The Last White Knight

by Tami Hoag

  “People make mistakes, Lynn. We’re human.”

  “Some of us more than others,” she said with a wry, sad little smile.

  “We don’t have to pay for them with our lives.”

  “I won’t pay with yours, Erik. I could ruin you. My past—”

  “Is behind you, and damn near buried,” he snapped, his patience fraying.

  Lynn met his gaze with that damnable calm resignation. “It could be unearthed if people cared to dig deep enough.”

  “But why should they?” he asked with a shrug. “You’ve done so much good, Lynn. Why should anyone go looking for the bad?”

  She laughed, well aware that there was more cynicism than humor in the sound. “Boy, you are a democrat, aren’t you—idealist to the end.”

  Erik scowled. “I’m being more realistic than you are. You’re so caught up in your martyrdom you can’t see anything else. You’d be a politician’s wife, not a politician. No one would care to look beyond what you’re doing with your life now. And what if they did? They’d find out you made the same mistake thousands of young girls make every year. No one’s going to brand a scarlet letter on your forehead. Not even in Minnesota.

  “Do you know how often this comes along, Lynn?” he asked softly but vehemently. “Do you have any idea how rare what we have between us is?”

  Lynn gripped the arm of the chair, her fingers tightening and tightening until her knuckles turned white. “Yes,” she whispered, emotional pain throbbing through her as real and sharp as any physical pain. Yes, she knew how rare it was. She knew all too well.

  “Once in a lifetime. Maybe,” Erik said. “How can you throw that away?”

  “I don’t see that I have a choice.”

  “Of course you have a choice. You’re just too damn stubborn to see it.” His temper boiled up inside him again and he had to struggle to subdue it with the calm control that usually ruled his arguments. “You can choose happiness or sacrifice. We could have a life together, Lynn, a home, a family—”

  Lynn held up a hand to cut him off, tears filming her eyes. “Don’t,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. She doubted he had any idea how cruel he was being, holding that image up to her—of the two of them with a child. She couldn’t have wanted anything more than she wanted that: a chance at a real family, a second chance at motherhood. But she was already a mother, she reminded herself. She had a son in Indiana.

  “I can’t, Erik,” she whispered. She pushed herself out of the deck chair and walked away from him to lean against the railing. She stared out at the woods as the fog began to lift and the first rays of dawn began to filter through.

  “You won’t,” he said angrily. “You’re too busy running from your past. First you ran physically. Now you do it in subtler ways, but you’re still running, throwing good deeds back in the path of that demon chasing you. If you’d stop and face it and deal with it once and for all, maybe you’d see things for what they really are. You’re not a monster, Lynn. You’re a woman, and you made some mistakes. You’re always preaching for other people to understand the mistakes of youth. Why don’t you take a little of your own advice?”

  “I am taking my own advice!” she shouted, whirling on him. “My advice to not screw up any more lives than I already have!”

  Erik’s eyes narrowed suddenly in speculation. He propped his hands on his hips and shuffled closer to her, trying to see past her defenses. “That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You think you’re not good enough for me. You’re afraid to try for happiness with me because you’ve painted me as some kind of knight in shining armor, someone too pure to touch.” He shook his head in amazement. “God, and you accused me of being a snob. Look at what you’re doing, Lynn.”

  Her trembling chin lifted a defiant notch. “I’m doing the right thing.”

  Erik swore viciously, turned, and batted at a chair, sending it toppling with a crash to the deck. “I don’t get a say in this?” he demanded, stepping toward her aggressively. He backed her up against the railing and leaned over her, trying to intimidate her any way he could. “It’s my life you’re so damned worried about! What about what I want?”

  Lynn gulped a breath, fighting tears of anger and pain and frustration. With the little scrap of strength she had left, she turned belligerent. “You wanted a career in politics. You’ve got it. You wanted to help Horizon and get yourself a little publicity in the process. You got that. You wanted to screw the counselor. You did that too. You ought to be happy.”

