The Hiding Place

by Karen Harper

  “Yes, Dr. Jennifer DeMar, my old doctor. I mean, my former doctor—she’s not much older than I am. She got her chance to be part of a bigger clinic near L.A. None of her patients were happy to have to switch doctors, though I’m sure Dr. Holbrook is good and your office is not far from where I live.”

  “He’s very good. He’s not even taking new patients, but he wanted to—to help you. Bet your Dr. DeMar misses our lifestyle here—clean air, the mountains,” Pamela rushed on. “Ick, L.A., with all those cars and smog. Now, if you’ll remove your clothes and put this lovely little gown on, tied in the front.” She forced a laugh. “I know everyone hates these things. I’ll be right back, and Dr. Holbrook will be right in.”

  With a sigh, Tara followed orders and lay back on the examining table, staring up at the white ceiling with its recessed lights. That was what she remembered seeing first when she came out of her coma: instead of darkness, she saw blankness, then cautious, curious faces staring down at her as they performed their cognitive and physical tests on her. But no Laird, no Dr. Jen, who had been a friend as well as her physician. Yet Alex’s mother, Linda MacMahon, had been there for her, visiting almost daily, even bringing Claire now and then. Laird’s mother, Veronica, had come to see her, too, holding her hand, filling her room with bright sunflowers and saying, “So, so sorry about how things have worked out between you and Laird. Maybe it’s for the best he’s moved away….”

  Tara sensed her former mother-in-law’s visits were secret, not at the behest of the rest of the Lohans, who never showed up or even called. Still, it was through the beneficence of their family clinic that she’d been so well taken care of all those blank months.

  Tara sniffed and tried to stop her tears, but they ran down her cheeks into her ears. She swiped the tracks of water away. Her new doctor didn’t need to see her crying. She’d been doing so well lately, working hard to resurrect Finders Keepers and growing closer to Claire. Tara was pretty much back on her feet when Alex’s widowed mother had suddenly died of a stroke. Tara was certain it was partly from grief over her only daughter’s death. She’d been given temporary custody of Claire by Claire’s new legal guardian, Nick MacMahon. Claire’s uncle Nick was working in the Middle East helping the troops train tracker dogs. Tara and Claire’s makeshift family included his pet dog, Beamer, a beautiful, smart golden Lab.

  The good news and the bad news was that Nick was coming home soon. Claire was so excited, but she didn’t fully realize he would probably take her and Beamer away. And then Tara would be alone again, with only her job helping strangers find their children to focus on.

  Nick MacMahon, still in fatigues and field boots, dropped his heavy rucksack in the front yard of his boyhood home on Shadow Mountain Road. He inhaled deeply, grateful not to breathe in hot desert dust. The air, crisp and clean, bit down into his lungs. Thank God, he was home where he didn’t have to watch his back, where the sun felt warm instead of scorching. Nothing like being nine thousand feet up in the fresh air of the Colorado sky, above the little valley town of Conifer.

  His family home, surrounded by rocky outcrops with thick pine and aspen forests, stood where Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain hunched shoulder to shoulder in the foothills of the Rockies. His family had always described their location as about twenty miles and forty minutes southwest of Denver on the edge of the Arapahoe National Forest.

  He lifted a hand in farewell to his buddy. With a honk! honk! their rented truck roared away; Jim was eager to get back to his fiancée near Vail by dark.

  Nick heard Beamer start barking, either at the sound of a stranger’s vehicle or because he just plain scented his best friend and partner. Nick couldn’t tell if the dog was in the house or around in back. Leaving his gear where it was, he jogged up the gravel driveway. Though he was in good physical shape, he felt the altitude and slowed to a walk. He’d have to get used to “high living” again, as his dad had jokingly called it.

  Nick’s carpenter father, who had died eight years ago, had designed and built the cedar house and its elevated wraparound railed deck with his own hands almost twenty years ago. Yeah, his dad had known how to build a house, and a strong family, too. Nick could remember helping him clear the lot of heavy stones. The place had large panoramic windows and side wings, which made it seem poised for flight. The interior boasted two-toned hickory flooring, well-insulated paneled walls and custom-made cabinetry.

