by Dale Mayer
He shook his head and dug into his pie.
Laurie Ann sat in the car, shaking for a good five minutes before she could get a grip on herself and headed out. Sure she was late, but that wasn’t the real reason. It was seeing Kurt like that, out of the blue. Of course he hadn’t told her that he was coming; he didn’t even know how to get hold of her. He hadn’t said anything because they hadn’t kept in touch. But why would they? He was headed to the military to take over and to save the world, and she’d been heading to med school or at least pre-med at that point in time.
She had managed to make her dream happen, even if it had taken a few extra years to get there. But then her son, Jeremy, was never something that she ever regretted having, but how was she now supposed to tell his father about their son, especially when she hadn’t told him back then? She hadn’t made any attempt to tell him before he left. She had kept that secret, knowing that he would have likely stayed in town, hating his life and hating everything about it, when he had been so desperate to get away. For her to let him go was the best thing for him.
She had known that at the time, and she hadn’t even told her parents. It had all been so damn new back then; she was only weeks pregnant when Kurt left, and it had been a tough adjustment. Her parents had not been very accepting, and that was to put it mildly. If it weren’t for Sally, her older sister, Laurie Ann didn’t know what she would have done.
Even now, her relationship with her parents was remotely cordial but not even close to warm. They weren’t trying to make up for lost time with Jeremy, which hurt more than their rejection of her and more than the fact they had practically kicked her out of the house for refusing to terminate her pregnancy. She found it hard to forgive and to forget. Didn’t say much about her, did it?
She sat there for a long moment, then finally turned on the engine and drove to work. She needed the job; she needed the work for her own sanity, if nothing else. She’d come a long way in these last few years, but just seeing Kurt like that again? It was as if she hadn’t moved forward. As in not at all. And how sad was that?
Jeremy was everything to her. He’d been an easy baby and was a good kid. He wasn’t aggressive or messed up, like his father had been at that age. Even now, she looked back and didn’t know what the initial attraction had been. But, like a moth to a flame, she couldn’t resist. No matter how much she tried to explain her relationship with Kurt to her parents, they just weren’t having it. There was no understanding in their worldly eyes. She’d made a colossal mistake with the worst person possible, and that was it. She had to live and let live, and they didn’t want anything to do with her. Or Jeremy.
She could feel the tears collecting in the corner of her eyes, as she thought about all those tumultuous years. One of the things that had kept her going was that she knew it wouldn’t be forever and that life would improve. It was mostly because of Kurt that she understood that lesson. After losing his mother, he’d gone wild and had a really rough time adapting to the loss. He’d also gone through a horrific time in foster care.
Laurie Ann hadn’t understood it at the time, but she sure did afterward. Nothing like realizing your parents—who you thought would be there and would be supportive when you fell and would give you a hand up—had turned their backs on you and made you feel so much less of a person.
And no way, even now, would she let them refer to her actions as a mistake because Jeremy was the result, and she loved Jeremy with a love she had never expected to experience—outside of the sexual intimacy that she had gloried in with Kurt.
She pulled into the medical clinic. This had been her second dream—to become a doctor—and she’d made it. She’d achieved two things in her world that she had desperately wanted. She’d wanted kids, and she’d wanted to be a doctor, so why then did she feel like everything in her life was a complete and utter failure? She shook her head, exited the car, and headed out to start her day. This was the lifeline that had kept her going before, and obviously it would be the lifeline that kept her going now too.
Chapter 2
Laurie Ann walked out of the office four hours later, having treated all the cases lined up for the day. Normally she would head to another clinic for the afternoon, but apparently it was closed due to a flood in the bathroom. She was grateful for the time off, as she was already feeling the effects of trying to keep her emotions locked down to get through the hours so far. She checked her watch, anxious to get home and to be with Jeremy.
She hopped into her vehicle, turned the key, and drove her car straight home. As she passed the truck stop, she wondered if Kurt was still there. Of course he wasn’t. No need for him to sit there for that many hours. When she finally pulled into her driveway, Jeremy sat on the front steps, talking with a buddy. They had skateboards out, and thankfully they had their crash helmets, knee pads, and elbow pads on. As she walked toward them with a bright smile, Jeremy looked at her and asked, “How come you’re home so early?”
She quickly explained about the flood at the second clinic. “How are you two guys doing?”
“Great,” he said. “School has been out since lunch.”
“I thought you had one class this afternoon,” she said smoothly, knowing full well he did.
He nodded. “Yes, but the teacher called in sick, so the class was called off. Since it’s the only class I have this afternoon, I’m home.”
“And you too, Frank?”
“Yeah, same class as Jeremy,” he said in a careless tone.
She nodded and stepped past them. “Just don’t break anything, huh?”
They both chuckled, got up, grabbed their skateboards, and headed down the sidewalk. The speeds they went sometimes scared her, but she was enough of a trusting mother to let them go do their thing. She already knew that to hold them back would be the opposite effect that she wanted.
