by Janet Dailey
Dobie was out working the fields. With luck, she'd be packed and gone before he finished. She hadn't seen him and didn't want to. Telling him she was sorry again wouldn't undo the damage she'd done to all their lives.
Hearing the sound of a car’s engine growing steadily louder, Abbie turned to glance down the driveway. When she recognized MacCrea's car, she frowned in surprise. What if Dobie saw him?
She tried to hide her concern as she walked over to him. "What are you doing here?"
"I was hoping to find Alex. You haven't seen him, have you?"
"Alex? No. Why?"
"I just came from River Bend. They're turning the place upside down looking for him. Nobody's seen him since late this morning. I thought. . . he might have come over here to play with Eden."
"We've been here nearly all day. Besides, after the heavy rains the other night, the creek between here and River Bend has been running bank full." The instant the words were out, Abbie felt a cold chill of fear. "Mac, you don't think he would have tried to cross it. I know he's only a little boy, but surely he would see that it's too dangerous."
Looking grim, MacCrea opened the car door. "I'd better go look."
"I'm coming with you." Abbie hurried around to the other side.
MacCrea drove out of the yard onto the rutted track that led to the lower pasture and the creek. When they reached the gate, Abbie hopped out to open it, then scrambled back inside after closing it behind them.
"There's a natural ford right along there where we usually cross." She pointed to a section of the tree-lined creek just ahead of them.
Short of the area she'd indicated, MacCrea stopped the car. "Let's get out and walk."
The blue sky, the bright, shining sun, and the rain-washed green of the trees gave a deceptive look of peace and quiet to the scene. But the stream was no longer a narrow rivulet of water trickling slowly over its bed of sand and gravel. The runoff from the recent heavy rain had turned it into an angry torrent. Its roar almost drowned out the sound of the two slamming car doors.
Linking up in front of the car, they paused to scan the shaded bank and the swollen creek, its dark waters tumbling violently down the narrow channel, hurling along branches, dead limbs—anything that got in their path.
"Where do you think he is?" Abbie was more worried than before. "He has to know they're looking for him by now."
"Let's hope he just doesn't want to be found."
"He wouldn't have tried to cross that," she insisted. "He's too timid." She couldn't find any consolation in that thought as she stared at a section of the bank on the opposite side that had caved in, undermined by the tremendous onslaught of water.
"We'd better split up and cover both sides." MacCrea headed for the creek's natural ford.
"Be careful," she urged.
Pausing, he smiled reassuringly at her, then waded into the rushing stream, picking his way carefully. At its deepest point, the water came up to his hips. . . well over a little boy's head. As she watched him fight to keep his balance in the strong current, she realized that Alex wouldn't have had a chance if he'd fallen in.
Safely on the other side, MacCrea waved to her, then looked around. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted, "I found some tracks! He's been here!" He gestured downstream, indicating they should start their search in that direction.
Abbie was more worried than before, aware that MacCrea had chosen this direction thinking that if Alex had fallen in, the raging torrent would have carried his body downstream. His body. No, she refused to think like that. Anxiously she scanned the bank ahead of her, keeping well away from the edge as she moved slowly along, paralleling MacCrea's progress on the other side.
Thirty feet downstream, she spied something yellow caught in a tangle of debris by the opposite bank. "MacCrea, look!" She pointed to what looked like a piece of clothing and unwillingly recalled that Alex had a jacket that color. She held her breath, wanting to be wrong, as MacCrea worked his way to the spot and snared the yellow item from the trapped debris with a broken stick. It was a little boy's yellow jacket.
"Alex!" Abbie called frantically. "Alex, where are you?" She hurried along the bank, mindless of the thickening undergrowth that tried to slow her, now doubly anxious to find Alex. The roaring creek seemed to laugh at her as it rolled ahead of her, a churning, seething mass of water, silt, and debris.
She thought she heard a shout. She stopped to listen, then noticed that MacCrea wasn't anywhere in sight. Had she gotten ahead of him in her search? Hastily she backtracked.
"Abbie!" MacCrea waved to her from the opposite bank holding a muddy boy astraddle his hip. "I found him!"
