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Chris sighed and drifted toward sleep. He'd always been too rigid in his beliefs. He'd had an image in his mind of the woman he would spend his life with. Now that he thought about it, the imaginary woman looked and acted a lot like Marianne McCall. Was she the kind of woman he wanted? Or had he thought he wanted someone like her because his mother embodied an ideal he'd clung to throughout his lonely childhood? |
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When he'd come into the house Chris had meant to tell D.J. about his past. She'd shared her background with him, though he doubted she would have if the circumstances had been different. The understanding of her character that had come with those revelations was so precious, he wanted her to understand him in the same way. Since the night he'd related the facts to the police officers who'd arrived on the scene too late to save his family, Chris hadn't revealed the horror of his parents' murder to a living soul. But he'd planned on revealing the nightmare to D.J., until she'd gone behind his back and torn his secrets loose from the wrong source. |
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Chris fell asleep with the remembrance of D.J.'s deception on his mindbut he dreamed again of the field and the children and D.J., and the deception shrank in importance when compared with the wealth of love forgiveness could grant him. |
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D.J. stood outside her father's room and listened for some indication of what McCall was doing on the other side. Ever since he'd slammed the door and locked it she hadn't heard a peep. |
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"How could I have been so stupid?" She'd asked |
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