by Unknown
THE PLASTIC BOX landed on the floor of the storeroom with a thud and Dylan groaned. She hated carrying boxes back and forth to Willow Point. In the morning you took them out, in the evening they went back in. It was so stupid.
“Dylan, that box is not heavy. Why are you making such a ruckus?”
“It is heavy and I need to go to the bathroom.”
Her mother placed her container against the wall. “Well go, then. Alicia and I will finish putting everything away.”
Dylan didn’t bother to glance back at her mother or Mrs. Alicia. She raced to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t really need to go, but she did need to wash her face. She’d spent the whole day at Willow Point where her mom ran the free clinic in the store. One of the local kids had a pirogue and they’d spent the day paddling around the creeks and backwaters. She knew her mom was from there. She’d once taken Dylan to see the rotting shack that had belonged to Dylan’s great-grandmother. Dylan was glad Willow Point wasn’t her home. She’d seen how the mean kids in Cypress Landing made fun of people who lived in the backwaters and didn’t have much. She often wondered if other kids had been mean to her mom.
Right now, though, she couldn’t have dirt on her face and wild hair. She didn’t want to look like a swamp rat when Cade saw her. He probably dumped her mom years ago ’cause she wasn’t from a good part of town. Of course, if she thought about it long enough, that would make Cade kind of a bad person. She didn’t normally like people who turned their noses up at others because they were poor. But Cade wouldn’t do that, even if he did have money. She’d heard Mrs. Norma and her husband talking, and they said Cade was filthy rich, the kind of rich where you drove fancy cars and had more than one house. But Cade didn’t drive a fancy car. That kind of talk confused her. Dylan only knew she liked Cade. What else mattered?
She didn’t see a soul in the hall when she left the bathroom, so she went to the small kitchen and pulled a soda from the refrigerator. From the window in the kitchen she could see old Mrs. Carson, the nurse, get into her car. Thank goodness she was gone. The woman always looked like she wanted to gripe at her about something. A figure trotted across the street to enter the small lot. No wonder the woman had such a frown on her face—there was her outlaw son. The young man got in the car with his mother and the two drove away.
Her mom said Mrs. Carson’s son had a drug problem and that was why she seemed worried all the time. Her mom had had to explain to her exactly what a drug problem was since she hadn’t had a clue. Even after the explanation, she still thought it sounded strange that anybody could do the things he’d done because of some pills. She was just glad no one she knew was mixed up in it. The most important thing was that Cade’s car was in the staff parking lot. Thank goodness he hadn’t gone yet. Following the sound of voices, she skipped toward the front lobby. It was time to go home and she was trying to think of ways she could get Cade to invite them to his house or to dinner in town, which would be even better.
In the lobby, her mother and Cade leaned against one side of the reception counter, and across from them stood Mr. Cooper. The big man could be pretty scary, but she knew him from the search-and-rescue team and he wasn’t mean. Maybe he was here because of search-and-rescue. She sure hoped no one was in big trouble. Sidling closer to the counter, she heard Mr. Cooper mention prescriptions with Cade’s name on them. Was Cade sick? No, it was prescriptions he had written for a patient, like a doctor is supposed to do. Except Cade said he hadn’t written them.
“Dylan, go fix yourself a sandwich in the kitchen.”
Darn it, she’d been noticed. “I’m not hungry.”
“Then go wait in my office and read that new book we got you.”
“I don’t want to read.”
Her mother gave her a stern look. “Dylan, we’re talking business here, and I said go.”
Dylan took two steps toward the office. Her mom started talking to Mr. Cooper about prescriptions and junk that she had no interest in whatsoever, but Cade was here and here was where she planned to stay. Now that she was out of sight she would…
“Dylan, you heard your mom. Now take off.”
Her throat tightened. How could he? How could Cade order her to leave like that? He’d taken sides with her mother, which so wasn’t fair because her mother didn’t even like him. She blew her breath hard between her teeth as she stomped down the hall.
“And quit huffing and puffing. You’re too old for it.” His words echoed behind her as she slammed the door on her mother’s tiny office. She grabbed the new book and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall and landed at her feet. She picked it up again. Reading was better than sitting and doing nothing.
CADE DRUMMED his fingers on top of the counter. “I didn’t write those prescriptions, which means someone is stealing prescription papers from here and signing my name to them.”
Brijette looked up from the computer. “Cade’s right, Jackson. We don’t have a patient by that name in our records.”
The big man nodded. “Well, be careful with your prescriptions.”
Cade crossed his arms in front of him. “All they need is one—and a good copying machine—and they could write hundreds of prescriptions.”
He’d wanted his time in Cypress Landing to be a break from the problems he’d had in Dallas. But since coming here, there had been nothing but one headache followed by another—first Brijette, now this.
Jackson stuck his folder under his arm. “I’ll keep in touch.”
When the door shut behind the officer, Cade stared at Brijette.
“What?”
“Why is this happening?” He sat on the desk that jutted below the counter.
“I don’t know. Stuff like this happens, it’s… Oh, I see what you mean.”
