by Teresa Hill
"The detective you hired told you Megan was with a group of runaways in Macon that winter, and that one of them was pregnant."
"Yes, he did."
"This morning I talked to the man I hired. The other runaway girl was named Margaret Addison."
"Addison?" she whispered. "Casey's mother?"
Stephen nodded. "My guy had also gone back to the trooper and asked some more questions. The trooper said when he got to the scene, four people were there—the doctor, two boys in their twenties, and the girl. A pregnant girl."
"A pregnant girl?" Allie couldn't breathe. "Megan."
"The trooper didn't hear anything about a second girl being in the car. He thought she showed up after the accident and was nothing but a witness. In fact, he hardly talked to her or even saw her. The doctor had her in his car, all wrapped up in a blanket. They were all soaked from being out in the rain, and the doctor said the girl was too upset to talk. But we found people in town who think they saw the two runaway girls together that day. The accident happened on the road between the town and the place they were staying. I think they were both in the car, and only one of them survived. The pregnant one."
"And she wanted to stay dead, so she took her friend's name."
Stephen nodded. "I looked at the reports. The girl who died had been in the water for three days before they found her, and three days in the water... They didn't have DNA tests in those days. They would have relied on generalities. Height, weight, age, hair color, and the things they found in the car. Megan's things. A learner's permit, a school ID card, some photographs. A necklace. Your father went there to make the ID, but maybe he was convinced it was Megan before he ever looked at the body."
"The girl we buried wasn't pregnant. She hadn't given birth recently. Greg checked," Allie said, a big, broad smile spreading across her face. Her sister was alive. "Tell me about her. About Casey's mother."
"Casey said she claimed his father died before Casey was born, that they had no other living relatives. But Casey didn't believe that. She had old newspaper clippings about your mother and father and Megan, things she kept locked away, and when he saw Megan's picture, he thought that was his mother, which meant he had grandparents here and he hoped, a father."
"Oh, God. He's your nephew, too."
Stephen nodded.
"I can't believe it." She'd stopped asking for miracles a long time ago. She'd stopped believing, and she'd gotten used to the idea that she had no one but herself. But now... "Oh, Stephen. Tell me everything you know about her."
"Casey says everybody calls her Meggie."
"My mother called her that sometimes."
"I know," Stephen said. "She's supposed to be thirty-three years old."
"Megan would be thirty-one."
"She's a freelance graphic artist, supposedly born in Arizona, no family. She went to Ole Miss, working her way through a four-year program in a little over six years, because she had Casey. Left an established firm two years ago to go out on her own. She's won several awards. Casey's never really been in trouble before now. He's very intelligent. He goes to an expensive prep school in town, and he was supposed to be on a class trip for the past two weeks."
Stephen told her all about it. Allie decided she liked Casey even more.
"I want to believe it. That Megan's alive, and she's coming here," Allie said. "But really good things never seem to happen to me."
"Maybe your luck's starting to change," he said. "Maybe it's all going to be good from here on out."
"I don't think anyone leads a truly charmed life."
"No, but people do find happiness. Sure, there are going to be disappointments along the way. But life can be good, too, Allie." He stared down at her. "It can be so good."
Chapter 18
Allie had never known time to drag by so slowly.
She climbed the steps to her sister's room, and Casey, who was just as nervous as she was, went with her. They picked through Megan's old things, and she told Casey the bits and pieces of their childhood she remembered. He apologized solemnly for breaking into the house and for scaring her. Allie gave him a long hug and promised him, no matter what they found out after his mother arrived, that she would help him. She made him promise that he'd never run away again.
"I think I'd like it if you were my aunt, Allie."
"I'd like it, too."
"My mom's probably gonna yell a lot when she gets there, and she'll threaten to ground me and do all sorts of stuff. But she's really pretty nice most of the time."
"I'm sure she is." Sighing, Allie looked at her watch one last time, then looked back at Casey. "I can't believe you came all this way by yourself."
