Our child by sally tyler-hayes
Hi everybody today i have one of my favorite novels, i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i did. :friends: synopsis: She'd had his son without ever letting him } the child existed, without ever giving Drew chance to have a say about what happened t, boy. Nothing could change what she'd done. Not could give him back the years with Billy, an Carolyn felt sure that he would want them b What could possibly matter after that? |
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Chapter 1 Little Sara Parker got away. She was only seven, but' she was fast, especially when she was seared to death. She had guts, too, because she saw her chance and she took it. Near as the authorities could make out from what the little girl had told them, the man had stolen her off the sidewalk, a mere block from her parents' home in Rus-sell ville Illinois, about seventy miles west of Chicago. Four days later--she wouldn't talk about the intervening time--he'd been driving, Sara in the truck with him, when he nearly ran out of gas. He'd stopped to get more and Sara had defied his command to stay in the cab of the pickup and keep quiet. She'd jumped off the high seat onto the parking lot, then immediately stashed herself away under a tarpaulin in the bed of another pickup, only moments before it pulled onto the rural highway. Sara Parker saved herself. Only trouble was, she had hidden herself away quite well in the back of that second truck, and had been too scared to move. No one noticed she was there until an hour or so had passed. The startled driver, a young boy from Bloomington, Indiana, headed for his cousin's new home on the White River to go fishing, had no idea where he'd stopped the last time; he'd been lost and looking for directions. But that must have been the place where Sara climbed into the bed of his truck. Sara had no clue about where she'd been kept for the four days she was missing or where she'd made her escape, and so far, she hadn't been willing to talk at all about the man who'd taken her away from her poor mother and father. Special Agent Andrew Delaney had been on the case for only three days when the girl escaped. He beat her parents to Pritchard, the little Indiana town where they'd found her, more than three hours' drive from where she'd been snatched. Drew had been the first FBI agent to speak with her. She hadn't told him much of anything that would be useful in helping him find the man. He was tall, but then all men were to a seven-year-old girl. He smelled bad, he smoked constantly, and he'd hurt her. She wouldn't say how, but then, she didn't have to. Drew knew what bad men did to little girls. All in all, he had next to nothing to go on in his search for the man. Still, there'd been something about Sara that triggered some memory for him. Something about this case was so familiar, and he'd concentrated so hard on what she'd told him that he overlooked it for an entire hour and a half. It was her clothes. Sara Parker had been kidnapped on her way home from her best friend's house. They'd been playing in the tree house in the backyard until it turned cold on them. It was October, so she'd been wearing a flowered pink sweater and a pair of light-colored jeans. Drew had seen' some pictures taken earlier in the fall, when she was wearing the same outfit. But when she escaped, she'd been dressed differently; in a light cotton short set more suited to summer than fall. He should have realized that earlier. That was at least part of the reason the girl had been shivering--from the cold. Now that Drew thought about it, the clothes had seemed too big for her, too. The top had kept falling off her shoulder, and her tiny waist had been too narrow for the waistband of the shorts. He knew those clothes. They were red--red-and-black checked shorts with red trim, with a matching cropped top that barely covered her stomach, even if the top was much too big for her. The answer was right in the back of his mind, hiding there in the shadows. In an eerie premonition of what was to come, in what he could only describe as an aeknowl~gment that some part of his brain figured it out before the rest of him, a chill moved over him in one long wave, shaking him to the core. Of course he knew those clothes. He'd seen them before, on another little girl. Her parents had bought that little red suit for her one year . in Texas, while visiting rdafives over their Easter vacation. Thelittle girl had worn the red suit all summer long. And one Sunday afternoon in August, after a church picnic, she'd disappeared. It had been ten years ago. "Carolyn! You've got to see this? She looked up as the door to her office, high in. the corner of the old renovated house in Chicago, burst open. By the lime Carolyn McKay stood up, her normally calm, cool secretary had come around to the other side of the desk and was tugging on her arm. "Come on," Julie said. "You won't believe it." "Okay, I'm coming." Julie led her through the hallway and downstairs to the combination kitchen-lounge, where the whole administrative staff of Hope House, a private agency working for children's rights and gaiety, seemed to be gathered around the small TV set in the corner and cheering. "Comin' through," Julie said, taking her right down front. "What's happened?" Carolyn said~ They so seldom got good news. "They found her," Brian Wilson, the best computer expert she'd ever had the pleasure of working with, said as'he threw an arm around her back and gave her a quick squeeze. "They found Sara Parker." She gasped. Her hand came up to cover her mouth, muffling her words, as she stared at the pictures of the little girl on the tiny television screen. "Oh, thank God..." Carolyn squeezed Brian back, then turned to her secretary for another celebratory hug. The adminisgrative of-rices of Hope House were in an uproar. They'd been following the little girl's case for the past seventy-two hours, and most of them had expected the worst, from the information the authorities had released about her kidnapping. But it hadn't worked out that way--not this time. "That's incredible," Carolyn said," straining to hear what the announcer was saying. " How did they find her? " "They didn't, actually," Brian said. "She ran away ~when the guy stopped to get gas for his truck." God, all kids should be so lucky--and so brave. Carolyn felt the throbbing in her head, the churning in her stomach--which had been constant ever since they'd heard about the kidnapping--finally ease. It would be all right now. At least until the next case. In her business, there was always another case, always another child, another set of grief-stricken parents, maybe brothers and sisters, too. Carolyn knew all about that. Her sister had disappear~ ten years ago, and no one had ever found a trace of her or her kidnapper. Drew Delaney sat alone at a borrowed desk in the corner of the Pritchard police station, waiting for someone at FBI headquarters to dig up the file on the ten-year-old ease that continued to haunt him to this day. He was oblivious of the constant ringing of the phone, the buzz of excited conversation around him, the curious stares of other officers, both local police and FBI. He turned his back on all that and sat facing the wall, his mind helplessly drawn back to another place, another time. They had never found the other girl, had barely found a trace of usable evidence, not even the first good clue as to what could have happened to her. It was even crueler than the actual death of a child, because her parents had never learned what had become of their daughter. To this day, they waited for answers. No doubt, in some corner of their minds, they still hoped for a miracle--that she was alive and well somewhere, that someday she'd find her way back to them. Some bit of irrational hope never. died, making the nightmare a never-ending one. Drew wanted answers for them, and for himself. While witnessing something as joyous as Sara Parker's tearful reunion with her parents helped ease the ache, it didn't stop it. Nothing would. Except finding the other missing child. "Mr. Delaney?" someone called out from the front of the room. He stood and turned around, then caught the clerk's eye. She made her way back to him, through the throng of excited, happy law-enforcement officers. They'd won one. for a change, and they'd all been in this bus' mess long enough to know that they had to celebrate the victories, because the defeats were far too many, the costs much too high. "Mr. Delaney?" she said again as she reached his corner of the room. "Yes," he said, holding out a none-too-steady hand. "Fax for you." She handed it over. "Thanks," he muttered. Drew held it facedown in his hand, waiting for the clerk to walk away. Then, once again, he turned his back on the crowded room. It shouldn't mean so much to him--not after all this time. And it shouldn't bother him this much; he'd worked on dozens of cases like this in which they'd never found the missing children. But that one, all those years ago, had been different. It hadn't been a case. It had been personal. Drew Delaney hadn't worked on it. He'd been a witness--one of the last people to see Annie McKay before she disappeared without a trace. And he knew what the odds were of finding her, or finding out anything about her kidnapping, after ten years. It would take a miracle, and Drew had been on the job long enough to know that those were few and far tween. Sara Parker's escape was probably the only one he'd see for years to come. Still, holding this old picture in his hand, he couldn't help but hope. Slowly he flipped the flimsy piece of fax paper over in his hands. It was a lousy copy of a black-and-white copy of an old color photo. The clarity was nonexistent, yet he still had to swallow hard when he saw the image. He would never forget the sight of a smiling Annie wearing that red-and-black suit; it was the image that had been reproduced thousands of times and distributed throughout the country in newspapers and broadcast on numerous television stations in hopes of finding Annie McKay. From his shirt pocket, he took the Polaroid he'd snapped this morning of Sara Parker in that little red shorts set. He could have sworn it was a perfect match for the outfit Annie had been wearing when she disappeared-the one Annie had on in the faxed photo he now held in his other hand. And it made sense that the red suit was too big for Sara. She was only seven, but