So why am I standing here staring at my row of shirts as if I’ve never seen any of them before?
It’s a thank-you dinner. That is all. It doesn’t matter what I look like.
Carson rolls over on my bed, sticking his paws up in the air and letting out a long sigh. Apparently, he’s gotten bored with my debate.
I force myself to grab a pair of jeans and a dark gray polo-type shirt. It doesn’t take a genius to realize how many guys she must be constantly turning down. Do I really want to get in that line-up?
No. If I took anything away from my marriage to Erin, it is that you shouldn’t ignore the little voice that warns you when something is a stretch. No doubt the voice warned me. No doubt I ignored it.
The voice warning me this time is blaring at megaphone volume. I shrug into the shirt, wondering if I should back out of going altogether. She probably just felt obligated to do something nice for me because of Evan. Of course, she did. But wouldn’t it be rude to cancel a half hour before I’m supposed to be there?
Yes, it would.
Okay, so I’m going.
“You’re going too, Carson. Come on, let’s go get your fancy collar on.”
He hops off the bed and follows me out of the room, tail wagging.
I PULL INTO the driveway and park behind Keegan’s Range Rover.
I feel like a sixteen year old, picking up a girl for a first date. I know how ridiculous this is and all the reasons why it’s not even accurate. I’m not here for a date. And I’m not sixteen.
I take a deep breath and slide out of the truck, waiting for Carson to hop out. The front door of the house opens, and Evan appears, hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Hey, Mr. Dare,” he says.
“Bowie’s good,” I say. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” he says. “I’m glad to be off the might-be-kin-to-a-chipmunk list.”
I smile and say, “I believe the nurses were still checking you out.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks embarrassed. “Nah. Come on in,” he adds, leaning down to rub Carson under the chin. “I should have hidden under the bush with you, huh?”
Evan leads us into the kitchen where Keegan is putting salad ingredients into a large stainless-steel bowl. She looks up and smiles at me. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I throw back, keeping my tone neutral in defiance of my leaping stomach.
I try not to notice, but she looks incredible. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail. She’s wearing a white tank top, designer-looking jeans, and she’s barefoot.
I am so glad I didn’t go the dressed-up route and ended up looking like I was trying way too hard.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asks. “We have red and white.”
“Red would be good,” I say.
Carson walks over to her and sits at her side, looking up in clear anticipation of her attention. She looks down at him, attempts to pet his head, but quickly pulls her hand back, before she says, “Should I put a bowl of water down for him?”
“He’s fine,” I say.
Carson throws me a questioning glance, as if he’s not sure what to do next. He isn’t used to being rejected by humans. I feel bad for him, but I’m almost glad to find a reason not to be attracted to her. I could never fall for a woman who didn’t like my dog. So there you have it. No need for the butterflies. Or the agonizing over the wardrobe. I’ll eat the dinner she’s prepared and then we’ll be on our way.
Except that it doesn’t go exactly like that.
When we sit down at the rectangular table in her dining room, she passes me a small plate, featuring bite-size pieces of the roasted chicken she has prepared, a mound of green peas, and three baby carrots.
“Can you give that to Carson? I hope he likes those things. I wasn’t sure.”
Carson is sitting by my chair, and at the sound of his name, wags his tail expectantly. It makes a swish-swish sound on the hardwood floor. “Sure,” I say, taking the plate from her, even as I realize that my plan to actively dislike her has now been decimated by an act of kindness that a true dog-hater would never be able to fake.
Carson tucks into the food as if he hasn’t eaten in a week.
“Thank you,” I say. “That was really nice.”
“He likes your cooking, Mom,” Evan says.
“Great,” she says. “Let’s see if you two agree with him.”
THE FOOD IS amazing. At one point, I can’t help asking her, “Did you go to culinary school or something?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and looking pleased by the question. “I just love food and started reading a lot of books on how to prepare it. It’s become a hobby, I guess.”
“Lucky for Evan,” I say.
Evan shrugs and says, “She gets a little fancy sometimes.”
“I try to keep it in line with the teenage palette.”
Despite his assessment of Keegan’s cooking, he cleans his plate while we’re still eating. He pushes back his chair and says, “All right if I go up and Skype a friend, Mom?”
She looks startled by the question, as if she hadn’t planned on being left alone with me. But I suppose there’s no graceful way to make him stay at the table, because she says, “Okay. Keep it PG.”
“Mom.”
“Evan.”
“Can Carson come up with me, Bowie?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
Evan calls him, and Carson takes off up the stairs right behind him.
The silence in the room following their departure is awkward to say the least. We both start to speak at the same time, stop, and then I say, “Go ahead.”
“I was just going to say I sometimes wish all this computer communication stuff had never been invented.”
“I would think it makes parenting a lot harder.”
