by Jillian Hart
“Hey, we were never well-behaved kindergarteners.” Ava laughed at something that had happened in the room. “Oops!”
Ava said that a lot. Katherine leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, taking in the chaos of one of the twin beds that had been so tidy ten minutes before. Ava had fallen hard onto her backside, her feet up in the air and the remote and cord to the blanket in her hands.
Aubrey snatched it out of her grip. “You are impossible. You’re a burden to me. If I could, I’d auction you off.”
“There’d be no takers.” Ava pulled herself to her feet. “I have this reputation. It’s why I can’t get dates.”
“Then we’ll never be able to marry you off. How sad is that?” Aubrey knelt down and managed to stick the plug into the prongs at the hem of the blanket. “See? I told you it was simple. But you had to go and make a disaster of it.”
“What can I say? I’m gifted.”
Tears stung Katherine’s eyes and burned in the back of her throat. Oh, she loved her sisters. Their funny, loving ways were exactly what she needed to get through the dark hours of the night. To help her pretend that she hadn’t lost the best thing that had ever happened to her.
And it was all her fault. Her fault, and no one else’s.
“There, it’s put back together.” Aubrey rolled her eyes. “Notice how your bed is neat and perfect and mine is the wreck?”
“I was just trying to help.” Ava looked around, scanning the room. “I remembered to bring my Bible, but it’s in my bag. O-okay, where did my bag go? I left it somewhere. But where?”
“We’ll use mine.” As if greatly burdened, Aubrey pulled hers off the nightstand. “Come sit down, Kath. If Ava hasn’t scared you off.”
“I’m fearless. I grew up with you two, remember?” Katherine eased back into the hallway. “I’ll get my Bible and be right—”
The phone rang, startlingly loud in the late-night hush. Her first thought was Jack, and she froze. The phone rang again, and her second thought was Marin. The roads weren’t good, and what if she’d had an accident? Katherine dashed for the nearest extension in her room before the answering machine could kick in.
The ID screen said it was from a pay phone. Nerves jerked into her stomach. What if Marin was hurt? “Hello?”
“K-Katherine?” It was a girl’s voice that sounded small and unfamiliar and broken, as if she were crying. “Uh…this is Hayden. You know, Hayden Munroe.”
Adrenaline shot through her system. Images of everything that could go wrong flashed through her brain in a single nanosecond. Jack shot on duty. A car accident. A robbery. A sudden medical problem. “What’s wrong?”
A watery sniff. “C-could you come a-and g-get me?”
Get her? Wasn’t she supposed to be at home or something? The bedside clock said it was ten minutes to eleven. Katherine’s heart broke at Hayden’s wrenching sob. A sound of genuine pain. “Sure. Where are you?”
“H-Hawthorne and White.”
“What happened, is your dad there?”
“N-no. You g-gotta h-hur-ry.” Harder crying. Utter misery.
“Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”
“I’m o-okay. J-just c-come. Please?”
“Stay on the phone, okay? I’m going to give you to my sister. Aubrey!” She called down the hall. “Come take this and keep her on the line.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Ava, get your cell and start calling around for Jack. The numbers I have for him are in my address book in the desk with the bills. Aubrey, find out for sure if she’s in trouble and call 911 if she needs it. I’m going out.” She talked into the receiver. “Hayden? I’m leaving right now, so talk to my sister until I get there.”
“H-h-hur-ry.”
“I promise.” Katherine shoved the receiver at Aubrey and grabbed her purse on the way out the door. She couldn’t bear to think what was wrong, what had happened to Hayden, but she knew firsthand the sound of serious pain. Of hurt and broken trust and betrayal.
She was out of the garage before the door had opened all the way, skating under it by a scant inch. Ice was everywhere, coating the driveway that had already been carefully treated by the management. She couldn’t imagine how bad the city roads were. Snow hadn’t been forecast for the valley, but the wintry mix of snow, sleet and ice was freezing upon contact. Her tires skidded when she turned toward the exit, and she was going only a few miles an hour.