  Three bedrooms and two baths were upstairs; the middle floor had a kitchen and a two-story great room. Downstairs, the large garage was one way, and down a few more stairs was a huge area which had once been his dad’s carpentry workshop. Now it was a rec room that could double as a guest suite. He and Alexis had been their only children, but the senior MacMahons had planned space for lots of grandchildren visiting. At least to their only one, Claire, it was home for now. Nick figured he’d never sell it. Maybe he’d lease it to Tara Kinsale, if he decided to take the job in the East.

  “Beamer! Beamer boy, your partner’s home!” he shouted, but the dog was not in the fenced-in run out back. The run was required by law, whether to keep the dogs safe from marauding bears or smaller wildlife safe from dogs, Nick wasn’t sure. Beamer was not a hunter; he retrieved escaped or lost people. He was one of the best dogs Nick had ever trained. Put a working collar on him, give him someone’s scent and he was off to the races. What a team they’d been. At eight years, Beamer was getting pretty old to work long days now, but he’d always have a home as Nick’s pet.

  No other sounds came from the house but frenzied barking. Nick was glad to be here before Claire got off her school bus from West Jefferson Elementary. They’d passed the school below and he’d been tempted to have Jim let him out there, to find Claire’s classroom and hug her and tell her everything would be all right now that he was home.

  The kid had been fighting battles of her own. She’d lost her mother—thanks to her bastard father—and her grandmother. He wanted to assure her that she would not lose her uncle Nick. It was his duty to take care of Claire. He had a great job offer to train more dogs at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, though his dream had always been to start a school near Denver for tracker dogs and their human partners. Wherever they ended up, Claire would have to learn to love it. Though he’d never been married or had a child of his own, he had no doubt he could somehow learn to be both parents to her.

  “Beamer!” he shouted again as he walked back around to the front of the house. Puffing from the altitude, he went up on the elevated deck. The Lab jumped on his hind legs, trying to paw his way through the picture window. Considering this manic display, he was sure no one but Beamer was home. Nick’s reluctance to leave his beloved pet was one reason he almost turned down the military consulting job with Delta Force in the desolate, dangerous province of Nuristan, Afghanistan, but duty called.

  Nick cursed the fact he didn’t have a house key. Maybe there was one still hidden where his mother had always left it. It was so bittersweet to come home but not find her here for the first time in his life.

  He strode behind the house and heard Beamer follow him to the back door. He had hoped Tara, his sister’s best friend and Claire’s temporary guardian, would be home. He should have called her from the Denver airport, but at the last minute he and Jim had flown standby from Dulles in D.C., and then he thought it would be fun to surprise them.

  Nick had met the beautiful, redheaded Tara here at the house a couple of years ago. He couldn’t quite recall when, but he could recall her. It was before he’d signed the contract with the army to train dogs to sniff out the cave-clinging Taliban, including Bin Laden, who had a reward of a cool fifty million dollars on his head. They’d located a lot of the enemy but not the man himself, a small regret compared to his tragic failure while he was there.

  Trying to deep-six that memory, Nick glimpsed a photo of Tara and Claire together, all dressed up for some event. The picture was on the coffee table, in great danger of being swept off by Beamer’s tail. The ph
oto reminded him of Tara’s lavish wedding to big money. She still looked like how he’d picture an old-fashioned Irish lass though, not someone on the society pages of the paper. She was a natural, windblown-looking beauty with red hair to her shoulders. He only really knew her through a couple of phone calls and their sporadic e-mails, all dealing with Claire. He’d been stationed so far out in the boonies with the Delta boys that he hadn’t even known Clay had murdered Alexis until she’d been buried for over a week. Anyway, if he’d been here, he probably would have tracked Clay down and then strangled his former brother-in-law with his bare hands.

  This homecoming was also tough because Nick had been incommunicado with a Delta chalk squad when the stroke killed his mother. Tara and some distant relatives had taken care of the arrangements, as well as of little Claire. He owed Tara Kinsale big-time.

