Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel

by Laura Moore

  “But after that we can climb the tree, right, Owen? I want to go really high up, okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, his eyes never leaving Jordan.

  The old linoleum was a bitch and half to pull up. There was no easy way to do it except with a scraper and warm sudsy water to loosen the adhesive. Luckily, Kate, Max, and even Olivia were more than happy to go back and forth from the buckets filled with warm water carrying dripping wet sponges to the areas Owen had peeled back, while Doug and Jesse went at the moistened glue with scrapers. Jordan, wielding a mop, cleaned up the excess water and picked up the pieces of lino, dropping them into a garbage bag.

  Within minutes everyone was soaked, but Jesse and Doug didn’t seem to mind too much, probably because Jordan was so excited about the wide-planked floor that was slowly emerging.

  “Gosh, it’s going to look superb when it’s sanded and finished,” she said happily.

  “Can we help with that, too, Mommy?” Kate asked.

  “No, that’s a messy job.”

  “As opposed to this,” Owen grinned.

  “As opposed to this,” Jordan echoed, returning his grin as she swiped the side of her face with her bare arm. With her hair in a ponytail she looked impossibly young, more like Kate’s older sister than her mother.

  Having peeled up a long strip, Doug sat back on his haunches and took a gulp of his iced tea. “The next time we run into a lino floor, we’re definitely calling you guys. Right, Owen?”

  “This job’s going faster than any I can remember.”

  “Did you hear that, kids? Owen and Doug think you’re good workers.”

  “I like working.” Max squeezed a large puddle of water onto the glue. “When we’re done, Owen and I are gonna climb that tree all the way to the top.”

  They were tackling the remaining stretch of linoleum, near the kitchen’s back door, when Kate ran over to Jordan and whispered in her ear.

  “Of course, sweetie,” Jordan said. “And let’s bring Olivia, too. I think she could use a diaper change. Excuse us, gentlemen, we’re going to use the bathroom. Max, do you need to go?”

  “No.” He shook his head vehemently even as he crossed his legs.

  “Perhaps we better try anyway. And I want to show you the upstairs. You haven’t seen those rooms yet. Owen removed the wallpaper in the bedrooms and Doug and Jesse built really nice shelves for the closets. Then you can come back downstairs.” She held out her hand for Max, and the four of them went down the hall, the children chattering away.

  “She’s got a nice way with her kids,” Doug said approvingly.

  “Yes, she’s a great mother.” Jordan was great, period. Owen grabbed hold of a strip of saturated linoleum and pulled it back with a grunt.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m soaked. I don’t know whether it’s from sweat because it’s hotter than Hades or because Olivia kept dribbling her sponge on me instead of the floor,” Jesse said.

  “Olivia did pretty well for someone who’s not even two.” Owen was as surprised as Jesse to find himself defending her. Then, because Jesse was grinning at him as if he’d just announced that he liked postcards adorned with fuzzy kittens and koala bears, he said, “You guys both look somewhat worse for wear. Why don’t I finish scraping this last section myself?”

  Doug checked his watch. “If we leave now, we can make it to the Habitat ReStore before closing time. What do you think, Jesse?”

  “Are you asking me if I want to quit work early and take a ride in an air-conditioned cab? I am definitely up for that.” With a flourish he handed the scraper to Owen. “Have at it, boss.”

  “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

  “Bright and early. Say good-bye to Jordan for us.”

  “And Olivia, too,” Jesse added with a laugh.

  “Will do,” he replied, already bending over and beginning to scrape.

  It seemed like only a minute later, Max literally jumped into his line of vision, his sneakers making a squishy landing inches from his scraper. “Hey, Owen, let’s go climb that tree now. I want to go as high as I can.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Max. I just have to finish this bit of the floor first. Why don’t you go find your mom?”

  “Nah, she’s showing Kate and Wiv the bedrooms. I want to climb the tree.” His sneakers did a jig of impatience.

