by Teresa Hill
"How's Emma?"
"She went to see him this afternoon. I think she had to hear it from him before she could believe he'd killed someone."
Sam braced himself to hear. "What did he tell her?"
"That he did it. What did he tell you?"
"Just that. I meant to ask, but we never got around to the details. We didn't get around to much except me jumping down his throat about Emma, and..." He swore softly and looked up at the ceiling, defeated. "Oh, hell, Rachel, he saved her."
"I know."
"I didn't even thank him for that. Rye. I can't get used to thinking of him that way. I look at him, and I see a little kid.... But I didn't even thank him for saving Emma."
"So, the next time you see him, you'll thank him."
"I don't want to lose him. Not again. And I'm so mad at him. How the hell did he screw up his life like this?"
"Ask him." Rachel said. "Give him a chance to tell you himself what happened."
"I should have told him about the two of us. All those years ago, he should have known that if he ever needed anything, he could have come to me. I would have done anything for him." Sam was nearly choking. "He must have needed someone so badly."
"He did come to you," Rachel said. "He came to you six days ago."
"And what if it's too late?"
That was about to burn a hole in his gut. Too late.
"He's still here, Sam. You're here."
"He's in jail. He could be going back for a long time." Sam wasn't sure what was worse—thinking about his brother in jail or thinking about him deserving to be there. "He really killed someone. How could he do that?"
"Ask him, Sam. And then listen to what he has to say. Let him know that whatever happens, we'll be here for him."
* * *
Emma went to bed sick at heart and woke up nearly screaming.
She sat up, shaking and freezing, trying to breathe normally and push the nightmare out of her head. A glance at the clock by her bedside showed it was shortly after three in the morning, too early to get up and stay up, but she wasn't willing to risk going back to sleep yet.
She got out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweats and socks, because it was cold. Padding to the window, she saw the tiniest bits of snow falling from the sky. It hardly made a dusting on the ground below.
Behind her, the door to her room gave the slightest creak. She turned toward the sound. Sam stood in the doorway, one of the saddest looks she'd ever seen on his face.
"You okay?"
She nodded, feeling just awful. She hadn't just hurt Rye. She'd hurt Sam, and left the two of them to start over together in the worst possible way.
Sam leaned against the doorjamb. "Can't sleep?"
"No."
"Me, either. Nightmare?"
He knew her too well. "Yes."
"Come on." He nodded to the right. "Let's go downstairs. We'll build up the fire. Pull out the chessboard, if it comes to that."
"Okay," she said, nearly choking on the word.
She followed him, conscious of the fact that he'd come into her life when there hadn't been a single shred of anything resembling security or predictability, and he'd given her and her brother and sister all of those things.
She thanked God for him every day.
It hit her a moment later that she was going to grow up someday and leave this precious house and these people. She had faith that they would always be here. She'd always be able to come home, but it wouldn't be quite the same. She wouldn't always be right down the hall from him when she needed him.
"I'm going to miss you, Sam," she said, tears threatening once more.
He paused at the top of the stairs, looking uneasy. "Are you going somewhere, Em?"
"Not now. But someday I will." God, she didn't even want to think about going back to college. It was so far from here, so much closer to Mark.
"You don't have to. You could just stay here with us forever."
She wiped away tears then. It was scary how much you could love someone, how deep it went, how people could grab on to a piece of your heart and it would simply always be theirs, no escaping it, no changing it. Sam had a big piece of hers. She never wanted to hurt him.
"Come on," he said. "Downstairs."
She followed him down and into the family room. He knelt by the banked fire, and she knelt beside him, because there was still some warmth left there, and she was cold.
"I'm sorry I made things harder for you and Rye," she said as she stared into the faintly glowing coals.
"Emma, no."
"I did. I know it." She might just cry again. Damn. "He just wanted to come here and find you. He wanted that so badly. I'm not sure if he's even admitted that to himself, but that's what he wants. Sam, please don't let me mess that up for the two of you."
"You haven't messed anything up," he insisted as he started stacking logs on the fire.
"You're mad at him."
"I'm mad at just about the whole world right now, except for you."
Which made it even harder. He loved her so much.
Emma sat there in utter misery as he tended the fire, finally reaching for one of the tools to rearrange the wood. There was a little metal stand to the right of the fireplace that held the set of black metal tools. Emma's gaze hit on the shovel.
There was a different set of tools by the fireplace in the living room. The shovel was missing. The sheriff had it for evidence in her nightmare come to life. Just like that, Emma started shaking again.
And she owed Sam an explanation. A big one.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about what was going on with Mark," she began. "I know you don't understand—"
"No, I really don't."
He looked over at the stand with the tools himself, no doubt thinking the same thing she was. She had been in so much trouble. Anything could have happened to her, things even worse than what had happened.
"Emma, I thought you knew you could come to me with anything, and that I would help you. I would do anything for you."
"I know that," she cried. "I never had any doubts about that."
"Then what?" He sat there with his head bowed, defeat in every line of his body. "Make me understand. Because right now, I feel like I failed you. I must have."
