Jane's Gift

by Abby Gaines

  “Sure,” Kyle said. “Or shall we let Jane get dressed first?”

  Daisy giggled; Jane shot out of the kitchen. Kyle folded his arms and enjoyed the view of her walking up the stairs.

  * * *

  THEY HEADED TO THE SUPERSTORE outside town, across the highway from Gabe’s church. The paint section was in the back.

  Jane tagged along behind Kyle and Daisy; this was really their expedition, father and daughter.

  “We’re looking for pink, right?” Kyle sounded resigned.

  “Yes, please.” Daisy’s eyes were busy, scanning the color charts and paint chips on the walls.

  “I suppose you’re not even going to try to talk her out of it,” he grumbled to Jane. “You do realize the house is meant to look like part of nature, right?”

  “Pink occurs in nature,” she said. “In the sunset.” After that stunt he’d pulled, practically undressing her with Daisy only a few feet away, he deserved the pinkest pink that money could buy.

  “I like this one.” Daisy pointed to the most lurid shade on a chart of about a dozen shades of pink. Way more Pepto-Bismol than sunset.

  Jane bit her lip, trying not to laugh. This was punishment on a karmic scale. She waited for Kyle to vent his disgust.

  “So this is the one you want,” he said stoically.

  Huh? He would paint that beautiful room such a hideous color, just to show his daughter he cared? Tenderness welled up inside Jane.

  “Kyle, can I have a word?” She grabbed his arm, aware of the play of muscle through the sleeve of his cotton shirt, and pulled him aside. He seemed similarly focused on that physical connection, eyeing her hand as if he wanted to direct it to all kinds of places. Jane shook off the distraction and shook his arm for good measure to make sure he was listening.

  “Giving Daisy everything she wants isn’t necessary to show her you love her,” she advised. “Quite the opposite. What matters is that you value her opinions.”

  “Maybe, but discussing sick-pink and then choosing beige doesn’t seem right,” he said.

  “Of course not. But it’s your house, too, so you have a right to a color you consider at least tolerable. Find one that she likes and you can live with.”

  Relief made his eyes crinkle. “Thanks, Jane.” He was standing so close, if one of them moved just a few inches they could...no. She stamped on the mental brakes. Not going there.

  “Have you thought about yellow?” she asked Daisy, and received identical looks of horror from both father and daughter.

  “Fine, I’ll stay out of it. How about you both hunt for your absolute favorite color, and show them to each other,” Jane suggested.

  Daisy loved that idea. “You, too, Jane,” she insisted. “You pick your favorite, too.”

  Looking at paint samples beat standing around doing nothing, so she agreed. “We’ll set a deadline—eleven o’clock.”

  “Then we’ll get burgers for lunch,” Kyle said.

  For the better part of an hour, they flipped through trays of paint chips and pored over charts.

  “Time’s up,” Jane said at eleven.

  Daisy had her chosen paint chip covered inside her clasped hands. Jane did the same. “On the count of three, show your hand,” she said. Kyle rolled his eyes, but obligingly concealed his choice.

  “One...two...three.” Jane opened her hand to reveal the pale pink just this side of orange that made her think of the sun setting over the Rockies in summer. “Let’s see what you two—oh.”

  Kyle held a cotton-candy-pink that was better than the Pepto-Bismol, but not much. Daisy held a light turquoise.

  Jane got a lump in her throat the size of Colorado. Father and daughter had gone all out to find something each thought the other would like.

  “I thought you wanted pink?” Kyle said.

  “Kind of,” Daisy said. “That pink is real pretty.” She ran a finger over Kyle’s paint chip. “But I really like this one.” She held up the turquoise.

  “I like that one, too,” Kyle admitted.

  “What about mine?” Jane asked.

  “Yours is nice too, Jane,” Daisy said earnestly, obviously not wanting to offend.

  “Yeah, yours is nice, too, Jane.” Kyle, on the other hand, was deliberately mocking.

  Jane pouted. “Hey, it looks like a sunset. It’s called Tropical Sunset.”

  “What’s tropical?” Daisy asked.

  “Nowhere near here.” Kyle grinned down at her. “But we won’t tell Jane that.”

  Daisy looked beyond delighted to be part of a conspiracy with her dad. Joy welled up inside Jane so fierce she could scarcely contain it.

  I love Daisy. The thought spilled out before she could censor it. Before she could tell herself her reaction was due to biology, not emotion.

  Her heart was overflowing, and not with biology.

  Too late to shut that floodgate now. She’d broken protocol number five, gotten unmistakably, irrevocably attached. And she’d picked a doozy of a moment to do it. She was finally ready to admit she had a mother’s interest in Daisy, just as Kyle and Daisy reached a stage where they didn’t need her.

  What a mess.

  Jane dragged her attention back to the moment. Kyle was trying to talk Daisy into the pink, but the little girl was adamant she wanted the turquoise.

  “How about a bright pink duvet for your bed?” Jane suggested. “It’ll make a nice contrast against the turquoise.”

