Bobby didn’t move or say anything, but he emanated the terror of a trapped animal and Connor felt utterly helpless. He’d known from their first hello yesterday that this was a special-needs child, but what on earth had happened to him just now?
“So after the store closes, I need to stop at the hardware store for tent patching material and at the grocery store to replace what that raccoon stole,” Connor continued. He kept his voice soft and low, as he always had when halter-breaking a foal or stepping aboard a green two-year-old for the first time, and just kept up a continual stream of quiet words. “Have you ever had a run-in with a raccoon? That was a first for me. I think—”
A key turned in the back door lock and Keeley breezed inside with a couple of grocery sacks in her hand. She gave Connor a startled look. Then her gaze veered to Bobby and her face filled with compassion. “Oh, my.”
“He’s upset, and I don’t know why. He’s been like this for maybe twenty minutes.”
The bells over the front door tinkled.
Ignoring the arrival of customers, she dropped her purse and groceries on the worktable and knelt on the floor. She rested her hand on Connor’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of this, if you can just watch the front of the store. I’ll talk to you about this later.”
* * *
After talking to Bobby for twenty minutes, Keeley fortified him with a cheeseburger and malt at the coffee shop down the street, then took him home to the dreary clapboard house out behind the Pine Cone Tap at the edge of town.
Just six blocks from Main, it was like another world back there—a hardscrabble tumble of shabby homes and the hulking wrecks of abandoned cars jacked up on blocks. Despite the efforts of the mayor and town council, it devolved back down into hardship acres as fast as anyone tried to clean it up.
No one was home, as usual, or she would have had yet another private talk with his aunt Bess. With a sigh, she watched Bobby walk into the unlocked house, dragging his backpack.
She would try again tomorrow.
Back at the store by five, she found Connor ringing up a sale for the mayor’s wife and busied herself in the storeroom until the woman left to avoid a lengthy bout of chatter.
“I talked to Bobby for twenty minutes. Then I bought him a cheeseburger and a Coke and took him home,” she said on a long sigh as she joined Connor at the cash register. “But I wish there was more I could do.”
Connor’s eyes were wary. “I have no idea what happened. One minute he was happy. The next he was cringing in that corner.”
“It was nothing to do with you, believe me. And, honestly, I hardly know where to begin.” She paced the floor, thinking about what she’d seen and heard about Bobby’s sad life. And once again, she felt tears burn beneath her eyelids. “Bobby was born normal, as far as anyone knows. But his father was an abuser who beat his wife to death one night and didn’t stop with her—he laid into Bobby and nearly killed him, too. A four-year-old child. Can you believe it? I hope that man never, ever, gets out of prison.
“Bobby suffered brain damage and multiple fractures. That’s why he walks a little funny, and why his mental abilities are slow.” She drew in a long, steadying breath. “I know other kids are mean to him because he’s different, but if I overhear it, those kids get a talking-to they won’t soon forget. I even call their parents and report it to the principal at school for whatever good that could do, and I tell those kids exactly what I’m going to do. But it still happens—and it breaks my heart. After all he went through, he doesn’t deserve any more pain.”
At the ravaged look in Connor’s eyes, she wondered if he was thinking about his own son, whose wayward mother might have lived with just such a man without regard for the boy’s safety.
“Who takes care of Bobby now?”
“His aunt. I think she does care for him, but she’s uneducated, obese, and has trouble walking, so he doesn’t have many opportunities. Even with welfare, she works part-time in a seedy bar to make ends meet. So now and then I take him out and buy him some decent clothes. Otherwise the kids would just tease him more.”
“And you gave him a job.”
“So he’ll have money for school supplies and whatever it is that kids want at that age. He’s such a sweet boy.”
Connor shook his head slowly, his expression grim. “Can’t the county step in? The social workers?”
“I don’t know all the details. I’ve tried to find out through the county and at school, but I’m not family and privacy rights prevail these days. For all I know, he might have gotten counseling in the past, but if that’s true, he needs more of it.”
“So he’s basically falling between the cracks.”
Keeley nodded. “And it breaks my heart. I’ve learned that if a child is fed, healthy, gets to school every day and doesn’t show physical signs of abuse, it’s pretty difficult for an outsider like me to intercede. And that boy really needs help of some kind—he’s terrified if he hears so much as a raised voice. I can only imagine the nightmares he must still have after seeing his mom killed.”
“Well, that clears things up.” Connor’s jaw clenched. “A scrawny, bandy rooster of a guy came in this afternoon. He was rude and demanding, and when I didn’t have the right size gift box, he got pretty loud. He slammed the door on his way out.”
“And that’s all it takes for the poor kid.” She slumped into one of the wrought-iron chairs by the front window. “I know he’s living with a relative and that’s what the county deems best, but how I wish I could give him even a year of a better life.”
“At least he has a job here—and someone looking out for him.”
Her heart warmed as she recalled the moment when she’d come back and found Connor sitting on the floor with Bobby while keeping up a flow of gentle, reassuring words. “Thank you, Connor, for what you did for him.”
He shrugged, as if it had been nothing. But she knew in her very bones that he would be a good and loving father to his son; a good and loyal husband for someone.