"No, Sam. It was me." She put her hand on his arm and then slipped her hand into his and held on tight. "I knew you'd be shocked and so disappointed. I kept thinking there had to be some way to tell you to make it not seem so bad. And my face was bruised. I didn't want you to see me like that, with a big bruise on my face. Isn't that the stupidest thing?"
"Hey." He reached out and brushed away one of her tears. "You're eighteen. Comes with the territory."
"Almost nineteen," she said.
"You want to hear about all the bad decisions I made when I was fifteen, seventeen, nineteen? It would take weeks for me to recite just the ones I can still remember."
"I'm sorry," she said again.
"Come on." He got to his feet. "Hot chocolate time."
He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Together, they walked into the darkened kitchen. He bent to dig a pan out of the cabinet. She grabbed the milk for him to heat. They'd done this before.
He pulled out the pan. She poured milk, then put the rest back in the refrigerator. He was setting the burner on low when he said, "Promise me the next time you can't handle something on your own, you'll come to me or Rachel."
"I've got a problem like that now. With Rye. I don't know how to fix things for him."
Sam turned around, looking like he was going to say one thing, then changing his mind. He took a breath, reconsidered, and finally said, "I don't know if anybody can fix that, Em."
"But you'll try, right? Don't be so mad at him because of me that you don't try. Please, Sam. It's not his fault."
Frowning even more, he said, "What's not his fault?"
"The way I feel about him," she whispered.
Sam took on that look that said he could cheerfully chew nails at t
he moment without flinching. It was as bad as she'd feared it would be.
"He said nothing happened."
"Because he wouldn't let anything happen," she admitted. "Not because I didn't want it to."
Oh, that made it worse. "Emma—"
"It's true. He didn't know how old I was. He asked, but I didn't tell him, because I didn't want him to know, because... Sam, he's special."
Sam swore softly. "He'll be thirty-four in the spring. He's fifteen years older than you."
"I know. I didn't at first, and then when I did... It was too late. I've never felt this way about anyone before."
"Give it some time. You will."
"Did you? Did you ever love anyone else the way you love Rachel?"
He frowned at her then. "Emma, you barely know him."
"I know." She couldn't look at him then. She was too worried about what was going to happen, about whether she'd ever get a chance with Rye.
Wanting something to do, Emma found a spoon and stirred the milk. She knew to heat it slowly, so that it never boiled, just warmed through and through.
She'd always been so careful about everything, would never have thought she could fall for someone so quickly and so completely. Everything inside of her said that he was the one, the one man in this whole world she could love.
Sam watched her, seeming to grow more tense with each passing moment. Finally, he said, "You have so much ahead of you. College and—"
"I don't know if I can go back there," she blurted out. "Not because of Rye. Because of Mark. He lives two hours from there, Sam."
"Well, it doesn't have to be Chicago. You can go somewhere else, if you want. But you're going back to school, Emma."
Was she? She'd never imagined not going. Now the thought terrified her. But she wasn't worried about herself. She wasn't the one in jail.
"You're going to help Rye?"
"I'll do what I can for him," Sam said grudgingly.
"He needs you. He needs all of us."
"He needs to keep his hands off you."
"Oh, Sam." She laughed, embarrassed but not about to let that stop her from setting the record straight. "It wasn't like that. Not at all. I know you don't want to hear this, but he was the one begging me to keep my hands off him."
Sam looked like he could cheerfully throw something then, but he wouldn't. She knew it. She knew him.
"I could lock you up until you're thirty," he said finally.
"You could. I'd still love you."
She thought she'd still love Rye then, too.
* * *
Emma drifted through the next day and a half, sitting in her room staring at the walls, afraid to sleep in the night. She dozed off and on through the days, jerking awake at the sight of Mark's face in her dreams.
And she spent a lot of time missing Rye.
Joe Mitchell stopped by that afternoon and went into Sam's office to talk to him, and then he and Sam came into the house.
"I asked him to find out what he could about my brother's troubles with the law," Sam told Emma. "You want to hear this, too?"
"Yes," she said.
Joe took a seat by the fire, Sam opposite him, and Emma went to the couch and sat beside Rachel. The three of them looked to Joe.
"I talked to the officer who arrested him for stealing the car, who said he seemed like a pretty good kid. Never been in trouble with the law before, although it seemed like there were problems at home, pretty normal teenage kid stuff. He was with a buddy of his, another sixteen-year-old. They wrecked the car, did a few thousand dollars' damage to it, and the owner pushed to have them punished. The other kids' parents were both lawyers, determined to get their son out of it with a clean record. They pointed the finger at your brother as the instigator of the whole thing, made sure their kid had the best legal representation, and Rye's parents basically washed their hands of him."
"Those—" Sam bit back whatever else he might have wanted to add. "They just had to have him. A dozen years before that, they had to have him."
"Yeah. I'd say if they'd stood by him right there, stood up to everybody on his behalf, he'd have never been sent to the juvenile facility. Probation, community service, restitution. That would have been it."
"His whole life would have been different," Emma said.
"Maybe," Joe said.
"What about the kid he killed?" Sam asked.
