The Road Not Taken. Jackie BraunЧитать онлайн книгу.

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      For my good friend Richard Noble.

       What would a book signing be without you?

      PROLOGUE

      JAKE MCCABE CURLED HIS HAND into a fist. Pain and useless rage had him wanting to use it. On a wall or whatever else might be handy. Bloody and bruised knuckles would be a small price to pay if they brought him even a small measure of relief.

      Instead, he relaxed his grip enough to pick up a pen and open the journal. It had only one entry, written a couple of months earlier when the department shrink first recommended keeping a diary as an outlet for his thoughts and emotions.

      “This is crap,” it read. “I don’t see how writing things down will make a bit of difference.”

      Now, however, with a new wound festering, he penned the words he couldn’t bear to voice. He didn’t find peace in doing so, for that was impossible. But it turned out the shrink was right about his need for an outlet. The words flowed in a bitter torrent. One paragraph, then two, scratched in his slashing penmanship.

      Afterward, Jake lowered his head and wept. Tears smeared the ink, turning the first sentence illegible. It didn’t matter. He would remember the words long after the raging storm of his emotions quieted.

      “Miranda killed our baby today.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE CAR HIT THE SNOWBANK with enough force that the air bag deployed. But at least it had stopped after what seemed like an eternity of swerving and fishtailing on the maple-tree-lined two-lane highway.

      Caroline Franklin Wendell peeled her fingers from the steering wheel and ran one shaking hand over her face. It wasn’t her life that had flashed before her eyes during those seemingly endless moments of terror. It had been her son’s. She’d nearly failed Cabot by dying and leaving it to his father and grandmother to raise him. That thought had her shivering.

      Caro gazed out the windshield. The front end of the subcompact was buried to mid-hood in a snowdrift. But she knew her life had gone off track long before she’d hit that patch of ice. It had been skidding out of control ever since she’d foolishly married Truman four years earlier. She’d just refused to believe it. She’d refused to believe that the mistake she’d made couldn’t be fixed.

      Even that morning, heading back to him in defeat, she’d held out hope that she would find a way out of this nightmare. Not for her sake, but for Cabot’s. Her son was the only good thing to come from her marriage to the heir of one of New England’s most affluent and powerful families.

      Now, with her heart hammering and her limbs still shaking, she laid her forehead against the faux-leather steering wheel and finally accepted the truth. Truman was right. There was no way out.

       I’m doing this for your own good. You need me, Caroline.

      Caro wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there, only that the last of the heat had leaked from the inside of the car. She could see her breath each time she exhaled and, even through her cashmere-lined leather gloves, her fingertips pinched and prickled from the cold. She fished her cell phone from her purse. Eventually, she would have to call her husband to report her delay and, if need be, beg him for more time. She wasn’t above begging when it came to her son. First, she needed a wrecker for her car and someplace warm for her to wait for repairs.

      She flipped open her phone and stared for a moment at the photo of her son on the display. He was smiling, happy and free of cares, just as every toddler should be. She ran the tip of her index finger over his cherubic face and then frowned as she realized that her phone had no service.

      After forcing open the car door and stepping into the knee-deep snow, she raised the cell high in the air and turned in a semicircle.

      Still nothing.

      She stuffed the phone into the pocket of her parka and cursed. The mild oath floated away on a puff of white air.

      She could wait for help, she supposed. Although it was doubtful another driver would be foolish enough to be out in these conditions. Only desperation had forced her to be. She glanced down the road in the direction she’d come. She’d passed a gas station when she’d unwisely decided to leave the interstate, as road conditions there had worsened. That was three miles back or maybe four. She was wearing boots, but the supple leather and three-inch heels weren’t meant for this kind of weather, much less a rigorous hike in it.

      She gazed in the opposite direction. What lay ahead on the road she’d been traveling?

      Her luck it would be miles of nothing but more maple trees and snowdrifts. She’d survived the accident but, quite literally, she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Tears stung her eyes and her breathing grew labored as panic kicked into high gear. What was she going to do? She had a deadline to meet.

      Caro thought she heard bells, a rhythmic jangling from off in the distance. She dismissed the sound as the product of the wind and her own imagination. A moment later, though, a man on horseback appeared at the bend in the road. The rim