LINKED (The Bening Files Book 1)

by Rachel Trautmiller

  Later, after the dinner dishes were done, the house picked up and Jordan bathed and in bed, Cassidy broke their mutual silence.

  “Thanks for explaining things to Jordan. Again.” Her tone belied the words, as if she’d given them out of habit rather than sincerity. She slipped into a pair of pale pink pajamas in the comfort of their bedroom.

  “Why wouldn’t I help him try to understand things?”

  She grabbed a matching fuzzy robe and tucked herself inside, away from him.

  “Have I ever given you a reason to believe I would treat him as anything other than my own? I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. “This isn’t as simple as I thought it could be. It’s going to take some time before Jordan gets used to things.”

  Something fierce and hot exploded in his chest. “You’re going to continue making him see Birmingham?”

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Were you in the same kitchen I was tonight? You earn a child’s trust and respect. You don’t force it just because you share blood.”

  “I have to give it a chance. For Jordan.”

  “Just because he provided the goods doesn’t mean he deserves to know anything about Jordan. It doesn’t make him good father material. He already proved he wasn’t good boyfriend material.”

  “People do grow up.” The words held no conviction.

  “That’s bull. He was just talking to me about picking up chicks at his nightclub. So, don’t stand there and tell me he’s grown up. Is that the kind of role model you want for Jordan?”

  She chewed on her lip and still hadn’t bothered to look at him. “I don’t want to fight about this.”

  Silence hadn’t gotten them anywhere. “Yes, you do. It’s the only thing you do with any passion anymore. Hannah died—”

  “Don’t.” Her voice held a warble, but also strength.

  “Don’t, what? Talk about how she died and we didn’t? How we didn’t get to spend as much time as we would have liked with her? You are not the only one who wishes things could be different. They aren’t. It’s time to move on.” The minute the words were out, he knew they weren’t what he wanted to convey. How could he expect her to move on, when he couldn’t?

  She turned her back on him.

  “Cass.” He rubbed his neck from where he stood on the other side of the bed. “Just…I…Jordan. Don’t make him do this. We need to adjust to things together.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. “No. You’re right.”

  “I am?” He straightened. Was there a small glimmer of hope?

  “We should move on.” She paused. “Maybe it’s best if we did that separately.”

  His heart squeezed painfully in his chest. “That’s how you really feel?” His voice came out so soft and broken sounding, he didn’t recognize it.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she began putting away laundry that had been neatly folded in the corner. Laundry that seemed more important than their marriage. Than their family.

  Maybe if her movements were jerky—full of some feeling instead of precise and controlled, he could have figured out a way to comfort her. He could have found a way to believe they still had a chance. That she still loved him even a little bit.

  She continued as if every wrinkle on the clothing mattered, because she’d given up. Hannah had died and instead of staying and fighting, she’d resigned herself to feeling nothing. And maybe that was better than the constant gnawing in his stomach and the weight in his heart.

  If he’d gotten to the hospital just a minute earlier. If. If. If. That’s all he saw in the mirror each morning.

  “I know you blame me.”

  She shook her head.

  Matthew clenched his teeth together. “Don’t lie to me. You owe me that, at least.”

  She stopped what she was doing and faced him then, unshed tears evident in those once bright, blue pools. “We can’t go on like this.”

  “No, we can’t.” She didn’t beg him to disagree with her or make promises that everything would be okay. They just had to stick it out. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “I don’t think it can be fixed.” The moisture in her eyes disappeared, a firm resolve evident in her stick-straight posture. The teasing light he’d grown accustomed to in her eyes over the last five years, extinguished.

  Any small amount of hope he harbored died, right then and there.

  He’d stormed out of the house that night and returned to a darkened living room and kitchen. Both Cassidy and Jordan were sound asleep by the time he made himself a bed on the sofa. The next morning he made sure he was up before either one, folded and put away his blankets. He watched a cartoon with Jordan and then headed to work.

  Cassidy didn’t say more than two words to him. Over the next month, the couch became his permanent home and Birmingham almost a daily presence in their lives. Jordan didn’t appear any closer to the man, but he tolerated his visits as long as Birmingham gave him adequate space.

  On numerous occasions, Matthew tried to catch her alone, but her roadblocks were up, same as when they first met. And he didn’t have the same optimism, he’d had then, to break through them. It was as if the last five years—the majority of them so memorable, his current fate felt like a bad nightmare—hadn’t occurred. So, he worked late and stayed away and by the end of the month both she and Jordan seemed happier than they’d been in a long time.

  It came to him on a rainy Wednesday night, that he might be the problem. The thing that stood in the way of Jordan having a relationship with Birmingham. And Cassidy being happy again.

  His confirmation lay on the table in the form of divorce paperwork.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Funerals made Jordan sick.

  They always had. He’d been twelve the first time he’d attended such a gathering, at this very cemetery. McKenna’s Grandmother went to bed complaining of indigestion and never woke up.

  His mom said they had to go to support McKenna’s family, even though Jordan had only met the woman a few times. At the time, he vowed he wasn’t ever going to sleep again, because what if that was the end? Daring to ask those questions hadn’t been in him that day.

