The Man She Once Knew (16 page)

“Would you like some tea?” His mother’s hands fluttered like wounded birds.

Callie trod carefully, though she wanted to scream,
Talk to me now!
Witnesses could be spooked so easily, and this woman was teetering on the sharp edge of falling apart. “Yes, thank you.”

With jerky steps, Mrs. Langley moved to the cabinet and drew out a glass, then opened the freezer compartment of the ancient refrigerator and took out ice cubes. She dipped into the refrigerator section and withdrew a plastic pitcher.

The pitcher suddenly tumbled to the floor, splattering tea everywhere.

With the hoarse cry of someone stretched beyond her limits, Delia Langley fell to her knees, oblivious to the pool of brown liquid around her.

“It was me,” she choked out. “He was trying to protect me, and I was—I couldn’t—” She extended her arms, beseeching Callie, for what she couldn’t say. Mercy? Forgiveness?

What exactly had David done? Nauseated by what she was beginning to suspect, Callie went to the woman ineffectively attempting to mop up the liquid with a dish towel and pulled her to her feet.

“I—I need to—” Mrs. Langley gestured to the floor. “I have to—” Normally a graceful, contained woman, she was shaking and spreading the mess to her clothing.

“Come here.” Callie used the most soothing tone she could manage, given her own agitation. “I’ll take care of it.”

But Delia continued to mop and was only making things worse. Callie cast around until she found a drawer with more towels and went to work on the mess, hoping David’s mother would calm down as the puddle receded.

At last they were done. Callie deposited the stained towels in the washing machine and turned to the woman standing in the middle of the kitchen as if in a trance.

Pity swamped Callie. Whatever exactly David had done, she thought she understood why. The woman before her was a frail wisp. She’d had the strength to raise David, to care for him alone and struggle every day to feed him and put a roof over his head until he was big enough to help.

The price of that, though, had to be steep. Had the incessant battle to keep them afloat stolen all her strength?

Or had the events of that tragic night finally broken her? Callie wasn’t sure, but it was time to find out.

“Let’s sit.” She led Delia to the table and seated her in a chair, then pulled another one near. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened, for David’s sake.”

The vacant stare turned to her. A tiny flicker told Callie she was still in there, the woman who had raised him, had loved him. “He made me promise. After. I didn’t—I couldn’t—By the time I recovered myself, began to understand what he’d done, it was too late. He’d already…” Her shoulders rounded, her voice became a whisper. “Still, I should have done something….” Her entire body began to quake. “I will never forgive myself. I’m his mother. I should have…”

Callie had to get the story from her before she fell
apart completely. She clasped Delia’s hands and squeezed. “You know David loves you,” she began.

If anything, Delia curled in on herself even more.

“Mrs. Langley, if you care about your son, you have to get a grip on yourself and talk to me. We’re running out of time. He’s in a dangerous situation. He could be sent back to prison very soon.”

“No—” she cried, her head lifting, her eyes sparking. “He can’t! He did nothing. It was me, I told you!”

And then Callie began to truly understand.

She’d had it all wrong. “David didn’t kill Ned Compton, not even in defense of you, did he? It was you, and David took the fall.”

“Yes!” His mother covered her face with her hands and broke into racking sobs.

Oh my God. Fifteen years of hell. Endless hate aimed in his direction.

A life fractured. Dreams ground to dust.

And none of it his fault. The David she’d loved—still loved, she might as well accept—had, in one selfless act, sacrificed everything he’d ever hoped for to protect the woman who’d given him life. He would have seen it as proper and just, that noble boy upon whose shoulders so much had been heaped.

Where is the justice?
Callie wanted to cry.

She believed in the system—it was necessary to survive every day in the grim world that she inhabited. But sometimes there were cases that literally made you sick, that robbed you of even the slimmest threads of faith in a justworld. Of the conviction that good could triumph.

Oh, David.
She wanted to weep for him, but that would do no good. It was time to fight for him.

With every weapon in her armory.

“Mrs. Langley.” She recognized the signs now and wondered why no one else had. “How long had Ned Compton abused you?”

The older woman shuddered, but she only kept sobbing, more softly now.

Callie longed to ask Delia how she could keep silent for so long, but Callie had seen too many victims of abuse not to realize that while many of them could be saved, some were broken in a way that was beyond mending.

She harnessed the urge to berate this pitiful creature and instead took Delia Langley in her arms, holding her as she wept.

Inside Callie, though, drumbeats sounded. The clock ticked away the minutes of imprisonment David should not be enduring. “Mrs. Langley, it’s not too late. You can help David now. Your son needs you, but he will never ask.” She felt the slight body tense. “Will you let him go back to prison?”

