Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  UNCOMFORTABLE MOMENTS

  Cole’s laptop came back clean, not that Hallie had thought it could be either him or Eileen. As uncomfortable as the confrontations had been for everybody, at least it was what Jim had said. Narrowed down.

  Her aunt and uncle—that was trickier. And when another week went by without anything happening, and Hallie getting more and more jittery, Jim said, “Time to go proactive.”

  He told her over the phone, of course, which was the only way she’d talked to him. With Hallie walking circles around her driveway, bundled up against the cold, not talking in the house just in case the bug detector didn’t work. “We’ll see if we can catch them off guard,” Jim said. “Scare them out of it, since they’ve been so wussy about it so far. It’s one thing to wait and hope it means they won’t escalate, but—doesn’t feel too good, does it?”

  “No,” she agreed. “So what do you think?” And he told her.

  Hallie knew it wouldn’t be Vicki’s idea of a good time, but when Jim called to tell her his mother had agreed, Hallie wasn’t too surprised.

  “Mom said it’s better for Cole to get used to facing them anyway,” Jim said. “And if he has to do that, she’d rather be there.”

  Which was why, on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving, Vicki, Cole, Anthea, Ben, and the kids were at Hallie’s house, along with Jim and Mac. The entire Lawson family, at Hallie’s first non-pizza-centric dinner party.

  The doorbell rang, and Hallie took a breath, wiped her hands on her skirt, and went to open the door, rehearsing the sequence in her mind.

  “Hi,” she told Dale and Faye. “Come in, please. Let me take your coats.”

  When she got back from the bedroom where she’d dumped them, Jim was saying, “I’m bartending for Hallie tonight. What can I get you? Wine, beer, something stronger?”

  They’d talked this out beforehand. Making it appear normal that Jim was in her house, together with the rest of his family. Taking any sting out of his familiarity.

  The group exchanged some stilted conversation for a couple minutes, with Anthea introducing her kids and Mac to Faye and Dale, and Faye managing to convey that she wasn’t impressed, until Hallie finally said, “Well, maybe it’s unfashionable, but—how about if we just sit down and eat?”

  She’d had a conference with Anthea about what to make for eleven people, a daunting prospect at the best of times, and had settled on enchiladas and salads. Simple, and she’d been able to make it all ahead of time.

  But first, she had to do this. She directed people to their spots at the table, into which she’d put leaves that had never been used. When she was seating Faye, she said, “Now, how did that get there?” and snatched away a folded newspaper sitting on the table.

  The black box with its heavy magnet fell on the hardwood with a crash, bounced, and landed on Faye’s foot in its spike-heeled pump, and Faye jumped and shrieked.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Hallie said. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. “Let me get that.” She bent down and snatched it up. “Are you all right?” she asked Faye.

  “Fine,” Faye said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure the mark will come out of my shoe.”

  “Oh, dear,” Hallie said. “I’m sorry.” She held the box out and turned it in her hand. “This fell off my car today. I was afraid it was something important. Is this some kind of . . . auto part, Uncle Dale, do you think?”

  He glanced at it and said, “Looks like something electronic to me.”

  Hallie looked around the table. Jim had briefed his family, and nobody said anything, even though Mac appeared to be bursting at the seams and kept sending her father significant looks. “Jim?” Hallie asked. “What do you think?”

  “Hmm,” he said, putting on his serious face. “I don’t know. If you give it to me, I’ll take a look at it.”

  She handed it over, then didn’t look at him again. She’d sat him far down the table from her, and she spent the evening not talking to him. Until Mac, who’d been nearly silent through dinner, remarked into a pause in the conversation, “So I have an announcement. I decided what I want to do when I grow up.”

  “Oh?” Vicki asked. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to be a Ranger,” she said. “Like Dad.”

  Jim set down his fork and looked at her without saying anything.

  “You’re dreaming,” Cole said. “Girls can’t be Rangers.”

  “They can, too,” she said. “Two women just did. The first ones.”

  “You’re too shrimpy,” Cole said.

  “I am not.”

  “Cole,” his mother said.

  “Dad,” Mac said, leaning into her father, “women can too be Rangers, can’t they? Anyway, you always say women should be strong. Not just have girl careers, like nurses and teachers and things.” She didn’t look at Hallie when she said it.

