by Nora Roberts
With the taste of blood in his mouth, his sister’s screams banging in his head, he passed out.
The next he knew, he realized his father had slung him over his shoulder, carrying him up the stairs. His ears rang, but he could hear Britt crying, hear his mother telling her to stop.
His father didn’t lay him down on the bed, but shrugged him off his shoulder so Zane bounced on the mattress. Every inch of his body cried out in fresh pain.
“Disrespect me again, I’ll do more than break your nose, blacken your eye. You’re nothing, do you understand me? You’re nothing until I say you are. Everything you have, including the breath in your body, is because of me.”
He leaned close as he spoke, spoke in that smooth, calm tone. Zane saw two of him, couldn’t even manage to nod. The shaking started, the teeth-chattering cold of shock.
“You will not leave this room until I permit it. You will speak to no one. You will tell no one the private business of this family or the punishment you forced me to levy today will seem like a picnic. No one would believe you. You’re nothing. I’m everything. I could kill you in your sleep, and no one would notice. Remember that the next time you think about trying to be a big man.”
He went out, closed the door.
Zane drifted again. It was easier to drift than to deal with the pain, to deal with the words his father had spoken that had fallen like more fists.
When he surfaced again, the light had changed. Not dark, but getting there.
He couldn’t breathe through his nose. It felt clogged like he had a terrible cold. The sort of cold that made his head hammer with pain, had his eyes throbbing.
His gut hurt something terrible.
When he tried to sit up, the room spun, and he feared throwing up.
When he heard the lock click, he started to shake again. He prepared to beg, plead, grovel, anything that kept those fists from pounding on him again.
His mother came in, flipping the light as she did. The light exploded more pain, so he shut his eyes.
“Your father says you’re to clean yourself up, then use this ice bag on your face.”
Her voice, cool, matter-of-fact, hurt almost as much as his father’s.
“Mom—”
“Your father says to keep your head elevated. You may leave your bed only to use your bathroom. As you see, your father has removed your computer, your PlayStation, your television, items he’s generously given you. You will see and speak to no one except your father or me. You will not participate in Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.”
“But—”
“You have the flu.”
He searched her face for some sign of pity, gratitude. Feeling. “I was trying to stop him from hurting you. I thought he might hurt Britt. I thought—”
“I didn’t ask for or need your help.” Her voice, clipped, cold, made his chest ache. “What’s between me and your father is between me and your father. You have the next two days to consider your place in this family, and to earn back any privileges.”
She turned toward the door. “Do as you’re told.”
When she went out, left him alone, he made himself sit up—had to close his eyes against the spinning and just breathe. On shaky legs, he stood, stumbled into the bathroom, vomited, nearly passed out again.
When he managed to gain his feet, he stared at his face in the mirror over the sink.
It didn’t look like his face, he thought, oddly detached. The mouth swollen, bottom lip split. God, the nose like a red balloon. Both eyes black, one swollen half-shut. Dried blood everywhere.
He lifted a hand, touched his fingers to his nose, had pain blasting. Because he was afraid to take a shower—still dizzy—he used a washcloth to try to clean off some of the blood. He had to grit his teeth, had to hang on to the sink with one hand to stay upright, but he feared not doing what he’d been told more than the pain.
He cried, and wasn’t ashamed. Nobody could see anyway. Nobody would care.
He inched his way back to bed, breathed out when he eased down to take off his shoes, his jeans. Every minute or two he had to stop, catch his breath again, wait for the dizziness to pass.
In his boxers and sweatshirt, he crawled into bed, took the ice bag his mother had left, and laid it as lightly as he could on his nose.
It hurt too much, just too much, so he switched to his eye. And that brought a little relief.
He lay there, full dark now, planning, planning. He’d run away. As soon as he could, he’d stuff his backpack with some clothes. He didn’t have much money because his father banked all of it. But he had a little he’d hidden in a pair of socks. His saving-for-video-games money.
He could hitchhike—and that thought brought a thrill. Maybe to New York. He’d get away from this house where everything looked so clean, where ugly, ugly secrets hid like his video game money.
He’d get a job. He could get a job. No more school, he thought as he drifted again. That was something.
He woke again, heard the lock again, and pretended to sleep. But it wasn’t his father’s steps, or his mother’s. He opened his eyes as Britt shined a little pink flashlight in his face.
“Don’t.”
“Shh,” she warned him. “I can’t turn the light on in case they wake up and see.” She sat on the side of the bed, stroked a hand over his arm. “I brought you a PB&J. I couldn’t get lasagna because they’d know if any was missing from the dish. You need to eat.”
“Stomach’s not so good, Britt.”
“Just a little. Try a little.”
“You need to go. If they catch you in here—”
“They’re asleep. I made sure. I’m staying with you. I’m going to stay with you until you can eat something. I’m so sorry, Zane.”
“Don’t cry.”
“You’re crying.”
He let the tears roll. He just didn’t have the strength to stop them.
Sniffling at her own tears, swiping at them, Britt reached down to stroke his arm. “I brought milk, too. They won’t notice if a glass of milk is gone. I cleaned everything up, and when you’re done, I’ll wash the glass.”
