by Melissa Tagg
And Mom, sick as she was, had bought it.
“I don’t understand why you’d keep this from your family, Rae. You have the most supportive father in the world. Your siblings would do anything for you.”
“I know all that.” She twisted her hands together. “At first I didn’t say anything because I was embarrassed. I felt horrible about adding one more thing to everyone’s already overflowing plate. Bear, we knew Mom was dying. That last bout with cancer, we knew it.”
She could still picture each sibling’s face when Dad and Mom had sat them down in the living room to talk. Logan’s silent stillness. Kate’s tears. Beckett’s balled fists.
“And then after she died, after the accident—”
“The accident?”
Her focus swooped to her lap. “That attack I mentioned—the worst one. I was . . . I was in the car.” It was as much as she could get out now. If she let herself replay any more, she might come undone.
And she was just too . . . tired. Exhausted from the emotional tumult of the past day.
Bear—kind, patient Bear—seemed to instantly understand. For the third time that night, he reached for her hand.
“I just couldn’t tell Dad. Not after everything he’d been through. And then later . . . you don’t understand how it is with my family, Bear. I know they’re wonderful and supportive and all the things you said. But they’re all so . . . successful. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been the odd one out? I don’t look like the rest of them. I don’t have big ambitions like the rest of them. Now they’re all getting married left and right and settling down and they think it’s odd that I’ve never been . . . I guess, unsettled.”
“Except that you are unsettled, Rae. I know because I’ve been there—in that place where you’re supposed to be happy, the place you thought you wanted to be. But inside, everything’s off, no matter how much you deny it.”
“Brazil?”
He only nodded.
“And that’s why you left? Because you were unsettled? So why do you want to go back?
“Why do you stay?”
She didn’t answer and he didn’t force it. Instead, after a hushed pause, he laced his fingers through hers. “There are other people you could talk to. You could talk to Sara. She’s a therapist.”
“Bear—”
“Will you just consider it? I promise I won’t say another word about it if you’ll just think about it.”
The breeze lifted his hair from his forehead. He traced her thumb with his own. “I’ll think about it.” Because she couldn’t say no to him. Not when he looked at her like that—as if unwilling to take another breath until he was certain she was going to be okay.
His sigh of relief was accompanied by the easing of his grip on her hand. But he didn’t release it. Minutes faded into each other as the last remnant of the sun sank low in the west. Only when it disappeared entirely did Bear turn to her again. “Ready to go?”
At her nod, he pulled her to her feet. But before she could angle toward the ladder, Bear’s forehead wrinkled as he looked over her shoulder.
“What?” She turned to the street.
“That car.”
Not hard to tell which one he meant. Only one besides her own rested at the curb—a long, blue Taurus spotlighted by the flush of the streetlamp. Was that a man or a woman sitting inside it? Hard to tell from up here.
“That’s the second time I’ve seen it, just idling with someone inside.”
“It’s not exactly an unusual car, Bear.”
“Yeah, but it’s after eight. Every business on the waterfront is closed.” Unease hovered in his voice.
“Bear—”
The screech of tires interrupted her as the Taurus lurched into motion and disappeared down the road.
The apprehension in Bear’s eyes only deepened.
9
This didn’t make any sense at all.
“You’re telling me there’s no record of a Rio McKinley in any jail in the greater Atlanta area.”
Bear held his phone to his ear, the tiny interior of Raegan’s car stifling despite the huffing A/C. The idling engine rumbled. Outside the windshield and across a blacktopped parking lot sat the Maple Valley Community Hospital, a mix of beige brick, glass, and gleaming chrome.
The man on the other end of the phone, a Sergeant Something-or-other with the Atlanta Police Department Zone 4, spoke again. “Not only is there no record of him in jail at present, but I don’t show any arrests in the past eighteen months.”
Bear leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. Why had he even bothered with this call? Anytime he meddled in Rio’s life, it only caused trouble.
But in the twelve hours since that conversation atop the scaffolding with Raegan, he’d begun to feel like a hypocrite. He’d urged her to talk to her family while he’d spent years avoiding his own. Plus, it’d been slowly sinking in for days now—especially after talking to Case Walker a couple nights ago—that the cavern of distance between Rio and himself didn’t only affect Bear. It’d impacted Jamie, too.
Jamie needed more than the dodging reply Bear had given him the other night when he’d asked about Rio. And yet, Bear didn’t want to fill his nephew’s head with thoughts of some grand family reunification if there was no chance of healing between Bear and Rio.
So earlier this morning he’d tried texting Rosa to find out what jail currently housed Rio. One conversation. Just call him to say hi. Make sure Rosa has filled him in on the kids.
But Rosa had never replied. So he’d moved on to Plan B: On the way to the hospital for his meeting with the EMS director, he’d made the long-distance call to the Atlanta P.D.
Only to find out that, if Rio was, in fact, in jail—and why would Rosa lie about that?—it wasn’t in Atlanta. Doesn’t make sense at all.
“Can I help you with anything else, sir?”
“No, uh, thanks anyway.” Bear turned off the car as he ended the fruitless call. So much for that.
