Abandon - Carla Neggers [98]
“I’m giving you the land,” Bernadette said, exasperated. “I had a waterfront lot surveyed when I drew up my prenuptial agreement with Cal. I just haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it. I’m not trying to steal you away from your family, Mackenzie. But I’ve no one else, and you love it here as much as I do.”
“I do.” Knowing Bernadette as well as she did, Mackenzie didn’t let her emotions get the better of her. “Thank you.”
Bernadette smiled, obviously relieved. “You’re welcome.” She nodded out toward the lake. “I think your FBI agent likes it here, too.”
“Beanie—I don’t know if Rook and I will work out.”
Gus grunted, coming onto the porch from the kitchen. “You two? You’re lifers.”
“It’s true,” Bernadette said. “Everyone can see it.”
But Mackenzie had no intention of discussing Rook or her love life with either of them, and she excused herself and ran outside, out to the end of the dock. She was barefoot and wearing shorts, and she was tempted to dive into the lake with the same abandon as she had a little over a week ago, before Jesse Lambert had come at her with a knife.
What was it Delvechhio had told her last night?
“Give yourself a day to put this behind you. Be back at work on Monday.”
That meant she wasn’t fired for having too much baggage.
It meant catching a plane back to Washington tonight.
And that meant she had the afternoon. She glanced back at the porch, where Gus and Bernadette were arguing about something, and then squinted out across the lake, trying to spot the two FBI agents in their kayaks. But there was no sign of them, or of the loon she could hear warbling out by the opposite shore.
Bernadette was right, Mackenzie thought. She loved it here.
With a running start, ignoring the healing knife wound on her side, she leaped into the cold, deep water.
Bernadette struck a match and touched the tiny flame to the edge of rolled-up newspaper. “It’s the obituaries,” she said, feeling Gus’s eyes on her. “Somehow, I think Harris would approve.” But not Cal, she thought. Irony had never suited him.
Gus said nothing.
She sat cross-legged in the grass as the fire burned through the newspaper and caught the kindling. By Gus’s standards—by her own, really—it was early yet for a fire, not yet dusk. And warm. But she’d wanted one.
She winced, feeling a tug of pain in her hip. “It used to be easier to sit cross-legged. I’m creaking these days.”
Gus grunted without sympathy. “Getting out of Washington more often would help. You sit too much.” He settled back in the old Adirondack chair. “You should go mountain climbing while you’re up here.” Then he added simply, “I’ll go with you.”
There were no deep corners, no layers and odd places, with Gus Winter. He’d seen war, he’d endured the tragic loss of his brother and sister-in-law and he’d stepped up to raise his orphaned nephew and nieces—and yet the complications of his life had never become excuses for him, rationalizations for bad behavior.
“That’d be good.” Bernadette kept her eyes on the fire. “I have regrets, Gus.”
“Tell me about it.”
She straightened her legs, relieving the strain on her hip. Her injured shoulder ached, too, but she didn’t want to take more pain medication. Without looking at Gus, she said, “I won’t survive the scandal of what Cal and Harris did. Who Jesse is. That so much of it went on for years under my nose.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t survive it, and perhaps I shouldn’t. I should have pressed Harris for the truth about what was going on with him five years ago. I knew for months something was wrong with Cal.” She noticed the newspaper turning black, crumpling into the ashes. “I’m too trusting. People won’t see that as a good thing in a judge.”
“Cal didn’t get mixed up with Jesse Lambert because of you. Neither did Harris. They had their own reasons.” Gus pulled himself out of the Adirondack chair and sat in the grass next to her. He was fit, but not as limber as he’d once been. He grinned