He pulled a wallet from his back pocket, peeled out several bills, and extended them toward her. "Take this."
She stared down at the money. She'd sacrificed everything for her child. Did she have to give up the last ounce of her pride, too?
Slowly she took the money and felt a little part of herself die.
Edward's chest heaved.
"Shh…" She brushed her lips over his hair. "It's not your fault."
"He seed me."
"Not for a whole day. He was so dumb it took him a whole day to find you. You did just fine."
Without a backward glance, she carried Edward to the playground where she gathered up their things. Blinking against the tears, she clutched her meager possessions in one hand and her son in the other. What kind of man would do something like this? Only one who had no feelings at all.
As she left the Pride of Carolina, she wanted to fall off the end of the world.
Gabriel Bonner, the man with no feelings, cried in his sleep that night. He jolted awake sometime around three in the morning to find a wet place on his pillow and the awful metallic taste of grief in his mouth.
He'd dreamed about them again tonight, Cherry and Jamie, his wife and son. But this time Cherry's beloved face kept changing into the thin, defiant face of Rachel Stone. And his son had held a bedraggled gray rabbit as he lay in his coffin.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and for a long time he did nothing but sit with his shoulders hunched and his face buried in his hands. Finally he pulled open the drawer in his bedside table and took out a Smith & Wesson.38.
The revolver felt warm and heavy in his hands. Just do it. Put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. He touched the barrel to his lips and closed his eyes. The cold steel felt like a lover's kiss, and he welcomed the click of it against his front teeth.
But he couldn't pull the trigger, and, at that moment, he hated his family for keeping him from the oblivion he craved. Any one of them-his father or mother, his two brothers-they would all put a dog out of its misery, but they wouldn't be able to bear it if he killed himself. Now their stubborn, unrelenting love kept him shackled to an intolerable world.
He shoved the gun back in the drawer and withdrew the framed photograph he also kept there. Cherry smiled back at him, his beautiful wife who'd loved him and laughed with him and been everything a man could want. And Jamie.
Gabe caressed the frame with his thumbs, and in his chest, his heart seeped. It wasn't blood that escaped-that had been shed long ago-but a thick, bile-like fluid that ran through veins that had become rivers of pain carrying a bottomless cargo of grief.
My son.
Everyone had told him his grief would be easier to bear after the first year, but they'd lied. It had been over two years now since his wife and son had been killed by a drunk running a red light, and the pain had grown worse.
He'd spent most of that time in Mexico, living on tequila and quaaludes. Then, four months ago, his brothers had come to get him. He'd sworn at Ethan and thrown a punch at Cal, but it hadn't done any good. They'd brought him back anyway, and when they'd dried him out, he had no feelings left. No feelings at all.
Until yesterday.
A vision of Rachel's thin, naked body swam before his eyes. She'd been all bones and desperation when she'd offered herself to him in exchange for a job. And he'd gotten hard. He still couldn't believe it had happened.
He'd seen one other woman naked since Cherry had died. She'd been a Mexican whore with a lush body and a sweet smile. He'd thought he could bury some small part of his anguish inside her, but it hadn't worked. Too many pills, too much booze, too much pain. He'd sent her away without touching her and drunk himself into a stupor.
He hadn't even thought about her again until yesterday. An experienced Mexican whore hadn't been able to make him respond, but Rachel Stone with her scrawny body and defiant eyes had somehow managed to penetrate the wall he'd built so solidly around himself.
He remembered the way Cherry used to curl in his arms after they'd made love and play with the hair on his chest. I love your gentleness, Gabe. You're the most gentle man I've ever known.
He wasn't gentle now. Gentleness had been burned out of him. He put the photograph back in the drawer and walked naked to the window where he stared out at the darkness.
Rachel Stone didn't know it, but getting fired was the best thing that could have happened to her.
5
"You can't do this!" Rachel exclaimed. "We're not hurting anyone."
The police officer, whose badge read Armstrong, ignored her and turned to the driver of the tow truck. "Go ahead, Dealy. Get this piece of junk out of here."
With a sense of unreality, Rachel watched the tow truck back up to her car. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since Bonner had fired her. She'd felt so ill and exhausted that she hadn't been able to summon the energy to do anything but stay by the car. Half an hour earlier, a police officer driving by had spotted the reflection of the late-afternoon sun off the car's windshield and come to investigate.
The moment he saw her, she'd known she was in trouble. He'd swept his eyes over her and then spat. "Carol Dennis told me you'd come back to town. Not a smart thing to do, Miz Snopes."
She'd told him her last name was Stone-she'd legally reverted to her maiden name after Dwayne's death-but even though she'd shown him her driver's license, he'd refused to address her by anything but Snopes. He'd ordered her to move the Impala, and when she'd told him it no longer ran, he'd called for a tow.
As she watched Dealy squeeze from the cab of his truck and lumber toward her rear bumper to attach the hook, she dropped Edward's hand and sprang forward to block the man's way. The skirt of her old blue chambray dress, cleaned now from the pounding she'd given it in the river, twisted around her legs. "Don't do this! Please. We're not harming anyone here."
He hesitated and looked over toward Armstrong.
But the wiry, straw-haired police officer with the creased face and small, unkind eyes, remained unmoved. "Get out of the way, Miz Snopes. This is private land, not a parking lot."
"I know that, but it won't be for long. Please. Can't you cut me a little slack?"
"Move aside, Miz Snopes, or I'll have you arrested for criminal trespass."
She saw that he was taking pleasure in her helplessness, and she knew she couldn't sway him. "My name is Stone."
Edward slipped his hand back in hers, and she watched Dealy fasten the hook to the rear of her car.
"You sure wasn't anxious to call yourself by anything but Snopes a few years back," Armstrong said. "Me and my wife was regulars at the Temple. Shelby even turned over an inheritance she got when her mother died so she could help out all those orphans. It wasn't much money, but it meant a lot to her, and now she can't seem to forget about the way she was cheated."
"I'm-I'm sorry about that, but surely you can see that my son and I haven't profited."
"Somebody did."
"Problem here, Jake?"
Her heart sank as she heard the soft, toneless voice she recognized only too well. Edward pressed against her side. She'd thought she'd seen the end of Bonner yesterday, and she wondered what new malevolence he was getting ready to inflict on her.
He took the scene in with those impassive silver eyes. She'd told him she was staying with a friend, but now he could see that she'd lied. He watched the Impala being hoisted and studied the meager pile of her belongings tossed out on the ground.
She hated having him look at her things. She didn't want him to see how little she had left.
Armstrong nodded a curt greeting. "Gabe. Seems the Widow Snopes here has been squatting on private land."