Closer Than You Think (73 page)

‘Much.’ Her fingertips petted his chest where she’d clawed him. ‘I hurt you. I’m sorry.’

He had to take a moment to control his voice, because her gentle caress was driving him wild. ‘I’m fine. I’m more worried about you.’

‘She left me, Deacon. She was unhappy with my father, but she’d always acted like she loved me. But she didn’t. Not enough to stay with me.’

He almost told her what he and Bishop suspected – that her mother hadn’t committed suicide – but he held his tongue. If it wasn’t true, he would have upended her world yet again for no good reason. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry you’ve borne the weight of this secret for so long. I’m sorry we had to rip it out of you that way.’

‘I’m not sure there was another way to make me tell it. A lot of therapists have tried over the years. They should take classes from Scarlett Bishop.’

‘Which therapists?’ He jostled her lightly when she didn’t answer. ‘Faith?’

She sighed. ‘My dad and I were spiraling down big-time after my mother died. He felt guilty for upsetting her so much that she lost control of the car and I felt guilty for keeping the truth a secret. He started drinking and it got bad. I took care of the house and kept things up so that no one would know. I kept hoping he’d snap out of it, but things kept getting worse and . . . I kind of snapped under the pressure. I had a breakdown and got sent to a hospital for a while.’

Deacon’s chest tightened. ‘Did you try to kill yourself, Faith?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘No. I went kind of catatonic. Just sat there and rocked. I still do that sometimes when I’m under a lot of pressure.’

‘I know. I’ve seen it.’ She’d rocked herself the night Vega had told her that the mother and child had died in her car. ‘What happened?’

‘I got therapy. Everyone I talked to knew something was wrong, but it almost became a compulsion not to tell. Like the anorexic who finds a sense of control in refusing food.’

That explained a lot. ‘That’s why you had such a tough time tonight.’

She nodded. ‘Old habits die hard. It turned out to be a good thing, though. Dad finally snapped out of it and went into alcohol rehab, which is why I lived with Gran for two years. She refused to let me go back to him until he’d proven his sobriety. He’s been sober ever since.’

‘And you kept the secret.’

‘Until tonight. I’m glad that was my only iceberg lurking under the surface. I don’t think I could go through this night again anytime soon.’

He kissed her forehead and rocked her a little more. ‘There is one bright spot in all of this. That bastard Combs can never hurt you again. I only wish he’d never been able to put his hands on you in the first place.’

‘Me too. But in a way it worked out.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, it brought things between me and Charlie to a head. After Combs cut my throat, the cops tried to find Charlie to tell him, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Finally Charlie’s partner told them that he was at his girlfriend’s house.’

‘Ouch,’ he said mildly.

‘His pregnant barely eighteen-year-old girlfriend.’

‘What a douche.’

She laughed softly. ‘Yes, he was. He was using me as an excuse to not have to marry this girl. You know, the whole “my wife won’t give me a divorce” thing. I would have. I only stayed with him because of my dad.’

‘Because divorce is a sin too?’ Deacon asked acidly, liking Faith’s father less and less all the time.

‘Yes. Although to be fair to my father, he never liked Charlie. When I told him that Charlie had been unfaithful, he supported my decision a hundred percent. I hate to admit this, but Charlie wasn’t the only one making excuses. I think I used worry over hurting my father to justify my inaction. I don’t like change. I like things orderly. Getting a divorce was scary. And inconvenient, as long as I’m being honest. If Combs hadn’t put me in the hospital, I might never have found out that Charlie was cheating. Cheating and physical abuse were probably the only two things that would have gotten me up off my keister and into a lawyer’s office.’

Deacon couldn’t keep his question contained. ‘Did you love him?’

‘No, I hadn’t loved him in years, maybe never. At the beginning I loved the man I thought he was. He may have even loved the woman he thought I was.’

‘Who did you think he was?’

‘A good man who took care of other people. A hero. Not a superhero, of course. He didn’t have a leather coat or the cool shades.’

Deacon’s heart warmed. ‘Who did he think you were?’

‘Obedient and biddable.’

He snorted. ‘Then your ex was not only a douche, but a stupid douche.’

She chuckled. ‘True, but I was more timid in those days. I’d just started grad school and was so young. At the beginning we were happy. At least I was. When someone cheats, you’re never sure that anything they said or did before was true.’

