Free F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 by Sibs (v2.1) Page B

suicidal…?
     
                If
there was something so terribly wrong, why didn't she come to me?
     
                Kara was suddenly feeling pretty
depressed herself.
     
                "Does this mean Kelly's going
to be written off as a crazy bimbo who threw herself through a hotel window?"
     
                "No," he said slowly.
"Not by a long shot. That doesn't sit well with me."
     
                Her spirits rose a tiny bit.
     
                "Why not?"
     
                "Kelly had to hit that window
with tremendous force to go through it the way she did. Jumpers just don't do
it that way. They open the window, step out on the ledge, and go. They don't do
what Kelly did. Besides, I used her purse keys and did a quick search of her
apartment the day after her death. I didn't find a suicide note or anything
like it."
     
                Kara looked around. Maybe that
explained some of the uncharacteristic disarray she'd noticed during her own
search.
     
                "So we're back to murder,"
she said.
     
                "I don't know where we are,
Kara," Rob said. His voice was tired. "But I promise you: I'll keep
this case open as long as they let me."
     
                "Thank you, Rob." She
believed him. "Can I call you again on this?"
     
                "Call me any time. You know
that."
     
                "Thanks."
     
                Kara hung up and stared across the
room at the pile of papers she had pulled from one of the closets. She was
going to go through everything there until she found an answer.
     
                Kelly a suicide? No way.
     
                "Was that Aunt Ellen of the
phone?" Jill said.
     
                Kara suddenly had an insane urge to
tell her the truth. No, bug. That was
your father .
     
                "Just a policeman."
     
                She looked at Jill. She so resembled
Rob. The idea of Jill and Rob being in the same city was almost unnerving. If
they ran into each other, there was no way he could miss the resemblance. And
then he would know that he had a daughter.
     
                Rob was a good man. Seeing him again
had released an almost overwhelming attack of guilt. She never should have kept
her pregnancy a secret from him. She saw that now, but at the time it seemed
the only thing to do. Nothing was going to deter her from having the baby, and
nothing was going to convince her to raise the child in the city. And there was
no way Rob was going to leave the city willingly. She could have used the
pregnancy to coerce him into quitting the NYPD and moving to the suburbs, but
what kind of marriage, what kind of life would that have been? He would have
felt like a prisoner, or a hostage. He would have come to resent Kara, maybe
even resent his child. The result would have been intolerable for the three of
them.
     
                So Kara had done the hardest thing
she had ever done in her life. She left the man she loved and returned home to
have her child and raise her by herself. The idea had shocked, offended, and
embarrassed her mother, and even Kelly had thought she was crazy, but they'd
all stood by her just the same. For awhile the farm had been a war zone… until
Jill was born. Jill brought them all together again.
     
                It hadn't been easy raising a child
on her own, but Kara had managed. She'd done it away from the city where they
were safe, where she could instill in Jill the values she thought important.
She was proud of the result. Jill was her own little person and Kara loved her
more fiercely than she had ever believed she could love anything.
     
                But did she need a father? That had
plagued Kara for the past ten years. Soon the vague questions Jill had asked
about the father she had never seen were going to become more