Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

to convince herself. And, again, the young woman spied her, their eyes practically shooting messages across the distance between them. Cindie continued on, this time driving farther down the street, turning into a different driveway. This time gripping the steering wheel so hard she worried it would come apart in her hands.

She swore at Westley again, this time between her teeth. A hiss like the snake he was. He was the father of her child … but he had some woman living with him. Not her. Not plain Cindie Campbell. Plain and stupid Cindie Campbell.

No. She had to face it, the woman on the porch was … everything she was not.

A brow rose as two facts collided—yes, that girl was everything but one thing. She wasn’t Michelle’s mother. And she never would be. If Cindie needed to use her child to her advantage, so be it.

Chapter Eighteen

Allison

As soon as I spotted Westley coming out of the pharmacy, I moved to the passenger’s side of the car, anxious for my husband to get in and kiss me. He all but trotted toward me, then opened the door and, before sliding in, stuck his hand in and waved a small stuffed Santa toward me.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking it. “A Christmas present?”

Westley drew the seat belt over him, buckled it, then leaned over for the much-anticipated kiss. “Just a little something that says I love you.”

“Oh, Wes,” I sighed. “Can we go home? I mean, we don’t have anywhere else to be, do we?”

“Yes, ma’am, we can and no ma’am we do not.”

As I hugged the Santa to my breast, he backed the car out of the parking space and into the slow-moving traffic. “So,” he said, “tell me about your afternoon. What did you do with yourself?”

I glanced out the window, placed my hand upon it, felt the chill from the night air pushing against it. “Well … I sat outside on the porch for a while. Did some reading.” I gave a little shrug, not sure how to tell him about the car that had passed back and forth in front of the house. “Something … well, something kind of odd happened.”

“Odd?”

I looked at him—the point of his nose, the angle of his chin, the curl in his hair that took on a slight frizz in the moist winter air—and shook my head. “Truth is, I wasn’t reading for pleasure. I was looking through that Betty Crocker Cooking for Two cookbook that Grand gave me for Christmas and—”

Westley shot a crooked smile my way. “God bless Grand.”

“Funny.”

He turned down a not-yet-familiar road where the streetlamps had all come on, casting soft funnels of light along a sidewalk. “So, something strange happened?” He laughed. “Did you spot a recipe you can’t wait to try out on me?”

I ignored the tease. “Not strange. Odd.”

“Okay.”

“While I was outside, there was this car that drove past really slow. I looked up and—I know it’s probably crazy on my part—but I thought the girl behind the wheel was—you’re going to think I’m silly, but, I thought she was staring at me.” Westley looked at me sharply, but only for a moment. “And then she pulled into a driveway and turned around and did the same thing and—not too long after—she did the same thing again.”

For a moment I thought Westley stopped breathing, or that perhaps he’d not heard me. Then he asked, “What kind of car?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know cars, Wes. But it was long and brown and kind of old. Beat up.”

“And the girl?” he asked, keeping his focus straight ahead.

“From what I could see, she had blondish hair. It was pulled up. A nice face …” I touched his arm. “I wasn’t scared or anything. She looked too young to be dangerous. I just don’t understand why she kept driving by and staring at me.”

The car turned into our driveway. “I see you left the front porch light on.”

“Mama always did … made me feel all grown up turning it on before I left to come get you.”

Westley all but shoved the gearshift into Park before saying, “Let’s get inside.” The dimness of light from the porch found his face; he’d aged. In the past five minutes. I could see it. Something I had said. Or done. Something had added time to his face and taken it away from his soul.

I squeezed the Santa. “What?”

He looked at me. “Let’s—I need to talk to you about something and—all right, it may as well be now.”

I spent the rest of the evening and most of the night sobbing into my pillow, my arm wrapped around the little Santa, sleep occasionally coaxing me to itself with puffy eyes and swollen lips. Anguish gripped me as I’d never experienced. As though someone—or something—had died.

But no one—and nothing—had.

The man I loved—and still loved—had a child. A daughter. With the woman in the long brown car. The girl with the pretty face and blond hair swept up, soft tendrils curling to her shoulders.

Westley had shown me the cheaply framed photograph—Michelle, he’d called her—as he told me everything. Or everything he chose to tell. Which was fine; if there was more, I couldn’t take it. What he’d said as he reached across the table to hold my hand was enough. “That girl—and that’s really all she is, sweetheart—is Cindie Campbell.” His eyes never left mine, as though begging me to believe him. Telling me I should when I couldn’t. Or maybe that I could when I couldn’t. I was too young, too inexperienced in the rules of love and deception to be sure. “And she and I have a child together. A daughter …”

Life intersected with his words and pulled me into a vortex. Drew me with such speed and power I felt like Alice falling through the rabbit hole. Westley’s face grew fuzzy. Time slowed and sped up all at once. His words garbled like Charlie Brown’s teacher when she