Elizabeth Lowell - A Woman Without Lies

She closed the trunk lid.

“How many pieces did you have in the show in Vancouver?” persisted Hawk.

“Thirty-two.”

Angel opened her purse and rummaged for her keys.

“Did they sell?” Hawk asked.

She looked up, only to find herself impaled on eyes as brown and clear as crystal.

“All but three,” she said.

“The ones that sold – were they small?”

“No. They were quite large. Why?”

Hawk ignored the question.

“How many shows do you do a year?” he asked.

Angel pulled her keys out of her purse and faced Hawk, wondering why he cared. But it was easier to answer than to argue. In any case, it didn’t really matter.

Money was a safe topic. It wasn’t personal, like emotions.

“Three shows this year,” Angel said. “One in Seattle, one in Portland, and one in Vancouver.”

“Did they all go well?”

“Yes.”

“You really don’t need the money from Eagle Head, do you?” asked Hawk.

“No.”

“But Derry does.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Angel hesitated, then shrugged. Hawk could always ask Derry. It was hardly a secret in any case.

“Derry wants to be a surgeon,” she said. “That means between six and ten more years of advanced training. He’s been accepted at Harvard, but no scholarship was offered because, technically, Derry is wealthy.”

“Eagle Head.”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Angel asked, looking swiftly at Hawk. “For once, let me be sure there’s enough light on the subject.”

She took a swift breath, steeling herself for the words to come.

“This isn’t a boyish whim on Derry’s part,” Angel said. “My parents were killed instantly in the wreck. Derry’s mother wasn’t. His brother wasn’t. Derry dragged them free – and then watched them bleed to death because he didn’t know enough to save their lives.”

Hawk’s face was expressionless, utterly still, his eyes almost black. There was a question he wanted to ask but he didn’t know how to word it without watching ghosts darken Angel’s eyes.

“And you?” he asked finally, softly. “Were you conscious after Derry pulled you out of the wreckage?”

“Yes. I couldn’t help Derry.”

Angel heard the question Hawk didn’t quite know how to ask. She knew how to answer it, though.

And she knew how much the answer would hurt her.

Derry. Derry needs Hawk, Angel told herself harshly. I have to make Hawk understand.

“My collarbone was smashed, my ribs were broken, I had multiple fractures of both legs,” she said neutrally. “Derry’s mother was unconscious. His brother wasn’t that lucky. So I lay there, I couldn’t move, and I listened to Grant – ”

Her voice stopped. When the words resumed, they were like powdered glass, no color, just sharp edges abrading everything they touched.

“When it was over,” Angel said carefully, “Derry wept and beat his fists against the road until there was no skin, only blood. I could do nothing about that, either.”

“Angel,” Hawk said softly, touching her cheek with gentle fingertips, regretting his question and her pain.

She stepped away from the touch.

“Derry swore then to become a doctor, saving lives to replace the lives he hadn’t known how to save,” Angel said. “It’s his way to make peace with a life that was cruel enough to leave him uninjured so that he could watch his mother bleed to death and his brother die in agony.”

Angel looked up and her breath caught. She had seen enough sadness and pain to recognize it in Hawk’s dark features.

“You really do like Derry, don’t you?” she said, surprised that Hawk could feel that much emotion. “He likes you, too. God knows why,” she added absently, frowning.

She had never understood Derry’s smiling acceptance of Hawk’s razor tongue.

Hawk’s face became expressionless again.

“Maybe I remind Derry of Grant,” suggested Hawk.

“You’re nothing like Derry’s brother.”

“Oh?”

The black arc of Hawk’s eyebrow irritated Angel.

“Grant was capable of love,” she said coolly.

“Then he must have been loved,” Hawk shot back.

“What do you mean?”

“Grant’s mother loved him. Derry loved him. You loved him.”

“Yes.”

“That must have been nice,” Hawk said.

His voice was flat. His words were simple statement rather than ironic mockery: It must have been nice to be loved.

“And you were loved, weren’t you, Angel? Your parents, Grant, Derry, even Carlson. In their own way, they all loved you.”

“Yes,” whispered Angel. “And I loved them.”

“Love linking to love. A bright, magic, closed circle.”

Hawk’s face changed, memories like talons in his mind.

“But your parents – ” began Angel, only to stop.

Hawk’s harsh laughter overrode her, laughter tearing through her, hurting her as it must have hurt him. She held her hand out as though to touch him.

“Hawk,” she said, “don’t.”

Then Hawk spoke, and his words were worse than his laughter.

“My mother was six months pregnant with me when she married my father,” Hawk said. “Only he wasn’t my father. He didn’t know it at the time. She told him when I was six. She told him by pinning a note to my shirt just before she ran off with a traveling man.”

Hawk’s smile was sardonic.

“Nice touch, that,” he added. “Dump a kid on a man and tell him it isn’t his.”

Angel tried to speak.

Hawk didn’t notice. His clear, bleak eyes were focused on the past.

“Dad kept me,” Hawk said. “I never could figure out why. It sure as hell wasn’t out of love. His mother came to live with us. There wasn’t any love in her, either. Oh, they were kind enough, so far as that goes. I didn’t starve. They never used anything worse than a belt on me no matter how drunk they were.”

Angel flinched, remembering when Hawk had told her that he had taken his dad’s fishing gear without permission and been soundly beaten for it. She had thought it a joke at the time.

Now she knew better. The knowledge didn’t comfort her.

“I had already learned how to work when my mother took off,” continued Hawk. “I grew vegetables, raised chickens, delivered papers, whatever. The money went to them, to pay for room and board.”

“But you were only a child,” Angel said, hardly able to comprehend.

“I ate their food. I wore clothes they found for me. I slept in a blanket they gave me.”

