Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [58]
She didn’t know what to say. She was still stunned to know that she’d been able to rip apart such a tight bond between brothers. Jake must have really loved her. And she must have loved him, too. But if she had loved him, why had she let him send away the brother he adored? Jake must have told her before how he had practically raised Dylan. She had to have known how close they were.
“Did I know at the time that Dylan disliked me?” she asked. “Did you tell me about your conversation with him?”
“Not completely,” he admitted. “You knew a little, but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Because he had a big heart, she realized. He’d protected his brother and he’d protected her. Jake was a good man. Why on earth had she left him? There had to be something he wasn’t telling her about their relationship.
“What did we fight about?” she asked.
Jake stared at her. “Nothing.”
“Seriously?”
“You weren’t a fighter. You didn’t complain. You didn’t argue about anything.”
“Wow. I sound like an incredibly boring doormat of a person. Why did you like me?”
Jake sighed. “You weren’t a doormat. We didn’t fight because we were in sync. We liked the same movies. We read the same books. We were never bored with each other. We didn’t talk about a lot of personal stuff, but we talked about everything else. And you have a great sense of adventure, Sarah. You once read an article about all the public stairways in San Francisco. There are three hundred and something of them, by the way. You decided that we would find all of them and climb them. And we did. I had grown up in the city, but I’d never seen it before, not until I met you.” He paused. “You made me stop and feel the sun on my face. It sounds stupid, but I’d never done that.”
No, because he was a goal-obsessed person, and right now he was chafing with impatience at having to tell her things about their past when all he really wanted to do was find Caitlyn.
“Thanks,” she said simply. “It’s nice to know something about myself.”
He shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”
The muscles in his face tightened, as if he regretted the small confidence they’d shared. She doubted she would get anything more personal out of him. But she didn’t want their conversation to end. She felt as if every word he spoke was lightening up the darkness in her head. “This is helping,” she said.
“Why? Are you starting to remember?”
“The memories feel closer.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Jake. Just keep talking. Tell me about your mother.”
“I don’t talk about her.”
“But why did she leave you behind? Don’t mothers usually get custody?”
“She obviously didn’t want custody,” he replied. “I think she was so beaten down by my father over the years that she just couldn’t keeping fighting. She used to drink, take sleeping pills. I’m sure she was trying to escape from my father.”
“Did he abuse her?”
“I never saw him physically hurt her. I even remember some good times. But one day they were just gone. And then so was she. She wrote us a long letter and that was that. Over the years she did sign her name to a few birthday cards or Christmas presents, but that was basically all the contact we had with her.”
“It seems strange that she would just leave you like that.”
“Really? It seems stranger to me that you would think it was strange,” he said pointedly, his gaze burning into hers. “Obviously you had no problem walking away without a word.”
Sarah felt the sting of his accusation. She didn’t like how closely his mother’s story seemed to parallel her own. Frowning, she asked, “Did I know this