  The suggestion made everyone happy. As they stood in line at the register waiting to pay, a vision floated into Jane’s head. A family, herself as mommy, with a daughter like Daisy. And a husband like—

  “Janelle Slater, what are you doing here?” the cashier asked. Her manner was openly hostile.

  Jane had no idea who she was, but that was how it had always been around here. People knew her and her family, or thought they did, but she didn’t necessarily know them. “Have we met?” she asked coolly, declining to answer the question, aware of Daisy’s curious glance.

  The woman snorted. “I’m Annie Talbot. You have a nerve showing your face in this town.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember....” Jane cloaked herself in the distance that divorced her from whatever disgrace her name was about to taint her with.

  “My husband, Phil,” the woman snapped. “Your low-life father blackmailed him.” Which meant Phil had cheated on Annie with Jane’s mother, but funnily enough she didn’t mention that.

  Kyle spoke up. “That’s ancient history now, Annie. You must be talking twenty years ago.”

  “You’re not with her, are you, Kyle?” Annie demanded. “Because if you think I’d vote for a mayor in cahoots with the Slaters, you’re wrong.”

  Her words were an uncanny echo of Barb’s after Daisy’s birthday party.

  “I’m babysitting Daisy,” Jane said. “It’s a temporary arrangement.” She felt like a Judas, denying her own daughter. But there would always be people who thought like Annie, and there was no point in Kyle losing their votes over her.

  “Jane, could you take Daisy to the car?” Kyle asked evenly. “While I settle up here?”

  “I just want to know when she’s leaving.” The woman’s words floated after Jane as she walked out to the parking lot.

  “What’s tempry?” Daisy asked, as Jane clipped her seat belt.

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  Daisy looked confused at the endearment; Jane cursed her own lack of self-control. J
ust because she loved Daisy, she couldn’t expect the girl to love her back. Not after she’d been so careful to create some distance.

  “You said a tempry arrangement,” Daisy said.

  “Temporary,” Jane amended. “It means not forever. You know I’m not staying with you forever, right?” All the more reason not to go showing Daisy how she felt.

  Daisy nodded. “I guess.”

  Kyle joined them a couple of minutes later. He stowed the paint in the trunk.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Jane, as he turned the key in the ignition. “Annie was out of line, and I told her so.”

  She’d expected some carefully hidden contempt about her family background; his genuine concern just made her feel worse. More of a misfit. She would never be a part of the kind of family she’d envisaged back in the store.

  He pulled out of the parking space.

  “Actually, I have a headache,” she said. “Can you drop me at home, then you and Daisy can get burgers without me.”

  Daisy protested. “I want you to come, Jane. Please come.”

  Kyle, however, didn’t argue. He flicked his turn signal and headed for the cottage.

  She suspected he saw the sense of what she was doing.

  Better to keep her distance now, than end up longing for something she could never have.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ON MONDAY, AFTER JANE DROPPED Daisy at school, she headed for Bentwood. At nine-thirty she arrived at the prison, a concrete slab of a building set with narrow windows

  This was probably a dumb idea. But having refused to go to lunch with Kyle and Daisy on Saturday, she’d spent all of Sunday wondering if she’d been too hasty.

  Before she decided once and for all that she shouldn’t take up Kyle on the offer he hadn’t yet revoked—his offer for her to remain in Daisy’s life—she wanted to be a hundred percent sure it couldn’t work. And since her feelings of inadequacy on the family front were all tied up in her own, hopeless family, visiting her father had seemed essential.

  She didn’t hate her family, not at all. There’d been a few good times, and she had that blood-is-thicker-than-water bond with them. The exception was her dad. She’d come close to hating him.

  Inside, she went through the routine she was familiar with from other prisons, from her childhood. Having her bag searched, walking through the metal detector. She followed the guard to the visiting room. The guard said, “Michael Slater,” to the visiting officer, and once again Jane had to wait.

  Her father had been in prison before for short stints. His current sentence was fifteen years and his record meant he wouldn’t be paroled for good behavior, though he was appealing the initial sentence. He was two years into his term.

  “Janelle, girl.” Mike Slater’s eyes assessed her, as he made his way over to the table and sat on the other side from her. She knew he’d be trying to estimate the cost of her clothes, her purse. “It’s been a while.”

  She hadn’t seen her father in ten years, but he hadn’t changed. The same lean build and narrow face, though maybe that crude tattoo of a bird on his right wrist, next to the equally crude anchor, was new.

  “How are you doing?” She ignored the reproach, which she knew was intended to make her feel guilty, and thus more likely to hand over money when he asked for it.

  “How do you think I’m doing, locked up like this?” he demanded. “How are you doing, out there in the land of the free?”

  “If you’re so interested in the land of the free, maybe you shouldn’t rob banks,” she snapped. She sounded as sanctimonious as an Everson. “I’m here because I wanted to see family,” she said. “I—I miss Mom.” It was part of the truth, and she was suddenly glad she’d come.

