“Have you heard from Jake?” she asked, as soon as she heard his voice.
“No. Not yet. But I’ve been to see Natalie.”
“Natalie? What for?”
Swiftly he told her all Natalie had said.
Kate sighed. “It doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t. Not at all.” He cast about for something to lift her spirits a little. “But I think you were right about the architect and Natalie.”
He heard her breath hitch. “What? Tell me.”
“I can’t be sure. It’s only a hunch.”
“A hunch will do fine.”
“He was right there beside her every minute I was in the house, up until she walked me to the door.”
“Yes?”
“And he couldn’t help reaching out—when the going got rough for her.”
“Good. Very good.” She was quiet. “Call me. The minute you hear anything.”
“You know I will.”
Back at the farmhouse, Natalie insisted on reading the newspaper story about Monica’s death. What Sterling had told her seemed even worse in black and white.
After that, they waited in an agony of impatience for news. An hour later, Sterling called.
“Natalie, I’ve just received a call from your father.”
Natalie clutched the phone in fingers that felt suddenly numb. “How is he? Is he all right?”
“He’s…fine.” Natalie didn’t like the way he hesitated over the word, but he didn’t give her time to ask him why. “I must leave now. To handle the situation. Do you understand?”
She didn’t, really, but she heard herself saying, “Yes,” anyway.
“Will you call your mother for me and tell her that Jake’s all right?”
“Yes, of course. But, Sterling—”
“I really must go now.” And the line went dead.
Rick took the phone from her nerveless fingers. “What’s happened?”
She looked at him, gaining strength from the steadiness of his gaze. “I’m not sure. Apparently my father has contacted Sterling. And Sterling’s planning to go to him now.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?”
Natalie shrugged helplessly. “How can I tell? He wouldn’t say any more. He was in such a hurry.”
“Natalie, I think Sterling’s a very competent man.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She shook herself. “He asked me to call my mother. I should do that now.”
“Do you want me to do it for you?”
Natalie gaped at him. And not because he’d offered. But because she was so tempted to say yes.
She cleared her throat. “No. No, I’ll do it.”
He handed her back the phone, pressed the plunger to disconnect from Sterling’s call and then ran a finger down her auto-dial list. When he got to her mother’s name, he pushed the button beside it.
“Hello, this is Erica Fortune.”
“Mother. It’s Natalie.”
“Oh, Nat.” The sweet, brittle voice brimmed with gratitude. “I’ve just been going crazy here. I’m so glad you’ve called.”
“I have news.”
Her mother sucked in a quick breath. “Yes?”
Rick was making signals at her. She put her hand over the receiver. “What?”
“Invite her to come over here,” he said. “I’ll bet she’s going nuts all alone at her house.”
She blinked and wondered whether somehow Rick Dalton knew her mother better than she did.
“Natalie? Natalie, are you there?”
“Um, yes, Mom. I’m here. Listen. Why don’t you come on over? To my house. And we’ll talk about all of this.”
Erica jumped at the invitation. “I’ll be right there.”
When her mother arrived, Natalie took her upstairs, where Toby wouldn’t hear, and told her the news Sterling had given her.
“But where is Jake?” Erica wanted to know.
“I don’t know, Mother. Sterling just asked me to call you and tell you that he was all right.”
“‘All right.’ What does that mean?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
When they came downstairs, Rick had lunch made. Toby had set four places.
“Eat with us,” Rick said to Erica.
So they all sat down and ate the soup and sandwiches Rick had prepared. It was a silent meal. In the quiet, Natalie couldn’t help but think of Rick and how terrific he was being about everything.
Once, he looked up from his bowl of soup and gave her a quick, encouraging smile. Her heart headed straight for meltdown.
She quickly lowered her gaze to her own bowl as all the awful things she’d said to him last night scrolled through her brain. She’d been telling herself for weeks that he was troubled and needy and would only use her if she let him get close. But, really, who was the needy one here? More and more, she was finding out that it certainly wasn’t Rick.
“Eat, Nat’lie,” Toby said.
Natalie heard her mother’s soft intake of breath; Erica knew that Toby had been mute for months.
Toby smiled. “It’s good for you.”
Natalie smiled back at the boy as she picked up her spoon and dipped it into the soup.
Erica took her leave soon after they finished eating. But right after she left, the phone started ringing.
Natalie’s sisters and her brother all called; so did Aunt Lindsay and Aunt Rebecca. They’d heard the news and wanted to know whether Natalie could tell them anything more than they’d read in the papers. Natalie reported most of what she knew—leaving out what Jake had said the night before and never mentioning Jake’s shoulder wound or the torn, bloody shirt he’d been wearing when she found him in the library.
Later in the afternoon, Rick said he had to run into Travistown to pick up a carton of milk; lately Toby was drinking the stuff by the gallon, it seemed. He invited Natalie, but she was reluctant to leave the phone, in case there might be more news about her father.
“But maybe you could just let Toby stay here with me,” she suggested hopefully. “I could use the company.”
