“No, I don’t think he is. But there’s another angle. It’s possible you’ve had contact with the killer three times now. Here, in the bar and now with him planting the gun at your cottage. That’s something to worry about, and you know it. You’re not an idiot either.”
“I can’t do anything about that but be careful.”
“You could leave, go visit your mother for a while. You won’t,” he added before she could speak. “And I don’t blame you. But it’s an option. Another option is to trust me.”
Hearing him say it, knowing she’d given him cause to say it, made her absolutely miserable. “Eli, I do trust you.”
“Not where it gets sticky, you don’t. I don’t know if I blame you for that, either. Men have let you down. Your father. It’s one thing for it not to work out between him and your mother, but he’s still your father. And he chose not to be one, not to be a real part of your life. He let you down.”
“I don’t dwell on it.”
“That’s healthy of you, but it’s there.”
When he let that hang in the air, she admitted defeat. “Yes, it’s there. I don’t really matter to him, and never have. I don’t dwell on it, but it’s there.”
“You don’t dwell because it’s unproductive, and you like to produce.”
“Interesting way to put it.” Her lips curved again. “And true.”
“And you don’t dwell because you know it’s his loss. Then there’s the bastard who hurt you. That’s letting you down big-time. You cared about him, trusted him, let him in, then he turned on you. He violated you.”
“As bad as that was, if it hadn’t happened, I might not be here.”
“Positive attitude. Kudos. But it happened. You gave someone your trust and they broke it. Why wouldn’t it happen again?”
“I don’t think that way. I don’t live that way.”
“You lead an open, energetic, satisfying life that I often find amazing. The kind that takes spine and heart. It’s admirable. You don’t lean easily, and that’s admirable, too, until it gets to the point where you could lean, where you should, and you won’t.”
“I would’ve told you if your family hadn’t been here.” Then she accepted, and told the whole truth. “I probably would’ve put it off for a while. I might’ve told myself you keep getting hammered, and there was no point adding to that until I knew more or it had been resolved in some way. I might have. But that’s not about trust.”
“Pity?”
“Concern. And my own confidence. I don’t like the word ‘conceit.’ I needed to take care of myself, make decisions, handle problems and, yes, maybe take on other people’s problems to build up the confidence Derrick shattered. I need to know I can take care of things when there’s no one to depend on but myself.”
“And when there is someone else to depend on?”
Maybe he was right again, and that was where it got sticky. And maybe it was time for a little self-evaluation.
“I don’t know, Eli, I just don’t know the answer because I haven’t given myself that choice in a long time. And still, I leaned on you that night, after I was attacked. I leaned, and you didn’t let me down.”
“I can’t get involved again with someone who won’t give as much as she takes, take as much as she gives. I found out, the hard way, if you do you end up empty-handed and bitter. I guess we both have to decide how much we can give, how much we can take.”
“I hurt you because I didn’t reach out.”
“Yeah, you did. And you pissed me off. And you made me think.” He rose, picking up dishes. Neither of them had done justice to the meal. “I let Lindsay down.”
“No, Eli.”
“Yeah, I did. Our marriage might’ve been a mistake, but we were in it together. Neither of us got what we wanted or expected out of it. At the end, I couldn’t stop what happened to her. I still don’t know if she’s dead because of some choice I made, choices we made together, or just some random piece of bad luck.
“I let my grandmother down, going longer and longer between times coming here, or seeing her at all. She didn’t deserve that. We almost lost her, too. Would it have happened if I’d spent more time here, if I came here to stay with her after Lindsay’s murder?”
“You’re the center of the universe now? You want to talk conceit?”
“No, but I know, I know I’m somewhere in the center of this, and all of it’s connected.”