  “I thought you wanted to be a doctor,” Jim said.

  “That was before,” she said. “Because of Mom.” She turned to Faye and said, “My mother died of cancer. My dad loved her a lot. He always says he’ll love her forever.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Faye said with a glance at Hallie. “Some women are like that. The kind a man just can’t forget.”

  “I know you are, hon,” Dale said, closing a hand over his wife’s. “I’m going to spoil you your whole life. That’s our deal.”

  Jim said, “Mac’s right. Women can be Rangers. And being small isn’t necessarily as much a handicap as you might think. When you’re doing extreme things, a bigger frame can be a handicap, truth to tell. You get tired faster, need more calories. Women have more endurance than men. Better pain tolerance, too. As long as she can build up her upper-body strength enough—which isn’t easy for anybody, but harder for women—a woman can do it.”

  “See, Cole,” Mac said. “I told you.”

  Dale shook his head. “I don’t want to discourage you, honey,” he said to Mac, “even though I’d sure be sorry to see a daughter of mine do something like that, but if they let girls in—that’s because they’ve made different standards for them, since they’re not really strong enough. Every time I see some petite little girl who’s a policewoman, a firefighter—well, even though I’m sure it’s wonderful to be politically correct, makes everybody feel all happy—I think, how about if there’s actually a fire, or she’s trying to get the cuffs on some two-hundred-pounder? I don’t feel near as safe as I ought to, thinking about that. And if a man has to be worrying about taking care of the woman next to him out there in combat—I don’t think that’d be good for either one of them.”

  “Did you serve?” Jim asked him. Nothing challenging about it. Level. Calm. But Dale stiffened all the same. As, Hallie was sure, Jim had meant him to do.

  “No,” Dale said. “But I wouldn’t think you’d have to serve to know that.”

  “Oh,” Jim said, “I think you might. As a matter of fact, Ranger standards are the same for men and women, because, yes, you have to be physically up to the job, and trust me, the Army’s going to make sure you are. But who you can count on when the chips are down—I think any soldier or any cop would tell you that that doesn’t have much to do with how big the person is. I’ve known plenty of big, tough guys who found they couldn’t handle combat after all, and plenty of little guys with hearts like lions. It’s about mental toughness, too. It’s about keeping your nerve under fire, about making the hard decisions and staying calm in the tight spots. And I’d bet there are teachers and nurses out there who could teach most men a thing or two about that.”

  That shut everybody up for a minute. “And what I want to know,” Vicki said into the silence, “is whoever in the world told you, Mackenzie, that a nurse or a teacher couldn’t be strong? I know you didn’t hear that from your dad. I have friends who do those jobs, and I’d call them strong. Strong enough to go back in there every day and fight the good fight, anyway, for not enough money and not enough respect, exactly the way your dad does. If they don’t get respect
ed because they’re women—well, that’s no reason for women to go around disrespecting them, too. That’d be a pretty sorry state of affairs.”

  “Hear, hear,” Anthea said softly.

  “And hey,” Ben said. “I’m a teacher. I’m insulted.”

  “You’re a professor,” Mac said.

  “Same difference.”

  “So what do you think, Dad?” Mac demanded.

  “About what?” He didn’t look at Hallie.

  Mac sighed. “About whether I should be a Ranger, of course.”

  “I think it’d scare me to death,” he said. “The last thing I’d want for you would be to go into the Army. And I’d also like to remind you that your mom was a bookkeeper, and most of those are women. If you don’t think your mom was strong enough, we can have a talk when we get home.”

  “That’s sexism,” Mac said. “If you say it would scare you to death.”

  “No,” he said, “that’s being a parent.”

  “But, honey,” Faye said, “you wouldn’t want to have those big muscles and be all dirty and sweaty all the time, would you? Or not to be able to keep your hair nice? I can tell that would bother you, after you spent all that time on those pretty braids tonight.” Mac’s hair was pulled back from either side of her face in French braids that had been gathered into a single braid down her back, with the rest of her glossy dark hair falling free. “Ah—” Faye said with a twinkling smile when Mac would have answered. “Caught you, didn’t I? And I’ll tell you a little secret. Boys don’t like girls who think they’re stronger or smarter than they are. You go around trying to outdo them, and you’ll never have a boyfriend. And I know you wouldn’t want that.”

