Not Without You Read online

  “Oh, Marlena…” Kelsey hugged her and the grief she’d held back these long, awful days surfaced and filled every space inside her. She wanted to cry out in agony. It was Jarred’s fault! He’d been at the controls of the small plane, and if anyone were to blame for the craft’s sudden spiral downward into the Columbia River, it was Jarred.

  “We—we hadn’t seen a lot of Chance lately, you know,” Marlena said, pulling away from Kelsey to search in her black faux-leather bag for a Kleenex. “He was having some troubles. You know…”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Robert and I have relied on you more than we should. But Chance couldn’t help it.” New tears welled and she pressed the Kleenex to her mouth, her face scrunched up in misery.

  “I know, I know.”

  Kelsey couldn’t talk about that now. Chance had been a drug user for years. A dabbler, mostly, or so Kelsey liked to think, but the bald truth was that drugs had controlled his life for so long that he was a stranger to everyone, maybe even himself.

  “If you hadn’t been there for us, I don’t know what we would have done.”

  “You were there for me,” Kelsey reminded her gently, hugging her once more. Marlena had been more like a best friend than a woman a generation ahead of her. Even when Kelsey was in high school, Marlena had treated her the way she might have someone her own age, and Kelsey had thrived in the role. Of course, these past years they’d naturally become more distant with each other; Kelsey’s marriage had necessitated the change. But it didn’t mean they weren’t still family, and now, with the Rowden’s only child dead just months shy of his thirtieth birthday, Marlena and Robert only had Kelsey.

  And she only had them.

  Marlena’s face was as white and fragile as old china. Holding her body close, Kelsey sensed the shudder that passed through her thin frame. Over her shoulder Kelsey caught sight of the wheelchair-bound Robert Rowden, a victim of Parkinson’s disease, Chance’s father. She smiled sadly at the man who seemed to have aged two decades since the accident that had taken his son’s life.

  “I wish he were still here,” Marlena choked out.

  “Me, too.” Kelsey’s voice sounded strangled and raw.

  “What are we going to do?” “I’ll be there.”

  Gently she disentangled herself from Marlena’s embrace, hugged Robert, then took a position among the ring of people who’d attended the grave-side service. The group was small. Chance possessed only a few true friends and most of them were scattered to the four winds. Other Silverlake residents who remembered him from high school still called him “the boy with the brightest future. “ Those attending the grave-side service knew Kelsey as well, and they stopped to talk to her, one by one. But in the back of her head, she considered what they truly must be thinking: She was the wife of the man who’d taken Chance Rowden’s life.

  A headache started at her temples, but she resolutely refused to succumb. She hadn’t lived in the same house as Jarred for the last three years; their marriage had been in trouble even longer. But she was still legally married to the man, and now, with this tremendous burden of grief and blame, which she couldn’t quite shake, she wondered why she hadn’t taken those steps toward divorce and freedom earlier.

  And what had Jarred been doing with Chance in that plane anyway?

  A flash of Jarred in the hospital bed burst across the screen of her mind: white bandages, unsteady breathing, bruised cheeks and chin, swollen fingers and lacerations.. Unwillingly, a pang of sympathy jarred her. He looked so… so pathetic that she wanted to comfort him!

  Imagine wanting to comfort Jarred Bryant!

  Inhaling deeply, she mentally shook herself. This service was for Chance. She refused to think about Jarred here.

  Marlena’s hand fumbled for hers, and Kelsey squeezed it warmly. They stood together like two sentinels and waited. This grave-side service was an add-on for those who knew Chance best. Kelsey listened to the minister’s final words through a haze of numb resolve as Chance’s body was interred forever. Glancing over the line of black umbrellas rimming the newly dug grave and walnut casket, she couldn’t help another thought of Jarred from creeping in. He’d shocked her, opening his eyes like that yesterday, and talking to him again this morning had been surreal and frighteningly déjà-vu-ish. He’d been so… willing to talk. Just the sound of his voice had raised her heartbeat and lifted the hairs on her arms, and she’d found it difficult to shove him to a distant corner of her mind.

