“So she lost the man she loved, and she lost his baby,” Keira said, trying to imagine what Mandy had gone through. Now that she’d witnessed firsthand the love between Ryan and Mandy Callahan, the enormity of what Mandy had to have felt swept through her, leaving her more shaken than she wanted to admit. “If I were Mandy I wouldn’t want to live,” she whispered under her breath, but Cody’s sharp ears heard her.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how she reacted. I was there when she regained consciousness in the hospital. I didn’t have to tell her—she already knew. But...” His eyes darkened with remembered pain.
“Part of me was tempted to tell her Callahan was still alive, but would that have made it any easier on her with him gone? To know the explosion was faked, that her desperate attempt to save him was meaningless? That her baby didn’t have to die?”
Keira blinked against the prickling sensation that was a precursor to tears, and waited until the sensation subsided. “No,” she confirmed softly. “It wouldn’t have been any easier to bear.”
“I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been in Callahan’s situation,” Cody said. “His choices were limited. Maybe I’d have done the same thing—I just don’t know. But Callahan had decided Mandy needed to be protected, no matter what. He chose to leave her, chose to let her think he was dead. He didn’t know....”
He drew in his breath sharply. “Mandy says I should have found a way to tell her the truth. Callahan says he trusted me to watch over her while he led the wolves off the scent. I was damned either way.”
“A no-win situation,” Keira agreed.
“All Mandy’s friends were worried about her after Callahan ‘died,’ not just me.” Cody’s next words came out harshly. “She lost weight. She wasn’t sleeping. She looked like hell. We were all afraid she’d—” He broke off, obviously suffering with the memory.
“Suicide?” Keira asked, feeling she already knew the answer.
Cody nodded reluctantly. “She’d tried once before, in the hospital right after it happened. I don’t think she really intended to...but...we were all still afraid for her afterwards.” He fell silent, and Keira knew he was back in that time, reliving the events as they occurred.
Then he picked up the thread of the story. “It started snowing the day before New Year’s Eve—a real three-day blizzard. As sheriff, I always checked on the local residents when there was bad weather, especially the most vulnerable ones, the ones who lived alone.”
Keira could see where this was heading. “So you went to check on Mandy.”
“Yeah. New Year’s Day. I should have sent one of my deputies,” he said roughly, “but I...didn’t.”
“What happened then?”
“Mandy had downed the remains of a bottle of whiskey the night before. She told me she just wanted to sleep for once without having nightmares. She wasn’t drunk that next morning, but she was in bad shape emotionally.” Cody’s gaze was turned inward, and Keira knew he blamed himself for everything that followed.
“There’s some excuse for Mandy—Callahan was dead, or so she thought. I knew he was alive—there’s no excuse for me.” His eyebrows drew together in an expression that combined both self-condemnation and honest bewilderment. “Callahan once accused me of planning it. I’ve gone over it in my mind a thousand times since then, and I don’t think I did, but...who ever really knows why we do what we do?”
He swallowed hard. “Mandy was grieving, and I loved her. I just wanted to...but it was the worst mistake of my life. Afterward, she wept as if her heart was breaking. God!” he said. “I never want to hear a woman cry like that again, especially if I’m the cause.”
He was silent for so long Keira finally asked him, “Then what?”
“Then Callahan returned for Mandy almost a year after his ‘death.’ He’d had plastic surgery to disguise his face, but he had no way of knowing his cover was already blown, that his ‘death’ had already been revealed as a fake. Pennington’s conviction had been overturned by the appellate court, the prosecutors were panicking because without Callahan there was no case left to prosecute, and D’Arcy had no choice but to disclose to them that Callahan was still alive, still available to testify.”