Deacon thought of Brandi, the girl she’d been. And the boy he’d been. ‘I know.’

Her petting fingers stilled. ‘Who?’ she asked simply.

After all she’d shared, he’d be selfish not to give a little quid pro quo. Still, he hesitated. ‘Brandi,’ he finally said. ‘My ex-wife.’

She drew back, staring up at him. ‘You were married?’

‘For about six months, back when I eighteen.’

‘Oh.’ She bit her lip. ‘Deacon, is Greg your son?’

He nearly dropped her, catching her as she started to slide down his legs. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No, no, no. God, no.’ He shook his head as he settled her back on his lap. ‘No.’

‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘I get that the answer is no. So what happened with Brandi?’

‘Just a really bad string of choices on my part. But it nearly killed Greg, so it’s not a time – or a
me
– that I like to remember. When my mother and Bruce died, I kind of went off the deep end and Brandi was there for me. But she was what you’d now call a troubled teen. My uncle Jim called her a whole lot worse. He hated her. Said he knew her type and to stay away from her. Said that as long as I lived under his roof, I had to obey his rules.’

‘Fightin’ words for a teenager,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Jim hated Brandi, but I
really
hated Jim. We’d lived with him before, when my father died. We’d been living in the house next door to theirs, which he owned and rented. But when my father died, my mother couldn’t pay the rent, so Jim evicted us.’

‘I know. Dani told me about it. She said it was especially hard on you.’

‘Dani slept with Mom. I bunked with Adam and his window looked into my old room. It was hard looking out and seeing someone else in the bedroom that had been mine. Jim said it was “just a house”. But for me, it had been home for my whole life. I forgot about that until Monday night when I went to see Greg. He’s in Adam’s old room and he asked me why I always looked out the window when I came to see him. I hadn’t thought about that time in years.’

‘Lots of that going on,’ she said wryly. ‘And? Brandi?’

‘I’m getting there. My contempt for Jim skyrocketed after Bruce and my mom died, because he didn’t really want to take Greg in. He . . .’ Deacon paused. Sighed. ‘Jim didn’t approve of my mother having children in the first place. You said that Greg told you about our syndrome?’

‘Waardenburg with two a’s. What about it?’

‘Well, it’s genetic. Hereditary. In our family it’s passed down through the women. Some kids in the family get it and some are completely passed over. My mother had it, but Tammy didn’t. So Adam was fine and Dani and I . . . weren’t.’

She stiffened, her hands clenching into fists. ‘You are more than fine, Deacon Novak.’

‘I wish you’d been there to defend me then,’ he teased, more than touched. ‘Anyway, Jim didn’t approve of Mom having more kids, and told her so when she got pregnant with Greg. So when Bruce and Mom died and Aunt Tammy insisted on taking Greg in, Jim got on his high horse about how he’d already taken us in once and now he was having to clean up my mother’s mistakes again.’

Faith frowned. ‘He really thought of Greg as a mistake?’

‘He said he did. It’s hard to know with Jim how much is bluster. The other thing he was upset about was that they’d left the house to us. He decreed that we had to move in with him and sell the house. I fought him. It was our house, and he’d booted me out of my home once before already. I didn’t have a sense of mortgages or taxes, but I wanted Dani and Greg to have Bruce’s house. That we had to live with Jim and Tammy again after Mom died, I saw as temporary. In my mind I’d planned to graduate high school, get a job to pay the bills, and have me and Dani and Greg live in
our
house. Looking back, I was embarrassingly unrealistic.’

‘You wanted your family all together. That’s a lovely dream. You were just too young.’

Deacon smiled at her. ‘And I think if Jim had said it that way, I might have listened. But he didn’t and so we were arguing all the time . . . and then there was Brandi. I was eighteen and she was hot. And she was really into the
me
I’d created.’

‘The leather coat and the hair and glasses.’

‘Yeah. Having a girl like that want me when my world had just imploded was more than I could resist at that age. But like I said, Jim really hated her type. So when he also decreed that Brandi wasn’t welcome under his roof, I figured,
hell, I have a roof of my own
. I married Brandi in a fit of defiance and we moved into my house.’

‘I thought Jim made you sell the house.’

