Hostile Witness

CHAPTER 29

"Kip?"

Linda Rayburn stood framed in the doorway looking at everything. Hannah. Her legs pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, trembling as if she was chilled to the bone. Against the wall was Kip, his arms hanging slack by his side, his expression melting with his anger and grief and, above all, hatred.

No one spoke. Finally, Kip threw himself toward the door and pushed past his wife. Panicked, Linda screamed at Hannah.

"What have you done? What?"

"Mom, I-" Hannah said, but Linda didn't wait for an answer. She darted after her husband.

"Kip, wait. Wait." She caught up with him in the dining room, unable to make him stop until she sprinted ahead.

"Get out of my way, Linda. It's all over. My life is over. Everything is over. And it's her fault. I don't want to look at her. I don't want her in my house."

"What about me? Do you want me? Isn't that why you came? To get me? I can make it better. I always have. I always will." Linda hustled in front of him, her hands out, touching his chest, his shoulders.

"Just get out of my way," he slapped at her hands but she persisted.

"No, answer me. Kip for once in your life say what you want. What do you want?"

Kip grabbed her hands and shook them.

"I want people to stop talking about us. I'm sick of it. I can't go anywhere. People ask me if my father really did those things to me. At the club they make jokes about the women and girls and my father. They look at me and wonder if I ever did what he did. The governor called. He is withdrawing the nomination. Can you change that?"

"Yes. Yes. I promise. I'll talk to him. We'll figure something out. It will be all right," Linda insisted, frantic to calm him. It was an impossible task.

"Don't be stupid. Nothing will be all right. Not until she is gone." He whipped his head around to glare at Hannah. She had followed cautiously, hugging the walls, the furniture, watching to see where the danger was coming from. But Kip's eyes were blurred. He saw nothing, and he could do nothing. He dropped his head and shook it. "Everything was fine when it was just him and me. No one knew. I could take anything if nobody knew."

Linda pulled him to her. When he resisted, she moved into him, forcing herself on him, angry and determined to stop the hemorrhaging emotions that would kill reason.

"I know. I do know. I swear. I've been there. But I can make it right."

She soothed him with the truth. It was an awful, ugly truth that weakness was better stomached in private, behind the doors, in the dark. Fritz knew that. Kip knew that and, most of all, Linda knew. The weak were bound together. Maybe that was why Fritz and Kip and Linda had coexisted as easily as they had. Maybe that was why Hannah never found her place in the Rayburn mix. Her weakness was open. It didn't shape her heart and soul; it only touched the delicate tissues of the mind.

"Mom?"

Instinctively Linda pulled Kip closer as if to protect him from her daughter. Kip twisted out of her grasp and stepped behind his wife. He ran a hand through his hair. His plain face was mottled with the color of emotions long held private.

"Leave him alone." Linda closed in on Hannah and lowered her voice. "Haven't you done enough?"

Hannah's eyes flicked to Kip and back to her mother. Her hand reached out. She touched Linda's arm. Once, twice, three times and Linda slapped her away.

"Mom, please. I didn't do anything. He came here. He scared me. I thought it was going to be like Fritz."

"Stop it." Linda grabbed Hannah's arm and railroaded her back into her room. She whipped Hannah against the wall, out of Kip's sight. "It's not going to be like that. Don't even think it. Kip's not like that, but don't push him, that's all I'm saying."