“She’s a good kisser.”
The evening sun lit her eyes with a sparkle of amusement. Man, she was fun. Fun to tease. Fun to love. “But I prefer my women a little fuller.”
Lorraine’s brows rose.
“More mature.”
“Big mistake, Beckett.”
“What—” She grabbed his arm and jerked him into the water beside her. He came up sputtering, his jeans weighing a hundred pounds, his T-shirt plastered to his body. “At least you let me take my boots off.”
Lorraine hoisted herself onto her belly on the edge of the pool and grabbed one of his Dingos.
“No, Lorraine, don’t, please, I’m sorry. Don’t throw it in."
“It’s an old pair.”
“But they’re my favorites. I’ll never get a pair to fit the same. I’m sorry. I think you’re sexier than any woman alive. I think you’re Jennifer Lopez and Rhianna and Shakira all rolled into one.”
She dangled the boot over the water, and he knew better than to lunge for it.
“Since when do you think Shakira’s sexy?” she asked.
“No. I don’t know. Actually I never looked close enough to tell. Maybe I was thinking of that llama singing her song in the movie. She’s sexy.”
She laughed out loud and threw the boot onto the deck behind her. “That character in Zootopia is a gazelle, not a llama.”
“If you put fringe on your shorts and shake it, you’d have her beat,” he finished.
She lunged for him and he moved aside and dunked her. “I wasn’t going to get my hair wet,” she sputtered, surfacing. “Now I’ll have to wash it before bed.”
“I’ll help you. We can sit in the tub and I’ll make curly little horns out of your hair with the shampoo.” She wiped water from her eyes and shook her head. “You’re hopeless.”
“Wrong. I have a lot of hope, Lorraine. It’s how I get through every day.”
She reached for him and pulled his face down so she could press her wet cheek against his. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
An hour or so later, she finished blow-drying her hair and found him stretched out on the bed. “Look,” she said. “Body and managerility."
“I’m going to tell them,” he said.
“What? Who?”
“Tom. Dad.”
Immediately serious, she sat beside him, her brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
“I can’t stand it anymore, Lorraine. You know and you still love me.”
Lorrie shook her head, a sick panicky feeling taking over. “I don’t know, I just have to wonder what good could come of it. What would it accomplish for you to tell your dad? Think about it!” It frightened her how they could be physically intimate one moment and have this terrifying wall come up between them the next. “You’re being selfish.”
He sat up, his expression guarded. One minute, they were in complete accord. Then, in the next second, she couldn’t fathom what twists his mind had taken.
“You want your dad to know you’re the one who stayed and ran the orchards,” she accused. “You’re tired of Tom getting all the credit. What difference does it make what your father calls you? It’s you he appreciates. It’s the work you’ve done that has made the place a success. You know it’s you. I know it’s you. Why can’t that be good enough?”
“I’m being selfish?” His tone was incredulous even to his own ears. “I’m willing to admit what I’ve done and bear the humiliation that goes along with it. You just don’t want to be embarrassed. You don’t want your mom and sisters and the teachers at school and the checkout girl at the Country Mart to know you couldn’t tell the difference between your fiance and his brother and married the wrong one!”
He had reduced her nightmarish fears to a matter of vanity. A surge of anger rushed through her limbs and she pushed herself from the bed.
He’d never talked to her like this before.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Her voice, though a near whisper, cracked. “Haven’t you put me through enough hell without adding to it to ease your conscience?” Her body trembled. “If you tell Gil, I swear to you I’ll leave. I’ll take the kids and I’ll go.”
She hadn’t realized how forcefully she felt it, how sure she was that she didn’t want Dan to reveal their secret, until the words were out of her mouth. They were unfair words, manipulative words. She knew exactly how much he feared her ever saying them.
Or ever following through.
His composure slid and she glimpsed the vulnerable core she’d deliberately attacked.
He got to his feet and she backed away.
They stared at each other and a muscle in his jaw twitched.
“You said you wanted to figure this out together,” she reminded him, trying to smooth over her rash threat. “What happened to that?"
“All right,” he said finally. “You win. I won’t tell Dad."
Lorrie regretted what she’d had to do to keep her sanity. But part of the weight eased from her chest.
“But I’m telling Tom.”
Telling Tom was fair. Telling Tom was logical. Telling Tom could backfire and have the same results as telling Gil, but somehow she didn’t think it would. If it did, then she would have to deal with it. “And please. Please show him how important it is to protect the children."
He nodded without looking at her.
“When will you tell him?”
He laid his palm on his chest as if the thought already pained him. “I don’t know. Tonight if I have the guts.”
They’d said too many hurtful things. Things that had come too painfully close to the truth. They both knew it. They both resented it. Neither was ready to forget.
Dan grabbed his boots and left the room. Lorrie sank to the bed’s edge and covered her lips with trembling fingers. Would this nightmare never end? How could it? All she could do was protect her children. And maybe in doing so, she’d salvage a little of her self-respect.
And right now, she needed all the self-respect she could muster.
He found Tom in the tractor garage, the lights blazing to chase off the night, the wrecked Harley a heap of parts. “What are you doing?”