  McKenna had cried through most of the graveside service until Alexis had carted her off to their vehicle. Every time he looked at the old woman’s coffin, he saw her pale, cold face—and he’d known she’d been cold because he had touched her cheek—staring back at him even though the thing was closed and lowering into the ground.

  He wished he had cried so his mom would whisk him away. So his guts would stop churning and he could quit wondering if he’d die without warning. One day here, the next not.

  “Do you recall any of those things he told us this morning?” McKenna’s voice brought him back to the present. To another coffin, slowly lowering into the ground as the first few people meandered away from the group gathered around the burial plot. Robinson had stood with them throughout the service. His eyes never left the casket, until he’d turned and walked from the site a few minutes ago, without a word.

  They sat at the outer edges of the group, paying their respects and not garnering any attention. McKenna shivered next to him, even though the sun was out and it had to be near seventy. Both of her hands hid in the pockets of her black spring jacket. A matching belt tied at her waist. Though black covered every ounce of her clothing, including her shoes, she had opted to forgo the usual dark glasses that so many people had donned for today’s occasion.

  “So, do you?” she asked.

  “I was a kid. I remember Birmingham coming around a lot and seeing Matthew less. My mom was upset a lot of the time, but she always put me first. When I turned twelve, I told her I wouldn’t see Birmingham anymore.”

  “Why twelve?”

  “I started spending a night here and there when I turned ten. He still lived above the nightclub, but he gave me a room in the quieter corner of the place. F
illed it full of toys, videogames, even got the Transformers bed set that I’d been begging my mom to get me.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Sounds rough.”

  “He’d pick me up and put on good show. Then when we got back to his place, he’d find some excuse to spend his time at the club.”

  She shook her head. “I know your mom wouldn’t have been okay with that.” She took her arms from her pockets and crossed them in front of her chest.

  “Never told her. The first time he brought a woman home, I was eleven. They smelled up the apartment with whiskey and cigarettes and he screwed her on the couch in the living room.” The words he been unable to tell a soul until now, poured out of his mouth like vomit.

  His young mind had conjured up a horrific scene from the grunts and screams coming from outside his closed door. The memories still sent a sick shudder through his body.

  “I packed my overnight bag and when it got quiet, I ventured out of my room intending to walk home. They were both stark naked, sprawled on the couch. I hadn’t taken two steps before his eyes snapped open. He asked me who I was and what I thought I was doing interrupting his booty call.” The actual exchange held curses mixed with barely concealed hate, which emanated from the older man in heavy waves.

  “Before I knew what was happening, he jumped off the couch. His woman friend fell to the floor in the process. Before I could do anything, he had me up against the wall, his hand around my throat.” Fear had paralyzed him, for a moment, before he tried to pry the large fingers from his neck and failed. The strong urge to cry stung his throat. The burning need to scream, but Birmingham’s hold made it impossible. Taking in air was difficult. Jordan’s desperation must have pushed through Birmingham’s stupor, because he relinquished his hand and Jordan fell to the floor in heap near his discarded bag.

  No apologies.

  Go ahead and tell her, boy. See what happens when you do.

  Looking up at the man through blurry vision, he’d felt so small and unimportant. Those feelings, partnered with the distrust he’d always carried for the man burned in his gut, threatening to spew out of his mouth along with the dinner he’d cooked himself.

  “He could have killed you.” Glittering eyes turned toward him, as McKenna’s hands balled into fists.

  Those barely concealed tears tore at something inside of Jordan that was already thread bare. “But he didn’t.”

  An exasperated sigh came from her lips. “Logistics. So, you stopped going?”

  “Not until the following year. By that time, he’d repeated the process several more times, only I was smarter. I didn’t leave my room. When, I turned twelve, I’d already figured out that this was how things would be. After a visit, I went home and told my mom I wouldn’t see him anymore. That I’d rather have no father than him.”

  “She didn’t question you?”

  “Of course. I made something up. I’m not saying she believed my lie, but she didn’t push the issue. Having him in our lives hadn’t done us any favors. She knew that.”

  “I always assumed you’d never had any type of relationship.”

  He lifted his sunglasses to the top of his head. “That’s the way I wanted it.”

  Hurt rushed into her eyes before she looked away. “Kind of selfish, don’t you think?”

  More people were leaving, a family of five passing them. The mother murmured something to a girl of about fourteen. She had tears in her eyes.

  McKenna watched them as if she hadn’t called him out for keeping secrets that had nothing do with her. “That might be the pot calling the kettle black.”

  Her eyes snapped to his, a clear, radiant blue. “I don’t have any secrets. I never did.”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “Would you have talked to me about your mother’s death if I’d brought it up?”

  Truthfully, he’d have run the other way, best friend or not. And he’d needed her then in a way he still didn’t comprehend even now. He’d needed her to silence everything going on around him. Her silence and her take-charge attitude had been the best salve for his soul.

  “You’re the reason I didn’t get married the first time.”

  A startled look crossed her face as her eyebrows scrunched together. “What?”

