Anything for Her

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Oh.” Her mother’s stiff stance briefly eased, and then she took flight again, resuming her frenetic pacing. “Of course not. I’m sorry, honey, but I had to ask.”

  Watching her, Allie had a truly awful thought. The timing was odd. Suggestive. Mom had never liked the idea of Allie’s relationship with Nolan. She wouldn’t have made this whole thing up, would she?

  Allie gave her head a slight shake. No, of course not; Mom didn’t have the connections or skills to give them new identities. She couldn’t make up that part.

  She could have hired someone to pretend to be searching for them, though. Look at her, a voice seemed to whisper to Allie. Is she really scared? Or is she excited, the way she was the other times?

  Feeling sick, Allie saw that her mother did have that same electrified air Allie remembered so well. If this scene were taking place onstage, every eye in the audience would be on her mom. She’s the star again.

  Allie actually had to swallow bile. “Mom, I’m going home. You’re overreacting. We should wait and see what happens. What if Dad applied for a loan that triggered a routine background search?”

  “Do you think he made up the investigator asking about you?”

  “I don’t know. No.” She flung up her hands. “Mom, I’m twenty-eight years old. No one hunting for you would have any reason to assume that finding me would necessarily lead right to you. A lot of people my age live on the other side of the country from their parents. Did Dad ask any questions? Like, ‘Why are you looking for my daughter’? What if whoever knocked at the door had the wrong guy? Did he mention me by name? And if so, what name did he use?”

  “I don’t know,” her mother admitted. “I suppose I’m too alarmed to think this all through logically. But you seem to be in denial. And you know if they move us, they’ll do it suddenly.” She spoke sharply. “There won’t be time to pack much or for goodbyes.”

  What she meant was that there won’t be time to say goodbye to Nolan.

  Allie’s immediate, heartfelt reaction was I can’t. But then, on a wave of cold, she realized the alternative: saying goodbye to her mother. Or discovering suddenly that Mom was gone.

  “I’m leaving.” She hurried to the front door. There, her hand on the knob, she turned to face her mother. “I can’t leave Nolan, Mom. I can’t.”

  Her mother stared at her in shock.

  Allie went out, shut the door and raced for her car. She wanted to drive straight to Nolan’s house, but knew she couldn’t. Not at this time of night. Sean would want to know what was going on and no matter what he couldn’t be told anything. Even a phone call at this time of night would probably wake him up. And that was assuming Nolan kept his phone anywhere he could hear it after he’d gone to bed.

  No, tomorrow was soon enough.

  This had to all be a mistake. She started the car, backed out of her mother’s driveway into the empty street and was grateful not to have far to go home. She wasn’t in any shape to drive.

  * * *

  “THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT moving us again.” Allie stood in the middle of Nolan’s workshop, looking as bad as she had the night she’d told him about the destruction of her family. She had called earlier; when he told her Sean had gone to one of his new friends’ houses for the day, she’d come over so they could “talk.”

  That had alarmed him enough. He had suspected he wasn’t going to like anything she had to say, but his sinking feeling had become a sense of doom when he saw her sprint from her car to the workshop through the rain without even bothering with a coat.

  Her hair was wet and plastered to her head, her face blanched, the raindrops on her lashes reminding Nolan of tears. Her hands were knotted so tightly together in front of her, the knuckles were white.

  He shook his head. “Say that again.”

  It didn’t sound any better the second time. “Someone is looking for us,” she said. “Whoever it was found Dad and was asking questions.”

  “Wait.” Oh, hell. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to tell her. At the same time, the relief was huge. Nobody from their past was looking for Allie or her mother. He’d been the one looking, stirring up something he didn’t understand. “This is all my fault,” he said.

  “What?” Eyes huge and dark, she gaped at him.

  “Allie, come here.” He held out a hand.

  With new wariness, she stared at his hand, then raised her gaze to his face without taking a step forward.

  “Please.”

  She was trembling, he saw, when she nodded and then came to him. Once he had her small hand in his, he drew her forward.

  “I did something stupid, Allie.”

  The green-gold was almost lost, as dilated as her eyes were. “You told someone?”

  Oh, man. He’d give a lot not to have to admit what he’d done. But she’d understand. Surely she’d understand. And she’d be relieved, too, he wanted to believe. “You know how curious I was,” he said gruffly.

  She had gone so still, he wasn’t sure she was breathing.

  “You told me you’d gone to high school outside Tulsa. You even told me the name of the town.” He was beginning to feel desperate. Oh, hell, he thought again. “Then when your mother had a different story, I called the high school in Fairfield. They had no record of an Allie or Allison Wright.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I was going to confront you.”

  “But instead you hired an investigator?” Her voice rose with each word. Her hand writhed within his grasp, trying to free itself. He didn’t want to let her go, but he did. She retreated a couple of steps.

  “Not at that point. Sean said high school yearbooks are online. He’s right.”

  “Online?” Allie looked and sounded as if he’d punched her in the belly.

  “I’m afraid so. I looked through the one for the year I figured you’d have been a junior.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yeah. I found you, Allie. But, surprise, surprise, you weren’t Allie Wright at all. You were Laura Nelson.”