  Pure, raw fury burned through Erik. His face reddened with it; his muscles trembled with it. He grabbed Lynn by the shoulders. “Don’t you dare try to cheapen this,” he snarled through his teeth. “Don’t you dare give me that street-kid bull. You’re not that lost little girl anymore, Lynn. You’re a woman; you can make your own choices. And I’m not some snow-white public savior. I’m just a man, and I want you, Lynn. Not only in bed, but in every way. I want us to have a life together.”

  “Well, take it from someone who knows, Senator,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her resolve. “It’s like what the Rolling Stones said—You can’t always get what you want.”

  That was it, Erik thought. Lynn’s life philosophy in a nutshell. She couldn’t have it all because she could never fully atone for the sins of her past. No matter how much she might want it, she wasn’t going to let them have a future. Nothing he could say would change her mind.

  He let go of her and stepped back. He wasn’t accustomed to losing. Defeat didn’t sit well on his shoulders. All his life he’d believed that if he worked hard enough, if he wanted it badly enough and covered all the angles, he could have anything he set his heart on. Well, he’d set his heart on Lynn Shaw, and all it was getting was broken.

  Lynn watched Erik prowl the deck, his hands jammed at the low-riding waist of his jeans. The muscles in his big shoulders were bulging with tension. The expression on his face was almost one of amazement, as if he couldn’t quite believe he wasn’t going to win the debate.

  She’d done the right thing. She knew she had. But that didn’t make Erik’s pain any easier to take. Guilt loomed up behind her and swamped her like a tidal wave. She never should have gotten involved with him in the first place.

  She wanted to say something. That she was sorry, that it had been great while it lasted … something. But no words seemed appropriate. At any rate, they had probably said enough.

  “I’ll walk home,” she mumbled.

  Erik made no reply—not that one was necessary. Lynn crossed the deck to the sliding glass door. She would get her shoes, take off his sweatshirt, and walk out of his life. They would probably have to see each other later in the day. There would be a press conference to announce Elliot’s arrest. But they wouldn’t have to have any real contact. Then life would settle back to what passed for normal at Horizon House and Erik would move on to some other worthy cause to occupy his summer. The wounds would heal and eventually the scars would fade.

  “I never had you pegged for a coward, Lynn.”

  Her fingers tightened on the handle of the door. Coward? No. He had no idea how hard it was for her to walk away from his golden, shining love. Maybe that was just as well.

  “You’re not afraid for me,” he said. “You’re afraid for yourself—afraid to face your past, afraid to face your family, afraid to give yourself a shot at something other than penance. You forgive everyone else, Lynn. How long will you go on punishing yourself?”

  Lynn looked at his reflection in the window. This would be all she would ever have of him—a memory, an insubstantial image in her mind. How long would she punish herself? Until that image and the image of what might have been faded completely away. A long, long time.

  Shoulders sagging with the weight of that knowledge, she stepped through the door into the bedroom.

  News of Elliot Graham’s arrest went through Rochester like wildfire. The tide of sentiment that had been flowing hard against Horizon died abruptly. Citizen
s for Family Neighborhoods went dead in the water. The protestors slinked away in embarrassment, dragging their signs behind them. Doors within the circle of well-heeled charitable groups in the community that had previously been closed to Horizon opened to the irresistible pressure of good publicity.

  Lynn knew the wave of interest and support would level off and then die down, but Lillian and Martha made hay while the sun was shining, parlaying Horizon’s sudden trendiness into a substantial down payment on land where new facilities would eventually be built. They didn’t want to rely on the charity of St. Stephen’s or the bishop. The move to church property had always been only a temporary answer to their housing problem. The windfall from the Elliot Graham debacle ensured that they would have a place to go to permanently, a place where they could conduct their business without interference.

  With the stress of the relocation dispute behind them, Lynn submerged herself in her work. She spent her days with the girls and worked late into the evening arranging her office and sorting through files. She left little time for thinking about her private life, often spending the night at Horizon on the sofa just to avoid being alone.