Tom glanced up. “This isn’t as bad as it looked. The frame’s good. The exhaust is toast, a lot of the chrome too, but it can be fixed.”
Dan inspected the parts his brother had removed. “I wish I could say the same about my life,” he thought aloud.
Tom set the wheels aside. “Trouble in Blissville?”
“Bigger than trouble.”
Tom pulled up a couple of wooden crates. “Park it and tell me.”
It seemed like such a natural thing to do, Dan didn’t think twice. He sat and watched Tom take off the gas tank. Neither of them spoke for long minutes, but the silence was comfortable.
Finally, Dan worked up the courage. His heart tripped against his shirtfront. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Shoot.”
“There’s no good way to say it. It can’t be softened or hedged.”
Tom looked up.
Now or never. Dan swallowed. “I’ve been lying to you.”
His brother’s glance darted uncomfortably back to the wrench in his hand.
“Years ago. Before you left, you were seeing Lorraine. Dad wanted the two of you to get married. He kind of pushed you that way and her father pushed her. I—I had always had a crush on her. Way back when Dad took us to the Legion Hall. I guess maybe I was even jealous that you were the one she paid attention to. ’Course you were better at everything than I was. You made friends easier. People liked you.”
This was turning into more of a confession than Dan had planned. But he couldn’t tell Tom the truth without telling him why.
“Anyway, when you decided to leave, you came and told me. I gave you my bike. This bike.”
Tom still didn’t raise his head.
“You left me with the job of telling Dad and Lorraine that you’d gone. I sat for hours trying to figure out
how to do that.” Dan let silence stretch between them for several minutes before he went on. “What this boils down to is that I didn’t tell them you’d gone. When Lorraine came looking for you, I asked her to marry me. And I told her I had gone. I married her, pretending to be you. You’re not Dan. You’re Tom.” Dan waited for an explosion. He’d prepared himself for resentment. For shock and disbelief. For a hundred questions. He’d been unfair to Tom ever since his arrival. Anger would have been normal.
Finally Tom raised his head. If Dan hadn’t known better, he’d have thought the look behind his eyes was guilt of his own.
“I know,” was all he said.
Confusion clouded Dan’s comprehension. “What?”
“I know who I am. I just didn’t know why you were calling yourself by my name.”
Dan gaped at him, stunned. “You know? You know who you are?”
Tom nodded.
“Then why the hell didn’t you let on?”
Tom shrugged. “I’ve just been biding my time, trying to figure out what was going on.”
“How long have you known?”
“Just this week. I remembered the day you and Thad were fixing the moped.”
“And you never let on.”
“I was too confused. I finally remembered who I was, and there you were going around as me. Not exactly your average situation.”
Dan shook his head.
“I guess I get it now,” Tom said. “You were in love with Lorrie all along?”
“I must have been.”
“So you thought if you pretended you were me you’d have her.”
“It worked.”
“What did you think would happen if I ever came back?”
“I stayed awake nights afraid of that,” Dan admitted.
“And then I finally did come back, but I didn’t remember who I was.” He gave a sharp, humorless laugh. Outside locusts droned. Tom laid the wrench on the concrete. “There’s one thing I have to know,” he said.
Dan agreed.
“Who is Thad’s father?”
So he’d thought of that, had he? The fact that he had to wonder hit Dan with a pang like a punch in the gut.
“I am.” Saying the words gave him immense satisfaction.
Tom’s deep blue eyes assessed his as though searching for the truth. “And Lorrie?”
Dan looked at him.
“She knows now?”
“She knows. I told her after you showed up.”
Tom exhaled a deep gust of breath. “Man. She never suspected?”
“No.”
“How did she take it?”
Dan stood. He paced a few feet away and back, raking his fingers through his hair. “Just like you’d think At first she couldn’t believe it. And then she got mad. She’s mad. She’s hurt. She’s betrayed. She’s ashamed. She has a right to everything she’s feeling.”
“What a mess.”
Dan stopped beside him.
“I feel...” Tom glanced up, then away. “Partly to blame.”
It was Dan’s turn to emit a wry laugh. “You didn’t have a clue what I did after you left. How can you be to blame?”
“I left. I left everything and everyone in the lurch. I even expected you to explain to Mom for me.”
“You do owe me for that one,” Dan pointed out.
“Dan.”
Hearing his name brought a sharp sting to his eyes. He inspected the metal crossbeams overhead. “Yeah.”
"I’m sorry.”
Dan struggled with his emotions. “I’m the one who should be saying he’s sorry.”
“All right.”
Dan shot Tom a glance and saw he wore a grin.
“I think I owe you an explanation, too,” Tom said.
“I know why you left.”
“You know how it was with Dad. You don’t know the rest of it.”
Feeling more at ease, Dan settled back on the crate.
“I had a drug problem,” Tom said bluntly.
Dan tried to take in his words.
“Oh, I didn’t think so at the time,” he went on. “After high school and my attempt at college I was still having a good time. Experimenting. Thinking I had a handle on my life. Dad was my problem. This place was my problem. You,” he said, gesturing with a greasy hand, “were my problem. I could have quit any time I wanted. I just didn’t want to.”