They spoke in whispers—they were used to it—but now her voice hitched.
“He hit you so hard, Zane. He hit you and hit you, and when you were on the ground, he kicked you in the stomach. I thought you were dead.”
She laid her head on his chest, shoulders shaking. He stroked her hair.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He sort of squeezed my arms and shook me, yelled at me to shut up. So I did. I was afraid not to.”
“That’s good. You did the right thing.”
“You did.” Her whisper thickened with tears. “You tried to do the right thing. She didn’t try to stop him from hurting you. She didn’t say anything. And when he stopped, he told her to clean up the blood on the floor. There was glass broken in the kitchen, to clean it up, to clean herself up and have dinner on the table by six.”
She sat up, held out half the sandwich she’d neatly cut in two. In that moment he loved her so much it hurt his heart.
He took it, tried a bite, and found it didn’t threaten to come up again.
“We have to tell Emily and Grams and Pop you’re sick. You got the flu, and you’re contagious. You have to rest, and Dad’s taking care of you. He won’t let them come up to see you. Then we have to tell people at the resort you fell off your bike. He said all this at dinner. I had to eat or he’d get mad again. Then I threw up when I went upstairs.”
He took another bite, reached for her hand in the dark. “I know how that feels.”
“When we get back, we have to say you had a skiing accident. Fell. Dad took care of you.”
“Yeah.” The single word rang bitter, bitter. “He took care of me.”
“He’ll hurt you again if we don’t. Maybe worse. I don’t want him to hurt you again, Zane. You were trying to stop him from hitting Mom. You were protecting me, too. You thought he was going to hit me. So d
id I.”
He felt her shift, saw in the faint light of the flashlight she’d set on the bed that she’d turned to stare toward the window. “One day I guess he will.”
“No, no, he won’t.” Inside the pain, fury rose. “You won’t give him any reason to. And I won’t let him.”
“He doesn’t need a reason. You don’t have to be a grown-up to understand that.” Though her tone sounded adult, fresh tears leaked. “I think they don’t love us. He couldn’t love us and hurt us, make us lie. And she couldn’t love us and let it keep happening. I think they don’t love us.”
He knew they didn’t—had known for sure when his mother had come in, looked at him with nothing in her eyes. “We’ve got each other.”
While she sat with him, making sure he ate, he understood he couldn’t run away, couldn’t run and leave Britt. He had to stay. He had to get stronger. He had to get strong enough to fight back.
Not to protect his mother, but his sister.
CHAPTER TWO
On Christmas Eve, Emily Walker still had half a dozen items left on her to-do list. She always made lists, always worked up a schedule. And invariably every item on every list in her history of lists took longer than she’d thought it would.
Every freaking time.
The other thing about lists? Other items tended to pop up onto it, adding yet more time she hadn’t anticipated.
Such as today. In addition to giving the house one last going-over, making her daddy’s favorite stuffed pork chops and scalloped potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner, giving herself a much-needed home facial, driving out to Asheville to pick her parents up from the airport, she’d added in a quick trip to the market to pick up a stewing chicken.
Poor Zane had the flu, so she’d also added making that stewing chicken in a nice batch of chicken soup. And that added on delivering the soup to her sister’s house across the lake.
Which added on the chore of being sweet and nice to Eliza.
To make it worse, she had to be sweet and nice to Eliza after Eliza decreed that Christmas dinner had to be at the old house.
Oh, not to worry, said Eliza, Emily thought while she threw on fresh clothes. She had to skip the facial, needed or not. No, not to worry, because Eliza had already contacted the caterer and switched the venue.
Venue, for God’s sake!
And who in holy hell hired on a caterer for a family holiday dinner?
Eliza Snootface Walker Bigelow, that’s who.
But she’d be sweet, she’d be nice. She damn well wouldn’t start something up with Eliza during their parents’ visit. She’d take over the soup still simmering on the stove, have a little visit with her sick nephew.
And she’d sneak him the latest Dark Tower novel, since King, along with a good dozen others, didn’t make Eliza and Graham’s approved authors list.
What they didn’t know wouldn’t come back and bite her in the ass. Zane was good at keeping secrets. Maybe too good, Emily thought as she slapped some makeup on her face. Maybe she didn’t spend as much time with the kids as she should, but sometimes when she did, she got the sense of … something. Something just not altogether right.
Probably her imagination, she admitted, pulling on her boots. Or just looking for something to whack her older sister with. They hadn’t been close as kids—opposites didn’t always attract, and the nine-year gap between them might have added to it.
They’d grown no closer as adults. In fact, while usually polite—usually—on the surface, there were those undercurrents again. An active mutual dislike.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for her parents and her niece and nephew, Emily could have gone the rest of her life never seeing or speaking to Eliza again.
“A terrible thing,” she murmured as she hurried downstairs. “An awful thing to think, to feel.”
Worse, she feared some of that thinking, that feeling was straight-out resentment on her part—which added shameful.
Eliza was prettier, and always had been. Not that Emily wasn’t cute enough herself, even without the home facial. But Eliza could claim double scoops of good looks, and bigger boobs, too. And of course, given that nine-year head start, had done everything first.