Delia Langley’s head rose swiftly, her reddened eyes fierce. “No. I could not—” She trembled, then forced herself to straighten. “I could not bear it.” She pressed her lips together to still them. “But I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay,” Callie said. “I do.”

“You must hate me,” his mother said. “He must, though he’s never even hinted at it, not once.” She glanced away, eyes batting hard. “How could I have
been so weak? My boy, my precious boy—” She covered her mouth with one hand and began to crumple again.

“Stop it.” Callie knew she sounded cruel, but time was racing past. “Mrs. Langley, if you want to help David, you have to keep it together.” Then she relented. “I don’t hate you. He doesn’t, either. He loves you.”

“Delia,” she said, straightening. “Why don’t you call me Delia.” She drew in a deep breath. “Every day—” She locked her gaze on Callie’s. “Every day since they took him away, I have loathed myself for bringing that man into our lives. He was handsome and charming and so strong. I thought I was doing the right thing, giving David a father figure, someone who was admired by the community, someone who could help him back on the path after he lost his way with—” She faltered.

“With me.” Callie nodded. “You can say that. I’ve earned it. If he had never met me…” She shook her head. “I bear my own share of guilt in this, Mrs.—Delia. I started him down this path.”

“You were so young. And that poor baby…”

Callie clenched her fingers into fists against that trip down memory lane. “We can’t focus on that right now. We have to save David. There are those who are eager to send him back to prison, and we have to stop them.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Callie tried to think of an answer. She didn’t want David being held one second longer than necessary, but her hands were tied until his attorney returned.

Albert Manning. He wasn’t a criminal attorney, but he was licensed in Georgia. She could guide his steps.

But she couldn’t get ahead of herself. She had to know precisely what they were dealing with. “I need the whole story. Explain to me exactly what happened.”

Delia’s lips quivered, but she quickly settled herself. Then she sat ramrod straight and began to talk.

“I don’t know why Ned Compton took an interest in me. I’m no one special.”

Callie could have argued with her; Delia Langley was—or had been—a very striking woman, just like her handsome son. Callie had often admired her, back before the ravages of time and grief had washed out her beauty. Now she was painfully thin and didn’t look well at all.

“Later, when I could think about it, I suppose there were two parts to what brought him here. David seemed to gather all the light into him, and everyone wanted to be near him, to bask in the glow he cast off.” She glanced at Callie. “You know how he was, everyone’s hero.” At Callie’s nod, she continued. “I suppose that was part of it—Ned had a hunger to be the center of everything. When David met you and…” She looked down.

Callie didn’t need her to fill in the words. “When I tarnished his image, you mean.”

Delia pressed her lips together. “Once you were gone, David had a difficult time getting over all the emotional upheaval. He started missing class, and his athletic performance suffered. Ned saw his opening. He could put the town’s star back on the straight and narrow and be a hero for it. He began to come around, and he was always kind and supportive. I was at my wits’ end. Never before had David been rebellious with me, and I
could see his future going down the drain.” She rubbed her brow. “So when Ned suggested we marry and make him David’s stepfather, I thought…” For long seconds, she stared off into obviously painful memories.

“I was so tired, you see, and everything I’d tried to do seemed hopeless. I began to rely too much on Ned, and he took over more and more. I still don’t—” Her voice caught.

She gathered herself together, gripping her arms tightly. “Things changed when Ned moved us into his house. I’d never lived in a fine place like that, so at first I was uneasy, and when he would correct me, I’d just think of how uneducated I was and I’d try harder, but nothing was ever enough and he—” She paused to compose herself, but all the color had drained from her face. She looked ancient.

“The first time he hit me, I was so shocked I didn’t—I couldn’t figure out what to do. David’s father would never have…” She pressed trembling lips together before going on with her story.

She didn’t really need to. Callie had heard this tale hundreds of times. “Was David aware of it then?” He surely had been later.

“No.” A violent shake of her head. “It was—Ned was already so hard on him, and things kept getting worse between them. I couldn’t let David know or he might…” Delia’s gaze beseeched her. “It was an accident, I swear it. David was only trying to stop him from beating me. He’d suspected, I realize now, and tried to make me confirm it, but Ned was very clever.
When David confronted him and accused him, Ned threatened him. Said no one would ever believe him now, not after he’d thrown away his future the way he had. That he had the town in his pocket. That—” Her voice broke. “That David couldn’t watch me all the time.” Tears spilled over. “David begged me to leave him. Said he could get a job and support us, that all I had to do was leave with him and he’d take care of me.”

