Forever

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  Even when he’d seen that Julie was drifting perilously far away, he’d pulled back, deliberately sabotaging their marriage. Patricia had poisoned Julie’s mind against him, feeding every doubt Julie had about him. But he’d allowed it. After a while, he didn’t even try to fight for Julie’s attention. Choosing to see only what he wanted, he’d seen that she seemed to have little time for him and was happy only when she was with Patricia.

  What he hadn’t seen was that Patricia was the only one who encouraged Julie to explore her wants and needs, to grow and express herself. If he had done that, Patricia’s influence might have been broken before it nearly destroyed them. Even taking into consideration the benefit of hindsight, it was hard for him to believe he’d been so blind. Even Lindsay had seen that Patricia was in love with Julie. In love. What kind of love was it that destroys?

  (What kind of love is it that cheats?)

  He’d put as much distance as he could between that man and the man he was today. The night of the suicide, he’d thrown his cell phone in the lake. And though he replaced the phone, he changed the number to cut himself off from Annie as thoroughly as he knew how. By the time he realized he hadn’t seen or talked to her for weeks, he could almost convince himself she never existed. Almost.

  Tom pulled a couple of Excedrin tablets from his shirt pocket, popped them in his mouth, and headed to the kitchen for a drink of water. The unused cupboards had become havens for daddy-long-legs, so he drank directly from the water jug he found in the refrigerator. As he washed down the pills, he noticed a cigar butt in an ashtray on the counter. He picked it up and sniffed. Dave’s.

  It had completely slipped his mind that Dave had been up here again in August. He’d tried to get Tom to come out to the lake with him, probably hoping to shock him out of his depression. He hadn’t been ready to face this place yet. And he wasn’t sure he was ready now, but they’d come to check what needed done to winterize the cabin. The Chatham Estates house had sold, Lindsay was living on campus, and soon this would be his and Julie’s temporary home. Time to get on with life.

  Tom, Julie, and even Lindsay had seen counselors throughout the summer. Secure in the love of both her parents, Lindsay had healed rapidly. And nourished by the child growing within her, Julie had progressed steadily through various stages of anger, guilt, forgiveness, and grief. Tom had just remained numb. No, that wasn’t exactly right. He’d gone straight to the guilt stage and stayed there. Mired in guilt, swallowed up in it, consumed by it. And when the counselor questioned why, he couldn’t give a reasonable answer.

  “Julie and I had some problems,” he said.

  “All couples do,” the psychologist replied.

  “I wasn’t there for her like I should have been.”

  “Your wife feels you were no more at fault than she was.”

  “No. It’s like … a death. It’s like I killed something. If only I … I don’t know.” He shook his head. It was always that way, as though what he felt, what he wanted to say was just out of reach.

  “You are not responsible for Patricia’s death.”

  Tom despaired of the psychologist ever understanding, but for Julie’s sake he continued the sessions.

  It wasn’t Patricia’s death he felt responsible for, and yet, she was the only person who’d died. By some miracle, his marriage had survived. His family was intact—and growing. The pending birth of his son was the biggest miracle of all. The desire to be there, to be a good father and a good husband kept him going.

  But night after night, lying in bed alone with his thoughts, he struggled to break through the partition in his memory. That’s what it always came down to—what he couldn’t remember. He believed Dave knew more than he was telling, but as they talked long hours on many nights since the suicide, Dave would only say that when he visited that month, Tom had been so stressed out that he was drinking too much and talking nonsense.

  It’s the nonsense I worry about.

  Sometimes he woke from a nightmare, still hearing screams, and knowing—knowing—that he was responsible. Sometimes he couldn’t wake himself up and Julie had to shake him out of it. But never could he remember the actual nightmare. Part of him knew that he could never really move on until he did. But a bigger part of him feared tearing down that partition.

  As Tom left the kitchen area and moved to where the hall opened into the main room, his heart sped up. Breathing required effort and his ears rang. When blackness replaced his peripheral vision, he bent over, hanging his head low until the threat of passing out retreated.

  Get hold of yourself.

  Determined, he stepped into the hallway. There was a second when, though he didn’t know why, he thought he might not be able to pass the bathroom door. Nothing had happened in there; it had all happened in the bedroom. Hadn’t it? He took one last step, one giant step, and then he was standing in the doorway of their bedroom. Where Patricia had stood. Where she had taken aim and fired. Taking her own life but, thank God, sparing Julie’s.

  After a moment, he dared look down. Thanks to Dave, a large section of plank flooring in front of the doorway was new. The stain and wax finish he’d chosen for the original floor was warm and natural but hadn’t been worth a damn in protecting the wood from bloodstains.

