Autumn's Shadow

by Lyn Cote

  Keely stood up, acting as if she hadn't heard the woman. She felt Burke rise and stand near her.

  "So someone took a shot at you?" Veda persisted, giving a nasty, gloating twist to each word.

  Keely half turned from the woman. Nick and Jayleen were coming toward her.

  "So the Weavers got your kid," Veda jeered at Jayleen.

  "Veda!" Ma snapped, coming up fast behind her. "You've had your free meal. It's time you left."

  Burke moved closer to Keely as though ready to protect her.

  Veda took a menacing step toward Ma. "Think you're the cat's meow now that you hooked an old fool. How did you trick Bruno into marrying you? You couldn't have gotten pregnant like you did the first time."

  "I said it's time you left," Ma repeated, "or do I have to have you put out?"

  Ma and Veda glared at each other. Harlan Carey joined the unhappy group. "Veda, do you need a ride home?" he asked.

  "I can get myself home!" Veda swung away and headed toward the cloakroom by the front entrance.

  "Thanks, Harlan," Ma murmured. "You'd think after all these years that woman would grow some sense."

  "She needs more than sense," Harlan replied.

  Chapter Seven

  After Veda stomped out of the VFW, Burke let Keely draw him away toward the other exit at the rear. He needed to talk to her, but being alone with her wasn't a good move. He wanted that too much. Caught in this crosscurrent, he hesitated. "Where are we headed?"

  Passing through the door, which had been propped open, she motioned him to follow her. Without a word, she crossed the parking lot to a large grassy area at the rear of the deep lot.

  He followed her, wanting to voice his doubts about the wisdom of their talking out here, ab out the wisdome of being private in such a public place. Being alone with her at the lake had been different. Couldn't they have talked inside? Wouldn't that have been less noticed by the gossips?

  She finally stopped and bent down to pick up a stack of four rusty horseshoes lying around a rugged metal stake. Dressed elegantly for a wedding but holding these rough objects, this lady was a puzzle Why was she in this little town, trying to help teens? "You want to play horseshoes?" he asked, disbelieving.

  She sighed. "Not really. I just needed to talk to you without a hundred people looking on. These—" she held them up—"give us a reason to be outside together." She walked over to a worn-bare spot in the grass and began swinging her arm back and forth, aiming her first shoe.

  Burke found himself captivated by the sight of Keely, dressed in a stylish rose pink dress, swaying in the twilight. The dress was made of a soft fabric that flowed over the length of her, molding to her slender curves, ending by hugging her calves. She tossed the shoe. It missed. "I'm out of practice."

  Watching her casually toss the horseshoes eased the tension he'd been feeling. She hadn't sounded that upset about Nick's stunt with the firecrackers. Maybe he'd been overreacting.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, worry creasing her forehead. "From what I've heard, Jayleen got herself mixed up with a bad bunch in Milwaukee."

  He snorted, trying to react to her words, not her. But he couldn't take his eyes off her. "The worst."

  "I'll be her principal and I need to know the girl's story." Bending at the waist, she began swinging her second horse shoe. "Please tell me the barebones facts of what happened to Jayleen and how the baby got here." She tossed the shoe. Clang. It hit the stake and bounced away. She straightened and shrugged, giving him a leisurely smile.

  She was right. As the girl's principal, she'd need to know what had happened. "Jayleen got mixed up with an older guy in his twenties, very smooth. She told us she didn't know that he was in a gang, a drug dealer. But who knows?" He went on, speaking fast, "Anyway, he got her pregnant, and she ran away from her mother last fall right after school started and moved in with him. He'd told her he was going to marry her."

  A burst of laughter from the reception came to them, carried by the breeze. Keely began swinging her third shoe, pointedly judging the distance. "But that changed after the baby was born?"

  Her facing away from him let Burke speak more easily."He had a bad temper and started using heavy. She said she tried to go home, but he wouldn't let her. I got the feeling he thought she'd inform on him." He watched Keely swaying. As always, her every move was graceful, intriguing, distracting. He pressed on, "Anyway, she felt unsafe, so she entrusted her baby to her girlfriend, who then stole a car with her boyfriend and headed north to give the baby to Jayleen's grandmother."