She felt a twinge of regret at the thought.
She had to stay here and he would have to leave, so maintaining professional distance between them was the safest course. No doubt about it.
Yet at the end of the day, when Connor asked if she’d join him for supper over a campfire tomorrow night, to reciprocate for the dinner at her dad’s house, her common sense flew out the window and she instantly said yes.
What was she thinking?
Chapter Eleven
Even sitting at his campfire that night, Connor couldn’t get Bobby out of his mind.
The thought of what the boy had gone through still had the power to send a wave of nausea through Connor’s midsection. He’d steered way clear of men like Bobby’s father in prison—abusers who showed no remorse, only rage over being convicted...and who baldly proclaimed that they’d get their revenge once released.
If there was truly such a thing as prison justice—where abusers of children were handed mortal retribution by their peers—Connor sure hadn’t seen it.
Which meant Bobby’s father might live to be released someday. The thought was chilling.
When Keeley came out here tomorrow night for supper, he wanted to ask her more questions. Connor stoked his campfire and sent a shower of sparks spinning into the black-velvet sky, then looked up as a gray-haired man and two young boys strolled by, towels slung over their arms. He nodded at them. “Nice night.”
“So far.” The portly gentleman nodded and kept walking, but the boys stopped and stared at his fire.
“Grampa forgot wood for a fire,” the younger one said somberly. “So we can’t have s’mores. And Charlie’s mad ’cause we even gots the chocolate and marshmallows and everything.”
His older brother gave him an elbow. “It’s gonna rain anyway, stupid.”
&nbs
p; Their grandpa turned and gave the older one a stern look. “No name-calling. Remember? Now, what do you say to Kyle?”
Charlie stubbed a toe in the dirt and mumbled out an insincere “Sorry.”
Connor rose and smiled down at the boys. “You know what? I bought too much wood today, and if we’re getting more rain later, it will get too wet to use. Would you do me a favor and take some of it?”
“Really?” both boys said in unison.
Their grandfather hesitated. “I don’t have my billfold on me right now.”
“Forget it. Just go have some fun.” He loaded each boy’s proffered arms with wood and then handed more to the older man.
“I’ll come by in the morning and settle up with you, promise. Thanks.” The older fellow took a few steps then turned back. “I’m Bill, by the way. Bill Gordon. Be careful tonight. I heard on the radio about heavy storms north of here, and the forecasters say we’ve got sixty-percent chance of the same.”
Connor glanced at the rocky bluff that rose high above the creek to the east, dimly lit by his flickering campfire. “You might want to set up camp on higher ground if you’re down low. I think I’ll do the same.”
“We’re good. My motor home is parked in a great spot.” He waved and the three disappeared into the darkness, the high, youthful voices of the boys echoing off the bluffs as they chattered about campfires and marshmallows and a puppy waiting for them back at their campsite.
Picking up his supplies and moving higher along the bluffs didn’t take Connor long with such minimal gear. In a half hour his tent was set up under a rocky outcropping he’d noticed earlier in the day, partially protected from the weather, with everything securely stowed. A good five feet higher than the bank of the stream where he’d been before, it ought to be safe enough.
Instead of starting a campfire, he turned on a couple of solar lanterns that he’d left outside all day to charge up in the sun. He settled down, leaned against the rock wall of the bluffs and smiled to himself, thinking of the two young boys who were probably tussling over those s’mores and the tending of the fire, and wearing their poor grandfather flat out.
But then the memories of Joshua’s early years started coming back and Connor’s amusement faded.
He’d been four when Connor went to prison, a bright-eyed chatterbox who wanted answers to a million questions and who never slowed down unless he was asleep. Even then, he tossed and turned, too busy in his dreams to stay tucked in.
Connor’s own poignant dreams of that time often came tiptoeing into his thoughts this time of day, then stayed all night and kept him awake until dawn.
But the rain and wind had risen sharply during the past half hour, and maybe the staccato beat of rain and the rush of wind through the trees would make sleep come easier.
He climbed into the down sleeping bag in his tent and secured the exterior flap against the strengthening buffets of wind, then closed his eyes and hoped for the best.
It seemed like only minutes later when terrified screams filled the air.
Connor flew out his tent, grabbed one of the solar lanterns and held it high in the slashing rain driven nearly horizontal by the high winds.
Lightning razored through the sky, illuminating a roiling rush of water pouring through the grassy area where Connor had first set up camp. The water had to be ten, fifteen feet above the usual surface of Aspen Creek, and the flash flood had grabbed entire trees that were now bobbing past at a dizzying speed.
Picnic tables spun by, crashing against the rocks and then ricocheting back out into the raging flood.
Another terrified scream rent the air—closer now. Searching madly at his feet, Connor clawed at the ground for a coil of rope he’d left just outside his tent then raced down the rocky embankment below his campsite to the edge of the water and swung the lantern’s beam through the darkness.
“Where are you?” he bellowed, knowing he could barely be heard above the roar of the water and crashing thunder overhead.
“Help! Help me!” a young voice screamed. “Please!”
