Which had to go totally against Helen’s grain. He strode over to see what he could do for his grieving mother-in-law.
Former mother-in-law.
As he bent to put an arm around Helen, he caught Susan studying him, her eyes thoughtful.
Sam blew out a breath. Everything was coming to a head now. Mindy, Helen, Susan. It was an emotional triangle he couldn’t figure out how to manage, couldn’t fix. He, who could easily run a complex business, had no idea what to do, no idea how to arrange his personal life.
“Helen, you don’t want to make a scene in front of all of these folks,” said Ralph, patting his wife’s arm and looking every bit as confused as Sam felt.
“You get those ponies set up,” Helen snapped at her husband. “I have to talk to Sam.”
After making sure that everyone had access to food and drink, and that Lou Ann Miller was supervising any kids who wanted to swim, Sam led Helen to the shelter beside the pool house. Bushes blocked it from the rest of the house and there was some privacy.
“Hey,” he said once he’d got her seated on a picnic bench and found her a can of soda and a napkin to blow her nose. “You’re going to be okay.” He was terrible at this, terrible at comforting. He remembered all the times he’d tried and failed to comfort Marie. The one thing he’d been able to do to make her feel better, at the end of her life, was the promise. The promise that now dragged at his soul.
“You promised!” It was as if Helen read his mind. “Sam, you promised you’d marry someone like her, someone who would fulfill her legacy. And instead you’ve come up with...that woman.”
“I don’t know where the relationship with Susan is going,” Sam said truthfully, all of a sudden realizing that he did, in fact, have a relationship with her.
“That woman can’t cook, she wants to work rather than staying home, and she says the wrong thing all the time. She’s so...different.”
“That’s for sure,” Sam agreed. “Susan is different.”
“Marie would hate her!”
Sam thought about it and decided that, yes, it was probably true. Marie would at least be made very insecure by Susan. But Marie was insecure, and that was what had made her such a perfectionist. And her insecurity had everything to do with her mother’s demanding standards.
He didn’t want to raise Mindy like that.
“She’d be a horrible mother. And you promised you’d marry someone like Marie.”
Sam sighed heavily. “It’s true. If I want to keep my promise to Marie, I...I can’t marry Susan.” As he said it, he felt trapped in a cage made of his own beliefs, the beliefs he’d always held about what made a good marriage, a good home, a good life.
Desperate for freedom, he lifted his head from his hands...and saw Susan and Mindy standing in the shelter’s gateway.
And from the look on Susan’s face, she’d overheard every word.
She squatted down and whispered something to Mindy. As Mindy ran toward him and Helen, Susan turned and left, almost at a run.
“Come on, Daddy, the kids all want to ride ponies and swim and nobody knows what to do!”
He had to take control of his child’s party. He stood and walked out, feeling dazed, looking for Susan. But she was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
Susan’s world spun as she thought about what she’d overheard. I can’t marry Susan.
Marie would hate her.
She fell backward on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, eyes dry, stomach cold. She lay there for a long time while the sounds of the ongoing party drifted up to her.
It’s fine, she told herself. It wasn’t as if he’d proposed.
But if he’d made some kind of promise about what kind of woman to marry—and who made that kind of promise, anyway?—then what was he doing kissing her?
It was like her dad, saying one thing and doing another. Men were so unreliable.
And what of what Helen had said, about how bad she was at household duties? Hadn’t she proven that to be true?
Just like her ex-fiancé, Sam didn’t want a woman like her.
Her foolish dreams crashed down around her and she squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry. She was a strong woman, and she would survive this. After just a little period of mourning.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Daisy. Where are you?
Susan ignored it. Clicked off her phone.
The ache in her chest was huge, as if someone had dug a hole there with a blunt shovel. It hurt so much that she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. God, help, she prayed, unable to find more words.
In response, she felt a small soothing rush of love.
She’d always gone to church, read her Bible when there was a study group to push her, talked over her questions with friends like Daisy. She’d felt God’s call for her vocation as a teacher. She knew she was saved.
But she’d never thought much about being loved by God. She’d never felt it, not deep inside. Now, the small soothing trickle grew to a warm glow.
Her father had only loved her conditionally, and he’d abandoned her. They spoke rarely by phone, and only at his instigation. Never when she needed him.
Her heavenly Father was different. He was here, waiting for her to reach out. Rest in me, He seemed to say.
Her hurt about Sam didn’t evaporate. In fact, knowing God loved her seemed to unfreeze the tears, and they trickled down the sides of her face and into her hair. She’d never have a future with Sam and Mindy, and the cold truth of that stabbed into her like an icicle, letting her know that somewhere inside, she’d been nursing a dream to life.
Now that dream was pierced, deflated, gone.
Finally, a long while later, she dragged herself out of bed and looked out the window. Most of the kids were inside, no doubt eating birthday cake. The clown was packing up to go. He’d removed his red wig and rubbery nose, but his smile was still painted on.
