“He would want to know.”
Ella eased down beside her niece, her heart breaking for the girl. It was all Ella could do to hold back her own tears. To keep from sobbing with Cami.
God, how could her mother leave her alone now? How could Margaret have left this precious, beautiful child to fend for herself against the cruelties her father waged against her?
Did Margaret even know the many, many times Mark had separated them? Had her sister-in-law even realized, in the Valium haze she existed within, that her daughter was being tormented by the man who had sworn to protect her?
“Cami,” Ella whispered as she laid her hand on the girl’s knee. “You don’t have to go through this alone. He would want to know.”
She shook her head again.
“Why?”
Cami turned back to her, the gray of her eyes like storm clouds, swirling with pain, with anger and desperation. “Hasn’t he had enough taken from him?” she asked painfully. “I can’t tell him, Ella. I can’t do that to him.”
No matter how much she needed him.
“Don’t tell him.” Cami suddenly gripped Ella’s arm, as though she knew the thoughts that hadn’t yet fully formed in her mind. “Please, Aunt Ella. Don’t do that to me. Don’t let me be someone else that’s hurt him. Please.” The last was a sob as more tears fell from her eyes, joining those that already had soaked her face.
Ella nodded hesitantly. She didn’t like it. She hated it. But this was Cami’s choice, and she chose to bear the burden alone rather than allow that young man to know that he had lost something so precious as the child he had created with Cami. She clearly remembered how he had come to her after getting out of jail, accused of Jaymi’s murder, his own eyes wet with tears as he comforted Cami then. He would have come for her now as well.
Could she blame her niece? Wouldn’t she have protected Eddy if the situation were the same though? Would she have done anything different? She knew she wouldn’t have.
Ella sighed heavily. “How much more are you going to carry alone, Cami?”
Cami shook her head, those tear-drenched eyes breaking Ella’s heart. “Don’t,” Cami whispered. “Just let it go. Just let me go, Ella. Please. I can’t talk right now.”
Ella let her go and understood the request. Cami had whispered those words to her the first time, nine years ago, when her sister had been laid in the ground.
The funeral had been over and everyone had left. Ella and Eddy had been unable to find Cami until the funeral director had called.
Cami had stayed at the gravesite, and she was silently watching as they buried her sister’s coffin. He was terrified if someone didn’t come for her, then they might be laying her beside Jaymi soon.
Ella had rushed to Cami’s side, trying to convince her to return to the house.
“Let me go, Aunt Ella,” her voice had echoed with such pure, deep agony that even Eddy had grimaced, forced to turn his head away to fight his tears. “Let me go, before I hurt you, too.”
Cami had just drifted away then. Ella had watched her eyes lose emotion, her expression become distant despite the tears that rained down her face. Emotionally and spiritually, Cami had drifted away from them.
That was what she was doing now. Turning back to the window, she stared out onto the street, and Ella wondered what Cami saw there. Where did Cami go when she sat there and stared onto the sun-drenched street that seemed quieter and more peaceful than it ever had, as though the world itself were holding its breath and grieving with her?
Ella wasn’t able to leave Cami. She couldn’t walk away from her. That was exactly what her mother had done. Ella refused to do it.
She stayed in the background, watched until Cami finally fell asleep, her small, fragile body curled into the window seat, her arms wrapped around her self as though there was no other way to feel the warmth of human touch.
And for a moment, for the briefest second, Ella nearly broke her word to Cami and called Rafe. She actually turned to go into the kitchen to retrieve her cell phone.
Because Ella knew he would come to Cami the minute he could, and she knew he would make Cami come back to them. But Cami carried enough guilt. Ella couldn’t imagine heaping more on her delicate shoulders.
Instead, Ella laid her head on the kitchen table and silently allowed her own tears to fall for the girl who deserved so much more.
Three years later, Cami at twenty-four
Coincidence.
Cami simply didn’t believe in it.
At least, not to the extent that it seemed someone wanted everyone in Corbin County, Colorado, to believe in it.
She stood on the edge of the small crowd, toward the back, as the Reverend Mayer said the final prayer over Clyde Ramsey’s coffin.
Rafer Callahan’s uncle and the only member of the family who hadn’t disowned him when his parents had died was laid to rest on a sunny summer day. Twenty-two years to the day that the Callahan brothers and their wives had gone over a mountain cliff, Clyde Ramsey had fallen from his horse and broken his neck.
The coincidence was simply too strong, especially considering that the so-called accident had come only days after he had filed papers with the courthouse that gave his nephew possession of the 450-acre ranch Clyde owned.
A ranch that Cami knew he had had several resort investors contact him over selling or at least leasing part of the property.
She was certain she had heard the sonic boom the second the three barons had received the news.
Now Clyde Ramsey was dead, and the ranch the three powerful families had been trying to buy was about to become the center of yet another court battle for Clyde’s heir, Rafer Callahan.
The battles begun twenty-two years ago after his parents’ death still hadn’t been resolved either. As of six months ago, the inheritance Rafe and his cousins had been entitled to was still frozen as part of the litigation the families of their mothers had brought against it.
Those families were still attempting to deprive their grandsons of everything their mothers had left to them on their deaths. Especially the property, left in trust that had been bought from Rafer, Logan, and Crowe’s grandparents JR and Eileen Callahan. A transaction that their sons, Rafer, Logan, and Crowe’s fathers had sworn their parents would have never signed.
To deflect suspicion, the vast amount of property had been placed in trust for the youngest daughters in each family. That inheritance went to each child on her thirtieth birthday. Those daughters, as fate would have it, had married the Callahan sons whose parents had supposedly sold it. Those three daughters had turned thirty only days before their deaths.