Chapter 24
There’s a new twist, Jake.” Wayne Luther leaned against Emily’s new countertop and pulled an envelope from the pocket of his sports jacket.
Jake’s gut tightened. “What do you mean?”
“Ben started adoption proceedings before Abby died.”
Steel bands wrapped around his skull. He took the paper. “If it wasn’t final—”
“It could still work in his favor. Shows he was serious about being their dad, that he cared about securing their future.”
Jake slammed his fist on the counter. “It shows he knew Abby might not make it and he wanted to secure the money!” He ran a paint-spotted hand over his mouth. “I don’t need to be taking this out on you. You know how grateful I am for your help.”
“Forget it. Kids still aren’t talking?”
“I’m not asking. They’ve been poked and prodded like voodoo dolls. Family’s supposed to be their safe place.” Jake opened the fridge and handed Wayne a soda. “Don’t we have enough evidence that the guy’s a psycho?”
“Not necessarily. Every parent has bad days.”
“He shot a cat!”
“With a toy gun.”
“Come on.”
Wayne popped open the can and took a drink. “Without the kids’ testimony, it may not be enough.”
“This wasn’t the first time the neighbor called the cops.”
“All Madsen’s been cited with in the past is disturbing the peace. He hasn’t caused bruises or broken any bones.”
“Nothing we have proof of. “Jake walked to the window, banged it with the heel of his hand, and shoved it open. Even with the front and back doors wide open, the kitchen was stifling. “I’ve seen bruises. It makes me sick to think what the slimeball threatened them with.”
“Have you told them you’re fighting for permanent guardianship?”
“No. I don’t want to get their hopes up.”
“Might loosen their tongues. Like you said, you’re the safe place. They may feel more like talking if they know there’s a plan.”
“And what if the plan fails?”
Wayne ran a hand through short gelled hair. “I know. I’ve got kids. But you may have to risk disappointing them to make this happen.”
A fat cardinal landed on a branch of the broken oak tree. Jake stared at the gash where the limb had ripped. The tender inner wood was no longer pink. “Maybe.”
“Hey, I have to get home. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” Wayne wrapped him in a quick hug. “Take care of yourself through all this. You doing anything for fun?”
Jake shrugged. “Trying my hardest to go out on a date.”
Wayne’s eyebrow rose. “Anyone I know?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, let me know how it goes. A wife could definitely help your situation.” Wayne laughed and waved. As he walked out the back door, something fell in the dining room with an echoing thunk followed by an even more sickening splash. A paint can. Spitting out a word he no longer used, Jake whipped around.
In time to see Lexi running out the front door.
He didn’t see her. He couldn’t have. Lexi stopped before she reached the corner and turned around. If Jake had seen her, he’d be screaming for her to get back and clean up the mess. She ran through backyards until she reached the pup tent she’d been living in since Emily moved in. It wasn’t a foot away from the basement window anymore. She’d moved it to the middle of the yard the morning after Naomi stayed over.
Their mission had succeeded. Emily had read the letters and just this morning Lexi heard her talking to Grandma Blaze about going to a hotel. Probably couldn’t stand being in the same room with the love letters. At this very moment, she and Grandma Blaze were trying out a new cookie recipe for Emily to take to the hotel. That was the reason Lexi had run to Emily’s house in the first place—to tell Jake how awful Emily’s toffee bars were. The bars were awesome, but Jake didn’t have to know that. It was just one more step in a plan that was working. In the nick of time, apparently.
She unzipped the tent flap and crawled in. It was so hot she could hardly breathe, but it was a good place to hide and think over everything she’d just heard. Putting in her earbuds, she listened to Jesse McCartney singing “Body Language,” a song Jake said she shouldn’t listen to. Maybe that was why the music didn’t calm her the way it usually did. She stretched out on her sleeping bag. In spite of the heat, it felt damp and clammy. Or maybe it was her skin. She got that way sometimes when she was scared or excited.
Right now she was both. Jake was trying to get guardianship! She hadn’t even told him her dream and he was making it happen. Unless “you” meant Jake and Grandma. But then the other part, the part that scared her, wouldn’t make sense. “A wife could help your situation.” Did that mean Jake was interested in Emily just because if he was married, or looked like he was going to get married, the social workers or judge or whoever decides those things would be more likely to let her and Adam live with him?
So maybe he didn’t really like Emily after all. Maybe he just needed a woman, any woman, to agree to marry him. She thought of something Naomi had said about wishing her mom and Jake would fall in love and get married and then they could be sisters. Mrs. Benner wasn’t Jake’s type, but if he was desperate to find someone, he might consider her. She was an awesome cook. Her house was always superclean. And she was funny, too. One time she got glasses with fake noses for herself and Naomi and Lexi, and they drove around Burlington wearing them and watching people’s faces. Jake needed somebody to make him laugh.
And it sure wasn’t going to be Emily. Not if she could help it.
Her fingers fumbled with the zipper. She had to talk to Naomi. Fast. Sweat beading on her face, she popped out of the tent.
And came face-to-face with Jake.
“What did you hear?”
