A Deep and Dark December (30 page)

Graham appeared behind Patricia and Erin stumbled back a step. He looked like the old Graham, the one who stared back at her from the pages of her high school yearbook. So young. So unencumbered.

He snagged Patricia around the waist and brought her up against him. “Maybe I just want to be where you are.” He nuzzled her neck, blatantly running a hand up to her breast.

Erin’s chest burned, watching them together. Her internal chant of
this is not real, this is the past
was abruptly cut off as Patricia moaned and gripped Graham’s ass, grinding her pelvis against his. Erin clamped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes closed tight, but not before she saw Graham kiss Patricia, pressing his lips to hers as he wrestled with the buttons on her blouse.

The room was suddenly hot, stifling. Then Graham’s lips were on hers, his body against hers, as he’d been with Patricia. Erin opened her eyes and saw Graham nose to nose with her. He yelled something and then pressed his mouth to hers again. Through him she could see the other Graham—the past Graham—leading Patricia back to the bedroom as he shucked his shirt and Patricia laughed.

Erin closed her eyes and focused all her energy into what she knew to be real—the feel of Graham’s lips on hers, his body covering hers. And slowly the sounds from the other bedroom faded away, replaced by the sound of Graham’s rough breathing as he broke the kiss. She opened her eyes again to find him hovering over her, his face creased with concern.

“Finally,” he said, collapsing against her. He held her tight, mashing her arms to her sides and whooshing the breath out of her. Just as suddenly he released her, searching her face once again, making sure she was really in the here and now. “Say something.” He smoothed the hair back from her brow. “Erin…”

“I’m here. I’m…back.”

He crushed her to him again, this time not as hard. “Thank God. I didn’t know what to do. I was about to call for an ambulance.”

“How long…?”

He released her. “Twenty minutes, half an hour. I don’t know. I tried everything I could think of to get you back.”

“Kissing? What am I? Sleeping Beauty?”

“You can joke when I’m nearly hoarse from yelling your name?”

She sat up and realized her nightgown and the bed around her was damp. “Why am I wet?”

“Cold water. Ice. Warm water. I tried it all.”

“And only the kiss worked?”

“I was desperate.” He adjusted his position, sitting across from her. “Where did you go?”

He asked the question as though she’d made the choice to leave. As though she’d left him on purpose when it was him who would leave her. She wanted to get defensive with him, blame him for all she’d seen as though he’d only just done it. But she was the only one at fault here. She’d purposefully focused on Patricia, drawing herself into that last scene. She had wanted to know more about the woman and the events that would haunt Graham from within like some parasitic specter.

What had happened between him and Patricia that had led to the events in that apartment and her death? Graham still carried the guilt over it, would carry it for years, dragging it into his and Erin’s future lives together. She wanted to ask him about it, grill him for every detail, but she’d made a promise to her father a long time ago that she wouldn’t ever talk about what she saw in her visions. Talking about someone’s past with them before they could tell it themselves would change the natural course of things and might somehow alter the future.

The future. The future was a monster she could confront but never vanquish. She hated it. Hated the knowing and yet not knowing enough. And now he wanted to know what she couldn’t tell him.

So instead she looked him square in the eye and lied. “I went back to when I was a child.”

“Uh huh.”

He didn’t believe her. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her legs, rocking a little. She’d have to give him something here. Maybe if she did, he’d give her something in return. “My mom…” She cleared her throat and started again, but the lump in her throat stuck. “My mom left when I was eight. I’d had a vision about it a week before. I told my dad about it. I wanted him to stop her, to do something to keep her from leaving us.”

“But he didn’t.”

She shook her head. “He got mad at me for telling him. He told me that he wouldn’t be stopping her from leaving. I think I told him I hated him. I don’t know.” She looked away, hiding sudden tears. She hated that she still cried over a woman who never gave her a backwards thought. “He forbade me from looking at the future ever again and he said that if I told my mom what I’d seen that she’d probably only leave sooner. So I kept my mouth shut and got an extra week with her because of it.” Her voice broke as the tears spilled over.

Graham reached for her, but she pulled away. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted his truth. Swiping at her eyes, she continued. “I never looked at the future again until the day my boss handed me the Lasiter file and I accidentally saw Greg dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“No. I’m sorry that you’d rather dig up an old, painful memory than tell me the truth.”

Erin looked at him with haunted eyes. Graham was sorry about that, too. Sorry she didn’t trust him enough to tell him the truth. She’d offered up that story about her mother too easily. What could she possibly have seen…?

Oh, shit.
Patricia.
He could see it on her now, the questions piling up behind her beautiful eyes. She didn’t want to ask. She
wouldn’t
ask. She’d divulged that story about her mother to get him to confide in her about Patricia. How much had she seen? How far back had she gone? What did she know? How in the hell could he tell her any of it when he couldn’t bear to look at it himself?

She’d tried to trade a part of herself for a part of him, an ugly memory for an ugly memory. Except his past transgressions ran colder and more dangerous than childhood heartbreak. He’d betrayed someone who’d trusted him, someone he loved and who had loved him in return. How could he possibly explain the reasons why, when he hadn’t fully accepted them himself?

