Kirk handed the album to her. Rachel ran her hand over it, as if she knew there was something very precious inside. And there was. Within those pages was the catalyst that had brought Ethan back to her. Taking a breath, she sat down on the edge of the cot. Kirk sometimes spent his nights on it when work rendered him too tired to even climb the stairs to his room.
Kirk watched Rachel quietly, anxiously, the way a novice applying for his first professional job might watch an editor. He’d had no idea how much he wanted her to be pleased by his work until just this moment.
Kirk saw by her awed expression that he’d been successful.
Rachel slowly turned page after page, looking down at the city she loved. The photographs were all in color. Collectively, they managed to capture the soul of the city, both its rural roots and its urban destiny. The only time Kirk spoke was to point out which photographs had been taken by Ethan.
“It’s beautiful.” She gently closed the album. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He couldn’t resist touching her cheek. It was soft, like the whisper of a prayer, he thought. His. “Your face said it all.”
Rachel rose to her feet and offered the book back to Kirk. “You do wonderful work.” She thought of Ethan. In far more ways than one.
Kirk shook his head, refusing the album. “No, keep it. I made it for you. I know how much you love this place.”
She pressed the book to her chest. “Thank you. I’ll treasure it always.”
It was no use. He couldn’t prolong this for his own selfish reasons. He couldn’t mislead her by his silence. Restless, Kirk shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away. He couldn’t talk to Rachel, couldn’t say what he had to say, if he was looking down into that endless well of love in her eyes.
The words became frozen in his throat, and he had to force them out. “Think of it as a farewell gift.”
“A farewell gift?” Stunned, she felt as if her legs were dissolving beneath her. Had she missed something? These past few days had been more fantastic than she’d ever dreamed possible. She had been so certain that the barriers that surrounded his world, his heart, had all come down.
Apparently, she thought with a stabbing pang, she’d deluded herself.
He stared at her photograph on the wall. That was the way he was always going to remember her. Rushing, with the wind in her hair, a smile of anticipation on her lips. “Yes. I’ve made up my mind to leave.”
“Obviously some time ago.” Her own voice rang in her head, sounding hollow and distant. “You’ve been working on these photographs for several weeks.”
Kirk heard the numbing pain in her voice, and it hurt to know that he was the cause of it. But it was better this way, far better for her than to be tied to someone like him. Someone who couldn’t give, who couldn’t love.
He shrugged, attempting to keep his feelings at a distance, as he turned around again. “I told you when I came back that I wasn’t staying.”
He wasn’t going to hide behind that excuse. Rachel felt tears rising in her eyes. “You said that when you thought you couldn’t find a place for yourself.”
He forced himself to sound cold. He was doing this for her sake, and someday she’d realize that. “Nothing’s changed.”
Rachel had never realized how much words could hurt. It felt as if each syllable had jagged points around the edges. Somehow, she worked past the pain. “Your place is here, with us. With me.”
He wanted to pull her to him. Instead, he bracketed her arms to keep her at a distance. “Rachel, there’s no future for us.”
“Why?” she demanded, raising her chin pugnaciously, like a bantamweight sparring for the crown. “Why do you keep saying that? There can be one, if you let it.”
She was so innocent. There was an entire black world that she knew nothing about. And he was going to have to be the one to show her. To make her see why he didn’t fit into her good, clean world. “You want to marry me?”
Rachel had never been embarrassed about being bold. She wasn’t about to start now. “Yes.”
He was leading her to a point, a painful point he’d wanted to avoid. Something that had haunted him for a long, long time. It had made him vow not to ever have children of his own.
“And you want me to be Ethan’s father.”
“Yes.” The answer was given without qualification, without hesitation.
The single word echoed in his soul. It was killing him to refuse. What shreds of integrity he still had left gave him no choice.
“Rachel, have you thought this through?”
Her eyes, filled with desperation, never left his. “Every night since you’ve come back.”
He shook his head, sorrier than she would ever know that he had to refuse the wondrous gift she’d offered. Her faith in him. “Then you haven’t thought this through far enough. Ethan’s just beginning to heal...”
That was exactly her point. How could he twist it inside out?
“Yes! And you did that for him.”
He wanted to shake her for forcing him to take this so far. He was saying things to her that he’d never said out loud to anyone, even himself. Things that sat, hidden, in the recesses of his heart. The monster he could yet become.
“And I could undo it all, too.” His fingers dug into her shoulders as he struggled to make her understand. “There’s a rage inside of me, an anger...”
Did he think she believed he could lash out at her? At Ethan? “An anger at what’s been done to you,” she insisted. That had nothing to do with her or her son.
“Yes, but it might just erupt in the wrong direction. His direction.” Kirk saw Rachel wince, and he released her. The imprint of his fingers remained on her flesh, and he cursed himself for it. But it proved his point. “I’m a product of abusive parents. People like me have a greater tendency to be abusive themselves.”
Her faith was unshakable, though her voice quavered from the emotion smoldering in it. “You won’t be.”
“How do you know that?” How could she be so sure, when he wasn’t? “Do you want to chance that? Do you want to chance Ethan?”
