her closely, so she turned before he could read every thought in her mind. She took a few steps, pretended to observe the area while she tried to make sense of it all.
“Grace?”
His family had owned the inn—the governor’s summer home. Wyatt had never mentioned that, but it had to be true. His last name bore it out. Gordon Kimball had tried to abduct Grace on her way home from school that day. And when he’d failed, he hid in the woods where he’d stumbled upon another victim—a woman with a boy too young to protect her.
Grace’s gut churned with the revelation. If she hadn’t managed to evade the man, Janet Jennings’s life would’ve been spared. Wyatt would’ve been spared all these years of grief and guilt.
Culpability rose inside, swamping her. She knew it was unreasonable. She didn’t have to know Mrs. Jennings to believe she wouldn’t have wanted a seven-year-old girl to suffer at that monster’s hands. This wasn’t Grace’s fault any more than it was Wyatt’s, but still . . .
The weight of it was crushing. The self-loathing she hadn’t fully felt since she was a girl flared up like a fuel-induced fire.
“Grace, what is it?” Wyatt was close behind her now.
She couldn’t breathe. Someone had sucked all the oxygen from the forest.
He turned her around to face him, but she couldn’t look him in the eye.
He tipped her chin up until she met his eyes, and she knew he’d see all the emotions roiling inside. She was helpless to hide them.
“Tell me.”
She would. She had to. This awful event connected them, and he deserved to know the truth. The whole truth.
“You’re Governor Jennings’s son.” She started there because she prayed she was somehow mistaken about all this.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I just didn’t want to get into all this . . .”
No easy out. Okay. She had to tell him then. Grace braced herself for his reaction. He might hate her. He probably had a right to. At the very least he would resent her, wouldn’t he? How could he not?
“Wyatt . . .” She swallowed past the lump in her throat and gathered her courage. “I’m the girl who got away.”
* * *
Wyatt stared at her as the words sank in. He wasn’t thinking very clearly right now. Or she wasn’t making any sense.
“The girl who got away?”
She continued to look at him, as if hoping he might figure it out on his own. When he didn’t she said, “Earlier in the day . . . Gordon Kimball tried to abduct a little girl. Did you know that?”
His thoughts spun. It had been a part of the articles he’d skimmed over. Some lucky girl had gotten away. His mother hadn’t.
His hand dropped from her chin. “It was you? You’re the girl?”
Silence filled the space between them, expanding, thickening, making the air hard to breathe.
“I—I was walking home from school, and he was following me in a van. I ran away. When I got home, my parents reported it, but the man disappeared into the mountains and they lost track of him. It was the thing I told you about the night we played that first conversation game—the guilt I was carrying.”
Somewhere from the recesses of his memory her words surfaced. “Someone died and I didn’t, and deep down I feel like it should’ve been me.” He’d recognized it as survivor’s guilt. He just hadn’t known his mother was part of the equation.
This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t think. It was too much. He turned and paced a few steps away, sightless. He was grateful Grace had escaped the monster. Of course he was. But if she hadn’t . . .
No, he couldn’t think like that. He would never wish any harm on Grace. He loved her. But he’d loved his mom too.
“I’m so sorry, Wyatt.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” The words sounded like lip service, but he knew they were right. “I just—I’m a little overwhelmed right now.”
“Of course you are. I—I don’t blame you.”
He hated how tentative she sounded. But he couldn’t deal with her emotions right now when his own were crashing into him like a tidal wave.
“I—I think maybe I should wait for you back by the creek,” she said. “Give you a minute alone?”
He needed space to process this. Didn’t want to say something he’d regret later or hurt her unintentionally.
He nodded. “All right.”
“Take all the time you need.”
He heard her quiet footfalls receding until the sounds of