  "Why did she hide the necklace?" Keely asked.

  "She didn't trust her friend not to steal it." Burke shrugged. "And she wanted it with the baby so her grandmother would know it was really Jayleen's baby. Her friend had a sealed letter to give Patsy with the baby; it explained everything and asked for help for Jayleen."

  Keely tossed the third shoe. It hit fast and spun around the stake, making a metallic ring.

  "But the letter and baby never got to Patsy. And her father couldn't get to Milwaukee because of the bad winter last year.

  "Why didn't her mother report Jayleen missing to the police?" Keely asked.

  "She wanted the child support, and she probably didn't want social services nosing around her." He hoped Keely never had to confront that woman. She'd been a piece of work.

  "Poor Jayleen. She must have been terrified." Frowning, Keely shook her head, looking grieved. "How did she get away from the drug dealer?"

  He wasn't surprised by Keely's quick sympathy. Jayleen was lucky to be getting Keely Turner as her principal."When the baby disappeared, he beat the girl up and made her tell him where the baby was. Then he took advantage of the child's disappearance. He acted like he'd gotten the baby away from her friends and she was with his family. He let Jayleen go home then but told her if she gave evidence against him, he'd make sure she never saw the baby alive again."

  "How could he do such a thing?" Keely asked, sounding as though the words had been twisted from her.

  The sound roused his compassion. He'd schooled himself to be detached from the cases he worked on. But this lady's empathy and Jayleens' sadness opened the door to feeling. The stirring inside him took him all the way back to when he'd been in the thick of the confrontationwith Jayleen's atrocious mother, in the midst of the shouting and crying, dragging the truth out of the guilty mother and helping the girl tag the drug dealer. He hadn't let himself think...or react then.

  But now it overwhelmed him. The girl wasn't even as old as Nick. And she'd been sick with worry about a baby she'd tried to protect but lost. The emotional torture she'd suffered flooded him. He looked to Keely and for the moment, he saw that they shared the same sympathy for Jayleen.

  Then Keely turned away. As though consciously breaking the mood, Keely swung her arm back and forth, aiming the final shoe. Finally, she let it go. It went wide. She groaned, such a commonplace sound, and started walking to retrieve the shoes.

  "You're too upset about Nick's prank last night." She tossed the charged words at him almost casually.

  Over the uneven ground, he moved to catch up to her. "I can't seem to connect with him."

  "Stop trying then." She gathered up the shoes.

  "What?" Stop trying? "That's what I'm already guilty of, not trying."

  "You can't push yourself on a teen." She didn't turn to look at him. "From what you told me, you haven't been a frequent part of his life in the past, especially the immediate past." She sighed. "So you can't make up for that by getting in his face all the time."

  Was that what he was doing? Getting in Nick's face?" There's no way I can reach him then?"

  Turning, she gave him an easy smile. "I didn't say that. It's just that with teens you have to be gentle as a dove and wise as a serpent."

  "I don't get it."

  Looking up at him, she placed the coarse, heavy horse shoes in his hands. "You decided not to move out of Harlan's, right?"

  He nodded. Ho
w did she always know things? "I decided we should stay. Nick's happy there."

  "Wise move. You're learning to be sensitive. Let Harlan get through to Nick. And it's good to have someone else living with the two of you. Don't you realize that Nick would give you more trouble if Harlan weren't around?"

  So he'd made one right decision about Nick. At last. "I hadn't thought of that." Unexpected relief shot through him, he looked away, suspicious of the sensation.

  She motioned for him to try his luck with the horse shoes. "You just have to hang around Nick and watch for openings to be there when he needs you."

  "Whatever you say." He didn't feel like playing horseshoes. But they were throwing off the gossips, not here to have fun. He sighted the stake, and began loosening his throwing arm. "I sometimes think it will never be right between Nick and me again." Between my sister and my parents again.

  She touched his arm. "A time will come when he turns to you for help. Just be there and do what you can to help him. That's what will build the bridge. If you try to force it now, he'll just put it down as too little too late. He's wounded and wants to hurt you and every other adult he thinks has let him down. But he'll get beyond that."