She watched him pack his clown supplies into his rusty car trunk. He looked tired.
Could she keep a smile pasted on in the face of what she’d heard?
No.
She pulled out her suitcase and hauled a couple of boxes out of the closet. She opened the suitcase on her bed.
She’d started to dream, to hope. Crazy, stupid hope.
And a little girl would suffer because of it. “I want you to be my new mommy,” Mindy had said earlier today, and the words, and the notion, had thrilled Susan way too much.
But she could never, ever be Mindy’s new mommy. Because Sam had made a promise.
She opened her dresser drawers and started throwing clothes randomly into the suitcase, blinking against the tears that kept blurring her vision. From the open window, she heard car doors slamming, adults calling to one another. The parents were starting to arrive. The party was almost over.
She heard steps coming up the porch stairs, double time. “There you are!” Mindy said, rushing in. “Come see all my presents!” Then she seemed to notice something on Susan’s face. She stopped still and looked around the room. “Whatcha doing?”
Susan’s heart was breaking. Rip the bandage off quickly, she told herself. “I have to go away,” she said.
“But you just got back from a trip.”
“No, I mean...I can’t stay here anymore.”
“Why not?”
Why not indeed, when she loved this little girl almost as much as she loved her difficult, obstinate father? “It’s just not working out. But I’ll still see you lots, honey. I’ll see you at school.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
Susan couldn’t help it; she knelt to hug the little girl. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t want to go either, but it’s for the best.”
Mindy’s shoulders shook a little, but she didn’
t sob out loud. So she was starting to learn self-control. Growing up more each day.
Susan hugged the child tighter, but she struggled out of Susan’s arms and ran down the stairs without looking back.
“Whoa there!” came Sam’s voice, drifting up through the windows. “C’mere, sweetie. What’s wrong?”
Panic rose in Susan at the thought of facing Sam. She needed to get this done fast. She’d just take a few things for now and send for the rest, because staying to pack and move would be too painful. Maybe this way, she could avoid seeing Sam or upsetting Mindy again.
She didn’t even have an idea of where to go. Maybe to the little motel in outside of town, until she could figure something else out. Maybe she could go spend the rest of the summer with her mom, drop in unexpectedly just as Mom had done on her.
Heavy steps climbed the wooden stairs, and there was a knock on the open screen door. “Susan?”
She sucked in a breath. Sam. She’d moved too slowly, lost her chance of easy escape. “Come in,” she said, feeling as if she was made of stone.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, stopping at the door of her bedroom.
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
What could she say? Because I’ve fallen in love with you and staying will break my heart? And Mindy’s heart, too, because it can’t be permanent?
Men were not dependable. She’d always known it, but for a while, Sam had seemed to defy the norm. But he’d proven, too, that he couldn’t be trusted, that she’d be better off alone.
“It’s just not working out,” she said, and found the strength from somewhere to snap her suitcase closed.
He stood in the doorway as if he was frozen there.
She had to leave now or she’d never be able to. “Excuse me,” she said, and slipped sideways past him. She trotted out the door and down the stairs.
* * *
Sam didn’t know how long he stood there after Susan left. But finally standing got to be too much of an effort and he sank down onto her bed. Collapsed down to rest his head on her pillow. Inhaled her scent of honeysuckle, and his throat tightened.
Why had she gone? Was it just that she was flighty, transient, easily bored? Had his and Mindy’s life proven too dull for her? Now that she’d earned enough money to send her brother to camp and make things up with her mom, had she gotten everything she could out of him?
But that wasn’t it. Or at least, it wasn’t all. She’d overheard what he’d said to Helen, and it had hurt her.
Having her gone had been bad enough when it was just for a week, but the expression on her face when she’d left had suggested that this time, it was permanent. She’d left for good.
Maybe she was oversensitive. Maybe he’d been right: he needed to stick to his kind of woman. Someone solid and stable and from his background. Someone who valued home and family over excitement. Someone who was in it for the long haul.
But the idea of finding someone else, a clone of the stable, boring blondes he’d dated over the past year, made him squeeze his eyes shut in despair.
He didn’t want that. But he’d made a promise.
He was well and truly trapped.
“Hey, Sam!” He heard voices calling outside the window at the same time his cell phone buzzed.
He didn’t have the energy to pick it up, but his wretched sense of duty made him look at the screen. Daisy. He texted back a question mark, having no heart for more.
Is Mindy with you? she texted.
He hit the call button, and Daisy answered immediately. “Do you have Mindy?”
“No. She was down on the driveway a few minutes ago.”
“Well, everyone’s gone, and I don’t see her anywhere.”
Sam stood and strode to the window. He scanned the yard. He didn’t see her, either.
He did see Susan’s car. Susan and Daisy were standing by it together. So she hadn’t left yet.
“I’m on my way down,” he said, and clicked off the phone.