  “We will. You just have to wait a little bit longer.” He drew out the final syllable in a growl of frustration as he applied his scraper more forcefully. But this patch hadn’t gotten as saturated as the rest of the floor. The lino wasn’t budging. With a silent curse he reached for the sponge and squeezed some more water on it. “Hold on a few more minutes, Max,” he said, not looking up from the damned flooring.

  Owen had no idea how much time elapsed while he battled with the remaining adhesive. Yet when he straightened he was abruptly aware of two things. One, Max was no longer in the kitchen and, two, Jordan was coming down the stairs with just the girls—if Max had been with them Owen would definitely have heard his voice.

  The hair on the back of his neck rose as he was gripped by a sudden, terrible premonition. Jumping to his feet, he dropped the scraper onto the damp floor and sprinted out the door, shouting “Max!” at the top of his lungs.

  The first thing he saw was that one of the folding chairs Doug and Jesse sat on at lunch had been dragged over to the base of the tree, just beneath the lowest branch. “Jesus, no. Please no,” his mind cried as again he shouted, “Max!”

  Behind him Jordan’s anxious voice echoed his call.

  Then came Max’s high-pitched voice. “Look at me, Owen! See how high I am? I’m really high!”

  His heart leapt to his throat. Damn it, he couldn’t see through the dense foliage. “Don’t you move, Max!” he yelled hoarsely. “You wait till I get there!” The twenty feet remaining to the tree stretched like a football field before him.

  Then Max’s voice came again, and to Owen’s panicked brain seemed to come from far too high above. “I think I wanna come down now.”

  Terrified Owen tried to run faster. In the unfolding of this nightmarish scene, however, his legs seemed to have turned to lead, unable to close the distance. Jordan seemed similarly afflicted for she was still behind him. He could hear her harsh, ragged panting.

  “Owen! I need help! Mommy!”

  “Max!” they cried in unison.

  Then Owen was at the tree, ducking under its broad canopy, but keeping his eyes fixed above, scanning the pewter limbs. To his right, on the other side of the tree, a good fifteen feet above his head, he heard the yelped cry of “Help!” that turned into a shriek of, “I’m fall—”

  He lunged toward Max’s tumbling body. But too late.

  Arms outflung, Max hit the twig and leaf-laden ground with a thud, followed by an agonized scream.

  “Max!” Jordan reached him a heartbeat after Owen.

  “It hurts, Mommy! Mommy, Mommy, it hurts!” he wailed, hunched in a tight ball of pain.

  “Where does it hurt, Max? Tell Mommy where.”

  “My arm.”

  Crouched beside Owen, Jordan rocked forward, her hands reaching out. “Can I see—”

  “No, don’t touch it! Don’t! It hurts so much.”

  “I won’t touch, I promise, Max, but I need to see it.”

  Slowly, he lowered his right arm to reveal the left one lying across his chest.

  Owen sucked in a breath. The back of Max’s arm was covered in blood, but from the odd angle with which his wrist lay on his heaving tummy, Owen knew that more was wrong with his arm than a really nasty cut. “We need to get him to the hospital,” he said, leaning forward to scoop him up.

  “No! Don’t touch him!”

  Owen froze at Jordan’s sharp command. She blamed him of course, but still—

  “Max, do you hurt anywhere else? Your neck? Your back? Your head? Max, you’ve got to tell Mommy.”

  Jordan’s words offered him an undeserved sense of relief as he realized she was try
ing to make sure Max wasn’t injured elsewhere.

  “No, but my arm really hurts and I’m bleeding.” He began crying again, very softly.

  “Yes, I know, sweetheart. But you’re going to be okay. Listen to Mommy now, Max. Owen is going to pick you up and carry you to the car. It’s going to hurt, but you’re very brave and we need to get you to the hospital so the doctor can fix your arm.” To Owen she said, “Let me get Olivia in her car seat and then you can pass him to me. I think it’s best if I hold him while you drive.”

  He gave a tight nod.

  His every muscle strained with the effort to lift Max gently off the ground. Cradling his trembling body against his chest, he moved as quickly and smoothly as he could to the car.

  Despite his precaution, Max moaned. “Ow. It hurts, Owen.”