  He absorbed her touch, taking it deep inside. "Can you guarantee that?" He let the shoe sail toward the stake.

  "Yes." She nodded. "Nick isn't bad. Good runs straight through him."

  She sounded so confident that he started to feel it. She stood only inches from him. The pull to draw her closer, hold her against him worked its way through him. The attraction he felt toward this special lady just wouldn't go away. Did she feel it too?

  Turning her head, she brushed away a mosquito near her ear. Her long slender nape beckoned him. His lips anticipated ...what it would feel like if he pressed them to the white skin just behind her ear.

  "I think," she murmured, "we should let him be Jayleen's hero."

  "What?" Her words broke his mood.

  "You noticed Harlan taking Nick over to meet Jayleen?A good idea."

  "I don't want Nick hanging around with her." He gripped the horse shoes tighter.

  She frowned at him. "Just because Jayleen's father made a poor choice in the mother of his children doesn't mean that Jayleen will be a bad influence on Nick. In fact, I think helping her will take Nick's mind off his own problems."

  Turning what she was saying over in his mind, he aimed and tossed another and then another shoe. Each one clanged and spun around the stake.

  "Impressive," she complimented him. "We both know that Nick's doing pranks in the vain hope that you'll get disgusted with him and send him back to Milwaukee, righ? But if he's interested in Jayleen, trying to help her, it could stop that."

  Her convincing explanation left him speechless. Keely, with her gentle voice and concerned expression, had the power to make matters clear ...and the power to make him want to draw near her and open up. A dangerous combination.

  "One thing though," she said. "The baby's father is in custody, right?"

  "Yes, on statutory rape for one thing. Jayleen was under sixteen and he was over twenty-one. As soon as Jayleen knew her baby was safe in Steadfast, she informed against him. Then the MPD caught him right in the middle of a drug deal. They'd been after him for months."

  "So that proves my point about Jayleen. As soon as she could, she did the right thing, didn't she?"

  He couldn't find any flaw in her logic. But experience had taught him that girls who got mixed up with drug dealers rarely had happy endings. He decided not to point this out. Maybe here with family around her, Jayleen could get off to a better fresh start. He tossed the final horseshoe, another point.

  His gaze lingered on Keely. She was a risky woman for him to be around. On the first night they'd met, he'd gotten a hint of that. And today, she'd managed to pierce him with the rich compassion that flowed from her.

  "We'd better go in." She helped him collect his stray horse shoes and deposit them all around the iron stake.

  "So soon?" Suddenly he didn't want to go back into the loud, crowded hall. He wanted to stay out here. With her. No matter the consequences.

  "Yes, unless we want this horse shoe game to be Monday morning's gossip." She folded her hands and looked up at him with a wry expression.

  "I'll never get used to small town gossip," he said. He had intended to steer clear of being alone with Keely. But he resented others thinking of his being associated with her. He wasn't being consistent; he knew it and it made him cross. "Don't people have anything better to do around here?"

  "Let's go back in and mingle." She led him to the rear entrance. A thick line of fir trees ran along the lot line near it. A group of men had come outside to smoke and were shielded by the trees.

  "Did you see how that new deputy's headed straight for Turner's daughter?" one anonymous voice asked in a sly tone.

  Someone chuckled dryly. "He's not letting any grass grow under his feet. That's for sure. Maybe he came up here because he was tired of being a cop. Being a rich son-in-law might suit him better."

  Burke took a step toward the voices.

  Keely stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. She said nothing, just shook her head and walked inside.

  Burke quelled the urge to walk over and shove the slimy words down the throat they'd come from.

  "Hello, Ms. Turner."

  Keely was kneeling on the floor of the Family Closet a week after Ma's wedding. She was in the midst of refolding a stack of crib sheets that customers had left rumpled. Keely looked up. "Hello, Patsy. Hello, Jayleen."

  "Give us those sheets," Patsy ordered. "I'll refold them. Jayleen needs some clothes and won't let me spend much on her." Patsy sounded grumpy and proud at the same time."Says secondhand will do."