* * *
Susan followed Daisy back into the house she’d thought she was leaving forever.
“Maybe she just fell asleep somewhere,” Daisy was saying. “Or maybe Troy and Angelica took her home? Would they do that? I’ll call them.”
She was starting to place the call when Susan put a hand on her friend’s arm. “I think I know why she’s missing,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
“What?”
So she filled Daisy in on the skeleton details of how she’d been packing and Mindy had found her and gotten upset.
“I’m going to want to hear more about this later,” Daisy said, “but for now, let’s find Mindy.”
A quick survey of the house revealed nothing. They’d already checked the pool, of course, but they went back to look around the pool house. The place where Susan had heard about Sam’s promise. Where he’d broken her heart. But there was no time for self-indulgence now.
My prickly independence hurt a little girl, she thought as she searched the woods at the edge of Sam’s property. I need to do something about that. If only I hadn’t just run up and packed, Mindy wouldn’t be missing.
They checked in with Sam, who was white-faced and tight-lipped, searching the property lines as well. Phone calls were made, and within minutes Fern and Carlo, Troy and Angelica came back, with Lou Ann Miller to watch Mercy and Xavier.
“I shouldn’t have jumped into packing,” Susan lamented as she, Fern and Angelica walked back into the fields behind Sam’s property, calling Mindy’s name. “I always think I’m just going to run away. If I hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t be missing.”
Fern patted her arm. “Don’t forget the time Mercy went missing. Only it was the dead of winter out at the skating pond. I totally blamed myself, but I’ve come to realize these things happen. We’ll find her.”
“It’s true,” Angelica said, giving her a quick side-arm hug. “Don’t blame yourself. We all make mistakes with kids.”
“You guys are the best,” Susan said, gripping each of their hands, not bothering to hide her tears. She couldn’t even pretend to be an island now. She needed her friends.
They met up with the men and Daisy in front of the house. “She just can’t have gotten far,” Troy was saying. “Look, Angelica and I will head to the surrounding houses.”
“We’ll check the library and the downtown,” Carlo said, “just in case she took off running.”
Sam shook his head. “I have this feeling she’s somewhere in the house. I’m going to search this place from top to bottom. But let’s get Dion involved, just in case.”
At that, Susan’s heart twisted. Everyone else looked half-sick, too, reminded of what could happen to missing little girls.
Daisy made the call to Dion, and then she, Susan and Sam started methodically going through the house. Susan realized anew how huge it was, how many spots there were for a little girl to hide. They searched each floor together, checking in with the other searchers.
Dion came in his cruiser and drove the neighborhoods.
The basement yielded nothing, and the main floor didn’t, either. Susan thought she saw a head of blond hair in the playroom, but it was just a doll.
Upstairs, they went through Mindy’s bedroom and all the closets, and then started on the spare bedrooms. Nothing.
But as they headed back downstairs, Susan heard a sound, like a sob, behind the sunroom door, that mysterious door that always remained closed.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“What? Where?”
Susan indicated the closed door.
“She wouldn’t go in there,” Sam said. “She’s scared of it, because—” He broke off.
“Didn’t you ever change it?” Daisy looked at Sam.
“Not yet,” he said, and opened the door.
Inside was a beautiful, multi-windowed sunroom with wicker furniture and a rattan carpet, decorated in rust and brown and cream. Autumn colors.
In the center of the room was a hospital bed.
In a flash it came to Susan: this must be the place where Marie had died.
There was a bump in the covers of the bed. And there, sleeping restlessly, with the occasional hiccupping sob, was Mindy. Her new little black-and-white dog slept in her arms.
They all three looked at each other. Daisy bit her lip, tears in her eyes. “You have to get rid of that bed, Sam. You have to open this place up.”
He nodded without speaking, and from the way his throat was working, Susan could see that he could barely restrain tears, himself.
“Thank the Lord we found her.” Daisy hugged both of them.
Sam picked Mindy up and carried her to her bedroom while Daisy and Susan called the others.
“Now, what’s this about you packing? Why were you leaving?” Daisy asked as they walked out to meet the others.
Fern fell into step beside them.
“It’s time for girl talk,” Daisy told her. “Susan was thinking of leaving.”
Fern winced. “I remember when you guys talked sense into me,” she said. She beckoned to Angelica, and the four of them headed into the living room, which looked to be the most secluded place right now.
“It’s not that I need sense talked into me,” Susan said, sinking into one of the formal living room chairs. She was too broken down to lie or conceal her feelings. “I love him. And I love Mindy. But he’s never going to be able to commit to someone like me. I heard him say it.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m just too different from him, not his type.”
“Do I look like Carlo’s type?” Fern asked. “I’m a librarian, and he’s a mercenary, or at least he used to be. What could we have in common? But love is strange.”
Angelica leaned forward and took Susan’s hand. “It’s hard to trust in men after you’ve been hurt,” she said. “But it’s so, so worth it.”
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