“It hurts too much.”
“Will you answer my questions?”
“The ones I can. Come on, let’s go inside. This may take a while.” She got up and followed him into the house and poured herself a glass of white wine, then sat down on the sofa, tucking her bare feet up underneath her.
Noah sat in the chair opposite her. “Tell me about the crime.”
“That’s what you care most about? Hmm. Well, a woman was murdered—a friend of your father’s, actually. I think the police suspected your father right away.”
“Did he do it?”
She’d steeled herself for this question, knowing it was coming for more than a decade, and yet now that it was here, she wasn’t sure what she should say. “Your dad had trouble controlling his temper.”
“Like me?”
“Nothing like you,” she said firmly.
“Did he kill that woman?” he asked again.
She knew he’d keep asking it until she answered, so she sighed and told him the truth. “I don’t believe he did.”
“Did you love him?”
Vivi Ann felt tears fill her eyes. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop them. “With all my heart.”
“Why did you divorce him, then?”
“He divorced me, actually, but that’s not what you really want to know. You’re asking why I . . . gave up on him.” Even after all this time, it hurt to remember that, to think about the way she’d let him go.
“It was so painful; hanging on, year after year, hoping. Every time the news was bad, I lost it. You remember some of that time. I took a lot of drugs and drank too much. I was a bad mother. I think your dad loved me so much he forced me to let go. And after we hit that tree in Grey Park—you remember that? It scared me, what I’d almost done to you. I knew I had to move on. We had to move on. You and me.”
“How could you do that to him?”
She closed her eyes. It was a question that haunted her. How many times had she longed to go back in time and say, No, Dallas, I won’t walk away. I won’t sign your papers. “I just had to, that’s all. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”
He got up and came around the coffee table. Sitting down by her, he laid his head in her lap the way he used to. She immediately began stroking her fingers through his silky hair.
So much like his father’s . . .
“Did he love me?” Noah asked in a voice so quiet and hesitant she knew why he’d come over here. He didn’t want her to see him cry.
“Oh, Noah,” she said, leaning forward to whisper, “he loved you so much. That’s why he wouldn’t see you. It would have broken his heart to look at you through prison glass.”
“That makes him a coward.”
“Or human.”
“Could I write him a letter?”
“I don’t think he’ll answer you. Could you handle that?”
“I think it’s better than not trying.”
Vivi Ann used to think like that; now she knew that trying could sometimes hurt more than giving up. “Okay, then. You give it a try. I love you, Noah. And I’m so proud of you.”
“I love you, too, Mom.” He wiped his eyes in a casual way, as if he thought she wouldn’t notice his tears. “It was kinda cool, you know. That carving in the tree.”
“Yeah,” she said, remembering. “It was.”