Hawthorne and White wasn’t far, but it would take forever for her to get there. She eased to a stop at the end of the driveway, but the tires couldn’t get a grip. Luckily no traffic was coming on the main street, so she turned into the skid, kept the car going, and made the turn.
Please, Lord, watch over her until I can get to her. Keep her safe. Katherine didn’t know if her prayer could rise at all above the hard downbeat of the ice and snow. Anything could have happened to Hayden on a night like this.
Where was Jack? And why wasn’t he with his daughter? More questions ate at her as she slid through intersections and up inclines toward the outskirts of town where the foothills, only a few hundred feet higher than the valley floor, were coated in snow as if a blizzard had hit.
Her studded snow tires should have been adequate, but they weren’t. All she could do was pray with each slip and slide, each skid around a curve, that she’d stay on the road. She had to get to Hayden. She prayed harder when she met a car on the road, having the same difficult time keeping in its lane.
The snow flew dizzily at her windshield, knocked aside by the wipers. The constant whap, whap, whap knelled like seconds ticking by. She felt as if she were taking too long, running out of time. Please, let Ava find Jack. Maybe the state patrol was on its way.
Suddenly she saw the street sign. White. She was at the intersection on a stretch of country highway that led to the upper-class homes northeast of the city. Hawthorne shouldn’t be too far. She slowed down, grateful that she was the only car on the road, looking for…she didn’t know what she’d find.
She squinted through the thickening snowfall. There was the haze of a streetlight hovering ahead, growing stronger, giving way to a street corner with a small strip mall. A gas station and convenience store’s outside floodlights glazed the ice and snow with an eerie gleam. There, against the night-dark parking lot, was a phone booth, wedged between the store and another building, dark except for a single security light.
Panic ratcheted through her. Hayden had called her from here. Where was she? Katherine slowed down, leaning over her steering wheel, squinting for any sign of anyone.
A shadow moved in the darkness and there was Hayden, in the narrow cut of the headlights, white with snow, bedraggled and dark with…blood. It stained the front of her ripped jacket.
Katherine was out of the car before she remembered stopping. “Hayden, what happened? You’re hurt.”
Hayden just stood there, tears rolling down her face, her voice high, near hysteria. “I’m so glad you came. Your sister said you were c-coming, but what if you cr-crashed, too.”
Crash. “Were you in a car accident?” When Hayden nodded, Katherine felt fear shear through her soul. “Where’s your dad? Was he driving? Was anyone else hurt?”
“N-no. He’s at work-k.” Hayden sobbed. “He l-left and then J-jan and her boy-f-friend c-came by a-and—”
“You need an ambulance. Why didn’t you call 911?” Katherine led Hayden to the passenger side and opened the front door. “We have to get you warm, and let me look. You have blood on you. We’re going to need to call for help—”
“No! I’m not hurt. Dad c-can’t know!” Terror paled her stark face. “Please. You have to help me.”
“I will, Hayden. But you’re hurt.”
“It was a nose bleed, that’s all. I swear. It’s s-stopped n-now.”
“Did you tell my sister about this?”
“A l-little.”
“Good.” That meant help was on the way. Aubrey would have made sure of it. The overhead dome light showed no wo
und, only a faint trail of dried blood above Hayden’s upper lip. She was scared and cold.
Katherine reached for a blanket she kept beneath the seat. She shook it open and wrapped it around the girl. She seemed so young, so small. Katherine couldn’t help the fondness rising up. “Is that a little better?”
Hayden’s teeth were chattering, but she managed to nod. “K-Katherine? You c-can’t tell anyone, okay? Please?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. You could take me h-home and Dad would never have to know. I’d work more hours at the store to make up for it. Not hours, weeks. Weeks and weeks.”
“I’m not someone who can deceive your dad like that.” She said the words gently, because she remembered what it had been like to be a teenager, but firm enough so there was no doubt. “You could have been seriously hurt tonight. You’ve been sneaking out on him all along, haven’t you? That’s not right, and it’s not safe.”
