In My Dreams

by Muriel Jensen

  She carried a stack of dish towels into the kitchen. “I’ve never noticed that your world was smaller than other people’s. I’ve seen you all over the place. I think you’re very brave, an adventurer, even.”

  “Real adventurers are often alone. It isn’t everyone who wants to share that kind of life. Anyway, I was thinking of reciting ‘I Hear America Singing’ for the show. Do you think that would appeal to anyone today?”

  “I do.” She put coffee at his left hand and a plate of coffee cake in his lap. “In a couple of weeks we’ll have our first rehearsal and see what kind of reaction we get from the other participants.”

  “I wonder if Vinny found his old drummer.”

  “He did. They’re doing a Sinatra medley. I’m trying to talk Margaret into joining them for a number. I think it would be wonderful.”

  He frowned in Sarah’s direction, a forkful of coffee cake halfway to his mouth. “Then it would turn into a murder-mystery dinner, rather than a talent show.”

  She admitted as much with a sigh. “True. But I’m going to keep working on them. They used to be friends once.”

  “Things change, Sarah. You can’t fix everything for us. You can fix meals and wonderful treats, but you can’t fix our lives.”

  The notion made her stubborn. A lot he knew.

  * * *

  JACK STOOD SEVERAL rungs from the top of an ancient, rickety ladder, changing the lightbulb in what was now Sarah’s room. It smelled of her already, he noted, that subtle blend of flower notes and vanilla. He removed the inverted bowl fixture and placed it on the bucket shelf, then unscrewed the spent bulb.

  “What are you doing?” Ben asked.

  Screwing the bulb in with one hand, Jack glanced down at his brother, who was still in uniform. “I’m changing a bicycle tire. Must have picked up a nail.” At Ben’s groan of impatience, he asked, “Well, what does it look like I’m doing? One bulb was burned out, so I thought I’d change them both. Sarah said we should think of her as a sister and not do everything for her, but I wouldn’t ask a sister to get up on this shaky ladder.”

  “Dad says that was the first thing he bought when he started the business.” Ben’s voice was less defensive now. Jack felt his own defenses relax.

  “Yeah. I’m not wild about using it, but it was on the back porch. Handier than getting mine out of the carriage house.”

  “Is she settling in okay? I haven’t seen much of her.”

  “Seems to be.” Jack removed the second bulb and handed it down to Ben. “This still has a little life in it. We can put it in the basement. The one over the dryer is starting to flicker.”

  “Right.”

  The air was heavy with Ben’s unasked question.

  “We were talking about hydrangea,” Jack said into the silence. He screwed in the second bulb. “Blue ones.”

  “What?”

  “When you walked into the carriage house with Sarah’s bear, and got all bent out of shape when you saw us together. She was telling me there should be dried hydrangea in the fireplace in the summer.” He picked up the glass fixture.

  “Yeah, well. I’m not as stupid as I look, Jack.” Ben sounded testy.

  “That’s a relief. We’d have to hide you from the asylum if you were.”

  Ben ignored his smart remark and said, “It doesn’t matter what you were talking about, I know what you were thinking about.”

  Jack held the fixture in place with one hand and screwed in the pin with the other. “Now you’re a stupid mind reader. Those two qualities aren’t usually found together.”

  “You like her.”

  “She’s a likable woman.”

  “Damn. I’m going to shake this thing until you fall off it, Jack. I’m trying to discuss a problem here.”

  Jack climbed calmly down. He knew Ben hated cool reason when he was passionate about something. And he was clearly still passionate about Sarah. “Why is there a problem here?” Jack asked. “You invited her to live with us. You asked me to pick her up at the time of the fire and bring her home. Your department’s understaffing keeps you away at unpredictable hours, so there will be times when the two of us are alone together. You can’t blame me for that, Ben. I know you’d like to, but you started all this.”

  “Just admit that you’re attracted to her.” There was little subtlety in Ben.

  Jack could be subtle but not reticent. “I’m attracted to her.”

  Ben glared back at him. “I don’t want it to be over between Sarah and me. And if you aren’t in the middle being...you...” The simple word had a distinctly condemning connotation. “She might just wake up one day and decide she does want children. And me.”

  Jack wanted to be offended, but he wasn’t sure if that remark warranted it or not. “Being me? Who do you want me to be?”

  Ben tossed the bulb down on the soft bedcover and walked out of the room, calling over his shoulder, “You know what I mean.”

  He didn’t. And he thought their conversation was beginning to sound like something from a counseling-session workbook. Jack followed him into the kitchen where he was pawing through the refrigerator.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I thought I was the stupid one.”

  “That still holds true. Tell me what we’re talking about.”

  Ben slammed the fridge door closed and leaned on it. “We’re talking about Sarah, who doesn’t want children, but would probably change her mind for you.” Again, that angry emphasis of the pronoun.

  Desperate to make sense of all this, Jack struggled to remain calm. “If she was going to change her mind, why wouldn’t she do it for you? I’m the one with the bad mother and the father who was stupid enough to fly while high on drugs.”