  The center of the room was bare. Julie had ordered a new bed to be delivered next week. And though most of the blood splatter had been contained to the immediate area around the doorway, she’d had the whole room scrubbed and repainted. He didn’t blame her.

  He took a deep breath and stepped into …

  Another dimension. Or something. Before him sat a bed. On the bed, a black-haired man was making love to a redhead. Tom couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he was even breathing.

  Am I having a psychotic break?

  The scene shimmered, and he closed his eyes. It wasn’t real. It was some projection of fantasy. Some blip in his neural circuitry. A result of that damned depression medication the shrink had put him on. The sound of Julie walking around the living room assured him he was back in reality. He opened his eyes.

  All the air that remained in his lungs shot out as if he’d been punched in the gut. The bed was still there. But the couple on it had changed. The woman was Annie and he was the man making love to her.

  Aw, God. No.

  He hadn’t strayed that far over the line. Had he? What he was seeing couldn’t be real. It wasn’t a memory. Please, God, don’t let this be memory. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want—

  Julie laid a hand on his back. His heart leapt. The image before him vanished—if it had ever been there. He sucked in a breath, and the partition in his mind closed. He slapped on a smile and turned to face her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Sure.” And he was. He saw only Julie. He slipped his arms around her waist.

  “Just barely,” he said.

  “What?”

  He glanced down at her rounded belly. “My arms barely make it around you now.”

  “And how do you feel about that, Old Man?”

  “I love it,” he said. “I love you.”

  She laid her head on his chest, and for a moment they were as conjoined twins, saying all without speaking a word, and then dissolving in laughter as they shared the sensation of two quick thumps from within Julie’s womb.

  Tom pulled back and placed his hands flat on either side of Julie’s abdomen, waiting for a second contact with his son. “He’s really there.”

  The catch in his voice pulled at Julie’s heart. “Everything’s going to be fine, Old Man. All the tests show he’s healthy and normal.” And then she responded to his unspoken fear. “We’re fine.”

  He met her gaze. “Yeah. It’s you and me all the way, babe.”

  29

  SO IT ENDS

  December 28, 2010

  Dave and Becky had flown up to visit for Christmas and to see their new nephew. The miracle boy, they called him, and
Tom couldn’t argue that. His son was another blessing he didn’t deserve but thanked God for every day.

  It was late. Julie and Becky had gone to bed after the baby’s last feeding, but he and Dave remained in the cabin’s great room, beer mugs in hand. They sat in club chairs pulled up to either side of the roaring fireplace.

  “How are you doing, Tom?”

  “I could use more sleep, but what parent of a newborn couldn’t?” Tom smiled and shook his head. “Parent of a newborn … at my age.”

  “He’ll keep you young.”

  Tom lifted his mug. “Have to limit this … and the junk food. Not smoking’s the hardest, though.”

  “Julie’s finally whipping you into shape,” Dave said. “Things seem good between you two.”

  “They are. They really are.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Well, slow this time of year, as usual, but I’m back full time again.”

  The brothers sat without speaking for a few moments, the only sounds came from the popping logs. As if cued by some fraternal bond, Tom and Dave looked up and into each other’s eyes at the same moment.

  “You have something to tell me,” Tom said. It wasn’t a question. “I need to know, Dave.”

  “Yes, but is this the right time?”

  “It’s been six months. Bits and pieces have come back to me. Flashes. I’m dealing with them.”

  Dave leaned forward, setting his beer on the floor. “Flashes of what?”

  Tom glanced toward the hall leading to the bedrooms. “Of her. Annie. Of things I had no right to be doing.”

  “And how did that end?”

  “I broke it off … I think. Didn’t I?” Tom frowned. “I … I’ve forgotten, haven’t I? I’m blocking it out.”

  Dave only looked at him.

  “I need to know, Dave. I have to. I need to face it all. It’s always there, lurking in the back of my mind. I want to end this year by putting all that behind me. Once and for all.”

  Dave nodded and stood. He walked across the room, pulled a small manila envelope from his laptop bag, and returned to his chair. “I’ve kept this for you. For when the time came. I had others, but I decided you didn’t need to read those. What you need to know is that Annie and her sister are dead.”

  Tom sucked in a breath that left him panting. “Dead?”

  Dave leaned forward, measuring his words as if to soften the blow. “They were murdered.”

  Tom shot upright. “Oh, God. I didn’t …”

  “No,” Dave said quickly. “Fuck no, Tom. You had nothing to do with that.”

  “Who, then. How?”

  “I think the less detail you know the better. I hope you’ll respect that. But who did it—”

  “Eddie.”

  Tom’s quick response surprised Dave into silence for a moment. “From what you told me, I suspected that, but I never saw the man. I had no way of knowing. The police had matched DNA to a missing Chicago man. His body was found two weeks after the murders.” Dave pulled a newspaper clipping from the envelope and handed it to Tom.

