Read Online Coming Home to You by Fay Robinson - Free Book Online Page B

he have the right to jeopardize their happiness just because happiness had eluded him?
    “I…” He shook his head and expelled a breath, angry that he’d placed himself in such an awkward predicament. When he looked back up, she gave him a smile that said she understood his unwillingness to talk.
    She reached over and took his hand, squeezing it lightly. “I know I’m the last person on earth you’d listen to, but I probably know as much—or more—about your brother as anyone. So will you listen to me for a minute, please?”
    He nodded.
    “You are not responsible for James’s death. The crash that killed James and the band was an accident, the result of a thunderstorm. I saw the report from the Federal Aviation Administration. I interviewed the investigators and dozens of people who were at the airport that night, and the evidence was conclusive.”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “No, I don’t. I don’t know what you think you didor should have done, but it’s obvious to me that you’re still hurting very deeply.” She let go of his hand. “I can’t say I understand why you didn’t go to his funeral, but I believe you loved your brother. I can’t imagine you hurting him intentionally.”
    Her expression held such compassion that it made him ache. How could this woman express such unwavering faith in him when he had so little in himself?
    “I want to tell you what happened the night James died….”
    Her lips parted in surprise. “I don’t have to know this,” she whispered, offering him the chance to change his mind.
    “No, but I have to tell it.”
    “I WAS THERE that night.”
    His revelation sent Kate’s heart fluttering. “I don’t understand what you mean when you say you were ‘there.’ Were you at the airport?”
    “No, at the concert. And later I was at the hotel.”
    Kate thought back to her interview the day before with the local librarian. “Miss Emma,” as she’d instructed Kate to call her, said Bret had been at the library returning books when they heard the news about his brother’s death, more than sixteen hours after it happened.
    Kate quickly calculated the distance from Bret’s farm to Rome, Georgia—not more than four or five hours by car. Okay, that was feasible. He could’ve easily driven over that Friday night for the concert, talked to James, then driven home, unaware until heand Miss Emma heard it Saturday afternoon that the plane had gone down.
    But why hadn’t his family notified him of James’s death Friday night, instead of letting him find out secondhand a day later? That didn’t make sense.
    “If you did go to that concert, you were one of the last people to talk to James,” she said more to herself than to him.
    “If you want to call screaming at each other talking, then I guess so. I told him he was killing himself with the crap he was putting into his body, but as usual he wouldn’t listen to me. So I came home.”
    “By ‘crap’ you mean drugs?”
    “Yes.”
    Kate briefly closed her eyes to regather her strength. So it was true. James had been using drugs. She’d refused to believe it even after the autopsy turned up diethyltryptamine, a synthetic hallucinogen. She’d held on to the slender possibility that somehow James had ingested the DET by accident.
    “Did you know before that night that he was using drugs?”
    “I suspected it for a long time because of the way he acted. One minute he was depressed and angry with the whole world, and the next he acted like nothing bothered him. I confronted him a couple of times and he swore he was clean.”
    “Like he swore to his fans and the media.”
    “I’d never seen any evidence, no needles or pills. I had to try to believe him, although I think a part of me knew he was lying.”
    “How did he ingest it?”
    “On blotting paper. He had several squares of it. I walked in on him putting one in his mouth.”
    “What did you do?”
    His eyes watered and he looked away. Kate understood