"It wasn't so bad," he insisted. "It didn't work out exactly the way I planned, but I got my mom to come back here. She's gonna tell me I was wrong to lie to her and take off by myself, but I'm still glad I did it. 'Cause she'll tell me about my father now." He stopped to think for a minute. "I'm not gonna tell her the part about being glad I came here."
"I wouldn't if I were you," Allie said, thinking it must be hell to raise a teenager.
Allie grew more nervous with every passing moment. Finally, she heard a car coming down the road. Casey looked scared once again.
"Want to go down together?" she asked.
They went. Halfway down, the front door opened.
"Allie?"
Stephen stood in the doorway, his arm around a woman with long, dark hair and a hesitant smile that took her back fifteen years.
Casey yelled, "Mom!" and started running.
Allie moved more slowly, hanging onto the banister for support.
The woman enveloped Casey in a bear hug. He started to speak, but she interrupted him. "Casey, if you're half as smart as your SAT scores claim, you won't say a word right now." -Then she just held him, the look on her face one of sheer relief.
Allie waited until the embrace wasn't so fierce, until she sensed that the woman's equilibrium had been somewhat restored by the feel of her son, safe and whole, in her arms once again.
The hesitant smile reappeared, familiar smiling eyes with faint lines at the corners now and hair that had been tamed over the years. She was close enough to touch, and so different from the girl Allie had seen sitting at the piano, playing out her sorrows with the bruises on her arms.
Finally Allie said, "Megan?"
"Oh, Allie." The woman smiled broadly and held out her arms. Allie fell into them, felt them close tightly around her. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
And then neither one of them could do anything but cry and hang onto each other.
* * *
"I never meant to do it," Megan said later. "I never thought anyone would think it was me in the car. But once it happened, it seemed smarter to let everyone believe I was dead."
Allie and her sister sat on the floor of Megan's old bedroom, a place where they'd had many long, serious talks in previous years. Stephen had promised to keep Casey downstairs to give the two women some privacy.
Allie told Megan she knew about the argument Megan had with their parents, about the fact that John Bennett wasn't Megan's biological father. She knew Stephen helped Megan out of town that day and that Megan ended up living with a group of runaways in a barn in Macon, Georgia.
"Tell me the rest," Allie said.
"Casey was due any day, and I was getting scared about how I was going to take care of him. I thought I owed it to him to try to go back home. A friend of mine, one of the kids I met on the streets, a boy named Mitch—"
"Mitch Wilson is here," Allie said. "He lives in Lexington."
"You're kidding?"
"No. He came here after you died. Looking for answers. Looking to punish someone, maybe."
"Mitch." She sighed. "I thought he'd forget all about me."
"I don't think he ever did," Allie said, thinking by the look of things, her sister hadn't forgotten much about Mitch Wilson, either. "He looks wonderful, by the way. Just in case you might be wondering.
.."
"I can't believe he's here."
"I'll take you to him. Later," Allie promised. "Tell me what you did."
"We scraped together some money and came back here. We were about a mile from the house when Rich saw us. He looked furious, and I was so scared of him. I decided it was too much of a risk—to come back. So Mitch and I just took off, and Rich must have followed us somehow. Or maybe he knew where we were all along. I don't know. I always felt like he was out there, watching me, to make sure I wasn't going to make trouble for him by telling anyone what he'd done or by claiming my baby was his.
"A few days later, we were back in Macon. My friend Meg—the real Margaret Addison—was with me. I was coming out of the clinic when I thought I saw Rich. We just took off. I was so scared. And then the storm hit. It was awful. The rain was coming down so hard, we could hardly see. The wind was blowing. I didn't even see the car coming. It was so big and so fast. It rammed us, and I screamed, and we started sliding. The next thing I knew, we were in the water."
"So he did try to kill you," Allie said.