  The photo caught Tom’s eye first. The man, Edgar Mason Woodridge, had thinning blond hair, but the face was the same. “That’s Eddie.”

  He read.

  WANTED CHICAGO MAN FOUND DEAD

  The decomposing body of Chicago CEO Edgar Mason Woodridge was found in his car in rural Marion County yesterday morning. The coroner’s full report is pending, but authorities say it appears he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound approximately two weeks ago. Woodridge, reported as a missing person in April of this year, had been wanted for questioning in the murders of two local women: sisters Anne and Katherine Garrett, who died in Indianapolis on June 27th. Woodridge’s DNA and fingerprints were found at the scenes of both murders.

  The brutalized body of Katherine Garrett, 22, was found in a drainage ditch along …

  Tom barely had time to lean over the fire before he vomited. As the flames sputtered, he crumpled the article and threw it into the fire, spitting on it for good measure. He wiped his mouth on his cuff. “Enough.”

  Dave brought him a glass of water and pulled his chair closer to Tom’s. “I felt you needed to know.”

  Tom nodded. “It’s really over.”

  “He was a sick man, Tom. Julie was very lucky—”

  “God, yes. He could have …”

  Dave leaned forward and grasped Tom’s shoulders. “The police have closed the case. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Let it go.”

  “Yes. Let it go, Tom. You can’t change the past.”

  Tom nodded. Dave was trying to tell him that what happened to Annie and Kate, and even Patricia, wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t guilty of murder. But there was so much Dave didn’t know. Dave thought Eddie was just a businessman gone pyscho. That wasn’t the case. At all.

  Dave dropped his hands and sat back in his chair. “You can handle this?”

  “I needed to know. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Well” —Dave stood and moved his chair back to its normal spot— “I guess we’d better get some sleep.”

  “In a few,” Tom said. “I’ll wait to see if the fire burns away the rest of that mess.”

  “Sleep well, T.J.”

  Tom watched Dave turn off all but one lamp and disappear into the darkness of the hall. Then he turned his gaze toward the fire. What did he look like sitting here? A man at ease? He wasn’t anything close to that. All the events of June he’d blocked out had rushed back to his consciousness as quickly as the beer and the remains of his dinner had spewed into the fire. He hadn’t needed to read the whole news article, and he wouldn’t seek out the details of Annie’s and Kate’s deaths. He could imagine Kate’s, and he knew Annie’s, didn’t he? If he allowed himself to, he could probably recall Eddie’s description word for word, but for now it was more than enough to know the agonized screams that haunted his nightmares had been hers.

  No, he wasn’t directly responsible for murder, not like poor Woodridge who’d woken after whatever-Eddie-was had abandoned his body and found himself the obvious perpetrator of a heinous slaughter. Little wonder the man had blown his brains out. Still, Tom couldn’t deny that the way he’d botched the whole thing with Annie—or even that he’d gotten involved at all—had contributed to the deaths.

  But what good does it do, what does it change, to blame yourself? Isn’t that what the therapist had asked Julie over and over after Patricia’s death? For her sake, for his, for the sake of their marriage, they had to move on. Move on. Move on. It was their mantra.

  “Move on,” he whispered to the fire. It popped and spit in answer. He imagined it mocked him. Move on, Tom? You can move forward, but can you move on?

  Tom banked the fire and closed the glass doors. “I can try. I can give it everything I’ve got.”

  *

  Note to Readers

  I’m thrilled you chose to read this book. I know your time is valuable, so thank you for spending some of it with my characters and their world.

  Please consider letting me know you enjoyed this book by writing a few words in review at Amazon.

  If you’d like to be an Insider and get first looks at my upcoming releases first, please subscribe to my newsletter:

  Linda’s Letter

  Also by Linda Cassidy Lewis

  The Brevity of Roses

  An Illusion of Trust

  High Tea and Flip-Flops

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I thank my family for loving, encouraging, and supporting me in many ways. A special mention, and much love, goes to my husband, the man who does far more than his share in real life so I have abundant time to spend in my fictional worlds.

  A special thank you also goes to my advance readers Jennifer Neri, James Garcia, Jr., Jill Snyder Hughes, Karen Gilmore, and Terry Self Parman. You each encouraged me and helped to make this story better.

  About the Author

  Linda Cassidy Lewis believes l
ife is all about relationships, and her fiction reflects that. She was born and raised in Indiana and now lives with her husband in California, where she writes versions of the stories she only held in her head during the years their four sons were growing up. She lives in the city and is thankful for the gift of imagination that whisks her away to sea or mountain or countryside whenever she wishes.

  Please connect with Linda online … she doesn’t bite.

  Website

  Blog

  Facebook

  Twitter