Rachel Lee by A January Chill Page B

rooms. This house wasn't big enough for him, she thought irrelevantly. He dwarfed it, seemed confined by it. And right now he looked like a tiger pacing in a cage.
    "Why did she do this to me, Hannah? She knows what I think of Wingate."
    "She didn't do anything to you. Hardy made a bid. You can ignore it."
    He rounded on her. "She betrayed me."
    Hannah, who rarely argued with anyone, and who usually had little to say about the folly of her fellow human beings, couldn't ignore that.
    "That's going too far. You weren't betrayed." "No?" He glared at her. "How would you feel if she went behind your back to someone who killed your daughter."
    "Witt, don't be ridiculous."
    "I'm not being ridiculous. That boy is the reason my daughter is dead."
    "You daughter is dead because of a drunken driver."
    "She's dead because Hardy Wingate encouraged her to slip out at night with him!" Witt roared the words, and Hannah heard the windows rattle.
    Another irrelevant thought slipped through her brain: time to caulk the windowpanes again.

This side of Witt appalled her a little, and worried her. She'd known him since she'd married his brother, and Witt wasn't prone to anger.
    He was ordinarily a reasonably quiet, self-contained man, calm in situations that had others shouting. And the degree of his anger, after all this time, troubled her.
    "Witt..." Hannah spoke quietly.
    He paused in his pacing and looked at her. The redness of his eyes made her heart ache. "What?"
    "I think Joni was trying to help."
    "Help what?"
    Hannah hesitated, still reluctant to offer opinions of this kind. But, she decided, Witt really needed to take a good long look at himself.
    "To help you heal."
    Witt practically gaped at her. "Help me heal? How the hell is this supposed to help me heal, for the love of God? She just ripped the wound wide open again."
    "Think about that, Witt. She couldn't have ripped it open if it had been healed. And if you want to know what I think..."
    "That would be refreshing," he said with a biting sarcasm that made her cheeks redden. "What I think is that your wound not only never healed, but is been festering for twelve years. And it's making you sick in your soul, Witt."
    She was braced for an explosion, but it never came. For the longest time he didn't say a word. Then, finally, he sat in the other armchair and studied his hands.
    "I've lost everyone, Hannah," he said quietly. "I lost my wife to cancer, I lost my brother to a mugger and I lost my daughter. I lived with the first two. I can't live with the last."
    "I can see that."
    "And it doesn't help me at all when my niece goes running around behind my back to the man who was responsible for Karen's death."
    Hannah smothered a sigh, finally asking, "Tell me, Witt. Please explain this to me. Why do you hold Hardy responsible? Because all that happened was that he and Karen were in a car in the wrong place at the wrong time when a drunk came along. It's just like with Lewis, Witt. Lewis was in the wrong place at the wrong time when that mugger came across him. It's no different."
    "It is different."
    "That's what I don't understand."
    He suddenly ran his fingers through his graying hair, then leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded drained.
    "It's different. They were running around behind my back. Hardy was encouraging her to disobey me and run around behind my back."
    The use of that phrase twice, after what he had said about Joni, chilled Hannah. The idea that he might be lumping her daughter in with Hardy frightened her more than anything ever had. And she wondered how she could prevent that.
    "Karen," she said yet again, "chose to disobey you, Witt."
    He shook his head and sat up straighter, looking at her. "Hardy Wingate was the only damn thing she ever disobeyed me about."

    "You don't know that."
    "I do know that."
    Hannah shook her head, "Wilt, no parent ever knows all the things their kids do when they're not looking. Every child does things that