Free Coming Home to You by Fay Robinson Page B

mausoleum, have you?” she asked, fearing she already knew the answer.
    Silent seconds passed. Indecision showed on his face.
    “I’ve never been there in person,” he said finally. “Only seen pictures of it.”
    “Why haven’t you visited?”
    “I haven’t found the time to go.”
    “I don’t believe that.” He looked away. “No, please don’t hide from me,” she pleaded, making his gaze come back to her face. “You don’t have to hide your feelings from me or lie to me.”
    “What makes you think I’m lying? I work hard. The horses have to be fed twice a day and I can’t leave that responsibility to anyone else. I don’t have time to take off.”
    “Now, Hayes…”
    “Well, I don’t,” he said defensively.
    He stood abruptly. Kate also rose.
    “You’ve gone to elaborate measures here to protectthe graves of relatives you never knew. Yet you want me to believe you haven’t visited the tomb that holds your brother, father and grandparents because in the four years since your family built it you haven’t found the time? That makes no sense.”
    He scowled, unable to deny the logic of her words.
    “What keeps you away?”
    “My conscience,” he said, his voice filled with self-loathing. “I can’t force myself to visit my brother’s tomb because I know I put him there.”
    “That’s not true. A freak of nature…God’s will…something…I don’t know…made that plane crash. But you’re not responsible. You didn’t kill him.”
    “I did kill him. I was so angry he’d lied to me about taking drugs that I…” The painful memories etched his face with agony. Kate held her breath and prayed he’d go on. He needed to face the bad memories before he could get past them.
    “You what? What did you do that makes you feel responsible for James’s death?”
    “I told him…he was dead to me, that I no longer had a brother and nothing he said or did would ever change that. And I hit him. Not once, but over and over until I had to be pulled off. I’d never hit my brother in anger before in my life, but that night I wanted to kill him.”
    “But you didn’t kill him,” she repeated.
    “No, not with my hands. With my anger. He begged me to listen to him, to stay and try to work things out, but I refused.”
    “He had to know you didn’t mean what you said.”
    “I did mean it. When we were growing up, wewere very close, but we’d lost that somehow and it was too late get it back. I didn’t want to get it back.”
    Kate’s heart skipped a beat. “No. I can’t accept that.” She shook her head, although his face told her he spoke the truth. “But he was your brother. You loved him. You’d never have walked away from him or given up trying to help him.”
    “I did walk away. I meant what I told him and he knew it. I’d watched drugs kill or destroy the minds of too many people I cared about, and I wasn’t going to go through it again, not with him. He got on that plane because I left him no choice. I refused to forgive him or give him the help he begged me for. And he died because of it.”
    Kate didn’t speak, but the tears that escaped against her will and slowly moved down her cheek conveyed her feelings better than words. He reached out and gently put his hand against her face, wiping a tear away with his thumb.
    “Do you cry for him, Kate?” he whispered.
    She drew a ragged breath. Giving in to the overwhelming desire to hold him and be held, she wrapped her arms around him and put her head against his chest. Both brothers had suffered so much because of a few words hurled in anger. One brother was dead and could never be returned to her. The comfort she offered the other would never match his pain, but it was all she had to give.
    “No, Bret, not for him,” she lied. “Only for you.”
    S HE WAS SILENT in the truck on the way home, something Bret decided didn’t happen too often. Twice todayhe’d upset her enough to make her cry, and that was probably a rare