Shirley looked from one to the other. “I hadn’t realized you two were acquainted.”
“We’re neighbors,” Delaney said.
“Oh, I see. Is there a problem with Inside Deedee? It sounded to me as if you were questioning its authenticity.”
“Not at all,” Delaney said. “There’s no one else in the world who could have done this except J. M. Harrison. That fact is staring me in the face.”
Shirley chatted with them for a few more minutes. She appeared aware of the strain between them and stuck to innocuous subjects in an attempt to defuse it. When the bell over the door announced another customer, she excused herself with obvious relief and went to greet the new arrival.
Delaney finally looked at Max.
She’d had more than twenty-four hours to get accustomed to the fact that he was real. It couldn’t have completely sunk in. Her pulse leapt at the sight of him. She found it hard to catch her breath. She’d once thought that she’d been the one who had made him sexy. No matter how powerful her imagination was, she should have realized she never could have created a man as attractive as this one.
He wore what she was coming to think of as his going-out clothes: polished leather shoes, tailored pants, and a silk shirt, all in black today. As usual, he wore no tie or belt or any jewelry for adornment. His features were arresting enough on their own. He’d replaced the white gauze bandage on his forehead with a smaller, flesh-toned one. Though his right wrist was still wrapped, he’d discarded his sling altogether. There was no sign of discomfort in his stance. She hoped it meant the aches from his bruises were easing. She’d felt his pain when he’d kissed her.
But she didn’t want to think about that kiss, or she was liable to start pretending again. He was watching her as if he was as starved for their connection as she was. Not the physical one he’d claimed he wanted but the bond of mind and emotion.
Or was she seeing what she wanted to see? She’d come to the gallery hoping to gain some insight into the adult Max through his paintings. All she’d learned so far was that there was much more she had yet to learn. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“I volunteered to watch your ass when you went out, remember?”
“I didn’t think you’d meant it.”
“Like I said, it’s a habit.”
“Under the circumstances, I would have expected you to change your mind.”
He shrugged. “I’m partial to your ass.”
“How did you even know where I was? Did you follow me?”
“I followed your thoughts. I recognized your surroundings.”
She rubbed her eyes. That must have been the reason she’d felt his presence. She’d assumed it was because she’d been looking at his work. “I find this awkward.”
“Why? I’ve got clothes on this time.”
“Things have changed, Max. You don’t have the right to dip into my thoughts whenever you please.”
“I didn’t dip, I just looked. I don’t need permission for that. It’s the difference between looking at your mouth and pushing my tongue into it.”
Her lips warmed. She pressed them together.
He ran his fingertip over her shoulder and down to the edge of the scar that curled around her upper arm. Though her blouse hid it from sight, he accurately traced its outline with his knuckles.
The repercussions of Max being real continued to mount. He was the only person besides her doctors who was fully aware of the disfigurement of her body. He’d seen her scars exposed in full sunlight—he’d even imagined kissing them—yet he continued to want to touch her.
No, he didn’t just want to touch her, he wanted to fuck her.
It still hurt. She didn’t want to believe that her Max could be bad or mean. His crudeness had been a warning snarl. He didn’t want to admit he might need her emotionally, so he’d tried to reduce the bond they shared to its lowest level.
And she was continuing to make excuses.
She gestured toward the canvas, breaking the contact with his hand. “What does the white in the center mean, Max?”
“It means my palette knife slipped.”
“Would you like to know what I think?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I believe it means hope. You recognized that ugliness doesn’t have to win, no matter how terrible the odds appear. There’s a core of goodness inside us that has the potential to triumph.”
“And you got all that from a few smears of paint?”
“You did the same thing with that orchard,” she said, moving back to stand in front of the other painting. “The blossoms die, but new ones will take their places. The trees will still be trees; they won’t change their nature, no matter how many storms batter them or how much they strain to escape the earth.”
“You could have a career writing blurbs for art catalogues.”
“Why did you come back to Willowbank, Max?”
“I liked the climate.”
“Why build your house on the site of the old trailer park?”
“The property wasn’t scenic and didn’t have waterfront, so it was cheap.”
“I have told you the most personal things about my marriage and about my life. I’ve never held back. Don’t you think you could drop the tough-guy act long enough to give me an honest answer?”
He didn’t respond.
“All right, I’ll tell you what I think about that, too.”
“This should be good.”
“You knew you wouldn’t be welcomed here. You deliberately chose the hardest path in order to punish yourself.”
“Your do-it-yourself psychology is way off base with that one.”
“Then correct me.”
“I came here to bury my past. I built my house where I did to obliterate the memories of the place I grew up. You said that walking inside my house was like taking a deep breath, and that’s a good description. It’s freedom. That’s all I need.”
“You need love, too, Max.”
“Love is a myth.”
“Yes, you’ve said that before, but the boy I knew was capable of it. I loved him, and he loved me.”
“Deedee—”
“Neither of us had any agenda then. We weren’t using each other. We trusted each other. We were true friends.”
