Page 19 of A Family Affair: The Cabin
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Pete rose earlythe next morning, made the coffee, and started gathering their belongings. He sure was going to miss this place, but sooner or later, he and Elissa had to step into the real world and it might as well be in Magdalena. The people there would study Elissa with a keen eye, draw conclusions they may or may not put to sound, but in the end, they’d accept her. That’s what small towns did. As long as she cared about him and didn’t hurt him. You could move from a small town and stay away for fifteen years, but the second you walked back in, it was as if you’d never left, like you were still one of them—which you were.
He grabbed the bag of yarn and knitting needles he’d spotted on the couch the first day. The needles stuck out, but when Pete tried to push them into the bag, he noticed a notebook blocking the way. Pete eased it from the bag, studied it. Had Elissa pasted the red rose on the cover? Was this some sort of sketch book? He could picture her as an artist, sketching flowers and people. He smiled, flipped the notebook open, expecting to see a pencil sketch of a rose.
He did not expect to see Gloria Blacksworth’s name scrawled along the top border or the nameMagdalenawritten in the margins.What the hell?Pete sank onto the couch and began to read…
Forty minutes later, he closed the notebook, stared at the cover with the pasted rose. How could Elissa be capable of such cold-hearted cruelty? What did it mean? Had she copied pages from Gloria Blacksworth’s notebook and created her own?
Did she plan to continue the torment once she sent the final letter?
Was she blackmailing people?
Who could tell? He sure as hell couldn’t, not after reading the contents and the side notes she’d written. Damn her for pretending to be kind and caring, a human being with a conscience…
“Pete?”
The sweetness of her voice swept over him, almost made him wish he hadn’t opened the notebook and learned the harsh truth about her. But what was the point of prolonging what would turn out to be a bad ending? Had he really thought he might have a future with the woman? A stranger, no less, whose sob story wasn’t half as sickening as the drama inside the notebook. Elissa could have ended it all when the Blacksworth woman died, but she didn’t. Hell no, she carried on the legacy, as a favor to afriend.
“Pete?”
She stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing his flannel shirt, long legs bare, a hint of a smile on her lips. Fresh-faced, innocent, tempting. A seductress bent on destruction. He slid the notebook across the table. “Look what I found. A play-by-play book on how to destroy lives.”
The second she realized what it was, she lunged toward the table and snatched up the notebook. “You…you read this?”
He shrugged. “Twice.”
“I planned to tell you today.” The words spilled out in a rush of panic. “I didn’t know Mrs. Blacksworth was lying. I believed what she told me. I thought I was honoring a dead woman’s request by mailing the letters.”
That pissed him off. He pushed back the chair, stood. “You didn’t know she was lying? You thought these letters were normal? They could destroy lives!” Pete moved toward her, stopped when he was an arm’s length away. “This Blacksworth woman is the friend you were talking about, isn’t she? She sounds sick in the head, a pariah, a mental cancer that eats at you.”
She shook her head, inched her gaze back to his. “I didn’t know. I don’t think she was like that in the beginning.”
“Of course, she was like that.” How could he have thought this woman was special? She was worse than Heather; at least his old girlfriend had never tried to be anything other than the society girl she was. But Elissa? Hell, she’d acted like goodness was her middle name.
“You didn’t know her. She was all alone…and dying,” she stammered, her eyes bright. “I think she lost her way.”
Let the damn tears come. He would not be taken in by them or the crushed look on her beautiful face. “Your definition of friendship is twisted.”
“I believed her.” Her voice split open with sadness. “All she wanted was for me to mail the letters. How could I say no? She told me it was her duty to see them delivered, that fate would help the innocents involved.”
Was she serious? “That is such bullshit. How could you believe that crap? Look what she wrote about the MacGregors. Would a decent person expose a pregnancy? And Nate Desantro. Were you involved in that mess?” When she didn’t answer, anger fueled his next words. “Tell me, damn it.”
The tears spilled down her cheeks, to her chin, her neck, landed on the flannel shirt. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.” Her lips quivered, her shoulders shook. “I only wanted to honor my word.”
“Yeah, you did that, and who knows what damage you caused in the process. And what about Jack Finnegan?” He’d saved this one for last. According to her side notes, she hadn’t mailed the letter yet. Taking money didn’t sound like his father, but if he had done it, then the old man had a reason, a good one, and it shouldn’t be brought into the open. Period. “Answer me.”
She shook her head, sniffed. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. I know you care about the people in this town…”
Those last words shot through him. “Sure, you do. Last night, when I told you about Magdalena and Nate, you never said a word. Did you think I wouldn’t care that you’d tried to torch the place where I grew up? Or did you think I’d never find out?”
“No.” More tears. “I didn’t know how to tell you about the Desantros because then you’d ask how…”
“Why not just lie? That’s what you’ve been doing all along, right?” The damn pain in his gut burned, shot through the rest of his body.
“That’s not true. I planned to tell you about the notebook today.”
“Ah, now isn’t that convenient?” Those hazel eyes poured tears, begged him to understand. Oh, he understood, he understood what it felt like to get played. Pete buried the hurt and said, “You’re gonna destroy this book. Right now, before any more harm comes to anyone.”