So Rick went off by himself, promising to return in no time at all.
Natalie’s upstairs phone was cordless, so she took it out on the back lawn with her and sat in a folding chair under a tree, watching as Toby threw a stick for Bernie. After a while, Toby grew bored with that game. He went back in the house and came out again toting a plastic ball and bat. He marched over to Natalie.
“Play ball,” he said.
In spite of all the worries that preyed on her mind, Natalie couldn’t say no to those blue eyes that were just like Rick’s and that adorable smile that was Toby’s alone. She followed him out into the sun and pitched to him for a while. He managed to hit about one in ten balls.
“You need a demonstration of batting technique,” she told him.
He looked skeptical.
“Here.” She held out the ball. “You pitch to me.”
She took the bat and he took the ball. But then it turned out that he needed as much work on his pitching as he needed on his batting. So she set down the bat and went to him and guided him through the moves of pitching underhand.
After ten minutes of practice, he could throw well enough that if she scrambled, she had a chance of getting a hit every now and then.
“Your dad is gonna be impressed,” she told him.
Toby puffed out his skinny chest and looked very proud.
And then, right after that, on the next pitch, he threw a beauty. It floated right toward her plastic bat. She swung at it, smooth and gloriously.
And she connected—boy, did she connect.
All three of them, the boy, the dog and the woman, stood watching with their mouths open as the plastic ball sailed up—and right over the roof of the house.
They heard it bounce on the other side.
Natalie looked at Toby. “C’mon. Let’s get it.” And they took off at a run.
In the front yard,
they discovered that the ball was stuck in a rain gutter of the second-floor roof.
“Aw, cheez,” Toby muttered.
“Whattaya mean, ‘Aw, cheez’?” Natalie demanded. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’re going to have to wait until your dad gets home to get that ball, aren’t you?”
Solemnly Toby nodded.
“Because you think that a kid and a woman and a dog can’t manage something like getting a ball down off a roof on their own, don’t you? You think they have to have a man around to do something like that, right?”
Toby nodded again.
“Wrong.”
Toby grinned.
“Just you watch.”
So Toby and Bernie watched as Natalie got her aluminum ladder from the garage and propped it against the roof of the porch. She was careful to test it for stability before she climbed it.
It wasn’t far at all to the skirtlike porch roof. And from there, she carefully shuffled her way up the roof to the windows and the wall of the second story. Once there, she grabbed the storm drain with one hand—but gently, just for security. And she fished out the plastic ball with the other. Then she turned and held it up in triumph.
Toby clapped appreciatively, and Bernie even let out a bark of admiration. Natalie felt very pleased with herself.
She looked up at the sky and saw how blue and clear it was. And she felt good for the first time that day.
Now all she had to do was get back down the ladder before Rick got home and yelled at her for not waiting and letting him handle it.
She started toward the ladder, smiling, imagining how pleased he’d be when he heard the kind of progress Toby was making with his plastic ball and bat. Why, with a few weeks of constant practice, Toby could turn out to be one fine little slugger. Maybe, now that she thought about it, she wouldn’t say anything to Rick. She’d wait awhile, till she’d had more time to practice with Toby, and then…
She stopped herself in midthought. What was the matter with her? She was thinking of Rick and his son as if they were a permanent part of her life.
Which they weren’t. And never would be.
She had ruined any chance of that last night.
Natalie knew at that moment what a fool she’d really been. And because she was thinking more about Rick than about watching her footing, she tripped.
Fourteen
Natalie heard Toby’s shout of fear as she slid down the slope of the porch roof and right off the edge. She managed to give a little push when she flew out into thin air, and that sent her beyond the hedge that grew thick and scratchy close to the porch railing. She landed on the grass.
Unfortunately, she somehow got her left leg caught under her at an odd angle. She heard a distinct snapping sound.
With a little groan, she rolled onto her back, then lifted up on an elbow and looked down at her leg. It was still straight. But it didn’t feel right. Not right at all. She reached out for it, to rub the place where it had started to throb a little, on the shin right below her knee. The moment she touched it, pain shot through her, hot and fierce. She grunted and leaned back on her hands, which caused another burning stab of pain.
She felt Bernie’s warm breath on her neck. The dog whined and nuzzled her.
“Nat’lie?” Toby was right there beside her, fear and concern written all over his small face.
She hastened to reassure him. “I’m okay. I hurt my leg, that’s all.” Miraculously, she still held the plastic ball in her hand. “Here you go.” She handed it to Toby.
He looked down at it, and then up at her once more.
She gave him the best grin she could come up with, under the circumstances. “And now, how about if you go back around to the other side of the house and get my phone for me? It’s on that little table beside where I was sitting.”
He dropped his ball and took off at a run.
He was at her side again in about a minute. He handed her the phone, and she dialed 911, gave her address and asked for an ambulance. When she was finished, she shifted a little, considering the idea of trying to drag herself into the house. But she gave that thought up right away. The pain in her leg was manageable, as long as she remained still. “I think I’ll just lie here, all right? For a little bit.” Her leg screaming in protest, she lowered herself back onto the grass.
