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in control somehow it had all collapsed on her...become
meaningless. She wanted the truth craved for it whatever price
had to be paid for it.
'Jared...' She didn't lift her head. Didn't want to see if she was
breaking into forbidden ground. He either answered her or not. And
if not...there was nothing anyway. 'Was my father...was he to blame
for what happened? You said... you implied... do you truly believe
that...?'
'No!' It sounded like an explosion of feeling that he had kept deeply
suppressed, that hurt him to admit, yet which demanded admission.
She felt his chest expand as he dragged in a deep breath and there
was a note of pained searching for truth in his voice when he slowly
added, 'How does one apportion blame? Who can unweave all the
threads that lead to tragedy? A meshed web of circumstances.
Passions driven to breaking- point ...'
He sighed and his breath wavered through her hair like the soft
stirring of a wind of change. The words that followed were slow and
measured, weighed in the balance of what was known and unknown.
'Your father was probably no more to blame than was mine. There
are some women with the power to twist men's souls. My mother is
one of them. Even Rafe... poor, damned Rafe hungering for the
crumbs she gave him... does give him... and I hate seeing it. I hated
it then... what I felt was happening all around me.. .but I was only a
boy, Laura. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Nothing anyone
could do...'
Only a boy... caught in the middle of something he didn't
understand... and his father ending up dead. A wave of sympathy for
his lonely fears and the terrible loss he had suffered stirred Laura
from her own anguish of soul. She lifted her head, bleak grey eyes
meeting and understanding the pain in his.
'I'm truly sorry about your father, Jared,' she said softly. 'You must
have been very close to him.'
The slight twist of his mouth mocked himself, not her. 'How close
does anyone get to another human being? Yet, he was.. .everything I
wanted to be. But that was a boy's point of view. A son's blind love
for his father. Obviously he was not everything my mother wanted.'
'Jared...' She hesitated, aware that she was scraping over old
wounds, yet her need to know pushed the plea from her lips. 'How
did he die? What happened? You intimated that it wasn't an
accident. That my father -'
'Laura, I don't truly know,' he confessed gently. 'A violent fight
broke out between them. My mother was screaming. She ran and got
a rifle. I think... to stop them. She yelled at me to fetch Rafe, who
had walked away when the quarrelling started. We heard the shot.
By the time we'd run inside, my father was dead, my mother was
sobbing hysterically over his body, and Drew was standing there,
staring down at them, the rifle in his hands. Rafe asked him what
happened. He didn't answer. He just handed the rifle to Rafe and
walked away. He never said a word. No explanation. He packed up
and left within the hour and we never saw him again. My mother
kept crying that it was an accident. She said there had been a
struggle for the gun and it had gone off.'
He gave an apologetic grimace. 'The fact that Drew went away,
turning his back on everything... I guess I always interpreted it as
guilt. But it might have been shock, Laura.'
The kind, conciliatory tone of Jared's last suggestion floated over
Laura's head. She was thinking along another line altogether. What
if it had been Naomi's finger on the trigger? Drew McKenzie might
well have left in order to protect the woman he had loved, taking the
guilt upon himself. And Naomi might well have let him, only to be
haunted by the thought of his sacrifice for her ever since.
However, there was nothing to be gained by suggesting that idea to
Jared. Whatever his mother's sins, she had certainly suffered for
them. Andrew McKenzie had taken his secrets to the grave and it
was better all around if they remained there now. Nevertheless.
Laura couldn't quite repress her unsatisfied curiosity about her
father. Again her eyes lifted to Jared's in searching appeal.
'Could you tell me what my father was like? From a boy's point of
view? From any point of view.'
He frowned. 'You would know better than I what he was like,
Laura.'
She heaved a deep, shuddering sigh and pulled out of his embrace,
feeling too uncomfortable to stay in the comfort of his arms. The
wounds to both of them went too deep. Her legs felt weak and shaky
so she backed up against the baobab tree and leaned against it. If
there was a time when truth had to be spoken, it was now, whatever
the consequences.
'I didn't know him, Jared,' she confessed. 'I never knew him. I didn't
even know of him... until he was dead. Only then did I receive word
of him and what he had left me.' The memory of how cheated and
robbed she had felt shadowed her eyes. 'It was as if...something I
had always yearned for...had been there all the time... only I wasn't
told it was within reach... until it was gone.'
She swallowed down the lump of emotion that had risen in her
throat. Jared was staring at her as if he had never seen her before
and she desperately wanted him to understand.
'You see... I never fitted in with the life my family led in Boston. I
wasn't the kind of child my mother wanted. The man I thought was
my father didn't have much time for children, and I... I didn't have
the assets he might have valued in a daughter. So when I found out
that for all those years there had been someone who might have
loved me, whom I could have belonged to, and I might have been
with him if only he'd got in touch, or come to see me...'
'Laura, Drew couldn't come to you. He was a wanted man. After my
father died, he never surrendered himself to the law. He simply
disappeared. If he'd tried to leave Australia, chances were he would
have been picked up on the manslaughter charge. Perhaps even
murder,' Jared explained quietly. 'And that would have dragged my
mother and the whole messy tragedy into the public eye. I don't
think he could have borne to see her again. To go through it all. And
he would have thought...I'm sure he did think...you were better off
without him. He certainly gave up everything else.'
'I know that now,' Laura said painfully. 'I guess I knew it when I
went in search of him and the life he led. The way he lived at Port
Douglas was so.. .so bereft of any real human contact. He kept to
himself. Wouldn't associate with any woman. And that painting. I
knew something dreadful had happened to him...' her eyes begged
his belief as she added '... but I didn't know how bad it was on your
side, Jared. I truly didn't. I'm sorry. I just wanted...'
'To take from us what we had taken from you and your father,' he
said as Laura floundered for words.
'No!' She shook her head, helpless to explain exactly what she had
felt. 'You can't get... what's forever gone. I thought if I came here...'
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