chapter
3
“WHAT THE HELL are you talking about?” All at once Dillon looked so menacing, that Jessica actually stepped back.
She held up her hand, more frightened of him than she had ever conceived she could be. There was something merciless in his eyes. Something terrifying. And for the first time, she recognized him as a dangerous man. That had never been a part of Dillon’s makeup, but events had twisted him, shaped him, just as they had shaped her. She had to stop persisting in seeing him as the man she had loved so much. He was different. She could feel the explosive violence in him swirling close to the surface.
Had she made a terrible mistake in coming to Dillon? In bringing the children to him? Her first duty was to Trevor and Tara. She loved them as a mother would, or, at the very least, an older sister.
“What the hell are you up to?” he snapped.
“What am I . . .” Her voice broke off in astonishment. Fear gave way to a sudden wave of fury. She stopped backing away and even took a step toward him, her fingers curling into fists. “You think I’m making up a story, Dillon? Do you think I dragged the children out of a home they’re familiar with, away from their friends, in secret, in the dead of night, to see a man they have no reason to love, who obviously doesn’t want them here, on a whim? Because I felt like it? For what? Your stupid, pitiful money?” She sneered it at him, throwing his anger right back in his face. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”
“If I obviously don’t want to have them here, why would you bring them?” His blue eyes burned with a matching fury, her words obviously stinging.
“You’re right, we shouldn’t have come here, it was stupid to think you had enough humanity left in you to care about your own children.”
Their gazes were locked, two combatants, two strong, passionate personalities. There was a silence while Jessica’s heart hammered out her fury and her eyes blazed at him. Dillon regarded her for a long time. He moved first, sighing audibly, breaking the tension, walking back to his desk with his easy, flowing grace. “I see you have a high opinion of me, Jessica.”
“You’re the one accusing me of being a greedy, grasping, money-hungry witch,” she pointed out. “I’d say you were the one with a pretty poor opinion of me.” Her chin jutted at him, her face stiff with pride. “I must say, while you’re throwing out accusations, you didn’t even have the courtesy to answer my letter suggesting the children come live with you after my mother died.”
“There was no letter.”
“There was a letter, Dillon. You ignored it like you ignored us. If I’m so money-hungry, why did you leave your children with me for all these months? Mom was dead, you knew that, yet you made no attempt to bring the children back here with you and you didn’t respond to my letter.”
“You might remember when you’re stating things you know nothing about that you are in my home. I didn’t turn you out, despite the fact that you didn’t have the courtesy to phone ahead.”
Her eyebrow shot up. “Is that a threat? What? You’re going to kick me out into the storm or even better, send me to the boathouse or the caretaker’s cottage? Give me a break, Dillon. I know you better than that!”
“I’m not that man you once knew, Jess, I never will be again.” He fell silent for a moment watching the expressions chase across her face. When she stirred, as if to speak, he held up his hand. “Did you know your mother came to see me just two days before she died?” His voice was very quiet.
A chill went down her spine as she realized what he was saying. Her mother had gone to see Dillon and two days later she was dead in what certainly wasn’t an accident. Jessica didn’t move. She couldn’t move as she assimilated the information. She knew the two incidents had to be connected. She could feel his eyes on her, but there was a strange roaring in her ears. Her legs were all at once rubbery and the room tilted crazily. She had brought Trevor and Tara to him.
“Jessica!” He said her name sharply, “Don’t faint on me. What’s wrong?” He dragged a chair out and forced her into it, pushing her head down, the leather covering his palm feeling strange on the nape of her neck. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
She inhaled deeply, taking in great gulps of air, fighting off dizziness. “I‘m just tired, Dillon, I’m all right, really I am.” She sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.
“Something about your mother’s coming here upset you, Jess. Why should that bother you? She often wrote or called to update me on the progress of the kids.”
“Why would she come here?” Jessica forced air into her lungs and waited for the dizziness to subside completely. Dillon’s hand was strong on her nape; he wasn’t going to allow her to sit up unless she was fully recovered. “I’m fine, really.” She pushed at his arm, not wanting the contact with him. He was too close. Too charismatic. And he had too many dark secrets.
Dillon abruptly let her go, almost as if he could read her thoughts. He moved away from her, back around the desk, back into the shadows, and hid his gloved hands below the desk, out of her sight. Jessica was certain his hands had been trembling.
“Why should it upset you that your mother came to see me? And why would you think someone might want to harm the twins?” The anger between them had dissipated as if it had never been, leaving his voice soft again, persuasive, so gentle it turned her heart over. “Does it hurt to talk about her? Is it too soon?”