  The long hours and lack of sleep were taking a toll on her. She’d lost weight and there were crescents of lavender beneath her eyes. Lillian, the typical doctor’s wife, clucked at her to go see a doctor. Martha offered quiet understanding and let it be known that her shoulder was available anytime of the day or night. Father Bartholomew, dear man that he was, gathered up the courage for a foray to the supermarket in order to bring her a box of Twinkies.

  “They’re no substitute for prayer,” he said solemnly, glasses sliding down his nose. “But they’re on my list of next-best comforts.”

  Lynn had accepted them with heartfelt thanks, but she had yet to touch them. They sat petrifying in the bottom drawer of her desk. She wasn’t ready to be comforted just yet.

  Erik had made no attempt to contact her. She had done her best to shut him out of her thoughts, futile as that effort was. Even if she had been able to stop thinking about him, his name was on everyone’s lips these days. He was the man of the moment. The press had heralded him as “the heroic hands-on senator,” editing Lynn out of the tale of Elliot Graham’s capture to suit their Lone Ranger theme. The powers of the Democratic Party were talking of running Erik against the incumbent Republican for the United States Senate seat a year down the road.

  Lynn’s gaze locked on the newspaper someone had tossed on her desk, on the photo of Erik addressing a group of area farmers on the latest crisis in the dairy industry. As she had predicted, his life was moving onward and upward. There was no telling how far he could go, how much good he could do … without her. The stab of regret was just as sharp as it had been the day she’d walked away, nearly a month ago.

  I did the right thing. That thought had become a mantra to her, words to be chanted mentally every time the longing became too much to bear. I did the right thing. But the words were small comfort when she lay alone in the dead of night and there was no one and nothing to distract her from the ring of hypocrisy in them.

  She’d done the right thing for whom? She’d done the right thing or the easiest thing? She’d argued that walking away from Erik had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but staying with him would have been harder. She had told herself she couldn’t stay with him without jeopardizing his future, but she also couldn’t stay with him without making her peace with her family and her past, and that was something she’d never been able to find the courage to do. She had excused herself on the grounds that she’d done irreparable damage where her family was concerned, that her father and sister and the son she’d left behind would be better off closing the door on her memory, but Erik’s accusations managed to cut through all her rationalizations, and the word coward haunted her day and night.

  Coward or martyr—either way she was still a slave to the mistakes of her youth. That didn’t seem a very healthy way to live. It wasn’t the way she would have counseled her girls to live.

  “So why’d you stop seeing him?” Regan’s voice cut through the haze, blunt and to the point.

  Lynn jerked her gaze away from the photograph, a guilty flush creeping across her cheeks. She turned her chair toward the door, where Regan stood in another of her gloom-and-doom uniforms of all black. The girl had made a lot of progress in the past few weeks. Lynn jokingly said she’d know they were over the hump when Regan put on clothes with some color in them. That there was color in her cheeks and something other than anger in her eyes was more than enough of a start.

  “I—a—it was for the best,” Lynn stammered, caught off guard. She was usually the one asking the questions and interpreting the answers, not the other way around.

  Regan gave a little snort as she stepped into the office with a four-inch-square white box clutched in her hands. She propped a hip on the desk and turned a critical eye to the newspaper article. “Best for who? You look like hell,” she commented mildly as she scanned the photo.

  “Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”

  “You know,” she said, completely ignoring Lynn’s sarcasm, “at first I thought he was a drag, but he turned out to be a pretty good guy. There aren’t a lot around, you know,” she added, sounding like the voice of authority on the subject.

  “I know,” Lynn murmured.

  “And he’s choice, besides. God, he’s got the cutest—”

  “What’s with the box?” Lynn interrupted, not needing to be reminded of Erik’s anatomy.

  Regan thrust the box at her. “It’s for you. A delivery guy brought it.”

  Lynn accepted it hesitantly. There was no return address, only a discreet gold-foil sticker with the name of a downtown jewelry store printed in elegant black script.

  “So are you going to open it?”

  She shot Regan a look. “In a minute. In private,” she added pointedly.

  Rolling her eyes, Regan slid off the desk and sauntered out.