He heard the anger in her voice and though he hadn’t meant to insinuate she might be at fault, he could see how she’d make that connection.
“You think I was involved before, so naturally I’m in on this. I guess my being part of search-and-rescue is a good cover for all my illegal dealings.” She began to shut down the computer.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you were thinking.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m thinking. We’d both better start trying to find out how this is happening before it gets worse.”
She sighed and twisted in the chair. “You’re right, and I wouldn’t blame you if you thought I might be part of this.”
“I don’t think that. You said you didn’t know the drugs were in your backpack. I believe you.”
She scratched at a spot on her scrub top, refusing to look at him. “You didn’t before.”
“I didn’t know what to think, then.”
“Well, if your intuition had been to think I was guilty, you’d better stick with that because you’d have been correct.”
He slid into the chair across from her, his legs sagging under his own weight. In his heart he’d believed Brijette had told the truth. And now she sat in front of him telling him she’d been a drug courier.
She knotted her fingers in her lap and finally met his eyes. “A driver at the tire factory where I worked asked me to drop a package off for him at a guy’s camp on the river. I said sure, and he gave me cash for doing it, for gas in the boat, he said.”
“How much did he give you?”
“A hundred bucks.”
Cade gave a low whistle. “Weren’t you suspicious? A hundred dollars is a lot for gas.”
“I didn’t really think it was drugs. To be honest, I tried not to think about what was in there. I figured I’d do it this one time and then never again. I knew it wasn’t quite right, but I needed the money for college. I made a mistake, and I learned a hard lesson.”
“I’d say it was, Brij. Three months in a juvenile detention center would likely teach anyone a lesson.”
She rocked in the chair as though weighing what she was about
to say.
“It wasn’t the detention center. I could have learned all the best ways to be a criminal if I’d wanted, but I knew that wasn’t the person I wanted to be.”
His hand went to her knee, without his planning it. He had to touch her as much as he had to take his next breath. “Are you the person you want to be, now?”
Her pink lips curled into a smile. “I think I’m pretty close. Aren’t you going to scream and yell at me about lying and doing something I should have known better than to do?”
Why wasn’t he furious? Part of his brain told him he should be angry that she’d lied and that she’d let him go with her when she was doing something that could get them both in trouble. But the anger wouldn’t come. Not now, not when so much time had passed and they’d both been through more than enough.
“If someone had asked me the other day if this would make me mad, I’m sure I’d have said yes. But hearing you say it, admit it to me…” He shrugged. “I don’t feel anger. You paid for what you did in that youth prison and learned from it. I’ve had to learn from my mistakes, too.”
“You went to jail, Mom?” The angry question echoed from the doorway, bouncing off the walls. Brijette drained to a pale ash. Cade had to admit, he’d forgotten Dylan was still in the clinic, supposedly in her mother’s office, but obviously not.
Brijette leaped from the chair as Dylan appeared in front of her. “How could you not tell me? Does everybody know? I bet all the kids talk about this behind my back. You said I should tell you if I didn’t think you were being a good mother. Well, I’m telling you now. You’re awful.”
Her blond ponytail swished as she spun and fled, her tennis shoes smacking against the wood floor. Brijette didn’t move except to raise her arm, as if she wanted to follow her but couldn’t.
“Let me get her. I’ll bring her home. You lock up and go to your house. We’ll see you there.” He knew she had to be in shock when she didn’t argue, only nodded her head. Reaching into his pocket for his keys, he raced after Dylan.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CADE JUMPED INTO his truck and drove in the direction of Brijette’s house. He’d only traveled a hundred yards when he saw his intuition was correct. One angry blonde jogged on the side of the road.
He lowered the passenger window as he pulled alongside her. “Get in, Dylan.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“You can’t walk all the way home.”
She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. “I’m not going home.”
He checked his rearview mirror, glad to see no cars behind him. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well that sounds like a great plan. Now get in here. Don’t make me put you in.” She paused in mid-stride and climbed into his truck—maybe it was the male authority in his voice that she wasn’t accustomed to. He was simply glad she hadn’t fought him more.
When they passed the driveway to her house, he could feel her eyes boring into him. “Where are we going?”
“I thought you might want to ride awhile and cool off.”
“I’m not hot.”
He laughed. “I mean, until your temper cools off.”
She watched the trees passing them in a blur. “She should have told me, and she shouldn’t have done whatever she did.”
They rode in silence a few minutes longer before Cade eased the truck onto the side of the road.
“Your mom grew up in a run-down place near where she has her clinic. She didn’t have much.”
“I know. She took me to see it before. It was horrible.”
“Then you should know you can’t judge your mother for what she did as a young girl. She had to make a better life for herself, and later on for you. I don’t know the whole story, so I’ll let her tell you, but you remember that.”
Cade couldn’t be sure at what point he’d begun to believe in Brijette Dupre again. Maybe he’d never stopped believing in her. He’d never been desperate for money to survive like Brijette had. She’d made choices he couldn’t understand. But now that he was older, had seen people not nearly so desperate for money make even more despicable choices, her sins didn’t appear nearly so black. He turned the truck around and started toward Dylan and Brijette’s house.