  He checked for the house key under the flower crock where his parents had always kept it. Negative. With walls still between them, he and Beamer raced for the front of the house again. He’d just bivouac on the front deck, waiting for Claire and Tara to show. But if he didn’t calm Beamer down, the high-ceilinged great room was going to look like a bomb blew up in it. He shuddered at that image—that memory.

  “Good dog,” he shouted through the window. Time to see if Beamer still knew who the senior partner was, the alpha pack dog, after their time apart. If Beamer obeyed him, he’d take that as a sign that Claire would happily do whatever he decided was best. After all, how hard could it be to take care of a young girl when he’d trained dogs and given orders to the Delta boys, no less.

  “Sit,” Nick commanded solemnly. “Beamer, sit. Beamer, quiet.”

  Tears blurred Nick’s vision of the big, wide-eyed, panting dog as he immediately sat silent with his tail thumping the floor like a pendulum.

  Tara wished she’d been able to find a female doctor who was taking new patients. She really did miss Jen. They had met at a social event years ago and had been friends before they’d been patient and physician. But Jen could never understand why Tara didn’t gladly toe Laird’s line. Jen hadn’t brought it up, but Tara suspected she probably blamed Tara for their divorce, despite the fact that Laird had left her. Though Tara was grateful to be out of a bad marriage, it did hurt that Laird had deserted her in her hour of need. It was so strange to be married to him, and then, when she awoke from the coma—which felt like the very next day to her, though it was almost an entire year—to be divorced and not to have any contact with him. A blessing, in one way, but a curse to her psyche, too, one that counseling had not quite erased.

  “A dream catch,” Jen had called Laird with a sigh the first time she’d laid eyes on him. “Wish I’d been the one doing some social work with patients at the Lohan Mountain Manor Clinic. You sure were lucky, running into the eligible fair-haired son there.”

  Jen and Tara had talked via cell phone several times while Tara was rebuilding her life, but she knew Jen was busy starting over, too. Lately, they spoke less and less. It seemed, at least on Jen’s part, they had little in common now.

  Dr. Gordon Holbrook, Tara’s new G.P., came into the examining room and said cheerily, “Good afternoon, Tara.” He was fifty-something, with gray etching his temples and prominent crow’s-feet and worry lines on his pleasant face. He sat down to chat about how she’d been feeling since waking from the coma and to go over the extensive medical records he’d received from Jen and from the Lohan Clinic, where she’d spent the last nine and a half months of her coma, then two months of rehab and counseling.

  In short, Dr. Holbrook seemed to have a good bedside—or examination tableside—manner. He was thoughtful enough to call Pamela back into the room when he began the cervical exam and pap test, so Tara would feel more at ease.

  Tara was still tense, but responded to his small talk about how the property values were skyrocketing in the area. He had friends who lived on Shadow Mountain Road, but not as high up as her. She didn’t know them. She explained that she’d only lived in the area since her foster child’s grandmother had died, because she didn’t want to uproot Claire again. Their nearest neighbors lived about a football field away.

  When he was done, Dr. Holbrook slid the stirrups back under the table, covered her legs with a light blanket and had her sit up. He told Pamela she could step out. He had stopped the light talk; in fact, he stopped talking at all as he went to her folder. He scanned it again, frowning. With all Tara had been through after the coma, she could tell when bad news was coming. She gripped her hands tightly together.

  “What is it, Doctor? Is something wrong?”

  “No, simply an incomplete record here—by far. There is nothing I see here about your pregnancy or your delivery of a baby. Was the child lost or perhaps adopted?”

  Her insides cartwheeled, then she actually snorted a little laugh of surprise. His question didn’t give her a lot of faith in him now. “That’s because I’ve never had a baby.”

  “I do understand,” he said, “that you might have private reasons for not wanting to admit to a pregnancy or having borne a child. But I’m not here to judge you in any way.”

  “Doctor, I have not had a child. Besides, I was on birth control pills the entire two years I was married. What gives you the idea I was even pregnant?”

