He was trapped, by an old anger and by a pair of depthless brown eyes. Again he found himself compelled to explain what he’d never explained before. “My mother was lonely and very vulnerable after my father died. Morgan knew how to exploit that. I was living outside of D.C. at the time. If I’d been here, I might’ve stopped it.” Resentment welled up and was controlled. “He knew how to play on weaknesses, and he played on my mother’s. When I found out they were lovers, I wanted to kill him.”

He said it as he had once before, coldly, calmly. Maggie swallowed on a dry throat. “She was already too involved for anything to be done, deluded into believing she loved him, or maybe she did love him. Other intelligent women had. She’d been friends with Louella for years, but that didn’t matter. When they found his car in the river, she snapped.”

It was painful to look back on it, but Maggie’s solemn brown eyes insisted he go on. “She didn’t disappear; she came to me. She was frantic, and for the first time since she’d become involved with Morgan, she was seeing clearly again. Shame affects different people in different ways. My mother broke all ties with Morganville and everyone in it. She knew her relationship with Morgan wasn’t a secret, and now that it was over, she simply couldn’t face the gossip. She’s still in D.C. She has a new life, and I don’t want any of this to touch her.”

Was he always so unflaggingly protective of the women in his life? Maggie wondered. Joyce, his mother … Where, she wondered, did she fit in? “Cliff, I understand how you feel. My mother was one of the most precious people in my life, too. But there might not be anything you can do about it. They’re reconstructing what happened ten years ago, and your mother has a part in it.”

But that wasn’t all she was thinking, Cliff realized. Deliberately, he sat down beside her, struggling to keep the tension from his fingers when he took her shoulders. “You’re wondering how much a part I might’ve had in it.”

“Don’t.” She tried to stand, but he held her still.

“It’s possible that I could’ve shot Morgan to end a destructive relationship with my mother.”

“You hated him.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes never left his. They looked deep, searching. Logic might implicate him; his own temperament might make him suspect. Maggie stared into the smoky gray of his eyes and believed what she saw. “No,” she murmured, drawing him against her. “No, I understand you too well.”

Her faith—the warm flood of it—almost destroyed him. “Do you?”