His wife had agreed to this trip, but so far, she wasn’t really participating in it. Not since they’d gotten off the plane, anyway. She’d never been on a plane before, and she’d enjoyed that.
“Gabe…”
“You want memories? I had about a billion screaming fights with my mother in that house. When I was little, she used to lock me in the coat closet for time-out—really lock me in. My dad used to get drunk every Christmas Eve and have a shouting match with my grandfather so that nobody was talking to anybody when I got up on Christmas morning.”
“I know you have better memories than that. You loved your family.”
“Those are the ones I remember.”
He picked up her hand. “There must have been good times, too. Tell me a good one. One good one.”
After a moment’s resistance she said, “She loved music. When she cleaned, she turned the radio on super loud and danced.”
“Your mom?”
Gabe nodded. “She liked Madonna.” A grin fluttered at the corners of her mouth. “She used to vogue with the feather duster and dumb stuff like that. Or sing into the mop handle.”
Heath laughed. “That’s cute.”
“She loved musicals, too. One time, when I was like ten, I had a sleepover with a couple of girls in my class. We watched Grease and she had us doing the songs in the middle of the living room, with props and everything. We were the Pink Ladies. My dad came in and was Danny to her Sandy.”
She turned and looked out the side window again, at the house she’d grown up in. “Can we go?”
“Sure, little one. You want to go back to the hotel?”
“No. Let’s finish the Gabby Tour. I’ll show you the cantina. Seeing where he killed my whole family will get me in the right place to deal with tomorrow.”
When they went to visit her father. That had been her idea.
*****
Heath had been shocked when she’d declared that she wanted to see her father, but he’d known better than to question her. She’d said only that she wanted him to see her.
It had taken some planning. Gabe had called the prosecutor of her father’s case and asked for her help, and there had been some back-and-forth negotiating with the prison. Her father had never had a visitor other than his attorney. But he’d put Gabe on his list, and they’d eventually managed permission to visit—Gabe and her new husband both.
Walking into the prison made Heath feel more than a little sick. Everything about it screamed that hope had been abandoned inside its perimeter.
He’d come so close to living a grey life like this. As they went through the process to be allowed into the visiting room, he could almost feel the walls reach out to snag him.
Gabe was pale, too, and in that still, stoic place she went to when she was forcing herself to be brave. Someday, he wanted to be able to give her a life in which she never had to go there.
The guards were gentle and kind to her, in her obviously pregnant and nervous state, and they treated him with respect as well. They were finally cleared to go into the room—a large, blank, dull space, with bolted-down tables and flimsy plastic chairs. A small room off to the side held vending machines.
They sat side by side. Gabe had twisted her arm around his so tightly that he wondered she hadn’t dislocated her elbow. Since they’d arrived at the parking lot, she’d spoken only to answer direct questions. Now, she simply held onto him and stared at the door through which her father should come.
When he did, Heath was surprised. He’d never gone looking for news stories about the murders, and Gabe had no photographs, so he’d never seen any image of her father before except the one his mind had conjured on its own. The reality was…less significant. He was a smallish man, maybe five-eight or so, and very thin, with sharp cheekbones and deep-set blue eyes. His hair was shaggy and grey, and his face showed about two or three days’ worth of dark stubble. He wore black-framed glasses. A gauze bandage was taped over his temple.
He wasn’t much older than Heath, about Logan’s age, but he looked a good twenty years older.
Gabe gasped quietly when he came in, and Heath thought it sounded like surprise. As her father approached, she shifted in her seat. Realizing she meant to stand, he helped her up.
Seeing her condition, her father’s eyes went wide behind those thick glasses. “Gabby? Oh, baby. Look at you.” He held out his arms as if for a hug, but Gabe took a step back, and he dropped his hands to his sides.
He turned his attention to Heath. “I understand you’re my son-in-law.”
“Heath Cahill.” He held out his hand. He didn’t know how else to behave but with respect. This was her father. His upbringing had kicked in before he had a chance to wonder how Gabe would feel.
“Stuart Kincaid.” He took Heath’s hand in his and gave a firm shake. “I hope you’re taking good care of my girl.”
Gabe made a strangled laugh, but Heath answered, “I am.”
“Please don’t pretend you care, Dad.”
Stuart Kincaid let out a long, slow breath. “Will you sit with me? I guess you came a long way. If you came to be hateful, that’s okay. I’ll take you any way I can, as long as I can be with you for a while.”
Without acknowledging her father’s words, Gabe sat. Heath and her father followed suit, and they sat in silence while seconds ticked by at a crawl.
“When’s the baby due?” Kincaid finally asked.
“March.”
“Yeah? Wow—that’s…” He frowned at Heath. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.” Coming up on thirty-seven, but that didn’t need to be said.
Those blue eyes narrowed into anger. “You take advantage here? Not much more than nine months since I last saw my daughter, and she’s sitting here seven months along.”
“Dad, shut up.”
Heath, however, answered the man. “We made our choices together. No mistakes.”
“She’s twenty-two years old, Heath. You sure she got to make her own choices?”
It was a question that had plucked at Heath more than once.