  “Several key indicators,” he said. Sitting, still frowning, he leaned slightly toward her. Her pulse picked up and her stomach cramped. “Tara, you have all the signs of having had a pregnancy and a vaginal delivery.”

  “Oh, you mean the stretch marks on the sides of my stomach. Those are from lying comatose so long, I think, even though they moved and massaged me and—”

  “I didn’t even notice those. There are telltale indicators of a pregnancy that must have gone at least nearly full-term.”

  “What? Doctor, there is no way. I said I was on birth control pills and—”

  “There have been instances of pregnancies while someone is on the Pill. One missed pill, or even counterfeit ones coming in from China that have found their way into reputable drugstores or other suppliers.”

  “It’s still impossible. You’ve read my record. That’s all there is!”

  “Tara, your vagina is relaxed, not tight.”

  “I was unconscious for almost a year! Every part of me was relaxed!” She kept shaking her head. This was ridiculous—impossible. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She even felt insulted. But when he’d said the words vaginal delivery, for some reason, she’d felt the earth shake.

  “Also,” he went on, “your cervix is open about one centimeter, and it doesn’t have the tip-of-a-nose-with-dimple appearance of a woman who has never been pregnant and delivered. But the first thing that I noted was external body signs, beyond the stretch marks you mention. From your naval to the pubis, there is a slight dark line called the linea negra, which pregnant women present. On women who have not had a child, it would be much lighter—a linea alba, or white line. And I’m sure you’ll note that the areolas around your nipples are darker than they used to be.”

  Her heart thudding, she stared gap-mouthed at him. This man didn’t know what was normal for her—not before today, at least. Yet she was riveted, trying to take in each word.

  “Tara, whatever you share with me will stay privileged from everyone, unless you choose to release the information. Since so much of your private life has been made public lately, I can understand your reluctance to trust me. But as we embark on our professional relationship, this is something very important you should consider sharing with your physician.”

  Tara actually couldn’t talk. She sputtered, half-furious, half-stunned. She blinked back tears. He—he had to be wrong. Even if by some fluke she’d gotten pregnant while on birth control pills, there was no way she’d had a pregnancy or a baby, not in a full-blown coma! She was getting out of here right now. She’d pick up Claire, go home and hide out with her and Beamer, where things were normal, safe and sane.

  2

  “Uncle
Nick!” Claire exploded, and pointed out the truck window. “It’s Uncle Nick! He’s here!”

  The child screeched in excitement as Tara pulled the truck into the driveway. She watched as Nick, grinning and waving a bit sheepishly at the raucous greeting, hurried down the steps of the front deck to greet them.

  Nicolas MacMahon was taller than Tara remembered from their one meeting. He was big shouldered and bronze skinned; his close-cropped blond hair and white beard stubble glistened in the September sun. He was the only man she’d ever seen who did not seem to shrink in this vast mountain setting. Though still in pale-colored combat fatigues, he didn’t blend in with the background but seemed the center of the scene.

  Claire was out of the car like a shot to hurl herself into his outstretched arms. He lifted and swung her around while she squealed in delight. After losing his sister and his mother while he’d been away, Tara thought, this must be the moment he knew he was home.

  Holding Claire in one arm as if she were a toddler, he met Tara partway around her truck. His ice-blue eyes glinted from under straight, pale brows and his teeth shone white in his tanned face as he smiled. Despite her height of five feet eight inches, he stood more than half a head taller. The late-day sun threw shadows in the clefts of his cheeks and a wayward dimple to the left of his mouth. His prominent nose was a bit crooked but it suited his look, a blend of ruddy and just plain rugged. He didn’t really resemble either his sister or his mother; from photos Tara had seen, he had clearly inherited his father’s form and face.

  He finally put Claire down. A moment of awkward silence stretched out between him and Tara, as if they’d been caught by a slo-mo camera. Something loud but unspoken arced between them before he threw his free arm around her shoulders and hugged her hard against his rock-hard side, then let her go.

  “Welcome home, Nick,” she said, shoving her hair from her face in the sudden breeze as she took a step back and looked up into his happy face. “Welcome home!”