Her hands fisted at her sides, and she fought the urge to beat on him, to somehow break down the wall he was constructing between them before her very eyes.
“This isn’t a game of chance we’re talking about. It’s you. I know you. You couldn’t hurt me or Ethan.” Tears were building within her, and two spilled out, running unheeded down her cheek. “You’re too busy hurting yourself.”
Now he was making her cry. Damn it, it wasn’t supposed to go this way. “Funny Face—”
Frustrated, she hit his cheek with the flat of her hand. “Stop it. I’m not a child anymore. You didn’t make love to a child. I’m a woman, Callaghan. A woman who loves you. Who’s always loved you.” She blinked as tears made her lashes heavy. “Damn it, I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t love the monster you’re painting.”
He had one weapon left to make her see the flaw in her words. In her faith. “You loved Don.”
She paled. “That was low.”
He’d told her the truth. Now he steeled himself to keep from taking her into his arms the way he wanted to. “No, desperate.”
“All right. All right,” she repeated as she began to pace about the small room, struggling not to hit something, not to vent her anger. “Since we’re being desperate, I might as well tell you something. Don was my substitute for you.” She saw surprise enter his eyes but felt no triumph. “I realize that now.” She wiped her tearstained cheek with the heel of her hand. It hurt to remember any of this. She’d placed it all behind her, in a neat little box. “I married him right after you left town. Maybe to coat the ache I felt because you wouldn’t stay.” She couldn’t help the accusing look that came into her eyes. She’d kept all this bottled up, but he had forced it out. “That I wasn’t enough to make you stay.”
She blew out a ragged breath. “Well, I can’t get you to stay now, an
y more than I could then. Last time, I waved goodbye.” She shook her head, trying to numb herself so that she wouldn’t cry. “I won’t wave this time. I won’t usher you out with good wishes, when I know that you’re leaving the best part of your life behind.”
Her voice broke, and she thrust the album at him. “Here, I don’t want it. You keep it. Maybe someday you’ll want to remember what it was you abandoned.”
“Rachel—” But there was nothing to say. There were no words to fill the void that lay between them.
With a frustrated sigh, she turned on her heel and ran from the room.
Kirk remained standing where he was, even after the front door had slammed and the echo had faded away. He was doing the right thing. The only thing.
He’d never felt so rotten in his life.
With an oath, he threw aside the album he had created for her. It bounced on the cot and then fell to the floor. Landing on its spine, it opened to a large photograph of Ethan, mugging for the camera. It was the day Kirk had gotten him to open up.
Kirk blocked the emotions that rose up. He was leaving, and there was no time like the present.
He left the book on the floor and walked quickly from the room. He had to go now, while he still could. Someone else could come and pack his equipment for him. The main thing was to go. he could sell the house through the agency that had handled the rental. There was no need to remain and make things any worse.
No need.
Needs scrambled through his body, and he cursed himself for them, for being weak. Without realizing it, he kicked something, and it went skittering across the wooden floor. When he looked, he realized it was Rachel’s earring. She must have dropped it in her hurry to leave.
He wanted something to remember her by, something to hold on the nights when loneliness became so huge it threatened to swallow him whole.
Kirk bent down to pick up the earring. When he raised his head, he was staring straight at the knob of the door to his father’s den. Very slowly, he straightened. It was as if his past were daring him to open the door.
To finally confront the rest of it.
Something cold and clammy wrapped its tentacles around him as he placed his hand on the knob and turned it, opening the door. For a long moment, he just stood on the threshold, looking in.
The room smelled stale.
He walked in, expecting to feel something, some wave of fear, of revulsion. Each time he was summoned to this room, it had been to wait for punishment to be meted out.
The room had always smelled of whiskey and anger.
The whiskey smell was gone. And the anger was now his.
Kirk moved about the claustrophobic room as if he’d never seen it before. And perhaps, in a way, he hadn’t seen it. Not this way, denuded of the things that had held terror for him. The trophies that had once hung on the walls, a tribute to his father’s hunting prowess, were gone. No more dead animals staring at him with unseeing, accusing eyes.
Nothing but the scarred oak desk remained to remind Kirk of his past.
Approaching it, Kirk rubbed his thumb over the corner closest to the door. He’d fallen against that exact same corner that time his father swung out blindly before he could duck. Edgar Callaghan had sent his son sprawling into the desk. Kirk had just barely avoided putting out his eye. There was a tiny scar above his right eye that commemorated the event. He remembered telling Rachel and Cameron that he had gotten the scar fighting a bully. They’d believed him.
Or said they did, he thought now with a tightening of his mouth.
One way or another, they’d always gone out of their way to support him.
If it hadn’t been for them, Kirk knew, he would have run away years before he reached his eighteenth birthday. And he would have run away, he realized, before he discovered his talent with a camera.
It was a room, he thought. Just a room. Not a prison cell. Not a chamber of horrors. Just a room.
He stood, looking around, waiting for that old feeling to permeate him. That feeling of dread, of fear, mingled with overwhelming guilt. Guilt that somehow, in some way, his father’s failings were his fault. That his father’s alcoholism was his fault. That everything bad that had ever befallen his family was his fault.