  Another flash of memory: herself, meeting Jarred Bryant for the first time, dazzled by his wealth and social status and good looks, standing like a deer caught in headlights as she watched him across a crowded room, dumbstruck when he’d worked his way toward her and they’d been standing face-to-face for the first time.

  “I understand you work for Trevor,” he’d said by way of introduction.

  “Yes.”

  “Interior design?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you have any influence whatsoever, can you get him to stop designing those milk cartons and littering up the waterfront?”

  She’d laughed then, her wonderment over meeting him evaporating as she broke into peals of mirth. Trevor Taggart, one of Seattle’s most influential developers and Kelsey’s boss, was chock-full of bad taste. He liked ultramodern buildings and had had the Historical Society, the city of Seattle, and most everyone else up in arms at least once every other year. Kelsey sometimes wondered why she aligned herself with Trevor, but he truly thought his ideas were good and often stood around in hurt and confusion at all the slings and arrows thrown his way.

  “Those ‘milk cartons’ aren’t so bad,” she said, referring to Trevor’s latest project, which included a series of look-alike buildings all painted white. “Don’t worry. They’re going to be taupe.”

  “Really?” Jarred arched a brow. He was a direct competitor of Trevor’s in Bryant Industries’ construction division, though his buildings were unfailingly tasteful no matter what the style.

  “You should see the interiors. They’re fantastic, really.”

  “Your work?”

  She blushed, embarrassed. “The design, I mean.”

  “I’d like to see them.”

  She lifted a hand. “Call anytime. Someone will be happy to show you around.”

  “I’d rather have it be you than Taggart.”

  Kelsey lifted her shoulders. “That can be arranged…”

  And so had started her life with Jarred Bryant. It was funny. Shortly after she and Jarred got serious, Chance appeared on her doorstep. He begged her not to marry Jarred, even before Jarred actually popped the question. She’d laughed at his fears, never believing Jarred’s intent was that honorable. Then she had been touched when Chance cleaned himself up and suddenly pledged true love. She hadn’t listened, of course, because not only was she falling in love with Jarred, but she knew Chance’s problems weren’t over. They’d just been momentarily put on hold. And she wasn’t in love with him anyway. Not in that way. They were friends and “adopted” siblings, and she could never regard him as anything else.

  And Kelsey had been entranced with Jarred’s extraordinary good looks, intenseness, quick, furtive smile, and business acumen. He’d seemed larger than life, and she’d fallen in love so quickly, so completely, that it was a long time before she faced the fact that she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t really known him. She hadn’t known then that he possessed the soul of a snake and a miserable, shrunken heart. She’d learned those truths the hard way.…

  Wincing at her own mental honesty, Kelsey came back to the events currently happening at Chance’s grave. The casket was being lowered. People flung roses onto its disappearing satiny, lid. Separating from Marlena, she hung back, detached in her own sorrow.

  Surprisingly, she’d actually seen Chance last Saturday night, the night before that fateful plane ride. He’ d come to her condominium, looking absolutely terrible, a walking skeleton. He’d broken down and cried and said t
hings were just awful. “My life is over,” he’d said, words that now lifted the hair on Kelsey’s scalp and caused her to shiver.

  She’d offered him coffee and food, but he’d seemed to have something on his mind that he couldn’t quite force past his lips. Apart from saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Kelsey, I’m sorry,” he’d been unable to express himself. He kissed her before he left and whispered he loved her near her ear.

  And then he was gone. It hurt. It ached. Chance had never escaped his desire for recreational drugs. He’d battled and lost time and again. He was a drug addict and that was it.

  But he didn’t deserve to die!

  “Are you stopping by the house?” Marlena quavered as everyone began to disperse. She stepped carefully over soggy patches of ground and piles of autumn leaves. Robert waited in his wheelchair, his gaze and thoughts a million miles away.