She’d starred in school plays, made head cheerleader, wore the crown as homecoming queen, as prom queen. And when she’d graduated, hadn’t their grandparents given her a slick silver BMW convertible?
Then she’d gone and bagged herself a doctor. A surgeon, and one handsome as a movie star. Had her fancy-dancy country club engagement party, her snooty-assed bridal shower, her extravagant and splashy white wedding.
And she’d looked just magnificent, Emily remembered as she turned off the heat under the soup. Like a queen in her big, beautiful white dress.
She hadn’t resented Eliza that day. She’d been happy for her—even when forced to wear the blush-pink attendant’s gown with its poufy shoulders.
But after that, resentment had built right back up again.
“Don’t think about it now,” she ordered herself, put on her coat, her hat, her gloves. “It’s Christmas. And poor Zane’s sick.”
She got her purse—with the Dark Tower novel already stuffed inside—got hot pads to cart the soup out to her truck and to transfer the soup to Eliza’s.
She’d had the truck washed, waxed, and detailed—something crossed off yesterday’s list—so sticky notes didn’t decorate the dash. And she’d completed a personal check on all the rental bungalows, so when her parents asked—and they would—she could tell them Walker Lakeside Bungalows, the family enterprise, was safe and secure.
She liked being in charge of it now that her parents had retired. Maybe she resented—that word again—cutting the check to Eliza for her share of the profits every quarter. Eliza didn’t do a damn thing, but blood was blood, family was family, so she got a share of what her parents had built and she maintained.
At least the house was hers, just hers now, she thought, looking back on it after she settled the soup pot on the floor of the passenger’s seat.
She loved the house, the wood and stone ramble of it, the wraparound porch, the views of the lake and mountains. It had been home all of her life, and she intended for it to be home until she died. Since she didn’t have kids, and the likelihood of making any looked dim at best, she planned to leave it to Zane and Britt when the time came.
Maybe one of them would live there. Maybe they’d rent it out or sell it off. She’d be dead, so she wouldn’t know the difference.
“A cheerful Christmas thought.”
Laughing at herself, she climbed in the truck, thinking how pretty the house would look come dusk when all the colorful lights came on, the tree sparkling in the window. Just the way it had every Christmas in her memory. The house smelling of pine and cranberry, of cookies warm from the oven.
As she pulled out to take the lake road, she blew her bangs out of her eyes. A trim hadn’t made it on her pre-Christmas list and had to wait.
As she drove around Reflection Lake, she turned the radio on, the volume up, and sang along with Springsteen as she passed the rental bungalows, the docks, the other lake houses, and curved around toward town with the snow-topped mountains rising up into the pale blue of winter sky.
The road rose and fell, twisted and turned—she knew every inch. She cut through Main Street just to see the shops all done up for Christmas and the star rising high above the Lakeview Hotel.
She spotted Cyrus Puffer carting a bag, heading toward his parked truck. She’d been married to Cyrus for almost six months—God, nearly ten years ago, she thought. They’d decided, pretty quick, they made better friends with benefits than husband and wife, and so had had, in her opinion, one of the only truly amicable divorces in the wide world of divorces.
She pulled over to say hey.
“Last-minute shopping?”
“No. Yeah. Sort of.” He grinned at her, a good-looking guy with bright red hair and a happy disposition. “Marlene wanted ice cream—nothing
but mint chocolate chip would do.”
“Well, aren’t you the good husband.”
He’d found the right woman the second time around. Emily had introduced them herself, and ended up being best man at the wedding.
“Doing my best.” That grin just wouldn’t quit. “I guess I’m lucky she didn’t want pickles to go with it.”
“Oh my God!” She gripped his face with both hands. “Oh my God, Cy! You’re going to be a daddy!”
“We just found out yesterday for certain. She doesn’t want to tell anybody yet, except her folks and mine, but she won’t mind me telling you.”
“It’s in the vault, but oh my God, I’m dancing for you.” She yanked him farther through the window to give him a hard, loud kiss. “Best Christmas present ever. Oh, Cy, you tell her merry, merrier, merriest from me. And when she wants to talk about it, just give me a call.”
“I will. Em, I’m so happy I could split in two. I gotta get the ice cream home to mama.”
“You tell her I want to give the baby shower.”
“Really?”
“You bet I do. Merry Christmas, Cy. Oh my God!”
She grinned all the way through town, back to the lake, and into Lakeview Terrace.
As she did every time she turned in, she thought: I’d kill myself if I had to live here.
No question the houses were big and mostly beautiful. And not exactly all the same, as there had been several styles and plans to choose from as she recalled. And many add-on options.
But there was, to her eye, an edging-toward-creepy Stepford air in the development. Perfect perfection, down to the tidy sidewalks, the paved or pavered driveways, the small park—residents and their guests only—with its carefully planted trees, carefully placed benches and walkways.
But her sister loved it, and in truth the perfect rows of McMansions with their manicured lawns suited Eliza very well.
Reminding herself to be sweet, Emily pulled into the driveway. She carried the soup to the door, rang the bell. Like a stranger, she thought, not like family. But they kept their personal palace locked tight.
