Holly rubbed her lips together, making them firm to keep them from trembling. “I should have answered Mitch’s letters. If I had known his friend blamed me for his death, I could have talked to him, made him understand how sorry I was that he had died in that accident.”
“There was no way you could have known Brett was in love with Mitch. He didn’t even know. When the police checked his apartment, he practically had a shrine to him. They think he’d been in love with him since high school. If Mitch didn’t know, there was no way you could have.
“You weren’t responsible for Brett, and you weren’t responsible for Lindy. No one she worked with knew they had met when he came to Treepoint and exchanged numbers. From what Knox said, they just fed each other’s obsession to get back at you.”
Holly gave a bitter laugh. “She thought me and Dustin were having an affair. She became even madder when I married Greer. Knox was able to get a warrant for their messages. He said one of Lindy’s texts was so violent he didn’t think women could think that way.”
“A jealous woman is a dangerous thing.”
“Yes, they are,” Holly agreed.
Lindy’s jealousy had affected her whole life, and Rachel’s.
She and Greer hadn’t even made love since she had come home from the hospital two months ago. Logan slept with her, afraid to go to sleep. Every member of their family was tense, walking around each other on eggshells, because they didn’t want to hurt Rachel if they mistakenly brought up her miscarriage, or Logan and her almost dying. Each person needed time to heal the wounds that Mitch and Lindy had dealt them.
“Logan doesn’t want to go out for Halloween this year. He says he’s too old to go. And he doesn’t color anymore. He threw his coloring pad away after I mistakenly turned the next page for him to draw on and realized he had already drawn on it. He had drawn a king’s crown on a dark sheet..”
“Because he’s afraid. He thought the pictures in his head were his imagination. When he almost died, he found out they aren’t. I was afraid of everything after I almost died. Tate said he was, too. When he’s ready, we’ll talk to him. He’s not ready yet.”
Holly sighed, finishing her wine. “All the Porters are strong. From what little I found out, you’re used to licking your wounds until they’re healed. For the rest of us, it isn’t as easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re pushing Cash away until you come to terms over losing the baby. Greer is pushing me away, because he thinks he didn’t protect me. I lived with you, and I didn’t know you and Greer were capable of healing like you can.” She waved away Rachel’s explanation as to why. “I understand why. I’m not blaming you. I just wish you would open up to me more. I didn’t even know you had been seriously injured when you were younger, and I still don’t know how your accident happened.”
“Tate, Greer, and I went to the lake to go swimming” Rachel began. “It was the first time Ma let us go by ourselves. Tate and Greer promised to keep an eye on me, so she let us go. Tate and Greer did watch me. They were very responsible. I was the one being silly. I kept wanting to climb on the rock, and they kept telling me no. They had taken their fishing poles, and when they were baiting their hooks, I sneaked away to climb the rock. I wanted to jump off just like I’d seen them do. I was diving into the water when I heard them yelling at me.
“That’s the last thing I remember, until I heard Greer’s voice in my head. The pain was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe I could feel that kind of pain and still be alive. I couldn’t breathe and knew I was dying.
“Holly, it was beautiful. I didn’t want to come back, but Greer wasn’t letting me go.”
“No, he wasn’t. How did Tate get hurt?”
Rachel wrapped her arms around her legs. “When Pa got drunk on moonshine, he got really drunk. He and Ma had some bad fights about how he would make us go to the barn and give us spankings …” Rachel stopped before starting again. “Pa usually let Ma discipline me, but the boys … He beat the hell out of them. He wanted the boys to be afraid of him. Said it would keep them out of trouble when they got older.
“One day, Ma left Tate and Greer with him. They were home sick with the flu. With Pa, the only one who was allowed to get sick was him. So, he was already mad, because the boys didn’t go to school that day, so to teach them a lesson, he had them deliver his moonshine to his customers. When Greer and Tate came home, one of his customers had called to tell him that he had been shorted.