Annie had been thirteen when she disappeared. It had been only about a hundred and twenty miles from here, across the border in Illinois, in a little town called Hope. Drew would never understand the cruel twist of fate that had bestowed that name on the town. He'd grown up there, and he hadn't been this close to the place in years. The past four years had been spent with the FBI working on the West Coast, and before that he'd been in the army. He didn't want to get any closer to the town now, but he didn't have a choice. It was his job to track down the miss' rag especially the children, and Annie McKay was still missing, even if no one had been working on her case in seven or eight years. He sat back in the swivel-based desk chair and stared at a water stain on the gray wall, near the ceiling. It had been so long ago. /knnie would have been twenty-three years old now, but in the eyes of h~ family, her friends, and the people who'd searched for. her 'she would remain forever a smiling, laughing thirteen-year-old. Annie would never grow old. She had a sister--Carolyn, who would be twenty-seven now. Drew couldn't help but wonder if she still lived in town. He wondered if she'd married, if she had kids of her own. Every now and then, he still let himself think about her. He wondered if she'd ha~. ~l him in the end, all those years ago, wondered if she still thought of him," every now and then, and what she'd do if he just showed up on her doorstep. Most of all, he wondered whether she still hated him for walking away from her so long ago. He still hated himself for that at times. Drew knew Sara Parker's case should take precedence over a ten-year-old kidnapping, but he couldn't help himself. As disciplined as he was, he couldn't keep his mind on Sara Parker; He'd been there when Annie McKay disappeared. He'd searched for her himself, along with most of the people in the small town where she'd lived. For years he'd tried to somehow atone for her disappearance by trying to get girls like Sara back home, safe and sound. And he knew that, no matter what he did today, he wouldn't stop thinking about Annie. Finally, he just gave up trying. He had a bad feeling about-this. Hell, he had more than that. He had a ten-year-old photograph of a little girl who hadn't been seen in a decade, and another of one who'd disappeared four days ago, only to return in what he was sure were once Annie's clothes. Even without that, Drew had been in the business long enough to trust his instincts. They were screaming at him right about now. After conferring with the agent in charge at the scene, convincing him nell that they had the manpower to do what they needed to do without him, he'd excused himself with. at erse explanation that he had another lead. It was a long shot, but he needed to follow up on it. Then he'd promised to check inas soon as he knew something. Drew had worked with Bob Rossi long enough that he didn't have to say more than that. Then he'd climbed into his car and headed toward a place he hadn't seen in nearly ten years. He reasoned with his conscience, telling himself that Sara was safe now, where Annie never would be again. The authorities still owed her parents something, even if it was only a body to bury And if Sara Parker really had been found wearing Annie's clothes, then there had to be some connection between the two cases. He had a duty to follow up on this lead. It was difficult to go back to that town. Like stepping back in time and into someone else'S skin. He'd been different here. At least, the people of Hope, Illinois, had seen him differently, and he hadn't appreciated it at all. They'd judged him by the clothes he wore, the rundown place he called home, the mother who'd run off and the father who all too often was falling-down drunk. No one had seemed that interested in knowing him, because they'd thought they knew enough about Drew already. " Well, they'd been wrong, though it didn't matter much anymore. He didn't care what any of them thought. Except, may he Carolyn. Because sometimes he still let himself think about her. Sometimes he imagined he caught a glimpse of her in a crowd. Sometimes he thought he smelled her perfume. Sometimes, in ~the night, he still reached for her, even though he hadn't touched her in years, and had never shared a bed or a whole night through with her. Sometimes he thought about trying to find he~, if for no other reason than to exorcise old ghosts, to separate the reality of Carolyn, thew0 man at twenty-seven, from the memories of the girl who haunted his dreams. But he'd never done that. Before today, he'd have sworn he never would, because he'd decided long ago that Carolyn McKay was better off without him. He had no trouble finding the town, despite the way the area had grown in the intervening years. There was a new, more direct road connecting it to the nearby Interstate 70, and the place was dotted with fast-food joints and gas stations. He passed a new-car dealer, an honest-to-goodness shopping center and a big grocery store before making his way into town. Once he got within the town limits, he stopped to get gas at what used to be Eddie's Garage. In what seemed to be another lifetime, he'd worked there. It was one of those convenience stores now--just like the ones you'd find in any city anywhere in the country. He wondered what happened to Fxldie, wondered whether anyone in this town would recognize him anymore and whether he'd recognize them. He was mildly curious about whether there was anything left of the old town he'd known. Not that he'd mourn its passing. It was just strange--like thinking of Annie being twenty-three instead of thirteen. In his mind, the town, like the girl, had never aged. He had found the presence of mind to realize that the McKays might well have moved in the intervening years. So when he stopped for gas, he'd asked the clerk, who'd told him that they still lived on Highland Avenue. Reluctantly he drove down the tree-lined street and parked in front of the house, one of those respectable two-story brick homes in that eminently respectable part of town. He'd been intimidated by it in his youth, but the man staring at it now found it to be smaller than he remembered, and showing definite signs of aging. The dark green paint on the trim and the shutters was peeling, the path leading to the front door was cracked. He remembered flowers--a profusion of them--in window boxes and pots on the front porch, but there were none in sight now. That was strange, he thought. It wasn't like Henry McKay to let the place go like this. Drew opened the old ornamental iron gate, and a loud creaking sound filled the air. He wondered why someone hadn't oiled the thing, wondered why he was starting to sweat now, merely at the thought of walking into the place. He glanced down the bare sidewalk and remembered how pretty it had been, lined with black-and-gold pansies, ones that matched the flowers in the pots on the porch. He had known from the beginning that he wouldn't fit in here. Determined to shake off the memories, he made his way down the path toward the door and knocked. Drew had done much harder things than this in the line of duty, so why did walking back into this house seem so difficult? Why did he dread the opening of that oversize oak door? But it didn't open. Even after he knocked, it didn't budge. He turned to one side, noting a brown sedan in. the driveway, then knocked again. Finally, he heard footsteps coming toward the door. After what seemed like forever, it swung open. A woman stared back at him with not a flicker of recognition in her eyes, but Drew would have known her anywhere. This was Grace McKay, Annie and Carolyn's mother. Her hair was going gray, which shouldn't have surprised him, but did. He took just a moment to survey the rest of her. She'd gained some weight, but not much. Her face had new lines running across it that seemed to have nothing to do with age and everything to do with the difficult life she'd led. "I'm sorry" she said, quite pleasantly; She obviously didn't recognize him. "I was just watching the news. They found that~ little girl this morning--the one who'd been missing for four days now." "I know," he said, before be even thought about it, then backtracked into something that wasn't quite a lie. "I was listening to the news on the radio." "I've been so worried about her, and to have them jusi find her like that--it's a miracle." "Yes, ma'am, it is," he said, feeling like-a boy who was trying and failing to impress her with his good manners and his politeness. "Now, what can I do for you?" Drew glanced around at the porch and the path, the old houses that lined the block. It was hard to believe he'd come back here after all this time. His hand went to the outside of his jacket, where the right inside pocket was, and felt the outline of the fax paper and the photograph. For a moment, he'd forgotten where he'd put them, and he wasn't sure how to bring them out. No doubt she was going to be upset just to see him again, once she realized who he was. And once she saw the photograph--anything could happen. For a moment, he wished he hadn't come alone, or that some of her neighbors were around. "I need to come inside for a minute, ma'am," he said, going for the case that held the credentials that identified him as a federal agent and flipping it open briefly for her to See. "FBI?" she said, obviously taken aback at finding an agent on her doorstep. "Yes, ma'am." "Well." . " She hesitated. " I guess. Please, come in. " He stepped into the dim entranceway, one that seemed even~ darker because of the sunlight he'd just left, then waited by the sofa in the living room until she invited him to sit. He chose the corner by the lamp, and he knew the' moment the light hit his face, because she gasped. "Oh, my Lord, it's you!" She sank into the chair in the opposite corner, her face deathly pale. "Mrs. McKay, I'm sor" "Drew Delaney? After all this time.." " She took a moment to gather her breath, then shook her head back and forth, as if she still couldn't believe it. Drew didn't like the way she looked one bit. He didn't want her fainting on him, especially at the mere fact that he'd returned after nearly ten years. If that upset her this much, what would she do when he brought up Annie? "Ma'am, is your husband home?" She shook her head. "No." "Could we' call him? Maybe he could come, be, cause- ' "My husband died six months ago," she said, and Drew decided that must account for the peeling paint and the absence of flowers in the front yard. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said earnestly. Carolyn's father had been much less vocal in his dislike of Drew than her mother, and he knew Carolyn had been very close to the man. His own father had died three years ago, and Drew hadn't even come back for the funeral. He would have felt like too much of a hypocrite. After all, they hadn't spoken in ten years. "Look," Mrs. McKay said, gathering her strength now, "I don't know what you think you're going to accomplish by coming back here after all this time, but it's too late. Do you understand me? It's too late. Whatever you were thinking of doing, you might as well forget it, because I'll never give up my" Drew just purled out the picture of Sara Parker. That left Grace McKay absolutely speechless once she caught a glimpse of it. It wasn't the nicest thing he could have done, but he didn't want to prolong this, or to get into an argument with the woman. He definitely wasn't ever going to change her mind about him or about anything in the past. So he was going to get this over with as quickly as possible. "I didn't come to talk about Carolyn and me." He tried to hide the anger in his voice, but he couldn't quite do it. He'd been gone for ten years, and this woman obviously still hated him--not that it mattered a damn bit anymore. "I'm sorry, I don't know any way of making this easy for you." She just stared at him with a look of utter disbelief. "This isn't about Bi?" -- She clamped a hand over her mouth then and--if it was possible--turned even paler. The breath went out of her in a whoosh, and Drew noted that the hands she was wringing together in her lap were now shaking; "I'm sorry," he said, searching for the all-important detachment that was so necessary to surviving things like this in his line of work. He followed her line of vision to the end table in the corner, to the photographs in the three small brass frames. Carolyn, a shot of the teenage girl he'd known, in one frame; Annie, smiling and happy, more than ten years ago; and a photo of a little boy who looked so much like Carolyn, Drew knew he must be looking at her son. Why did that surprise him? That Carolyn had a son? He certainly hadn't thought she'd be here waiting for him. Still, faced with the fact that there was another man in her life, that she'd had a child with him. it was harder than he'd imagined it would be, harder than it had a right to be. He was finally going to see her again, and he'd do so / knowing that she'd had another man's child. That shouldn't matter to him--not at all. But it did. "Why in the world are you here?" Grace McKay's shaky voice brought him back to the task at hand. "Business," he said abruptly. "Official business." He intended to look her in the eye, just once, briefly, before he flipped the photo in his hand over and got this over with. But he didn't think that would he possible now. She'd moved back in her chair, getting as far away from him as she possibly could without getting up--which would be out of the question, he was sure, because she~ was Ixembling all over now. She was having trouble catching her breath; he could hear her struggling with that now, and she had her hands up in front of her, as if to ward off an attacker. He supposed what he was about to do constituted an attack against this woman. "About... Annie?" He nodded. "I don't want to see that," she shot back, glancing down at the picture in his hands. "It's not Annie," he reassured her. "I don't want to see it." "She sounded close to hysteria now. "You have to, Mrs. McKay. I need you to look at it, he-cause I think... I think it has something to do with Annie. It's a picture of Sara Parker, the little girl you've been heating about on the news. She's alive. She's going to be fine, but I need for you to look at the picture for me. It's important." Somehow, she rose to her feet then, though Drew was sure that was a mistake. "I'don't care," she said. "I don't want to see it." Drew backed off for a moment, rethinking the situation. He truly hadn't wanted to upset the woman, but he was trying to catch a kidnapper here. Sara Parker had gotten away, but the next little girl might not be so lucky. And who was to say whether, if someone had pushed a little harder more than ten years ago, they might not have caught that other man before he kidnapped Sara? He had to do it. He had to make this woman help him, regardless of how much it upset her. "I'm sorry," he said to her once more, then held the photo up in front of her. Grace McKay gave a little cry and turned her head aside, but he watched as her eyes helplessly darted ba~k toward the photo for a quick glance. There was nothing upsetting about the photograph at all. It merely showed a~small, thin, frightened LITTLE girl standing before the camera. She didn't even look anything like Annie. Her hair was dark, where Annie's had been blond. Her eyes were brown; Annie's had been blue. And she was six years younger than Annie had been when she disappeared. So there was nothing, nothing at all, about this picture that could have upset Grace McKay--except for the clothes. And something had definitely upset her. Dtc~ felt as if a streak of sheer power, like the kind that skimmed along the electric lines outside, shot through him in that instant. He'd been right. He was certain of it now. There ~as definitely a link between Annie's kidnapper and Sara Parker's. He'd just found the first good clue they'd ever had in Annie McKay's kidnapping. He was going to find out what had happened to her, finally, after all these years. And then he was going to put this whole nightmare behind him. "Mrs. McKay?" He looked up just in time to see her pitch forward. Her knees buckled beneath her. She nearly hit the floor before Drew could grab her. She slumped heavily against him and clutched a hand to her chest. He braced himself, then hauled her up in his arms long enough to make it to the brown flowered couch. "My heart," she said, pressing. a hand against chest. "I can't-- Oh, it hurts." "Lie still," he said, pushing her gently back against the cushions, then checking the pulse in the carotid artery in her neck. Her pulse Was racing, and he heard her gasp' rag painfully for every swift, shallow breath she took. For all the color there was in her face, she might as well have been a ghost. Drew knew enough first aid to be scared. He wondered if he'd just sent the woman into heart failure. "I don't want to see that picture," she said weakly. "It's all right," he said, not believing it himself, but needing to say something to try to reassure her. It's been ten years, he wanted to tell the poor woman. Ten years, for Christ's sake. Didn't it ever get better? Hadn't any of them found a way to live with what had happened to Annie? Was he going to hurt Carolyn just as much as he'd hurt her mother, just by showing this picture and tracking down this lead? What in hell had he started here? He wondered, even as he picked up the phone and dialed 911. He remembered the address without any problem, and answered the dispatcher's questions as best he could while he tried to calm Mrs. McKay down. He knew CPR, and he'd used it before. If need be, he could do it again to try to keep this poor woman alive until the ambulance arrived. But he didn't need to do that just yet. He loosened the top two buttons of her blouse, kept one hand on the pulse at her neck, and watched her struggle for breath. "Slowly," he told her. "Try to slow it down a little. Take deep breaths, if you can." He was still checking to make sure Mrs. McKay's l~cart was beating, however rapidly, still trying to quiet her breathless ramblings about not wanting to see that picture, when he heard the ambulance pull up outside. Drew went to the door and waved the two men inside. "This way," he told them, stepping aside. "Her pulse is racing, and she's having trouble breathing." "What happened?" one of the men asked as they walked across the room. "She grabbed her chest and said it hurt." "Okay." One of the men dropped to his knees beside the woman and opened one of his bags. Drew stepped aside and looked away as they started working over the woman. He picked up the picture of Sara Parker that he'd dropped when Grace McKay collapsed, and put it back in his jacket pocket, next to the one of Annie McKay, which surely would have upset her even more. |
Chapter2 It didn't take the EMS workers long to decide to transport Grace McKay to the hospital. Just before they-wheeled her out the door, she grabbed Drew's hand and mouthed something that sounded like "Billy." ~ "Who's Billy?" he said, afraid that he already knew. He must he Carolyn's son. It must be almost time for school to get out. Maybe she baby-sat for 'the boy. "Don't worry," he told this woman who'd hated him on sight eleven years ago. "I'll call Carolyn. We'll take care of everything." The paramedics loaded her in the ambulance. They were getting ready to pull away from the curb when a yellow school bus came down the street. With its brakes screeching, the bus pulled to a stop in front of the house. The doors folded open, and a little boy stepped outside. He was long and lanky, his arms and legs seeming to be too big for the rest of his body, though he'd no doubt grow into them in time. He was wearing a pair of jeans with an oversize T-shirt and a pair of expensive black high-tops. Drew figure~l he had to be at least six. Maybe seven. The boy looked at Drew, then turned to watch the ambulance heading down the street. Drew noticed with dismay that the bus driver didn't even wait to see what happened to the boy. She would have had to be blind not to see the ambulance in front of his house. He was furious that the woman had pulled away without a word. Anything could have happened to the boy, now that there was no one in the house to watch over him. He'd have a word with the school superintendent about child safety tomorrow, but right now he had to concentrate on not scaring the boy. He'd stopped on the sidewalk just outside the gate, and now he stood staring at the ambulance, which was disappearing from view. It was when the kid turned his face slightly to the left--to look at him without really seeming to look at him--that Drew noticed the resemblance in the kid's little turned-up nose. He'd teased Carolyn about being stuck-u. p, until she'd finally confessed how much she hated that nose of hers. The boy had her