“Are you still harping on that? We were kids.”
“You know what happened to me. Tell me what happened to turn the boy I knew into the man who would create paintings like these.”
“It’s no secret. I was arrested for two counts of attempted murder. I pled guilty to aggravated assault. I decided to learn a trade while I was serving time, and now I’m able to throw some paint at a canvas and con a bunch of gullible art collectors into giving me money. End of story.”
“You are a very frustrating person, Max.”
He lifted his hand and pushed her collar aside to touch the scar on the side of her neck. His forearm brushed her breast. “If you’re frustrated, I could remedy that.”
She was tempted to call his bluff, though she wasn’t sure why she thought he wanted more from her than sex. Maybe it was because she’d seen the emotions in his paintings.
Or maybe she was repeating the pattern of her life, clinging to the good and denying the bad. She turned away. “I need some air.”
He followed her to the sidewalk. When she started walking, he fell into step beside her, placing himself between her and the curb. “I do like the climate here,” he said. “I enjoy the contrasts in the cycle of the seasons.”
She shouldn’t be as pleased as she was. He was only talking about the weather. It wasn’t much of an olive branch. Still, it was a start. “You use it as an element in your paintings.”
“It’s part of the fabric of a scene. Most of it isn’t visual, unless it’s obvious like sunshine or rain. I use it to set the tone and give a sense of place. It’s one of those background things that shapes our lives and half the time we don’t realize it.”
“We take it for gra
nted.”
“Sure, because we can’t change it.”
They paused at the corner of the block. The parking lot where she’d left her car was on the street to her right. She decided to go straight instead, toward the center of town. “What else do you believe shapes our lives?”
“You’re going to start getting all analytical again, aren’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“That could turn into a nasty habit.”
“Do you believe in fate, Max?”
“I used to.”
“Tell me about it. Why did you stop?”
He rested his palm at the small of her back as they moved around a couple with a baby stroller. With any other man, the contact would have been casual, but there was nothing casual about Max’s touch. He rubbed his thumb along her backbone, sending echoes of the same pressure around her ribs and down to her thighs as if he was reaching beneath her clothes . . .
She glanced at him sharply. “Max.”
“Mmm?”
“You’re doing that to avoid my question.”
“You won’t like my answer.”
“You haven’t been happy with a lot of the things I’ve told you, either.”
He withdrew the mental caress, slid his arm around her waist, and guided her across the road where a small park bisected the block. Though the far side bordered the main street, raised beds of colorful annuals bordered by low yew hedges helped absorb the noise of the traffic. He waited until they’d found a vacant bench in the shade of a huge sycamore before he replied. “I used to think it was my destiny to kill my stepfather.”
There were other people in the park, families with children, an old couple leaning on each other as they walked arm in arm along the paved pathway. A dog barked as it chased a Frisbee. It was a beautiful day. It took a moment for his words to penetrate.
He was right. She didn’t like this answer and had to tamp down the reflexive urge to deny it.
Yet this was what she’d asked for, wasn’t it? To know what had happened to him?
“I grew up imagining how I’d do it,” he said. “I fantasized about seeing him bleed and hearing him scream. When I finally had the chance to kill him, I failed. I didn’t finish him off.”
“Why?”
“I was enjoying watching him suffer.”
No, she didn’t like this answer, either. “I meant why did you want to kill him?”
He fisted one hand on his knee. “Virgil was one of those things like the weather. Always there. Impossible to change. I was lucky they reduced the charges to assault. I lied through my teeth when I said I was sorry. The only thing I’m sorry about was that he was still breathing when the cops pulled me off him.”
She covered his fist with her hand. The tension that flowed from the contact gave her goose bumps.
“I heard that liver cancer’s doing what I couldn’t. He could be dead now, for all I know. How’s that for destiny?”
“You must have really hated him.”
“The word doesn’t come close, Deedee. He was . . .”
“Evil,” she finished.
He lifted his shoulders. The gesture would have been a shrug if his body weren’t so stiff.
“That’s what I saw in your paintings,” she said. “The struggle against evil, against forces that can’t be controlled.” And children were defenseless against the worst forms of evil. She squeezed his fist. “What did he do to you, Max?”
“He murdered my mother.”
To say she was relieved with the reply wasn’t right. Rather, she was less horrified than she’d feared she might have been. “I don’t understand. I thought she was—”
“She was alive when I went to prison? Yeah, she was. She didn’t die until a month before I was due to get out, but he’d started killing her long before that.”
“What happened?”
“They moved to Cleveland after he got out of the hospital, probably because nobody knew them there so he figured he’d keep getting away with it. It worked for a while. She took what he dished out and never fought back. She never thought of leaving. She claimed she loved him.”
A piece from one of their earlier conversations clicked into place. “You once told me that some women are so afraid of being alone that they stay married to a monster.”
“He was that, all right. The night he killed her, he had broken both her arms first. She couldn’t fight him even if she’d chosen to. She couldn’t have screamed, either, because one of his blows had split the inside of her cheek and knocked out four of her teeth. She was choking on her own blood. That probably would have done it, but he couldn’t wait. He used his belt to strangle her.”
