After Dark by Beverly Barton Read Free Book Online Page B

what her confession would do to Will and to
you and-"
        Lane placed her arm around her housekeeper's
shoulders. For many years, she and Lillie Mae had shared a special relationship,
closer than many mothers and daughters. For fifteen years they had been
bound together by two secrets, one that had been revealed a few months
ago when Lillie Mae's only child, Sharon, had died.
        "Maybe what she did was wrong,
but I think she did it for the right reason." Lane hugged Lillie Mae,
then turned and headed toward the den.
        Lane found her son standing by the
row of windows overlooking Magnolia Avenue. She walked up to him, hut
didn't touch him. Knowing him so well, she gave him enough time for his quick
temper to cool.
        The street outside lay in early
evening shadows. A hot breeze shimmied through the trees that lined the
enormous brick walkway outside their antebellum home. The home her
ancestors had built before the Civil War. The home that had been part
of her parents' legacy.
        "The only way to stay sane
when the whole world's gone crazy is by keeping things around you normal
by going on with life's little mundane matters." Lane glanced at
her son, the child to whom she had devoted her life. Not a boy any longer
and yet not quite man. Fourteen and fragile and vulnerable as only the
very young and innocent can be. Her poor, sweet baby. Innocent no longer.
Kent had taken that away from him, too, when he had heartlessly ripped
Will's heritage from him and unmercifully shattered his sense of identity.
        "Whose child am I?" he had
asked her as he lay ill her arms and cried the day of Kent's death.
        'You're mine," she had said.
"Mine."
        "Our lives won't ever be normal
again, will they?" Will's voice caught with emotion. A voice already
as deep and husky as his father's had been.
        When he laced his long fingers together
and moved them back and forth, Lane watched her son's nervous habit and
remembered another young man who used to lock and unlock his fingers whenever
he felt agitated or uncomfortable.
        "You're right. Our lives won't
ever be the same," she said. "But someday we'll put all of this
behind us and-"
        "Why won't you let me tell them
the truth about what happened that day?" Will faced his mother, his
gaze colliding with hers.
        "You don't know what happened
that day. The police understand that the shock of Kent's death has caused
your partial amnesia."
        "I know you didn't kill
Da-Kent. We both know you weren't even here when I found his body." Moisture
glimmered on the surface of Will's black eyes. "If you'd just let me
tell Chief Lawler what I do remember."
        "No!" She reached out
for him, took his big hand into her small one and gave it a reassuring
squeeze. "We've been over this time and time again, Will. If you
tell Chief Lawler what you remember, it will look as if you might have
killed Kent. And we know that's impossible, don't we?"
        "Do we, Mama? Do we really
know it's impossible? If I can't remember anything that happened after
I hit him, then how-"
        "You hit Kent once," she
reminded Will. "Once. You do remember tossing the bat aside after
you hit him that one time. And the autopsy plainly stated that Kent was hit
repeatedly. Someone else picked up your baseball bat and killed
him." She grabbed Will's shoulders and gave him a stern shake.
"Do you hear me? You did not kill him!"
        "Then, who did?"
        Standing on tiptoe to reach her
six-foot teenager, Lane wrapped her arms around him. "I don't know.
But I know that you didn't."
        "And I know you didn't."
He hugged his mother fiercely, holding on to her for dear life.
        She stroked the dark, straight hair
that hung to his collar. Like silk in her fingers. Shiny and soft and almost
blue-black in the evening sunlight spilling through the windowpanes.
        Lane pushed him away gently.
"Why don't you go help Lillie Mae finish