The Hopechest Bride. Kasey Michaels

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СКАЧАТЬ Patsy’s confession was sealed, and Patsy was, even now, very tightly locked up in an institution for the criminally insane, just as she had been so many years previously, after murdering the father of her firstborn child.

      Patsy had been very tightly locked up then, and had gotten out, gotten out to wreak her havoc on the Colton family. Was she locked up tightly enough this time? It was a question Meredith had to ask herself, even as she shivered in the chill, walking through her sad and neglected gardens as twilight fell on a damp, rainy day.

      In exchange for telling her story, Joe had agreed to keep Joe, Jr. and Teddy, raise them as his own. They now knew that Joe, Jr. was also Patsy’s biological child. They also knew that Patsy had been still actively seeking the infant taken from her at birth so many years ago.

      Patsy had fixated on her children, when she hadn’t fixated on hurting Meredith, taking her place, stealing her life. And it was her children that had prompted Patsy to cooperate. Joe was even continuing the hunt for Patsy’s first child, futile as that might be.

      So Patsy was locked up, Meredith was home, and it was time to put the past in the past, get on with the future.

      Did Meredith feel safe yet? No. No, she didn’t, she couldn’t. She had yet to feel quite whole, as there were still some gaps in her memory, and she’d gotten one new shock after another as her family gathered around her—still the same family, yet so different.

      Her children weren’t children anymore. They had husbands, wives, children of their own. Lives of their own.

      And Joe. The years had not been kind to him; Patsy had not been kind to him. Meredith would give her last breath to see the taut lines around his mouth fade into a smile, her hope of heaven to have him lie quietly beside her in sleep, rather than tossing and turning, obviously in the grip of a nightmare.

      Time. That was what they needed. Just some time. Wasn’t that what Martha Wilkes had told her? Time to heal, time to forgive.

      Of all of those hurt by Patsy, Meredith’s heart most went out to Joe, Jr. and Teddy. If nothing else, Patsy had been a good if too indulgent mother to her two boys, and they both missed her terribly, were too young to understand that there was a new mommy in their lives now, a new mommy who looked like their old mommy, yet wasn’t the same.

      When Joe had told Meredith about Joe, Jr. and Teddy, she had wept, partly for the boys, partly for her husband. How he must have suffered when Patsy told him she was pregnant with Teddy, when he knew he couldn’t be the father. Yet he had loved “Meredith” enough to forgive her affair, had been man enough to claim Teddy as his own, never knowing that he’d once more been the victim of her sister’s deception.

      And Joe, Jr. Patsy had admitted that he was hers, the product of a casual liaison with some unknown man. She’d admitted that she’d left Joe, Jr. on the Colton doorstep, knowing he’d be taken in, knowing she planned to join him in a few short weeks. The deviousness of the woman, the near-brilliant manic imagination of the woman.

      In exchange for Meredith and Joe continuing to raise the boys as their own and hunting for the baby she had named Jewel, Patsy had talked for hours, for days, outlining her deception, filling in blanks with a sort of fierce pride that just emphasized her mental illness.

      She’d tried to poison Joe the night of his sixtieth birthday, had hinted that there had been other plans for other attempts on his life. That had been a shock, a very big shock. She’d laughed as she admitted to being surprised to learn that she wasn’t the only one who wished Joe dead, that Emmett Fallon had also been trying to kill the man.

      But her most particular glee had come in exposing Joe’s brother, Graham, as the father of her son, Teddy. She’d even admitted to blackmailing Graham in order to keep her silence.

      Poor Joe. Poor, deluded, betrayed Joe. He hadn’t wanted to tell Meredith about Graham, but after one horrible nightmare from which she’d had to wake him, he’d finally blurted it all out. He told her that Rand knew, and he knew, but nobody else knew, and Meredith urged him to keep silent, for Teddy’s sake, at least for now. She didn’t know if this was the right or wrong thing to do, whether it was fair to Graham’s other children, Jackson and Liza, but she did know that Joe, Jr. and Teddy were Coltons by name, and Portmans by birth. She would raise both boys as if they were her own, and with no regrets.

      Meredith stopped in front of the fountain, the one that had haunted her dreams and begun her long road back from the amnesia that had plagued her since the accident Patsy had engineered so many years ago. She put out a hand, catching the cool water as it ran over the rim, listening to the gentle sound of it.

      “It’s a lot bigger than the fountain back in Mississippi,” a woman’s voice said from somewhere behind her, “but I think we could have put it together the way we built that one, given enough time and a few margaritas. Hello, Meredith. Your husband thought maybe I ought to visit here for a while, if that’s all right with you?”

      “Martha!” Meredith wheeled around to see Dr. Martha Wilkes standing on the patio, shivering in her thin coat not made for a raw November California day. The psychologist was smiling, her dark face lit with humor even as her brown eyes measured Meredith, her patient of five years.

      Joe had invited her? What a wonderful man! Just what she needed, to talk with Martha, the one person who understood everything, the one person who wouldn’t demand answers because she knew, she knew it all. The one person Meredith could talk to without reserve, without worrying that she might say something hurtful, might have forgotten something important to the other person. The one woman who might be able to help Emily. Meredith’s heart swelled with hope.

      “Well?” Dr. Wilkes asked with a smile. “It’s been a long trip, Meredith. Is that all you’re going to say? ‘Martha?’”

      Meredith launched herself into her friend’s arms. “Oh, my God—Martha!”

      Emily knew more than her parents thought she knew. She’d gone to Rand when she learned that Patsy Portman had made a full confession, and she’d railed at him, pleaded with him, until she’d learned everything, including the knowledge that her conversation with Nora Hickman had directly led to that good woman’s death. Well, Rand hadn’t exactly told her; she’d guessed most of it. It had been easy to think badly of herself, blame herself for anyone’s misfortunes.

      She also knew now that Silas Pike had followed her when she’d fled the Hacienda de Alegria, and had found her in Keyhole, helped by Patsy’s description of her unique, long chestnut-red hair.

      The hair Toby had so admired. The hair that had been her vanity, so that she hadn’t cut it, hadn’t worn a wig, hadn’t disguised herself. She’d been so sure she was safe. She should have cut her hair. Dyed it. Done something.

      The guilt she felt was crushing, debilitating. And never-ending.

      Emily admired her mother’s courage, the woman’s ability to look for happiness where she could, embrace the family that had not seen through Patsy’s deception for ten long years. She was amazed as she watched her mother slide almost effortlessly back into the ebb and flow of daily life at the ranch, her smile always bright even if her eyes were sometimes sad and wistful, her strength of will so obvious to anyone who looked.

      Emily envied her mother’s courage as well, because she had none of her own. She used to, she was sure of that, but she still had horrifying nightmares about Silas Pike, nightmares where he walked toward her with his curious limping gait, his eyes cold and hard, his Fu-Manchu mustache not quite hiding the leer of his smiling mouth and the large gap СКАЧАТЬ