That’s when she heard the faint scream of a siren above the rush of the storm. Jack. Katherine knew it even before she recognized the colors of a state patrol cruiser roaring their way, because of the shadows turning to light within her like a sun rising.
The cruiser skidded expertly alongside them and the door popped open. Katherine was already stepping aside, making way for Jack as he charged toward his injured daughter.
“Daddy!” Hayden’s cry was both pain and relief.
The blue-and-red flash of an ambulance sliced through the thick snowfall, lumbering closer.
Katherine stepped back, into the darkness, into the protective veil of the storm. It was right that Jack was with Hayden, looking her over and then moving to the side to let the EMTs check her vitals.
The ghost of a memory haunted her, of her own father when she’d called him from the emergency room, alone, so utterly alone. And how he’d driven straight through the night to make it to Seattle. She hadn’t been discharged yet, she’d had a broken wrist that had needed stabilizing and some lacerations. She could still see her daddy rushing through the hospital door, her stepmom a pace behind, terror and concern and love all tangled up as they wrapped her in an iron-strong hug.
I’ve come full circle. Somehow the old, haunting agony left her and she knew, somehow, that it was over. If she hadn’t gone through what she had so long ago, then she wouldn’t have been here to help Jack help Hayden. God had taken a horrible wrong in her life and made good of it in someone else’s.
She no longer saw the teenaged girl, almost the age of the daughter she’d given away that sad, heartbreaking summer. Or felt the shock of whole innocence shattering that previous rainy November night on the university campus.
Maybe this was why Jack had been brought into her life. To heal them both, and to help Hayden when she really needed it. Maybe that had been God’s true design, and the falling in love with Jack, that was her own doing.
As soon as the EMTs loaded Hayden into the back of the ambulance, she emerged from the night. She closed the passenger door and circled around to her side of the car. As she folded herself behind the wheel, she caught Jack’s gaze through the swiping windshield wipers.
For one brief moment, they connected. The cold, the storm, the fear and worry, the sirens strobing faded into nothing but the beat of his gratitude. She nodded, all hope shattered, and drove out of the lot. That was the last she would ever see of Jack Munroe.
Chapter Eighteen
The hospital parking lot was packed on a night like this. Ice crisped every surface of the car. While the defroster wasn’t making a dent, his wrath might. Jack had been terrified for Hayden, he’d hurt for her, he’d gone through the worst of all agonizing fear when he’d gotten Katherine’s sister’s call. It coalesced into red-hazed rage the instant he got her into the car. “What were you thinking?” he demanded.
“It wasn’t all that bad. I don’t have any broken bones.”
The top of his skull was going to blow right off. “Do you know what I was doing when Katherine’s sister called me?”
“She wasn’t supposed to call you.”
“I just finished helping with a family whose car had slid on black ice and hit a utility pole. The father, who was driving, was seriously injured and so was his teenaged girl, who is your age. Even though she was wearing a seat belt, she hit her head so hard she didn’t regain consciousness.”
Hayden looked down, contrite. “I’m sorry.”
“That could have happened to you. What were you doing in Jan’s boyfriend’s car?”
“R-riding.”
“Racing?” He’d gotten the call from a colleague, who’d found the car in a ditch. Some kids this time of year raced on the slick country roads, spinning for kicks on the ice. There had been telltale skid marks. “I checked on the status of the girl from the accident while I was waiting for you. She has a hairline skull fracture, but she should be okay. She’s lucky. That could have happened to you.”
“Chill, Dad. Nothing happened.” False bravado.
She just didn’t get it. “Hayden, you deceived Mrs. Garcia. You lied about being in your room. You betrayed her trust and mine the second you snuck out your window. You put your safety and your life in danger.”
“N-nothing happened.” Her chin was trembling.
A crack in her shield. “This time. What about next time? Maybe you’ll break a bone. You could have been killed. I don’t get this, Hayden. That’s what happened to your mom.”
