Page 28 of Into These Eyes

When I glance his way, he’s tense again.

I’m such an idiot. He’s worried about how I’ll react, but he’s so strong and resilient, it hasn’t even occurred to me how being back at the crime scene might affect him .

As he stares blankly through the windscreen, I remind myself that he’s just as much a victim in all of this as I am.

Instead of blindly focusing on facts alone, I need to keep that in mind.

“I shouldn’t have rushed you into this,” I tell him. “I didn’t think. We can turn around.”

He hesitates only a moment. “As long as you’re okay with it, so am I.”

After he directs me through the rabbit-warren of streets, I pull up to the kerb.

When I look at him, he’s staring straight ahead.

I follow his gaze, taking in the way the road doglegs in a sharp bend a little further ahead, causing a row of homes to face us.

Anyone looking through those windows have a clear view of the street where I’ve parked.

We climb from the car into the scorching heat. When I meet Gavin on the footpath, he’s tense and uncomfortable, but he forces half a smile my way. This isn’t going to be easy for either of us.

“Can you show me where … you found her?” I hate myself for asking, but I know I’ll never come back here again and, even though it’s not why we’re here, I can’t leave without seeing where my mother took her last breath.

Clearly struggling, he turns his back to the house he’s been staring at and glances down the street before meeting my eyes. “You sure?”

I nod, but when he takes a few steps past me, I freeze. Glancing over his shoulder, he offers his hand. I stare at it, the concept foreign. Apart from when I was a kid and when Anika was little, I haven’t held anyone’s hand in a very long time.

Swallowing over the lump that wants to creep its way into my throat, I step forward and take it. Studying me, he gives a gentle squeeze, and I tighten my grip. As we walk along the footpath, the comfort of his kindness almost undoes me.

Then he stops, gently places his hands on my shoulders, and turns me toward the nature-strip.

“Just here,” he says softly, squeezing my shoulders. “If you want me to, I’ll tell you every detail I remember. Just ask.”

When I nod, his hands slip away and I feel him step back to give me space. I wish he hadn’t.

As I stare at the nature strip where my mother died, for some reason I expect it to hold the indentation of her body, as if the continuous growth of grass throughout the years should remember what happened here. It’s a stupid thought, but it rattles around in my brain anyway.

Blinking fast to ward off the threatening waterworks, I raise my face to the cloudless sky. Now that I’m standing in this spot, I know it’s meaningless. If she’s anywhere at all, she’s not here.

I take another moment to get myself under control before I turn toward Gavin.

“So,” I say, “since we’re here, are you okay to walk me through how you found her?”

He nods and I follow him further along the footpath toward the end of the street.

“I’d been out running, but by the time I came around this corner, I was walking. That’s when a guy wearing a baseball cap and dark clothes came rushing out of the shadows, knocked me down, then disappeared around the corner.”

“He ran into you?” I ask, astonished.

“Yeah. Of course, no one believed me.”

Anger ripples through me from the injustice of it all. What the hell were the police doing that night?

I follow him halfway to the spot where my mother died.

“About here, I heard someone yelling. When I looked up at Liam’s window,” he points to the first house on the bend that faces us, “he was waving his hands around like crazy.”

I wait while he takes a breath, clearly lost in the memory.

“He opened his window and frantically yelled my name. The moment I realised something was very wrong, I saw her.”

Not ready to hear those details particular yet, I turn back to the corner where my father fled and ask, “Where does that go?”

“If you turn right out of here, the road runs alongside the golf course.”

I stare at him, my mind racing with possibilities. “Golf course?”

“Does that mean something?”

“You might have just solved how my father did it.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

I explain that the house we shared a back fence with sat across the road from the golf course. On the outside of this estate. My father could easily have left home on foot when I was giving Anika a bath, snuck through that neighbour’s yard and then the golf course.

Gavin runs a hand over his face, the relief sweeping over his expression unmistakable. “The missing piece of the puzzle.”

“Yes, but—” I stop cold, realising what he’s telling me. “You … you thought my father … before I told you it was him?”

