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Chapter 13 — Returning
The yacht of the Capwells gets slowly closer to the coast. Mason was nervous. Not because he was afraid of possible problems — it just seemed to him that by approaching Santa Barbara the thin thread, which connect him to Mary, might break. The thread was broken, when she was died, and he was afraid that now it will be broken again. And Mary. She was so frightened of coming back that he started to think that maybe she keeps hidden something that Mark made with her something just awful. She was a little bit different. More afraid, less self-reliance. Where did her usual “I know what I had to do” disappear? Now she hangs on to him so, as if after a minute — and they will be separated. In a way this was pleasant for him — she was more unapproachable and independent before, and now this barrier was destroyed. But he was more afraid that something terrible was done to her and that what caused her to change. But she was the same Mary he couldn’t live without. When she fell asleep he got the feeling that she becomes who she was before.
"What do you think about?" Warm hands hug his shoulders.
"About you."
"Have I changed a lot?"
Mason shook his head.
"And me?"
"I don’t know. Barely," Mary smiled and then become serious again. "When will we arrive?"
"In a couple of hours."
"Don’t you want to call your relatives?"
"I don’t. I want to arrange everything for you first. And besides they will begin to question me: why did I return so quickly and etc?"
"Mason, you care so much about me! I don’t deserve this."
"Mary! How cannot you understand! I thought that I lost you forever. I didn’t even have a tiny bit of hope!"
"But I am the wife of another man--"
"Mark doesn’t have any relation not to you! And he is not your husband!"
"Mason--"
"What "Mason"? Mark is a sex maniac, he's--" Mason suddenly cut off his talk and hugged Mary. "I am sorry. I did not mean to shout. But I so mad at him!"
"Mason, you believe that he raped me?"
"What? Mary what are you talking about?" Mary went silent waiting for his answer.
"Of course, I believe," Mason press her fingers and tried to glance into her eyes, but Mary escaped his look. "Besides he admitted the rape to me."
"How did he admit?" Mary lifted her head with a jerk. "When?"
"After... After the funeral. I lured him into the Orient Express and forced him to write down his confession."
"Forced how?"
"With the gun pointing at him. Don’t worry, he told the facts, everything that happened."
"What?" Mary’s voice started to tremble.
"That he was mad at us both; he was fury about the fact that you told him that you love me. Mary, you don’t have to remember this case. Let it stay in past. Just trust me for good? OK?"
Mary without words buried her head in his chest and begun to cry. Quietly and hopelessly as a child. Mason rubbed her on her back and waited while she calmed down. He already knew that there is no other way to make her stop crying.
At last her sob stopped and they both started to look slowly at the coast of Santa Barbara getting closer.
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