Prospect Street (43 page)

“He left.”

“I'm going to press charges unless he moves out of here and away from Prospect Street.”

“I'll make sure. Nobody likes him anyway.”

“You can tell him I'll come by on Monday to check. If his stuff isn't gone, I'll report this as attempted rape of a juvenile.”

“He'll be gone.” Colin stole a glance at Remy. “Hey, Remy, are you okay?”

She just cried harder.

“She's a good kid,” Colin told David. “She was just playing at being older. I don't think she knew what could happen.”

“She found out.” David tightened his arm around his daughter. “Let's go, sweetheart.”

“Are you going…to tell Mom?”

“You know I have to.”

“She'll hate me! She'll never trust me again.”

“She won't hate you.” Trust was a separate issue. He pulled Remy's coat closed and buttoned it, as he had buttoned it hundreds of times when she was little. Then he helped her toward the door.

Outside, the cold air seemed to revive her. She gasped when it hit her, but it seemed to clear her head. By the time they reached the row house, her sobs had diminished.

The door was unlocked. David pushed it open and ushered Remy inside. Faith stood in the foyer with Pavel Quinn beside her. “Remy?” she asked.

Remy began to cry again. Faith grabbed Remy's hands and held them to her cheeks.

“Remy, are you okay? David, is she okay?”

She wasn't okay; and wouldn't be for a long time. But for the first time, David was absolutely sure she was going to be.

“She had a close call,” he said. “She's been lying and hanging out with some college guys up the street. She was lying to them, too, about her age. One of them nearly raped her.”

Faith let out a cry and pulled Remy to her chest. Remy went without resistance. David glanced at Pavel. The man's eyes were blazing, and David realized he had an ally. In a different time and place, Pavel would have been strapping on his six-shooter to avenge Remy's honor.

“I took care of it,” David told him. “He'll be moving out.”

Pavel nodded. “He'd damned well better.”

“How did this happen?” Faith said. She was trying to get answers from Remy, but David put his hand on her shoulder.

“I'll tell you the whole story. I promise. She's too upset to go into it again.”

“She was supposed to go to Megan's house. I thought that's where she was. Then I came home, and Alex told me—”

David cut her off. “Remy and Alex are coming with me to the cabin for the weekend.”

Faith looked up. “No, she's upset, David. She can't go—”

Remy pulled away from her mother. “I'm going with Daddy.” She crossed her arms, as if to comfort herself. “That's…where I want to go.”

David watched Faith and the parade of expressions that crossed her face. He was relieved to see acceptance bringing up the rear.

“Okay. I can see you do.” Faith smoothed Remy's hair back from her forehead. “That's the best place for you right now. Shall I throw a few extra things in your backpack so you can stay warm?”

“Thank you.” Remy sniffed.

David rested his hand on his daughter's shoulder. “Why don't you go wash your face while your mom packs?”

“You'll wait?”

“I'm pretty good at waiting for you,” David said.

Her eyes met his. A smile trembled on her lips, then died. It was a start.

B
y the time David and the children drove off together, Faith knew the whole story. David had conveyed the rest of it while she packed warmer clothes for Remy's trip to Maryland. Now, as she stood at the window and his car passed the house, heading out of town, she felt her shoulders sag and the muscles of her throat tighten in protest.

“You must be feeling a million different things.”

She hadn't forgotten Pavel's presence, but his words startled her, as if he'd seen directly inside her heart. “I'm worried about Remy. She's been through so much, now this.”

“What a great mother you are. Anybody else would be furious.”

“Of course I'm angry, too. What were those young men thinking? How could they believe Remy was a senior in high school? And the one who almost—” The word lodged in her throat. She couldn't say it. “He's lucky he's getting off so easily.”

“Not as easily as he thinks. I have friends on the police force. They'll be interested in his extracurricular activities.”

“No, David's right. We can't drag Remy through anything
else. And the fact that she's been lying about her age would make it harder to prosecute him.”

“I'm talking about drugs. He'll be out of business shortly, and he'll be out of Georgetown shortly, too, if he knows what's good for him.”

Faith hugged herself. Remy was lucky. She had two men who cared about her and wanted to protect her. She had a mother and a brother who would do anything they could. She had behaved badly and taken foolish risks, but she was going to be all right. She had all the help she needed.

That realization didn't calm her as much as it should have. Faith was still angry, and not only at Enzio Castellano. “
I
should have realized. I knew how hostile she was, but I thought if I was just patient, if I left the door open, she'd come back to me. I know her better than anybody does. But I never guessed my own daughter was capable of that kind of deceit.”

“She's a teenager, and like you said, she's been through a lot. Rebellion comes with the territory, doesn't it?”

“She lied to
me.
Over and over, and I couldn't see it. My God, I must be the stupidest woman in the world.”