She started to cry with relief and pressed a hand to her mouth to cover the sob. Alex was all right. He was safe. Finding a place to ford the stream, MacCrea carried the boy across. Abbie waited tensely on the opposite side, not drawing an easy breath until they were beside her. "Where did you find him?" she asked as MacCrea set him down.
"He was hiding in some brush."
Abbie stooped down to look for herself and make sure he was all right. Up close, she could see the streaks on his grimy cheeks left by tears. "We've been looking for you, Alex. We thought. . .” But she didn't want to voice the fear that was still too fresh. Smiling, she lifted the brown hair off his forehead, damp with perspiration, and smoothed it back off his face. "We'd better take you home."
Abruptly he pulled back. "No. I don't want to go there."
"Why?" Abbie was taken aback by his vehemence. "Your mother and father will be worried about you. You don't want that."
"She won't care," he retorted, tears rolling down his cheeks again. "She doesn't want me. She told me to go away. I did and I'm never going back!"
"Alex, I'm sure she didn't mean it."
"Yes, she did," he asserted, then, as if it was all too much for him to bear alone, he threw himself at Abbie and wrapped his arms tightly around her neck to bury his face against her and cry. "I don't want to go back. I want to stay with you and Eden."
Moved by his wrenching plea, Abbie glanced helplessly at MacCrea. MacCrea crouched down beside them and laid a comforting hand on Alex's shoulders as they lifted spasmodically with his sniffling sobs.
"That's not really what you want, Alex," he said. "Think how much you'd miss your father."
"He works all the time."
"Not all the time."
"He could come see me when he doesn't," Alex declared tearfully, obviously having thought it all out.
"Oh, Alex," Abbie murmured and hugged him a little tighter, feeling his pain. "I'm sorry, but it just wouldn't work."
"But why?"
"Because. . . you belong with your mommy and daddy."
"Come on, son. I'll take you home." But as MacCrea tried to pull him away from Abbie, Alex wrapped his arms in a stranglehold around her neck.
"No!"
"I'll carry him," she told MacCrea. Alex clung to her, winding his legs tightly around her middle as she walked back to the car with MacCrea. She continued to hold him once they were inside, cuddling him in her arms like a baby.
"I'll drop you off at your car," MacCrea said.
"No. I'm coming with you." She'd made up her mind about that at the creek. "There are a few things I want to say to Rachel."
"Abbie." His tone was disapproving.
She didn't need to hear any more than that. "I'm going." Nothing and no one was going to stop her, not even MacCrea.
A half-dozen sweaty men, exhausted by their search for the missing boy in the full heat of the day, hunkered together in the shade of a surviving ancient oak, guzzling water from the jugs brought by the house staff and silently shaking their heads in answer to the questions put to them by both Lane and Rachel. Few even looked up when MacCrea drove in with Abbie and Alex.
Abbie struggled out of the passenger side, with Alex still in her arms. At first no one noticed her, their attention all on MacCrea, who was nearest them. As she came around the front of the car, Rache
l saw the boy in her arms.
"Alex! You've found him!" Relief flooded her expression as she broke into a run. "Oh, Alex, where have you been? We've been so worried about you."
"He was over at the farm," Abbie answered as Alex tightened his arms around her.
At the sound of her voice, Rachel finally noticed Abbie. Immediately she stopped, wary and suspicious. "Why are you carrying him? Give me my son."
As she tried to take him from her, Alex cried out and hung on to Abbie more fiercely. "No! I want to stay with you."
"What have you done to him?" Rachel glared.
"It's not what I've done, but what you've done to him," Abbie answered as Lane joined them, his sunburned face still showing the mental and physical stress of the search, his shirt drenched with perspiration.
"Is he all right?" he asked worriedly.
"He isn't hurt, if that's what you mean," Abbie replied. Alex didn't resist when Lane reached to take him from her. Abbie willingly handed him over to Lane, but Alex continued to hide his face from Rachel. "You should know that he's been sneaking over to play with my daughter for several months. I probably should have tried to put a stop to it, but I didn't want our children to become involved in our personal conflict."
