Her face sank, and tears welled in her eyes. "Goddammit, Gemma," she whispered. "Why the hell’d you have to run off and die like that?”
She buried her face in her hands and wept softly. Turk immediately trotted over to her and pressed his head into her lap, looking up at her with the sad, strong brown eyes that had won Faith over two years ago. Faith felt a lump form in her throat and stood. “Izzie, thank you for your time. We’ll—”
Michael nudged her and gestured with his eyes toward Turk, who was now wrapped tightly in the weeping woman’s arms. The lump in Faith’s throat clenched tightly, and she turned abruptly and left the room.
Michael frowned questioningly at her as she stepped outside, but she didn’t stop. Once outside, she exhaled in a rush and breathed deeply of the cool, moist, fresh air. She gasped twice, gulping huge draughts before she grabbed the porch rail and steadied herself. A single tear trickled slowly out of each eye and she gripped the rail as tightly as she could with her injured hand and forced herself to take measured breaths until the lump in her throat eased.
She looked out across the twilight mist that slowly formed over the city and knew suddenly that she would never have what Izzie had. She had lost Michael already and now was losing him as a friend. David was halfway out of her life already and probably wouldn’t miss her much when she was gone.
Dr. West had already won. He had already taken everything she loved from her. In the cabin, he had shown her how easily he could take even Turk from her.
Except it wasn’t Dr. West who had beaten her. For all his grandiosity and arrogance, he owed all of his success, all of his identity, to an overgrown farmer with bad teeth who had effortlessly and completely robbed Faith of all of her strength and dignity and left behind nothing more than an angry, haunted shell who had no choice but to watch as she torpedoed her own life.
The Donkey Killer.
Jethro Trammell.
“Fuck you,” she whispered softly, no longer trying to stop her tears. “Fuck you, Trammell.”
“Hey,”
She turned to Michael and managed a half-hearted smile. “Sorry. I just needed a bit of air.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I get that. You’re worried about David.”
“Yeah,” she said, deciding it was easiest to allow him to believe that. “Yeah, I am.”
“Well, he’ll be all right,” Michael said with a compassionate smile. “Even Franklin West isn’t stupid enough to mess with Faith Bold’s boyfriend.”
She nodded. “God, I wish that were true.”
“It’ll be okay,” Michael said gently. “This is the suck. You’ll get through it.”
She laughed. “The suck? Where did you hear that?”
"From you. You told me that's what you guys called it in the Marine Corps."
“When did I tell you that.”
His smile faded a little, and he turned away. Then Faith remembered when she had told him that. It was the day of their first and only anniversary. More specifically, the night of their anniversary.
She colored a little. “Oh. I remember now.”
He nodded. “Well, come on. Let’s go say goodbye to our person of interest before we do something stupid like talk about the relationship.”
“Way to make it more awkward,” she said, coloring further.
“You know me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Have you any idea yet who may have hurt my Patrick?”
Darlene Jeter was taking her husband’s death just about as hard as Isabel Montgomery was taking her wife’s death. She had made an attempt at putting herself together for the agent’s visit, but her puffy eyes and trembling hands belied her grief. She, like Izzie, insisted that the agents address her by her first name and invited them inside, although she offered tea rather than cocoa.
All things considered, she was doing an admirable job of keeping her voice even and her eyes dry.
“That’s what we hope this visit will help with,” Faith said.