Just five minutes ago, he’d been laughing to himself as he pulled into the hospital parking lot, thinking about how funny it’d be next time Raegan dropped into her Honda and couldn’t reach the steering wheel. They’d switched cars for the morning since she was taking the kids out to the train depot and his rental had more room. He’d had to adjust her driver’s-side seat as far back as it could go in order to fit in her compact car. He’d pictured her scrunching her nose, muttering his full name.
Now confusion wiggled through him. It was certainly possible Rio had been arrested and jailed elsewhere—different city, maybe even a different state. But he distinctly remembered Rosa mentioning the Atlanta P.D.
Maybe it was better this way, though. What was he going to say, anyway? “I can’t get ahold of your wife, so I might as well tell you: Your kids are in Iowa and they’re doing fine. And oh yeah, I’m thinking they should just stay here. With me.”
Right. He’d sound like a child abductor.
Although, if he were honest, perhaps that was the real reason he’d wanted to talk to Rio. He couldn’t stand the thought of returning Jamie and Erin to Atlanta. Sunday—three days from now—would mark two weeks since Rosa had thrust her children into his care. He could feel the time ticking by too quickly, raising his hackles with every move of its hands.
He was a mess of warring desires. Explore the possibility of reconciliation with his brother? Or let the cavern grow even wider by insisting . . . what? That if Rio and Rosa couldn’t get their act together, he’d refuse to return their kids?
As if he really needed to add kidnapper to his rap sheet. Besides, did he really think the kids would be better off with him? It wasn’t like his life was any more stable than anyone else’s at the moment.
He wasn’t even planning to stay in the States. What was he going to do? Cart the kids down to Brazil?
Then again, John still hadn’t sent him the application for the community center position. Bear had sent an email to the mission boar
d yesterday. No reply yet.
Still, he had to keep trying, doing whatever he could to improve his standing with the mission. Which was why he was here now. He’d stayed up half the night last night Googling for information on local EMT programs, trying to figure out if any of his former training might carry over. But the internet’s answers had proved convoluted and unhelpful. Thus, his morning phone call to the local emergency response director.
Bear pushed open the car door, moisture-tinged air rushing over him as he stepped out. The morning’s humidity this ninth day of June sagged the spindly young trees dotting the hospital grounds.
Think about Rio and Rosa later.
Limp clouds rolled overhead in a colorless sky, smudged shadows shifting over the sidewalk in front of him that lead to the hospital. Inside, he stopped at the front desk, asked to speak to the EMS department director, and within minutes found himself seated across from a man who probably had little more than a decade on Bear. The cramped office barely had room for the small metal desk it contained. A whiteboard spanned the wall behind the desk and contained a list of names and what looked like a.m. and p.m. on-call schedules.
“You’re lucky you caught me when you called earlier this morning,” the director—Gage Whitaker, according to the placard on his desk—said after shaking Bear’s hand and motioning for him to sit in the metal folding chair opposite him. “Don’t spend much time at my desk.”
The chair creaked as Bear lowered onto it. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I appreciate it.”
“So you’re here about a job?”
“Not exactly.” He leaned forward in the worn chair.
“Really? Heard through the grapevine you’re a paramedic. Even got an application ready for you.” He held up a stapled clump of papers.
“Former paramedic.”
“Shame. We’ve got a small paid staff—four paramedics and myself—with a larger crew of volunteer EMTs on the side.” Gage leaned back in his vinyl chair, balancing against the wall behind him. “I’m advertising for an additional full-time paramedic right now and am always on the scout for volunteers. I was all prepared to do a job interview after you called.”
“I wish. Thing is, I do want to get recertified. That’s why I called.”
“How long’s it been?” Gage tapped his pencil on the desktop.
“About ten years.”
Gage dropped his pencil with a scant “Oh.”
“And it was a Georgia certification, at that. I realize it’s not as simple as taking a quick refresher course, and considering I may not be in the country that long, I’m probably going to have to settle for EMT training—”
“Why’d you let it lapse in the first place?”
All the air seemed to seep from the room. “It, uh, wasn’t entirely my choice. My life got . . . complicated. I had to turn my attention elsewhere.”
To an arrest and a court case and the hardest decision he’d ever made. To a sentencing that stole so much more than his freedom.
“I guess what I’m wondering is, considering my past training, is it possible to skip ahead some? Is there some kind of reinstatement process I can go through?”
“You’d have to get approval from the Bureau of Emergency and Trauma Services to pursue reinstatement and you’re looking at a couple months, at least, on that. To be honest, with it being an out-of-state certification and lapsed so long, I have a feeling they’d send you straight back to basic EMT training anyway.”
Bear swallowed his disappointment. “I had a feeling you’d say that. In which case, do you have any advice on best programs? I looked up a bunch of information last night. I saw there’s a program at Des Moines Area Community College that starts on the fifteenth—”
Gage leaned forward, the front legs of his chair thumping to the floor. “Look, Bear, you realize there’s no chance you can get into a program that quickly, right? You’ll have to retake a prerequisite CPR class, for one thing. Not to mention, you’ll need to get accepted into DMAAC first.”
