Danielle Steel - Southern Lights - A Novel

“I am nice,” Alexa said tartly, putting their dishes in the machine. “That doesn’t mean I have to see your father. Not tonight.” Or anytime soon. Or maybe in this lifetime.

“All you have to say is hi and bye.” Alexa didn’t say it to her daughter, but she was still thinking more along the lines of “fuck you.”

“I don’t think so, sweetheart. I want you to have a nice time with him. We both love you. But we don’t have to be friends.”

“No, but you could at least be polite. You won’t even talk to him on the phone. He says he would, but he understands why you won’t.”

“That’s big of him. At least we know his memory is still intact,” Alexa said, and walked out of the room. Savannah knew that her father had gone back to his first wife after leaving her mother, and they had had another child, whom Savannah had never met. She had never met his wife either, or seen her half-brothers in ten years, although she still remembered things about them. She knew none of the details of the divorce or why it had happened, and her mother refused to discuss it with her. Alexa didn’t think it right to explain it to her. Even if she hated Tom, he was Savannah’s father after all. Savannah remembered her paternal grandmother vaguely, and being slightly scared of her. She had never heard from her in all these years either, not even a birthday card. There was a rift a mile wide between the two sides of her family, and her only contact with her father was when he appeared. He rarely called her and had told her years before that she could never call him at home, only in the office, but she never did. She had correctly sensed that it was okay for him to visit her, but not for her to go anywhere near his Charleston life. It was a silent pact between them, and the kind of thing a child knew, without ever having it spelled out.

Alexa and Savannah sat and watched TV together, and the doorbell rang at nine-fifteen. Alexa leaped to her feet when she heard it and headed for the bedroom and was telling Savannah to come and say goodbye to her when she left, when Savannah pulled open the door, and there he was, and Alexa felt like a deer in the headlights as they stared at each other and said nothing. Ten years melted instantly like snow on their tongues. She had no idea what to say, and neither did he. He hadn’t expected her to be there. She never was. And he looked exactly the same. He was wearing jeans, a black ski parka, and hiking boots, and he was as handsome as he’d ever been. His hair was just a touch too long, his eyes were just as blue, the gray in his hair didn’t show among the blond, he had the same athletic body, and the same cleft in his chin. Tom Beaumont hadn’t changed one bit.

“Hello, Alexa,” he said quietly, as though afraid to approach her. She looked on the edge of panic and as though she were about to run from the room, and from him. And when he spoke, he had the same deep, husky voice, and the same southern drawl. What was different was that she wasn’t his wife anymore, and hadn’t been in years.

“Hello, Tom,” she said politely, looking stiff. She was still wearing her work clothes, a quiet navy suit, and she had kicked off her shoes, and had on navy stockings and a lawyerly white blouse, and her hair in a bun. Unlike him, she looked like a different person than the carefree, happy woman she had been ten years before. Now she looked serious, professional, and extremely uncomfortable to be facing him. But Savannah was grateful that she was at least talking to him. It was a first. She was so glad his plane had been late. Alexa wasn’t. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get ready. Savannah can get you something to eat, if you haven’t eaten.”

“I can pick something up on the road,” he said gently. What he had seen and startled him most was the look of sorrow in her eyes. It was all still there, everything he had done. It made his stomach hurt and made him want to cry. But it was way, way too late for that. “We’ll get going now,” he told Alexa, as though to assure her that he would be out of her sight and her space soon. She nodded, somber faced, and left the room. She walked into her bedroom and closed the door. He looked at Savannah and said nothing. Savannah looked happy, as though something wonderful had happened. He wondered if she was used to the devastated look in her mother’s eyes. That would be even worse. Alexa looked well, but the price of his betrayal was deep in her eyes.

They were ready to leave a few minutes later. Savannah was wearing black ski pants and a white parka, and she looked gorgeous when she came to kiss her mother goodbye in the bedroom. Alexa was going to miss her but had a ton of work to do. She could use the solitude, without having to feel guilty for the time she couldn’t spend with Savannah. And she knew how much she had been looking forward to the trip with Tom.

“I love you,” Alexa said as she hugged her. “Have a good time.”

“I love you too, Mom. Don’t work too hard.” And then she hesitated for a minute in the doorway. “Do you want to come and say goodbye?” She meant to her father. Her mother shook her head without a sound, and Savannah reassured her. “That’s okay. Thank you for being nice when he came in.” Alexa smiled, and Savannah closed the door.

Alexa heard them leave a moment later, and she lay down on her bed. She hadn’t expected to see him, or to be so shaken when she did. What had shocked her was that he looked no different, not one jot. He looked exactly as he had when he was her husband, and for an instant she had to remind herself that he no longer was. It was as though her heart and body had hung on to all the memories she had tried to kill. Her soul remembered, her skin remembered, her heart remembered, and now she remembered how much she had loved him then, and how painful it all was. As she lay there, she wondered if there were some people you always felt the same way about, who awoke the same feelings and the same memories. No matter how much you had come to hate them, or how much things had changed, there was always some tiny part of you that remembered how sweet it had been. The worst part was that she knew that if she had met him for the first time that night, she would have been just as attracted to him, just as dazzled by him and how incredibly good-looking he was. He was hard to resist. And then slowly as she lay there, she remembered just how awful it had been, how badly he had hurt her, and how weak and despicable he was. But for just a fraction of a second, she had remembered the good times and felt the same things for him. She was sorry she had seen him, and then decided she wasn’t. All it did in the end was remind her of how much she hated him, and why.

Chapter 6

Halfway into the week Alexa was relieved that Savannah was with her father. Her days had been insane. They had found another victim they could link to Luke Quentin. This time, a nineteen-year-old girl. He had sixteen victims that they knew of, and the forensic lab was working overtime on DNA. The task force was growing under the supervision of the FBI, since several states were involved now. Jack had a dozen investigators working on the case full time. The trial was three months away.

On Thursday Alexa met with Judy Dunning, the public defender, to discuss discovery with her. Alexa had to give her the evidence she had, all of which was incredibly damning. Alexa tried to convince Judy to get him to plead guilty, and Judy explained that she was beginning to think he had been framed, possibly by someone he had had bad dealings with in prison, who had sworn vengeance on him. She said that she was convinced herself that he hadn’t done it. There were too many victims, and suddenly every dead girl in half a dozen states was being blamed on him. She told Alexa that he was a very sensitive man, and of course he didn’t want to plead guilty, if he hadn’t committed the crimes. Alexa stared at her as though she was out of her mind. It was clear to her what had happened. Luke Quentin had turned his smoldering sexual gaze on her, had done his sociopathic dance, and she was falling in love with him, in a frighteningly innocent way. It was what he did, and probably how he had seduced all his victims, made each one feel special and like the only woman in the world—for those few minutes, until he killed her. He wasn’t going to kill Judy Dunning, but he had blinded her to the truth. Maybe it was what she needed to defend him, but Alexa came out of the meeting shaking her head.