She closed her eyes. “If only I’d gone, but I was frightened of Ned, and David was struggling. He needed to finish school, to get back on track.
‘Go off to college and make a life,’
I said, but he told me he couldn’t leave me. And then, one night, Ned struck me in front of him. David went crazy, jumped on him…the fight was terrible. David was young and strong, but Ned had no sense of honor. He went for David’s knees, said he’d cripple my boy so he wouldn’t be able to play football and he’d be stuck here forever, never amounting to anything. He said cruel, awful things about me, and David’s rage made him reckless where Ned was so canny. He caught David off guard and toppled him to the floor on his back. He was about to smash his foot into David’s knee—”

She looked so gray that Callie reached out for her. “Delia, you don’t have to continue.”

But it was as if Delia were locked in that time and couldn’t hear her. “He said he’d call his buddy the sheriff and have David charged with assault. Said David would go to jail and lose everything. Ned was kicking him, hurting him…1 couldn’t let him destroy my son. I
grabbed the first thing I could find to stop him—the fireplace poker.” She turned horrified eyes to Callie. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I only wanted to stop him, but I hit him once and then he wheeled on me, and I swung again and it—His head…there was blood, so much blood. I dropped the poker. I must have fainted because the next thing I knew, the sheriff was there, putting David in handcuffs and—” She began to gasp for air.

Then, like a rag doll, she simply collapsed to the floor.

“Delia!” Callie rushed to her, feeling frantically for a pulse. She had little knowledge of first aid, but Delia’s heart rate was clearly unsteady. Callie raced for the phone and dialed for help, afraid it would take too long in this remote spot. When the dispatcher assured her help would be there in fifteen or twenty minutes and patched her in to the paramedics so they could advise her what to do in the meantime, Callie was too busy to think beyond keeping Delia alive.

Hours later, Delia had been admitted overnight to the county hospital for observation after what the doctors believed was a panic attack exacerbated by Delia’s poor physical condition. Exhausted, Callie was desperate for sleep, but she couldn’t rest yet.

David was in jail, and she had to set in motion the process to clear him.

But first, before he heard about his mother from someone else, she had to go see him.

And confess what she’d done.

S
HE APPROACHED
the interview room like a condemned prisoner on the way to the gallows. She’d been wise enough not to demand anything from the sheriff regarding David’s release; one charge would not suddenly vanish simply because another had been invalidated. She would have to talk to the D.A., and she’d have to choose every step from here carefully.

Right now, tonight, she was only here on an errand of mercy. The sheriff had no idea how she longed to be anywhere else.

David would hate her. As well he should.

It was with relief that she noted that he was only handcuffed this time, not ankle-bound, as well. Even a reviled criminal like David deserved, apparently, a little consideration when bad news was coming his way.

He stood, as before, braced against whatever she had to say. The sight of those broad shoulders stiffened to deflect whatever toll she would exact made her inexpressibly sad.

She was the enemy.
And I am.
She accepted the role, however unwelcome. Most of the troubles in David’s life had begun with her.

She thought of a tiny grave, a precious memorial, and she wondered if she would ever finish paying for all the damage she’d created. With a deep inhalation, she steeled herself and opened the door.

He turned, his face a mask, a stone wall. Obviously expecting the worst.

She decided to rip off the bandage, quick and clean, since there was no easy way to say what she had to tell him. “Your mother is in the hospital. She’s going to be all right, though. She just needs rest and nourishment,” she hurried to reassure.

None of that helped one iota, she could tell.

His glare was acid. Fire and brimstone. “What have you done?”

Callie averted her gaze. There was no excusing her, no rationalization that the hardened man would accept. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” He advanced on her, then abruptly stopped as the deputy rattled the knob from outside.

David didn’t come closer but his face lost all pretense of control.
“Sorry?”
he echoed. A muscle hardened in his jaw. “Tell me.” Not a request.

“She’s the one who sent me the note. She’s desperate to help you,” Callie tried.

“She promised she’d never—”

“David, you’re innocent. You should never have—” Seeing his face go from fury to outright loathing, she halted. Continuing took everything she had. “All of this can go away,” she whispered furiously. “If everyone knew what really happened, no one—”

“Stop it.” He bit off each word. “Do not say it. Don’t you dare.” Then utter devastation ravaged his features. “You have made a travesty of the last fifteen years of my life.” He hadn’t approached, yet he seemed to loom. “Is that what you want? For me to have wasted everything, all my dreams, every single thing I ever hoped for?” His voice caught, and he had to look away.