freckles, too, and what Drew thought would someday be a perfect match for Carolyn's hair color. For now, it was a shade or two lighter than what Drew remembered. Either that, or the sun bleached it out a little in the summer. Damn. Here he was, face-to-face with Carolyn's child. There was no doubt in his mind. It hurt, too, more than it should have. After all, he hadn't seen the woman in ten years. He'd walked out on her, and he'd never come back. He couldn't very well expect her to have been sitting here waiting for him all this time. He wondered about the man she'd married, wondered if they were happy, if they had any other children. And he prayed to God that they would forever be safe and healthy. "Is my mama all right?" A hesitant little voice pulled Drew back to the situation at hand. "I'm sure she's fine," Drew said, still studying the boy. "Where is she going?" the boy said, turning again to watch the ambulance, which was nearly out of sight. "Going?" Drew said, hoping like hell he didn't have to come face-to-face with her anytime soon, yet knowing that he probably would have to do that. "Her name is Carolyn, right?" The kid shook his head back and forth. "Isn't this your grandmother's house?" Again, the kid shook his head. Drew was stumped. The kid was wary of him, as well he should be, because the boy didn't know him. Obviously, someone had taught him to steer clear of strangers. Drew didn't want to do anything to discourage that. Still, what was he going to do with the kid? "Do you live here?" he said, deciding that was as good a place to start as anywhere. "Yes," the boy admitted. "And you're Billy?" That didn't give him any clues as to what he was facing. He would have simply explained to the boy that Mrs. McKay had made him promise to look out for him, but he hated to do that to the kid. It was too easy for grownups, any grown-ups, to say something like that to children and get them to go anywhere with them. He tried something else. "Billy, what are you supposed to do if you come home and no one's here?" "Go to Mrs. Martin's house across the street." That was good. The kid had a plan. Every kid needed a plan. "Why don't you go ahead, then? I'll watch you to make sure you get across the street in one piece." "Okay," the boy said, obviously relieved. He turned to go. Drew watched him run to the other house and ring the bell. He wondered who the kid could be~ From what he remembered, Carolyn didn't have. any close relatives in town, and obviously Billy was related to her. He couldn't leave until the boy was safe. Then he . cided he'd go inside and try to find Carolyn's number, so that he could tell her about her mother. He stood there in the front yard, waiting for the lady across the street to answer the door. But she didn't. Billy rang the bell again and again, then finally came back across the street to stand on the sidewalk again. "I forgot. She went to visit her grandkids," he said. Drew watched as the boy's eyes turned all watery. He struggled not to cry, choosing to bite his lower lip instead~ He had Carolyn's eyes, too, a deep, dark green. "Okay," Drew said. "We've got a problem. What are we going to do with you?" The boy looked at the ground, scuffed his shoes on the sidewalk and wiped away a tear. Drew thought he seemed terrified of being here alone with him. "What's your name, son?" "Billy." Drew had to smile. The kid had no clue. "Billy what?" "Billy McKay." "I'm Drew," he said, but made no move to shake the boy's hand. He didn't want to Spock him by trying to touch him. "And you know Carolyn?" "Uh-huh." "How do you know her?" "She's my sister." That took a little while for Drew to absorb. "You mean Grace McKay is your mother?" The kid nodded. "Did the ambulance take her away?" "Yes," Drew said. "Is she gonna he okay?" "I think so." He didn't have the guts to tell him anything different, not when he was so upset already. ' They both just stood there and stared at each other for a minute, both of them at a loss. Carolyn had a little brother? He supposed that was possible. He guessed her mother would be in her late forties, from what he remembered, and women were having children later and later in life now. Also, it wasn't that uncommon for people who had lost one child to have another. Some people had told him it helped to have someone else to love and to fill the time and the silence left behind, although Draw wondered where they found the courage to bring another child into this crazy, mixed-up world. It seemed an awful risk to' take--seemed they'd he scared of having someone else to lose. It was cynical of him, but then, he'd turned into a cynical man. A cynical, solitary man. Sometimes--nO, most of the time--it didn't seem so bad, having no one and nothing to lose. He didn't have anyone at all in his life who was truly important to him. He couldn't have said he regretted that, at least not very often. Drew felt something tugging on the jacket of his suit, looked down and saw the boy. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," he said. Drew finally smiled. "I know. That's a good rule." "But I want to go see my more." "Okay, what if we call your sister? Would you like that?" The kid hesitated and looked even more worried. "I don't know if she can come. " "Why don't we try?" Drew turned and started up the walkway to the house. Billy lagged behind. "Hey, mister, wait," he said. "I'm not supposed to let anyone into the house if I don't know them." "Okay, do you know Carolyn's number?" He shook his head. Drew thought that was strange, but he didn't say anything~ He'd thought he'd just let the kid go inside by himself and call. Carolyn could tell him that he didn't have to be afraid of Drew, then the two of them could wait there together for her to come get him. Drew didn't like trying to talk kids around the safety rules they'd been taught. He would have just flashed his badge and told Billy it was Okay to talk to him, but any two-bit crook could buy a phony badge and talk kids into just about anything. It ticked him off, and it made it next to impossible to reassure a scared child, that it was all right to talk to him. "How about this, Billy? You sit here on the porch. I'll go inside, find your sister's number, and I'll call her. We can wait out here together for her, okay?" "Okay," the kid said, momentarily relieved. "But I don't know if she'll come." Drew went back inside and headed for the phone. He found a cordless in the kitchen. Reading the label on the base station, he saw that Carolyn's numbers--both home and work--were programmed into the speed-dial memory. Grimly he pressed the one for her home. He sweated out five rings before he gave up on that and tried the work phone. It wasn't until the second call went through that he noticed it seemed to take forever for the phone to dial the programmed number. He thought the woman who answered the phone said, "Hope House," but he couldn't be sure. "Carolyn McKay?" he said, only then realizing he'd used her maiden name without even thinking about it. But she must still be using it herself, because the woman gave him a crisp "Just a moment, sir," then put him on hold. Hope House? The name meant something to him, but what? He wondered where it was. From the name, he'd thought it must be somewhere in town, but now that he thought about it, there'd been too many pulses on the line when the call went through. He'd definitely called long-distance. He wondered how far away she was, wondered if he'd be seeing her sometime today, or if she'd simply direct him to take the boy to someone else in town until she could get there. Drew wanted to see her. He didn't think he could leave town without doing that. He didn't'Carolyn McKay," she said when she came on the line. She didn't sound at all like the girl he'd known, and yet she did. Her voice was calm, cool and authoritative, maybe a bit rushed. Still, he sensed the vulnerability. But how could he? he argued with himself. She said two little words across a hair-thin wire, the first he'd heard from her in nearly ten years, and he thought he detected something like that in her voice? He must be dreaming. It was just the past--the image that he'd always carried of her. She'd been the most vulnerable person he'd ever known. He'd come into her life at the worst possible time, and he'd hurt her. "Hello?" she said. "Is anyone there?" Drew couldn't help it. He wondered if she still wore her hair long and loose around her shoulders, wondered whether she still had those freckles on her nose and whether she ever let them show anymore. He wondered Damn He had to pull himself together here. This wasn't the time for a trip down memory lane. "Carolyn?" he managed to say. "Yes." She'd gone all wary on him now. "Who is this?" "It's Drew," he said, glad not to hear the slightest tremor in his voice. "Drew?" "Don't tell me you forgot," he said, thinking he might brazen his way through this. He'd left her speechless. For a moment, he believed they'd gotten cutoff, but then he detected the faint sound of her breathing on the other end of the line. And then he found himself rushing into ~ business at hand, putting the past where it belonged--in the past. "Carolyn, I'm at your mother's house. She's, uh ... she had a problem this afternoon, and she's been taken' to the hospital." "A problem? What kind of a problem? Is she all right?" she said. "I'm sorry. I don't know much. She was in a lot of pain, and it may be her heart. The par medics took her to Hope Memorial about twenty minutes ago, and I'm here with Billy. He says he's supposed to go to a neighbor's if the house is empty, but the neighbor's away on vacation. didn't know what else to do with him, so I called you. " He finished to dead silence on the line. " Carolyn? " he said finally. "Yes," she said. "I'm--I'm sorry. I'm just surprised, that's all." "Of course," he said, rushing on. "Where are you? Do~ you want to come get him? Or is there someone else who can take care of him?" "I don't know," she said. "I'm in Chicago. I could be there in about three hours, if I drive straight through and get lucky with the traffic. I don't know who else could take care of Billy. My father died six months ago, and... Drew?" "Why are you there?" She sounded terrified by the very idea, and he wondered if there was any way she could already know why he was here. He didn't see how that was possible, unless she somehow knew what he did for a living, and that seemed unlikely. And if she didn't know, he certainly didn't want to get into it with her right now, on the phone. "I'll explain when you get here," he said. He would explain when she got there? Carolyn nearly dropped the phone, just thinking about what possible explanations he might have for being there. What explanation could there possibly be? Drew was back in Hope. He was at her parent~' home, and he was with Billy. Oh, dear God, he was with Billy. |