Jake sat in a lawn chair drinking a no-longer-cold soda. He’d waited in silence, planning his questions, rehearsing a lecture. What was it about the red-faced girl with hair the color of her mother’s that made him forget it all? He pointed to the empty chair across from him and Lexi sat down. He waited for her to answer.
She played with the fringe around a hole near the hem of her shorts. “I’m sorry I spilled the paint. I just turned around and—”
“It all went on the drop cloth.”
Finally she looked up, sunlight sparkling on unshed tears. “You’re trying to get permanent guardianship.”
Jake nodded.
“Just you, or you and Grandma?”
“Just me. You know Grandma would love to have you.”
“But it would be hard on her. I know.”
“I haven’t told you guys because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. We don’t know how things will turn out.”
“What if we just say we want to live with you and not Ben? Won’t they listen to us?” A tear spilled from each eye and rolled slowly down freckled cheeks. Lexi swiped them away.
“They might. It sure won’t hurt. But you’re not quite old enough to appoint your own guardian.”
“How old would we have to be?”
“Fourteen.”
“What if Ben gets us and adopts us before that?”
“What they will listen to is you and Adam telling the truth about anything bad Ben has done to you. Any time he’s hurt either one of you or said things to make you feel bad about yourself.” He crumpled the empty can and tossed it. “You need to start being honest, Lex.”
“But what if he says bad things about you? What if we tell things about him, and then he tells things about you, and the court decides we can’t be either place and splits us up and puts us in different foster homes?” Her face crumpled. Tears poured.
Jake’s hands seized into fists. What kind of garbage was Ben filling their minds with? “Lex, there’s nothing he can say—”
“He knows things about you. What if he tells the judge that you got tickets for drunk driving or that you used to be Goth and you took drugs and got in a car accident?”
Closing his eyes, Jake breathed away fear. He’d had two DUIs before he was twenty. The car accident wasn’t his fault, though they’d both been drinking, and he’d smoked pot his first year in college then came to his senses and hadn’t touched it since. Old stuff. None of it would affect his chances—unless Ben had a lawyer who tried to make his past an issue. What scared him was knowing that Ben wasn’t as passive as he’d assumed. “Lex…” He tried to steady his voice, but it didn’t work. “All of that happened years ago. I was young and stupid. No judge is going to take that into consideration.”
“But it’s all true, isn’t it?”
Staring over her head at the little green tent, he sighed. “Yes. It’s all true.”
Jake stood on the second rung of the ladder in Emily’s new master bath, twisting wires and sorting through all Lexi had said. And not said.
“Would the judge think you could take care of us better if you were married?” she’d asked.
He’d answered her honestly. “Maybe.”
Lexi had smiled then. “I think so, too.” And then she’d asked if they were done talking and ran off to call Naomi.
“The judge isn’t the only one,” he muttered as he stripped a wire for the ceiling fan. Every encounter with Lexi over the past few weeks deepened his conviction that he wasn’t equipped to raise her alone. Adam he could handle, but he’d had no experience with the weird hormonal stuff.
Connecting the two black wires, he smiled at the irony. For the kids’ sake he’d tried to keep some emotional distance from Emily. Now, for the kids’ sake, he felt almost compelled to pursue her. As he loosened a screw in the mounting base, he worked on his side of a conversation he hoped to have after supper. I know you’re leaving, but—
The screen door banged downstairs. Jake sighed and mounted the antique-looking motor housing. He wasn’t up for any more twelve-year-old drama. Slow footsteps probably meant she was in tears again. “I’m in here.”
The sound stopped and he turned. The screwdriver slipped from his hand and hit the floor. “Emily. You scared me.”
“Sorry.” Her tone was flat, her face drawn.
He climbed down. “Hi.” He wasn’t sure what was supposed to follow that. “Do you like it? I can put the blades in so you can get the full effect.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
Fine. It was a code word with women. The word was as neutral as Switzerland. The tone of delivery meant everything. It didn’t take a genius to break this one. Maybe the fan was okay, but nothing else was. And it was his fault.
He climbed down, wiped his hands on his jeans, and touched her elbow. She pulled away. He stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “I’m sorry about dinner the other night. Lexi—”
“I understand.”
He waited, watching as her lips pressed against each other and her blinking increased. It was hard not to smile. He’d seen the exact same look on Lexi’s face just hours ago. “I don’t.”
She looked at him. Probably involuntarily. Tiny ridges raised between her eyebrows.
“If you’re not mad about me cancelling out of dinner, I don’t understand what’s changed since Saturday. If I said something or didn’t say something, if I did something to upset you I—”
“I know about Heidi.” Narrowed eyes turned on him.
Jake swallowed hard. What did she know? And why did it matter now anyway? Only one person knew the things he wished no one knew, the things he’d confessed and repented and tried to forget. “Topher told you, didn’t he?”
Her chin drew back. “No?” She said it as a question.
“Then how—”
She sighed with so much force he felt it on his neck. “It doesn’t matter.”
Doesn’t matter how you heard or doesn’t matter what kind of a relationship I had with Heidi?
“I need to talk to you about the finishing work.”