  “My dad does my hair,” Mac said frostily. “So I guess soldiers can like pretty hair sometimes, too.”

  “And I don’t know about the rest of that, either,” Ben said into the ensuing silence. “I found a woman like that, who was smarter than me. Stronger than me, too, if you twist my arm and make me admit it. I’m still here. I guess it just depends how secure the man is.”

  “Well, if you want to put it that way,” Faye murmured into her napkin.

  Mac’s eyes were too bright, Jim looked like he wanted to say about six things at once but they were choking him, so he wasn’t saying anything, and Anthea looked like she wanted to lunge across the table and stab Faye in the eye with her fork.

  Vicki caught Hallie’s eye, and Hallie read the message as if Vicki had said it aloud. You’re the hostess. Take charge.

  Stand your ground, Anthea had said, what felt like a year ago, in the September heat in the parking lot of the funeral chapel. Take up your space in the world.

  Hallie channeled every bit of professionalism she had. She didn’t need to channel anybody else, because she was enough. She wasn’t seventeen anymore, and she didn’t need to cower when somebody said objectionable things at this dining-room table. “Well, that’s a very interesting topic,” she said in her best classroom voice. “And one you could spend hours talking about, I’m sure, although I think I’d need my ground rules of discussion up on the wall for it, because we aren’t doing as well as we could be, are we? Some topics are just like that. It just makes me look forward to Thanksgiving dinner more and more. Vicki’s invited me,” she told Faye. “It gives ‘extended family’ a whole new meaning.” She stood up. “But you know—I actually baked brownies for this thing. It may be too feminine, but there you go, I did it anyway. And I could debate sexual politics, or I could eat chocolate, and right now—I choose chocolate.”

  Now she was just babbling. Time to wrap it up. “I’ve got ice cream, too. Cole, do you want to help me dish up?”

  “Uh—sure,” he said, standing up.

  Anthea jumped to her feet. “Ben and I will clear the table,” she said. “Mac, give us a hand.”

  The evening didn’t last much longer, to Hallie’s relief. It had felt like a lifetime.

  “Thank you so much, hon,” Faye said at the door. She and Dale left first, which was just as well. “You did fine, considering that you probably haven’t had much practice entertaining. It gets easier, I promise. And the conversation was so . . . educational, too, wasn’t it, Dale?”

  Dale shook his head. “Well, if I didn’t want to hear left-wing ideas, guess I wouldn’t live in a nest of liberals like Paradise. You have to take what you get in a college town, I suppose. But thanks, Hallie. You take care of yourself. I don’t like hearing that you’re having car trouble. Idaho roads can be dangerous in winter. Watch yourself.”

  “Oh, I expect Jim will take care of her,” Faye said. “Seems like he already is.”

  “I’ll take it into the shop if I need to,” Hallie said. “To figure out what that . . . part is. At least I know about it now.”

  “Well, we’ll get on,” Dale said. “Thanks again. Nice to have a chance to meet Cole, and all. I have a nephew. Imagine that.”

  On that note, they left. Hallie shut the door after them and went into the living room, where the rest of the party was still sitting.

  Anthea said, “We’ll take off, too. Getting to be the kids’ bedtimes. I just wanted to stay till the end. See if there was a big climax. A grand finale.”

  “Ha,” Hallie said, sinking down into a chair.

  “You did good,” Vicki said, standing up herself. “Come on, Cole.” She reached down a hand, and Hallie raised hers and accepted Vicki’s squeeze.

  “Thanks for playing along on the . . . thing,” Hallie said. “Especially you, Cole. Not giving it away. I just want to show it to as many people as possible and see if anybody knows anything.”

  “Yeah, right,” Cole said. “That wasn’t why. I’m not stupid.”

  “Cole,” his mother said, her voice sharp, and he glanced at Mac and shut up. Hallie got up to walk them to the door, but Vicki said, “No. You sit. See you on Thursday for that Thanksgiving dinner. You can put up the rules for . . . what was that?”