Chapter3 ?' Carolyn? " From what seemed like a million miles away, she heard the voice. "Yes," she said, pulling the phone back to her ear. "Did you hear what i just said?" No, she hadn't. Not a word. She was so frightened, she'd been lost in thought, worrying about her mother and imagining the worst possible circumstances that could have brought Drew back to Hope, Illinois. "I'm sorry," she said inW the phone. "I've... I can't..." And then she simply gave up on explaining. "What were you asking me?" "About Billy?" "Yes," she said, starting to shake now. Hadn't he said he would explain when she got there? "He doesn't know me. He just got the ambulance was leaving, and found me here. He's. frightened of me. Can you talk to him? Tell him everything's all right?" "Of course," she said, ashamed of herself now. Natu--rally Billy would be frightened. He knew, better than most children, how dangerous strangers could he. She heard the sound of Drew's footsteps as he moved through the house, heard the sound of the door opening, then, from the occasional traffic sounds, realized he must have taken the cordless phone outside. There-was a long pause, then something Drew said that she couldn't make out, followed by Billy's defiant answer. "She won't come." And Carolyn thought he must be crying then, because she heard something that sounded like sniffling, and it wasn't coming from her. Though her eyes soon filled with t~u~s of her own, and her blood turned to ice in her veins, she made no sound that would have given her away. Sloe won't come. "Billy?" she said, though it did no good. He wasn't on the other end of the line yet. How could he think she wouldn't come? She loved him with all her heart and soul. It was hard for her to be in Chicago, so faraway from him, but it was also necessary. She was only his sister, when she wanted to be so much more. She'd made her decision years ago, and 'she couldn't change her mind now--not when so many people stood to be hurt by it. Especially B'my. And she would not let herself hurt Billy. But judging by what she was hearing from the other end of the phone, she'd done just that. Carolyn had never heard him speak of her with such anger in his voice. "What do you mean, she won't come?" she heard Drew say, when she could bear to listen again. "She never comes anymore. Ever since my dad died, she's always too busy to come and see us." Oh, Billy, she thought helpl~sly. Had she really given him that impression? That she was too busy to see him? It's not that, she wanted to tell him now~ It's not that at all. "She won't come," she heard him repeat defiantly. And then, mercifully, Drew clasped his hand over the phone. At least, that was all she could figure out, bemuse, for a while, she heard nothing from the other end. Drew had a hard time believing what he was hearing and seeing. The boy was quite upset, and he meant every word he'd said about Carolyn. She's always too busy to come and see us. He'd spoken so bitterly about her. Drew couldn't reconcile the image of the uncaring sister Billy believed her to be with the reality of the girl he'd known. Carolyn had been devoted to Annie. She'd been lost without the little girl, and she'd grieved alone, for the most part, because her parents had been too caught up in their own pain to be any real help to her. That wasn't a criticism, it was merely a statement of fact. Some things were simply too overwhelming for people to handle, and Annie's disappearance had been one of those things. He hadn't been able to handle it himself. So, he rationalized, maybe Billy was too much for Carolyn, as well. Maybe, as she saw it, the risks were too great. Maybe loving him would be too dangerous for her to handle while she was still trying to make sense of her siSter's Maybe he could understand. He wondered if he could ever explain it to the boy, if he got the chance. Of course, now wasn't the time. He still had Carolyn on the line. With his hand still pressed against the mouthpiece of the phone, hopefully blocking out the harsh words from the boy, Drew sat down on the brick steps leading up to the porch and looked the kid straight in the eye. "Carolyn needs to talk to you, Billy," he said, in his best no-nonsense law-enforcement-officer voice. Drew gave the boy no choice--the boy had to either hold on to the phone or let it fall to the sidewalk. Billy chose to take it. "Say hello to her," Drew said, prompting him. The boy sniffled once, then backhanded his wet cheeks and wiped his hand on his jeans. Finally, he brought the phone to his face. "Hello." Their conversation was brief and stilted. Billy had nothing but uh-huhs to say to her. He didn't even tell her goodbye, just handed the phone back to Drew. Drew put the receiver to his ear and heard the muffled yet unmistakable sound of Carolyn McKay weeping. Drew was no stranger to a woman's tears, and he didn't turn to mush at the sight of a. woman crying. In his business, more often than not, the women he had to deal with were upset, many of them in tears. He'd grown immune to it all over the years, ~and he wouldn't have thought any one's tears could get to him so hard and so fast. But this was Carolyn. She was different. She made him ~eel as if his own heart might be weeping inside his chest. He felt the pain as if it were his own, and wished he could make it so. Once, it had been his mission in life to make her laugh, to coax just one smile onto her pretty face. It had started as a sort of penance for him--a punishment for his sins, whether real or imagined. He'd helped bring on her pain over losing Annie, so it was his duty to try to ease that pain as much as he could. Of course, it had been more than that. She was much more to him than a girl who'd lost her sister and had no one to turn to as she tried to deal with that loss. Once, Carolyn McKay had been everything to him. And now she was hundreds of miles away, sobbing as softly as possible on the other end of this phone. "Aw, Carolyn..." he said, the way he must have said her name a thousand times before, the way he must have called out to her somewhere deep in the night in the midst of some dream that would have been better off forgotten long ago. He simply couldn't help himself. He still had dreams about her and the way things had been between them. That, in itself, was amazing, given the time that had passed and the fact that they'd had absolutely no contact in the intervening years. "Don't cry, sweetheart," he said, the endearment slipping out as naturally as her name. Drew didn't even stop to question that. He just couldn't stand to hear her ~ry anymore. "He didn't mean it. I'm sure he didn't. It's probably nothing more than a misunderstanding. You'll straighten it out in no time, once you get here." "It's not what you think," she said, her breathing settling down now, as she fought for control. "Ever s'nice Dad died, six months ago," it's been so hard to be there. My mother and I. we haven't been getting along that well, and I've done what she asked. I've stayed away. But . I never imagined Billy would think anything like that. Oh, God, Drew, I just didn't think of that. " "Carolyn, come on. It's all right. I'm sure you can explain everything to him when you get here, okay?" "All right," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm not usually like ' ~"I know." It was a silly thing to say, but she'd seemed to need to hear it, so herd said it. And he believed it, too. The girl he'd known would never have been too busy to make time for a little boy. He wouldn't believe the woman could be like that, either. "So, are you coming?" "Yes. I'll drive down. I can get anything I need when I arrive. With luck, if I beat the rush-hour traffic, I'll be there by seven." ~ "And Billy's all right with that? You told him he could trust me?" "Then we'll be here waiting for you." And he didn't know what else to say then. Apparently, neither did she, because the conversation just died, but neither of them made any move to break the connection. Though tenuous at best, it was the only link between them in more than nine years. So they sat there for a moment, listening to each o~her breathe. He tried to picture her face as it would look now, but saw nothing but the girl. He'd loved her once. He'd lived for her. Drew closed his eyes and tried to reach back inside himself for that feeling--of living for Carolyn, with Carolyn, within her. She was so close now. Three measly hours and she'd be here. How would that feel--to see her again, perhaps to touch her once more? It couldn't possibly feel the same. The years couldn't simply fall away, and yet Drew felt somehow that they had. Three hours, she'd said. He didn't see how he could wait that long. "I've missed you, Carolyn," he confessed, without one regret. ~ "Oh, Drew..." she said, and he thought he might have set off her crying again. "Drive safely," he told her. The minute she got off the phone, Carolyn simply collapsed. The phone banged back down onto the receiver. She wasted precious energy trying to stay upright before giving in to the awful weakness invading her limbs. It was a LITTLE better when her head came down to the top of her immaculate white desk. She had this childish urge to take her arms, her hands, and wrap them around her head, to try to block out the whole world and hide here in her nice, safe office, surrounded by people with whom she knew she was secure. She looked at the lock on the door, the one she rarely used, and thought about turning it now, thought about locking herself away here. She could stay until the shaking stopped, until she could breathe again and felt able to cope with the task ahead of her. Bat she couldn't do that. She didn't have time. Her mother was sick. That was so hard to believe. Her mother was never sick. She picke~l. up the phone again, because she needed to call Hope Memorial Hospit91, but she got sidetracked by thoughts of Drew. Drew was waiting for her--Drew and Billy were waiting for her--and she had to get to them. Billy was frightened. No doubt, Drew was angry with her and waiting for an explanation--one