She was already looking at him differently. The worry and fear he’d felt for her during her episode boiled over. His breath came harsher, his heart thundered in his chest. The edges of his vision hazed red and still she sat there, silently pleading with him to tell her everything. She’d gone behind his back and riffled through his past, looking for what?

“And what is the truth, Graham?” Her appeal was small and sad, lacking reproach.

“What do you want from me?”

She didn’t flinch at his anger. She just sat there, watching, waiting. The light from the bedside lamp cast half her face in shadow, but he didn’t need to see her full expression to feel her disappointment. It wrapped around him, lashing him to her like a prisoner.

“What do you
want
?” he asked again, his voice betraying his inner turmoil.

“I’m sorry. I…” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I should know better. I’m sorry.”

He pretended he didn’t see the tears she tried to hide, but they took a nick out of him, marring his already damaged soul. He gulped back the rising pain. He’d hurt her. Again. Maybe his father was right. Maybe they
were
wrong for each other, but he’d gotten the most important part wrong. Erin wasn’t the one lacking, Graham was.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” she was saying. “I knew better, but I couldn’t help it. I’m not like my aunt. Or I wasn’t. I don’t try to look into people’s lives, prying where I don’t belong. That’s not me.”

So she had seen something about him, something she’d purposefully set out to find.

“I want you to know,” she continued, “that I didn’t get to choose where the—”

She pressed the heels of her hands into the sides of her head and squeezed her eyes shut, taking slow, deep breaths. He started toward her, but she waved him off.

“I’ve got this. Give me…” More deep breaths. “…a minute.” After a few moments more, she sighed heavily and opened her eyes. “Okay. It’s gone.” Her sudden smile twisted his gut. “I did it. I did it all by myself.”

He couldn’t help the half smile he gave her in return. “Good job.”

“Thanks.” She grew serious again, twisting the edge of her nightgown. “This thing, this whatever it is that’s happening to me, it’s changed my ability. I used to be able to choose when and who I saw. Now, it’s like if I think about someone,
bam
, I’m there, past or present. I thought about Keith and saw his death with no decision on my part. None at all.”

The fist-sized knot in his chest loosened. Whatever she’d seen of his past wasn’t her choice then. She hadn’t gone behind his back.

“At least at first,” she said.

“What do you mean
at first
?”

“This last time I went from vision to vision. The first one I didn’t choose, but the second one… I purposefully changed the vision. I was wrong to do it and I’m sorry.”

The knot was back. “Changed how?”

“I can’t tell you. If I tell you it could alter the future.”

“Between us.”

“Yes.”

“What am I supposed to say? You went into my past… I’m assuming my past?” She nodded, confirming his worst fears. “On purpose. Looking for what?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t… Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well that helps.” He rose from the bed and began to pace, trying to smother the clawing panic. “Do I get to rummage through your drawers now? Go through your things? Know things about you that aren’t any of my goddamned business?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I got that.”

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No shit.”

“There’s no way to make it up to you, I know.”

“And I don’t even get to know what part of my life’s been violated?”

“I can’t.”

He stopped and stared at her, the nightmare growing, spreading like a cancer against her. “
You can’t
is awfully convenient.”

“That’s not fair.”

Un-fucking-believable.
“Fair?” He stalked toward the bed. To her credit, she didn’t flinch or shrink away. “You want fair?” he demanded. “What would be fair here, Erin, is you telling me what the hell is going on. You can tell me all about your visions of the killer and of Keith, but when you pry into my past, all of a sudden you play the
I Can’t Change the Future
card. Bullshit.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? Your visions have already changed the future. If you hadn’t shared what you’d seen about the killer I would’ve accepted the D.A.’s decision that Greg and Deidre’s deaths were exactly as they appeared—murder/suicide. I wouldn’t have considered Keith a suspect until you told me about your visions. And maybe he wouldn’t have killed himself if you hadn’t confronted him about your vision of him and Deidre.”

Her hands flew to her mouth and she sucked in a breath. That was a cheap shot on his part, but the anger and fear made him not care. She’d done this to him, to them.

“Which is it, Erin? Because you can’t have it both ways.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Maybe so, but at least I’m honest.”

“Yeah, you’re
so
honest.” She came up to her knees on the bed, her gaze nearly level with his. “You’re so honest you killed that man and put the gun in Patricia’s hand. You’re so honest you wiped everything down so no one would know you were even in that apartment. So
honest
that you left her there alone, dead. You loved her and just left her.”

“That’s it. Go on. Don’t stop now. What else did you see?”

“I saw you pull up her shirt, her bra, and remove a recording device.”

“What else?”

“I saw you kissing her, touching her.”

“Touching her how?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Is that the part you had to see?” he asked, his voice punishing. “Me
fucking
her?”

“Stop it!”

“You wanted to know about her. You had to look. Don’t chicken out now. Ask me about it. Cast your judgment.”