Sanctuary(155)

"Nathan didn't know, Daddy." Jo clung to Sam's arm. "He was just a boy. He didn't know."

"I'm not looking at a boy now."

"I found the photographs and a journal after my father died. Everything Jo told is true. My father killed your wife. He wrote it all down, locked the journal and the prints, the negatives in a safe-deposit box. I found them after he and my mother died."

When the words trailed away there was no sound but the whisk of the blades from the ceiling fan, Lexy's weeping, and the harsh breaths Sam pushed in and out of his lungs.

He could see her now, shimmering at the front of his mind, the wife he'd loved, the woman he'd cursed. All the lights and shadows of her shifted together to form rage. To form grief

"Twenty years he kept it to himself." Sam clenched his fists, but there was nothing to strike. "You find out and you come back here and put your hands on my daughter. And you let him." He burned Jo with a look. "You know, and you let him."

"I felt the same way when he told me. just the same. But when I had time to think it through, to understand ... Nathan wasn't responsible."

"His blood was."

"You're right." Nathan moved so that Jo no longer stood between him and Sam. "I came back here to try to find a way through around it, or to just bury it. And I fell in love where I had no right. Brian set Lexy aside so that she could weep into her hands in of on his shoulder. "Why?" His voice was as raw as his soul. "Wh he do it?"

"There's no reason that can justify it," Nathan said wearily. "Nothing she'd done. He ... selected her. It was a project to him, a study. He didn't act out of anger, or even out of passion. I can't explain it to myself "

"It's best if you go now, Nathan." Kate spoke quietly as she rose. "Leave us alone with this for a while."

"I can't, until it's all said."

" I don't want you in my house." Sam's voice was dangerously low. "I don't want you on my land."

"I'm not going until I know Jo's safe. Because whoever killed Susan Peters and Ginny Pendleton wants her."

"Ginny." To steady herself, ICate gripped Sam's arm.

"I don't have any proof of Ginny, but I know. If you'll listen to the rest of it, hear me Out, I'll leave."

"Let him finish it." Lexy sniffed back her tears and spoke in a voice that was surprisingly strong. "Ginny didn'tjust run off. I've known that in my heart all along. It was just like Mama, wasn't it, Nathan? And the Peters woman, too."

she folded her hands in her lap to compose herself and turned to Jo. "You were sent photos here, to the house, pictures taken here, on the island. It's all happening again."

"You're handy with a camera, Nathan." Brian's eyes were hot blue slits.

It stung, coming from a man who had been friend in both the past and the present. "YoLt don't have any reason to trust me, but you have plenty of reason to listen."

"Let me try to explain it, Nathan." Jo picked up her wing to cool her throat.

she left nothing out, picking her way from detail to detail, question to question, and Icading into the steps she and Nathan had agreed upon taking to find the answers.

"So his dead father's responsible for killing our mother," Brian cut in bitterly. "Now his dead brother's responsible for the rest. Convenient."

"We don't know who's responsible for the rest. But if it is Nathan's brother, it doesn't make Nathan culpable." Jo stepped up to Brian. "There's a parable about apples falling from the tree someone told me recently. And how some are strong enough to roll clear and stay whole, and others aren't."

"Don't throw my own words back at me," he said furiously. "His father killed our mother, destroyed our lives. Now another woman's dead, maybe two. And you expect us to pat him on the back and say all's forgiven? Well, the hell with that. The hell with all of you."

He strode out, leaving the air vibrating in his wake.

"I'll go after him." Lexy paused in front of Nathan, studied him out of red-rimmed eyes. "He's the oldest, and maybe he loved her best, the way boys do their mamas. But he's wrong, Nathan. There's nothing to forgive you for. You're a victim, just like the rest of us."

When she slipped out, I;,ate said in surprised admiration, "You never expect her to be the sensible one." Then she sighed. "We need some time here, Nathan, Some wounds need private tending."

"I'm going with you," Jo began, but Nathan shook his head.

"No, you stay with your family. We all need time." He turned to face Sam. "If you have more to say to me-"

"I'll find you right enough."