Gabriel absorbed that. “What does Karen need to hear from me, Ann?”
“Her question is simple. If she tells Will this story, says she doesn’t want to marry him because of it, will he accept that decision?” She hesitated, then added, “My read of it-she’s not going to marry him and take the risk that trouble could find her again and touch her new family. That’s her bottom line. Maybe she sees it differently in three years, five, but I don’t know. She’s not the first person I know to face this catch-22, and it has no real solution. For right now, she wants to stay here in Carin with Will as a friend, if she can do that without having to carry the burden of knowing he’s put his life on hold for her.”
“Okay.” Gabriel said it quietly, mentally getting his arms around the problem. “Okay,” he breathed again. He’d been a cop a long time. He had lost his naïveté about the world years ago. Ann was right that there was no solution-at least no good one-to this problem. Tom Lander would do what he could, and Karen would have to respond in whatever way she could. Not pulling someone else into her problem was instinctive on her part. To the extent she could keep Will at arm’s length, a friend but no romantic entanglement, she could protect him should she need to again cut ties and drop out of sight. Gabriel understood how Karen had reached this point.
But he also knew Will was not a man easily shifted off his own course of thinking. Will hadn’t mentioned marriage in his casual conversations yet, he hadn’t changed direction in his plans for the next year, but it was clear to any who knew him well that he was carving out room in his life for Karen. When she walked into a room, his face would light up, and he’d often say softly, “There’s my girl.” His affection for her, his demeanor in public, was clearly staking a claim. It was clear to family and friends the relationship was deeply serious on his part.
Gabriel’s opinion of the two as a couple hadn’t changed with Ann’s news and the insights it gave. He’d thought last night Karen was right for his brother, and he still thought the same tonight. But how they could get past the implications of this was an enormous hurdle.
Ann rose to pour them the last of the coffee. “That’s the story, Gabriel, at least the highlights. I apologize that it got this complicated, that your family got pulled in, before I told you this. I was walking a narrow line on what was best for Karen. She needed this last year to heal, and I watched that happen in large part because of Will. I haven’t wanted to take her away from that. But it has reached a decision point. It may well be that the better course is not to tell Will. Instead, she simply tells him she’s not interested in pursuing the relationship further and he should look for someone else to date.”
Gabriel grimaced at that suggestion, shook his head. “That’s not going to fly.” He couldn’t fault Ann’s reasoning that the tightest security was no one knowing Karen’s situation. But now there was Will…
Gabriel gestured with his coffee mug. “If Will helped save Karen’s life, as you put it, you need to understand she’s done something similar for him. I haven’t seen Will as content, as at peace since he came back from the war. This relationship has been helping them both in equal measure. Will cares about Karen more than any other woman he’s ever dated, going back to high school. She’s inside the circle of people Will considers his to protect. He’s going to take care of her, Ann, romance or not.”
Gabriel paused, thinking about his brother. “Will’s tied to this place, this land-by history, by family. Karen’s correct about that, and I’m glad she appreciates it. But she may not be seeing the broader picture. Will was away at war for six years, hasn’t said much about where he was, what was going on, but he stayed in touch with family, he stayed connected all through it. If Will had to change names and take Karen five states away, spend a decade there to keep her safe, he could do it and see it as a temporary necessity, much like going on deployment. I see him able to segment life away from here for a while. So leaving Carin might be an acceptable fallback plan in Will’s view of this. The day in the future when Lander is no longer a threat is the day they would return.”
“That could be a very long wait,” Ann cautioned.
Gabriel’s phone rang. He seriously considered ignoring it, but at this time of night didn’t have that luxury. “Hold that thought.” He got it from his pocket and rose. “Sheriff Thane.”
He listened to his dispatcher. “Patch the call through,” he replied, then covered the phone. “This is going to take a few minutes, Ann. Get some more ice cream, make more coffee-”
“I’m fine. Go do what you need to do.”
He nodded and headed into his home office while a call from the deputy in the next county transferred to him.
Gabriel found Ann in the living room, settled in one of the comfortable leather chairs by the fireplace, paging through a book she’d picked up from his side table. He mentally shifted from the rash of vandalized cars his caller wanted help on back to their conversation about Karen and Will. He took a seat near hers. “Karen needs to tell Will the story, tell him all of it, then give him some room to think. Tom Lander is a nasty problem, one I don’t underestimate, but there are options that might let a relationship between Will and Karen work. Don’t bet against Will, Ann. That’s what a lifetime as his brother has taught me.”
Ann set aside the book and gave a thoughtful nod. “I’ll tell Karen your perspective. If she agrees, she tells Will the details, I do, or you do. I think I’d prefer to be the one-an initial angry reaction at not having been told about this already is not only likely, it’s to be expected. Karen is sensitive to even a hint of anger right now. She would flinch and blame herself for having not told him, even though she was following my advice. It wouldn’t be a good setup for the rest of the conversation they need to have. I’ll take the blame for Karen’s silence, give it time for things to settle before Will and Karen talk.”
“Will would handle it with some care if she told him herself. But see if she’s comfortable with you and I having the conversation with him.”
“I’ll talk with her tonight, let you know,” Ann agreed.
It was a plan. Gabriel leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankles, and gave a small smile. “That leaves Grace.”
Ann simply closed her eyes and dropped her head back.
“That bad, huh?”
Ann sighed and shifted in the chair to look over at him. “Will and Karen are the knot you can see. You can work with it to try to find a solution, even though you know the cleanest way to undo the knot is to cut it. Take that kind of problem, square it, square it again, and you’ll begin to get a sense of what’s going on with Grace Arnett.”
“It’s become a night for hard things. Lay it on me, Ann.”
She smiled at his attempted humor. “Oh, I wish I could share the weight of this, Gabriel, because it’s crushing me.”
She took a deep breath and eased into it. “I’ve known Grace since she was sixteen. I met her shortly after she moved away from Carin. She’s become a good friend. If I had a younger sister, this relationship would be it. She’s told me some things over the years, and I’ve told her some things-it’s definitely not a card-at-Christmastime bond. She’s one of the few I let inside my life. And she’s chosen to let me into hers. That underlies what I’m going to tell you, Gabe.”
Ann went quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts before she continued. “Grace is planning to ask Josh for a favor, and if she does, I’m encouraging him to say yes. He’ll do whatever he can to help her-I know that about Josh. But Grace isn’t ready for what she’s decided to do. I’ve got an inkling of what’s coming, and I know it will be more than she can manage, and yet I can’t talk her out of it.” Ann gave a small shrug. “I don’t mind painful truths coming out-that’s the way people come to healing, the way justice finally gets done. But there is a season, a time, for that truth. I know what Grace is already dealing with. I’m afraid the truth she wants to find isn’t going to be that simple. She’ll break, and it will be a crippling wound, difficult to heal, and will forever leave its mark.”