Dan absorbed the confession, but a layer of shock kept it from completely sinking in.
“It wasn’t until later. A long time later, when I was doing hard stuff, that I realized it had control of me. I couldn’t keep a job. Couldn’t keep a woman.” He turned to the bike strewn across the floor. “This is the only thing I ever hung onto.”
As many times as Dan had imagined his brother’s life away from here, he’d never imagined it as Tom described it to him now.
“The day I polished it and took it for an estimate so I’d have money to get high, was the day I knew I had to get help. Instead of taking the money for the bike, I rode it to a treatment center in Texas and checked myself in. One of the counselors kept it in his garage for me until I got out.”
“I wish I’d known,” Dan said helplessly.
“I worked my way back north. When I met Cedra in Tennessee, I stayed longer than I’d stayed anywhere before. Got my own place, started saving. She knew that part about me. Somehow it’s easier to tell people you’re an addict than to tell them you ran out on a dying mother and a father who needed your help.”
“Tom, I—I...” He couldn’t even think of a response.
“But now you know... you know why I didn’t come back all that time.”
“It’s hard knowing,” Dan told him, honestly.
After a minute, Tom asked, “What are you going to do now?”
Dan shrugged. “Lorraine won’t let me tell Dad the truth.”
“I can understand that.”
“What about Cedra? Does she know you have your memory back?”
“She knows. I didn’t tell her I’m really Tom, though. I figured there’s time for that.”
“I’ve asked Lorraine to marry me.” The words sounded funny. He’d gone through the ceremony once, lived with her as man and wife ever since, yet he’d had to ask her again.
Tom looked perplexed, too.
“We’re not really married,” he explained. “Because I used your name on the license.”
“I’m not married to her then, am I?”
Dan almost laughed. “No.”
“Well, what about—”
His question was cut off by a scream coming from the direction of the house. Dan sat up straight. Not a scream like one of the kids playing; it was too late for that anyway.
He heard it again. A sound of pure terror. Rising, he knocked over the crate and tore out of the garage.
“Da-a-an!” Screams pieced the air from the direction of the house. “Da-a-an!” Was that Lorraine? The outdoor lights were on, illuminating the redwood fence and the deck. Water splashed and a woman sobbed.
Dan ran through the open gate and up the stairs to where Lorraine, in a drenched nightgown, knelt over a small figure and sobbed.
The acrid smell of vomit met his nostrils at the same time he saw his tiny daughter lying limp on the deck, her hair and pajamas plastered to her pale skin.
Autumn.
Chapter Twelve
The scene came into focus, and horror like he’d never known slammed into his skull. Ignoring the nauseating smell and Lorraine’s near-hysteria, Dan assessed Autumn’s unconscious condition and knelt beside her.
“She’s not breathing. Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Lorraine sobbed beside him. “Oh, Autumn, baby. Baby, oh, this is my fault.”
Sensing Tom’s presence, Dan glanced past her overwrought face and discovered his brother’s tense one. “Call 9-1-1,” he ordered.
Tom took off like a shot.
Dan tried to remember his shaky CPR training, telling himself calmness was the first priority. Calmness wou
ld have been a whole lot easier if it hadn’t been his daughter lying here, if Lorraine wasn’t in a state of alarm, and if he remembered what to do. But he had no choice. The paramedics at the rescue station were miles away and there was no telling how long Autumn hadn’t been breathing.
Someone had to act quickly.
He placed his fingers beneath her chin and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He leaned down and placed his ear against her nose. Nothing. He glanced at her lifeless face. She had a translucent blue lump on her forehead near her hairline.
After clearing her mouth with his finger, he tipped Autumn’s head back to clear the airway, remembering that much from watching videos and practicing on a dummy. Dan pinched her nose, covered her mouth with his and blew. Two quick breaths for a kid, wasn’t it? How hard was appropriate for a four-year-old? Could he hurt her?
“She threw up all that water, why doesn’t she breathe?” Lorraine asked in a voice that trembled, but had gained more control.
Through her soaked pajamas, Dan felt Autumn’s chest for the appropriate place, covered it with the heel of his hand and pressed. Vaguely he recalled that it was unlikely to actually break any ribs, but still he was afraid to push too hard. “Keep count, Lorraine. That’s two.”
She obeyed. “Three. Four. Five.”
He moved back to Autumn’s mouth and breathed for her. Two quick ones and back to her chest for five palpitations. He repeated the process again and again.
Lorraine lost count to sob for seconds before she got herself under control again.
Tom knelt on Autumn’s other side. Vaguely, Dan realized the boys had come onto the balcony above and one of them was crying. “Let me take a turn, Dan,” Tom said gently.
Dan kept count for Tom, watched him breath into Autumn’s mouth. It was easier doing it himself: He didn’t have to think as much. An eternity passed. Cedra brought a robe for Lorraine, urged her away from the men, and held her trembling shoulders.
Finally, sirens broke through the stillness of the night. Dan knew all three volunteer paramedics who showed up.
“You’ve got a pulse,” Rob Welch said.
“Why isn’t she breathing?” With his hands on his knees, Dan watched.
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