The lights glowed in the windows and Brijette waited for them on the porch. The girl jumped from his truck and would have run past her mother except Brijette grabbed her by the shoulder. He’d have liked to stay to see how they worked through this. What did you tell your kid when they realized you were once young and foolish, too? But he didn’t stay, because he wasn’t part of that family, and he tried to ignore whatever it was inside of him that whispered how much he wanted to be. He drove past the trees that lined the drive and went home, letting mother and daughter try to patch things up.
THE SOUR CREAM made the salsa a pinkish color as Brijette stirred the spoon in the bowl. She dipped a chip into the mixture and pushed it across the bar to Dylan. After three detailed explanations of what had happened that summer, Dylan had finally calmed down. Hearing, by accident no less, that your mom had a criminal past had to be tough to take.
“Cade said you did that thing so you could have a better life.”
Brijette tried not to choke on the chip she’d swallowed. She’d been afraid of what Cade might say to Dylan, but at the time she hadn’t been able to react fast enough to go after the girl herself. Not that Dylan would have gotten in the car with her.
“When did he say that?”
“In the truck.”
Thank goodness for miracles, especially the ones that had Cade Wheeler paint a decent picture of her to her daughter.
“Was that why he dumped you? Because of the drugs?”
“No, that wasn’t why he dumped me. Well, it might’ve been part of it, but we ended our relationship because we were too different.”
“What does that mean?” Dylan stuffed a chip into her mouth and watched her expectantly.
Brijette gritted her teeth. How did she explain things she didn’t understand herself? “You know where I came from, how I lived. I was poor backwoods trash to people like the Wheelers. Cade and I didn’t have a future. His family would never have accepted me.”
“Would they accept you now?”
“To the Wheelers, if you’re born trash, you’re always gonna be trash.”
“Does that mean I’m trash, too?”
She wiped up a drop of spilled salsa. “No, Dylan, no one’s trash. I’m just saying that’s how people occasionally think.”
Her daughter straightened on the barstool. “Well, I don’t think Cade believes that stuff.”
“He didn’t used to, a long time ago, but family is important and you usually live the way you were taught. I may have been poor, but my grandmother raised me to have morals and respect for others. I made mistakes, but like she always said, ‘you gotta be true to your raisin’.”
“What’s my ‘raisin’?”
She ruffled Dylan’s blond hair.
“Same as mine. Be good to other people, do what’s right, money isn’t everything and take care of your neighbors.”
Dylan held her glass of lemonade and swished the liquid around inside. “Is going to the jail place how you learned money isn’t everything?”
“Yes, it is. Now I know that if I work hard I’ll get the things I need and most of the things I want.”
Dylan chewed a chip. “I believe that, too.”
“Good, so we’re okay.”
Dylan nodded as Brijette stood. “I’m going to take a bath. You finish the chips.”
In her room, Brijette sat on the edge of the bed. One secret in the open and it hadn’t killed her. She hadn’t wanted Dylan to know she’d spent time in the detention center, not yet, but she had planned on telling her.
When? She pushed away the accusatory voice in her head. I was waiting until she was old enough, she told her nagging subconscious. Obviously the girl could handle it now, but no
t the other secret. That one had to stay locked tight for good. She’d been careful to say to Dylan, during her explanation, that this happened before she met her father. How fair is it to Dylan to never let her know her father? Now Brijette wanted to strangle the voice in her head. Having no father had to be better than having one whose mother had never even wanted the child to be born. How would the Wheelers treat Dylan amid all their high-society friends? They’d either make her feel like a second-class citizen or they’d change her into a rude rich kid. No, Brijette wasn’t having that for her daughter. She got to her feet and hurried to the shower, that irritating voice reminding her how wonderful Cade had been with Dylan since he’d been here. How naturally he slipped into the role of Cypress Landing small-town doctor. It was an act, she reminded herself. When the time came for hard decisions, the real Cade Wheeler would appear, the one who ran out on a girl when she got into trouble, who let his mother make his decisions for him. That’s the man she had to protect her daughter from, him and his mother.
CHECKING HER WATCH, Brijette couldn’t believe they’d finished for the day. Across the small staff parking area, Cade still sat in his truck and she tilted her head, trying to see inside. His door opened and he waved at her.
“My battery is dead, lost charge. Could you let me jump my truck off you? I have jumper cables.”
She tried not to be surprised that the rich boy actually had jumper cables in his vehicle. That he drove a truck instead of a Porsche or Jaguar had surprised her even more. She pulled next to his vehicle, popped her hood and waited as he put the cables in place. When he tried to start his truck, the engine remained quiet. He waited and tried again. Still nothing.
“The battery’s shot. Could you give me a ride to the store to get a new one?”
She started laughing. “You do realize that it’s after five so we’ll have to drive for nearly an hour to get to a store that’s open.”
“No, I hadn’t thought of that.”
She shook her head. “Get in. I’ll take you home and get you in the morning. Your place is only a couple of miles from mine. You can get a new battery tomorrow.”