Hawk shrugged again, dismissing the subject of material wealth. Being poor hadn’t bothered him. Being unloved had.

“They weren’t fattening themselves at my expense,” he said. “Our farm was a joke. Five hundred acres, and not enough water to irrigate more than ten. It’s dry in west Texas. Real dry. Only thing that land is good for is raising dust and hell. It’s more fun to raise hell than dust. I raised more than my share.”

With a sudden movement, Hawk went to the far side of Angel’s car, opened the door, and slid into the passenger seat.

Angel stood without moving, still caught in the words that illuminated an aspect of Hawk that she had never suspected – Hawk’s past, as harsh as the land he had described.

She wanted to ask questions, many questions, because she sensed that there was more to be told.

Other boys have been abandoned by mothers and yet learned to love and trust women. Carlson, for one. His childhood was no better than Hawk’s. Even worse Carlson had been half-Indian; he had to fight for room to live and work in white society.

Yet Carlson knew how to love.

Why didn’t Hawk?

Hawk leaned over and opened the driver’s door, silently inviting Angel to get into her own car. She slid behind the wheel. With a hand that trembled slightly, she turned the key and started her car. She glanced swiftly at Hawk.

He didn’t notice. Other than opening the door for her, he seemed unaware of her existence. She wondered what he was thinking, what fragments of the past he was looking at, what their colors were… and how many edges they had, how deeply they cut him.

Angel asked no more, though. She was still learning from the first instants when Hawk’s words had illuminated him. The colors he had shown her were dark, almost brutal, yet their intensity was compelling, their possibilities alluring.

Silently Angel drove to Mrs. Carey’s house. As she parked in front, she looked questioningly at Hawk. She hadn’t expected him to come with her in the first place. She didn’t know whether he wanted to go inside or wait in the car until she was finished.

Hawk looked at Angel.

“I take it we’re here, wherever that is,” he said.

“Mrs. Carey’s house.”

Hawk encouraged Angel with a look.

“She broke her hip a while ago,” Angel said. “I’m bringing her groceries and taking her to the doctor until she can drive herself again.”

Black brows came together as Hawk turned the name over in his mind.

“Mrs. Carey,” he muttered. “I’ve heard that name.”

“Jams and jellies,” said Angel, opening her door.

Hawk got out and joined her at the trunk.

“As in this glass?” he asked, lifting the quilt-wrapped panel out of the trunk.

“As on our breakfast croissants.”

Hawk made an appreciative sound and licked his lips.

“Now I remember the name,” he said. “Are we going to buy some more jam today?”

“Mrs. Carey would sic her cat on me if I even suggested it. I’ve eaten her wonderful jams all my life. Gifts. Every last bite.”

“And all the sweeter because of it,” Hawk said.

Again Hawk had surprised Angel. She hadn’t expected him to understand.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Don’t look so shocked, Angel. I know what gifts mean. I used to wait in an agony of hope every birthday, every Christmas. I learned not to hope after a while.”

Angel closed her eyes, trying not to feel Hawk’s pain.

“And then my third-grade teacher gave me a small candy cane with a green ribbon on it,” Hawk said. “I kept that candy cane until Christmas morning, when I knew other kids would be opening their presents.”

Angel’s hands clenched in helpless sympathy.

“Then I walked out into the fields until I was alone,” Hawk said. “I can still feel the wrapping crinkle beneath my fingers, smell the freshness of the mint, see the bright green ribbon and the clean red and white of the cane. It was the sweetest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever tasted. I carried the ribbon in my pocket until nothing was left but a few green threads.”

Hawk shook his head, almost baffled by the bittersweet shaft of memory.

“I haven’t thought about that for a long, long time,” he said.

Angel fought tears as she compared her own Christmases and birthdays heaped with gifts and laughter and love. She had lost so much four years ago, but at least she had something to lose.

Years of memories, years of love.

Hawk had nothing but rare moments, the fading taste of mint, and a ribbon worn to shreds in a boy’s pocket.

Quietly Angel shut the trunk and followed Hawk to the front door of Mrs. Carey’s house. She rang the bell and waited, knowing it might take a while for Mrs. Carey to reach the front door.

Hawk noted Angel’s silence and drawn face, saw the tiny indentations where she had bitten her lower lip. He didn’t know what had upset her. All he knew was that he wanted to soothe the marks away with the tip of his tongue.

Like the memory of mint, the impulse surprised Hawk. He realized that he wanted to comfort rather than seduce Angel. He wanted to see her smile because he had brought pleasure to her. He wanted -

Mrs. Carey opened the door. Her gray head barely came to Hawk’s breastbone. She adjusted her glasses as she looked up at the tall, dark man who stood so unexpectedly on her doorstep.

“Good morning, Mrs. Carey,” Angel said, her voice soft, still shaken by Hawk’s sad memories. “I’d like you to meet Miles Hawkins. Hawk, this is Mrs. Carey.”

“Mr. Hawkins,” said the old woman, nodding her head.

“Call me Hawk. Everyone else in Canada does.”

He slanted a sideways look at Angel. Then he shifted the quilt-wrapped stained glass panel to his other arm as he took the old woman’s cool, dry hand in his.

“A pleasure, Mrs. Carey.”

The old woman’s shrewd black eyes measured the man in front of her. Then she nodded once, abruptly.

“Not many men could carry that nickname. You can. Come in, Hawk.” Then, dryly, “You too, Angie. Tea’s brewing.”

A big orange tomcat wove in and out of Mrs. Carey’s walker with breathtaking disregard for safety as she led the way to the kitchen. Finally Angel could stand the suspense no longer. She bent down and lifted the heavy cat into her arms.