  “Then...when I told you, you already knew?”

  “All I knew was that you and your mother had left Oklahoma and changed your names. You kept being resistant when I asked you about your background. I thought I could find out what had happened back then.”

  “So you hired a P.I.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah. That’s what I did.”

  “How could you do that?” Her shock and hurt went deeper than he’d ever dreamed they would. “We were seeing each other, and you were having me investigated?”

  In her words, it sounded even worse than it did the way he’d framed what had at the time seemed like a rational thing to do. Possibly paranoid, he would admit. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know he had one very hot button, which she had pushed.

  “It was...actually during that week when I didn’t see you.”

  Allie gave her head a small shake. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I’m sorry.” His throat felt raw. “It was a shitty thing to do. My only defense is that I have a big thing about being lied to. You know why.”

  “You never came to me and said, ‘I know you’re hiding something. If we’re going to have a relationship, I need you to be up front with me.’ Instead, you hired an investigator?” Her voice had risen again, in exactly the same way, ending up shrill and disbelieving.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was going to tell you what I’d done, Allie. I’ve been dragging my feet because I knew you’d be pissed or hurt or both. I don’t blame you.” His urgency grew as he watched her face. “Once I got the first report from the P.I., I knew I’d gone too far. I called him off.”

  “What if his questions caught someone else’s attention? What if the very fact that he was poking around has put us at risk again?”

  Guilt was a huge, indigestible lump in his belly. “What would make you think anyone else even noticed?”

  “Did he run credit checks? Search for drivers’ licenses? Property records?�
�

  Nolan frowned. “I don’t know. Drivers’ licenses, maybe. Apparently your background story then had your family moving to Oklahoma from Michigan. The P.I. did try to find some evidence you’d actually lived there. He came up empty.”

  “Oh, dear God.” She turned her back on him.

  “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “But knowing I did is good news in a way, isn’t it? It means you and your mother don’t have to worry.”

  “I can’t believe you did this.” She sounded so shell-shocked, he began to get really afraid.

  “What can I do to make you forgive me?”

  She swung around and met his gaze, hers flat and chilling. “I don’t know if I can. Or if I want to. Even if Mom and I don’t have to move, I can’t trust you, Nolan. I thought...I thought you’d never do anything...” Her voice broke. “I have to go home.”

  “Wait. Please.” Goddamn it, he’d never begged for anything in his life.

  “Do you have the name of the P.I. so I can pass it on?”

  He told her the name. “Allie, there’s no reason your mother should have to move.”

  “That man is an outsider. He knows too much. If the marshal has to ask him questions, that’ll make him curious, won’t it? What if he betrays us?”

  “No. Damn it, Allie! He doesn’t know your original names. He wouldn’t know who to contact, and that’s assuming he’s the creep you’re implying he is.”

  “I told Mom I could trust you.” Her stunned gaze raked him.

  “You can.” Nolan took a step toward her and grabbed her hands. “I swear. I love you, Allie. I’ll do anything.”

  “Sure you will. You proved that, didn’t you?”

  Bone-deep scared, he dropped her hands. “I would never hurt you on purpose. I was trying to answer my own questions. That’s all.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” She swung away and started for the door.

  “Allie.” He had this terrible fear that if she left now, he’d never see her again. “Even if your mother gets relocated for some reason, you don’t have to go. I need you to stay.” He barely hesitated. “To marry me.”

  She only shook her head and hurried out. Nolan caught the door and watched her dash through the rain, get in her car, start it and drive away without once turning her head toward him.

  For the second time in his life, the bottom had dropped out of his world. This time, he’d done the damage himself, and he had no idea how he could atone.

  * * *

  TELLING HER MOTHER was one of the worst things Allie had ever had to do. She didn’t know if Mom made it better or worse by accepting the news with surprising calm. She didn’t once say, I told you so. Or, This is why I didn’t trust your judgment.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry” was what she did say, very softly. She put her arms around Allie and held her for a long time.

  Allie couldn’t make herself relax into the embrace. She didn’t cry. She simply stood there, waiting until she judged an adequate length of time had passed before she gently separated herself. “You’ll pass this on?”

  “Of course I will. It does sound as if he stirred up a hornet’s nest, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe not. It might all have been the P.I.”

  Her mother looked at her with pity. “The problem is, now there’s someone who can link Judy and Laura Nelson with Cheryl and Allie Wright in Washington State.”

  “Nolan may not have said anything about Cheryl and Allie Wright.” She felt the tiniest twinge of hope. “I told you. He’d already discovered that I was Laura Nelson. He asked the investigator to try to find out about the Nelsons. Mostly he wanted to know why you and I took off and felt we had to change our names.”

  “Then why was he trying to discover where we’d lived before Fairfield?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe he was only being thorough.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. The fact is, a man in West Fork, Washington, hired a P.I. to investigate the Nelsons in Oklahoma. Someone looking for us would come straight to West Fork, wouldn’t they?”

