“For God’s sake, Ian,” Aimee bit out, her eyes red rimmed and face puffy. “I want to show you something, Carlos. Will you come with me?”
Natalya swiftly rose to her feet. She glanced down at me, panicked. We both knew what happened the last time I went off alone.
I stood and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her breast pressed into my side. “I’ll be fine,” I whispered in her ear. “I doubt she’ll try to hypnotize me.”
Natalya pressed a flat hand to my chest. “That’s not funny.”
“We won’t be long, Natalya,” Aimee said with an unmistakable edge to her tone. She might be married to and in love with Ian, but she didn’t like Natalya with me, not with the way she visibly seethed underneath her barely controlled exterior while she watched us.
Ian glanced at his watch. “You’ve got an hour; then I’m coming to get you.”
Aimee lifted her face to the ceiling, exasperated. “With what? I have the car. Dad, make sure Ian stays put.”
Hugh’s brows lifted over the rim of the wineglass from which he was drinking. He waved a fork at Ian’s empty chair. “Have a seat, son. You and Cathy can now interrogate Natalya.”
“Hugh,” Catherine huffed, annoyed. Ian kissed Aimee’s cheek. He whispered to her, then returned to his chair. Catherine got up from hers. “Would you like another glass of wine, Natalya?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well, I need one. So do you, Ian.” She patted his shoulder as she passed behind him, heading for the kitchen. “Actually, I think we need another bottle.”
I cupped Natalya’s cheek. “I’ll be fine.”
Her eyes searched mine. “What if where she’s taking you triggers James?” she asked in a low voice meant only for me. “And then you’re with her and you forget about me . . .”
I kissed her mouth hard, stopping her words. “I love you, Nat.” Then I left with Aimee before either of us could change our minds. Besides, I was tired of having an audience. I came to California to meet with Aimee. She was the one I wanted to see more than anyone.
Aimee drove their minivan, taking sides streets to a freeway. She was not Thomas, and she’d been a pawn in his game to keep me hidden, but my palms were still sweating. I couldn’t stop my heart from hammering. She hadn’t told me where we were going despite my asking. “You’ll see,” she’d answered, fighting her tears from falling. I figured it was too difficult for her to explain. Yet, I still went with her.
She exited the freeway a short distance later to an expressway. She talked sparingly, pointing out landmarks here and there. I didn’t notice anything that might have meaning to me, and from her tone, they weren’t of consequence to her. Her comments were solely meant to fill the void between us.
After a few miles she turned uphill, weaving along residential roads. I had a moment of panic, thinking she was taking us to the meadow she once told me had been her favorite place to be with James, a place that meant much more to both of them. And the one and only place I imagined could yank me from my fugue state. James had proposed to, and Phil had accosted, Aimee in that meadow. It was an emotionally intense spot for everyone.
But my worries slipped away to be replaced with another form of panic. She turned onto the driveway of a cemetery.
I clutched the door handle, knowing exactly where she was taking us.
We followed the road through the grounds and she eventually pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. “It’s over there.” She pointed across the lawn, then opened the door and got out of the car. She tromped across the lawn without looking back.
I unfolded from the car and followed. She stopped about twenty-five meters in and moved aside when I joined her. She pointed at a granite headstone.
JAMES CHARLES DONATO
BELOVED SON
Birth and death dates followed.
I slid my hands into my back pockets. I should have felt angry looking at the stone, and I should have felt some sort of connection to, or sense of loss toward, the woman standing beside me. The man I used to be had lost everything. Instead, I felt a bone-deep fear that Natalya could be right. Would I recognize her when I got back to the Tierneys’ house?
I glanced from the headstone to the car and back and swallowed the rising panic. “Is anything buried here?”
Aimee hummed a laugh. It sounded cruel and was filled with loathing. “A coffin full of sandbags.” Part of Thomas’s stratagem to fake my death, she told me, and I had to remind myself she didn’t know the full story. Based on what Thomas explained to me yesterday, Aimee and anyone else close to James had been told the bare minimum of what they needed to hear.
“Leaving you behind in Mexico was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was the right thing.”
Afternoon sunlight peeked through the tree canopy. Shadows of leaves danced on her clothes. Warm light played off the outline of her profile. It reflected in the shimmer of tears that moistened the soft tissue under her eyes.
“I love James. I will always love him. And for the most part, he treated me very well. In the end, though . . .” Her voice slid away. She swiped a finger under an eye and hummed uneasily. “You know what happened.”
“I wish I could apologize on his behalf.” I wished I could beat the crap out of James for what he’d asked of her. How he’d expected the love of his life to bury what happened with Phil until Thomas and the DEA could carry out the sting operation. For not allowing her to heal the way she needed to.
She sucked in her lower lip. “There are three reasons why I’ve been able to forgive James.” With her arm down by her side, she splayed three fingers. “One, I had to put the past behind me. Two, James was fiercely loyal to me. He was protecting me the best way he knew how, and that was by doing what he thought he could to keep Phil away from me. But Carlos,” she lifted her head, her eyes a piercing blue in the shadows, “I have to believe James is dead. He is dead to me.”
My chest rose and fell with a deep, settling breath. “That’s the third reason, isn’t it?”
She pressed her lips between her teeth as though holding the emotion inside and nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do, or how I’d feel, were you James, and you moved back here. That scares me. I’ve never told Ian, but I know it’s something he thinks about.”
I took two steps back and one forward, rocking on the lawn. What would James do? I had to assume he’d return home as soon as he could. Would he bring the boys with him or leave them behind?
“You’ve mentioned James wasn’t like his brothers. Other than how he handled the situation with Phil, was he a good man?”
“I wouldn’t have spent as many years of my life with him as I did if he wasn’t. There were things about his past, things that happened before he moved to California when we were kids, that he kept from me. I have to believe he did that because he was ashamed. But I’d trust him with my life, even after what happened in the meadow.”
“My sons . . . should something happen to me . . .”
“James will be angry and hurt. He will feel like everyone bailed on him, but he would never give them up.”
Aimee had built a new life with Ian, a man I sensed she loved deeply. What would happen to them when James returned? Would he try to win Aimee back? He’d already left Aimee behind, but then that hadn’t been intentional. It probably never crossed his mind he wouldn’t be back for his wedding.
What about Natalya? Would she give him up, or fight for him? James wouldn’t know her.
“Would you leave Ian for James?”
“I honestly don’t know. But I can tell you this. For Ian and me to be truly happy together, I can’t live near James. There’s too much history. Ian trusts me, but I know he’ll wonder, and that’s not fair to him.” She rested a hand over the lower region of her belly. “It wouldn’t be fair to our child.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Her mouth turned downward and she looked at the headstone. She’d probably imagined for as many years as she and James dated telling him that news. For one day they would be married and she’d birth his children. But here he stood before her, but not really him, and she was pregnant with another man’s child.