He came up behind her and put his hands on her arms, rubbing them slowly back and forth. “But it's okay now. She's safe, and judging from what I saw, she learned a huge lesson.”

“And when am
I
going to learn?” She faced him, her anger growing. “When am I going to figure out that nobody's the person I think they are? Not even a child I raised. I hovered over her. I taught her my values, and I thought that was all I needed to do. I never thought she would turn everything I believed about her inside out.”

He didn't say anything. He seemed to know she wasn't finished.

Her next words were more emphatic. “Nobody's told me the truth since the day I was born. Not my parents, not my husband, not even my beloved daughter!”

“Not me.”

“Right. Not you.” Anger was slowly turning to fury. She had
been terrified to discover how close Remy had come to disaster. Terrified of all the things that might have happened but hadn't. Terrified that she herself had made such a huge mistake in judgment, that she hadn't looked closely enough or intervened. Fury felt better than terror.

Pavel cocked his head, as if he were a spectator watching a storm spin out of control. “What is it, Faith, that makes people lie to you? Maybe you were just born gullible. Do you think that's it? Or maybe it's a plot. All of us who've ever cared about you get together on a regular basis and decide how best to deceive you. A secret society of liars, devoted just to Faith Bronson, and our only purpose is to shatter your belief in yourself.”

There was no sarcasm in his voice. He asked the questions as if she might really know the answers.

“How dare you!” Her eyes narrowed, and her fists balled. “You think this is funny? Do you think what you did to me was funny, Pavel? Passing yourself off as somebody you're not?”

“I'm not a master of psychology, but here's something I learned in the business world. The things we hate most in other people are the things we don't like about ourselves.”

Her hands were trembling. “I—am—honest. I don't lie about who I am. I don't pretend to be somebody I'm not.”

“Then let's hear a little of that famous honesty. You're angry at your daughter for lying to you, even though you know she's just a kid like a million others. You're angry, even though you know deep inside that this isn't about you.”

“It feels like it's about me. It keeps happening. Over and over again!”

“No, I think it reminds you of something important about yourself.”

“You think you know what I'm feeling? Right now I'm feeling like I never want to see you again.” She stepped closer. “You of all people have no right to lecture me. Look at your track record in the honesty department.”

“How many times in the last months have you used that line
in your head? If you focus on the lies everyone else has told you, then you don't have to focus on the lies you tell yourself, do you?”

“What lies?” She shouted the words.

“Come on, what are you feeling, Faith? Besides anger? Besides hurt that somebody lied to you again?” He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her one step closer. “What in the hell are you feeling?”

“They left without me!” She shoved his chest with her palms, but he didn't move. She didn't know she'd said the words out loud until Pavel tightened his grip.

“They abandoned you?”

Her stomach churned, and her palms began to sweat. For the first time she realized how David must have felt all these months. His life had been severed from theirs. What had been four was suddenly one. Alone. Yes, he had Ham, but all the people he'd loved before were gone. His beloved children were gone. Life as he'd known it was over.

And she had
wanted
it that way. She had lied to herself since that day at the cottage. She had wanted to hurt David the way he'd hurt her. Deeply. Permanently. All year long she had tried to stop being the good girl, but she had never been a good girl to begin with. She was just like everyone else. Flawed, dishonest, unforgiving.

She choked out the next words. “I didn't realize how much I liked having him on the outside looking in. It seemed like just punishment. Maybe he left me for a man, but I had the children and he didn't. Three of us against the world. And him. And now that's over.”

He rubbed her shoulders with his palms. “You know how natural that is, don't you?”

“But it's not me! That's not who I thought I was. I thought I was above that. When I recovered from the shock, I told myself I was going to do the divorce perfectly. Make a home for the children, be calm and sensible, restart my life, be an anchor for everybody else.”

She was crying now, and she didn't care. “And what I really wanted…deep inside, was to hurt David…and keep him out of the family. I wanted to prove…I was the one who could be counted on.”

“Okay, but I've been watching, remember? Maybe that's what you were feeling, but that's not the way you acted. You rose above it, Faith. Maybe you wanted to punish David, but you didn't. Okay, you didn't extend a hand to help him back into the family, but you allowed him back in as fast as he could find his way.”

But this wasn't about what she had
done.
Faith knew it was all about who she
was.
Never the good girl. Never the paragon. A human being with a dark side. Like the other human beings in her life. Like the other human beings she loved.

Pavel shook his head, then pulled her to his chest. “Faith, Faith…” He wrapped his arms around her. “Didn't you know you were just a nicer version of everybody else?”

She was crying too hard to answer. He held her close, stroking her back while she sobbed. The tears went on and on, a well of tears she had never cried. Finally, when she could, she choked out the most damning statement of all.

