She covered her face with trembling hands. “I’m sorry. It’s just—except for talks with my doctor, I’ve been dealing with this alone for a good long while, and to be perfectly truthful, there have been times when I’ve doubted my sanity.” She wiped her cheeks and sniffed. “You can’t know what a relief it is to hear you mirror my thoughts.”
“You aren’t crazy, honey. Get that notion straight out of your head.”
She nodded. “It’s just that—well, these last few days, I haven’t been so sure a couple of times.” She haltingly told him about finding the debris in her bed and the deiselsoaked gloves in her kitchen. “Until Rodney showed up this morning, I was half convinced it was me doing it all.”
“You booby-trapped the cabin so you wouldn’t sleepwalk? That’s why you had all that crap in front of the door that night?”
“Yes, and then the tires got slashed. I realized you were in danger of losing the ranch. At that point, I felt so awful that I knew I had to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She reminded him that he hadn’t been accessible for a couple of days. “I meant to tell you, wanted to tell you, but the moment didn’t present itself.”
She went on to tell him of the weeks following her father’s death, how bizarre incidents began occurring in her and Rodney’s home. “It always appeared that I had done it. You know? We found the bloodstained jacket my dad was wearing when he died, hanging on a dining room chair. Rodney asked why I had kept such a gruesome memento.” She shook her head. “I never saw the clothes Dad died in after they took him away in the ambulance. I tried to tell Rodney that, but he didn’t believe me.”
“He was trying to make you think you were losing it.”
“I did think I was losing it. Shortly after that, I began sleepwalking again, and the incidents had violent undertones. I had no recollection of them, but I’d wake up to find the house in a shambles. Slashed cushions, slashed pictures, overturned garbage. Red lipstick or catsup smeared on the bathroom walls to look like blood, with Sarah’s name written in the mess. I didn’t own a lipstick, but Rodney insisted I must have bought one and simply didn’t remember.”
Jake’s heart caught at the agonizing trace of doubt he heard in her voice. “That must have been scary, thinking you had done things you couldn’t recall.”
“It was. Rodney was so convincing. You saw him today, how calm and gentle he seems. I thought I was going mad.”
“But, of course, you weren’t. That’s only what he wanted you to think.”
She nodded. “Finally, after one particularly bizarre sleepwalking incident, he called my mom in a panic early one morning.”
“In a well-staged panic,” Jake corrected. “Let’s keep this story on track.”
She flashed him another grateful look. “Claudia is a general practitioner with a thriving practice. She rushed over. When she saw the house, she concluded that I was having a hard time with my dad’s death and had started sleepwalking again. She wanted me to see a good psychologist for counseling. Rodney wanted to wait. He said a few sleepwalking incidents didn’t make me crazy. He suggested that Claudia write me a prescription for sleeping pills, his hope being that if I slept deeply, the incidents would stop. She finally relented, though I think it went against her better judgment, and wrote a prescription. Rodney got it filled.”
Jake sensed what was coming.
“The pills made me sick. Horribly dizzy and disoriented all the next day. Rodney asked Claudia for another prescription that might better agree with me. I just got sicker. Pretty soon he was giving me pills to cure the symptoms caused by pills. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t think. It got so I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom without collapsing.”
“Oh, my God. He was slipping you something.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Yes,” she said shakily, “I believe he was. I think my illness was chemically induced, that he drugged me to make it appear I was having a breakdown. During that time, he kept trying to get me to sign some papers. My dad had stressed never to sign anything I hadn’t read. I hadn’t observed that rule during Rodney’s and my marriage because he often wanted me to sign personal papers, and sometimes I was too busy to read the fine print. But the documents he wanted me to sign during my illness could have been firm related. I felt responsible for my dad’s half of the business, which represented his life’s work, and I refused to sign anything without reading it first. That created a problem. My vision was too blurred for me to make out the words.”
“I’ll bet Rodney was thrilled about that.”
“He was furious.” She gazed off at nothing. “To understand the shock element of that, you have to know how Rodney was before then. I know you think he was a jerk, but he was never overt about it. If I displeased him, he never yelled or hit me. He’d simply not speak to me for days on end. Or he’d humiliate me, often in front of other people. I always paid for my transgressions, but not in the ways you’d think.”
“He was a calculating, vicious bastard, in other words.”
She laughed tremulously. “Yes, and very good at hiding it. He never meant to humiliate me in public. He never intentionally hurt me. He was simply stating a fact, and I was being too sensitive.” She shrugged. “I can’t count the times he’d say something in front of people that left me bleeding. Then he’d thump himself on the forehead and apologize to me for putting it that way. It made him appear thoughtless, but not deliberately cruel, and people found it endearing, the way he apologized so profusely after he tripped over his own tongue. In the beginning, even I fell for it. Unfortunately, that didn’t lessen the hurt any, and later on, it hurt even more because I knew he intended it to wound.”
“What kind of things did he say to you, honey?” Jake asked softly.
Silence. Finally, she said, “Just stupid stuff. It doesn’t matter now.”
Jake thought it mattered a great deal. “Can you give me just one example?”