she simply didn't have to give. Her corner office, behind its locked door, looked pretty good to her now. She was still shaking, and she wasn't certain she was getting enough air into her lungs to satisfy her. She wasn't sure when either one of those nervous reactions would subside. She hadn't been this out of control for years, and she couldn't help it. Carolyn looked dbwn at the notepad in front of her. Sometime during their conversation, Drew had given her the phone number for the hospital, and she'd scribbled it on the pad. It was so hard to believe--Drew was there. He was waiting for her. God, had he really said he'd missed her? Nearly ten years and not a word from him, yet now h~ was back. How could that be? People just didn't drop out of the sky and land in Hope, Illinois. He had a purpose in coming back, and she was afraid she knew exactly what that purpose was. He must be looking for someone--and it wasn't her. He was after her son--their son. A miracle, in the form of a child. The boy the whole world thought of as her little brother. He'd never understand what she'd done, especially when she didn't even understand it all herself anymore. Carolyn argued back and forth that way with herself as she drove through the steadily falling rain that had dogged her all the way from the outskirts of Chicago. Once she'd pulled herself together, she'd quickly called the hospital to check on her mother's condition--stable, though they weren't sure exactly what was wrong with her. Then she'd given a hasty explanation to her secretary and gotten in her ear, beating the worst of the afternoon traffic. It wasn't that much of a drive, three hours in most eases, yet she'd rarely made the trip in the past six months. She had been busy. Purposely, she kept very busy. The schedule suited her, for it left little time for anything else. But that certainly wasn't the reason she'd seldom made it back to Hope lately. She'd gone often before her father died, even though the trip had been quite painful for her. The house, in many ways, remained a kind of shrine to Annie, who'd been gone for ten years now. Her room was still intact, waiting for a little girl who no longer existed. Her pictures still hung on the wall, and that alone would have been enough to keep Carolyn away from the house. She had her own pictures of Annie, which she kept hidden away in the back of a drawer and took out only once in a while, only when she thought she could handle it. But to just glance up at the living room wall and see Annie's face, day after day, with no warning and no time to prepare? Carolyn couldn't take that. She wasn't sure how her mother could do that, either. And, if Annie's memory wasn't enough, there was Billy, and her memories of Drew. The three of them gave her more than enough reason to stay away, and somehow her recollections of them all had gotten hopelessly intertwined in her mind. Carolyn couldn't s~parate the memo-ri s of one from another. She'd adored Annie, and she'd lost her. She'd loved Drew, the way she hadn't loved another man since, and he'd left her. Carolyn had tried hard to guard her heart against loving Billy, because she'd feared he was lost to her before he had ever been born. Of course, she hadn't really been able to do that. Billy had found his own very special place in her heart, and she loved him. She loved him too much. More than she had a right to. And she wanted things from him that she couldn't have. She wanted to give him everything--all the love she had to give: But she wasn't free to do that. For all he and the rest of the world knew, she was nothing more than his older sister. That was all she'd thought she'd ever he--until her father died. That had truly shaken her. Besides missing him terribly herself, for he'd been a wonderful father, she'd grieved for Billy and the loss he'd suffered. When she, at seventeen, had made the difficult decision to give her baby to her parents to raise as their own, she'd known very clearly what she wanted for him. A loving father, a caring mother, a strong family--strong despite the tragedy they'd experienced. Her parents had married young, as soon as her mother got out of high school, and they'd had her right away. Her mother had been only thirty-seven years. old, her father forty, when Billy was born, and both of them had been in good health. Carolyn had felt sure that they'd be there to raise him to adulthood. And she had to admit they'd needed Billy so much after losing Annie. Billy had been their miracle, their reason for getting up in the morning, for putting a smile on their faces, for going on living. They'd devoted themselves to him, and Billy had flourished under all that love. If nothing else, she could reassure Drew with that. Their son had lived a wonderful, safe, happy life. She'd done that one thing right; she'd made sure Billy had all those things. But her father's sudden death, from an anenrysm, had been a shock to them all. And it had created anew this terrible yearning inside Carolyn, one that she'd fought for the past nine years and successfully kept at bay, the yearning to be more to Billy than just a sister. Of course, she couldn't do that. She'd made her decision endless years ago,~ and she couldn't go back on it now. It wouldn't be fair to anyone--least of all to Billy. But she couldn't help how she felt. She'd tried simply to bring the subject out into the open for discussion with her mother about five months ago, but the woman had hit the ceiling. Things had been strained between them ever since. Carolyn knew her mother felt threatened by her feelings for Billy, knew that it must be incredibly hard for Grace to think about losing Billy so soon after losing her husband. But Carolyn didn't see it that way. She didn't understand why her mother thought she had to lose a child in order for Carolyn to gain one. Surely there was enough time and love for both of them to share him. Carolyn didn't want to take anything away from Billy. She wanted very much to give things back to him--his sense of security, for one thing. But she hadn't been able to explain that to her mother yet, and she'd followed Grace's wishes and kept her distance these past few months in hopes that the older woman would calm down and see things more clearly. And now her mother was ill? She couldn't let herself think of all that might mean. Carolyn and Grace had their problems--what mother and daughter didn't? But she truly loved her mother, and she couldn't imagine losing her. Nor could she imagine what it would do to Billy. Of course, while all this was raging inside her head, she also kept thinking of Drew. She was still angry at the way he'd 'walked away from her all those years ago, but foremost in her mind was the fact that he'd somehow found out about Billy. He'd want an explanation for what she'd done; he would insist on that. And she'd never be able to make him understand. She could beg and plead and cry, if she sank so low that she reached that point, but it wouldn't make any difference. It wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't give him back the years with Billy, if he regretted- the loss of those years and wanted them back. And Carolyn felt sure that he would. He would he furious. But, somehow, she would have' to get around his anger. She had to make him see this whole thing from her point of view. It wasn't as if she didn't hate herself for what she'd done--but it was a futile exercise. She couldn't change the decisions she'd made in her life. She couldn't explain the things that had happened, or find any useful purpose in ~them all. And she had no insights that had ever allowed her to accept it-all with grace, as a better woman might have done. She'd had Drew Delaney's son, without ever letting him know the child existed, and she'd given up that child without ever giving Drew the chance to have a say about what happened to the boy. It was the irrefutable truth. What could possibly matter so much after that |
Chapter4 ."She'd braced herself to drive down that familiar street, to walk into that house and see them--and it had all been for nothing. ~ They weren't there. ~ Instead, she found a note in what had to be Drew's handwriting. That alone shook her, holding something that he'd written, She'd waited years for just a letter from him--something, anything, to explain why he'd sun ply disappeared from Hope. And she'd gotten nothing. He'd never written a word. Now, he'd been in her parents' house. He'd been there when the ambulance took her mother away and when the school bus dropped Billy off. It was all so strange and so hard to believe. Billy had gotten upset, he told her in the note. He'd wanted to see his mother, and Drew had decided to take him to the hospital for a visit while they waited for Carolyn to arrive. She wondered if the two of them were still at the hospital, wondered where she'd rather face them--here in the house, by herself, or in a hospital full of strangers. Carolyn leaned against the living room wall for a moment, her eyes carefully downcast so that she could avoid seeing any of the pictures--either those of Annie or the ones of Billy. She concentrated hard on trying to stop shaking. She had spells like this, when she simply couldn't stop shaking. Her therapist would probably have some l two-hundred-dollar word for it, but she simply called them spells. The past caught up with her sometimes, and when it happened she couldn't do anything but shake. She'd had them since the age of seventeen, s'nice Annie had disappeared, since the time she'd faced the fact that Annie wasn't ever coming back. And she tried not to make a big thing out of them. Everyone had problems, some worse than others. People coped in different ways. Some drank. Some smoked. Carolyn got the shakes eve~ now and then. It didn't sound so bad when she thought of it that way. But she'd have to control it now. Billy didn't need to see her this upset. And Drew? She suspected it wouldn't matter that much to him. No doubt he'd he too angry to care about her own problems, because she'd taken his son from him. In that instant, Carolyn knew she had no time to waste. ~ She'd much rather find them at the hospital than here at home~ Strangers were definitely preferable to the privacy of these walls. She gave herself the luxury of a few deep breaths, now that the worst of the shakes had passed, then walked back out the door. Hope Memorial was only ten minutes away. Sooner than she would have liked, she was walking down