  His throat constricting, he brushed his lips against Max’s sweaty forehead and said hoarsely, “I know, Max. Hang in there, okay? Once we get to the hospital the doctors are going to make the hurt go away.”

  “I don’t like doctors.” If possible Max’s voice was even smaller. “Sometimes they give me shots.”

  It felt like he’d swallowed a lump of coal. “I don’t like shots, either, but the doctors at the hospital are really good, and if they have to give you a shot, it’ll only be to make the hurt go away. And your mom’s going to be with you.”

  “You’ll be there, too?”

  Owen nodded. “I’ll be there, too.”

  “Okay.”

  At that single bravely resigned word, Owen shuddered as something grabbed tight around his heart, squeezing it painfully.

  It was a white-knuckled drive to the hospital, with Owen gripping the minivan’s steering wheel so tightly his fingers ached. Behind him Olivia, who’d been crying steadily since seeing her brother hurt and bloodied, had now added writhing and bucking to her tears of fright as she tried to escape her car seat. Kate, usually so quiet, kept asking, “Is Max going to be okay, Mommy?”

  How Jordan maintained her calm in all of this, especially with Max’s moans of pain spiking every time the minivan’s inferior suspension rolled over a damned pothole, was beyond Owen. But after calling both Richard and Margot to let them know they were heading to the emergency room, she stroked Max’s forehead while holding a cold compress to his elevated arm (that she’d had the wits to grab the compress from the first-aid kit in the back of her car and a pillow for his arm showed an amazing presence of mind), her voice rock-steady as she told her children again and again that everything was going to be all right. Lots of people broke their arms. Aunt Margot had broken hers riding Suzy Q. Ned, too, when he fell off Stoneleigh.

  “Why, I bet Owen broke his arm when he was little.”

  He would have lied to back Jordan up, but he didn’t have to. “I broke my arm playing soccer. I was nine, so a bit older than you, Max, but not as brave.”

  “Did your mommy take you to the hospital?”

  His mother and father had been hosting cocktails followed by a dinner with various diplomats and European intellectuals. A duke was to be in attendance. His nanny had gone in their place, then Owen and she had taken a taxi home. “Sure.”

  Jordan met his gaze briefly in the rearview mirror and actually smiled at him. How could she when he’d caused her little boy to get hurt?

  “Take the next exit and you’ll see signs for the hospital.”

  In the emergency room, they processed Max quickly. As the nurse was examining Max’s arm, Jordan turned to Owen. “They’re not going to allow us all into the room when the doctor comes.”

  No, and setting the arm would be a scary thing for kids to see, and Owen was sure a cut that bad would require stitches.

  “I’ll take them.” He picked Olivia up and she buried her wet face in his neck.

  “Thanks.” Jordan then dropped to her knees. “Kate, honey, you and Olivia are going to sit with Owen in the waiting room while doctors fix Max’s arm. It might take a while, but you need to be a big girl and help Owen with Olivia.”

  “I will, Mommy,” Kate said, sounding just like Jordan, so serious and sweet.

  Jordan gave her a fierce hug. Rising, she kissed Olivia’s red cheek. To Owen she gave a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry about this—”

  He let her child get injured and she was apologizing?

  “He’ll be all right,” she said.

  Owen nodded, feeling sick to his gut.

  She left them, rejoining Max, who’d been lifted onto a gurney to protect his arm. She walked beside him as the nurse rolled it down the corridor and out of sight.

  Not knowing what else to do, Owen took the girls over to the vending machine and bought some M&M’s, then did his best to entertain Kate and Olivia in the waiting room by reading a story Jordan had remembered to grab from the back of the car and shove into the diaper bag she carried into the hospital emergency room with them. He could only thank God that Olivia’s diaper was dry, though Owen bet Kate could have handled diapering her baby sister herself.

  As they sat in the hideously ugly waiting room, it was painfully clear to Owen that practically anyone, even a scared six-year-old girl, was better suited to the role of caregiver than he. A fact that had already been drilled home when Kate solemnly warned him against buying the peanut M&M’s because Olivia might choke on them.

  It made his blood run cold how close he’d come to harming yet another of Jordan’s children.

