Right Where We Belong. Brenda Novak

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СКАЧАТЬ all the negative energy. And I know it’s not good for me. We need a fresh start.”

      There was a slight pause. Then he said, “Why the sudden change of heart?”

      “I told you. I can’t handle the anger and the blame. It feels as if almost every person I meet hates me. And I doubt that’ll go away anytime soon.”

      “What do you mean? Why would they hate you? You’re not the one who raped those women. They don’t think you helped Gordon in any way...”

      “No one has launched that accusation, thank God. Right now, they’re only blaming me for missing whatever signs I should’ve seen.” She stared glumly into her glass. “And maybe they have the right. I can’t say anymore what I should or shouldn’t have done. Would some other woman have noticed that he was too secretive? Would she have called his work to verify his hours and location? Would she have searched his stuff and found that ‘rape kit’ hidden in the shed out back?”

      “We’ve been through this. There was nothing to make you doubt him. You even had a regular sex life—or that was what you told me.”

      “We did, for the most part. But how would I know? I was twenty when I married him, and he’s the only man I’ve ever been with. Who am I to say what’s normal between two people? I can only judge from my own experience. Maybe you should tell me.”

      “I’ve never been married. So far, my longest relationship has lasted two months.”

      Still, he had more sexual experience than she did, but when he chuckled about that, she wondered, as she often did, why he hadn’t ever made a commitment to anyone.

      She figured he would eventually—he was only twenty-four. Regardless, that was a question best left for another time. Tonight, she was too bogged down by thoughts of Gordon and what he’d done. “They found blood from one of the women in our van. Did I tell you that? He had his family riding around in a vehicle that still had the blood of a woman he’d attacked.”

      “You told me. That was when we both decided we could no longer maintain our faith in him, remember?”

      She raked her fingers through her hair as she studied herself in the mirror above the dresser. She no longer even looked like the woman she used to be. She hadn’t taken the time to get her hair trimmed—hadn’t wanted to visit the salon she normally frequented while everyone there was whispering about her—so it had grown out of the bob she’d been wearing before her world collapsed. All she could do was pull the thick, auburn mass into a ponytail or let it go wild and curly. She’d always liked the gray blue of her eyes, but they looked empty now—hollow, shell-shocked. Who was this person staring back at her with a face so pale she could almost trace the blue veins underneath? “Maybe I should’ve noticed the blood.”

      “You have children. They scrape their knees and elbows now and then, don’t they? And Gordon fixed mining equipment, which meant he had to have injured himself occasionally. Why would you assume—from a few drops of blood—that he was out harming women?”

      She turned away from the mirror, couldn’t bear to look at herself any longer. “I don’t know. It’s just that so many people think I should’ve spotted something. I’m beginning to doubt myself. The morning after he raped Meredith, he had scratches on his arm. I asked how he got hurt. He said he backed into a ditch he didn’t see at a mine site and got scraped up by blackberry bushes while trying to get a two-by-four under his rear tire. Maybe that seems like a lame excuse now that the police have pointed out the pattern of those scratches. It did look like four fingernails had gouged his arm, but...I honestly thought nothing of it at the time.”

      “It’s only been a month since they locked Gordon up, Savanna. Surely things will get easier.”

      She detected a hint of impatience. He’d heard so much about her problems of late. As sympathetic and supportive as he’d tried to be, she’d been falling apart for too long, ever since she’d learned that her husband was the primary suspect in the string of violent sexual assaults that’d sent the good people of Nephi into a panic. Understandably, Reese was eager to get back to his regular life. He was her younger brother, after all, wasn’t used to having to support her so much. She’d been the one to carry them both through the loss of their elder brother and both parents a little over a year ago.

      He’d had enough sorrow for one fourteen-month period. She felt like an idiot for not realizing before now that she’d exhausted his reserve of compassion, that this was the point where she’d need to soldier on alone.

      “I’ll let you go,” she said abruptly.

      After a brief silence, he said, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

      He probably felt guilty for revealing that hint of impatience. But he was with someone. He’d said that. Anyway, if he was capable of moving on after losing, all at once, three members of their immediate family and was beginning to feel good again, she wouldn’t continue to drag him down. “There’s no need,” she said. “I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be moving as soon as I can arrange it.”

      “That takes time. You’ve got to sell the house, don’t you?”

      “No.”

      “You’re going to walk away from it?”

      “Why not? There’s no equity. Gordon took out a second mortgage almost as soon as he inherited it from his grandmother. With the market the way it is...we’ve been upside down on this place for two years or more.”

      “What about your credit?”

      “The house is in his name. He never put me on the loan or the title. If his mother wants to save this place, she can move in and make the payments. I’ll leave all of his stuff behind—” she’d already boxed them up and stacked them in the garage, anyway “—and put the keys under the mat.”

      “But where will you go? Back to Long Beach?”

      “No.” They’d sold the beautiful five-bedroom, four-bath home their parents had owned in Los Angeles, where they’d been raised, and split the proceeds. Reese had paid off his student loans and was using what he had left for graduate school. He was planning to be a doctor. She’d spent a portion of her inheritance on Gordon’s defense—which she now considered to be a waste of money.

      “Then where?” he asked.

      The only place she could go. “The farmhouse in Silver Springs.” It was all she had left.

      “Savanna, no. That place needs too much work. Dad was barely getting started with it when he...when they had the boating accident. How will you live there?”

      “I’ll renovate it myself.” And why not? They had to do something with it. And neither one of them had wanted to put it up for sale. That home hadn’t been just another real estate purchase to their father, although he’d done a lot with real estate over the course of his life. This was the ranch his grandparents had once owned. He’d had fond memories of the place, was so excited to be able to bring it back into the family where he’d said it belonged.

      “With what money?” Reese asked.

      “The money I have left from the LA house.”

      “That won’t carry you very far, not when you’ll be using it for the repairs as well as your monthly overhead.”

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