  Kelsey shook her head. She wouldn’t be able to stand about while people drank coffee and ate hors d’oeuvres off paper plates and talked in quiet circles about Chance. Her stomach revolted at the image. “I’ll come see you another time,” she told the woman who had once prayed she would be Kelsey’s mother-in-law. But Kelsey had inherited Nola and Jonathan Bryant, instead of Marlena and Robert Rowden, and she knew, regardless of what she felt about Chance, or Jarred, she’d certainly lost out in the in-law department. Jarred’s parents were as cold and self-motivated as Chance’s were warm and giving.

  She shuddered just thinking about how she would have to soon see them.

  “How is your husband?” a stolid woman in a gray dress asked as she hurried to catch up to Kelsey and Marlena. Florence Wickum. Silverlake’s self-appointed know-it-all.

  Kelsey couldn’t immediately answer. Marlena started to tear up, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue. It was as if this reminder of how her son had died was the final crack in the dam of her defenses.

  Florence blinked. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to cause more pain.”

  Marlena shook her head and tried to wave her away. She was woefully inadequate in fighting off the Florences of the world.

  Kelsey surged to her rescue. “Jarred is…recovering,” she said tightly.

  “I heard he was in a coma.” Subtlety was not Florence’s forte.

  “He was unconscious for several days.”

  “Oh? So he came out of it?”

  “Yes.”

  Marlena gazed numbly at Kelsey. “Did he say… why?”

  She knew what Marlena meant. No one understood why Chance and Jarred had been together. They weren’t friends. Acquaintances, maybe, but even that was a stretch. “No.”

  “Is he all right?” Marlena asked.

  “Physically he seems to be improving very well. I’m meeting with his doctor tomorrow for a full update.”

  “What about mentally?” Florence seized on Kelsey’s unspoken concern.

  “He’s… alert.”

  “He spoke to you then?” Florence pressed. “You talked to him?”

  “I did.” Kelsey took a step backward and her heel sank into water-soaked grass. She struggled to pull her shoe free. Her foot slipped out, one toe dipping into the damp ground. Reaching down, she yanked at the shoe and stepped back inside it, mud and all.

  “I’m sure Mr. Bryant had a perfectly good reason for taking Chance with him in that airplane,” Florence said soothingly to Marlena. “I have to admit I’d be anxious to hear what it was though!”

  “He didn’t say anything?” Marlena pressed, needing answers Kelsey was unable to give.

  “Jarred hasn’t recovered all of his memory yet,” Kelsey was forced to explain. “Apparently it’s a common enough side effect from trauma to the head.”

  “Are you saying he has amnesia?” Florence demanded.

  “No. He’s just fuzzy on the details. Please…” Kelsey tucked a hand under Marlena’s arm and pulled her away from Florence. “I don’t know enough yet. Jarred’s barely awake. Believe me, I’ll find out what happened.”

  “I know you will, dear.”

  “He was heading toward Portland when the plane nosedived. It crashed into the north bank of the Columbia River, then slid into the water. There were rescuers there immediately. They saw it go down. Otherwise, Chance’s body would not have been recovered so quickly.”

  “And your husband might not have survived.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Kelsey turned her gaze toward the Olympic Mountains. Today they were invisible, their majestic slopes hidden by the arms of gray clouds that so often enfolded the Seattle area in their thick embrace. The crash was still being investigated, but there was no question that Jarred had been at the controls of the small plane. Preliminary reports suggested mechanical malfunction. Detectives involved in the investigation were tight-lipped and unresponsive when the suggestion of foul play was bandied about.

  Marlena’s drowning eyes gazed up at Kelsey. “You’ll tell me, won’t you? Please? When you learn the truth?”

  Kelsey gazed at her helplessly. “If there’s any truth to learn,” she agreed.

  “Thank you. Thank you…” She glanced around distractedly.

  Knowing Marlena was searching for her husband, Kelsey’s gaze sought out Robert Rowden, who surfaced from his reverie and lifted a hand in their direction. Kelsey made sure Marlena and he connected. Then she gave them hugs and a last sketchy wave good-bye.

  She walked back the way she’d come, feeling weary all over. Her feet barely stepped one in front of the other. The cabbie was still there. She’d asked him to wait, and he’d happily complied. “Where to, ma’am?” he asked as she closed the door behind her and simply sat in silence.