“You really can’t imagine all the things they can get into. I mean you try to foresee it, put rules in place. But the temptation is just too much for them to resist.”
“It’s hard for a lot of adults to resist,” I say. “I was watching this documentary the other night where a woman pretended to be her eighteen-year-old daughter online. She went into chat rooms and developed relationships with guys. One of them ended up shooting another one over her. It was only afterward that they found out she was a forty-seven-year-old mother.”
Keegan leans back, her eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“That’s so beyond crazy. How could a mother do that to her daughter?”
“Anonymity prods people to do things they wouldn’t do in plain sight. The internet provides that. You can be whomever your picture says you are.”
She takes a sip of her wine and says, “You must have seen some difficult-to-believe stuff in your line of work. Evan mentioned you worked for the FBI at one time.”
“The worst and the best,” I say.
“Did it change how you see people?”
“I’d like to say no. That the bad people don’t get to do that to us. But it takes its toll after a while. I guess evil is like weeds. You think you’ve pulled it up by the roots, that it’s gone for good. And then there it is again. As if your previous efforts had done nothing at all.”
Her expression has a hint of caught-in-the-headlights. I instantly apologize.
“You certainly didn’t ask for that much information, did you?”
She shakes her head a little. “It’s okay. Actually, I think most of us walk around with our head in the clouds, oblivious to just how much bad there is out there.”
“It’s not such a bad place to be. Oblivion.”
“Do you write about all of this?” she asks. “The things you know about humanity now?”
I shrug, swirling my wine in the glass. “Some of it. Not all of it. My feeling is that people read to escape. I try to remember that when I’m walking that line between entertaining and venting my views on the world.”
“I’d like t
o read one of your books. Which one should I start with?”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, assuming she’s just being polite.
“I love to read. Give me a title.”
I do so, reluctantly. Why, I’m not sure. Is it because I don’t want to be judged against her creative standards? Or because I’m not comfortable with her looking for pieces of me based on what we’ve been talking about?
She picks up her phone from its place on the table, taps the screen, taps a few more times, and then says, “There. I’ll start it tonight before bed.”
“Thanks,” I say. And then for distraction, “The meal was incredible. Can I help you clear up?”
“I’ll get it later. How about some coffee on the deck?’
“Sounds great,” I say.
“Head on out. I’ll get everything together and meet you there.”
I start to insist on helping, but decide to do as she suggested. Outside, the night air is a welcome relief to the heat in my face. I don’t normally find it that easy to talk to a woman I barely know. I guess I’m out of practice. But something about Keegan makes it easy. Her seemingly genuine interest.
I remember for a moment the last couple years of my marriage and how Erin and I had gotten to the point where we really never talked. Two people living under the same roof, and little more.
The French door to the deck opens, and Keegan walks through with a tray. A French press pot, two white cups, and cream and sugar containers sit in the middle.
“I can take that,” I say, walking over to get it.
“You can just put it on the table,” she says.
I do, and she pours me a cup before handing it to me and saying, “Fix it the way you like it?”
“Black is good,” I say, taking a sip. “Um, good coffee.”
“It’s one of my weaknesses. That’s an Italian blend. Little hard to find, but my favorite.”
She adds some cream to hers and then goes over to the rail, leaning forward to look out at the night-darkened lake. “It’s unbelievably peaceful here,” she says.
“It is,” I agree, walking over to lean on the railing but being careful to leave a few feet between us. “I’m not sure I could ever get used to the constant sound of traffic again.”
“D.C.?”
I nod.
“Do people there consider horn-blowing a natural-born right?”
I smile. “It’s one of those things I never got used to. It’s like constantly be yelled at.”
“I know,” she says. “And, of course, there’s the old stand-by middle finger.”
“I guess driving in big cities isn’t for the faint of heart.”
“Definitely not.”
We sip in silence for a minute or more, and then I say, “I guess I should be going. The dinner was amazing.”
“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed. “Can you stay a little longer?”
The question surprises me, but I say, “Maybe I’ll have one more cup of coffee.”
She takes my cup and refills it from the pot on the table, then walks back over and hands it to me.
“Did you ever look for missing people when you were with the FBI?”
I look at her over the rim of my cup, raising an eyebrow. “Ah, yes. Fairly often, actually.”
“May I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
“It’s not easy. But people leave a lot of footprints today that they aren’t always aware of.”
“Oh,” she says, looking down at her cup. And then, “It’s my daughter. I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Is she a runaway?”
“She’s nineteen, so I guess technically, no.”
“That makes it a lot harder then.”
“She can go where she wants, right?”
“Right.”
“I just wish I could know she’s okay. That would make it all so much more bearable.”
I’m not exactly sure what to say. I wonder then if this is why I was asked over tonight. “Do you think she’s in L.A.?” I ask.