As he struggled to compose himself, Callie tried to think how to frame her argument. “David, I can—”

Viciously he cut her off. “You can’t do anything. Not one goddamn thing, do you hear me?” His nostrils flared and his eyes burned. “Haven’t you done enough damage?” He glared at her like some creature he loathed. “If I’d never met you…”

Her eyes burned. She forced herself to battle back the agony that threatened to destroy her. Of course he was right. Meeting her had begun his descent into endless loss. He’d pitied her. His kind, generous heart had taken up for her when she’d had no one else. He’d always been the champion of the downtrodden, and he’d done for his mother what he’d done for her…put them before what he really wanted. Given up all to help someone else.

“I can save her,” she beseeched. “I can save you, too.”

He turned on her, quick and savage. “Do you think I want anything from you? After what you’ve done? Do you not get it that she would never survive a trial? Even if you could clear her—” his withering tone spoke of his utter lack of confidence “—doesn’t today demonstrate that she can’t survive the process of your precious justice system?” It was clear that he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

The dingy gray walls matched her spirits, but somehow Callie had to think her way past her devastation. She could free him now, she knew it. Could clear his mother. “Listen to me. There’s is a defense that—”

“Get out!” he roared. “Get out of my life!”

The deputy shoved the door open. Callie rushed to reassure him. “It’s all right, Deputy. I’m fine.”

The man pinned David with a warning gaze. “I better not see you one foot closer to her than you are now. As a matter of fact, you back away.”

“No problem.” David’s loathing gaze caught her. “I have nothing else to say to Ms. Hunter.”

She’d heard her name spoken in many contexts, but never with such animosity.

She somehow found her voice when what she really wanted to do was break down. “Thank you, Deputy.”

Silence reigned while they waited for the man to close the door again.

When it came, David’s voice was cold as the grave. “For the sake of that child,” he said, invoking her plea to him. “Go away now. And don’t ever come back.”

That child. Not our baby.

He’d written her out of his life for good.

“David, please…you have to let me fix this.” If she had to plead, so be it. She couldn’t bear to leave things this way.

He stared at the opposite wall. “You can’t.”

Everything in Callie cried out to stay, to make him see, to reassure him that she could…

Her shoulders sank in defeat. Everything she touched eventually turned to ashes. He was right, much as it
sickened her to admit it. The most she could do for him now was to turn over what she’d learned to his attorney.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered brokenly. Then she summoned what strength was left to her and did as he asked.

Began making plans to pack up and drive out of his life.

S
HE’D GOTTEN TEN MILES
down the road back to Oak Hollow when she realized that she had two allegiances—one to David, who loathed the sight of her and wanted her gone. He’d made that perfectly, brutally clear.

But she’d also made a promise to his mother. Before she ran out of town with her tail tucked between her legs—oh, how that prospect grated on her, however much she’d wronged him—she couldn’t just disappear without talking to Delia, as least putting her mind at ease that she had a viable defense, that what David feared was not the case.

She turned the car around and drove toward the hospital.

Callie was certain of little right now, but one thing she believed to her marrow was that Delia Langley could be defended. She should not have to worry about her fate. Any competent attorney could ensure that she would spend not one hour in jail.

Except Delia couldn’t afford that competent attorney.

In that instant, Callie saw what she could do to redeem herself. Miss Margaret had left Callie with the resources to buy the best defense Delia Langley could ever wish for.

And maybe, just maybe, that attorney could swing
the tide for David, as well. Surely if even Mickey Patton understood the sacrifice David had made, he or one of his buddies would recant the assault charge. Of course she would have to dig up evidence that Ned Compton had a history of abuse, but if there were previous girlfriends or—

There she went again, getting involved.
Haven’t you done enough damage?

But how could he expect her just to walk away? She banged her fist on the steering wheel. He was wrong, damn him. She could fix this, all of it, if only…

The image of his face, ravaged, despairing, would not let her be. She sagged against the seat, watching an inner slide show of this thoroughly decent man and the noble boy he’d once been. Could she be absolutely positive that she could clear him of the current charges?

No. She of all people knew the justice system was capricious. Wasn’t that why she hadn’t revealed that her witness had an ulterior motive regarding the defendant? Because she didn’t fully trust that a bad guy would pay?

She raked her fingers through her hair.

In the end the bad guy hadn’t paid anyway.

If she were really honest with herself, she knew that the frightening reality was that David could lose. That she no longer trusted herself to save him.

This was why she’d chosen prosecution and not defense. Why she’d done everything possible to keep her heart out of the courtroom. Prosecutors focused on wrong and right, on the black and white of guilt or innocence. She’d liked the moral high ground of it.

