Free Sanctuary by Nora Roberts Page B

When Jo started to move past, Lexy grabbed her arm and jerked.
    “Why did you come back here?”
    Weariness swamped her suddenly, made her want to weep. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t to hurt you. It wasn’t to hurt anybody. And I’m too tired to fight with you now.”
    Baffled, Lexy stared at her. The sister she knew would have waded in with words, scraped flesh with sarcasm. She’d never known Jo to tremble and back off. “What happened to you?”
    “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.” Jo shook off the hand blocking her. “Leave me alone, and I’ll do the same for you.”
    She walked quickly down the path, took its curve toward the sea. She barely glanced at the dune swale with its glistening grasses, never looked up to follow the flight of the gull that called stridently. She needed to think, she told herself. Just an hour or two of quiet thought. She would figure out what to do, how to tell them. If she should tell them at all.
    Could she tell them about her breakdown? Could she tell anyone that she’d spent two weeks in the hospital because her nerves had snapped and something in her mind had tilted? Would they be sympathetic, ambivalent, or hostile?
    And what did it matter?
    How could she tell them about the photograph? No matter how often she was at sword’s point with them, they were her family. How could she put them through that, dredging up the pain and the past? And if any of them demanded to see it, she would have to tell them it was gone.
    Just like Annabelle.
    Or it had never existed.
    They would think her mad. Poor Jo Ellen, mad as a hatter.
    Could she tell them she’d spent days trembling inside her apartment, doors locked, after she’d left the hospital? That she would catch herself searching mindlessly, frantically, for the print that would prove she wasn’t really ill?
    And that she had come home, because she’d finally had to accept that she was ill. That if she had stayed locked in that apartment alone for another day, she would never have found the courage to leave it again.
    Still, the print was so clear in her mind. The texture, the tones, the composition. Her mother had been young in the photograph. And wasn’t that the way Jo remembered her—young? The long waving hair, the smooth skin? If she was going to hallucinate about her mother, wouldn’t she have snapped to just that age?
    Nearly the same age she herself was now, Jo thought. That was probably another reason for all the dreams, the fears, the nerves. Had Annabelle been as restless and as edgy as her daughter was? Had there been a lover after all? There had been whispers of that, even a child had been able to hear them. There’d been no hint of one, no suspicion of infidelity before the desertion. But afterward the rumors had been rife, and tongues had clucked and wagged.
    But then, Annabelle would have been discreet, and clever. She had given no hint of her plans to leave, yet she had left.
    Wouldn’t Daddy have known? Jo wondered. Surely a man knew if his wife was restless and dissatisfied and unhappy. She knew they had argued over the island. Had that been enough to do it, to make Annabelle so unhappy that she would turn her back on her home, her husband, her children? Hadn’t he seen it, or had he even then been oblivious to the feelings of the people around him?
    It was so hard to remember if it had ever been different. But surely there had once been laughter in that house. Echoes of it still lingered in her mind. Quick snapshots of her parents embracing in the kitchen, of her mother laughing, of walking on the beach with her father’s hand holding hers.
    They were dim pictures, faded with time as if improperly fixed, but they were there. And they were real. If she had managed to block so many memories of her mother out of her mind, then she could also bring them back. And maybe she would begin to understand.
    Then she would decide what to do.
    The crunch of a footstep made her look up quickly. The sun was