  Ben growled. “What your parents did were personal choices. They had nothing to do with you. Somehow, their faulty genetics produced you—the golden child who came out of a hideous situation and got everything right.”

  Jack was getting angry. “You think I’m somehow charmed, is that it? Or does this have to do with our parents and not just mine? You never liked that I wanted to work with Dad when you didn’t, that I have the same interest and skill set he has. He’s your natural father, not mine. Do you hate that our parents love me, too, even though I’m grafted onto this family?”

  Ben untied his creaky leather belt with gun, flashlight and handcuffs, and placed it on the back of a chair.

  “Afraid you’ll be tempted to shoot me?” Jack taunted, going to pour two cups of coffee.

  Snorting scornfully, Ben retrieved a bottle of brandy and carried it to the table. “I could take you down with one hand. Don’t need a bullet.”

  Carrying the mugs to the table, Jack snorted back. “Yeah, right. Remember the old Chevy incident?”

  They’d fought over driving an old Camaro their father had held onto for them to use through high school. They’d had to share it, and one particular summer evening when they’d gone to a beach party with a pair of sisters, they’d fought over who would drive home. Ben had had two beers more than Jack and Jack had fought for the keys. Jack had won, but only because Ben had been somewhat worse for wear.

  “I thought we decided not to bring that up since I have no real memory of what happened,” Ben said. “You could be lying to me for all I know.”

  “So, what’s your problem then?”

  Ben poured a tot of brandy into each mug. He pulled one toward him and leaned back in his chair. He looked grim, clearly reluctant to say what was on his mind.

  “Are you still on duty?” Jack asked. “Should you be drinking?

  “No. Have to take my uniform to the cleaners, so I just wore it home.” He tore open the top buttons of his shirt.

  “Just spit it out,” Jack advised. “Don’t try to sugarcoat it. You hate
me, after all?” He took a sip of the laced coffee to fortify himself in case the answer was yes.

  “What I didn’t like as a kid,” Ben replied, his voice a decibel lower than it had been, “was that Mom and Dad did seem happier after you came.” He sighed heavily, drank his own fortifying sip of coffee, then looked Jack in the eye and admitted, “I know it’s a small-minded thought, but I can’t help it. It’s there. You sort of filled things out. Made it better.”

  Jack looked into his brother’s eyes and couldn’t remember a time when Ben had expressed any resentment of him. They’d fought, competed, been jealous of each other, but all that had been classic sibling stuff. “You lobbied for them to adopt me,” he reminded Ben.

  “I know. You were important to me then, and you’re important to me now. I just hate that you’re sometimes—often—better than I am.”

  “What?” Jack stared at him in disbelief. “You’re a cop who’s been commended over and over. You have a million friends in a town of only 4,000 people. You’re on the fast track for promotion and women love you. I don’t see—”

  “Sarah doesn’t,” Ben interrupted.

  “That’s bull. She doesn’t want children. You don’t know that she doesn’t want you.” What was he doing?

  “If she truly loved me,” Ben asked morosely, “wouldn’t she consider thinking about having children...for me?”

  “Well, yeah, but the reverse is true, too, isn’t it? If you truly loved her, wouldn’t you consider living without children...for her?”

  “God.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ben nodded broodingly into his coffee and then looked up at Jack as though he had more to say.

  “Go ahead,” Jack encouraged. “I can take it.”

  Ben sighed and took a long pull on the cup. “I saw a look in her eyes when she was with you in the carriage house that she’s never given me.”

  Jack gave himself a minute to absorb that, trying not to react. Was that true? “You were jealous and imagining things.”

  “You know me, Jack. I don’t imagine anything. I deal only in reality—passionately, but honestly. You’re going to make this fall apart for me.”

  Jack thought he should probably do the noble thing and back away, but the past six years of his life had been about stepping up, pushing through. It was who he’d become. “Ben,” he said levelly, “if you’re dealing only in reality, think about it. If you and Sarah disagree on the issue of children, there’s already a lot against you.”

  Ben’s expression was indecipherable, except that it was absolutely black. “Are you hoping to pick up the pieces?”

  I wish, Jack thought. Aloud he said, “Maybe. But I want kids, too. The only difference between you and me is that I’ve lived most of my life wishing I could change things. Facing reality is good, but figuring out how to reshape it has kept me sane—with my birth mother, in the Middle East and...right now.”

  Running a hand over his face, Ben said bleakly, “So we’re in love with the same woman. Seriously.”

  “Looks like it.”

  Ben stood abruptly. “You get no quarter because you’re my brother.”

  Jack took that threat as a good sign. He still called him his brother. Jack nodded. “Neither do you.”

  “All right.” Ben took his mug to the counter. “She’s late tonight,” he said as though they hadn’t just discussed a life-altering love for the same woman.

  “She’s at a Coast Care meeting.”

  “I’m going to meet Mario and Rico at the Water Dog. Want to come? There’s a baby shower or something and the ladies are out.”

  “No, thanks. I’m still trying to find some sign of my sisters.”

  Ben wandered back to the table, the subject of Sarah shelved for the moment. Jack had pulled his laptop toward him and Ben leaned over him to look. “What have you tried?”