  “Bryant Park Hospital,” she said, leaning her head back against the cushions. She was asleep inside thirty seconds.

  Money. That was what made the world go around, not love. One step through the silent sliding doors of the lobby and one was inside Bryant Park Hospital—haven for those with the biggest bank accounts. It sported the Bryant name by no coincidence. Jarred’s grandfather had bought up property around Seattle, made a fortune in development and land sale, donated money hand over fist, and left a king’s ransom in the upper millions for his son and grandson.

  Kelsey turned toward the stairs, which were carpeted on these lower floors in soothing mauve tones. She trudged up six flights, needing the exercise and time before she faced the man she’d married eight years earlier. Eight years! For one startling moment, she remembered how good it had been in the beginning; then she shook her head, erasing those treacherous thoughts. It wasn’t like that anymore.

  The sixth floor sported gleaming linoleum floors and stretches of wide windows along the outside walls. Gray, gray, gray. The weather was as dismal and boring as her life had been since that terrible night when she and Jarred had fought so bitterly and she’d moved out of the house they shared.

  Turning the corner toward Jarred’s private room, she stutter stepped, then inwardly berated herself for revealing her tumultuous feelings to the people whispering outside the door: Nola and Jonathan Bryant. Jarred’s loving parents.

  They looked up and frowned in unison. Neither had approved of Jarred’s choice of a wife. Not then, and certainly not now. Neither bothered to approach her now with any kind of encouragement whatsoever as she slowly made her way toward them. Politeness did not run in the Bryant household.

  “How is he?” Kelsey asked quietly.

  “The same.” Nola’s lips pursed, heightening the lines around her mouth, lines etched by years of smoking. She looked desperate for a cigarette now, her toe tapping, tension emanating from her in palpable waves.

  “What was he doing?” Jonathan asked a bit blankly. He leaned heavily on a cane now, a recent addition because his own health was steadily failing. Like Robert Rowden, Jonathan seemed to have aged alarmingly since the accident, and at this rate, it wouldn’t be too much longer until Jonathan found himself facing a wheelchair as well. He was an anxious, unhappy man, and Kelse
y had never really understood him, though she silently sympathized with anyone who had lived so long with his demanding wife. “What was he doing? Where was he going?” he muttered fretfully, running his free hand over his jaw and shaking his head.

  These were the same two questions Jonathan had asked ever since the accident occurred. Kelsey shook her head. She knew Jarred’s parents blamed her somehow, but she was at as much of a loss as any of them. Jarred’s motives were murky. What had he been doing with Chance?

  Neither Nola nor Jonathan had expressed any sympathy or even interest in Chance’s death. They were as self-absorbed as always, although their fear for their son was real. Kelsey glanced past them to where Jarred lay. She could just see the end of the bed from her position, the small white tent of the covers that indicated his feet. Dim gray afternoon light from the fading day filtered into the room. The weight of depression was so intense she had to take several deep breaths to clear her head.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured, intending to slip between Jarred’s parents.

  “I know you want that divorce,” Nola said tautly.

  “Pardon?” Kelsey turned back in dumb amazement. Nola, for all her faults, was rarely so blunt.

  “You’ve just been waiting. Letting Jarred hang on all these years in the faint hope that you’d come back. Meanwhile everyone’s just getting older and nothing happens, and now this!”

  “I’m sorry,” she answered automatically, startled a bit by Nola’s vehemence. She reminded herself that the woman was under tremendous strain. “He’s going to recover,” she added more softly.

  “Will he?” Nola demanded through quivering lips. “You’d be happy if he didn’t, wouldn’t you? So much more convenient for you.”

  “Oh, Nola,” Kelsey protested.

  “Don’t pretend you care now!” She glanced toward the door of Jarred’s room, her hands clenched in agony. “He may not recover, you know. And when I think about how you could have been there for him, all these years, it just breaks my heart. No children. No heirs. Just selfish Kelsey and now my son… is… lying in there .…” One arm gestured futilely toward his room.