He grips the back of his neck. “Yes and no. I had a hell of a lot of time on my hands to run through every scenario. Obviously, I knew I didn’t do it.

” He shakes his head and gazes into the distance.

“The rage I felt when I discovered my father’d been cheating on my mother …

well, I imagine that's nothing compared to a spouse finding out his wife’s cheating on him. ”

I swallow over the tightness in my throat. He’s right. The spouse is usually the most obvious suspect. For sixteen years, Gavin’s been tormented by that fact. A fact the police didn’t bother looking into at the time. Because of me.

“Or,” I say, guilt churning that hamburger in my stomach, “they didn’t look into it because they relied on the alibi I gave them. The false statement I made.”

Gavin’s eyes lock with mine and he steps forward, placing his hands on my shoulders.

“Even if you’d told them he wasn’t home, do you think they’d have cared?

They were convinced they had their man. Don’t you see?

If they were interested in looking for other suspects, Reid never would have buried Liam’s eyewitness statement. Do not blame yourself, Jamie.”

I stare up at him, wishing I could stop the guilt from crushing me. “But, I—”

“It wasn’t a false statement. It’s what you believed to be the truth.”

Just like I believed his guilt was the truth. Jesus. I don’t care what I have to do, I need to set this right for him.

“Tell me you understand, Jamie. What happened to me was Reid’s doing, not yours, Okay?”

One of his thumbs rubs over my clavicle, and when it accidentally brushes my bare skin where the neckline of my dress ends, a delicious shiver skates through my nervous system.

Trying to ignore it, I realise he’s right again.

I’d told the truth as I knew it. It was their responsibility to test that truth, and they never did. Slowly, I nod.

I know he’s assessing my reaction, checking for signs that I’m lying, or about to fall apart.

Apparently satisfied, he releases me and steps back. “Should we go knock on Liam’s door?”

After discovering the house has been sold several times since Gavin’s incarceration, leaving the new owner with no knowledge of who once lived there, we head back toward the car.

“When I’m back in the office, I’ll do a historical title search,” I tell him. “That way we can track Liam’s parents down, then find him.”

As we draw closer to my car, Gavin’s pace slows until he comes to a complete stop in front of the house where he told me to park.

“This is where I grew up,” he says, a strain in his tone I haven’t heard before. Stepping a little too close to him, our arms brush while I study the house. Ignoring the foreign sparks scattering through my body, I concentrate on the only home he’s ever known.

“Do any of your family still live here?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I lost my mother a month before … you lost yours. And I lost my father that night.”

I take in a sharp breath. “What do you mean you lost your father?” He closes his eyes and swallows hard. I knew that he’d assaulted his father that night, knew his father testified against him. But he wouldn’t have had a choice.

“I didn’t know it until the next day,” he says, staring straight ahead at the house again. “Didn’t believe it until the next week. He thought I killed her too. I haven’t seen or heard from him since he testified.”

My own throat tightens painfully, his words bringing up everything I’m trying to suppress.

I can’t help but wonder how painful losing his father in that way must have been.

At least comparable to my mother’s death, if not worse.

Mum didn’t decide to get murdered. Gavin’s father made a deliberate choice to cut his only son out of his life.

The damage my own father has done to this man is almost unbearable. Before I know it, I’m blinking fast again, tamping down on all that emotion bubbling under the surface. That’s when he chooses to finally look at me.

“Don’t fight it, Jamie.”

I shift my gaze to the house he once called home. My chin trembles and I’m so fucking close to completely losing it, I blink harder, faster and draw in a deep breath until the quivering subsides.

“I wish you wouldn’t fight it,” he says, “because … I can’t.”

When my eyes snap to his, I catch sight of a tear sliding down his face just before he turns his head away and places his hands on his knees. His back heaves as he tries to breathe through it.

“Ah fuck, I’m sorry,” he manages to get out, his voice thick and ropey with raw emotion.

I stare in awe at the bravery of this man.

I don’t see his vulnerability as anything but strength, even though I berate myself for being weak when I break down.

There’s something different about a man unafraid to let go, and I wonder if this is the first time he’s cried over his father’s abandonment.