  Keely had been hoping Patsy would bring Jayleen by. She relinquished the stack of sheets to Patsy, knowing that the older woman was always pleased to help. Also this would make Jayleen's first visit here go easier, seeing that her family was already a part of the Family Closet team.

  "We have some like-new things," Keely said. "What do you need, Jayleen?"

  "School clothes mostly." Jayleen didn't lift her gaze from the floor. "Just jeans and a winter jacket."

  "No!" Patsy objected. "That will be new. I seen a down-filled one in a JCPenney catalog that will suit you to a T. And no arguing. Now let Ms. Turner help you pick out a few things. She knows the stock here." Patsy ambled over to the counter, turned her back, and began carefully refolding the small bundle of sheets.

  "Our jeans are over here." Keely led her to a long shelf of folded denims. "Let's see, this stack should be your size. Oh, here, these still have the original tags on them. Why don't you try them on first? The fitting room is—"

  Nick walked in from the garage. "Someone's here with another donation," he announced, sounding put out by this imposition.

  "Good, Nick." Keely noted that his eyes lighted on Jayleen and lingered. "You know where the charitable receipt pad is. Just fill one out and sign it for them."

  Nick rummaged behind the counter. "Hey, Jayleen!" he called out in an offhand tone. "Thought that was you I saw come in."

  "Hi, Nick," Jayleen replied without turning to look at him.

  But Keely noted a change in Jayleen's voice. Evidently, Nick had made an impression on her. Yes!

  "Did you take notes in history yesterday?" he asked in a studied nonchalant tone.

  "Yes." Jayleen looked down.

  "Can I come over and check mine with yours later?"Nick asked on the way out. "See if I missed anything?"

  "I don't—," the girl began.

  "You come right over," Patsy chimed in. "I baked chocolate chip cookies today. Jayleen's friends are always welcome."

  Jayleen hung her head, her cheeks pink.

  Nick mumbled an okay and escaped to the garage.

  Though Jayleen might be embarrassed by her grandmother's offer, Keely thought Patsy's welcoming attitude and cookies would only help. At least, Patsy was behaving just like
her good self.

  "Keely?" Penny Weaver with baby Rachel in her arms walked in. "I just found the match to that sock I brought in—" At the sight of Jayleen, Penny froze just inside the front door. "Oh."

  Keely hadn't foreseen this and couldn't think of a thing to say.

  There was an awkward silent moment; then Jayleen speed-walked into the fitting room and shut the door firmly behind her.

  Penny looked crestfallen, as though caught doing something wrong. Complaining loudly, Rachel twisted in her arms, trying to get down.

  Patsy broke the awkwardness. "Oh, let me hold her." She hurried forward, arms open in welcome.

  Keely felt Penny's distress as her own.

  Obviously forcing a smile, Penny let the eager great-grandmother take Rachel, and then she walked over to give Keely the sock. "I didn't know," she said. "I didn't think."

  "That's okay," Patsy said loudly. "No use trying to avoid each other. Everyone knows you're taking care of Jayleen's baby. It's best to keep things plain and honest," Patsy went on. "And this little sweetheart looks like she's as happy as a clam. Though how a person knows when a clam is happy, I don't know." The woman grinned.

  Keely tried to think of something to say to help lessen Penny's discomfort. What was going to happen to the baby? Would Jayleen reclaim her child or not?

  Penny walked over and held out her arms. "Sorry, Patsy. Can't stay. I'm on my way to pick Zak up from a play date."

  Patsy gave Rachel a hearty kiss and returned her to the pastor's wife. Tears moistened the older woman's eyes.

  Penny made her getaway.

  Nick walked back in. Looking unhappy, Carrie Walachek trailed in after him. Where had she come from? Was she here to sign up for their pre-motherhood classes?

  Keely hadn't spoken directly to the girl since the night at her trailer. She sighed, feeling overwhelmed.

  Nick put the receipts back into the drawer behind the counter. I need backup. Keely called to the other volunteer, who was in the kitchen making iced tea, to come out.

  Then unexpectedly, Grady slouched in the front door, looking sullen as usual. He carried a large cardboard box.