Megan nodded. "I was more worried about Rich than anything else. I got out of the car and made it to the bank. I grabbed onto a tree branch that hung out over the water. I don't know if he meant to kill us or just to scare us, but I heard a car back up. It stopped on the side of the road, and a man got out. There was a flash of lightning, and I saw his face. It was Rich.
"I didn't even think of Meg at first. I was too scared of him. It wasn't until he got back in his car and left that I panicked and realized I hadn't seen her since the car went into the water. By then, it was too late. I looked for her, but the water was cold, and it was moving so fast. I never saw her again." Megan's voice shook. "I'm not really clear on what happened next. A couple of cars came along and stopped. One of them was the doctor I knew from the free clinic, a man named Jim. He wrapped me up in a blanket and made me sit down inside a car, out of the rain. He and a couple of guys went into the water after Meg, but it was too late. They couldn't find her.
"The police showed up, and I was still sitting in Jim's car. When the police came over to question me, they assumed I was just someone who'd come along and seen the car and stopped to try to help. I begged Jim not to say anything else. I told him I couldn't go back home, that the man who raped me was there. That I was scared, and I had to protect my baby.
"He helped me get into a home for teenage mothers in Alabama," she said. "The police identified the body in the creek as mine, and it just seemed right. Meg didn't have anyone. The only person left who cared about her was her grandmother, and when her grandmother died, she ran away. And when Meg died, I became her. It's not even that hard, at least not on paper. You can find books on how to do it. They tell you to find someone who's about your age who died, and assume her identity, and I already had someone's identity.
"I almost gave Casey up. I wanted so much more for him than I could give him, but when it came time to sign the papers... He was all I had left in the world, and I wanted him, even though..."
"Rich raped you?"
"Some people might call it that today. Back then... There was no term that really applied. I was sneaking out to see him. I let him kiss me, but he wanted more than that, and he didn't listen when I told him no. Afterward, he got up and went right on, like nothing happened. Like I wanted it, and I liked it. Like he was entitled to have sex with me if he wanted to."
"It was rape," Allie said.
"It took me a long time to understand that. At the time, it was more like a date gone bad, and I felt like I was as much to blame as he was. He was so nice to me in the beginning, Allie. He acted like he really liked me. Nobody had ever treated me like that. Nobody ever made me feel special. And that one night, he just started kissing me, and he wouldn't stop. He'd been drinking, and he was so much stronger than I was. All of a sudden, he was like a stranger. I kept thinking I was going to wake up, and it would all be a nightmare. He said girls didn't like sex the first time. That we'd do it again and again, and eventually, I'd like it.
"I was terrified of him. He was right next door, and his father was a judge. I knew he'd never be arrested, much less go to jail for what he'd done. So I hid the bruises, and I kept to myself. I tried to stay out of his way. But he caught me two more times, and I swear he enjoyed it," she said. "I never said a word to anyone until I hadn't had my period in two months, and when I told Mom and Dad, they didn't believe me. My own father told me that he wasn't my father and he didn't want me in his house any longer. So I left. I didn't want Rich to have anything to do with the baby. I didn't want Casey to ever know."
"Megan, what are you going to tell Casey?"
"I don't know. I know what it's like to have someone lie to you about who your father is. But rape... How can I tell him that? How can I tell him the best thing in my life, the person I love more than anyone or anything, came to me through such an ugly act? And if I tell him that, do I tell him who did it? What if Casey doesn't even believe me? What if he wants to have a father so badly that he wants a relationship with Rich? It scares me to death. It scares me to think of what Rich might do, even now, to try to keep us quiet about what he did all those years ago."
They sat there for a moment.
Megan said, "I don't want to think about that now. I want to think about happy things. I want to know all about you. And Stephen? I saw the way he looks at you. God, if I was sixteen again and he looked at me like that, I would have melted right on the spot."
Allie laughed. Megan did, too.