“What I knew…what I
know
…is that nobody will ever really love me unless I'm perfect.”

“So you convinced yourself you were both. Lovable and perfect, the magic combination.”

She shook her head, wiping her wet cheeks on his shirt. “Not lovable. Not deep down…not where it counts.”

“And when the rest of us lied to you, it made you doubt yourself more, huh? Because if you'd just been a little more perfect, we wouldn't have lied in the first place.”

“There were things I could have done to help Remy find her way back to David. I…could have gotten us into therapy. We're going to do it after the holidays, but…I could have agreed to it sooner. Maybe…maybe I was afraid it would work?”

He stepped back and held her away. “Look at me.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I'm a mess.”

“I like you this way. Look at me.”

She did. Eyes and nose red, cheeks flushed and damp. Imperfect.

“You were angry at David,” he said. “Of course you didn't want him back in the family. But you're a good mother, and you did what you thought was right.”

“I've been lying to myself. I've been fooling myself.”

“Welcome to the club.”

She took a deep, shaky breath, then another. Finally she tried to smile. She failed, but it was a start. “How do the rest of you stand it?”

He smiled for her. “We've had years of practice. Most of us figured out a long time ago how imperfect we are. We forgive ourselves.”

And that made it easier for them to forgive each other. That was the unspoken message, the one he didn't want to hammer home. But she heard it anyway, and she was ashamed.

The conversation wasn't about Remy anymore. It wasn't about David, or the lies her own parents had told her. The conversation was about them. She knew it, and she knew that this conversation was as important as the others. Because this one was about her future.

Pavel Quinn was a good man. Flawed, yes. Just as she was. Shaped by the traumas of his childhood. Just as she was. Wary of emotion. Capable of deceit. Just as she was.

But still, beneath it all, a good man.

“I wish you had told me right away who you were,” she said.

“I know. So do I.”

They couldn't change the past, but she could change the future. She saw that now. She could change it for everyone she loved, beginning with herself.

“I'm not perfect,” she said. “Can you forgive me for that?”

“Faith, I've known all along. I revel in it. Perfection doesn't appeal to me.”

“I understand why you didn't tell me about your father. I've understood ever since the night I confronted you. I just couldn't…”

He sighed. “You couldn't forgive yourself for being duped again. I know.”

She felt hollow until he smiled. He had a wonderful smile, filled with warmth and promise. The smile was honest, because Pavel himself was filled with warmth and promises, too.

He tilted her chin so they were eye to eye. “It's okay. I knew that you'd figure this out. I've just been waiting.”

She sniffed. She remembered what he had said about himself the night the stove caught on fire. “For somebody who's just an inch deep, there's an awful lot you understand.”

“I guess I've been lying about that, too.”

She tried another smile and this time nearly succeeded. “Two inches deep?”

“At least.”

She didn't know where to go now. She felt cleansed and empty at the same time. She didn't know what she had to offer anymore. She didn't know who she was. She didn't know what she had a right to ask for.

He understood. She could see it in his eyes right before he kissed her. He pulled her close, and his lips were warm against hers. She pressed her body closer to his, lifted her arms to encircle his neck, gratefully let the kiss go on and on.

When it ended, he stepped away reluctantly. “We started in the wrong place, Faith, and we've still got too many unanswered questions fogging our lives. I want to start over with you, but not now. Not until there's nothing in the way. Not secrets. Not lies. Not a past we don't understand.”

Not until she understood herself a little better. He didn't say it, but she knew that was the biggest part of it. He didn't want to take advantage of her now and risk losing the trust they were rebuilding.

“You realize we may never get answers?” she said.

“We'll need to let go of our parents' lives at some point, but that time's not here yet. And you're still too raw for another complication in yours.”

“You're a complication? You can admit it?”

“Find your feet. I'll be here.”

She knew he was right. As much as she wanted him—and she hadn't stopped, not during all the weeks of anger—he was right, and she was grateful for his insight. Because she knew, from the kiss, that it wasn't easy for him to wait.

“And now I think I'll get out of here while I still remember how,” he said. “You need some time alone, and you're not ready for another confrontation today. We can question Dottie Lee another day.”

She didn't want Pavel to go. What would she do for the rest of the weekend? Wonder how she had fooled herself for so long? Question why she hadn't tried harder to get Remy into counseling months ago? Ask what might have happened if David hadn't taken it on himself to find Remy today?

Ask herself who she wanted to be when she finally and completely confronted who she was? And whether she wanted Pavel to be there to witness it.

She rested her hands on his. “No, please. I don't want you to go.”

“You're sure?” He waited until she nodded. “Then I won't.”

“Let me wash my face and recover a little, then let's go next door and talk to Dottie Lee. The sooner we do, the sooner we can move on.”