Another silence. And then, waving a hand as if to indicate the insignificance, she said, “Things like, ‘My God, where did you get that dress? It makes you look like a fat cow.’ Then he’d do his forehead thumping routine, hand me money to go shopping, and be all over himself, trying to flatter me.”
Jake ground his teeth. He needed to say something, but he couldn’t think of a single thing. In the end, he remained silent. Words weren’t what she needed. Not from him, at least. He did his best talking with his actions.
“Anyway,” she went on. “That’s water under the bridge. My point was that Rodney hides behind a mask most of the time and only shows his real self when it suits his purposes. Afterward, he’s very talented at glossing it over and winning people back. My father was a great judge of character. He never liked Rodney very much, but I don’t think he knew until the end what kind of man Rodney really is. I certainly never knew. Not in the beginning. In the early years, I never suspected that he was being unfaithful to me, for instance. He was gone a lot, but he always had an explanation, and I had no reason to think he might lie.”
“You were going to make him rich someday. If he’d been a blatant adulterer, you might have divorced him, not to mention that your father would have been down his throat. Rodney may be a snake, but he’s a smart snake.”
“Anyway,” she said with another wave of her hand, “one night, when I refused to sign the papers, his mask slipped completely, and I saw the real Rodney in all his ugly glory. It was the most awful feeling, Jake. Even doped up as I was, I reeled from the shock. I looked into his eyes and saw a stranger. I know that sounds overly dramatic, but that was exactly how I felt. It was Rodney’s face, but the man wearing it was a monster. He looked as if he wanted to rip me apart with his bare hands, and in that moment, I thought sure he would. The worst part was, I was so sick and dizzy, I saw three of him. I didn’t know which fist would plow into my face.”
“Oh, honey.” Jake was tempted to pull over again, this time because he wanted so badly to hug her. Rodney We
lls was a fairly big man, and Molly, for all her ample curves, was a slip of a woman. She must have been terrified.
“He intimidated me that night. But after losing my dad the way I had, I couldn’t betray everything he’d taught me.”
Jake smiled slightly, not at all surprised to hear that. He was coming to know that Molly would stand firm on her convictions no matter what it cost her.
“I refused to sign the papers. The next morning, I woke up in a clinic. I was strapped to the bed. I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten there. My first reaction was to scream for help.”
“Of course it was.”
“My attendants didn’t see it that way. They thought I was a raving lunatic. It was so awful, Jake.” Her voice went whispery. “It was the first time I’d been able to think clearly in weeks, and they pumped me full of sedatives again to calm me down.”
“At least you had a few minutes of clarity. Rodney wasn’t there to shove pills down you.”
She smiled sadly and sighed. “It is so good to tell someone all this.”
“And find out your take on everything wasn’t so crazy, after all?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “After waking up at the clinic, I didn’t immediately put two and two together, but in moments of clarity after that, I began to. At first, I didn’t play by the clinic rules. I was so enraged. You know? My father was dead. I was locked up, and I wasn’t crazy. I wanted to tell anyone who’d listen and try to get help. That only made me look crazier. It was a pretty outlandish story.”
“Did they treat you kindly at the clinic?”
“Eventually. I had a fabulous doctor. His name is Sam Banks. In the beginning, he thought I was a certifiable basket case, but before long, he started to believe my story. After that, he became my champion. He petitioned the court to get me a divorce. He allowed Rodney to see me only when he was present. Rodney hated his guts and still does.”
“I think I’ll like Sam Banks.”
“I know I do,” she said. “With his help, I was able to recall details I had blocked out or forgotten, and eventually, I was able to pinpoint the exact moment everything started, the day I went to search my father’s office. Rodney began a campaign then to make me look nuts. I think he slipped the debilitating drug into my prescription bottles just in case I read the labels. I don’t know if he got it on the black market, or if Claudia helped him get it, but I’m convinced he gave me something that made me deathly ill.”
“You really think Claudia may be involved?”
“She helped Rodney put me away. She took Jared into her bed shortly after my father’s death. I can’t rule it out. I’m suspicious of all of them. Maybe they want my share of the firm. A great deal of money will eventually be at stake. People have done more heinous things out of greed.”
Right after meeting Molly, Jake had sensed how very lonely and lost she felt. Now he knew why. Even the woman she’d called mother may have betrayed her in the most horrible way.
“What kind of woman is Claudia?”
“I always believed she was wonderful. My mom died of ovarian cancer when I was only five. She was ill for a long time, and shortly after her death, my father met and fell in love with Claudia. She couldn’t have children, and, after adopting me, she always treated me like her own.” Her voice quaked as she added, “I would have trusted her with my life, Jake, and I never questioned her love for Dad. I truly thought she adored him.”
Jake couldn’t bear to hear that hollow, tortured ring in her voice. “Maybe she did, Molly. If you and your dad were fooled by Rodney, maybe she was as well. Let’s not condemn her until we know for sure.”
She flashed him a warm look, even though her eyes shimmered with tears. “That’s exactly what Sam would say. And my dad, too, for that matter. You remind me so much of him sometimes.”
“Sam or your dad?”
A glow warmed her eyes. “My dad.”