  Lynn turned her attention back to the box that now sat on her lap. She wasn’t sure she wanted to open it. She didn’t know what she would do if it was from Erik. On the other hand, she didn’t want to know how she would react if it wasn’t from him. She had the feeling that her heart was teetering on a precarious edge and would end up falling and breaking all over again, no matter what.

  She lifted the box, testing its weight. It was so light, it might have been empty. It might have been from anyone, she told herself. A former resident, a parent, someone who had seen her on the news. It might have been from Elliot Graham. He had been released on his own recognizance. And while she certainly didn’t expect gifts from him, she wouldn’t have put it past him to send her something nasty. Only Lyon’s Jeweler’s didn’t do nasty—it was the finest jewelry store in town.

  “You’ll never know until you open it,” Martha said softly.

  Lynn glanced up as her friend walked into the room and settled like a plump old hen in the visitor’s chair. With the move and the unpacking behind them, Martha had forsaken jeans and oversize T-shirts for her usual chic wardrobe of colorful, flowing clothes and dramatic jewelry. Tonight she was in an ensemble of teal-blue slacks and tunic that draped gracefully around her. Her earrings were gold hoops strung with teal and purple wooden beads. A beautiful amethyst crystal in an elaborate gold-wire setting hung around her neck.

  “I was building the anticipation,” Lynn said.

  She didn’t look for a comment from Martha, but returned her attention to the box. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened between herself and Erik. Martha had been playing a waiting game, like a fisherman waiting for a trout to weary of the fight so he could reel it in. Lynn didn’t want to be reeled. She preferred to suffer in silence, afraid that if she ever did open the floodgates on her emotional turmoil she would never get them closed again. As a counselor, she knew that bottling up emotion was unhealthy, but she couldn’t look at her own feelings from a counselor’s point of view. She w
as too close to the problem to keep her own defense mechanisms from kicking in.

  She broke the seal on the box and opened it, figuring whatever was inside, whoever it was from, dealing with it would be preferable to facing another minute of Martha’s stoic patience.

  Nestled in a bed of rose-pink tissue paper was a tiny porcelain figurine: a white knight on a white horse perched on a pedestal of polished gray marble. It was exquisitely done, the figurine itself no more than an inch tall, and every detail perfect, from the knight’s gold-trimmed helmet to the horse’s tiny hooves. Lynn lifted it out and set the treasure on her blotter.

  There was no card, but it was clear who had sent it—Erik. What wasn’t clear was why he had sent it. Was it a peace offering? A memento? Was it meant to mock her? She didn’t know, couldn’t begin to say, but as she looked at the delicate figurine the sense of loneliness that struck her broadside was almost enough to make her cry out in pain.

  The last white knight. Her chance at true love. And she’d shoved him out of her life with both hands.

  The tears came silently at first, brimming in her eyes and sliding down her cheeks, dripping off her quivering jaw like raindrops. Then Martha was holding her hand and Lynn was sobbing, the pain ripping through her shield of self-control at last. She doubled over in her chair, nearly laying her head on her knees, her hair spilling down like a curtain on either side of her face. A wave of emotions rolled through her—loneliness, sadness, self-pity—but the strongest by far was fear. Erik was right. She was afraid to reach out for something good, afraid she didn’t deserve it. She was afraid of her past and afraid to bet on a future. And because of her fear she’d missed out on the chance of a lifetime.

  “Go to him,” Martha said softly.

  “I can’t,” Lynn said, nearly choking on the words.

  “You love him, Lynn. He loves you. There isn’t anything love can’t conquer.”

  “I’m afraid,” she murmured, lifting her head. She snagged a handful of hair and impatiently tucked it behind her ear as she regarded her friend through the distorted windows of her tear-filled eyes. “I’m so afraid and I hate it. Everything was fine until he came along. I was satisfied with my life. I didn’t have to deal with my past. Then he came along and now nothing will ever be the same again. Why’d he have to go and make me fall in love with him?” she cried angrily, swiping a fist across her dripping nose.