“This was an unbelievably stupid idea.” Gabe levered herself out of the chair, and Heath stood, too.
Her father didn’t, but he held out his hands in plea. “No, please. Gabby, I’m sorry. Please. Sit.”
Gabe stared down at her father. She put her hand around her throat, and Heath saw her father notice that and wince.
“Why did we come, little one?”
That seemed to focus her again, and she sat.
As Heath sat again, too, Kincaid asked, “Why did you come, Gabby?”
“I wanted you to see me. To see that I have a life and I’m happy.” Her tone was defiant and bitter.
“You think I don’t want that for you?”
“I know you tried to take it away from me.”
Her father’s eyes filled with tears; he blinked them away before they could fall. “I wish I could take it back. All of it—and not because I’m here. This is where I belong. I loved your mother—you know that. God, I loved her so much. I still love her. And Gabby—baby, you are the best thing I ever did in my life. I love you more than anything.”
“You killed everybody I loved. You almost killed me. You took my whole life away.”
“I live it over every day. Every single day. I’m sorry. I was drunk and so mad. So scared. I just wanted my family back.” He sighed and sat back. “There’s nothing I can say. I know that. I can’t explain because I can’t believe I did it.”
“Oh, you did it.”
“I know I did it. I just can’t believe I was capable of it. That I would hurt what I loved like that. To be so…consumed with an idea that I forgot what I loved.”
Heath thought he understood a bit too well. But he had never hurt a woman. Not directly. Even in the thick of his rage at Sybil, when he’d found out about her and Black, he’d never laid a finger on her or even been tempted. That was not the tendency of his brand of wrath. He knew his own wea
kness, knew he was violent and vengeful, but it took a special weakness of character to have anywhere in one’s body, even in the darkest corner, the capacity to hurt women or children. Any women or children, much less one’s own.
Stuart Kincaid had stabbed his own daughter, put a knife to her throat. No, Heath didn’t understand at all.
Gabe turned to him. “This was a bad idea. It…it doesn’t matter. Please just let me let all this go.”
“Can you let it go?”
She was quiet, and when she spoke, she didn’t give him an answer. “I need to go.”
“Okay. Whatever you need.”
They stood, and Gabe gave her father a last look. “I love you. I guess I don’t have a choice about that. I don’t wish you ill. But I don’t forgive you. And I hope someday I forget you.”
Stuart Kincaid dropped his head, and his daughter turned and walked away without looking back.
Heath thought maybe bringing her back home had been an especially terrible idea.
*****
They rode in silence all the way back to the hotel. When Heath parked, Gabe didn’t move, so he sat behind the wheel and waited. After a moment, when it became apparent that she had no plans to get out of the car anytime soon, he said, “I’m sorry. I thought coming to Santa Fe would help.”
“Help you or help me? Help what?”
“Us. Help you come to terms with what happened. Help me know you better.”
“Why do you think we need that? Do you think you don’t know me well enough? Do you think I’ll be different if I ‘come to terms’ with my family being murdered by my father? Whatever the hell that means. Am I supposed to stop thinking it sucks? Is it supposed to stop hurting? Am I supposed to be okay with it? Ever? What about you? Have you ‘come to terms’ with your daughter being burned alive?”
She’d said the last words to hurt him—the lash of her tone was sharp and clear—and she had.
“I’m worried your father is right. You’re young. Has any of this been a conscious choice? You ran away and left everything behind, and you landed in my life by accident, and then my life ran roughshod over you. I don’t want you to run again before you realize that you can’t escape your own past.”
“You say this to me now, when we’re married and I’m about to have your baby?”
They’d moved so fast, and it had been him pushing for it. He’d seen the end of his real life rushing up at him, and he’d wanted everything right away. And he now had everything he wanted, but did she? “This—us, you, Matthew—this is the life I want for the rest of my life. I love you. I don’t want to lose this. I want to be sure you have what you want.”
“Can’t you just believe me when I say that I do? I think I’ve lived enough to know what I want. I love you. I love being married to you. I love our baby. I love our family. I love our life. We already fought like crazy to have a future together. Why do I have to care about the past?”
Because she still dreamt of it, and that meant something. But they were fighting in circles. He didn’t know how to fight with her; they never really had. “You still dream about it. I just want to be sure the road ahead of us stays clear.”
He didn’t know what he’d said that was particularly significant, but she blinked and went still, as if an important idea had occurred to her.
“Gabe?”
“I know what I need to do.”
Nerves twitched in his gut. They seemed far too close to the edge of a cliff, and he wasn’t sure what to say or do to pull them to safety. No—she had to come on her own. That was the whole point. “Whatever you need.”
“Can we cancel the flight back and keep the rental car? I want to drive home.”
He didn’t understand, but he wouldn’t deny her anything he could give her. “Whatever you need.”
He was repaid for his answer with a smile and a hug, and they were okay again.
*****
That night Heath canceled their flights. They drove back down to the Albuquerque airport the next day anyway, to turn in the rental sedan and exchange it for a truck. He didn’t want to drive a thousand miles in January in some flimsy car. The weather had been clear and not unusually cold, but he just felt better with some heft around him, especially when his wife was with him, and their baby was in her.