Jake took that as the highest of compliments. “Thank you,” he said huskily. He checked his speed, noted how much he’d slowed down while listening to her story, and sped back up a bit. “Maybe Claudia turned to Jared in her grief. From things you’ve said, she must have regarded him as a very good friend. Sometimes when we’re hurting, we just need someone to hold us, and maybe Jared was there for her in a way no one else was because he loved your dad, too.”
“I want to believe that,” she said in a thin voice. “You can’t know how much. But she never came to see me, Jake. Except for that one time when Rodney called her over to the house, she stayed away the entire time I was sick. I never saw her in the clinic until right before my release when she came to tell me she was marrying Jared.”
Jake felt her pain like a knife in his guts. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t love your dad or that she was in on anything. It could very well be that Rodney was doing everything solo, and he said or did something to make Claudia stay away.”
Keeping one eye on the road, he leaned over to open the glove box where he kept a roll of toilet paper. “My version of tissues,” he said.
She sniffed and tore off a length of squares to blow her nose. “Claudia said Rodney told her I was furious about the thing between her and Jared, and that I didn’t want to see her. Knowing I was so ill, she didn’t want to further upset me, so she honored my wishes. She came that one day to the clinic only because she felt I deserved to hear the news of her marriage directly from her.”
“Sounds reasonable. Did you tell her of your suspicions about Rodney?”
Molly shook her head. “I’d worked so hard to get out of there. I was afraid to tell her anything for fear she and Rodney would have me moved to another clinic away from Sam. I didn’t know if I could trust her.”
“So the one time you could have talked with someone outside the clinic who might have believed your story, you were held back by fear.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see her again after that? Before today, I mean.”
“Right after I was released from the clinic, but I was still on probation. Sam had warned me not to do or say anything to rock the boat, that they could go over his head and put me back in a ward.” She shot him a worried look. “That could still happen. Stealing a horse will definitely strike a judge as being irrational.”
Until that moment, Jake hadn’t understood how greatly she had endangered herself to help that poor horse. She’d risked her freedom, her dreams, everything.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I was afraid to tell Claudia anything. If she was in on it, and I started accusing Rodney of killing my dad, they could have claimed I was delusional.”
“Why did you see her after you got out?” Jake asked, hoping she didn’t feel as if he were grilling her.
“She’d heard about my divorce through Jared, and she knew I’d be out on the streets after my release until I found a place. She took it upon herself to get me an apartment, and working through Rodney’s dad, she arranged to get my SUV returned to me so I’d have transportation. Except for the times Rodney showed up at the apartment after I was released to try to get me to sign those papers, I never had to see him.”
Jake drew his brows together in a thoughtful scowl. The thing with the papers worried him. He had a bad feeling there might be far more to this than Molly realized. If Wells had her power of attorney, why did he need her signature on something? It just didn’t figure.
Pulling himself back to the subject, Jake said, “It sounds to me as if Claudia did everything she could, outside of denying herself a relationship with Jared, to make sure her little girl was taken care of. As for her relationship with Jared, you can’t condemn two grief-stricken people for clinging to each other.”
“No,” Molly whispered. “And if that’s all it is, God forgive me for being so cold to her this morning.”
Jake’s throat went tight. “No self-recrimination allowed. You’ve been through a hell of a time. I don’t think you’ve said or done anything that wasn’t perfectly understandable, and if Claudia is
half the woman I think she may be, she’ll agree with me when she realizes what’s been going on.”
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
Jake considered carefully before answering. He’d seen such pain in Claudia’s eyes. “She was mighty upset. It’s hard for me to believe it was all an act.”
Molly sighed and began fiddling with the tissue. “I love her a lot. If she’s innocent of any wrongdoing, I’d like very much to mend our relationship. I always loved Uncle Jared, too. He’s a nice man.” Her eyes darkened again. “At least I always thought so.”
Jake fell quiet for a while, thinking about all that she’d told him. Then he said, “Okay, now I know all the facts. Right?”
Judging by the way she avoided his gaze, he guessed that she’d left out some of the grittier details about her marriage. He could understand that talking about something so personal wasn’t easy. “You know all the really important things,” she agreed.
“You come with some pretty serious trouble riding drag, lady.”
She nodded. “Yes. If you want to annul the marriage and wash your hands of me, I won’t blame you. You didn’t create this mess, and it’s not your job to fix it.”
“I disagree. The moment I fell in love with you, Molly, everything about you became my problem.”
“That’s me, one big problem.”
He winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t. But it’s the truth. I’ve been nothing but trouble, and if Rodney has his way, that won’t end anytime soon.”
“I’ll take you, trouble and all.”
Molly thought she would have to start cooking dinner the moment they arrived at the ranch, but when she and Jake pulled up out front, four unfamiliar pickups were parked at the edge of the yard. Jake took one look at them and swore under his breath.
“Who is it?” Molly asked.
“Family,” he muttered.
Molly’s stomach dropped. “What are they doing here?”
“Hank must have called them.” His eyes gleamed in the light from the porch. “I’m sorry. I know you’re probably not keen on the idea of a big celebration.”