The Hiding Place

by Karen Harper

  While he filled their tank, Tara phoned Carla again as she watched Nick chat up the guy in the adjoining gas station bay.

  “Pine Crest Lane is only a couple of miles farther,” he told Tara when he got back in. “He said you can’t miss it, which usually means you can. And I got the phone number of the local police—unfortunately, not in Robe Valley but in Granite Falls.” He recited it, and she punched it into both their cells. “But the bad news is,” he went on, “the guy says cell phones often don’t work up here because of the mountains and the lack of cell phone towers, just like at home. On a nicer note, how’s Claire?”

  “Carla says the girls had a great time at the aquarium. Their favorite animals were the seahorses at the Myth, Magic & Mystery exhibit, but they thought the sharks were ‘awesome and way scary.’”

  “Good that they enjoyed themselves.”

  Just past a sign pointing to Mount Pilchuck, which seemed to hover over the valley, lending a stark, snow-tipped backdrop, they came to a fork in the road. One way headed up into the deep, dense forest fringing the foothills; the other was marked by a carved signpost for Pine Crest Lane. Nick slowed and turned onto it.

  “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked.

  “Never been more determined.”

  “Don’t let them get to you.”

  “One way or the other, I’m going to get them.”

  When they approached the first house on the winding lane, Nick pulled off to the side and killed the engine. “That’s got to be it up ahead,” he told her, pointing at a chalet-style house peeking through the pines. “I don’t see a car, but it could be around the other side or in the garage.”

  A jagged memory flashed through Tara’s mind. Parked at the bottom of a driveway, she was looking for Clay’s house, trying to find Alex. Grateful for the camouflage of trees, she crept onto Clay’s property. No, she told herself. Stop remembering that now. This isn’t like the day of that tragedy at all.

  “Are you going to stay with the car?” she asked as she got out. Her legs were trembling.

  “I know we agreed I wouldn’t get in the way of your speaking to either of them. But I’m going to try to find a location where I can see you, or at least be in earshot if you need me.” He got out the other side and put Beamer on his leash.

  With the Lab sniffing at everything, they crunched through the crisp leaves along the roadside. Bare-limbed deciduous trees as well as pines rattled and shifted in the brisk breeze. On the drive, she’d seen the foliage change from a rain-forest mix to subalpine. See, she told herself again. This isn’t like that day Clay went berserk, when Alex died and I almost did. Nick and Beamer are here with me, so I can put that memory out of my mind. After all, what’s more important, the past or the future? Or, in this case, just surviving the present.

  As they walked up the curving gravel driveway—for the Lohans, this A-frame cedar building was really roughing it—Claire glimpsed a swing set and sandbox out back. “I hope they keep a good eye on Jordie when he plays outside,” she whispered. “I’ll bet all kinds of wild animals are in these parts.”

  “Including the human kind,” Nick muttered, but she forced herself to keep walking.

  They started toward the front door, then stopped. The house had huge glass windows, front and back, so that they could see into the main living area. A woman sat within, slumped over a kitchen counter or bar. Despite some reflection on the glass, her silhouette was stark against the trees out in back.

  “Is that her?” he asked. “Can you tell?”

  Tara grabbed his wrist. “I think so. And alone, I hope.”

  “If you get in, stay in that area of the house so I can watch. I think I’m going to go around back. If you need the cavalry to rush in, just wave an arm over your head or shout.”

  She nodded, but she was thinking that was the way Marcie had watched them. They had become the stalkers.

  Nick squeezed her shoulder, then he and Beamer moved quickly to the side of the house as Tara forced herself to walk up to the front door. She felt suddenly alone and afraid. The day she’d gone looking for Alex, the day her coma had begun, she’d looked in the kitchen window and seen her friend slumped over, tied in a chair and now Jen…

  Standing directly in front of the door to avoid appearing to be staring in, she rapped hard on the wood with her knuckles.

  No sound at first. Nothing. Hadn’t Jen heard? What was taking her so long? Had she spotted them and was refusing to answer the door? Or was Laird here? Would he be standing there if the door opened? Dear God, what if, just like Alex, Jen was dead?