“D-dad.” Sheer pain echoed between them.
“And going off with Jan and her boyfriend. I don’t know this kid. There was another car involved. Who was driving that car? Why did they leave you beside the road? It’s a tough world out there and anything could have happened. You haven’t seen what some people are capable of. You could’ve been assaulted or raped.” He was blind with protective fury and heartbreak. He scrubbed his face with his hands. He shattered at the thought of his daughter hurt beyond repair. Hurt even more with a wound too deep to heal completely.
That thought troubled him. It had something to do with Katherine. But what? He heard the echo of her words. It’s not so much that you erase the wound from your heart, but that you learn to move past it. He’d wondered over and over again how she’d become so wise in healing from deep pain. Maybe she’d been speaking of more than her mother’s abandonment. Maybe much more.
“I—I’m sorry, Daddy.” Hayden’s voice seemed to come from far away. She’d put her face in her hands, muffling her words. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I hurt so much and it won’t stop.”
“Everyone has tragedy in their lives. It’s a part of living. But you don’t want to add to it, sweetheart. You can’t erase the pain. You can’t escape from it. Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“I just—” She shrugged. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It hurts too much to keep pretending like everything’s j-just peachy when it’s not.”
“No, it’s not.” He didn’t think anything could hurt as much as seeing his daughter still in pain. But he was wrong. It was realizing how close he’d come to losing her forever. Realizing that anything could happen in the blink of an eye. “One wrong decision, one injustice, and life is never the same.”
Jack hesitated, feeling an odd reminder. Katherine had said something about that. He had a hunch. A gut instinct. “Nothing bad happened this time, but that’s not always going to be the case. You have enough pain, you don’t want to bring any more hurt into your life. It’s hard enough learning to live with the pain we have. To keep living in spite of it.”
She sniffled, tears rolling down her face.
Yeah, him, too. “Do you know how much I love you? Do you know what I went through after I got Ava’s call?”
She shook her head.
“It was pure hell. It nearly destroyed me. What would I do if I lost you? You’re my daughter. You are endlessly precious to me. I loved you from before you were born and there is nothing that will ever change that. You can test me, push a
t me with all you’re worth, but you’ll fail every time. I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here to help you through this.”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, holding in so much pain. As if holding on. “You aren’t gonna marry Katherine and forget mom, are you? Or me?”
“How could I forget you? You’re half my heart, baby. And every time I look at you, I see your mom. There’s no forgetting her. I promise you. We won’t let that happen. I’ll be grateful to her for you every single day for the rest of my life.” He felt the truth in his soul. “Are we good? Are we going to get through this together?”
Hayden nodded, bowing her head. The sleet beat against the windows, blurring the outside world, letting in only the faintest of ambient light, but Jack had never seen so clearly.
They were going to be all right. All three of them. Hayden, Katherine and him.
God had led them here, intersecting their lives, finding for them the kind of love to heal the pain. That’s what this bleak night was about. Jack was far from the most sensitive guy in Montana and he might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he knew one thing. He loved his daughter. He’d never stop fighting for her. It would take time with Hayden, and he was committed all the way.
And if tonight hadn’t happened, if he hadn’t had time to sit in the emergency room and hear the sounds of other people’s tragedies through the thin walls and not-so-private curtains, it wouldn’t have gotten him to thinking. If Hayden hadn’t jeopardized her safety and her life tonight, he never would have put it together. It was a cop’s hunch, but he was right more often than not.
Katherine was wrong. She was the right woman for him. She was the only woman. He loved her without condition and without end. He’d do whatever he had to do to fix this. He’d show Katherine he was the right man, her man, and he was committed to her, one thousand percent.
Jack fastened his seat belt. “Let’s get you home. You have some apologizing to do.”
“To Mrs. Garcia?” She gulped. “To Katherine. She came and got me. When she didn’t have to because I was real mean to her. I didn’t know who else to call, but she came. And she was n-nice to me. And it wasn’t because she likes you. She was just…nice.”