  Jack listed all his efforts, then told him about finding Miguel Ochoa’s obituary. “I thought that might be her father, but she isn’t listed among the family.”

  “You know, there’s a website called TombStones.com where family and friends can leave a message on the deceased’s page. If that was her father and she was alienated from the family or something else separated them, she might use that as a way to, you know, let the universe know she still cares. We use it in investigations all the time. And the site logs not only the message, but where it came from. You might try it.”

  When Ben left, Jack went to that website.

  He put in Miguel Ochoa’s name and the date of his death, and came up with his page. There was a photo of his tombstone and one message: “Your daughter forever, Isabel.” Jack remembered that Isabel had been mentioned in the obituary. No messages from Corie. Or Elizabeth. Well. He’d been crazy to think it would be that simple.

  With a groan of exasperation, he turned off the computer and went to the carriage house where he prepared to paint the bedroom. If he exhausted himself before he went to bed, maybe he wouldn’t dream.

  * * *

  SARAH PULLED HELEN PALMER’S RAV4 into the driveway and parked beside Jack’s SUV. Thank God for the extra car that was left behind when the senior Palmers went south for the winter, and for Helen’s fall and winter wardrobe from which Sarah had borrowed jeans that were too short, but passed when worn with the boots she’d been wearing when she escaped the fire, and a nubby red sweater that was wonderfully cozy. Sarah was happy to see Ben must have met friends for dinner or drinks, as he often did.

  Her living with him and Jack now made everyday things so much more awkward than they’d been before. She saw it in Jack, too. She was attracted to him, but she put that down to all the trauma of the past week, the status of her relationship with Ben changing and the strangeness of having lost all familiar possessions. But Jack seemed uncomfortable, too. There was a tension between them like an electrified fence.

  She guessed things were a little iffy between Ben and Jack, also. Both of them were courteous to her, but a little less so with each other. The last thing in the world she wanted was to cause a problem between the two of them.

  She saw a light on in the carriage house and was surprised that Jack was still working. Maybe that was good. She was too tired tonight to deal with whatever little drama they had going on.

  She carried her purse and cooler bag into the house and set them down on the kitchen table. The house was absolutely quiet. She made a cup of tea, put the things from her food bag into the dishwasher and then went upstairs, thinking that going to bed early sounded wonderful. She was bone-weary.

  Her room was cool and dark. She hit the light switch with her elbow and was surprised when every corner of the room lit up. She dropped her bag on the bed and looked at the light fixture. Two bulbs were visible through the glass. Jack must have changed them. Ben had been gone all day.

  Jack Palmer, she thought. Bringer of light.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SAME THING AGAIN. Jack was watching the action from outside himself. His mother was walking down the dusty Iraqi lane, but his dream self didn’t know it was her. He tried to tell him, but he wasn’t listening. He was standing on the turret, this time steeling himself to hold the M4 steady.

  She climbed onto the turret—always a surprise because it was hard for a man to swing up there, but she did it easily. He told himself to shoot, but he still wasn’t listening. He saw his own horrified look as she grabbed his hands and fought with him for possession of the weapon.

  He tried to kick her away, but as they struggled, fingers on one hand locked, the gun between them in the other, she looked into his eyes. Hers were deep blue, like Cassidy’s eyes, and for the moment there was no drugged glaze, no lack of recognition. They were a mother’s eyes, a sober mother’s eyes. She told him silently that she knew what she had done to him, to the girls.

  And in t
hat moment of his distraction, of their rare emotional connection, he loosened his grip on her and she got the gun away. He knew she was going to kill him. She’d been a danger to him since he was a baby. She’d dropped him, forgotten to feed him, let him do pretty much what he’d wanted without fear for his safety.

  Now she was going to finish the job.

  He watched his shoulders square, felt his spine stiffen with resolve. He’d spent his entire life surviving her against impossible odds. She wasn’t going to get him now. At least not today.

  He tried to grab for the gun, but she danced out of his reach. “No, Jack,” she said in an eerily quiet voice. “No.”

  The distant him, watching the struggling him, knew it was over. But he had to try. He flung himself at her and they flew off the Humvee together, struggling for the gun.

  * * *

  SARAH WHACKED AT Jack with the wooden spoon he was trying so hard to get away from her. He was dreaming again, and while she’d promised Ben she’d keep her distance, she was too much the nurse to watch that painful struggle and not try to do something about it.

  She’d better take a strength-building class, she told herself as Jack grabbed for her and went sailing off the bed, taking her to the carpet with him. Her body trapped under the steel of his, she was unable to move, except to whack him with the wooden spoon she still held.

  “Wake up, Jack!” she shouted in his ear right next to her lips. “It’s Sarah. This isn’t Iraq and I’m not your mother! Jack!”

  She felt him come awake. The tension in his body held for one moment while he propped himself up on his elbows, probably assessing where he was, guessing what had happened. His body straddling hers, he looked into her eyes, his angry and hard, then softening as he understood the situation. She was aware of every inch of him in contact with every inch of her. A small shudder rippled along her nerves.