as he stormed by. He thought it was a snake.

The man looked like some kind of criminal.

Probably how Tuck looked to the Decker family. He’d been a fool to think he’d ever fit into their world.

After hours of tests and more waiting, at least Helen didn’t have to take the news while wearing a cotton sheet, her backside open to the wind. Paula granted her the dignity of putting her in a private waiting area, letting her watch the sunshine as it poured down from the skies.

It couldn’t reach her spirit.

How could Frank have betrayed her? Spied on her and then spilled her secret to her family?

She should have listened to her instincts and kept him out of her life. She didn’t need Frank Harrison. So he had made her feel young and alive and helped her believe she could live beyond Deep Haven. She didn’t need him in order to be happy, to change her life. For pity’s sake, she’d only known him a week or less, and she’d decided to build her life around him? Maybe she had a brain tumor too.

For a few days there, she hadn’t recognized herself. Had actually wooed herself into believing that she might have a second chance at love.

Foolish old woman.

She should be concentrating on what had happened at Nathan’s house to make him sleep with a shotgun.

Helen pressed her hand to her chest. Good night, she barely knew him this morning when he asked her to leave. Worse, he’d looked at Annalise with such venom . . .

It had reminded her too much of how Dylan had looked at her that last day, when she told him he’d never see his son again if she had anything to say about it.

She swallowed past the tightness in her throat.
Please, God, don’t let Nathan make my mistakes.

A knock came at the door and Helen looked up as Paula entered. She looked so crisp and young this morning, dressed in a white jacket, a stethoscope around her neck.

“Helen, thank you for coming in.”

Oh, she couldn’t go through this again. Helen took a breath. “Before you start, I’ve already made up my mind. I don’t want chemotherapy. I can’t put my family—”

“Helen.” Paula shook her head. “You don’t have cancer.”

Helen stared at her, her pulse in her ears. She didn’t have—“Then what’s wrong with me?” Oh no, what if it was something worse? Like Lou Gehrig’s disease or Huntington’s? Her hand wrapped around the arm of her chair.

“You may have lupus. The fatigue, the weight loss, even your headaches and upset stomach. All symptoms. I need to do a few more tests—an ANA test, and we’ll need a urinalysis to see if it has affected your kidneys. Your hemoglobin is low, and you’re a bit anemic, but you had a full body scan three months ago.” Paula leaned forward, pressed a hand to her knee. “You don’t have cancer.”

“And the bruises?”

“They’re called purpura—looks a lot like a bruise, and some of these are actual bruises, of course, which is also a symptom of lupus.”

“What is lupus?”

“It’s a chronic autoimmune disease that presents when your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs, including your skin, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs, kidneys, and especially the joints. It can often be accompanied by fibromyalgia and lead into more serious complications like a stroke or heart attack.”

“So I’m not going to die a slow death. I could drop right here.”

“Helen.”

“Calm down, Paula. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

Paula offered a tight smile. “There’s no cure, but we treat the symptoms, and there are a number of homeopathic options as well. We’ll do more tests, but at this point, I don’t think you should be announcing to your family that you have cancer. They might panic.”

Oh, boy. She had no idea. “Thank you, Paula.”

The doctor left Helen in the waiting area.

No cancer.

So she didn’t face a slow death. She didn’t have the dire push to change her life, to see the world, to live dangerously, as if for the last time. She stared at the clock, watched the long hand tick toward noon. It matched her heartbeat, the pace of her life.

But perhaps she didn’t need a reason to jump into a second chance.

Maybe she’d just been looking for a reason like cancer to risk loving again. Risk being the woman who still stirred inside her. The woman who had, once upon a time, climbed onto the back of Dylan’s motorcycle.