"I found an officer at the juvenile facility who was there when Rye was. Said he seemed like he was going to come through it okay. I mean, it's a bad place to be, and if you're not tough when you go in, you either get tough inside or they'll eat you alive. So, I'm not saying he was a saint, but... Well, who's to say what he would have been like? But there was a fight one day. Rye didn't start it. A troublemaker named Morgan did. They weren't happy about having him in a juvenile facility and were trying to get him moved. He and Rye had been in some spats. Nobody's sure why. But the day the kid died, everybody said Morgan's the one who jumped your brother, and Morgan had a knife."
"So he was just defending himself?" Emma asked.
Joe hesitated. "I don't know, Emma. I wasn't there. The jury convicted him of manslaughter."
"The other guy had a knife and jumped him." Surely that meant something.
"Yeah. Who's to say? I could see it going either way, from what the guy at the juvenile facility told me. They'd had some trouble before. The place was getting a bad reputation. Lots of fights. Lots of kids getting hurt. It may have been that they wanted to make an example of him."
"This is his life we're talking about, Joe," Emma said, then turned to. Sam. "He's not a bad person."
"I want to believe that," Sam said. "But you saw what he did to Mark."
"And what would you have done to Mark, if you had been here when he broke into this house and you'd found him getting ready to smack me with a fireplace shovel?"
"I don't know," Sam admitted, then turned to Joe.
"I feel bad about this," Joe said. "I wish I'd done more to head this off before it ever got ugly. Emma, I'm sorry."
"Joe, I'm not the one who got hurt. If you want to make it up to somebody, make it up to Rye. Can you do that?"
"I'll try," he said.
"What's happening now?" Rachel asked.
"Well, Mark's parents showed up, screaming about their precious little boy being attacked. They didn't want to believe anything I told them, but we got the fingerprint evidence back today. His fingerprints are all over your back door, the frame of the broken windowpane, the lock, and the fireplace shovel. Emma saw him hit Rye with that shovel. He waved it in her face and talked about needing to punish her. So we're looking at breaking and entering, assault and battery... His parents sure aren't going to like that. Apparently, they think he's downright perfect, and they want Rye locked up for a long time."
"Is that going to happen?" Emma asked.
"I'm not sure," Joe said. "If we charge him with a felony, he may have to serve out the rest of the time on the manslaughter conviction. But it's not really up to me. I'll make a recommendation, and from there, it's up to the county attorney, a judge, and a jury."
"What about Mark?" Rachel asked.
"I sure don't want him to do this to anybody ever again. Which reminds me..." He turned to Emma. "Has he hurt anyone else? Did he mention any old girlfriends? Any of them ever give you any kind of warning about him?"
"You know... One of them did say something." Emma felt sick just thinking about it. "I didn't think much of it at the time. It sounded more like someone who was jealous because he'd broken up with her. And... Oh, no."
"Em, it's okay." Rachel put her arm around her.
"She tried to tell me. She said something like, he wasn't what he seemed." She leaned into Rachel, thinking that this whole thing could have been avoided, thinking about Rye and all the trouble she'd drawn him into.
"What was her name?" Joe asked. "If there's a pattern of behavior here, I need to know about it."
Emma gave him the name. "Th
at will help?"
"We'll see," Joe said. "Give it a few days. We'll see how it plays out."
Chapter 13
It took two days. She had to go to the county attorney's office and give a statement. They took one from Rye, one from Mark, conferred with the attorney Mark's parents hired, and finally called Emma back in. Sam and Rachel were with her. She sat in the thickly padded leather chair in front of a massive, gleaming wooden desk and felt like her whole future was on the line.
Joe was there, along with the county attorney, Jim Dixon. She knew him. She'd gone to high school with his daughter.
"Emma, I'm sorry about all of this." Jim opened up a file on his desk and frowned. "I know it's been difficult, and I hate putting you in this position, but it's time for us to make some decisions."
"About Rye?" she asked.
"About the whole thing. The Jacobsons are screaming, but there's no doubt their kid was the instigator. We've got his fingerprints. But you and Sam's brother came out of this relatively unscathed. Mark's still in the hospital, and we've got Sam's brother's own statement that he basically beat the hell out of the guy. He never tried to deny that. Although I have a feeling if I put Emma on the witness stand in court, she'd say he was just trying to defend her."
"He was," Emma said.
"Emma," Sam began.
"No," she insisted. "He was."
"Okay." Jim jumped in. "I can see where this is going. The Jacobsons' attorney seems to understand it, too. Bottom line is, they have high hopes for their son, and it doesn't include a criminal record. At the moment, they're more interested in making this go away than seeing Sam's brother punished."
"What?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, I'm not crazy about any of it, but you know what the courts are like these days. We plea-bargain most everything. The Jacobsons' attorney asked us to consider a misdemeanor battery charge against their son, a year of probation, and court-ordered counseling. Maybe he can work through that little problem he has in controlling his anger and wanting to hit women."
"No," Sam said. "He hit Emma. He harassed her, scared her, chased her here from Chicago, and for that, you're going to send him to a shrink?"
"I know, Sam. I'm sorry. It's not what I want, either, although I have to tell you, the courts have never been too concerned about a guy hitting his wife or his girlfriend. Not the way they should be. I think you know that."