  Hallie smiled. “Ground rules for discussion. And thanks. I’m looking forward to it. I’m guessing it’ll be easier with the, ah, smaller group.”

  They left, and then Jim and Mac were the only ones there. Jim said, “We’re only staying because I’m thinking Mackenzie might have something to say to you.”

  He’d disappeared with her for a few minutes between dessert and coffee, supposedly to “say hello to Cletus,” who’d been banished to the family room for the evening. Now, Mac said, her face tight and closed, “I apologize for being rude about teachers.”

  Hallie thought a moment before she spoke. “That did hurt my feelings a little,” she said. “But I think I understand why you said it.”

  That made Mac look apprehensive, but Hallie wasn’t sure there’d be much point in pursuing the topic. Mac was bound to resent anybody who came between herself and her father. Hallie was the first, that was all.

  “I’ll call you,” Jim said. “Later on. Or we can stay and help you do the dishes.”

  “No,” she said. “Go on. I’d like the quiet time.” Mac didn’t need Hallie rubbed in her face anymore tonight, either. It would serve no purpose.

  Whatever Jim had thought about the results of her performance with the tracker—that would have to wait.

  FULL TILT

  Once again, Hallie was out on the driveway talking to Jim on the phone, walking around to keep warm. They weren’t supposed to get snow again until after Thanksgiving, but that just meant it was cold, especially at nine thirty at night.

  “So,” she asked him, “when I dropped the GPS, what did you see?” That had been their deal. She’d drop it, and Jim would watch. Since that was, as he’d reminded her, his job.

  “Your aunt was upset about her shoe,” Jim said. “Or scoring a point on you. That was about it. And your uncle—I’d call that no reaction. He got more steamed up about being called on his fossilized worldview than he did about the GPS. If he recognized it, he must be one hell of a poker player.”

  Hallie thought a minute about that.
“Well, he worked with my dad all those years, and never reacted when my dad was nasty to him—which was all the time. I always just thought he was nice, growing up, but now I think . . . he holds it in. Though he did tell me something about the roads being dangerous, about being careful when they were leaving, which sounded like a warning. But again—why would he warn me?” She sighed. “I don’t know. Seems like we went through a lot of tension for nothing. Especially what happened with Mac.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” She walked another circle, and Cletus, as always, followed her. “It’s natural. If I really am the first woman you’ve shown interest in, she’s not going to like it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean, if you really are? I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. But you’ll be there for Thanksgiving dinner, and we’ll give it another try. And after that—Anthea and Ben are taking the kids right after dinner and driving to Seattle to visit Ben’s folks. You and I could meet up at her place. I could walk over there. No motel clerks, my rig in my garage, and Mac at her grandma’s for the night. I could work that out with Anthea, I know. What do you say? I’d sure like to spend the night with you again.”

  “No.” She realized that this was the reason she’d dreaded his call tonight as much as she’d looked forward to it. Because this had to be said, and he wasn’t going to say it. Of course he wasn’t. It wasn’t the same thing to him as it was to her. “We can’t do that. Why wouldn’t somebody—all right, my uncle—be watching, somehow, or listening, if he’s done all this already? Especially now that they know we’ve found my tracker.” They’d decided to leave Jim’s on his truck for now, but to leave Hallie’s in her garage. It might still fool somebody into thinking Jim wasn’t aware that he was being watched. Meanwhile, Hallie could move around unseen. Maybe.

  “It’s too risky,” she went on, “and you know it, and there’s no point anyway beyond . . . adventure seeking, or something. We got it out of our systems, and that’s got to be enough.”

  When he didn’t answer, she hurried on. “Don’t get me wrong. It was great, and I’m glad we did it, and I appreciate all your help. With everything, but especially with . . . with that. It settled some things for me, and it’s going to help me move on. You moved on with your life a long time ago, and in some ways, I didn’t. What we’ve done, connecting with you again—it’ll help me close that door. I can see you as part of your family, and I can be part of it, too, in a sort of . . . fringe way. The way it needs to be now, with Cole. But if I keep up with this, it’s going to be so much harder to do that. I’m not going to be able to move on. I’m going to be wishing again, stuck between my past and my future, hu—” She stopped, breathed, and finished it. “Hung up on you. And I can’t do that. I need to move forward.”