Jessica gritted her teeth against his effect on her. They had been so close at one time. He had filled her life with his presence, his laughter, and warmth. He had made the entire household feel safe when he was home. It was difficult to sit across from him, thrown back to those days of camaraderie by his smoky voice, when she knew he was a different person now.
“My mother’s car had been tampered with.” Jessica blurted it out in a rush. She held up her hand to stop his inevitable protest. “Just hear me out before you tell me I’m crazy. I know what the police report said. Her brakes failed. She went over a cliff.” She was choosing her words carefully. “I accepted that it was an accident but then other accidents started happening. Little disturbing things at first, things like the fan on a motor ripping loose and tearing through the hood and windshield of my car.”
“What?” He sat up straight. “Was anyone hurt?”
She shook her head. “Tara had just gotten into the backseat. Trevor wasn’t in the car. I had a few scratches, nothing serious. A mechanic explained the entire thing away, but it worried me. And then there was the horse. Trevor and Tara ride every Thursday at a local stable. Same time, every week. Trev’s horse went crazy, bucking, spinning, squealing, it was awful. The horse nearly fell over backward. They discovered a drug in the horse’s system.” She looked straight at him. “I also found this in the horse’s stall, sticking out of the straw.” Watching his face she handed him the guitar pick with the distinctive design made for Dillon Wentworth as a gift so many years ago. “Trevor admitted that it might have been in his pocket and fallen out. That and other things were sent anonymously to the kids.”
“I see.” He sounded grim.
“The stable owners believe it was a prank on the horse, that it happens sometimes. The police thought Trevor did it, and grilled him until I called an attorney. Trevor would never do such a thing. But it felt wrong to me, two accidents so close together and only a few months after my mother’s car went out of control.” Jessica tapped her fingernail on the edge of his desk, a nervous habit when she was worried. “I might have accepted the accidents had that been the end of it, but it wasn’t.” She watched him very, very closely, trying to see past the impassive expression on his face. “Of course, the incidents didn’t happen one on top of the other, a couple of weeks elapsed between them.” She wanted desperately to read his blue eyes, but she saw only ice.
Jessica shivered again, experiencing a frisson of fear at being alone in the shadowy room with a man who wore a mask and guarded the darkness in his soul as if it were treasure.
“What is it, Jess?” He asked the question quietly.
What could she say? He was a stranger she no longer trusted completely. “Why did my mother come here and when?”
“Two days before her death. I asked her to come.”
Her throat tightened. “In seven years you never asked us here. Why would you suddenly ask my mother to travel all the way out here to see you?”
One dark brow shot up. “Obviously because I couldn’t go to see her.”
The alarm bells were ringing in her mind again. He was sidestepping the question, not wanting to answer her. It was too much of a coincidence, her mother’s visiting Dillon at his island home and two days later her brakes mysteriously failing. The two events had to be connected. She remained silent, suspicion finding its way into her heart.
“What else has happened? There must be more.”
“Three days ago the brakes on my car failed, too. It was a miracle we all lived through it. The car was totaled. Someone also has been phoning the house and sent old newspaper accounts of the fire to the children. That’s when the guitar pick was sent. The phone calls were frightening. That, along with the other incidents over the last few months, made me decide to bring them here to you. I knew they would be safe here.” She injected a note of confidence into her voice which she no longer felt. Her instincts were on alert. “Christmas was a natural, a perfect excuse should anyone question why we decided to visit you.” She had been so certain he would be softer at Christmastime, more vulnerable and much more likely to let them into his life again. She had run to him for protection, for healing, and she was very much afraid she had made an enormous mistake.
Dillon leaned toward her, his blue eyes vivid and sharp. “Tell me about these phone calls.”
“The voice was recorded like a robot’s voice. Whoever was calling must have prerecorded it and then played it when one of the twins answered. They said terrible things about you, accused you of murdering Vivian and her lover. Of locking everyone inside the room and starting the fire. Once he said you might kill them, too.” She could hear her own heart beating as she confessed. “I stopped allowing the twins to answer the phone and I made plans to come here.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“Only the police,” she admitted. She looked away from him, afraid of seeing something she couldn’t face. “The minute they realized Trevor and Tara were your children, they seemed to think I was looking to grab headlines. They asked if I was planning to sell my story to the tabloids. The incidents, other than the car, were minor things easily explained away. In the end they said they would look into it, and they took a report, but I think they thought I was either a publicity-seeker or the hysterical type.”
