Sunrise Canyon (New Americana 1)

The other doors were closed, except for one that stood a few inches ajar. Against his better judgment, he found himself walking toward it, moving lightly down the hall, until he could look into the dimly lit room.

Something tightened around his heart. Paige lay sleeping in the glow of her night-light, her eyes closed, her hair tousled on the pillow.

She was so beautiful, she almost took his breath away. But he knew he shouldn’t be here looking at her. If Paige woke up and saw him, she might be startled. And if Kira found him in the hallway, she was liable to be upset, or even angry. Nobody needed that kind of confrontation tonight.

He was turning to go when he noticed something on the nightstand. He recognized it at once. It was the framed portrait that he and Wendy had posed for on their wedding day.

Paige had been little more than a toddler when her mother died; and as her father, he’d scarcely been there at all. Any real memories of her parents would be very dim at best. But Jake could imagine how the smiling pair in the picture could become an idealized version of her father and mother. Their happy faces would greet her every morning when she woke. They would watch over her at night while she slept. They would never hurt her, never scold her, never grow old or go away.

But people in a photograph were a sad substitute for the real thing. They could never laugh with her, play with her or teach her. They could never love her.

Driven by impulse, Jake slipped through the door, took the picture and carried it back to the light in the living room. Looking at those faces was like twisting a knife in his gut, but right now, feeling the pain was better than feeling nothing at all.

The young man in the portrait looked like a stranger—the trusting eyes, the boyish grin. He was marrying the woman of his dreams, and he would do everything in his power to make their lives perfect. Even the thought of his upcoming deployment couldn’t dim that confident look. There’d been no doubt that he would serve his country with honor and come home whole, finding his wife waiting with their child in her arms.

The poor, stupid bastard.

And Wendy—Lord, but she’d looked so beautiful in her ivory gown and veil. They’d been so happy then, and so much in love. If only he could have chosen to die in her place. She could have been there for their daughter. She could’ve followed her own dreams and made a fulfilling life for herself without him.

Instead he’d survived—a useless wreck of a man who could barely make it from one day to the next; a man whose real life had ended on a dark city street, in a crumpled mass of metal.

“Give me that picture, Jake.” Kira’s soft voice startled him. He hadn’t heard her come back into the house. Gently but firmly, she took the photograph from his hand.

He’d expected her to be angry, but all she said was “Let me put this back. Paige will be upset if she wakes up and finds it gone.”

Jake watched her walk into the shadows, slim, erect and utterly self-possessed. Nothing seemed to touch her—at least not from the outside.

“Kira needs you to forgive her for what happened. Maybe if you can do that, she’ll finally be able to forgive herself.”

Dusty’s words came back to him as Kira vanished into Paige’s room and came out a moment later without the photograph. She didn’t act like a woman who needed forgiveness. For that matter, Jake wasn’t sure he was ready to forgive her. But after three years, maybe it was time he stopped walking around the tragedy and tried to learn the whole story.

As she stepped into the light again, Jake forced himself to speak. “We’ve never talked about that night, Kira—the night of the accident. If I understood what happened, maybe it would help me move past it.”

Kira glanced away, her hands arranging an afghan on the back of the couch. “There’s not much to understand,” she said. “Wendy had gone to a bachelorette party with a couple of her girlfriends. They’d picked her up at her place. Since I’d agreed to babysit, they dropped Paige off at my apartment on the way.

“Toward midnight, when she wasn’t back, I started to worry. I was just about to phone her, when she called me. She said she wanted to go home, but her friends were drunk and didn’t want to leave the party. I offered to come and get her.”

“Wendy wasn’t drunk?” Jake remembered how his wife had enjoyed getting tipsy. It had never been a problem between them. But he sensed—or perhaps only imagined—a slight hesitation before Kira shook her head.

“I didn’t ask, but she sounded sober,” Kira said. “Paige fussed when I woke her up and buckled her into her car seat, but she was fast asleep by the time I picked up her mother half an hour later.”

“How did Wendy seem? Was she all right?”

“She was fine, just tired and glad to be away from there. But . . .” Kira’s voice trailed off. She crossed the room and stood gazing out the front window.

“But?” Jake demanded, his impatience getting the better of him.

She stood silent a moment more. “It was late, and I was dead tired,” she said at last. “I wanted some coffee to perk me up for the drive home. I spotted an all-night drive-through and stopped long enough to buy a cup.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Just long enough.”

There was no need for Kira to finish the story. Jake could guess the rest. The brief time it had taken to pull up to the drive-through window, buy the coffee and leave had put them directly in the path of the drunk driver, who’d run the red light, slammed into Kira’s small car and killed Wendy.

A few seconds more, or a few seconds less, and nothing would have happened.

“My God,” he said, staring at her.

“Yes, now you know.” She turned away from the window. “For what it’s worth, the driver of the SUV wasn’t hurt. And because his family had political connections, he got off with a slap on the wrist. He was killed, driving drunk again, six months later. I guess you could call it karma.”

She made a shrugging motion, like someone shedding an uncomfortable coat. “But this isn’t why I asked you to stay. Since my grandfather’s in the hospital, I’m going to need your help with the students and the horses. I know you don’t owe me a thing, but I hope you’ll lend a hand, out of respect for Dusty.”