“I’m assuming so. Although no one we know has seen her. Or at least admitted to it, anyway.”
“And you know she’s—”
“Alive?”
I nod because it seems like saying it out loud might cause her pain.
“Yes. She told Evan that she didn’t want me to try to find her. That’s how much she hated her life I guess.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t begin to imagine how painful that must be.”
She takes another sip of her coffee and stares out into the darkness. “You think you know someone. Your own child, anyway. For most of her life, I think I have known her. But something changed in her. She didn’t want to tell me things anymore. I thought it was just normal for a teenager to do that. Part of the pulling away and developing wings stage. And so I never really questioned her about it. I thought with time, things would get back to being like they once were between us. But they didn’t.”
“Did she go to college?”
Keegan shakes her head. “She had planned to, and then a month before it was time to leave, she decided she didn’t want to. A few weeks later, she told me she was pregnant and that she was having an abortion. I was heartbroken. I just couldn’t believe she would do that. I even told her I would raise the child, but she wouldn’t agree. That’s when she left, and I haven’t seen her since.”
I try to think of something to say. But I can’t find any words that seem up to the task of comforting her. I finally manage a lame-sounding, “That must have been difficult for you.”
“It was. Is. I almost made the same choice myself. With Reece. Now, I don’t know how I could ever have considered that. To think that Reece might not have been born—”
She breaks off there, turns to look at me and says, “I have no idea why I’m telling you all of this. I don’t make a habit of opening up my closet of personal stuff and forcing it on others.”
“I don’t mind,” I say, realizing that I really don’t. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a personal conversation with anyone. Most of the people I’ve met here are acquaintances, and we don’t get past the small talk phase. But then I’m good at keeping people in that particular phase. Which makes me wonder why I haven’t sought a way out of this very personal conversation.
“Do you have children?” she asks, looking directly at me.
“No,” I say. “My wife, ex-wife, and I were pretty focused on careers. She’s an attorney and didn’t see herself becoming a mother.”
“Do you regret not having them?”
“Sometimes,” I admit.
“It’s not too late,” she says. “You’re young.”
I shrug and say, “I think I probably missed that milestone.”
“I have to say it’s been the most rewarding part of my life and the most difficult.”
“Even compared to a career in acting?”
“Even compared to that,” she says, smiling a little. “It’s a slippery slope. I thought I was doing a good job at juggling being a single parent and having a career, but I was wrong.”
“No one gets it perfect,” I say.
“I agree with that. But I’m beginning to wonder if you really can’t do both.”
“Sometimes, people don’t have a choice. Did you?”
She shakes her head. “Not for a long time anyway. I was on welfare until Reece was five and Evan four. I would take whatever job I could get, waitressing and auditioning for commercials, bit parts for TV shows. It took five years of that kind of work before I landed anything significant and could stop the waitressing.”
“That must have been hard.”
She shrugs. “I wanted to give them the life I never had growing up. To really make it so they would never want for anything. I thought it was worth every moment of discomfort, every rejection, because I was doing it for my children.”<
br />
“Do you regret any of it?”
“I think I should have spent more time with them. That it would have mattered more in the long run than being able to give them the latest and greatest.”
“You know I don’t have the insight of having been a parent, but if you did what you did for them out of love, I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself.”
“We just don’t get a do-over, you know?”
I put my forearms on the railing, leaning forward without meeting her gaze. “Unfortunately, that’s true for most things in life.”
“Anything in particular you’re talking about?”
“Work, I guess. What I chose to do for a career.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Parts of it.”
“Why?”
I don’t answer for several seconds because it’s hard to know what to say. I finally just admit, “Because on some days I wish I could go back to believing that people are basically good and the world is an okay place.”
“You saw a lot of bad stuff,” she says, the words a statement instead of a question.
“Yeah,” I say.
“How did you deal with it?”
“You have to develop a way to close it off in your mind when it’s time to be a regular person. I was able to do that for a long time. But the bad began to seep through my wall, and I wasn’t able to keep my work life separate from my personal life any longer.”
“Is that what happened to your marriage?”
“I’m sure it didn’t help it.”
Keegan looks at me for several moments before saying, “It’s good to feel things for others. You shouldn’t belittle yourself for that.”
“Yeah. It was just the signal that told me it was time for a change.”
“I’ve always thought it would be awesome to be able to write. When did you start?”
“I’ve kept journals since I was a teenager, but I started writing novels a few years before I left the bureau. It was a way for me to make the bad guys do what I wanted them to do.”
She laughs. “Well, apparently a lot of people enjoy what you make them do. I’m looking forward to reading your work.”
“Keegan, you really don’t have to—”
Dragonfly Summer (A Smith Mountain Lake Novel Book 2) Page 6