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stopped at the table’s edge. “I don’t know why you’d say something like that. Me? I’m an open book. It still hurts that you tried to frame me for stealing that ring. You got caught with it, and what did you do? You blamed it on the man who’d been thinking about buying it for you. Did you have time to think about that while you were in prison? Did you wonder if I would have stood by you if you hadn’t told those cops who grabbed you in the parking lot that I was the one who dropped the ring in your shopping bag?”
The scene hadn’t happened that way. At first Cristy hadn’t even considered that Jackson had put the ring in her bag. She’d been sure it was an accident, that someone had unknowingly brushed it off the counter, and it had fallen into the shopping bag filled with socks and dish towels from the Dollar General. Then, when that had seemed like too much of a stretch, she’d blamed the incident on the sales clerk, who must have hidden the ring there for some dark reason of his own. Later, though, with nothing but time to face everything that had happened, she had realized how hard that would have been for the clerk, how nearly impossible from his side of the wide display case.
Only then, sometime later in her first full day in jail, had she finally faced the truth. And only after a sleepless night had she realized that she had to tell the truth to everybody who would listen.
Jackson had never intended to marry her, even though he’d known she was carrying his child—something she had tearfully told him the previous morning. He had taken her to the jewelry store to look at rings, and then he had used her enthusiasm against her. While she had been trying on one ring, he had swept another off the counter, then easily slipped it into the bag she carried, since he was standing right beside her. He had wanted his pregnant girlfriend out of his life.
And now, months later, she finally understood all the terrible reasons why.
Her hand closed over the flashlight she’d set beside her. As a weapon it was probably useless, but the barrel was something to grip and steady her.
“There’s nobody here to hear this conversation except us,” she said. “We both know what happened. But it’s over. I’ve paid the price and it’s behind me.”
“It just confounds me, that’s all. After everything we were to each other, that you could do something like that...” He shook his head slowly. “And now I have to ask myself how I could make so many big mistakes choosing my friends. You, Kenny...” He shook his head again, as if he really couldn’t believe he had ever been such a fool.
Cristy knew better than to respond, but her hands began to shake. That he would use Kenny Glover’s name so calmly, as if it meant nothing that his best friend since childhood was about to stand trial for the murder of another of Jackson’s closest friends. Kenny, a sweet, goofy country boy who’d been known to miss a clear shot at a five-point buck just because the deer looked him in the eye.
Kenny, the man who would have given his right hand without flinching if Jackson had ever said he needed it.
“Please go,” she said.
“I just want to understand, that’s all. How I could have been so wrong. How you could have tried to destroy my name in my own hometown. How you could have thought you might get away with it.”
“That’s the hardest part for me to understand, too,” she said. “I really should have known nobody would listen.”
“But you went ahead and said those things anyway. And now sometimes I think people look at me different, you understand? Like they’ve lost a little respect. Of course maybe that’s just because they know you and I had a little fling before you got thrown in jail. And that lessens me in their eyes, because they know I made such a bad choice.”
“A little fling?”
“I never promised you anything, did I? You call it whatever you want to, Baby Duck.”
“How about a stupid mistake?”
Jackson’s brown eyes narrowed a little. She’d known women at NCCIW who had that same ability to mask their feelings, women with curiously unlined faces because they were so often expressionless. Jackson always looked pleasant, happy, even engaged. But now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see when she was so hopelessly in love with him. Jackson couldn’t show feelings he didn’t have. He could look sad, even contrite, if necessary. But on those occasions he was simply an actor demonstrating emotions for his audience.
He did feel rage, though. She’d seen that more than once and knew that rage, at least, was real for him when someone dared to cross him. A cold, thoughtful rage that was the most frightening kind of all.
With one swipe of his hand, the puzzle pieces she’d so carefully laid out fell to the floor, but his expression didn’t change. “We can talk about mistakes,” he said, as if measuring his words. “You getting yourself pregnant would be one of them. A real classic, wouldn’t you say?”
“I didn’t get myself pregnant.”
“Yeah, I guess you had a little help from somebody or other.”
Anger shot through her, but caution won. She forced herself not to respond.
“I can’t help wondering whose baby that little boy of yours is,” Jackson said. “I’ve even thought about asking for a paternity test. You ever come back to Berle for any reason, I might just have to. Seeing him everywhere, like I would, that could surely make it hard to ignore the possibility he’s mine.”
Now she knew exactly why he had come, but she had to ask, to hear him finally say the words. “Why would you do that, Jackson? Then you would have to be responsible for child support.”
“Oh, if I found out he was mine, I’d have to let a judge decide a lot of things, that’s for sure. Like who he should live with, for starters. A felon like yourself, or the son and heir of Pinckney Ford, with everything the Ford family has to offer a boy?”
And there it was. The real threat, worse than Jackson’s presence here, a threat to the child they had created together. If she ever returned to Berle, if she ever told anyone what she knew about the murder of Duke Howard and the evidence against Kenny Glover, if she ever tried to incriminate Jackson in any crime again, she would lose custody, and he would turn the boy into a copy of himself.
The entire conversation was a sham. Jackson knew Michael was his. He knew he was the only man she had ever had sex with. And that was what it had been. Not making love, as she’d believed at the time. Sex, manipulation, lies.
“I am not coming back,” she said.
He gave a short nod, as if it pleased him to hear it. “So what will you do instead? Where will you go? Because this place?” He gestured to the room around him. “It’s nice enough, I guess, considering where you’ve been these past months, but it’s kind of dangerous, don’t you think? You out here so far away from any neighbors? A stranger in the area, too. And I guess you can’t get a gun to protect yourself, you being a felon and all. Besides, we know you don’t like guns.”
Her throat constricted. She couldn’t answer.
He went on, as if she had. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Maybe I’m just worried about that boy of yours. People around me keep dying. You know, like Duke, then Kenny? I mean, Kenny might as well be sitting on death row already. And I’m guessing you didn’t hear about that pretty Nan Tyler who managed the Dairy Queen out on Freygale Road? She got killed in a car accident not too long ago. I knew her pretty well.” He grinned. “Had for some time, as it happens. What a shame that was.”
She tried to swallow, but nausea welled inside her. She felt as if she might get sick right there.
“You just make sure you make provisions for that little boy,” Jackson said. “You just never know what the future could hold.”
The blast of a car horn from somewhere below coincided with a huge clap of thunder. Cristy jumped at the noise, then she bolted around the table and stumbled toward the kitchen and the bathroom beyond. She would