Once they’d decided to drive home, Gabe’s mood and attitude about the trip changed markedly. She was, in fact, excited, though she didn’t really explain why. And Heath didn’t question it; their few days away had been the most tense of their relationship, and he’d been growing increasingly concerned that he had fucked up badly—or that he had exposed something badly fucked up between them. Either way, he’d felt real worry that the life he wanted was slipping from his grasp after all.
But Gabe woke that morning in good spirits, in high spirits. She was randy and wild in a way that she hadn’t been for several weeks, since she’d really started to get big with their son, and they got a later start on their day than they’d planned.
The first leg of the drive was good. They talked comfortably, as usual. Not about Santa Fe, but about home and family, about their plans for the baby. While Gabe spent a couple of hours doing homework for her new classes, Heath drove and thought, considering the sparse beauty of the southwestern landscape, so different from the lush world of the Sawtooth Range. It seemed another world entirely.
Heath began to feel like he’d simply read everything wrong about what she did or did not need to work out about the past she’d run from. He was coming to understand that she hadn’t run from it. She had rejected it. And that was her choice to make.
They’d driven out of New Mexico, through the southwestern corner of Colorado, and were maybe an hour or so into Utah, coming up on a little town called Moab, when Gabe said, “Can we stop here for the night?”
It wasn’t quite sundown yet—not even the early sundown of January. “It’s pretty early still. If you’re hungry, we can stop to eat, but I’d like to get to Salt Lake City before we stop for the night.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to stop in Salt Lake at all. I hate Salt Lake City. I want to stop here. Please?”
This was her trip, so—though he couldn’t hold back a rhetorical shrug—he slowed to turn off into Moab.
“No, I don’t want to go into town yet. Let’s keep going. I want to see the Arches first.”
There had been brown signs for Arches National Park along the way for a while. Heath nodded and kept going. He might have been behind the wheel, but he was only along for the ride.
In the park, they stopped at the visitor center. Gabe was obviously nervous as they got out of the truck and walked into the low building at the base of towering red rocks.
It was winter, and nearing the end of business hours in the middle of the week. The center seemed to be empty, except for a blonde woman in a ranger uniform, who smiled when they came in.
“Hi. Welcome to Arches National Park. We’re closing soon, but if you hurry you can catch sunset out on one of the trails. A day like today, it’s bound to be a beaut.” She cast her eyes over Gabe’s belly. “I wouldn’t go too far out, though.”
“Um, thanks. We will. Is Chuck here? Or Lori?”
Surprised, Heath shot Gabe a look. “You know people here?”
Gabe didn’t answer; she was focused on the ranger, who shook her head. “Lori’s off today. Chuck’s at a different park now. Would you like me to tell Lori you stopped by?”
Blushing hard, Gabe shook her head. “No…no. That’s okay. Thank you. We’ll just go watch the sunset.”
After a quizzical look, the ranger smiled. “Well, sure. You have a nice evening.”
*****
They drove a bit through the park before they stopped at a trail head Gabe wanted. With all the stark rocks and crevices throughout the area, Heath was not thrilled at the idea of Gabe hiking in her condition, but the trail she picked seemed, on the map he’d picked up in the center, one of the easiest and safest in the park.<
br />
Before them as they walked was a massive arch. They had the trail to themselves, and after a few minutes, Gabe sat on a rounded rock. Heath sat next to her and picked up her hand.
She had become pensive again since they’d left the visitor center, and he let her be quiet and take in the stark, imposing scenery. He had questions, but it seemed better to let her speak when she wanted to. They were here for a reason; that much was obvious.
As the sun began to set enough to change the light around them, Gabe spoke. “When I left Santa Fe, I got this far before I realized what I was doing—I’d left everything behind except a couple of changes of clothes and the cash I had in the bank, which was all that was left from my grandparents’ insurance. I left my whole life behind, with the key to it all on the counter with a thank you note for the landlord. I didn’t even take my phone. I got this far without thinking about it, and then I freaked out.”
She paused and took a deep breath—not like she was trying to calm herself, more like she was savoring the air. Heath didn’t fill that moment with a question. He simply waited.
“I thought I’d stop here for the night and regroup, figure things out a little bit, decide where it was I was going. I hadn’t decided anything—just that I wanted to get away and I wanted to go somewhere new. Where people didn’t know what my father did. I picked north for dumb reasons, like by default. And when I got this far, I got really scared that I was being stupid. But they were having a festival or something like that, and all the motels were booked. Even the campsites. Everything was booked. I was too scared to keep driving. So I spent the night in my dad’s truck, in the visitor center lot. It was a hard night. I decided that I was going to go back home, that I wasn’t strong enough to make a new start. The next morning, Chuck and Lori found me. They were totally nice. They gave me coffee and donuts, and they…they were just nice. It helped. They gave me a map and some suggestions about where I could get a phone, and…I don’t know. They knew about my dad, but it was different. They were like my first friends in my after, and that made it so I could keep going north. I wish I could have thanked them, shown them you and this”—she patted her belly—“and told them everything turned out good.”
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 31
