He scraped a hand through his hair, wishing he’d asked Violet a dozen more questions…yet knowing he couldn’t. Just because he’d always had a private hard case for Camille didn’t mean he had any right to know-or right to interfere either. Further, his skill and effectiveness with women was measured by his ex-wife-who’d effectively ripped him off for everything but the kitchen sink…and his sons.
God knew, his sons were full time-sometimes a full-time nightmare and sometimes a full-time job. But either way, he had no time to dwell on the worrisome picture Violet had painted in his mind. Camille couldn’t be his problem. It was just upsetting, that was all. To picture anyone as joyful and full of spirit as Cam, brought down by so much tragedy so young. Camille always had a heart bigger than Vermont, more love than an ocean, more laughter than could fill a whole sky.
It made him sick to think about her hurting.
“Pssst. Dad.” The daredevil hanging over the second story railing was, of course, risking life and limb. “Ms. Campbell-is she gone? Is it safe to come down?”
“Yeah, she’s gone.”
In another moment, his son’s spitting image hung over the railing, too. “Are you sick or something? What’s the matter with you, Dad? You’re not yelling at us.”
“I will,” Pete promised them absently, but when he didn’t immediately come through with a good, solid respectable bellow, the boys seemed to panic.
“We’re not cleaning,” Sean announced.
“Yeah, we’re going on strike,” Simon said. “Gramps is going on strike with us. So it’s three against one.”
Maybe he’d failed a wife, but he’d never fail his boys. Since they were expecting him to scream and yell, he forced his mind off Camille and thumped up the stairs to deliver the lecture they wanted.
Two
When Camille heard the knock on the door, her heart slammed in instant panic-but that was just a stupid, knee-jerk response from the attack. She’d been home and forcefully installed in the cottage by Violet for three weeks now. She was safe. She knew she was safe. But somehow, even all these months after the attack, sudden noises and shadows still made her stomach jump clear to her throat.
Someone knocked on the door again-which she purposefully ignored. She just as easily ignored the pounding after that. But then came her sister’s insistent voice calling, “Yoo-hoo! Camille? CAMILLE?”
Camille didn’t budge from old, horsehair rocker in the far corner of the living room, but hearing Vi whining her name reminded her of how much she’d always disliked it. Mom had named all three daughters after flowers, so she could have gotten Violet or Daisy, but no, she had to get Camille. Practically by definition people seemed to assume that a Camille was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, sultry romantic. The dark hair and dark eyes were true, but the rest of the image was completely off.
These last months, she’d turned mean. Not just a little mean, but horned-toad mean. Porcupine-mean. Curmudgeon-rude and didn’t-give-a-damn-about-anyone mean.
“All right, Cam, honey.” When no one answered, Violet’s voice turned so patient that Camille wanted to open the door just to smack her one. “I’ll leave lunch on the table at noon, but I want you up at the house for dinner. You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to do anything. But unless you’re up there at six-and I actually see you eat something-I’m calling Mom and Daisy both.”
Camille’s eyes creaked open in the dim room. Something stirred in her stomach. A touch of an ordinary emotion…like worry. Not that she gave a hoot-about anything or anyone. But the threat of having both her mother and oldest sister sicced on her made Cam break out in a cold sweat. The Campbell women, allied together, could probably make a stone sweat. She just wasn’t up to battling with them.
With a resigned sigh, she pushed herself out of the old, horsehair rocker to search for a drink.
Rain drooled down the dirty windows, making it hard to see without a light, but she didn’t turn one on. The past weeks had passed in a blur. She remembered Violet barging into the apartment in Boston, finding her curled up in bed, shaking her, scolding her, packing her up. She remembered driving to Vermont in a blizzard. She remembered refusing to live in the warm, sturdy farmhouse where they’d grown up, fighting with Violet over whether the old cottage on the place was even livable.
It wasn’t. But then Camille wasn’t livable either, so the place had worked for her fine.
She stumbled around now, stalking around suitcases and boxes. She hadn’t unpacked anything from Boston. No reason to. She didn’t want anything. But eventually she located the flat briefcase on the scarred oak bureau. She clicked the locks, pulled it open. Once upon a time, the briefcase had been filled with colorful files and advertising projects and marketing studies. Now it held a complete array of airline-sized liquor bottles.
Quite a few were missing, although not as many as she’d planned. She hadn’t given up her goal of becoming an alcoholic, but the ambition was a lot tougher to realize than she ever expected. Frowning, she filched and fingered through the collection. Crème de cocoa was out of the question-she was never trying that ghastly stuff again. Ditto for the vodka. And the scotch. And the gin.
Squinting, she discovered a bitsy bottle of Kahlúa. She wrestled with the lid, finally successfully unscrewed it, guzzled in a gulp, swallowed, and then opened her mouth to let out the fumes.
Holy moly. Her eyes teared and her throat surely scarred over from the burn.
As hard as she was trying to destroy her life with liquor, it just wasn’t working well. She set down the mini-bottle-she was going to finish it!-she only needed to take a few minutes to renew her determination.
She sank down in the creaky rocker again, closing her eyes. Maybe the drinking wasn’t going so well, but other things were.
Several weeks ago, she’d mistakenly believed that she wanted to die. Since then, she’d realized that one part of her was alive-totally alive, consumingly alive.
The rage.
All around her was the evidence. Violet had tried to give her a phone, but she’d trashed it. The cottage behind the barns had been built for a great grandmother who’d wanted to live independently, so there was no totally destroying the charm. There was just a front room, bedroom and kitchen, but the casement windows bowed, and the bedroom had a slanted ceiling, and the living room had a huge limestone fireplace with a sit-down hearth. She hadn’t fixed any of it. Hadn’t looked at any of it either. She’d been sleeping on a hard mattress with a bald pillow and no bedding. Cobwebs filled the corners; the floors hadn’t been swept, and the cupboards were empty.
She couldn’t remember the last time she brushed her hair or changed clothes.
Eventually this had to stop. She realized that in an intellectual way, but emotionally, there only seemed one thing inside of her. All she wanted was to sit all day and seep with the rage, steep with it, sleep with it. Fester it. Ache with it. My God. It had been bad enough to lose Robert. Bad enough to wake up in a hospital bed with a face so battered she couldn’t recognize herself, bruises and breaks that made her cry to touch, lips too swollen to talk…and that was before she’d been told Robert was dead.
Initially, the grief had ripped through her like a cyclone that wouldn’t quit. It just wrenched and tore and never let up. But then came the trial. She’d been so positive that the trial would at least bring her the relief and satisfaction of justice. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the dark street, heard her laughing with Robert, complaining about walking in high heels from the party on the balmy fall night, and then there they were. The bastards, the drug-high bastards. There was no reason for them to start punching her, playing her, scaring her. They’d have given them all their money in a blink. But it wasn’t money they wanted. Robert-he’d tried to protect her, tried to get in front of her. That’s why they were meaner to him. Why he ended up dead.