  Now, he felt like a romantic schmuck. He cleared his throat. “I told you I got your graduation announcement in the mail.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. To go back to forgetting about the past.” Even though his palms started to sweat, he pressed on. “It was the first time I’d really let myself think about how I’d left things. How I’d run, when I needed to stay. How I’d let an innocent man sit in prison, when my gut told me it wasn’t true.” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his mind urging him to continue, while a heaviness in his stomach said the opposite.

  “I wasn’t completely honest the other night. I didn’t mean to leave everything, but I did.” How clear that was now. “I couldn’t take the sympathetic looks, the memories I had whenever I tried to go home, being unable to trust anyone because the cops hadn’t found the right guy. And you.”

  McKenna’s eyes searched his face, but she remained silent.

  “You made it so easy. You didn’t pester me with questions about how I felt. Or ask about my plans for continuing college. I’d managed to bury all those feelings when I left.” One glimpse of her picture brought it back in a heavy wave, the pain as intense as an elephant sitting on his head. “For weeks I deliberated over calling you. Then one day, two weeks before the wedding, I went into work, asked for a transfer, and canceled a wedding I wasn’t sure I wanted.”

  McKenna’s hand shot out and found his. Their fingers intertwined and she gave his a quick squeeze. “I imagine that wasn’t a fun day.”

  “There wasn’t a scene, if that’s what you mean. We parted ways amicably, almost as if that had been the plan all along. My boss was more upset than she was. I should have done everything differently, but I didn’t.”

  A step brought her closer to him and then she was up on her tiptoes, her lips finding his cheek. “Even if you had called me, I still would have been a pain in the butt.”

  “I know.” The first genuine smile he’d had in a week, crept up on his face, the sensation both foreign and freeing. And fleeting, given their current setting. Unlike the need to tell this incredible woman, who was both the friend of his youth and adulthood, that he couldn’t live without her.

  Even after everything they’d been through, he didn’t know how she would react. More than once, in the last week, he’d been advised not to throw too much change in her direction. What no one would tell him was, how he could avoid doing so when life changed on a dime.

  He glanced around him. No wind rustled the trees surrounding the plot. He nodded at Amanda who stood twenty feet away, dark shades covering crowd-roving eyes. She leaned against an old oak, one hand rested on her opposite hip, the other dangled near her holster. Instinctively, he checked for his. When he looked up she was gone.

  A few more people headed out as the casket disappeared. The pastor remained near the site along with the crew that would finish the final burial later that evening. A couple turned from the grave. The tall, lanky man put his arm around an equally tall woman with delicate bone structure and bright, blonde tresses.

  She dabbed her eyes with what looked like a well-used tissue. She spotted them and headed in their direction, away from the parked cars at the cemetery’s side. Mrs. Kimmel had given her daughter both her height and features. She made a beeline for McKenna, her husband trailing in her wake, a look of concern and despair on his face.

  When she reached them, she pulled McKenna into a hug that would have given a linebacker whiplash.

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” The older woman wailed.

  At first, McKenna didn’t move, then she removed her hand from his and patted Mrs. Kimmel’s back. “I’m sorry for your loss.”


  “I know—” her voice hit a squeaky note.

  Mr. Kimmel brushed at his nose. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Not here.”

  The woman stepped back and dabbed at her eyes again. She patted her husband’s hand. “I just keep hearing about the steps of grieving and thinking this shouldn’t be happening. There aren’t any steps.” She wiped at a mascara smudge under her eye. “I shouldn’t be here. My baby shouldn’t be in the ground. How can I leave her?” Another large sob and dab with the Kleenex and she seemed to pull herself together. “I have to know. D-did she suffer?”

  Mr. Kimmel inhaled, his red-rimmed eyes darting toward Jordan. “Honey, I think she’s been through enough.” His voice hitched at the end.

  McKenna swallowed. “No, no, it’s fine.”

  They both knew the details of Kara’s prolonged death. Jordan wanted McKenna anywhere but here. And if he knew she would let him, he’d drag her away.

  “I made her as comfortable as I could.” Her voice was soft and filled with regret and compassion. She bit her lip and took a deep breath. “She wasn’t alone in the end.”

  Tears rolled down the other woman’s cheeks, unchecked. “T-thank you.”

  “Sweetheart, let’s go.” A firm hand found Mrs. Kimmel’s shoulder and gave a gentle tug.

  “Wait. I know it might be hard to believe, but she admired both of you growing up.”

  “Honey.” Impatience cover Mr. Kimmel’s grief-stricken face.

  “You’re more than welcome to stop by the house.” Then she let her husband lead her to their waiting car.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. McKenna’s posture remained still, almost too still, her face pale. He touched her shoulder and gave a light squeeze.

  Her eyes met his then, a stormy shade of blue. “I don’t think I can go over there.”

  “I’ve got a Federal Marshal looking for both of you.” Amanda appeared next to them. She raised her glasses to the crown of her head.

  Jordan had known the Bureau of Prisons would catch up with them sooner or later.

  McKenna shook her head and crossed her arms. “Nathan Stanley?”