Mirror Image

viewed him with far more objectivity than you or your mother ever could.”
    He braced one hand on the arm of the sofa and leaned over her. “Cliff Daniels was a brilliant photographer. In my book, he was the best. I’m not denying his talent with a camera. But he didn’t have a talent for making the people who loved him happy.”
    “I was happy. Whenever he was home—”
    “Which was a fraction of your childhood—a small fraction. And you were disconsolate every time he waved good-bye. I watched Rosemary endure his long absences. Even when he was home she was miserable, because she knew it would be for only a short time. She spent that time dreading his departure.
    “Cliff thrived on the danger. It was his elixir, his life force. To your mother, it was a disease that ate away her youth and vitality. It took his life quickly, mercifully. Her death was agonizing and slow. It took years. Long before the afternoon she swallowed that bottle of pills, she had begun dying.
    “So, why does he deserve your blind adoration and dogged determination to live up to his name, Avery? The most valuable prize he ever won wasn’t the fucking Pulitzer. It was your mother, only he was too stupid to realize that.”
    “You’re just jealous of him.”
    Steadily, Irish held her gaze. “I was jealous of the way Rosemary loved him, yes.”
    The starch went out of her then. She groped for his hand, pressed it to her cheek. Tears trickled over the back of it. “I don’t want us to fight, Irish.”
    “I’m sorry then, because you’ve got a fight on your hands. I can’t let you continue this.”
    “I’ve got to. I’m committed.”
    “Until when?”
    “Until I know who threatened to kill Tate and can expose him.”
    “And then what?”
    “I don’t know,” she groaned miserably.
    “And what if this would-be assassin never goes through with it? Suppose he’s blowing smoke? Will you stay Mrs. Rutledge indefinitely? Or will you simply approach Rutledge one day and say, ‘Oh, by the way’?”
    Admitting to him what she had admitted to herself only a few days earlier, she said, “I haven’t figured that out yet. I didn’t leave myself a graceful escape hatch.”
    “Rutledge has got to know, Avery.”
    “No!” She surged to her feet. “Not yet. I can’t give him up yet. You’ve got to swear you won’t tell him.”
    Irish fell back a step, dumbfounded by her violent reaction. “Jesus,” he whispered as the truth dawned on him. “So that’s what this is really about. You want another woman’s husband. Is that why you want to remain Mrs. Rutledge—because Tate Rutledge is good in bed?”

Twenty-Three
    Avery turned her back to keep from slapping him. “That was ugly, Irish.”
    She moved to the window and was alarmed to notice that it had already grown dark. At the ranch, they’d be finished with dinner. She had told them she was going to shop through the dinner hour. Still, she needed to leave soon.
    “It was ugly, yes,” Irish conceded. “It was meant to be. Every time I feel like going soft on you, I think about the countless nights following the crash when I drank myself into a stupor. You know, I even considered cashing it all in.”
    Avery came around slowly, her face no longer taut with anger. “Please don’t tell me that.”
    “I figured, fuck this life. I’ll take my chances in the next one. I had lost Cliff and Rosemary. I had lost you. I asked God, ‘Hey, who needs this abuse?’ If I hadn’t feared for my immortal soul, such as it is…” He smiled ruefully.
    She placed her arms around him and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “I love you. I suffered for you, too, believe it or not. I knew how my death would affect you.”
    He gathered her into a hug, not for the first time wishing she was truly his daughter. “I love you, too. That’s why I can’t let you go on with this, Avery.”
    She leaned away from him. “I have no choice now.”
    “If there is somebody who wants Rutledge dead—”
    “There is.”
    “Then you’re in danger, too.”
    “I know. I want to be a different Carole for Tate and Mandy, but if I’m too different, her coconspirator will figure she’s betrayed him. Or,” she added soberly, “that Carole isn’t really Carole. I live in fear of giving myself away.”
    “You might have failed already and don’t know it.”
    She shivered. “I realize that, too.”
    “Van noticed.”
    She reacted with a start, then expelled her breath slowly. “I wondered. I