“I’m sorry, Jess, that must have been painful for you.” There was a quiet sincerity in the pure sensuality of his voice. “I’ve known you all of your life. You’ve never been one to panic.”
The moment he said the words aloud, her heart slammed hard in her chest. Both of them froze, completely still while the disturbing memories invaded, crowding in, filling the room like insidious demons crawling along the floor and the walls. A sneak attack, uninvited, unexpected, but all-invasive. The air seemed to thicken with the heavy weight of memory. Evil had come with the mere mention of a single word and both of them felt its presence.
Jessica did indeed know panic intimately. She knew complete and utter hysteria. She knew the feeling of being so helpless, so vulnerable, so stripped of power she had wanted to scream until her throat was raw. Humiliation brought color sweeping up her face and her green gaze skittered away from Dillon’s. No one else knew. No one. Not even her mother. She had never told her mother the entire truth. The nightmare was too real, too ugly, and she couldn’t look at it.
“I’m sorry, Jess, I didn’t mean to bring it up.” His voice was ultra soft, soothing.
She managed to get her shaky legs under her, managed to keep from trembling visibly, although her insides were jelly as she pushed away from his desk. “I don’t think about it.” But she dreamt about it. Night after night, she dreamt about it. Her stomach lurched crazily. She needed air, needed to get away from him, away from the intensity of his burning, all-seeing eyes. For a moment she detested him, detested that he saw her so naked and vulnerable.
“Jessica.” He said her name. Breathed her name.
She backed away from him, raw and exposed. “I never think about it.” Jessica took the coward’s way out and retreated, whirling around and fleeing the room. Tears welled up, swimming in her eyes, blurring her vision, but somehow, she made her way down the stairs.
She could feel Dillon’s eyes on her, knew he followed her descent down the stairs but she didn’t turn around, didn’t look at him. She kept moving, her head high, counting in her head to keep the echo of the long ago voices, of the ancient, hideous chanting from stealing its way into her mind.
When she reached her room, Jessica shut the door firmly, and threw herself, face down, onto the bed, breathing deeply, fighting for control. She was no child, but a grown woman. She had responsibilities. She had confidence in herself. She would not, could not let anything or anyone shake her. She knew she should get up, check on Tara and Trevor, make certain they were comfortable in the rooms Paul had provided for them, on either side of her room, but she was too tired, too drained to move. She lay there, not altogether asleep, not altogether awake, but drifting, somewhere in between.
And the memories came to take her back in time.
There was always the chanting when Vivian and her friends were together. Jessica forced herself to walk down the hallway, hating to go near them, but needing to find Tara’s favorite blanket. Tara would never go to sleep otherwise. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry. Vivian’s friends frightened her with their sly, leering smiles, their black candles, and wild orgies. Jessica knew they pretended to worship Satan, they talked continually of pleasures and religious practices, but none of them really knew what they were talking about. They made it up as they went along, doing whatever they pleased, each trying to outdo the other in whatever outrageous perverted sexual ritual they could envision.
As Jessica moved past the living room, she glanced inside. Black heavy drapes darkened the windows, candles were lit in every conceivable space. Vivian looked up from where she sat on the couch, naked from the waist up, sipping her wine while a man lapped greedily at her breasts. Another woman was naked while several men surrounded her, touching and grunting eagerly. The sight sickened and embarrassed Jessica and she looked away quickly.
“Jessica!” Vivian’s voice was imperious, that of a queen speaking to a peasant. “Come in here.”
Jessica could see the madness on Vivian’s flushed face, in her hard, over-bright eyes, and hear it in her loud, brittle laugh. She made herself smile vaguely. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wentworth, I have to get back to Tara immediately.” She kept moving.
A hard hand fell on her shoulder, another hand clapped over her mouth hard enough to sting. Jessica was dragged into the living room. She couldn’t see her captor, but he was big and very strong. She struggled wildly, but he held her, laughing, calling out to Vivian to lock the door.
Hot breath hit her ear. “Are you the sweet little virgin Vivian is always teasing us with? Is this your little prize, Viv?”
Vivian’s giggle was high-pitched, insane. “Dillon’s little princess.” Her words slurred and she circled Jessica and her captor several times. “Do you think he’s had her yet?” A long-tipped fingernail traced a path down Jessica’s cheek. “You’re going to have such fun with us, little Jessica.” She made a ceremony of lighting more candles and incense, taking her time, humming softly. “Tape her mouth, she’ll scream if you don’t.” She gave the order and resumed her humming, stopping to kiss one of the men who was staring at Jessica with hot, greedy eyes. Jessica fought, biting at the hand covering her mouth, a terrified cry welling up. She could hear herself, screaming in her head, over and over, but no sound emerged.