  Then movement, a shuffling sound inside. Jen looked out through the glass. Her eyes went wide; her lower jaw dropped. To Tara’s relief, the door opened, but so wide and fast it banged into the inside wall.

  “A ghost early for Hall’ween or a blasht from the pasht?” Jen asked and hooted a shrill laugh.

  Of all the greetings Tara could have fathomed, this was not one of them. Her former friend looked like a ghost herself: pale, hair wild, her slender body almost gaunt. Tara smelled liquor on her breath; she must be drunk, and in mid-afternoon. Her blouse was rumpled, her usually immaculate mane of white-blond hair looked flattened, her eyes bloodshot. With shaking hands, she hugged herself as if to keep warm.

  “’Mon in,” she said. “I can use some comp’ny, true confessions and all that.” She almost fell over from the momentum of sweeping her arm in a welcoming gesture. “Guessed you’d show up sooner, later.”

  Tara followed her in and closed the door, resisting the urge to help Jen walk. She couldn’t stand to touch her. “Where are Laird and your son?” she managed, still astounded. Jen had liked a social drink as well as anyone, but she’d always seemed to handle her liquor. The curse of the Lohans, Tara thought, first Veronica’s abusing drink and pills and now this.

  “Laird out for a golf lesson at the club, gone wi’ the wind,” she said, and plopped back onto the high bar stool where she had been before. “Took Jordie ’long, give me a break for once.”

  Amazed that anyone could resent one moment of taking care of the little boy, Tara sat on the metal-and-leather stool beside her. If Jen really was inebriated—she’d learned to trust almost no one—maybe she’d tell her things she needed to know. And since she had no idea when Laird would return, she had to get Jen talking. But she looked so bad. Surely Laird didn’t allow this, especially not when she had a son to care for.

  “I didn’t know you drank, Jen. The question is, why?”

  Jen turned to her, leaning one arm on the bar and bending over it as if she would go to sleep on the polished wooden bar. “You, of all people, certainly don’ have to ask why,” Jen said. “Wanna hear a good one? Yeah, you’ll like this. I don’t care if he gets mad or gets another wife.”

  She took another gulp of whatever amber liquor she had in the cut-glass tumbler. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes and tracked down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away. “Crying in my beer…” she whispered, “but this stuff’s harder than beer, harder than…than I ever thought it could be…” Her voice and gaze drifted off into vacancy.

  A movement out in back caught Tara’s eye. Thank God, not Laird but Nick up in the tree line, squatting with Beamer at his side. She had the oddest urge to wave, but that might bring him running. For once, she was grateful to be spied on.

  “Jen, what were you going to tell me? You and Laird had a fight?”

  “Mmm. Over kids. More of ’em. Jennifer DeMar Lohan, M.D., specialty ob-gyn’s having trouble having kids. It’s even in our prenup that I get an extra fifty thousan’ a year in my pers’nal account for each child we have. Ha!”

  “But you gave him a son.”

  Jen narrowed her eyes and seemed to sober a bit as she drew herself up to a sitting position. “You should not be here, Tara. You have to go.”

  “He wants more children, but you’re having trouble conceiving?”

  “Don’t give me that social worker,
do-gooder, I-care look!” Jen shrieked so loudly Tara jumped. “You hate me, an’ you should! But I couldn’t help wanting him, an’ you didn’t.”

  Tara jerked as Jen heaved her glass against the wall next to the wide glass window. Glass shattered, ice and liquor flew, streaking the pine paneling. Tara had the urge to pick up the glass shards; the little boy could cut himself. But she forced herself back to business. She’d rehearsed a hundred things to say. Now she wanted both to beat Jen to the ground and to put her arm around her. She’d spent too long helping women whose men had hurt them. But, above all, she needed to know about her own child.

  “Jen, please tell me about my baby’s birth. What went wrong? I just need to know—for closure, as they say. You understand that.”

  Jen propped her elbows on the bar and pressed her face in her hands so her words came out muffled. “Hell of a night. Lots of snow. Cold. Your primary-care doctor lightened your medicine so you could help push. I tried to help, to be there for you. Honest.”

