Once in Every Life

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Lissa said his name. He heard the quiet fear in her voice and felt a stab of regret so strong and sharp, he almost cried out in pain. The hope he'd felt only moments ago shattered like glass, sending thousands of clear, invisible shards scattering around his feet.

With a certainty that sickened and shamed him, he knew he'd killed those people. He knew without a doubt that he hadn't meant to hurt them, but somehow he had. And to them, dead now and in the ground, his intentions and his sickness didn't mean shit.

The memory of that night washed over him in a cold wave. The excessive amount of blood on his long Johns?

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had he really been naive enough to believe it was from his scraped hand? The marks he'd left on his wife's pale, fragile wrists that night came back to him suddenly, burning through his brain. He remembered the Winchester shotgun, propped in the corner of the barn. So out of place, so forgotten. The nightmare had gripped so hard that night, and so fast, with icy-cold fingers that seemed to suffocate him. He hadn't been thinking right?only feeling, acting on impulse. During a blackout his mind turned into a morass of fear and darkness and desperation. Maybe he'd taken the gun, thinking he was shooting Johnny's killer. Who the hell knew what had gone on in his mind?

Who the hell knew? He knew only that he'd been right to believe the worst of himself all those years.

He squeezed his eyes shut, battling a near-crippling flood of remorse and grief for the Dwyer family and what he'd done to them. God, forgive me. I never meant to hurt anyone.

Lissa came up beside him, touched his arm. "Jack, are you all right?"

He didn't dare look at her. He was afraid it would all be revealed in his eyes?the fear, the dread, the ache. Even some tiny, regret-filled remnant of hope. The only voice he could find was flat and lifeless, like the scratchy rustling of long-dead leaves. "No."

He pulled his arm free of her hold and turned to go.

"Wait, Jack?"

He didn't slow down. "I'll get the wagon hitched. We'll leave in fifteen minutes."

Jack strode into the barn, every step reverberating up his spine like a hammerblow. His breathing was fast and shallow, the ragged cant of a man on the verge of exploding.

He moved into the cool darkness of the barn with a re-

lieved sigh and slammed the door shut behind him. Alone, he sank to his knees on the hard-packed dirt floor.

"Oh, God." The words slipped past his mouth in a desperate sigh.

He closed his eyes to pray, but couldn't find the strength. Slowly opening his eyes, he saw a wadded pile of red in the corner by his workbench. Fear brought him to a stumbling stand. His long Johns. Trembling, he made his way to the rag box and pulled out the torn, dirty garment.

The wrinkled cotton fabric dipped and swayed in his shaking grip. The dried black splotch seeped for one dizzying moment into the sea of red. He blinked hard, clutched his long Johns more tightly. Gradually his vision slipped back into focus, and the black blotch became once again a crust of dried blood easily distinguished from the rest of the red.

Whose blood is it?

The terrifying question catapulted into his thoughts a

gain, bringing with it a wave of helplessness and fear so strong, his knees buckled. His hands shook harder. An icy chill crept down his spine and spilled through his blood. Whose?

When he'd first come out of the blackout, he'd assumed it was his blood. He glanced down at the scraped, bruised back of his hand. Scabs streaked from his knuckles to his wrist in intermittent dots and dashes. It had bled. It had. And he'd pinned it protectively to his chest. Exactly where the blood was on the underwear.

But he didn't believe it. Deep down he knew what he'd always known about himself. He was capable of violence, even murder. The coincidence was too strong to deny: He'd been blacked out the day of the murder, and he'd come home with blood on his clothing. Everything Lissa had told him meant nothing, less than nothing. It had

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given him a night, a glorious, laughter-tinged night he'd remember all his life, but no more.

A crazy killer like himself didn't deserve even that. All that mattered now was protecting his family, keeping his wife and children safe from the terrifyingly dark side of himself. He thought again about the bruises on Lissa's wrists?pale, bluish-yellow marks on the softness of her flesh. More pressure, just a bit more, and he might have broken her bone. Or worse.

He swallowed thickly. Nausea tasted sharp and bitter on his tongue. He could have hurt her; he could have hurt them all. Could hurt them still. The blackouts would return, creeping in when he didn't expect and ripping him from the caring circle of his family without a backward glance.