As she walked inside, she headed for the coffeepot. She was drinking way too much caffeine these days, but it was pretty hard to do anything else. And after today, seeing Kurt, she knew that it would take coffee to keep her going. With the coffee dripping—thankfully just a small two-cup pot—she decided an awful lot of housecleaning needed to get done. It seemed a shame to take her afternoon off to clean house, but sometimes it was the better answer for keeping her mind occupied.
She got out her rubber gloves and her spray bottles and was working in the bathroom, when her sister called. “Well, as much as I love any interruption from cleaning bathrooms,” she said to her sister, “you only call when you have a reason.”
“Somebody saw Kurt in town,” her sister said without any preamble.
“That’s nice,” Laurie Ann said calmly. “I saw him this morning.”
A horrified gasp came from the other end of the phone. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nothing to tell,” she said. “I stopped in for a bite to eat. After staying up all night, I didn’t have time this morning to fix breakfast. So I stopped in at the truck stop and had coffee and one of their danishes.”
“You know that you shouldn’t be living on sugar,” her sister said irritably. “You’re a doctor. You should know better.”
“I also know that sugar is what gives me energy, and I needed something to get through the morning,” she snapped.
“What about Kurt? Did you call him?”
“I haven’t seen or contacted Kurt since he left town thirteen years ago,” she said for what had to be the thousandth time over the last decade plus. “He was sitting behind me. I saw him as he came down the aisle. I couldn’t believe it, but then I recognized his voice.”
“And did you get up and run out of there?”
“I don’t run from anything these days,” she snapped. “Now did you have a reason for calling? Otherwise I’m going back to cleaning the bathroom.”
“Why aren’t you at work?” her sister snapped back.
“Look. The second clinic had a flood in their bathroom, so everybody was sent home, and I’m just taking the oppo
rtunity to get some housekeeping done.”
“Well, you only clean house when you’re upset,” her sister said, in that same shrewd tone that said she knew too much about Laurie Ann already.
“No,” she said. “I just have a busy weekend planned, and I didn’t want to ruin it, trying to get all this stuff done at the same time.”
“Oh,” Sally said. “Did you talk to him?”
“Yes, I did,” she said.
“And?” Sally asked after a moment, when Laurie Ann didn’t volunteer anything.
“And what?” she said. “We exchanged some basic greetings. How are you? How’s life been treating you? That was it. I was late for work, got up, and left.”
“Okay,” Sally said, “but make sure you avoid him in the future.”
“Just like I said already, I don’t run anymore,” she repeated. She sprayed the bathtub with the phone tucked into her shoulder and said, “If there’s nothing else, let me get back to my cleaning.”
“You’re not seeing him again, right?”
“Stop worrying, Sally,” she said. “We have to take every step forward in life that we can. I’ll not allow his return to hold me back.”
“I know that, but what if he finds out?”
“It’s been on my mind a lot anyway,” she said. “What if he does find out? What do you want me to do? Ignore him? I don’t think so.”
“You can’t tell him,” Sally said, horrified.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get there,” she said wearily. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to my cleaning.” In frustration, she hung up, put the phone on the counter beside her, and then she attacked the bathtub ring with a vengeance. Ever since she’d gotten pregnant, her family had treated her as if she were an innocent gullible fool. And that, even now, she would go running back into Kurt’s arms.
As she thought about it, she wondered if maybe she would. He was older and more mature, and something was clearly different about him than the bad boy she’d known. But still that same frisson of attraction existed between them. That had partly been the reason why she’d been so grateful for a chance to leave the coffee shop. It had been such a shock to see him. Yet he was on her mind most days because of Jeremy. Why the hell should her son not have a father? It’s not as if she’d given Jeremy a choice, and she hadn’t given his father a choice either. But it was just one more of those things in life that she had to sort out for herself, and she didn’t quite know how to do that.
“Mom?” Jeremy called out.
“I’m upstairs in the bathroom, cleaning,” she called out. He raced up the stairs. She groaned and said, “Are those dirty shoes you have on?”
“Yeah,” he said, “but I’m leaving right away.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Can I go over to Frank’s house?”
“Yes, but I want you home before five.”
He groaned.
“Home before five, or you can’t go,” she said in that calm voice that she always used with him.
“Fine.” And he bolted off.
She smiled because of all the things that she’d done well, raising Jeremy was one of them. He was a good kid, and it just made it all that much harder to wonder if he was missing out on that whole father-bonding thing because she hadn’t bothered to tell Kurt that he would be a father.
Kurt walked around the truck stop for a couple hours, looking for any sign that the War Dog was around. He talked to the staff currently on duty, but the shift changed in another hour, and then he would speak to the new staff. He wandered all along the edge of the gravel area leading to the bushes, where they thought they’d seen the dog, but nothing fresh remained. He sat inside the shrubs for a good hour, waiting to see if anything would approach. So far nothing. He got up and walked a good one hundred yards into the treed area and circled around the truck stop another one hundred yards back of the pavement.