Toby knelt beside her. His small hand smoothed her hair. “Don’t be ’fraid. Daddy will come.”
Natalie said nothing, only forced another smile for him. Toby stroked her hair, as Bernie stretched out on her other side, big and warm and solid. Natalie stared up at the blue bowl of the sky and made herself breathe evenly.
She glanced at Toby. “So much for that cruise.”
His expression turned curious. “Cruise?”
“I was going to fly far away on Monday, and then get on a big boat and go traveling to many exotic lands.”
“Exotic?”
“That’s like strange and different.”
Toby patted her shoulder. “You better just stay here.”
“Yes. Yes, I think I’d better. I think going on a cruise right now would be bad timing, all the way around.”
The decision made, she took Toby’s small hand and held it, closing her eyes with a sigh.
“What’s happened here?”
Natalie opened her eyes to see Rick standing over her.
“Nat’lie’s hurted,” Toby said.
“It’s my leg,” she explained, feeling sheepish. “I think I broke it.”
Rick knelt and touched her leg. Natalie bit back a moan. Toby held her hand tight.
“I’m not going to ask how this happened,” Rick said.
“Good.” It sounded more like a grunt of pain than a word.
Rick went on, “I don’t trust myself to move you. I’m going in and calling an ambulance.”
She felt for the phone on the lawn right beside her, and held it up with a proud grimace. “I did that already.”
He took the phone from her. “Okay, then. All we have to do is wait.”
“I can do that.” She tried to sit up again. Her leg throbbed harder than before. With a whimper she couldn’t quite hold back, she sank to the grass again. “I think.”
When the ambulance arrived, Rick insisted on going to the hospital, too. He went upstairs, put Natalie’s phone in its recharging base and got a change of clothes for her, since one of the EMTs had told him they would probably end up having to cut her leggings off her. Then he took Toby and followed the ambulance in his car. Only Bernie stayed at home, staring after them longingly as they headed away down the drive.
The hospital where the ambulance took Natalie was much smaller than Minneapolis General, where her aunt Lindsay was a resident pediatrician. The emergency room staff consisted of one doctor and one nurse, both of whom had their hands full with other patients when Natalie arrived. It quickly became obvious that it would be a while before Natalie’s leg could be x-rayed and set. More than once, as they waited, Natalie urged Rick to take Toby on home.
“There’s no reason you have to hang around here with me,” she argued. “I can call my mother and she’ll be here in a flash.”
“Your mother’s already upset enough as is,” Rick replied, which was just what Natalie had been thinking herself. “Why worry her any more? We’ll call her when everything’s taken care of and you’re back at home.”
His argument made sense, but still she felt guilty about making him and Toby wait around.
She tried another tactic. “Something might come up about my father. If you were home, you could handle it.”
He looked at her with frank skepticism. “Come on. The most that’s going to happen at home is that someone will call with more information on the situation. They’ll leave a message. And we’ll follow up when we get back. Let it go. I’m not leaving until you can come with me.”
She looked in his eyes and wished she could throw her arms around him and tell him how wonderful he was. But tha
t would be completely out of line, and she knew it. She sighed and stopped arguing. She didn’t feel like arguing, anyway. They’d given her a shot to kill the pain while she waited. And she was feeling halfway between numb and euphoric. In no condition for arguing at all.
“We’ll stay.” Rick made his point one more time, softly, holding her gaze. “Say, ‘thank you.’”
So she did.
When they finally left for home early in the evening, Natalie’s leg was protected by a lightweight cast, which the doctor had assured her would be much more comfortable than the old-fashioned kind. She also checked out with a pair of crutches and a big bottle of pain pills.
“You were lucky,” the doctor told her. “It’s just a hairline fracture of the tibia. Keep it elevated as much as possible, and stay off it if you can. You’ll be your old self again in six weeks or so.”
They gave her another shot before she departed, so the ride home was quite pleasant. She sat in the back, with her leg stretched along the seat, feeling peaceful and dreamy and not really all there.
At home, there were several messages on Natalie’s answering machine. Most were from family members, wanting to know whether Natalie had heard anything new about Jake. Two were from reporters, asking Natalie to please call them back. There was nothing from Sterling. Natalie called the members of her family, ignored the reporters and hoped that her father was still “all right.” She decided not to call Erica after all. There was really no reason to bother her right now. Natalie’s mother had enough on her mind.
Since it was so much trouble for her to get up and down the stairs, Rick decided she would take over his room and he would sleep in a spare room on the second floor.
“Rick, I can’t take your room.”
“Shh… Don’t argue. You’re in no condition to argue, and you know it.”
So Natalie watched, feeling useless and burdensome, as Rick changed the sheets for her, carried some of his things upstairs and brought hers down. Then he went out to the kitchen and cooked them all some dinner. When she hobbled in and offered to help, he told her to go put her leg up, he was managing just fine.
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