When We Let Go, Delancey Stewart [early reader books .txt] 📗

“Well he seems put out,” Jack said, turning everything into a joke as he always had.

I spun back around to face him. “Listen to me, Jack.” I pulled myself up straight even though all I wanted was to crumple into a ball and cry. “I don’t want this money. I didn’t sell that picture. You did, without my permission. I could sue you for copyright infringement, or libel, or …” my brain spun as I tried to figure out how Jack stealing my picture might be a prosecution-worthy offense.

Jack was laughing at me, chuckling silently beneath his smarmy smile.

“Just go away,” I said, my voice becoming thick as tears threatened. “Please. Just go away forever. Go marry Annalise and leave me alone. Don’t come up here again. Don’t call me. Just go away. Please.” My voice broke on the last word and I wiped at the tears rolling down my cheeks. I was too exhausted to try to hide them.

“If that’s what you want, Maddie,” Jack said, pretending to be hurt. “I was just trying to help…”

If he said anything else, I didn’t stay to hear it. I turned and headed into the library. I needed to see how my picture had been used, what damage Jack had done. Jess and Cam had gone back to the lodge to rest, and I had some time to myself. At least I had the signed book, maybe that would win me some points with Cam.

I nodded to Christine as I sat down at the one terminal in the small library. I wondered if I was the only one who ever used it.

Glancing over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t watching, I typed Connor’s name into Google. Several pages of results came up. All the retail listings for his books, conferences he’d spoken at, and interviews in magazines and papers. And images. Lots of images.

I scanned the headlines of some of the articles. They weren’t all from the most reputable of sources, but they were definitely intriguing in a stomach-turning kind of way.

Connor Charles – Woman Beater?

“He’s a Tortured Artist” – Ex-Girlfriend of Author Connor Charles Speaks Up

Dark and Twisted: An Inside Look at the Mind of Connor Charles, Horror Writer

Writer Charles Accused of Kidnapping, Potential Murder

I felt sick. But not all the headlines were as awful as these. Some mentioned Connor’s foundation for foster kids, others talked about his donation of money to school libraries. Another mentioned his investment in a charter school in Chicago. There were not as many articles about Connor’s good deeds as there were those that speculated about his evil nature, but I was happy to see some weight on the other side of the scales.

I read. For at least an hour, I read all about the accusations that had followed Connor from relationship to relationship. There were photos of him with a tall thin blond woman, a bruise on her face as his arm circled her waist in a possessive way. There were pictures of him with his arm over the shoulder of another woman, a fierce look on his face as he glared at the photographer.

There was good, and bad, and lots of in between. Connor had been to many events, had lots of pictures taken of him. The photos were the most intriguing thing to me, of course. Seeing him in a life completely outside my own, outside my knowledge and understanding of him, was fascinating. He often looked unhappy, troubled. But always painfully handsome.

I went back to my name search and clicked the image link. A full page of Connor’s face came up. But there was one photo that caught my attention completely. Connor, in front of a fire, his face in shadow. My photo.

I followed the photo to its source, and read a horrible tabloid article full of half-truths about the investigation going on up here. It had quotes attributed to “concerned neighbors” saying things about how suspicious they were, how Connor behaved in a manner that made him untrustworthy. My blood chilled and I sat back, staring at the screen. A dark shadow filtered into my gut and settled there. Had Connor already seen this? Was this why he was so angry?

I ran my hands through my hair, a new feeling of desperation washing through me. How had this happened? I’d refused to sell this picture. I was at the bottom of a pit of financial desperation, this picture had been a lifeline, and I’d chosen not to take it because I cared about Connor. I’d sworn to find some other way. And here it was anyway.

How had Jack gotten it? I had to think back to when I’d first looked at the picture. I’d pulled up the photos on this terminal during my break and I’d been working on it when Jack had come in. I wondered if he would have any idea how to log on and retrieve it from the terminal—Jack was the type to pay other people so he didn’t have to learn how to do things himself. And I always cleared the memory when I used a public machine.

My blood chilled. I always cleared the cache…except that day. Jack had surprised me, and I’d yanked the memory card out of the machine and left. I tried to remember if I’d gone through my usual effort of clearing the photo cache in the editing program, but I knew with a certainty that I hadn’t. I opened the program and clicked to list recent files. Several images were listed by the auto-assigned filename the camera gives them. My camera. I clicked one, and the image of Connor came up.

Jack had stolen my picture from this machine, and it was my fault. I wondered how much he had gotten for the picture. I wondered how I’d ever married someone who was capable of this. I moaned out loud, deleting the photo cache and shutting down the terminal. This was bad. And I needed to go to Connor and try to fix it. I couldn’t let him believe that I would do this to him, that I would knowingly betray him.

I left the library and drove straight to Connor’s house.

“Maddie, I don’t have time for this right now....” Connor appeared above me on the overhanging deck, no doubt beckoned out by the noise of my SUV spewing gravel as I raced up the driveway. “I was pretty clear on the phone and you already have the book.”

“No!” I was practically falling out of the car in my haste to get to him, to explain myself and make this right. “I just…Connor, you have to let me explain.”

“There’s really nothing to say.” His voice was low and disappointed. He turned and the fiery head disappeared out of view.

“There is!” There was. There was plenty to say. Like how I didn’t believe any of what they were saying about him. That I wanted to stand by him through this, through all of it. That I didn’t betray him—that I wouldn’t do that. He could choose not to be with me, but he wasn’t going to make that choice based on the belief that I sold him out when I’d done no such thing.

I scrambled to his door, knocking ferociously. “Connor! I have to talk to you!”

He let me knock for a full five minutes. My arm was tired and my knuckles were banged raw. I cursed the fact that no one had doorbells up here. An actual cabin would be too small to need one, but this behemoth of a house could use something more effective than my bony fist. Just as my knock was losing intensity, Connor pulled the door open, his face angry and exasperated in the shadow beyond the door.

“Maddie, please just go away.”

“I can’t. Not until you let me talk to you.”

He kept me standing at the door, an eyebrow arched in a face that looked exhausted, etched by tiny lines. “What do you want to talk about?” His voice was soft, tired. “You want to tell me about how you worked to get close enough to get a good shot? About how you used me to further your career, your own financial interests? You want to talk to me about why I can’t trust a damned person in this world? Or about how your little picture just added fuel to the fire in this police investigation? Is that what you want to talk about, Maddie? Because I don’t want to talk about any of it.”

He might as well have slapped me. He’d already made up his mind about all of it—told himself the story of how that picture got online, and left it at that. “That’s not what happened.” My voice was stronger than I felt. I wanted to melt, to disappear in the face of his disappointment in me, his belief that I could betray him so completely.

“You have two minutes.” He made no move to invite me in.

“I took the picture without thinking about it. I had no plans at all,” I began. “But Jack…”

“Somehow I knew he’d be involved. You two seem to spend a good deal of time together for people who are supposedly trying to lead separate lives.”

My head snapped up. “That’s not true.”

“Either way. Go on.”

“Jack walked into the library when I was reviewing my shots, and he saw that picture. He said he had a friend in Los Angeles who would pay a lot of money for it.” I watched Connor’s face as I spoke. It was like a mask of stone. No expression flitted through the icy blue eyes. His lack of response made me nervous, and my words were flying out in a jumble. “He wanted me to sell it. And when