Abandon - Carla Neggers [97]
“I don’t mind,” Mackenzie said.
“It won’t be easy to see him again, but at least you’ll know he can’t hurt anyone else.” Bernadette flopped back against her wicker chair, her face ashen just twenty-four hours after her encounter with Jesse—after learning that Cal was dead. “All these years, Mackenzie, and I had no idea that your father’s mishap wasn’t an accident. I feel like such a sap.”
“You and Dad tried to get rid of Jesse.”
“Your father tried to get rid of him. I can’t say I did much of anything.”
“But you never helped Jesse,” Mackenzie said. “Don’t beat yourself up, Beanie.”
She stared out at the lake. “I let people take advantage of me.”
“Don’t we all, at some point in our lives?”
She snorted. “I did repeatedly.”
Mackenzie almost smiled at her friend’s sudden drama. “There’s nothing wrong with giving someone a helping hand, Beanie. Most people you’ve helped—including me—appreciate it.”
“I’ve never…” She fought back obvious tears. “I’ve just never felt so damn alone.”
“You’re a brilliant and generous woman, Beanie, and you have good friends, people who care about you—people who don’t want anything from you.” Mackenzie smiled. “For example, Gus Winter.”
“He’s always been there, hasn’t he? For all of us. He and his brother would come out here to the lake as teenagers—Jill and I were friends.”
Bernadette drifted into silence, and out on the lake, Mackenzie could hear the familiar, eerie cry of a loon. She wondered if T.J. heard it. He and Rook had taken two of the kayaks out onto the lake, leaving her alone with Bernadette.
“The worst day of my life was when Harry and Jill died up on Cold Ridge,” she said. “It was such a freak thing. They’d never have gone up there if they’d known the weather would turn like that. How do you get over such a tragedy?” But she didn’t wait for Mackenzie to respond and stood up, moving to the screen and gazing out at the water and woods that had been home to Peachams for decades. “Well, I can tell you—you don’t.”
Mackenzie remained in her wicker chair, remembering Carine explaining to her what it was like to have become an orphan at three years old. “That was the worst,” she said. “And to leave behind three children.”
Bernadette looked away from the lake, her incisive gaze now on her neighbor from across the lake. “But the scope of that tragedy made it all too easy for us all to minimize other things that happened here in the valley. It gave us a perspective we wouldn’t have had otherwise, and we tried—I think we all tried to let it make us stronger, better people. Wiser, even. Because what other choice was there?”
“Beanie.” Mackenzie thought she could see where this was going. “Please. Don’t judge yourself.”
“We were all too slow to recognize the effects of what happened to your father on you. Kevin hadn’t died up on the ridge. You weren’t orphaned.” She sighed, turning away from the screen and sitting back down. “Well. The past is what it is. I can’t take any of what I did back.”
“None of us can,” Mackenzie said.
Bernadette frowned at her. “You’re so young. You can’t have many regrets. What would you do differently?”
“For starters, I’d have recognized Jesse when he slashed me.”
“That was only a week ago!”
“It’s in the past. It counts.”
At first, Bernadette look dumbstruck, a rarity for her. Then, all at once, she burst into laughter. “Oh, Mackenzie. I swear, if changing anything about the past made you any different…” But she didn’t finish, just motioned toward the lake with the arm on her uninjured side. “I want you to have your own spot on this lake.”
“I do—”
She shook her head. “You don’t. Your parents do, and I do, but we’re all going to live to a hundred. You should have a spot now, while you’re young. Let your children grow up here, even if it’s only for summers and holidays.”
Mackenzie stared at her, not quite grasping