"He knew how I felt about him," Megan said. "But he was so nice about it. He was a good friend to me that summer. I almost told him everything."
"I wonder what would have happened if you had?"
"I don't know. I try hard not to second-guess anything. There's no point. I made mistakes. I did things I regret, but I have Casey and my business, and I've managed to stay fairly happy most of the time. It's not perfect, but it's my life, and I like it. I'm certainly not going to waste my life feeling sorry for myself or feeling like a victim."
"Me, either," Allie said. "I think it took me longer than it did you to see that. But I finally made peace with it myself. With the whole mess. Later, after everything calms down, we have to talk about the house. Mom left it to me, but by rights, half of it should be yours—"
"Allie, I don't want any part of this house. If I hadn't had to come back here, to find Casey and to see you, I wouldn't have ever wanted to set foot inside these doors again. There are too many bad memories here for me."
"What if we made some good ones?"
"I don't think that's possible."
"I do." She quickly told her sister about her hopes for the shelter.
"It's something to think about." Megan looked around the room, a glint of tears in her eyes. "I spent some time in shelters. Some that were very good. Some that even made me think about trying to come back home."
"We could make it one of those," Allie said, her throat tight with tears. "You and me. Together. You'd know just what it needed to be, and I... Well, I have work to do, too. Stephen's insisting there are a dozen practical reasons it would never work. Not here. But if you and I were working together, I think somehow we could do it."
"Here? In Kentucky? You're going to stay?"
"I'm not sure."
"Are you and Stephen getting married?"
"No."
"You turned him down?"
"He hasn't asked," she said. "I don't know if he will."
"Of course he will. He's a good man, Allie."
"I know."
"And you're in love with him." Megan grinned.
"I think I am. It scares me. But I think I am."
* * *
Stephen came upstairs a few minutes later and something about the way he carried himself, the pinched, painful look on his face had Allie compelled to suddenly be by his side. She slid close, putting her arm around him, leaning into him, thinking this had to be so hard on him. His brother wa
s a rapist, a murderer.
"I heard what you were saying," Stephen told Megan. "Trying to talk Allie into moving back to Alabama with you?"
"I haven't seen her in a long time," Megan said. "I miss her."
"So stay here with her," he said.
"We can't do that," Megan said.
"Of course you can."
"We have a home, Stephen. In Alabama."
"You have a family," he said. "In Kentucky."
"I have my reasons for staying away from Kentucky," Megan said. "I think you can guess what they are."
"You don't have to worry about Rich," he said softly.
"I'll always have to worry about Rich. He's always held all the power. He still does. Who's going to believe me, even now? DNA would prove he fathered my son, but it wouldn't prove he raped me or that he killed my friend fifteen years ago. It would still be my word against his, and I don't want to put myself or my son through the kind of fight it would take to bring your brother down."
"Megan, you don't have to fight him anymore."
"Of course I do—"
"He's dead," Stephen said.
"What?"
"He's dead."
Megan gasped. Allie did, too. She moved to stand in front of Stephen, putting her palm against his cheek, making him look at her. He seemed truly stunned and hurt and for once, not quite sure of himself.
"What happened?" she asked.
"He was upset after we talked." Stephen laughed bitterly. "Upset is an understatement where Rich is concerned. Out of control. In a rage. Maybe because he thought he was going to get caught, that he'd finally have to pay for one of the wrongs he'd committed. Maybe he'd finally gotten himself into a mess our father couldn't fix. I don't know. I suppose we'll never know. But he had too much to drink and never made it home. Turns out he drove his car off one of those big bridges off I-64 near Frankfort and went into the river. They just found his car about an hour ago. He was inside. He won't be hurting you or anyone else anymore."
Shocked, Allie slid both her arms around Stephen and held on tight. He stood stiffly in her embrace, breathing hard and trembling. Megan left at some point, and Allie felt tears filling her eyes. Stephen had been so good to her when everything was falling apart around her, and now he was hurting.