She struggled, rolled over, the sound of ugly laughter fading into terrified weeping. She woke completely, sobbing wildly. She pushed the pillow harder against her face, muffling the sound, relieved it was a nightmare, relieved she had managed to wake herself up.
Very slowly she sat up and looked around the large, pleasant room. It was very cold, surprisingly so when Paul had turned on the heater to take the chill off. Pushing at her long hair, she sat on the edge of the bed with tears running down her face and the taste of terror in her mouth. She hadn’t come back to the island with the sole purpose of keeping the children safe. She had come back in the hopes of healing herself, Dillon, and the children, of finding peace for all of them. Jessica rubbed her hand over her face, resolutely wiping the tears away. Instead the nightmares were getting worse. Dillon wasn’t the same man she had known seven years ago. She wasn’t the same hero-worshipping girl.
She had to think clearly, think everything through. Tara and Trevor were her greatest concern. Jessica flicked on the lamp beside the bed. She couldn’t bear to sit in the dark when her memories were so raw. The curtains fluttered, danced gently, gracefully in the breeze. She stared at the window. It was wide open, fog and rain and wind creeping into her room. The window had been closed when she’d left the room. She was absolutely certain of it. A chill crept down her spine, unease prickling her skin.
Jessica looked quickly around the room, her gaze seeking the corners, peeking beneath the bed. She couldn’t stop herself from looking in the closet, the bathroom, and the shower. It would be difficult for anyone to enter her room through the open window, especially in a rainstorm, because it was on the second floor. She tried to convince herself one of the twins must have come into her room to say goodnight and opened the window to let in some air. She couldn’t imagine why, it didn’t make any sense, but she preferred this explanation to the alternative.
She crossed the room to the window, stared out into the forest, and watched the wind as it played roughly in the trees. There was something elemental, powerful about storms that fascinated her. She watched the rain for a while, allowing a certain peace to settle back over her. Then, abruptly, she closed the window and went to check on Tara.
The bedside lamp was on in Tara’s room, spilling a soft circle of light across it. To Jessica’s surprise, Trevor lay on the floor wrapped in a heap of blankets, while Tara lay on the bed beneath a thick quilt. They were talking in low tones and neither looked at all astonished to see her.
“We thought you’d never come,” Tara greeted, moving over, obviously expecting Jessica to share her bed.
“I thought I was going to have to go rescue you,” Trevor added. “We were just discussing how to go about it since we didn’t exactly know which room you were in.”
Warmth drove out the cold in her soul, pushing away her nameless fears and the disturbing remnants of old horrors. She smiled at them and rushed to the bed, jumping beneath the covers and snuggling into the pillow. “Were you really worried?”
“Of course we were,” Tara confirmed. She reached for Jessica’s hand. “Did he yell at you?”
Trevor snorted. “We didn’t see any fireworks, did we? If he yelled at her we would have seen the Fourth of July.”
“Hey, now,” Jessica objected. “I’m not that bad.”
Trevor made a rude noise. “Flames fly off you, Jess, if someone gets you angry enough. I can’t see you being all mealymouthed if our own father didn’t want us for Christmas. You’d read him the riot act, probably knock him on his butt and march us out of his house. You’d make us swim back to the nearest city.”
Tara giggled, nodding her head. “We call you Mama Tiger behind your back.”
“What?” Jessica found herself laughing. “Total exaggeration. Total!”
“You’re worse. You grow fangs and claws if someone is mean to us,” Trevor pointed out complacently. “Justice for the children.” He grinned at her. “Unless you’re the one getting after us.”
Jessica threw her pillow at him with perfect aim. “You little punk, I never get after you. What are you doing awake, it’s four-thirty in the morning.”
The twins erupted into laughter, pointing at her and mimicking her question. “That’s called getting after us, Jess,” Tara said. “You’re worse than Mama Rita was.”
“She spoiled you rotten,” Jessica told them haughtily, laughter brimming over in her green eyes. “All right, fine, but nobody in their right mind is up at four-thirty in the morning. It’s silly. And it was a perfectly reasonable question.”
“Yeah, because we’re not in some spooky old house with total strangers and a man who might want to throw us out on our butts or anything like that,” Trevor said.