"You. You're the one who's turned my son against me," Rachel accused. "I should have known you'd do something like this. All my life, everyone's always loved you. Dean—everyone. You've always had everything. Now you're trying to steal my son. I never knew how much I hated you until right now. Get out of here before I have you thrown out!"
"I don't blame you for hating me. I probably deserve it. But I'm not leaving until I've said what I came here to say."
"I'm not interested in listening to anything you have to tell me." She started to turn away, but Abbie caught her arm, checking the movement.
"You have to listen. . . for Alex's sake," she insisted. "He thinks that you don't want him—that you don't love him. You can't let him go on believing that. I grew up thinking my father didn't really love me. So did you. Can't you remember how much that hurt? That's what Alex is feeling now."
"He's never cared about me," she replied stiffly. "It's always been Lane."
"And you resented that, didn't you? Don't you know that Alex picked up on that? Children are very sensitive. But they're still just children. You can't expect them to understand your hurt feelings, when they haven't even learned how to cope with their own. He wants you to love him, and he thinks there's something wrong with him because you don't."
Rachel tried to shut out the things Abbie was saying. Each was a barb, pricking and tearing at her. But none of them was true. They couldn't be. "You don't know what you're talking about," she protested.
"Don't I?" Abbie replied sadly. "Look at us, Rachel. Look at how bitterness and envy have twisted our lives. When I think of all the things I've said, the things I've done, the way I felt. And I blamed you for everything. We're sisters. What turned us into enemies? Why are we always competing against each other? It can't be for Daddy's love. He's gone. But if he could see us now. . . Rachel, you have to know that this isn't the way he wanted us to be."
"Stop it!" Rachel pressed her hands over her ears, but she succeeded in only partially muffling Abbie's voice.
"Maybe he did love us both. It's taken me a long time to realize that. You need to believe that, too. Maybe you and I will never be sisters in the true sense of the word, but can't we at least stop this fighting?"
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Abbie looked at her silently for a long moment. "Just love your son, Rachel," she said finally, emotionally drained. "And let him know it, the way Daddy should have."
Rachel turned and ran, her vision blurred by tears. It was a lie—a trick. It had to be.
As Rachel disappeared from sight near the barn, Abbie felt MacCrea's hand on her shoulder. "You tried."
She glanced at Lane, and the boy in his arms. She hesitated. "I'm sorry for creating a scene."
"Don't be," Lane said gently. "A lot of it needed to be said."
Just then, a clatter of hooves came from the barn. A second later Rachel burst into view, riding her dark gray mare. For an instant, Abbie stared in shock. "She only has a halter and lead rope on that mare."
"Somebody, quick! Go after her!" Lane ordered.
Sobbing, blinded by tears, Rachel twined her fingers through Simoon's dark mane, holding on to it as well as the cotton lead rope. Digging her heels into the mare's sides, she urged her faster, needing to outrun the thoughts pounding in her head.
"It isn't true. She can't be right," she kept sobbing over and over. But the drumming in her temples didn't stop as they raced headlong across the pasture, swerving around the towering pecans that loomed in their path and scattering the mares and colts that grazed among them. All the while she kept trying to convince herself that Abbie had said all those things just to confuse her. Dean couldn't have loved them both.
"Daddy." She buried her face in the whipping mane.
She didn't see the white board fence coming up, but she vaguely felt the bunching of the mare's hindquarters and the stiffening brace of the front legs as Simoon tried to get her hindlegs under her and slow down.
At the last second, the mare came to a jerking, sliding stop just short of the fence, unseating Rachel and pitching her forward onto the mare's neck. Simoon reared, twisting to turn away from the fence. Rachel felt herself falling and grasped at the one thing still in her hand: the lead rope. But the pull of her whole weight on it twisted the mare's head around, throwing her off balance. As Rachel hit the ground, the gray mare fell on top of her. Rachel felt first the jarring impact with the hard earth, then the crushing weight of the gray body pressing down on her, then pain. . . pain everywhere, intense and excruciating. She whimpered her father's name once, then let the blessed blackness consume her.