a hallway at the hospital, following the instructions the receptionist had given her to help her find her mother's room. She couldn't imagine her mother suffering a heart attack at forty-seven. Her mother was never sick. She rounded the last corner, found room 203, then quickly scanned the corridor for any sign of Drew or Billy. She nearly missed them. Just when she'd decided to turn and go into the room, she caught the sound of Drew,s voice coming from a room down the hall. Her' head whirled around, her gaze zeroing in on a room about ten feet away and to the right. Room 203, her mother's room, was just to the left, and she thought about slipping in there, taking the coward's way out--but Drew's voice was so compelling. He was right here, right on the other side of that wall, and she hadn't seen him in so long. Even though she dreaded what was sure to take place between them, she wanted to see fiim so badly. Still, she should have waited. She should have headed back down the hall and hidden herself away, just for a few moments, and she would have, if she'd thought it would do any good. But it wouldn't. No amount of time would have allowed her to prepare for this moment. There was no way to be prepared. It was an unmanageable situation. She'd been involved in too many of them not to recognize that. She wondered if he'd hate her for what she'd done, even as she took that first step toward him, Carolyn was careful to stop just outside the open door, which was marked Family Waiting Room. Not wanting to draw attention to herself just yet, she somehow managed to keep silent. But it was hard' It was incredible and exhilarating and frightening--all at the same time. The emotions rolled over her, like waves breaking over her head, choking her. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she drank in the sight of the two of them, together for the first time. Drew had his back to her, and he was down on one knee so that he could look Billy in the eye. She took a moment to study them both. Carolyn couldn't tell much about how Drew looked now, except that his hair was now short, but still full of those small, tight curls, and he still had a beard. Billy had Drew's hair, even had it styled in nearly the same way; curling waves of golden brown, clipped close to his head and brushed back from his face. Billy's was lighter, but time would change that. Someday it would be as dark and brown as Drew's was. Her son had his walk, too, that loose swaying of his backside and those long legs. She'd tried not to notice over the years, tried not to search through her mind for memories of Drew with which to compare him, but it was one of those inevitable things. It could not be avoided. They were father and son. NatUrally, they were alike in so many ways. Billy got up from the chair, and Carolyn quickly stepped sideways, hiding herself behind the doorway, buying her; self a few more moments to herself Billy seemed so much taller now. The last time she'd seen him had been three months ago, when she'd come here to try to talk to her mother. He seemed to have grown so much in just a few months. The time just flew by--another month, another season, another year of his life that she'd missed. He seemed so grown-up now, she could hardly believe it. Carolyn was bracing herself for the walk through that door when she realized Billy was becoming upset. Drew held him by the arms when the boy tried to pull away. "Wait a minute," he said. "What's wrong.9 What are you so afraid of?" "She's going to die," Billy said, his lower lip trembling now. "My mama's going to die." Carolyn once again-had to press a hand over her mouth to stay silent. Could that be true? Was the situation much more serious than the nurse had led her to believe when she called to check on her mother's condition? "No, she's not," she heard Drew tell Billy. "She's just had a rough time of it since your father died, and she hasn't been taking care of herself the way she should. But that's all it is, Billy." The child just shook his head defiantly. "She's going to die, just like my dad, and then I won't have anybody." Carolyn should have spoken up then. She should have been the one to take him in her arms and promise him that he'd never be alone in this world, but it was Drew who was there instead. Drew, already on his knees in front of Billy, hauled him up against his chest and held him there, despite the resistance Billy put up. He held on to him until he wasn't fighting anymore, until Billy's head came down to Drew's shoulder, his arms closed around Drew's neck, and sobs shook his whole body. It should be me, Carolyn thought. I should be holding on to Billy that way. He should have come to me, and I should have been there for him. Instead, she stood alone in the doorway. With her back rigid, the breath frozen in her lungs, her arms wrapped around her own waist, she tried to hold herself together with nothing but the memory of what it had felt like to be in Drew's arms. He'd held her just like that, so many times. It should have been me, she'd told him, so many years ago. I should have been the one who was walking by myself that day. I should have been the one who was taken. Annie should still be here. Somehow, everything in her whole life had started and ended with Annie's disappearance. Drew had heard it all from her, many times before. He'd understood, and he'd tried to comfort her, to help her make sense of it all as well as two teenagers could understand something that left adults absolutely baffled. She'd lost Annie. She'd lost Drew and their son. Oh, God. What a mess. From inside the tiny waiting room, she heard Billy call out. "Carolyn's mad at us, and I don't think she loves us anymore," he said. "I heard her and morn yelling at each other the last time she was here. She's selfish and mean. I heard my mom tell her so. And she won't come." Drew yelled at him then. "Billy! That's enough." "I'm telling you, she's not coming." "She's right over there," Drew said, settling that whole argument, leaving both her and Billy speechless. Carolyn stared from one of them to the other. Drew let go of Billy, stood and turned around to face her. By the way he was looking at her, as if he would have done anything to have kept her from overhearing those words, she decided he must pity her. That fact, and nothing but that, was what she needed to hold herself together. It was by Sheer force of will that she kept her tears from falling. Her shoulders didn't sag, and her chin went up another fraction. She would not have Drew feeling sorry for her he-cause of the mess she'd created. Billy didn't say anything. If he could tell how much he'd upset her, he didn't seem to care, because he stood deft-antly by Drew's side. She wanted to go to him then, wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let go. H~r son thought she didn't care about him. He thought she couldn't even spare a day or so here and there to come to see him. He seemed to honestly believe that the only mother he'd ever known was going to die and leave him all alone in this world. He had no idea how wrong he was. "Billy..." she began, but she couldn't get anything else out. He turned to face her, obviously uneasy about having been overheard. His lower lip was trembling, and his face was streaked with the remains of his tears. Carolyn felt his pain like a dagger shoved into her chest. She would have done anything in this world to keep from hurting him, even if it meant hurting herself. And he didn't seem to understand that at all. She didn't see how she could explain it ~o him, either. He hesitated for a minute. She held out her arms to him in a silent invitation as she watched him wavering. Then he brushed right past her. "I'm going to see my morn," he told Drew, pointexily ignoring her as he walked out the door and into the room across the hall. Carolyn watched him go. She stood there in the hallway as the door to her mother's room slowly slid shut behind Billy. She stood there trembling, her stomach in knots, not knowing what to do next. Drew was watching her; she felt that so clearly, though she had her back turned to him now~ He was waiting, and she had to turn around and do something, tell him something, yet she had no idea what. She'd never find the words. She'd never make him understand. And right now she was too worried about Billy to even try. "I'm going to go talk to Billy," she said, without turning around to face him. But Drew would have none of that. He took her by the arm and turned her around, pulled her into the room with him and 'closed the door. "I have to talk to him," she said. "I have to explain. I have to go to him, and" "In a minute," he said, quite calmly, quite gently. "First I think you'd better sit down, before you fall down." "I..." She didn't know what to make of that. Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the beat-up old couch, the uncomfortable plastic chairs, the magazines scattered across the end tables, the emptiness. Mostly the emptiness. She was alone here with him, when she'd so hoped for the presence of strangers to act as a buffer between them. Carolyn shook her head sadly. Her tears lay heavily in her eyes, stiff threatening to overflow, and she wished she'd been the one to end up standing against the wall, the way he was, instead of here in the middle of the room, with nothing to lean on, nothing to hold her up. Because he was right. She might well fall flat on her face. "Drew, it's not usually like this between us," she had to tell him. "Things have just been so difficult ... since my father died. I had no idea Billy was so angry at me." As he watched her struggling with her composure, watched her literally swaying on her feet, Drew didn't know where he'd find it in his heart to tell her what had brought him back to Hope, or about the role he'd played in her mother's collapse. There'd be time for that later, when she was up to hearing it. Rig~ now, he didn't think Carolyn could take much more. Hell, he wasn't sure he could. He was having trouble believing he was finally in the same room with her. She looked just the way he remembered her, beautiful, endearing, and heartbreakingiy vulnerable-such a dangerous combination~ Drew wasn't sux~ what had happened between Carolyn and her mother and her brother, but he'd seen right away that it had left her as torn up as he'd ever seen her. She looked almost as upset as she'd been when Annie disappeared. He'd tried to comfort her then, to ease the guilt she