Animals were attracted to humans because of the food supply, and, in this case, maybe also because human companionship is what Sabine knew. But, if she’d had a few bad months, it would make her wary, and she wouldn’t get too much closer to Kurt. After he did the one pass, he went out another one hundred yards farther into a bigger and wider pass. Again nothing, although he saw bits and pieces of golden fur on the bushes.
It was almost impossible to tell how fresh they were after the rain last night. He wasn’t seeing any fresh tracks, but he knew that Sabine had to be somewhere around here. At least in the last couple days. As he slowly made his third and final wide path around, he stopped at a fallen tree and just sat here.
“Sabine,” he called out softly. “Sabine, I’m here for you. Let me help you, little one.”
Of course there was no answer.
After he rested a bit, he resumed walking slowly, calling out to her every once in a while in a gentle voice, letting her know that he was around. He returned to the fallen tree and put some treats on the stump for her. The birds might get them, but maybe she would too. And he kept walking around to the next point. He stopped listening to the trucks coming and going, even though they were there nearby, but it remained dim in the background of his primary focus.
He noted another tree stump up ahead. He put a few treats on it, and he walked ten feet forward and then slowly stopped. He tilted his head but didn’t turn around. He smiled at the gentle rustling in the bushes. “Are you stalking me, Sabine?”
He twisted ever-so-slightly and looked behind him but couldn’t see her. But he had that inner sense that he was being watched. It could be something else, but he was hoping that the only thing out here looking and following him would be the dog he was after. He kept going, carefully keeping an eye on the world around him, but she never showed herself. Just before he walked back toward the pavement, he dropped one more pile of treats and then kept on going.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to find a place to stay for the night and to see about getting the rest of my equipment. I’ll return in the morning.” And he headed toward his truck.
As he got there, a group of teens—five of them—hung around his rental.
“Can I help you?” he said.
One of the kids looked at him guiltily.
“You got a problem?” Kurt asked him.
The guy immediately started to bluster. “Hey, we thought it was stolen.”
“Yeah, what would make you think it was stolen?” he asked. “It’s got rental stickers all over it.”
They just shrugged and said, “Hell, we didn’t know that.”
“Ah, because it says it right there.” And he pointed it out.
“Hey, smart-ass,” one of the kids said, “you don’t have to be nasty.”
“That’s nasty?” he asked with his eyebrows tilted.
“Whatever,” the first guy said. “Come on, guys. Let’s leave it.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Kurt said. “Leave the truck alone.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with you, old man.”
At that, he snorted. “I’m an old man? What are you? Still in diapers?”
One of the guys turned and sneered at him. “You don’t want to push it,” he said. “We don’t take kindly to strangers around here.”
“Well, if you think I’m scared, think again,” he said. “I’m not scared of little punks like you.”
At that, the guy roared, turned around, and came at him, running. Kurt braced himself for the blow and just before the kid caught up to him, Kurt smacked him hard with a hook right into the elbow swinging his way. As soon as he connected with the bone, the kid started screaming.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” he said, “you broke my arm.”
“Wow, that’s funny. How could I break your arm when you were the one attacking me?”
“Well, I saw everything,” his friend said. “You attacked him.”
Kurt laughed. “You think video cameras aren’t all around the truck stop?”
At that, the boys turned an
d looked at the cameras. One of the guys said, “Come on, Quinsy. Let’s go.”
“Fuck off,” Quinsy said. “He fucking broke my arm.”
“Come on. We have to get out of here,” the other kid snapped.
“My arm is broken! Remember?”
“Let’s go get it looked at.” Finally, at the other one’s insistence, the kids took off.
The last thing Kurt wanted was any more trouble. But, when trouble came his way, he didn’t back down.
And then a voice behind him said, “I didn’t think I’d see that day.”
He stopped, frowned, and turned to look at a cop standing nearby, his hands on his hips, studying Kurt carefully. He looked at him, and then the memory hit. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Amos Packard,” he said.
“Detective Amos Packard, if you don’t mind,” he said, crossing his arms. “It really is you, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s certainly me,” Kurt said. “Funny how, in my first day back in town, I see two people I know. Who’d have thought it?”
“Well, I can say that I fully expected you to be in trouble again.”
He looked at him in surprise, then looked at the kids. “That wasn’t trouble,” he said. “They were just kids in trouble.”
“You would recognize that, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I sure would. I was a pain in the ass back then, wasn’t I?”
“Yep, you sure were,” Amos said. “The question is, are you still?”
He grinned at him. “Thirteen years in the navy, as a Navy SEAL, before I was medically discharged.” He watched the shock and the surprise in Amos’s eyes.
“Seriously?”
Kurt nodded. “The US Navy was the best thing for me,” he said. “It took a bit, and I didn’t learn quickly, but I did eventually learn and straightened up pretty decent too.”