  Maybe it was the doctor training coming out, but Jen didn’t sound drunk anymore. “Go on,” Tara whispered when she paused. Jen put her hands flat on the bar as if to prop herself up and just stared off into space. Tara had to fight the urge to ask about the medicine they gave her to keep her comatose, but this was more important.

  “Jen, go on,” she prompted.

  “Never thought you’d go to full term, of course. Pretty rare. Laird was ecstatic.”

  For himself, not me, Tara almost blurted, but she controlled her voice to ask calmly, “So, for the birth, you needed me more conscious?”

  “We used different drugs that night from the ones being used to give your brain time to heal. For labor, you were in a kind of twilight, lighter coma,” she said, her voice sounding as if she were reciting something in a formal lecture. “Years ago, they used to put women out entirely to deliver. I tried to tell you that we were going to do a vaginal delivery. That you had to help. And you did.”

  Silence. Wind outside, a clock ticking somewhere inside.

  “Then what happened?” Tara asked.

  Jen cleared her throat. “Umbilical cord around the neck—her neck. In the delivery, strangled. She got wedged—that’s it.”

  Tara sucked in a sob. “Which a cesarian section could have avoided?” she blurted.

  Jen shook her head so hard she almost tilted off the stool. Tara pushed her shoulder to keep her on it, then pulled her hand back as if that touch had burned her. “Happened too quick, too late,” Jen said in a rush. “The thing is, when we tried to revive the baby in the other room, then had to—to prepare her—Laird went berserk…”

  Tara saw it all. The panic and confusion. A comatose woman, a dead child for Laird—and Jordan. Jen, guilty, horrified, yet pregnant herself with Laird’s child. The entire nightmare leaped back into this room now.

  “And then,” Tara choked out, “I got out and wandered the grounds.”

  “Yes, I forgot. Someone found you and brought you back. Hemorrhaging, but I stopped that—maybe saved your life.”

  “Saved it after you let me wander out into the snow to bleed to death in the first place. Maybe,” Tara said, getting right in Jen’s face, “I went looking for the child you were preparing to secretly get rid of. Or maybe I was out of my mind with pain and grief and was looking for whoever let her die.”

  Jen burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she sobbed, putting her head down on her arms. “Sorry I got into any of this.”

  How could she say that when she had a beautiful son? Tara wondered, unless she meant getting mixed up with Laird.

  “Then help me find the other attending doctor—Dr. Givern—now, Jen. Get me his address or phone number or e-mail. I know he’s in Europe. To have some sort of closure, I need to speak with him, just to know what happened.”

  “It was all wrong, not to tell you, but you’d been through so much—and then Laird and I—it just happened. And then he started to turn against me when I want children just as desperately as he does. I’m seeing a fertility specialist, the best, but that’s not good enough for him, and I want so much to have his baby…”

  “You have, Jen, a precious Lohan son!” Tara cried, feeling furious again. “Just give it time. Hell, I even had one when I was on birth control!”

  “You weren’t,” she said, fumbling for a tissue in the pocket of her slacks and blowing her nose. Her eyes were swollen; she looked unsteady again. Would Laird lock her up in the clinic until she got off booze? Who would care for little Jordie then? But what was that she’d just said? You weren’t on birth control?

  “What do you mean?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean I wasn’t on birth control? You yourself prescribed and even gave me the tablets.”

  She shook her head so hard, tears flew. “Sugar pills. Laird asked me to substitute—”

  Tara didn’t hear what else she said. She wasn’t sure if she threw herself off the stool or fell off in shock, but she grabbed the edge of the bar to steady herself. Laird had set her up to get pregnant, despite the fact she’d told him she wanted to wait until they’d solved their problems! All that sudden understanding and sweetness those last months, all that sex. Suddenly, it hardly mattered if he was sleeping with Jen that early or not, because either way, such deceit was the ultimate betrayal of their marriage vows. Laird had impregnated Tara, then—maybe as a backup—seduced and impregnated Jen, too. She wanted to hate this woman, but she only pitied her, another Laird Lohan victim, even as little Sarah had been.