  He read the words to a story about a dormouse called Dudley, who bit into a strawberry that turned out to be a dog’s pink nose, surprising them both very much.

  If he’d been asked to repeat what he’d just read aloud, though, he’d have flunked. His mind was focused on Jordan and Max on the other side of the peachy-gray metal doors. They’d be working on him by now; the doctors wouldn’t keep a frightened little boy waiting. Had he been okay when they gave him the anesthetic?

  Kate turned the page of the book for him, which was good since he hadn’t realized he’d come to the bottom of it. The mouse was filling up his tree home with acorns. Then he was crawling into his snug little bed and falling asleep to dream happy acorn-filled dreams. Owen knew that tonight when he at last crawled into bed, he’d be dreaming of Max falling out of that tree, and of him rushing to catch that tumbling body before it thudded to the ground, and being too late, just like today. His dream would be no more horrific than reality.

  God, it could so easily have been Max’s neck that snapped instead of his forearm. The thought made Own want to vomit.

  Under the glare of the banked fluorescent lights the truth couldn’t be ignored any longer.

  He was in love with Jordan.

  Acknowledging this, Owen made himself admit that his love for her had been growing inside him for weeks, most likely since the day he spied her struggling to overcome her tears in front of the flower shop. All the conflicting emotions he’d felt toward Jordan, his attempts to maintain his distance and remain uninvolved, had been vanquished by this strange and powerfully intense need to be with her.

  These the first stirrings of a man blind to love.

  But now he saw, and it frightened the daylights out of him.

  He’d spent so many years avoiding emotional attachments that to discover now this endless desire for Jordan, this dependence on her for the warm wave of happiness, the sense of completeness he felt when she was with him, made him question if he’d ever be the same. This beautiful, giving woman had changed him forever.

  What scared him even more was how he’d come to feel about the children. He wasn’t just in love with Jordan, he loved them, too. Kate for her shy earnestness; Max for his gusto; Olivia for her oddly beguiling weirdness.

  They were wonderful kids. They were amazing. And this afternoon had shown Owen beyond a shadow of a doubt how disastrously bad he would be at caring for them, at keeping them safe. He was too much the product of his self-absorbed parents to be trusted with such enormous responsibility. The thought of failing Jordan, of making another mistake, one
that might result in Kate or Olivia being injured, was too frightening and all too damned likely.

  There was only one solution. He was going to have to do what he used to do best: disengage.

  Time lost its meaning. Once Dudley the door mouse’s adventures had been digested, Owen honestly didn’t know how long he spent leafing through outdated magazines and talking to Kate about the pictures in them—thanks to her aunt Margot, Kate had a discerning eye when it came to fashion photos—and saying “Uh-huh” to whatever Olivia said.

  After that activity grew old, they walked the wide corridor, visiting the vending machine to buy Oreos and then the water fountain to try and wash off the black smears coating Olivia’s face. Then they returned to their plastic and metal seats to stare at the metal doors, willing Jordan and Max’s reappearance.

  When Olivia became antsy, Owen became desperate. The last thing Jordan needed was to hear her daughter’s hysterical shrieks—and Olivia could shriek like nobody’s business. Ripping two pages out of the oldest magazines he could find, he folded the paper into airplanes and showed Kate how to angle her toss so that the airplane floated for a few seconds before nosediving into the industrial carpeting.

  Olivia was distracted by the twin planes enough to race after them, like a two-legged golden retriever, grabbing them off the carpet and then running back to Owen with them. They often returned too mangled to fly again, but Owen was more than willing to keep folding paper airplanes as long as it kept her tears at bay for a few minutes more.

  They had tossed paper planes into the air for what could have been eons or merely minutes when the metal doors swung open, and there was Jordan carrying Max on her hip. A blue sling covered his arm.

  Both looked exhausted, but Jordan smiled as the girls rushed over.

  The children talked at once, Kate wanting to know what the sling was for, Olivia saying “Mommy” and “Max” over and over again. Max, despite his ordeal, had regained enough of his usual brio to catalog his injuries.