At least she had as long as her feet had been planted safely there. She knew how to excel after a childhood full of failure, and she’d liked the air up there on the peaks. Success didn’t endanger her heart, and a sure knowledge of her position as a fighter for good over evil had been the armor that had shielded her.

Until she’d faltered, that is. Felt the sweat of fear as her first defeat, the first chink in the casing she’d donned to clearly delineate the woman from the mixed-up girl, had begun to eat away at her faith in herself.

Now she was mired in uncertainty, too much of the insecure girl bubbling up to the surface and blistering the patina of the woman she’d believed herself to be.

She was terrified of falling, sliding down that peak. She’d been kidding herself and playing house these past few days with David. Pretending that there could be more for her than the job that was the sum total of her, the burning ambition that provided the only warmth in a life constructed on cold calculation.

Her job might have lost its shine even before she’d faltered.

But it was all she had.

Callie stepped from her car in the hospital parking lot and felt for the first time since she’d arrived back in Georgia a return of her strength. She had been Lady Justice before; she could be again. All she had to do was lock up the past and throw away the key. Never let herself be touched by it again.

Just as she would never be touched by David again, physically or emotionally.

If her heart quailed a bit at the notion, she ruthlessly stamped out any weakness. She couldn’t afford it. She would never survive if she let herself think about what she’d lost here, in this place that seemed destined to forever haunt her.

Outside the three-story redbrick building, Callie drew in a deep, steadying breath.

Then marched inside to tie up one last loose end before she would leave Oak Hollow forever.

S
HE SHUDDERED
a little as she made her way down the beige hallway, the sting of disinfectants the strongest note in the powerful bouquet that was a hospital. She thought back to the pale, fragile figure she’d comforted while waiting for the ambulance, every second a tick of fear that she’d wind up telling David she’d killed his mother.

Though how that could have provoked a much worse reaction from him remained to be seen.

Not fair, Callie. He’s given up everything for her.

She couldn’t think about David anymore, how badly she’d blundered with him. Instead she braced herself for the wraith she would find as she pushed open the door to Delia’s room.

But if she’d expected a fragile, clinging victim, she was dead wrong.

“Is David out of jail?” demanded Delia. She was still pale, still hooked up to an IV, but the moment Callie entered, she used the controls to raise the head of her bed, never taking her eyes off Callie. “Where is he?”

“He’s—it’s—He’s still there, Delia.”

“Why? I told you I did it. Why haven’t they let him go?”

“It’s not that simple. He’s already served his time for Ned Compton’s death. He’s in jail because of the assault charges. He’ll have to have a hearing on the most recent one.”

“Why haven’t you gotten him out on bail, at the very least? He shouldn’t be in there. You know what being locked up is doing to him. Do I need to pledge my house? Will that help? Go back and tell them I’ll give up whatever I have. He’s not the guilty one, I am.”

The intricacies of the legal system were clearly lost on his mother, and that wasn’t the point of this visit anyway. “I’ll make his attorney aware of everything I know. He’ll be back in two days.”

“Two days? My son can’t stay there that long. You do it. You know how.”

Callie’s shoulders sank. “He’s refused my help. He—”
Hates me
, she almost said, but that was between them. “I’m leaving town. He’s been very clear that he wants nothing else to do with me, and frankly I can’t blame him.” She looked straight at Delia. “I’ve fought him at every turn, I haven’t listened to anything he’s asked. I owe him more than that after all the harm I’ve done.”

Delia’s gaze bored into her. “So you’re just going to give up?” She leaned forward, her face pale but her eyes burning coals as she gripped Callie’s hand. “You could actually walk away and leave him in jail? What kind of person are you?”

I don’t know
, she wanted to cry out. Had she ever
known who she was, except a child who wasn’t wanted, a girl who caused trouble…a woman who kept herself apart from everyone who might matter? She tore herself from Delia’s grasp and began to pace. “Delia, he can’t stand the sight of me. He’s—Look what he did to save you, and now he’s furious and worried sick that you’ll go to jail, too, that I’ll destroy you where Ned Compton couldn’t.”

At Delia’s gasp, Callie turned, hurried over. “You won’t, Delia, I swear it. I’m going to hire you the best lawyer in the state of Georgia, and you’ll be fine, I promise.”

“I want you.”

“What?” Callie shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. I’ve told you I can’t—Delia, I’m not a defense attorney. Even if I were, I can’t practice here, I explained that.”

“You said you could work with someone who is.” Green eyes so much like David’s looked up at her from a face shadowed with exhaustion yet burning with an inner resolve. “I can get a loan on my house and hire you if that’s what it takes.”

“No! No, of course you can’t do that. I don’t want your money, it’s not that, it’s—”

“Don’t you love my son?”