“Taking you off upstairs to do some dastardly deed we’ve never heard of,” Tara said, adding her two cents.
“When did you two become such smart alecks?” Jessica wanted to know.
“We talked to Paul for a while downstairs,” Trevor said when the laughter had subsided. “He’s really nice. He said he knew us when we were little.”
Jessica was aware of both pairs of eyes on her. She caught the pillow Trevor tossed to her and slipped it behind her back as she sat up, drawing up her knees. “He and your father were best friends long before the band was put together. Paul actually was the original singer for their band. Dillon wrote most of the songs and played lead guitar. He could play almost any instrument. Paul played bass guitar, but he sang the songs when they first started out. Brian Phillips was the drummer and I think it was his idea to form the band. They started out in a garage and played all the clubs and made the rounds. Eventually they became very famous.”
“There were a couple of other band members, Robert something,” Trevor interrupted. “He was on keyboard and for some reason I thought Don Ford was the bass player. He’s on all the CD covers and in the old magazine articles written on HereAfter.” There was a note of pride when he said the band’s name.
Jessica nodded. “Robert Berg. Robert’s awesome on the keyboard. And yes, Don was brought in to play bass. Somewhere along the line, Paul picked up a big drug habit.”
Tara wrinkled her nose. “He seemed so nice.”
Jessica pushed back her hair. “He is nice, Tara. People make mistakes, they get into things without thinking and then it’s too late to get out. Paul told me he began using all the time and couldn’t remember the lyrics to the songs during their live performances. Your father would step up and sing. Paul said the crowds went wild. Paul was on a downward spiral and eventually the band members wanted him out. He was doing crazy things, tearing places up, not showing up for scheduled events, that sort of thing, and they said enough.”
“Just like you read in the tabloids,” Trevor pointed out.
There was a small silence while both children looked at her. “Yes, that’s true. But it doesn’t make the things they wrote about your father true. Remember, this was all a long time ago. Sometimes when people become famous too fast, have too much money, they have a hard time handling it all. I think Paul was one of those people. It overwhelmed him. Girls were throwing themselves at him all the time, there was just too much of everything. Anyway, Dillon wouldn’t give up on him. He made him go into rehab and helped him recover.”
“Is that when they picked up another bass player?” Trevor guessed.
Jessica nodded. “The band really took off while Paul was cleaning himself up and they had to have another bass player, so Don was brought in. Dillon’s voice rocketed them into stardom. But he wouldn’t leave Paul behind. Your father gave Paul a job working in the studio and eventually made a place for him in the band. And when Dillon needed him most, Paul came through.”
“Did Paul know Vivian?” Tara’s question was hesitant.
Jessica realized Vivian still managed to bring tension into a room years after her death. “Yes he did, honey,” she confirmed gently. “All of the members of the band knew Vivian. Paul didn’t do all the tours with them so he often stayed here, seeing to things at home. He knew her better than most.” And despised her. Jessica remembered the terrible arguments and Vivian’s endless tirades. Paul had tried to keep her under control, tried to help Rita and Jessica keep the twins safe when she brought her friends in.
“Does he think my father murdered Vivian and that man she was with, like the newspaper said?”
Jessica swung her head around, her temper rising until she saw Tara’s bent head. Slowly she let her breath out. How else was Tara going to learn the truth about her father if she couldn’t ask questions? “Honey, you know most of those tabloids don’t tell the truth, right? They sensationalize things, write misleading headlines and articles to grab people’s attention. It wasn’t any different when your father was at the height of his career. The tabloids twisted all the facts, made it sound as if Dillon found your mother in bed with another man. They made it sound like he shot them both and then burned down his own house to cover the murders. It didn’t happen like that at all.” Jessica curved her arm around Tara’s shoulders and pulled her close, hugging her. “Your father was acquitted at the trial. He had nothing to do with the shooting or the fire. He wasn’t even in the house when it all happened.”
“What did happen, Jess?” Trevor asked, his piercing blue gaze meeting hers steadily. “Why wouldn’t you ever tell us?”
“We’re not babies,” Tara pointed out, but she cuddled closer to Jessica’s warmth, clearly for comfort.
Jessica shook her head. “I would prefer your father tell you about that night, not me.”
“We’ll believe you, Jess,” Trevor said. “You turn beet red if you try to lie. We don’t know our father. We don’t know Paul. Mama Rita wouldn’t say a word about it. You know it’s time you told us the truth if someone is sending us newspapers filled with lies and calling us on the phone telling more lies.”