  “Me, too.” Her father sounded as if he meant it. Given he’d spent at least half his marriage fooling around or risking everything on a criminal venture, it didn’t seem likely. But Jane had to take the words at face value.

  “Have you seen much of the others?” she asked her father.

  He shook his head. “Darren’s locked up, like me.”

  Jane had to grit her teeth to refrain from scolding him for the offhand pride in his voice.

  “Johnno’s still in Australia, far as I know,” her dad continued. “Young Cat...I’ve seen her. She’s gone straight.”

  “Really?” Jane couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice. Of course, her dad’s definition of going straight was somewhat looser than Jane’s. Her younger sister had had a line in charming old people out of their money for a while. Nothing illegal, but definitely immoral. “What’s she doing now?”

  “Ah, I don’t know.” Her father looked shifty, making her doubt the veracity of his report. “How much money you making these days?”

  Jane stifled a sigh. She shouldn’t have come. She’d had some misguided urge to see the only parent she still had, perhaps to capture the sense of family that Barb suggested she was desperate for.

  “I need to go,” Jane said. “I left some cigarette money at the office.”

  “You’re a good girl,” he said halfheartedly. “Got any more cash? There’s a guy on the block looking to do me an injury—I got the better of him in a deal. Wouldn’t mind being able to buy him off.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jane said stiffly. She no longer knew which of her father’s tales were true, and which were fables designed to extort cash.

  By the time she left, she knew one thing for sure. Mike Slater was Daisy’s biological grandfather...but Jane didn’t want him anywhere near her daughter. Kyle’s daughter, she corrected herself. Then: my daughter, dammit, even if she never knows it. Even if no one does except me and Kyle.

  * * *

  “MAN, AM I GLAD to see you.” Micki grabbed Jane’s arm and practically hauled her into the café.

  “I’m here to wallow in self-pity and I want sympathy,” Jane said. “You’re looking annoyingly pleased with yourself.”

  Micki tried—and failed—to rearrange her expression into one of sympathy.

  “Pathetic,” Jane grumbled.

  “Romance with Kyle gone sour?” Micki asked innocently.

  “Pretty much,” Jane said.

  Mickie squawked. “You said there was no romance!”

  “There was the potential for one,” Jane said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

  “Bummer.” Micki flipped the sign on the door to Closed. “Does it have anything to do with that therapist visit? I forgot to ask how that went.”

  “That feels like a lifetime ago,” Jane said with feeling. “It opened a can of worms that might have been best left...in the can.” She frowned. “That metaphor is silly.”

  “I still can’t believe Kyle agreed to see a therapist.” Micki lifted a couple of chairs down from the table where they’d been stacked while she mopped the floor. “When Lissa wanted them to see a counselor after they separated, he flat-out refused.”

  Because he was afraid of what would come out during those sessions, Jane guessed. He’d likely been worried Lissa would reveal Daisy wasn’t his daughter. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to face that possibility and its emotional consequences.

  “I guess the timing was right,” she said.

  “Or the persuader was.” Micki raised her eyebrows. “I’ve said it before, Kyle likes you.”

  Like isn’t enough, not with all that’s gone on.

  “I’m not really in an opening-up mood,” Jane apologized. �
��Let’s talk about your good news instead.”

  “Great idea.” Micki beamed. “I have a date with Charles!”

  “He asked you out?” Jane gaped. “I hate to say it, but I owe you twenty bucks.”

  Micki snickered. “Your money’s safe. He didn’t ask me out, not knowingly. He put an ad on SingleInColorado.com, and I replied. He replied to my reply...and we have a date.”

  “Presumably you lied about your age.”

  “Well, duh.” Micki poured two glasses of water from a carafe. “But the thing is, I didn’t lie about anything else. All my answers to his questions, all my emails, were one hundred percent me. And he said I sound charming.”

  “So who does he think you are?”

  “Charles is taking Michelle Barratt, age fifty-three, to dinner in Frisco on Saturday night.”

  “Makes sense to go to Frisco,” Jane approved. Until now, the prospect of a relationship between Charles and Micki had seemed so unlikely, she hadn’t considered the logistics. But any romance would need to be conducted out of the public eye. In a place like Pinyon Ridge, that would be a challenge. “Good luck.”

  “Not so fast, missy,” Micki said. “There’s every chance I’ll walk into the restaurant and he’ll walk right out.”

  “More likely he’ll have a heart attack,” Jane quipped. “Sorry,” she said at Micki’s horrified expression.

  “My point is, I need more coaching.” Micki gulped down some water. “I’m bringing Charles to a crunch point. It’s my big chance to make him see the possibilities, and I don’t want to blow it.”

  “Why would you blow it?”

  “How would I know? I’m not prepared to take the risk. You need to help me.”

  Jane eyed her determined expression. “You’re not going to let this guy get away, are you?”

  Micki looked at her as if she were crazy. “I believe Charles and I could have something amazing. It makes no sense not to do everything I can to grasp it.”