Page 156 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
Connor stills next to Liam. “Wasn’t his wife’s name Roberta?”
A vague image of a friendly woman with dark hair who used to visit with Mom at Claire’s when we were in town as children flickers through my head.
I exchange a glance with Connor. “Yeah, but she left town years ago, when Connor and I were very small.”
Willow shifts closer to me, her tear-filled eyes locked with mine. “He thought I was her.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. “Almost the whole time I was with him. He was adamant, got angry if I tried to argue with him about who I was and my name.” The look in her eyes shifts, filling with so much pain that the throb in my arm instantly disappears. “He said he wasn’t going to let me take this baby from him.”
Her hands settle over her stomach.
This baby?
“They had a baby.” Her gaze darts across Liam and Connor before finding mine again. “He showed me a picture of the three of them together, and God, I do look like her twenty years ago.”
Connor raises a dark brow. “I never knew they had a kid.”
I shake my head. “Me, either… So, she left and took their baby.”
Willow bobs her head. “I think so. At first, I didn’t realize what he kept ranting about, but I figured out enough to understand he was delusional. Lost in some memory, something in his mind.”
All the bits and pieces of the puzzle we’ve been collecting for weeks start to fit together, but there are too many still missing. Jagged edges. Giant gaps that I can’t see clearly.
I shake my head, trying to clear away the cobwebs. “So, he thought you were her and that you had taken his baby?”
She nods. “I didn’t know if I was pregnant or not, but I thought maybe there was a chance and that maybe he wouldn’t—”—she gulps—“maybe he wouldn’t touch me if he thought I was pregnant with his baby, so I played along. I told him he was confused, and I hadn’t had the baby yet.”
So fucking smart.
Connor squats, bringing himself to our level while maintaining a watch on the area where the shots came from. “And he bought it?”
“He did.” Willow sniffles. “Whatever’s going on with him, the confusion, it helped me convince him that he was mistaken about me having the baby. I told him he would come soon enough and that he needed to be patient. I played along with him when I realized he wasn’t going to let me go. I let him believe I was Bobby.”
His wife.
My hand falls from her cheek, and forgetting about my injury, I reach out with both arms and drag her up, clutching her to me.
Visions of what might’ve happened, what he must’ve done to her, flash through my head.
“Did he…”
I can’t even say the words.
She inhales sharply, understanding what I’m asking, and burrows against me, pressing herself so close there isn’t even an inch of space between us. “The morning sickness got so bad within a few days that I convinced him it would risk hurting the baby.”
Morning sickness…
I drag her head back, holding her gaze, assuring that she sees all the love in mine. “You were pregnant?”
She nods, her trembling growing even stronger as panic wells up inside her, matching my own. “I gave birth to our baby, Killian, up here with that man, two months ago. He kept me locked in the cabin because he was afraid I was going to run with our son. Like his memory knew that his wife had done it before, even though I convinced him she hadn’t and I was her…”
Our baby.
Our son.
Those words ring in my ears as loudly as the gunshots—the pain of them so intense it’s almost numbing.