Bright spots blurred her vision, as if she’d looked straight into the sun. It was the spillover from Max’s emotions. They were seeping into her own mind. She clasped his hand more firmly, wishing there was something she could say, but no words would be adequate. “I’m so sorry, Max.”
“So am I. I should have killed him when I’d had the chance. If I had, she’d still be alive.”
Another piece clicked. Phoebe had said John had beaten his mother with a belt. Delaney had never wanted to believe that, even before she’d known he was Max. Now she was certain it wasn’t true. “You were innocent. You never should have gone to prison. You didn’t assault her; he did.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “There you go again, wanting to believe the good.”
“I know I’m right. You never would have hurt her. You would have tried to protect her.”
“Not everyone wants to be rescued.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone the truth? Why did you plead guilty?”
“I tried to tell the truth, but she testified against me. She said I beat up Virgil because he tried to stop me from beating her. She was damn convincing, too. I realized I would serve less time if I took a plea bargain.”
“Your mother lied?”
A couple on a nearby bench turned toward them. Delaney lowered her voice. She was shaking with outrage. “How could she lie? Why?”
“She loved him.”
“That wasn’t love; that was an abused woman’s dependence on her abuser.” Like her love for Stanford? Though his abuse hadn’t been physical, on a smaller scale the effects would have been similar: the denials, the compulsion to make excuses, the desperate attempts to please and to maintain the relationship at all costs.
The ramifications of what Max was telling her were too complex to sort through here. She would save that for later, when she had more time. Her only concern now was Max. “There must have been some way to prove the truth. Someone else must have known. Willowbank’s a small town.”
“I had a juvenile record because I used to get into fights; that’s what the town knew. Besides, trailer park trash don’t get fancy lawyers. The guy Legal Aid assigned didn’t look much older than me. He seemed more scared of the judge than I was. The plea bargain was the best he could do.”
“What about now? It’s not too late to set the record straight.”
“There’s no point. The law got it right with Virgil eventually. He got convicted of second-degree murder. He roughed up a guard a few years back and got extra time tacked onto his sentence. He’s going to die behind bars in the Ohio state pen while I have my freedom. Thanks to my time in prison, I’ve also got my art. That’s all I need. I like my life the way it is.”
“Let me help you. We can get your case reopened. We can—”
“What? Change me? Pretend I’m someone else?”
“The way people treat you isn’t fair.”
“Most of what they say about me is true, Deedee. I was innocent of only half the charges. For the rest I was guilty as hell.”
“There were extenuating circumstances.”
“I don’t need your sympathy or your pity. I was getting along fine before you came, and I’ll be fine when you leave.”
“If you didn’t want me to care, then why did you tell me all of this?”
&nbs
p; He opened his fist and turned his hand over to clasp hers. “Because I figured you wouldn’t have sex with me unless I did.”
By now she should be accustomed to his penchant for flipping conversations when they became too emotional. Advance and retreat. He’d done it countless times. “Don’t be afraid of getting close to me, Max. I would never hurt you.”
“But I do want to get close, Delaney.” He curled his middle finger to tickle the center of her palm. A similar sensation curled between her legs.
Her chin trembled. The sob she’d managed to suppress until now finally broke free. Not for the tragedy Max had been unable to prevent or the injustice of what he’d endured, but for the rare and precious connection that he was refusing to accept now. Calling what they could have between them sex was like focusing on a single raindrop and ignoring the rainbow. He was afraid of emotional closeness, and who could blame him? She opened her mind, drawing in his anger, absorbing his pain into her warmth, imagining her love like arms to shelter him.
“Well, well, I hardly recognized you, Delaney.” A woman stopped in front of them. “You certainly appear to have recovered from your grief.”
Max broke the contact, both the physical and the imaginary. He rose to his feet. Delaney looked past his shoulder.
Elizabeth Graye stood on the grass beside the pathway. Her blonde hair was coiled into her trademark French twist, and a tasteful string of pearls circled her neck. Her leather clutch purse, taupe linen suit, and matching pumps projected understated elegance. Her expression projected pure distaste. She glanced at Max. “My, he’s a big one. Did you use my father’s money to hire yourself a new toy?”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE WAITRESS WAS CHEWING GUM. SHE SHIFTED IT TO ONE cheek as she put the glasses on the table. The name tag on her pink uniform said her name was Mary Lou. “Are you sure I can’t get you girls something else? We’ve got a sour cream apple pie that’s to die for.”
Elizabeth refused the offer without bothering to look at Delaney, then used her fingertips to slide her glass of club soda to one side. She couldn’t recall being in a place where straws came in paper wrappers and the only napkins provided were more paper and fastened around the cutlery with a strip of tape. Country music warbled from speakers on the walls, as if they were in Oklahoma instead of upstate New York. This would have been the kind of dining establishment Delaney would have frequented before she’d married Stanford.
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