Nora Roberts - The Hollow

“Every choice I made with her was the wrong one. All those wrong choices killed her.”

“No. It killed her.”

“She wasn’t part of this. She’d never have been part of this except for me.” He drew back, drew away so he could finish. “Last night, I dreamed,” he began, and told her.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Layla told him. “I don’t know what I should say to you. But…” She took his hand, pressed it between her breasts. “My heart aches. I can’t imagine what you feel if my heart aches. Others who know what happened, who know you, have told you it wasn’t your fault. You’ll accept that or you won’t. If Carly loved you, she’d want you to accept it. I don’t know if you were wrong to lie to her. And I don’t know if I could accept as truth everything I know if I hadn’t seen and experienced it myself. You wanted to keep her separate from this, to keep what you had, who you were, who she was apart from what you have, who you are here. I know what that’s like, the wanting to keep everything in its proper place. But your worlds collided, Fox, and it was out of your control.”

“If I’d made different choices.”

“You might have changed it,” she agreed. “Or it all would have taken a different route to the same end. How can you know? I’m not Carly, Fox. And like it or not, we share what’s happening in the Hollow. They aren’t all your choices now.”

“I’ve seen too much death, Layla. Too much blood and pain. I know more’s coming, and I know we’ll all do whatever we can, whatever we have to do. But I don’t know if I can survive if I lose you.”

It was his sadness that lay on her heart now. The unbearable weight of his sorrow. “We’ll find a way. You’ve always believed that. You’ve made me believe it. Come on. You’re going upstairs to lie down. No arguments.”

She cajoled, bullied, and nagged him upstairs. By the time she got him into bed, he was too exhausted to argue, or make suggestive jokes when she undressed him and tucked him in. When she was sure he was asleep, she ran down to close the office, then back up again to call Cal and ask him to come.

Layla put her finger to her lips when he came in the back way. “He’s sleeping. He had a rough night, and a rough day. A nightmare,” she added, gesturing him into the kitchen. “One that blurred me and Carly together.”

“Oh. Shit.”

She poured coffee without asking if he wanted it. “He told me about her, not without considerable struggle, and considerable pain. He’s worn out now.”

“Better he told you though. Fox doesn’t do well holding stuff in.” He started to drink, lowered the mug and frowned. “How did coffee get in here?”

“He bought me a coffeemaker.”

Cal let out a half laugh. “He’ll be all right, Layla. It hits him sometimes. Not often, but when it does, it hits hard.”

“He blames himself, and that’s stupid,” she said so briskly, Cal lifted his brows. “But he loved her so he can’t do anything else. He told me as soon as he knew she’d left the farm, he tried to find her. You were burned getting people out of a house-kids out-some guy was shooting up the town, that son of a bitch Napper came at him with a baseball bat, and he’s sick because he couldn’t stop her from jumping.”

“Here’s what he probably didn’t tell you, stop me if I’m wrong. He was burned, too, not as bad as I was, that time, but bad enough. When the call came through, he took off ahead of me and Gage. On the way he kicked Proctor- that was the guy with the shotgun-square in the nuts, tossed Gage the gun, and kept going. He punched out one of two boys tearing into a woman on the sidewalk. I got the other one, but it slowed me down. And there was Napper. He got a good swing in with that bat. Broke Fox’s arm.”

“My God.”

“Gage went in like a battering ram, and Fox took off again. It took both of us to take Napper out. Fox was already running up the stairs when we got inside the old library. And it was hell in there. We were too late, too. She was jumping, hell, she was diving off that ledge when we ran out on the roof. I thought he was going to go over after her. He was bloody from fights, from being rammed by books that flew around like missiles, and God knew what else. There was nothing he could do. He knows it. But once in a while it takes ahold of him and gives him a good, hard squeeze.”

“If she’d believed him, believed in him and done what he asked-what she promised him-she’d be alive.”

Cal kept his calm gray eyes even with hers. “That’s right. Exactly right.”

“But he won’t blame her.”

“It’s harder to blame the dead.”

“Not for me, not at the moment. If she’d loved him enough, believed in him enough to keep her promise- only that, to keep her promise-he wouldn’t have had to risk his life to try to save her. I didn’t say that to him, and I’m going to try very hard not to. But I feel better now that I’ve said it out loud.”

“I’ve said it out loud, and to his face. I felt better, too, but it didn’t seem to do the same for him.”

Layla nodded. “There’s something else. Why Carly? She wasn’t part of the town, but she was infected, apparently, in minutes. So strongly that she committed suicide.”

“It’s happened before. It’s mostly people who live in the Hollow, but outsiders can get caught up.”

“I bet most of them get caught up as victims of someone who’s infected. But here she is, the woman one of you loves, and she’s caught up immediately. I wonder about that, Cal, and I wonder how it was he heard her calling, that she was able to call him, that she was able to wait until he ran out on the roof so he had to watch her jump.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I’m not sure. But it might be worthwhile to have Cybil do a search on her, a genealogy. What if she’s connected? What if Carly was on one of our twisted family trees?”

“And Fox just happened to fall in love with her?”

“That’s the point. I don’t think any of this just happened. Cal, have you ever been in love-really in love- with anyone before Quinn?”

“No.” He answered without hesitation, then took another contemplative sip of coffee. “I can tell you Gage hasn’t either.”

“It uses emotions,” she pointed out. “What better way to cause pain than to use love against one of you? To twist it like a knife in the heart? I don’t think she was just infected, Cal. I think she was chosen.”

THAT NIGHT, THEY READ, AND FOR THE FIRST time in many pages, the first in the many months that had passed for Ann, she wrote of Giles and Twisse.

It is a new year. What was has passed into what is, and what may be. Giles asked that I wait until the new to make record of what came to be in the old. Do such turnings of time truly form shields to block the dark?

He sent me away before I ever had birth pangs. He could not do what he had determined to do with me besidehim. It shames me that I wept, even begged, that I would hurt him with my tears and my pleas. He would not be swayed, nor would he send me from him weeping.He dried my tears with his fingers, and pledged that if the gods were willing, we would find each other again.

At that moment, what did I care for gods, with their demands, their fickle natures and cold hearts? Yet my beloved had pledged to them before ever to me, and so I was no match for gods. He had his work, his war, he told me, and I-and he put his hands on my belly and the lives growing in them-had mine. Without me, his work would be nothing, and his war would be lost.

I did not leave him weeping, but with a kiss as our sons squirmed between us. I went with the husband of my cousin, away from my love, the cabin, the stone. I went away on a soft night in June, and as I did, he called these words to me.