  Yes, the one she really hated, the one she wanted to suffer, was Laird Lohan. And suddenly there he was, coming in the front door, in the flesh, with his son in his arms.

  24

  “Tara!” Laird exploded, so loudly his son cringed. “That’s your truck down the road? What in hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you just call?”

  Tara crossed her arms over her chest. “Because you never would have invited me to your hiding place for the inquisition I have planned.”

  “Mommy, I back,” Jordie said with a wave at Jen standing behind her. Tara’s insides cartwheeled; it looked as if the child waved at her. Laird did not put him down. “I hitted a ball with a long stick,” the little boy said proudly, now openly studying Tara. Chocolate ice cream or candy was smeared on his upper lip. Despite her building rage at Laird, she smiled at the boy.

  “That’s good, Jordie. Really good,” was all Jen said, still making no move to go to Laird or her child.

  “Mommy crying?” he asked.

  “Mommy’s all right, Jordie,” Laird clipped out. “She’s just tired.”

  “She’s just tired,” Jordie repeated, but his lower lip thrust out as if he would pout or cry.

  Laird looked as strikingly handsome as ever, but he had noticeably aged. More silver hair at the temples; frown lines etched deeper on his chiseled face that now, compared to Nick’s open, rugged countenance, seemed hard and haughty.

  “I needed to speak with you and Jen to settle some things,” Tara said, keeping her voice calm.

  “You came alone?” he asked, again loudly.

  She decided not to answer that. “You’re upsetting your son. He’s a great-looking kid. Was our little Sarah, too?”

  “Dad said you had named her that.” He walked around Tara to Jen and started to hand Jordie, who was now sucking his thumb, to Jen. Evidently, when he smelled her breath, he drew the child back. Frowning even more, he kept such a tight hold on the boy that Jordie winced and fidgeted.

  Jordie’s face drew Tara’s gaze. Unlike in the photos, where his eyes looked bluish-green, she saw their color was the clearest emerald, just like her Irish grandmother’s eyes—and hers. Tara’s hair had been curly, too, when she was young. As Laird had tipped the boy down to hand him to Jen, Tara had noted that his hair looked strangely reddish at the roots. Why would they dye a little boy’s hair unless…unless…And why had they moved so suddenly far away when the Lohans were such a tight
ly knit clan and when she knew Laird would love to flaunt his son and heir in his brother’s face? Had Laird and Jen even been back to Colorado since they’d left or had everyone kept coming here, even for family photo shoots?

  Could she have had twins, one who died and one who—No, that was impossible. Yet, she was dealing with the Lohans.

  Tara trembled as she tried not to stare at the child, tried not to reach out to touch him. It couldn’t be that Jordie was hers.

  “Daddy, put me down,” Jordie said, squirming. “Put me down!”

  But Laird gave him a bounce and kept him in his arms.

  “If you’re here with that Special Ops guy or whatever he is,” Laird said, “you’d better find him and get going.”

  “He’s a civilian who served with them,” she said, not giving ground, unlike Jen, who had retreated to the bar to pour herself another drink. Tara wondered if Nick could see all of them from his vantage point, and if he’d stay outside as he’d promised until she gave him a sign. “But you,” she said, emphasizing each word and pointing at Laird to punctuate her words, “are the real special ops guy.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you mean. My wife and I need to talk, so I’m asking you to—”

  “You’d rather my attorney just contact yours, and that I go to the Denver and Seattle newspapers to get sympathy for my civil suit?” she brazened. She was getting more frustrated and furious by the minute, but she didn’t raise her voice so she wouldn’t scare the child. She was almost afraid to look at him again, because all the other questions she had to ask were beginning to fade next to the new obsession growing inside her. Jen was blond with blue eyes. Did someone in the Lohan clan have green eyes and red, curly hair?

  “Don’t try to threaten me,” Laird said, finally putting the little boy down on the beige rug next to the sofa and blocking her view of him, though Jordie peeked around Laird’s legs at her.