carried, even as he tried to ease his own. He'd held her so many nights when she sobbed her heart out, and he warned todo that for her right now. "Carolyn," he said, taking a first step toward her, wanting to erase all the years between them with just one embrace. She stepped back, alarm showing clearly on her face. "It's all right," he said, reaching for her hand, taking it in his and drawing her closer with it. Gently, the way he might have approached a frightened kitten that had been backed into a corner, he stroked his fingers over the back of her hand. "I..." She stared down at their intertwined hands, as if she couldn't believe he was touching her, then looked into his eyes. "I messed it all up, Drew." He'd held her so many times, Drew told himself. How much could one more time matter in the scheme of things? Carolyn was hurt and upset. She needed someone, and he was here. How many others had he held on to for a moment, just because they were upset and he was there? Countless numbers. It didn't mean anything. At least, it didn't have to. He'd done it so many times for strangers. Surely he could do it for Carolyn, as well. Drew wrapped both his hands around the one of hers that he'd managed to get hold of before she turned all skittish and shy on him. Her hand was soft and small, cd to the touch, and there was a fine trembling within her that went all the way down to her fingertips. What in the world had happened to her? She seemed as vulnerable as ever, and he couldn't stand that idea. He'd believed her whole life would have come together after he left--that the healing would have started, that she'd be whole and happy by now. He'd thought all he had to do was leave . "I'm sorry," she said, choking back the distress that threatened to overtake her, trying to pull her hand away from his. "I just ... I can't believe what a mess I've made of all this." But Drew wasn't ready to let go of her, not just yet. It had been too long since they'd been together for him to' give her up so fast. He took another step closer. One hand continued to hold hers, while the other slid along her forearm to her elbow. He cupped it in his hands. Her eyes, huge and roktnded now, fringed with smoky brown lashes spiked together by her tears, locked on his. Clearly, she'd been so distressed before that she didn't realize how close he'd gotten to her. The breath stuck in her throat, the fine trembling that was coursing through her body not so fine anymore. He'd been right; she might fall if she didn't sit down soon. "Carolyn," he whispered, hating to break the silence, hating to end the spell they were caught up in. "It's go' rag to be all right." And he smiled at her then, because he wanted to reassure her, not frighten her. Why would she be so frightened of him, anyway? He didn't have time to stop and figure it Out. He took the hand that he still held and pressed it to his chest. She swallowed hard and made one last attempt to step away from him. Clearly, she wasn't used to having anyone see her this way. He'd have bet money that she didn'. t have anyone to hold her when she cried, either, and he couldn't have said whether that made him happy or sad. He would make her sad, though. The reason he'd come back to town--the matching clothes, the other little girl who'd disappeared, yet been found safe and sound--it would take her back in time, to the worst days of her life. He was going to hurt her, and he didn't want to. But his job meant he would. It was a commitment he'd made when he was put on Sara Parker's ease. It wasn't enough just to have the child back. He l~ad to find the man who'd taken her, and when he did that he might finally figure out what had happened to poor little Annie McKay. All of that was going to be hard as hell on Carolyn, and if he could help her now, if he could hold her and make her feel a little bit better about whatever combination of things was tearing her up inside, he'd do it. He owed-her that much. And besides, he wanted to hold her so bad, he'd have cut off his right arm for the privilege. Ten years gone by, thousands of miles--and despite it all, he just wanted to hold her so much. It was staggering how much he wanted that simple connection with her one more time. "C'mere, sweetheart." He folded her into his arms, easing her toward him, inch by torturous inch, until the wonderful, familiar weight of her body settled against his. She resisted right up until the end. Her back was ram-rod-straight, her head was held high and proud, and the look in her eyes was telling him that he'd caught her by surprise and frightened her at the same time. "What are you so afraid of?" he asked. She opened her mouth, then paused, asif she 'didn't know what to say. Finally she just shook her head as her eyes flooded with tears once again. "Carolyn?" He was intrigued now. "You're not... mad at me?" she said. "Mad? Why would I be mad?" He couldn't imagine. And then, with a little gasp, she just melted against him. All the fight went out of her, and she turned boneless in his arms. He guided her head down to his chest and held-it there with his hand in her soft hair, his chin resting on the top of her head. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, her arms were anchored around his waist and holding on for dear life. He remembered now how this had felt. He remembered everything about holding her and trying to comfort her the best he knew how. He remembered the way she'd had of making him feel like a man, the way she'd clung to him as if he were the only solid thing in her world. "Let it go, sweetheart. Let it all out," he said, and she finally started to cry. For Carolyn, being in Drew's arms was like coming home. Of course, she couldn't know if the similarity was exactly true, because she didn't have a home. She had a house. An apartment, really, one that might as well be ~npty, for all the care and effort she'd put into trying to make it a home. She had a f~v friends she seldom saw, lots of business associates who were dear to her, yet carefully kept at a distance when it came to her private life. She had a mother she hadn't seen in months--all cause of some destructive mixture of guilt and anger over things Carolyn could not change. She had a son who didn't know she was his mother and probably never would kn~w, a father she wanted to believe was in heaven now and felt no pain, no emptiness, no sense of loss. And she had a sister who might as well have van isle into thin air. That was it--the sum total of her personal life. She didn't r~m~mber the last time she'd given in to the luxury of letting go like this and crying her eyes out. And she couldn't remember the last time anyone had been around to witness it, much less wrap her up in his big, strong arms and hold her the way Drew was. He wasn't even mad at her, and that was an absolute impossibility. She'd known he would be furious, and justly so, she thought. But he wasn't. He was tender and kind, warm and strong, incredibly handsome and so achingly familiar. This couldn't be real. She knew that, even as she clung to him, much too long after her tears had stopped falling. He said he'd missed her. Imagine that. He'd 'told her everything would be all right, and she loved him just for saying it, even if there was no way it could be true. But she'd needed so much to hear it, and he must have known that. Somehow, he'd always known what she needed. Oh, Drew. " she said, then felt the touch of his hand in her hair turn into a caress instead. He threaded his fingers through the strands, then brought a handful up to his nose and drew in the smell of them, then kissed them softly. She couldn't do anything but shiver at the incredibly intimate gesture. "I've missed you so much," he said, and it was so sweet to hear it, despite the obvious questions his admission automatically brought to mind. Why had he left? Why had he stayed away? In this instant, she didn't care. She was just so happy to have him back. Even if it didn't last, even once the past interfered, she would savor this precious moment with him. He was so warm and so solid, the feel of him so familiar, it overwhelmed her and it made her so hopeful, Maybe the world wasn't falling apart. Maybe he would stay. Maybe she'd find a way to trust someone again, to believe that not everyone would either walk out on her or be snatched away. Maybe they could find a way to be together-her and Drew and Billy. Oh, God. Billy. He was so upset and worried. She had to find him. She had to explain. Abruptly she pushed him away, then backed away herself. The three steps she took-seemed like a mile, but she managed to take them, then hold her hands up in front of her to keep him from closing the distance again. "Wait a minute .... " Drew protested. "Billy," she reminded him. "I have to find Billy." "In a minute," he said. "I want to know about you. Are you all right?" "Yes." She actually managed to sound halfway convincing. "I am now." Carolyn's face flooded with heat at all that confession implied. Now that he'd held her so tenderly in his arms and she'd bawled her eyes out, she was all right. But she had to get back 'on solid ground. She wasn't seventeen years old anymore, and Drew wasn't her savior. She was on her own now. She'd made this mess. She'd have to try to sort it out as best she could. "Are you sure?" he asked, and it was only then that she realized she was swaying on her feet. She supposed that was better than leaning over her desk or against the wall, shaking like a leaf, but it still left a lot to be desired. "I'll be fine," she said. "I'm not usually like this, really. I'm usually " Cool, calm, quiet. Unemotional? She liked that word. She'd strive to attain that state of mind. It didn't sound nearly so bad as the truth--that she'd simply shriveled up inside herself, to the point that nothing and no one mattered to her that much. She was utterly and absolutely alone in this world, by her own choice. It was safer that way. It was manageable. It was difficult and lonely as hell, but that was her life, her right, her choice. At least it had been until now. Now Drew Delaney was back. He'd held her in his arms, stroked her hair, caught it to his lips and kissed it tenderly--and she wanted him'. It was next to impossible, but she wanted him. "Oh, Drew." She sighed again. It was impossible. Then she ducked her head, sidestepped her way around him and said, "I have to go find Billy |
الساعة الآن 06:49 AM. |
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