  Yes, Allie supposed if anyone in the Moretti family had ever traced the Marrs as far as Oklahoma and was still looking for them, that’s exactly what they’d do. They would be very curious indeed why a stonemason in Washington State wanted questions answered about the Nelsons.

  “You think we’re still going to be moved, don’t you? Even though we can explain what happened.”

  “That’s my guess.” Her mother really did look sorry. “Nolan couldn’t have foreseen any of this. I’m sure he never meant to hurt you.”

  “That’s what he said.” There was a shift in the thin crust of anger that encased pain, as if a cataclysmic fracture was imminent. She couldn’t afford that. “No matter what, I’m not sure I can get past the fact that he had me investigated.”

  “Between us, we did raise a lot of questions.” Mom sounded rueful.

  She’d decided to be sympathetic and understanding now? Because she actually did feel bad for Allie? Or because she could afford to be gracious knowing she’d won? Either way, Allie was suddenly mad in a whole new way.

  “I’m going to work,” she said.

  Her mother frowned. “Why don’t you wait until I’ve called the marshal?”

  “You can tell me what he says. I promised Barbara I’d be there by noon.”

  I seem to be making a habit of walking out on people, Allie thought, as she did just that. It seemed that her instinctive reaction to powerful emotions was to flee. The insight gave her pause.

  Had the fact that her family had spent so many years running imprinted itself on her, becoming as natural to her as breathing? Or was it that she was afraid of her own emotions when they grew too powerful?

  Yes. Coping was beyond her. This time, she couldn’t hide inside herself. So I run away.

  Allie parked in one of the two spots behind her store and let herself in the back door. A quilter and excellent customer, Barbara was happy to work a few hours when Allie needed help. She didn’t seem to need the money so much as she enjoyed an excuse to spend time in the quilt shop.

  When Allie walked in, Barbara had finished ringing up a purchase and was adding two spools of thread to the fabric already in a bag while the customer wrote a check. Allie went immediately to help another woman who was wandering in apparent befuddlement with a bolt of fabric clutched in her arms.

  “May I help you?” Allie asked.

  “Please. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, but I can’t seem to make any decisions.”

  Allie pried out of her the fact that this was to be only her second quilt, intended to be twin-sized for her eight-year-old daughter’s bed. She thought she’d use a pinwheel pattern. She’d intended to keep to perhaps three fabrics, but now she was wondering if a multitude of different fabrics used in the blades of the pinwheel wouldn’t be more effective.

  Allie showed her a couple of different options and led her to fabrics that would contrast rather than blend with the background she’d already chosen. Then she pointed out the bins of fat quarters. “If you’d really like to go for the scrap-quilt effect...”

  The woman pounced and Allie was able to leave her happily browsing through dozens of packets of color-coordinated fabrics already cut into quarter-yard lengths.

  She thanked Barbara and they chatted for a few minutes. Allie felt as if she was hovering outside of herself, watching. She was smiling, relaxed, completely natural, betraying no hint that anything at all was wrong. Inside, she churned with disturbing emotions.

  A horrifying thought hit her. She wouldn’t be able to open a new quilt shop if she and her mother were relocated. It would be like dancing, an obvious way to trace her. Stunned, she stood behind her counter and looked around the store, the place she felt most comfortable, most fulfilled, most herself.

  She didn’t know if she could survive the dual loss of this, her vocation, and Nolan and Sean, her future.

  But the altern
ative was to abandon her mother, who had already been abandoned by her husband and son. As I’ve been abandoned, Allie thought wretchedly. And she would have sworn that she was being literally rended in two.

  * * *

  SOMEHOW ALLIE WASN’T surprised when she heard the deep growl of a truck engine that evening, followed by steady, heavy footsteps on the outside steps and then a knock on her door.

  Allie gave very serious consideration to not answering. She didn’t know yet what to say to him. She still felt so betrayed.

  But she hadn’t liked that morning’s insight. It was bad enough knowing she was timid, inclined to retreat into herself. She didn’t want to be a complete coward.

  With a groan, she rose from where she sat curled on her easy chair and went to open the door.

  Nolan did not look good. The bristles on his jaw and cheeks made her realize he must have shaved for a second time other evenings when he expected to see her. There were tired lines beside his eyes and deep furrows between his eyebrows. She didn’t like seeing self-doubt and uncertainty in this man who had always projected solidity and confidence that she had believed would never fail.

  After a moment she stepped back, wordlessly inviting him in.

  She didn’t quite want to say, What are you doing here? She searched for a better alternative.

  “I didn’t expect you.”

  “I had to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “When you left today, I had this terrible feeling you were walking out of my life. That I’d never see you again.”

  “It’s possible that will happen,” she said carefully. She hesitated. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No.” Desperation looked very different from the intensity Allie was used to seeing in his eyes. “I want— I don’t know what, but sure as hell not to sit here politely conversing. Damn it, Allie!”

  The rage and sense of betrayal rose with shocking suddenness, like a flash flood roaring down a narrow canyon. “I don’t even know why I opened the door!” she cried.

  “Yes, you do.” His hands shot out and caught hers in a hard grip. “You said you love me.”