Blinking away the rain, Connor swung his lamp again—and there was Kyle, desperately clinging to a picnic table caught in a logjam midstream with something sodden and lifeless caught in the crook of his elbow. A stuffed animal? Had he risked his life for that?
The tangle of uprooted trees was bouncing, swaying, in the onslaught of the rushing water. At any moment they could break free and rocket past, leaving the boy helpless—threatening to sweep him from his makeshift raft as they tumbled through the water. There’d be no hope for rescue then. None.
Even now, with the logjam at least twenty feet from shore, the deep, violently churning water made reaching the boy nearly impossible.
A slight figure in a yellow hooded rain jacket came running from the direction of the parking lot. Keeley?
“Connor—you’ve got to get out of here,” she yelled above the wind. “The National Weather Service has issued flash-flood warnings and—”
“Can’t,” he yelled back. He lifted an arm and pointed at the water. “A kid is out there.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Can we get him?”
He pulled her close to yell in her ear. “Just go back to town and stay safe. And start praying.”
“I’ll pray, but I’m not leaving. You might need help.”
The obstinate lift of her chin and her resolute expression told him he’d only waste precious time trying to argue.
Slipping and sliding in the mud, tripping over rocks and branches, he raced to the point on the bank closest to the logjam, with Keeley at his heels. From far upstream he could hear the boy’s grandfather screaming Kyle’s name.
At the water’s edge he thrust the lantern into Keeley’s hands.
“Okay, Kyle,” he shouted into the screaming wind. “I’m here, and I’m going to get you out of there. Hang on and do not let go. Hear?”
His rope was nothing more than forty feet of limp white nylon—nothing like the stiff lariats he’d used to rope cattle most of his life. He quickly tied a slipknot at one end and formed a loop. “I’m going to throw this noose at you, kid. Grab it if you can, and hook it around your chest.”
The boy stared at him, his eyes wide with terror. “I c-can’t. I c-c-can’t,” he cried.
“You have to catch this, buddy.” Connor tried once. Twice. Three times.
With each throw, the fierce wind whipped the rope downstream, nearly tangling on the bobbing branches and roots of the uprooted trees.
The entire mass jerked and shifted again. Jerked downstream a good ten feet.
“Help me!” Kyle screamed. “Please.”
The picnic table under him bucked and pivoted. An edge slipped under a tree trunk, nearly upending before it wedged tight once more.
Connor froze. If the boy slipped off, he could be swept under those trees and drown.
“New plan,” he shouted as he moved a dozen feet upstream, tied the end of the rope around the leg of a teeter-totter frame—galvanized pipe set in cement. God, please let it hold. Help me. “I’m coming for you. Hang tight.”
He started to tie the other end of the rope around his waist. Keeley grabbed his arm and shook her head. “Let me go—I’m a strong swimmer. I’ve got a good chance of making it between all those branches. And I’m much lighter, so you can pull us in when I get him.”
He shook his head. “Risk your life? Not a chance. Hold the lantern. Then guide us back in.”
He took a short running start and dived as far into the raging flood as he could.
Instantly the violent force of the water sucked him deep into the icy blackness, obscuring his vision. His head hit a boulder at the bottom, sending a burst of pain and dizziness rocketing through him.
A wall of floodwater slammed into him, sending him downs
tream. Tumbling helplessly, he managed to struggle to the surface and take a strangled breath before the racing water threatened to pull him under again.
He slammed against something hard, rough, unforgiving. Another tree? He grabbed it, launched himself upward and hung on. In the dim light he saw Kyle just a few yards downstream.
The sound of sirens wailed in the distance as he pushed away and swam hard to reach the boy. “Okay, k-kid,” he sputtered as a wave of water slammed into his face. “I’ve got a rope and I need you to help me get it around your chest. Let that stuffed animal go, Kyle—”
“No,” the kid screamed, clutching it tighter under one arm. He was pale as flour, his teeth chattering. “Don’t make me!”
Connor blinked the water from his eyes and realized the boy held a weakly shivering puppy.
Gripping a tree branch with one hand, Connor worked one-handed at the knot at his waist with numb, icy fingers. After three tries he managed to get it around Kyle’s chest and tied a quick bowline knot.
Seconds later the logjam of trees broke free with an unearthly shriek and disappeared into the darkness, taking Kyle’s picnic table with them.
Kyle went under water but Connor reeled him in, sputtering and coughing.
Connor spit out a mouthful of filthy water. He hooked an arm around the boy and his pup, and let the current drag them downstream until the rope grew taut with an abrupt jerk.
It held fast. Thank You, Lord.
And then Keeley was hauling on the rope, trying to pull them back in.
Battling the current, they swung like a pendulum, closer to the bank as she took up the slack. What had been a quiet little creek was too deep to touch bottom and the racing current clawed at them as he fought to reach the shore.
Cold and exhaustion seeped through Connor’s muscles, making each effort slower. Weaker.
He struggled harder. “Don’t worry, kid—almost there.”
Like voices in a dream, he heard the sound of Keeley shouting. Felt her superhuman, adrenaline-charged efforts to bring them in to safety.
The Single Dad's Redemption Page 9