Unbreak My Heart

by Teresa Hill

  She imagined the whispers, the odd looks following her father wherever he went. "He must have suffered so much."

  "He looked bad during that time."

  "Someone told me he said it was his fault my mother and I left."

  "He told me that. Every time I tried to tell him how sorry I was for everything that happened, he said he'd gotten what he deserved by ending up here all alone."

  Allie shook her head, thinking of the bruises on her sister's arm and dismissing them just as quickly.

  Her father hadn't done that. They weren't the source of his guilt.

  "Every memory I have of him is a good one. Except for that night my mother and I left, and even then, he wasn't hurting us. He was just so sad."

  "What do you remember of that night, Allie?"

  "That we ran away," she said, thinking how odd it sounded when she said it out loud. But there was no other way to explain. They ran. Not like they were guilty of some crime and trying to escape. Like something terrible had happened, and they had to get away from it.

  What terrible thing? she wondered, no closer now than she'd ever been to knowing.

  "We were on the stairs when I realized my father wasn't going with us. I remember he hugged me. He begged me to always remember that he loved me, and that was it." That had always been her most vivid memory of him—standing on the stairs looking hurt. "Did he ever say anything about my mother?"

  "I never heard him say a word against her. And I checked the family court records," the lawyer said. "Here and in Connecticut. There was never any formal custody agreement between them. She simply took you, and apparently he didn't fight her on that."

  "Why?" she cried. "Why wouldn't he fight for me?"

  "I don't mean to pry, but there aren't a lot of reasons mothers grab their daughters and run away. Allie, did you ever see him hit your mother?"

  "No," she said. That was ridiculous. He wasn't that kind of man.

  "Could he have touched you? In a way he wasn't supposed to?"

  "No." Allie shook her head back and forth. "He loved me."

  "People do terrible things to people they claim to love," Mr. Webster said gently. "Do you remember anytime he was in your room late at night? Anytime he touched you, and you felt uncomfortable?"

  "No."

  "Memories are fluid things. People can block out a lot of things that hurt them or frighten them."

  "It didn't happen," she insisted. "I loved my father, and he loved me."

  "What about your sister? Could he have hurt her?"

  "He wasn't like that," Allie said, again seeing the bruises on her sister's arm. Just because Megan had bruises didn't mean they came from her father.

  "All right." Mr. Webster backed away. "I had to ask. I want to help you, and I liked your father. But I had to ask."

  Allie nodded, glad to have the questions out in the open, ready to put them behind her. The idea had flirted around the edges of her brain for so long. Not because she believed anything like that happened. But, as the lawyer said, there weren't a lot of reasons a woman took her child and ran away from her husband. These were the worst she could imagine—that a man was either abusing his wife or his children.

  "It must have been tied to Megan's disappearance." Allie sighed, coming back to one single question. "Why did my sister run away?"

  "I don't know, Allie. There are just so many things I don't know."

  "Did you ever hear anything about her accident? Anything to indicate that it might not be an accident?"

  "No. Never."

  She nodded. "Well, thank you. I appreciate all your help."

  "Anything else I can do?" he offered.

  Allie thought of the shelter, the future, of leaving the painful past behind. It was time, long past time.

  "What do you know about zoning issues?" she asked.

  * * *

  Martha called Tucker and said, "The girl came back."

  "And?" Tucker said.

  Standing at the end of the alley at the pay phone, sucking hard on the cigarette in her mouth, Martha said, "Janet is dead."

  Tucker said nothing. Martha felt the life they'd shared slipping away, felt how unimportant she must have been to Tucker all these years if he could still be this torn up over Janet Bennett's death. She didn't make him ask for the details, she just wanted this to be out in the open and hopefully forgotten.

  "It was cancer," she said. "Two months ago. She went kind of fast."

  Tucker was still there. She could hear him breathing shakily. She nearly choked on the words, "I'm sorry, Tuck."

  "And the daughter?" he said finally. "Allie? Does she..."

  "I don't think she knows anything."

  Chapter 6

  Allie started shaking as she drove home, thinking again of the old rumors about her father. And she was ashamed to admit it, but her first impulse was to run to Stephen. As she got closer, she couldn't help but slow the car in front of his house. She wondered if he was home and what he would do if she just showed up there like this. Upset and uncertain and in need of a little reassurance.

  She thought she knew. He'd make it all better somehow, would likely hold out his arms to her and draw her close, and she would indeed feel better just because she was with him. But the strength of the need she felt for him had her hesitating. She barely knew him, she reminded herself, and trusting people, depending on them, was dangerous. Life had taught her that. People left. They hurt you and lied to you, and they died.

  Would he hurt her, too, in the end?

  Allie squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again, he was there, standing just outside his front door watching her and waiting. She thought about being smart; she thought about being alone. She thought of the kindness he'd shown her, the tenderness, and then she was lost. The morning and images of her father living with the suspicions of the whole community for the rest of his life.

  She pulled into the drive in front of his house.

  He opened her door for her, pulled her from the car, and held onto both her hands. "What's wrong?"