“You’re saying I’m too late for the summer course?”
“I’m saying at this point you’ll be lucky if you can get in on the fall program. You can apply for late acceptance, but . . .” Gage shrugged.
Not get into the fall program? He could handle staying in Iowa through the end of the year if it meant being recertified and therefore upping his chances with the mission board. But if he couldn’t even start training until next year, well, surely the mission would hire someone else.
And a college application? How could Bear not have factored that in? Had he really thought he’d just call the school and land a spot in the program? College applications required time, sometimes interviews, even physicals or immunizations.
Which brought up another complication he hadn’t considered. “Do you know, um . . . do you think a background check is part of the process?” Had it been when he’d gone through the training in Atlanta? He didn’t remember.
Gage’s scrutiny turned even more skeptical. “Yep. In Iowa, once you go through the training, it’s the Bureau that makes the final call on whether to certify. That’s the point at which the background check comes into play.”
So Bear could go through the entire twelve-week program and still not walk away a certified EMT?
“Why?” Gage slid the application he’d held up earlier into an open drawer. “Is that a problem?” He closed the drawer.
This meeting had turned as pointless as that phone call to the Atlanta P.D.
Raegan couldn’t shake the feeling that she was betraying her father.
But she also couldn’t deny the sense of tranquility that had blanketed her the moment she’d settled into the cushioned wicker rocker in Sara Jaminski’s sunroom. It smelled of lavender, the scent she’d come to associate with the older woman.
After spending the morning at the train depot, Raegan had originally planned to spend her afternoon off fiddling around with her mural design. After all, the masonry primer she’d ordered wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow—which meant there was nothing she could do at the site itself until then.
She’d holed up in Bear’s apartment with a blown-up photo of the Hay & Feed building spread out on his kitchen table. The idea was to come up with some sort of grid system for the actual painting of the mural.
But after an hour of attempting to focus, she’d finally given up. Twenty minutes later, she’d found herself here.
“This was my favorite room in the house even as a kid,” Sara said as she set a cup and saucer on the lace-covered end table beside Raegan. She lowered onto the dainty loveseat that sat against one honey-colored wall. “My mother joked until the day she passed away about how she used to find me curled up right here on this loveseat many mornings. Apparently I had a habit of sleepwalking my way out here.”
“Beckett used to sleepwalk as a kid. We’d find him on the porch steps using his basketball as a pillow.” Soft sunlight cascaded through the open windows that rounded three sides of the room. An array of plants in stands and hanging in baskets ornamented the room, along with a small bookshelf and French sliding doors that led into the main house.
Raegan hadn’t called before showing up at Sara’s house. Hadn’t even known if she’d go through with the haphazard notion even as she sat in her car facing the old farmhouse on the ranch property, watching a rusted metal windmill spin in the wind.
But then Sara had emerged from the barn in dusty jeans and an old tee, work gloves and boots. Raegan had slid from her car as Sara approached, coercing what little bravery she might possess to the surface. Bear’s right. If I keep holding this in, nothing will ever change.
She could go on counting the days between panic attacks, taking false comfort the higher the number grew, riding her bike everywhere, refusing to travel alone.
Or she could stop hiding.
Sara had stopped in front of her. “You look like you need to talk.”
Raegan had only nodded.
Ten minutes
later, here she was, sitting across from the woman who’d managed to transform from cowgirl to counselor with just a change of clothes. She wore tan linen pants now and a thin oversized white sweater, another one of her colorful scarves tied around her hair.
If Dad knew, he’d want me to talk to someone, too, wouldn’t he?
Raegan lifted her teacup, the soothing aroma of Earl Grey wafting over her. “I’m sorry to show up so out of the blue.”
“Trust me, after thirty years of living from appointment to appointment, constantly answering to a calendar controlled by my assistant, I love the freedom of being a little more impromptu here in the country.” Sara tucked her legs underneath her on the loveseat, then quieted. Waiting, most likely, for Raegan to explain why she’d come.
Just start talking. She’s a counselor. She’s not going to judge you.
But the thought of repeating all she’d told Bear—going even deeper—petrified her. It might have felt freeing to spill her tears to Bear, but she’d begun to wonder since if that comfort had been less about finally liberating her secret and more about the man whose arms she’d fallen apart inside?
She’d felt terrifyingly vulnerable, but also closer to him than ever before. Figuratively and literally. If that locker room door hadn’t slammed when it did . . .
Her teacup clattered against the saucer.
“Raegan.” It was a gentle prodding.
She placed her cup and saucer on the end table. “I get panic attacks. I don’t know why. I just know I hate them. I thought I’d learned how to curb them—I was closing in on two years—but . . .”
“But you had one recently?”
“Two days ago.”
“And before that?”
“I was with Kate in Chicago. She’d been injured in a car accident, so I stayed with her for a couple weeks to help her out. I went to the store for her one day. It was only a half-mile away, so I walked, but I took a wrong turn on the way back and . . .” She’d eventually shown back up at Kate’s without the groceries. “It really wasn’t that bad, though. Not even close to the worst I remember.”