His heart started to pound at the frank curiosity in the boy’s eyes. Glancing through the windows, Preston saw Emma cleaning her hands with something on the other side of the van.
“My mom hates it when people smoke,” Max volunteered. “She says it’s stinky. And sometimes it eats a hole in your throat.”
“She’s right.” Preston pulled open the driver’s-side door, then hesitated. The highway wasn’t busy, but he couldn’t get in and slam the door as he longed to, in case Max happened to step into the road while no one was watching.
“My dad smokes, too,” Max said.
Although he didn’t really want to talk to Max, this piqued Preston’s curiosity. Was Max’s father the same man who’d burned Emma? “Where is your dad?”
“Mexico.”
“How long has he been there?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Max?” Emma called.
The boy darted back around the van. “What?”
“I told you to stay right here.”
“He smokes,” Max said loudly.
Emma lowered her voice. “That’s none of our business.”
“I told him you hate it.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Preston couldn’t prevent the rueful smile that curved his lips at the sarcasm in her voice. Children didn’t understand polite subtleties. They were honest, fresh, innocent….
Dallas had been the same way.
Memories of his son invited the pain he’d been working so hard to suppress. Preston had let him down. Terribly. He’d let Christy down, too. But especially Dallas.
Emma came around the van, holding Max’s hand. “Would you like me to drive for a while? Maybe you could nap.”
Reluctantly, Preston raised his head. She looked fragile and worried, like Christy had two years ago. He wondered what other horrors, besides the burn, had created the haunted expression in her eyes. At the same time, he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t get involved, couldn’t care. There wasn’t anything left inside him except a ravaging desire to hold his son again, which would never happen, and the determination to punish the man responsible.
“Just get in the van,” he said, and hoped she would simply do as she was told.
She didn’t. “Are you okay?”
He’d broken into a cold sweat when the emotions had overwhelmed him. He struggled to pull himself together, but he couldn’t erase the images emblazoned on his mind: Dallas soaking the sheets with a raging fever. Christy’s whispered prayers and constant pleading. Vince’s odd behavior. And, at the end, six-year-old Dallas lying innocently in his coffin, stiff and cold and gone forever.
Emma and Max made his loss jagged, new. Every emotional wound he had that was connected to the past two years felt like it had just burst open.
He reached for the side of the van to steady himself.
“Is it the cigarettes?” he heard Max whisper to Emma.
“Why don’t you find another rock, okay, buddy?” she said. “But search on the other side of the van, away from the road.”
Now that Max had permission to dig in the dirt, he seemed unwilling to leave. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’ll be all right. Go ahead.”
Max finally did as he was told. Except for the occasional car shooting past them on the highway, the silent stillness of the desert settled around them, almost as stifling as the heat.
“Are you ill?” Emma asked.
Preston breathed deeply, summoning the strength and willpower to avoid the jaws of the dark depression that sometimes gaped after him. He knew it came from the betrayal and the rage and the guilt. In a sense, he’d been as much of a victim as Dallas. But he wouldn’t remain a victim. “No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He thought of the gun, and the promise that sustained him. It’d all be over soon….
“Give me the keys,” she said. “I’ll drive for a few hours.”
He looked up to find that she was still staring at him. “No.” He was feeling better, back in control.
“Why not take a break while I’m here to help?”
A semi honked as it passed, and the subsequent blast of hot wind blew her long, silky hair across her face. “Because I don’t need a break. I’m fine.”
He’d used his gruffest voice, but she didn’t seem to notice. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ears. “Come on, you can worry about being a tough guy tomorrow. You’ll have two more days of driving to manage on your own.”
A tough guy? He wished he was tough. He wished he were as tough as Christy and could have resumed his life the way she had. All through Dallas’s ordeal, Preston hadn’t been able to shed one tear. He still hadn’t released the pain buried inside him. Christy, on the other hand, had sobbed from the beginning. And now she was remarried. The invitation to her wedding had included a picture of her smiling brightly at the side of a man who used to be their neighbor.
You have to forget and move on, she’d told him only months after Dallas’s death. For our sake. For the sake of our future. Let Dallas go, Preston. Please. Let him go so I can, too….
But Preston couldn’t let go. Not then; not now. So Christy had moved on without him.
He had to admire her survival skills. She certainly wasn’t as fragile as he’d once thought.
“Hello?” Emma prompted when he didn’t answer right away.
“I can drive.” It wasn’t easy to accept kindness from someone he was so reluctant to help.
Her eyes appraised him coolly, almost mutinously. “You need a break.”
Preston almost got in. But…if she was going to be so stubborn about it, he didn’t see how it could hurt to let her drive.
Without another word, he tossed her the keys and stalked around to the other side. Since his divorce, he’d never been a passenger in his own vehicle. He doubted he’d managed to sleep, even if he wasn’t driving. Since Dallas’s death, it seemed he could never shut down completely. He feared too many things—that Vince would slip through his fingers. That he’d crumble and never be able to put the pieces together again.
But twenty miles down the road, Max nodded off. And the thrumming of the tires, combined with the movement of the car, slowly eased the tension knotting Preston’s muscles. Soon, his eyelids felt so heavy he could scarcely lift them.