  "Was I happy here, Stephen? When I was a little girl, was my family ever happy?" she said, her voice trembling.

  "I think so," he said.

  "And my father? Did he love me? Did he love Megan?"

  "Your father thought you could do no wrong," Stephen said.

  "What does that mean? He thought I could do no wrong?"

  "Allie, you're trembling." He slid his hands along her forearms and onto her upper arms, holding her steady. "Come inside."

  "I'm sorry. I know I don't have any right to just show up here and start throwing questions at you."

  "I told you I wanted to help you, and I meant it. Come on in," he said again. "You can ask whatever you want."

  She found his house quite similar to hers, but lovingly maintained, furnished with a pleasing mix of well-preserved antiques and new pieces, a true show-place. He led her to the back of the house to a cozy-looking room filled with wicker furniture. Sunlight, warm and cheerful looking, streamed inside from windows that filled the back and the side walls. Stephen led her to a chaise lounge, and she sank back into the pillows.

  It was nearly noon, and once he found out she hadn't eaten, he wouldn't let her say a word until he returned with hot coffee, sandwiches, and some fruit, courtesy of his parents' housekeeper.

  She ate, finding that she was indeed hungry, and then she leaned back against the comfortable cushions and let the sun warm her right down to the bone. But she was still trembling from the ugly things she'd heard about her family.

  "You look tired," Stephen said. "Are you sleeping all right over there by yourself?"

  "No," she admitted.

  He took her hand once again and held it. Allie closed her eyes and let herself feel the simple pleasure of his touch. After that scene in the lawyer's office, she couldn't help being reassured by the way she responded to him—easily, naturally. She didn't have any hang-ups about being touched, about sex. It wasn't something
she'd done often or casually, but she'd had sex before. Perfectly normal sex. She didn't cringe at the idea of a man touching her. It didn't bring back any odd memories, because there were none. Her father never touched her that way.

  Unnerved nonetheless, Allie pulled her hand from Stephen's and sat up. "I heard that after my mother and I disappeared, people thought my father had done something terrible with us."

  Stephen frowned at her, but he wasn't surprised.

  "You knew? You could have told me, Stephen."

  "Why? What does that do for you, Allie? How does that help in the least? The way I see it, all it's done is hurt you."

  "It's what happened," she cried. "Stephen, he was my father, and this is what happened to him after we left."

  "Is that the kind of thing you came back here to find out? Is that what you honestly want me to tell you?"

  "I want the truth," she said, practically begging. "This is my life we're talking about, and I deserve to know the truth."

  "I think you deserve something better than that, Allie," he said. "To not be hurt anymore. Have you thought about that?"

  He'd told her that before, but this time it scared her into an uneasy silence. The scene this morning had tapped into her own private nightmares about what was waiting for her here. After all, her own mother couldn't bear to come back. Even after she was diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease, she hadn't been strong enough to be honest with Allie about the past. She hadn't cared enough to do something with this house, with all their things, leaving it instead for Allie to take care of on her own. It was one of the most selfish and most cowardly things her mother had ever done, but Allie couldn't deny that she'd been a coward herself.

  "It scares me," she admitted. "But I've had years of living with it. I've imagined every rotten thing that could possibly have happened, and if I hadn't been such a coward, I would have been here years ago. I would have seen my father again."

  It was her greatest regret, one she didn't think she'd ever get over.

  "Just tell me what you know," she said. Watching him, she had to add, "Tell me why you look guilty every time I say my sister's name."

  "I do feel guilty," he admitted finally. Looking grim, he sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge. "And sooner or later, you're going to hear this. It might as well come from me. There's a lot I don't know about Megan's disappearance, but this part... I know this because I was there. When Megan disappeared, I was doing my undergraduate work at Vanderbilt."

  "In Nashville?"

  He nodded. "I was heading back to school one weekend when Megan came and asked for a favor. She said she needed a ride, that she was going to stay for a while with an aunt who lived in Tennessee."

  "I don't remember having an aunt in Tennessee."

  "You don't," he said sadly. "She was running away."

  "Oh." Allie could hardly breathe at first.

  "I'm sorry," Stephen said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know, Allie. I swear. She just asked me to give her a ride. I dropped her off in front of a house in a little town called Greenbriar, Tennessee, and nobody ever saw her again. The police were never able to trace her from that point."

  Allie took the news like a blow.

  He'd helped her?

  Stephen had helped her sister run away?

  Allie gasped. She looked down at her own hands, once again held tightly in his, and she pulled away from him, not wanting to touch him, not sure if she wanted to hear anymore, cowardly as that might be.

  She was simply stunned. She'd known he was hiding something, but she never imagined anything like this.

  "You?" she whispered.

  He nodded, watching her and waiting.

  Allie didn't know what to say, where to go from here.

  "I'd like to tell you what happened," he said.

  And she needed to hear it. She needed to weigh his words carefully and decide whether his explanation was at all logical, whether she believed it. She needed to know if he was hiding anything else from her, and she needed to stop thinking that she'd come over here knowing it would be so easy to crawl into his arms once again.