It didn’t come.
Kirk took a deep breath as a cool wind seemed to sweep through him. None of it had ever been his fault. And he realized that the seeds of that knowledge had been nudged into fruition by another small boy who had felt just as he did. That evil had been his own doing.
“It wasn’t my fault that you drank, was it, old man?” he said aloud, looking at the chair where his father had always sat. “Just like it wasn’t Ethan’s fault that his father was a failure. Or that he was killed.”
With a shake of his head, Kirk laughed at his own folly. At his own stupidity. He’d wasted all those years feeling guilty for no reason, when the explanation had been so simple, so clear. Edgar Callaghan had transferred his own guilt onto his son, and made him a whipping boy, in theory, as well as in practice. He’d done it so well and for so long, Kirk had grown up believing it was gospel.
It fell into place in his head, like dominoes falling against one another until the whole row has fallen. Or, better yet, like the sun coming into a darkened room and chasing away the shadows with its intrusion.
If he wasn’t to blame for his father’s drinking, if he wasn’t as worthless as his father had always maintained, then he didn’t have to taint what he came into contact with. He’d always lived in fear that he would become his father someday. Cruel. Abusive. Heartless.
All his beliefs, the dark foundations of his world, were wrong.
“I guess I just had to see it in another context to realize it for myself. You made yourself a drunk, old man. I had nothing to do with it. And nothing I could have done would have changed it.” Just as nothing he could have done would have had a world-shaking impact on the tragedies he’d preserved for history.
Kirk shook his head again at the shame of it all. “You wasted all those years, taking out your anger on me, missing out on what was important. A home. A family. A wife who loved you.”
Love. That had been the missing ingredient in this house. Missing only because his father had thrown it away. He had been willing, eager, to love his father, and he knew his mother’s love had been all but obsessive. All that love, wasted, misdirected. Abandoned.
Abandoned.
The word echoed in his head. Kirk thought of Rachel, and what she had just said to him.
Wasn’t he guilty of the same thing? She was giving him her love, and he was throwing it away under the sanctimonious guise of doing it “for her own good.” Whatever the reason, it was still being tossed back in her face.
The way his father had tossed his love back in his face.
Kirk wasn’t rich enough to toss a gift like that away. Maybe crazy enough, he reflected, but definitely not rich enough, to toss away the love of a woman like Rachel. And a child like Ethan.
Maybe, just maybe, her love would make him worthy of her. He could only hope so. What he knew was that he planned to love and cherish her and Ethan until his dying day. If he was lucky, that wouldn’t be for a long, long time. It would take that long, he thought, to make up to her for today.
Anticipation hummed through him as he left the room. He felt like someone emerging into the sunlight after years in a dark cave. If this were a play, he thought, there’d be music accompanying his entrance.
Or exit, as it were.
Whatever it was, he knew that his life was ahead of him. And it would be with Rachel. If she’d have him, after the fool he’d just been. His mind moving rapidly, he decided on his next move. He was going to get the photo album he’d made for her, and get down on his knees, if he had to, to make her accept it. And him.
A humbling prospect, he thought, begging. But not nearly as humbling as the idea of going through the rest of his life without her.
As he turned toward the studio, someone
began pounding on his front door. Pounding as if intending to break the door down.
He frowned as he crossed to the door. If it was someone selling subscriptions or cookies, he wasn’t going to find a very agreeable prospective customer.
Kirk pulled open the door. “Hey, what’s the idea? Are you trying to break the door down?” His annoyance evaporated immediately. Rachel stood on his doorstep, shaking like a leaf. She looked almost wild with fear. “Rachel!” He caught her as she stumbled into the house. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Ethan. Cameron just called me from the campgrounds.”
Had the boy been hurt? “What?” he prodded. He’d never seen her like this, and it frightened him. “What about Ethan?”
“He’s missing.”
Chapter 17
“It’s going to be all right.” Kirk’s tone was firm, assured. It belied the tension working through every part of him, wringing him dry.
Rachel sat beside him in the minivan, staring straight ahead at the road, willing them to already be there.
Kirk glanced at her when she didn’t respond. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her knuckles so white he thought they’d break through her skin. They were driving to San Gabriel Mountains Park as fast as was reasonably safe. He kept one eye out for the highway patrol, the other on the road in front of him. Because of the holiday, traffic was mercifully light.
Agitation was beating a sharp drum roll within Rachel, growing in intensity. Would it be? she wondered. Would it be all right? She found her endless supply of optimism completely gone.
“Cameron said Ethan’s been out overnight.” She swallowed, fighting back the terrifying image that the words evoked. “He said he didn’t want to call me, but when they didn’t find Ethan by morning, he knew he had no choice.” She covered her mouth with her hands to hold back a sob. She had been making love with Kirk while her son was lost somewhere. Guilt and fear almost overwhelmed her. “Oh, God, Kirk, he’s just a little boy.”
“A bright little boy. This isn’t his first time camping.” His hands tightened on the wheel, as tight as his control over his thoughts was. He refused to let his mind wander.
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