No way was she going to throw a smoke bomb and then stand there as if she hadn’t just clouded everything between them. “I can understand why my relationship with Heidi might bother you, but considering what you told me at the cemetery, I don’t think you’re in any position—”
“What?” Her eyes blazed. Her hands flew to her hips. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Because I made mistakes in my past I’m supposed to be perfectly cool with you asking me out the night after you’re lovin’ on some—”
“Whoa! Stop. What in the world are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you and Heidi and disgusting love letters and—”
“Disgusting? Since when do you think the letters are disgusting and what does Heidi have to do with anything?”
“Not those letters, the ones under your—” Her mouth gaped. She spun around and headed for the stairs.
“Emily! Wait. You’re not making sense. I haven’t seen or talked to Heidi in over a year.”
She stopped, teetered, and grabbed the railing. “You haven’t?” She didn’t turn around.
“I broke up with her before Abby died. What’s this all about?”
A faint gasp echoed in the stairway. Her shoulders dropped and she sat down. “Jake?” Her voice was tight and hushed.
He walked down and sat one step below her.
“Did Heidi write you letters? Really mushy letters?”
He shrugged. “A few cards, I guess. She worked in our office. I saw her every day. Not much need for letters.”
Her eyes closed. The slightest smile curved one side of her mouth. “I think I’ve been had.”
“That’s cruel.” Emily couldn’t quite mask the smile Jake’s suggestion spawned. She reached overhead for the railing and pulled herself off the step. “You have to be sensitive to her feelings.”
“You dare accuse me of not being sensitive?” Jake clapped one hand to his chest. “Look at it this way—Lexi needs a graceful way out. If we treat it like we thought it was a practical joke, she can laugh her way back into my good graces. Either that, or I kill her.”
“Okay. I’m in. As long as you promise that after we get her, you have a heart-to-heart and convince her no one could ever take her place in your life.”
“I promise.”
This wasn’t going the way she’d planned. “Heidi’s” letters had steeled her with the strength she’d needed to march over here and tell Jake she was leaving. Yet here she stood, looking down at his perfectly disheveled hair, close enough to breathe in his earthy scent, laughing and conniving as if she weren’t ready to say good-bye.
October 23, 1852
Sweat dripped from Big Jim’s forehead. One foot tapped on a massive pumpkin as his fiddle rested on the knee of his breeches. Hands that seemed too large for such an instrument raised the bow again and coaxed the first few notes of “Miss McLeod’s Reel” from the strings. Music filled the barn and Hannah’s soul.
Across the room, Liam’s gaze swept the crowd and found her. He wore what appeared to be a new white shirt. Had his mother stitched it just for this night? His smile drew her—a pull she wouldn’t resist. Like the desert oases she’d read of, the space beneath fresh-cut beams, surrounded by newly raised walls, shut out the ugliness of the past few days and sheltered them, for these few precious hours, from the fear they’d face come nightfall.
She stepped beside her father as two lines formed, women on one side, men on the other. Running damp hands along the paisley print of her skirt, she lifted her chin.
Just one dance.
Liam took his place and leaned forward enough to keep his eyes on her. As Hannah’s shoes hit the sawdust, Dolly brushed past her, strode behind the women, and planted herself directly across from Liam.
Hannah froze. The music picked up. The couple on the end closest to her joined hands and glided down the aisle then turned in a smooth half circle.
Cheeks burning, Hannah stood out from the safety of the crowd, by all appearances rejected. Head still held high, she turned and pushed through the wall of spectators. Pretending not to care, not to hear the whispers, she forced her feet to walk until she reached the stinging safety of the cold, late afternoon air.
The reel no longer tempted her feet to dance, but neither would she allow them to run. It wasn’t Liam’s fault that he danced with the girl with the fat curls pinned to one side of her head, the girl whose mother detested all that he stood for. She would wait for him here, knowing he would come for her when the song ended.
And he did, at a run. “Hannah! You know that was not of my doing.”
“I know.”
He took her hand, pulling her into the shadow of the barn. “Come here,” he whispered.
She slid easily into his arms. The sun was low, casting stretched-out shadows. “It will be dark soon. And the sky is clear. You’ll be traveling tonight, won’t you?”
He kissed the top of her head then lifted her chin. “I’ll need a memory to warm me.” His head bent. His lips touched hers—
A gasp, followed by stomping feet on hard-packed earth. “Hannah Shaw! You…traitor!” Dolly stood, hands on hips, eyes blazing.
Pulling away from Liam, she looked up at him. “Go inside. Let’s not draw a crowd.”
“I’ll be close,” he said, stepping around the corner.
“How could you?” Dolly took two giant steps until Hannah felt her breath on her face. “I claimed him.”
Hannah laughed, not intended, but fitting. “You cannot claim what belongs to another.”
“Belongs? What are you saying?”
Her hands dug into the fabric of her dress, her chin jutted forward. “Liam and I have been in love for many months.”
“You lie!”
“I do not. I have a box full of letters in my closet to pr—” Her hand flew over her mouth.
“Then it’s true, isn’t it? Liam and your father are working together to—”
“Hannah!” Liam rounded the corner, took her firmly by the elbow, and marched her away from the squawking Dolly Baker.