Severe internal injuries and bleeding was the diagnosis. They operated to stop the bleeding and make what repairs they could, but her prognosis was uncertain. Lane refused to leave the private suite in the hospital's intensive-care unit. Special accommodations were arranged to let him sleep in the same room. But Lane slept little during the three days Rachel lay unconscious. Most of the time he spent by her bed, staring at her deathly pale face, the tubes sticking out from her nose, arms, and body, and the wires running to the monitors, their beeps and blips constantly assuring him that she was still alive when his own eyes doubted it. He'd never been a praying man in the past, but he'd become one as he watched over her, willing her to come back to him.
Her eyelids fluttered. Lane wondered if he had imagined it. When it happened again, he held his breath and gazed at her intently. A moment later, she tried to open her eyes. After the second try, she succeeded. Lane immediately summoned the nurse on duty and leaned closer to the bed.
"Rachel. Can you hear me?"
She appeared to focus on him with difficulty. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. He clutched her hand in both of his and called to her again.
"Lane?" Her voice was softer than a whisper.
"Yes, darling. I'm here." He leaned closer, tears springing into his eyes.
"I. . . knew you. . . would be." The breathy words seemed to require great effort.
The nurse came in and he was forced to move aside. Several times that day, she'd drifted in and out of consciousness. Lane regarded it as a hopeful sign. The specialists he'd hired admitted that the next forty-eight hours were critical.
Abbie shortened her stride to match Ben's slower pace as they crossed the parking lot to the hospital entrance.
"She's got to be all right, Ben." She'd said that over and over the last three days, every time she came to the hospital to see Rachel. But she'd received no encouragement until Lane had phoned the house tonight. "If only I'd let MacCrea take Alex back alone," Abbie said ruefully.
"Do not play this 'if only' game in your head." Ben's lined and craggy face was grim with disapproval. "There is nowhere for it to stop. 'If only' y
ou had not gone there must be followed by 'if only' Alex had not run away, then 'if only' you had not allowed him to play with Eden. Eventually it must become 'if only' Eden had not been born, 'if only' your father had not died. No one can say where the blame truly belongs."
"I know." She sighed heavily. "But I still feel responsible for what happened."
"I remember well the day you learned that River Bend would have to be sold. You also went galloping through the pasture like a madwoman. If you had fallen, if you had been injured, would you have blamed Mr. Canfield? He was the one who told you. Would you have blamed your father? Rachel?" He stopped to pull the glass entrance door open, then held it for her.
"That was different." Abbie halted to protest the comparison.
"The outcome was different, Abbie. You were not hurt on your wild ride." For all the sternness in his voice, his expression was filled with gentleness and understanding. "Abbie, you are not responsible."
"Ben." Her throat was tight with her welling emotions. "'If only' Rachel had known someone like you when she was growing up."
"No more of that." He shook a finger at her, smiling warmly.
"Come on." Abbie hooked an arm around his waist. Walking together, they entered the hospital. The sterile atmosphere, the medicinal and antiseptic smells, and the muted bells, all combined to sober her. "I left word for MacCrea to meet us at the intensive-care nurse's station. I hope he got the message."
But he was waiting for them when they arrived. His dark glance swept over her in a quick inspection, a hint of relief in his expression. "I had visions of you racing through this traffic. If I had known Ben was with you, I wouldn't have worried so much."
"Have you seen Lane yet?"
"No. I just got here. Where's Eden and Alex?"
"Momma was at the house when Lane called. She's watching them." After learning the seriousness of Rachel's injuries, Abbie had persuaded Lane to let Alex stay with them rather than be looked after by servants, no matter how caring they were.
A nurse came to escort them to the private hospital suite. Lane emerged from the room as they walked up. Again, Abbie was struck by the change in him. Over the last three days, he seemed to have aged ten years, his face haggard and worn from the strain and lack of sleep. Even his hair looked whiter. The confidence, the strength that had been so much a part of him were no longer evident. Instead he looked vulnerable and frightened—and a little lost, like Alex had been.