Deacon winced. ‘Well, all of this happened in the course of a few weeks. The estate wasn’t settled yet. I thought if I got married and set up housekeeping, they couldn’t make me leave. So I did. Like I said, I made a string of bad choices after Mom died. Jim ranted that I was an idiot, but Tammy said they should let my little fantasy run its course, that as soon as the mortgage came due and I didn’t have the money, I’d realize that Jim was right and that I’d give up on this whole setting-up-house idea and go to college like she wanted me to.’

‘And your marriage?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think she really took it seriously. It was just paper and easily dealt with later. I wanted to prove them both wrong.’

‘So how did all of this almost kill Greg?’

‘Tammy let me have him for a few hours after school one day. Brandi had done some drugs in high school, but she said she was clean. I foolishly believed her.’ He sighed. ‘She also said she loved me and I foolishly believed that too.’

‘Maybe “foolishly” is too harsh,’ Faith said gently. ‘Maybe you were a young man missing your mother and Bruce and wanted to create a home like the one you’d lost.’

Something tight in Deacon’s heart loosened. Yes, that was exactly what it had been. That she’d seen it so effortlessly . . . 
I could love this woman
. Maybe he was already well on his way.

‘Maybe,’ he said gruffly. ‘But that was a bad day. A horrible day. Greg got into Brandi’s purse. Luckily she’d already snorted all the coke she’d hidden in there. There was just dust, but it was enough to put a one-year-old in critical condition for days. Jim blamed me, told me Brandi had to go, and he was right on both counts. I lashed out at her, but she cried, so repentant, so I let her stay one more day. The next day I came home from visiting Greg in the hospital to find Brandi and her dealer in my mother and Bruce’s bed, doing lines of coke. That was it. I called the cops. Of course Jim was on patrol and he showed up to make the bust. Made a big deal of how stupid I was in front of everyone. I gave up. Let him have Greg. Let him sell the house. I went to college and moved out.’

‘I don’t think I like your uncle very much.’

‘I don’t like yours much either,’ he said wryly. ‘But Jim’s not a bad man. He just thinks he’s right and he is often enough to make him insufferable. I went away to school, but I was still close enough that I could visit Greg and Dani on the weekends. And then I got recruited into the Bureau and was able to visit less often. Greg did come live with me in Maryland for a few years, when he hit middle school. Everything was great for a while, but then he got belligerent and was expelled from the school for the deaf there. Jim said my experiment had failed and since he still had custody, he took Greg back. Dani was here, but she was doing her internship and she didn’t have the time to spend with him. That’s when I put in for a transfer. It was so frustrating because I knew Greg was unhappy, but the wheels turn slowly in the Bureau. Greg kept getting into trouble, mostly for fighting. Then Tammy had a heart attack and Jim blamed Greg, even if he never said a word. When Greg got thrown out of the local school for the deaf here too, I was so desperate to come home that I was ready to quit the Bureau and find another job. I needed to get Greg into a new school and be here when he started.’

‘He was mainstreamed, then?’

‘Yes. And I didn’t want him starting a new high school filled with hearing kids on his own.’

‘He does very well.’

‘One on one. Not in the classroom. And in the cafeteria at lunch? You might as well put him at a table for one with a big ole spotlight on it. I needed to be here. Adam helped me get this transfer, and now I’m here and determined to be to Greg what Bruce was to me. The best male role model I can be. I’m not giving up on him.’

‘You’re saying that the two of you are a package deal,’ Faith said quietly.

‘Yes,’ he answered and held his breath.

‘That’s not a deal-breaker for me. I like Greg,’ she said, then smiled when his breath came out in a rush. ‘So we’ve made it through Day Two. What excitement do you have planned for Day Three?’

‘Finding the bastard who wants to kill you,’ he said soberly.

Her smile disappeared. ‘Please let me help you. Let me finish going through the Foundation names. At least I can do that much.’

‘Only if you stay where I know you’re safe. That’s all I ask, Faith.’

‘I promise. I’ll go to the precinct tomorrow and I’ll stay there all day.’ She kissed the corner of his mouth tenderly, taking care not to touch the cut on his lip. ‘Did I do that?’

Just that quickly, his body responded. ‘Yes. But I kind of liked seeing you all wild.’