“It’s the three of us, Jessie,” Tara added. “It’s always been the three of us. We’re a family. We want you to tell us.”
Jessica was proud of them, proud of the way they were attempting to handle a volatile and frightening situation. And she heard the love in their voices, felt the answering emotion welling up in her. They weren’t babies anymore, and they were right, they deserved to know the truth. She didn’t know if Dillon would ever tell them.
Jessica took a deep breath, then she began. “There was a party at the house that night. Your father had been gone for months on a world tour and Vivian often invited her friends over. I didn’t know her very well.” The fact was, Jessica had never understood Dillon’s relationship with his wife. Vivian had left the twins with Rita from almost the moment they were born so she could tour with the band. She rarely returned home the first three years of their lives. Yet during the last year of her life she had stayed home, the band’s manager refusing to allow her to travel with them due to her violent mood swings and psychotic behavior.
“You’ve gone quiet again, Jessica,” Trevor prompted.
“The fact is, Vivian drank too much and partied very heavily. Your father knew about her drinking, but she threatened him with you. She said she’d leave him, take you with her, and get a restraining order so he couldn’t see you. She knew people who would take money in return for testimony against Dillon. He was often on the road, and bands, especially successful ones, always have reputations.”
“You’re saying he was afraid to risk a court fight,” Trevor said, summing it up.
Jessica smiled at him. “Exactly. He was afraid the court would say you had to live with Vivian and he wouldn’t be able to control what was happening to you if he didn’t have custody. By staying with her, he hoped he could keep her contained. It worked for a while.” Vivian didn’t want to be home, she preferred the nightlife and the clubs of the cities. It was only during the last year, when the twins were five, that Vivian had returned home, unable to keep up appearances.
“That night, Jess,” Trevor prompted.
Jessica sighed. There was no getting around telling them what they wanted to know. The twins were very persistent. “There was a party going on,” she chose her words very carefully. “Your father came home early. There was a terrible fight between him and your mother, and he left the house to cool off. He made up his mind that he would leave Vivian and she knew it. There were candles everywhere. The fire inspector said the drapes caught fire and it spread fast, because there was alcohol on the furniture and the walls. The party was very wild. No one knows for certain where the gun came from or who shot whom first. But witnesses, including me, testified that Dillon had left the house. He ran back when he saw the flames and he rushed inside because he couldn’t find you.”
Jessica looked down at her hands. “I had taken you out a window on the cliff side of the house and he didn’t know. He thought you were still inside so he went into the burning house.”
Tara gasped, one hand covering her mouth to stop any sound but her eyes were glistening with tears.
“How did he get out?” Trevor asked, a lump in his throat. He couldn’t get the sight of his father’s terrible scars out of his mind. “And how could he make himself go into a burning house?”
Jessica leaned close to them. “Because that’s how courageous your father is, how absolutely dependable, and that’s how much he loves both of you.”
“Did the house fall down on him?” Tara asked.
“They said he came out on fire, that Paul and Brian tackled him and put out the flames with their own hands. There were people on the island then, guards and groundskeepers who had all come to help. The helicopters had arrived I think. I just remember it being so loud, so angry . . .” her voice trailed off.
Trevor reached up and caught her hand. “I hate that sad look you get sometimes, Jess. You’re always there for us. You always have been.”
Tara kissed her cheek. “Me, too, I feel the same way.”
“So no one really knows who shot our mother and her friends,” Trevor concluded. “It’s still a big mystery. But you saved our lives, Jess. And our father was willing to risk his life to save us. Did you see him after he came out of the house?”
Jessica closed her eyes, turned her head away from them. “Yes, I saw him.” Her voice was barely audible.
The twins exchanged a long look. Tara took the initiative, wanting to wipe away the sorrow Jessica was so clearly feeling. “Now, tell us the story of the Christmas miracle. The one Mama Rita always told us. I love that story.”
“Me, too. You said we were coming here for our miracle, Jess,” Trevor said, “tell us the story so we can believe.”
“We’re all going to be too tired to get up tomorrow,” Jessica pointed out. She slipped beneath the covers and flicked off the light. “You already believe in miracles, I helped raise you right. It’s your father who doesn’t know what can happen at Christmas, but we’re going to teach him a lesson. I’ll tell the story another time, when I’m not so darned sleepy. Goodnight you two.”
Trevor laughed softly. “Cluck cluck. Jessica hates it when we get sappy.”
The pillow found him even in the dark.