  Even now, the slightest move toward him, and he'd pull her to him. Just as he'd done for Megan? It seemed so ironic to her that when Megan was in trouble and needed help, she turned to Stephen, and that fifteen years later, Allie was doing the same. She wondered if either of them was right in doing so, if he was someone who'd hurt Megan or helped her? If he'd be good for Allie or very, very bad?

  "Tell me," she said.

  "I didn't see anything unusual in her asking me for a ride. I never imagined she was running away. If I had, I would have tried to stop her."

  "Then why didn't you tell me this before?"

  "Would you have believed me?" he said, turning the question right back on her. He had a habit of doing that, she noted.

  "I'm not sure," she admitted. Surely she wouldn't have. Surely she wasn't already so blind to him that she believed everything he said.

  Stephen frowned. "I guess I hoped we'd have a little time to get to know each other. That by the time you found out, you might believe me. But it's all right. You're not the only one who had doubts."

  "People thought you'd done something to her?"

  "Some people," he admitted. "It's not that surprising, I suppose. I was the last person we know of to see her alive."

  Allie felt a chill run through her. The last person to see her sister alive?

  "She must have planned it for a long time, Allie. Because she waited until late the night before to ask for a ride. I offered to pick her up at your house, but she was waiting by my car when I walked outside early that morning. I'd gone to bed late, hadn't seen anybody that night or that morning. No one knew she'd gone with me. It was weeks before I even talked to anybody from here on the phone. Rich was in some kind of trouble at UK, and Dad was trying to fix that. My mother was planning a charity ball. By the time I heard... it was too late."

  Allie supposed that was entirely possible. On the surface she didn't see any reason to distrust what he'd said, except for the fact that he'd waited this long to tell her and maybe because people made a habit of keeping things from her. He'd touched a raw nerve.

  Still, she thought about the haunted look she'd seen so many times in his beautiful eyes, and she had to ask, "Is this what you meant when you said you blame yourself for Megan's disappearance? For her death?"

  He nodded.

  Allie fought the urge to sympathize.

  She felt guilty herself and knew how irrational an emotion it could be. Hers was classic survivor guilt she'd been told by people who were supposed to know. It didn't seem to help. Whether the guilt was rational or irrational, it was still there. It still hurt.

  She looked at Stephen again, waiting, seemingly ready to accept whatever judgment she came to about his own guilt or innocence.

  She was still angry, still distrustful of his motives and whether he'd told her everything this time. But the fairer part of her, the part that felt guilty herself, had to add, "Stephen, if she wanted to run away that badly, she would have found a way, with or without you."

  He didn't look convinced. It made her want to believe him even more.

  Allie tried to think selfishly—about what she wanted, why she was here. She tried to avoid making any snap judgments about whether or not she trusted him. She didn't have to trust him to try to find out what else he knew. She would simply judge his actions and his words more carefully now.

  "My father felt guilty, too," she said. "He told people he deserved to lose us, to end up here all alone. Do you have any idea why he felt like that?"

  "He and Megan always had their differences," Stephen said carefully. "They never seemed to be close in the way you and your father were."

  "What do you mean."

  "I mean you were always his favorite. He indulged you."

  "In a way that he didn't indulge Megan?"

  "Megan was your mother's favorite," he explained.

  Allie k
new in an instant it was true. Some part of her had always known. If her mother had a choice of which daughter to lose, it would have been Allie.

  She turned and looked toward the back of the house where it all happened. The past was all around her now. Sometimes it seemed so close it might suffocate her. Sometimes she felt like she couldn't even breathe.

  "The night we left, he begged her not to go, not to take me. She told him she'd lost one daughter, that she wasn't going to lose another, and after that he didn't try to stop us. He just stood there and watched us go. I think my mother took me away to punish him, because she blamed him for Megan's death," she said as evenly and emotionlessly as she could. "I wondered if you had any idea why."

  "No, I don't. And I didn't know your parents well," Stephen said, drawing her back. "I never talked to your father about why you and your mother left. I don't know of anyone who did, but..." He paused, considered. "I don't understand, Allie. If your mother was angry and wanted to punish your father, I can see her taking you away for a few days. But your mother kept you away for fifteen years. And it didn't just punish your father. It punished you."

  It had certainly felt like a punishment, except she couldn't ever figure out what she'd done to deserve it. In truth, it was a relief to think that it wasn't her fault, that it was her father's or her mother's.

  "What did your mother say about your father?" Stephen asked. "About why you didn't see him anymore?"

  "She didn't. We didn't talk about him."

  "One of those little boxes you mentioned?" he said softly.

  Allie closed her eyes and swore softly. God, was there no limit to what she'd tell this man?

  Stephen took her hand and held it.

  Allie told herself not to feel anything at that. Not the warmth. Not the reassurance. Not the simple comfort that came from not being alone at this moment. She thought of how hard it had been just to make it this far, about how much farther she had to go to find out what happened to her family. She thought about long, empty years with no one left for her, no one who meant anything to her. What in the world was she going to do? When she left here, where would she go?