Preston's Honor(70)

She glanced up at me and her eyes lingered on my face for several seconds, which was longer than she usually looked at me. “The rain woke me up.”

“Ah. The rain.”

“A miracle, yes? Preston must be happy for his farm.”

“Yes, Preston is happy for his farm.” My voice sounded dull even to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

My mother glanced at me again. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you here?”

I went to her and sank down on my knees in front of her, so desperate for affection, for love that I felt like begging her for it. Would it matter?

“Mama,” I said, and then the tears did start, rolling slowly down my cheeks. “I know we’ve never been very close but . . . did you ever love me, Mama? Is there something lovable about me? Something more than the devil eyes that have reminded you of him all my life? Is there, Mama?” Oh please tell me there’s something good in me. I need it so badly.

Her expression was wary and slightly stunned as she stared at me on my knees in front of her. Her hand lifted from her lap and fluttered in the air for a second as if she was going to touch me and my breath caught with the hope that maybe it would be with tenderness, with the love I craved so desperately from someone, anyone, but mostly from her. But then it dropped again and she looked away from me. “In the morning he went away, but he left me with his eyes. Devil eyes to watch and curse me all the rest of my days,” she muttered, as if to herself more than in answer to my question. But it had been my answer all the same. An ache took up deep inside, making me feel as if I were a thousand years old. I pulled myself to my feet slowly, grimacing as if I’d been beaten, as if the pain might actually be physical. And maybe it was. I couldn’t tell anymore.

Something was wrong with me. Very, very wrong.

And I wouldn’t get better here either.

My eyes moved slowly to the table next to Mama’s chair and I stepped around her as if in a trance. I opened the drawer, my gaze catching on the small, shiny knife my mama had always kept near her for protection, lingering, lingering . . . before I tore my eyes from it, ripped my mind from the thought it’d been moving toward, reaching to the back of the drawer where my mother kept the letters from my aunt. I stared at them for a moment, my heart thumping as I took them all, putting them in the pocket of my jacket.

My Mama remained silent, watching me. “I’m going away for a while. If Preston comes by, tell him I’ve gone, but please don’t tell him where.” I didn’t wait for her answer before pulling the door closed behind me.

I didn’t dare glance back at Linmoor as I drove away. My heart wouldn’t have been able to bear it.



The memory of that night propelled me up and out of bed. But not because thinking about it depressed me—although it did—but because there was something else there . . . something I hadn’t seen all those months I’d been away. When I’d remembered it, I’d remembered the pain, the way the hasty sex against the wall in the foyer had made me feel used and unloved, and the way I’d already been drowning, and that night had seemed like the final shove underwater.

But now, after talking to Preston the day before, I was seeing that night in a different light. I hadn’t known about the fight with Cole. I hadn’t known that Preston had carried the responsibility for Cole’s death on his shoulders all that time in addition to all the other anguish he’d held inside. He was a man with a deeply protective nature. How had it tormented him to feel he was at fault for a situation that caused so much suffering?

I wished we had been in a place where we could have talked about it, but there were so many reasons why we hadn’t. Grief, guilt, confusion, the baby, the farm. I’d never been good at opening up and sharing what was inside me, and the circumstances under which we’d been living certainly didn’t help to encourage what would have been new and terrifying.

But Preston was good at stuffing his own feelings inside, too. Maybe it was part of being one half of a whole, the half that had always seemed content to stay out of the spotlight, to let his twin take the stage. Perhaps he just came by it naturally. Maybe it was part of being a man. I didn’t exactly know. What I did know was that together, we were a recipe for misunderstandings and unresolved hurt. But what I also knew was that if we identified the problem, maybe, oh, maybe we could fix it. At least we could try.

Do you think there’s a chance for us, Lia?

Hope surged inside me.

Make a fuss, mi amor. Make a fuss.

Rosa’s words came back to me, the way she’d said them with such earnest intensity. And a small spark ignited in a place that had never held light or warmth before. I knew what she meant, though she had just been talking about a nametag. She’d meant stand up for yourself, believe in your value. I’d been trying to find it in everyone’s eyes except my own and that’s why it was so easily taken away.

Oh God, I was going to have to figure out how to do that if things were going to work between Preston and me. I was going to have to try, and it scared me half to death because all I knew was how to focus on other people’s needs—even to the detriment of my own. But that hadn’t ever worked for anyone, not really. My mama had become a hermit, hiding away in our apartment unless I dragged her out almost by force, and Preston and I had drifted so far apart, I didn’t know if we could come back together or not.