Page 40 of Deliver Me

She had suspicions that she wasn’t the only one having nightmares.

“How was the drive?” he asked, already rubbing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. He was always touching her, like he was trying as hard as she was to soak every bit of their visits in through the skin where it would live forever, an indelibly etched memory.

“It’s not as stressful as it used to be.” He nodded but he said nothing else, and she frowned, sensing an undercurrent of something dark that made her uneasy. “What’s wrong?”

“I spoke to Amy,” he said quietly. “They’re still looking but without those witnesses … What if they don’t find anyone?” His hand tightened on hers until it was almost painful as he spoke a portion of her own fears aloud, and he looked at her like he might fall apart.

“We just have to keep our faith.”

“I don’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life because I’m stuck in here.”

Mia sighed and pressed a hand to her eyes, willing back the tears there before he could see them. She knew he loved her, that he wanted her, but right now he needed her hope more than he needed anything else. It had been her hope that had finally swayed his mother and it would be her hope that kept him going.

Her pleas to Lilah had earned them an opportunity they couldn’t afford to waste in fear and self-pity. Amy had told her plainly, when she had arranged to meet her at a little coffee shop just off campus, that this process would be long and exhaustive, that it would push her to the limits of her emotions, with one day bringing the highest of hopes and the next the dark certainty of failure and despair. They would need as much support from others as they could find, but mostly they would need each other, and she prepared to give him all that she had.

“Hey,” she crooned, hating the guards and the rules for preventing her from pulling him into her arms, from running her fingers through the soft waves of his hair and kissing his anxiety away. “We can’t think like that.”

“I didn’t care so much the first time because I thought my life was over anyway, but now I have you and I have a fucking life waiting for me.” She started to speak but his head whipped up and she was caught in the tumult of his eyes. “Do you want to know the worst part, though? Even now she isn’t here, and she doesn’t care.”

“Who?”

“My mother,” he said, surprising her as the words tore into her to lodge somewhere primal, nestling into her heart. He hadn’t spoken at all about Lilah since he had found out about the lawyers and she’d been reluctant to bring it up, afraid of upsetting him.

“Gabriel, I’m so sorry,” she said, squeezing his hand and wiping away the tears that she could no longer hold back. “I tried to get her to talk to you, but she said she wanted to hear what the P.I.’s had to say first.”

“Of course, she did,” he said bitterly.

“She talked about you and your father,” Mia told him softly. “She’s not a soft woman, obviously, but I think she loved you both.”

“AndRichard? Did she talk abouthim?”

“Yes,” Mia admitted, still unsure how much she should say on the subject of his uncle. “I got the impression they were close, and she felt very betrayed by the idea that he might have hurt you.”

“Theywereclose,” Gabriel said. “Richard was able to get away with so much because people trusted him.”

“It looks like he dropped out of the public eye around the time your father died, but Amy and my dad told me how famous he was.”

“Convincing people that he wasn’t as perfect as they thought he was will be almost impossible.”

“We’re going to be taking on a big legacy,” she admitted, “but wecando this.”

“How was the visit?”

Mia sighed, pausing with her foot on the bottom stair. She’d thought she might be able to get by without her father seeing her, but she hadn’t been so lucky.

“It was fine,” she said, turning to smile at him as she took another step up the stairs. “Just going over some stuff that we had talked to his lawyers about.”

Pastor Anderson nodded absently, still rooted to the spot in the doorway to the dining room. He had been waiting for her to come home, she realized. He hadn’t done that since she was in high school, when he needed to talk to her about her mother’s illness. It was usually an indication that he had something serious to say.

“Can you come in here, please?” he asked, confirming her suspicions, and tapping his fingers nervously on his thigh.

“Sure,” she said, turning away from the stairs and taking a few hesitant steps to follow him into the dining room, where he sat at the table, a cup of coffee sitting untouched in front of him.

Kennedy wouldn’t be home from class for another two hours, and without the buffer her presence had provided, Mia had a sinking feeling that this conversation was going to be the one that she had been specifically avoiding for the last three months.

“We haven’t had much time to really talk since the unfortunate disagreement we had at Christmas,” he said, confirming her suspicion.

“No, we haven’t,” she agreed. She hugged her arms around her middle, anxiety already prickling beneath the skin and making her thoughts buzz uncomfortably.

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