by Karen Young
Jake raked a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable with Michael’s questions. “You mean, was he a missing child?” Michael nodded. “Yeah, he was.”
“Was he made by a cop?” Michael asked.
Any other time, Michael’s use of police jargon amused Jake, but at the moment, his attention was on Rachel. He sensed her mounting fury. “As a matter of fact, he was,” Jake said. “A sharp-eyed rookie ID’d him.”
“All right!”
A flicker of amusement softened Jake’s features for a second or two. “Hooray for the good guys, right?”
“You bet, Dad.”
Jake glanced outside. “Did you and Todd clean up the patio area?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All the trash bagged and put away?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He sent Rachel a quick look. “My…uh, Rachel and I have something we need to discuss, Mike. How about you take a quick hike, okay?”
“Sure thing, Dad. I’ll just do some laps in the pool.” Although he smiled, he looked anxious, as though picking up on the tension between them. “Don’t worry, Miss Rachel. I know Dad’s gonna find Scotty.”
Rachel nodded, unable to speak.
Michael left, closing the French doors quietly behind him.
CHAPTER NINE
“EVEN MICHAEL KNOWS more than me,” Rachel said coldly. “How could you, Jake?”
“Michael only knows what he picks up at the office,” Jake said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “He’s like a sponge. He loves everything about law enforcement, and he’s especially interested in the search for Scotty.”
“I’m especially interested in the search for Scotty, too! Why is it okay for Michael to know what’s going on, but not me?”
After a quick look at her, Jake turned away, but he could still see her tearstained face and trembling mouth. “Because I love you and I don’t want you to have to bear any more!” he whispered fiercely. “Is that so wrong?”
“Yes, it is,” she said quietly, without emotion. “It’s wrong for you to try to insulate me from the ups and downs of the search for Scotty, and it’s wrong for me to allow it.” She drew a deep breath. “I want your word that you’ll tell me everything from now on, Jake. Everything.”
He hesitated, but then said, “All right.”
“Your word, Jake.”
He slammed his palm on the countertop. “I said I would.” His mouth grim, he reached for the notes he’d made from the phone call and stuck them in his shirt pocket. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”
She frowned. “Why? What is it?”
“It’s not about Scotty.” He gave her a straight look, a look that dared her to challenge him. “Do you think you can bring yourself to believe that?”
She nodded reluctantly. Without another word, he left.
RACHEL STOOD VERY STILL, hearing the echo of the front door as Jake slammed it on his way out. He had no right to be angry with her. She was the one who should be angry. And she was. She wasn’t making unreasonable demands. What was unreasonable was Jake’s chauvinistic need to run interference for her. Silently fuming, she gazed around her perfectly decorated kitchen. What kind of relationship did they have if he continually patronized her? More important, why did he do that? What was it about her that made him believe she was too fragile to bear the harsh realities of life? Without realizing it, had she given off some unspoken message that she needed coddling, needed to be taken care of? He had more confidence in Michael—a fourteen-year-old boy—than in her, his wife of eighteen years! Had she handled the horror of Scotty’s disappearance so poorly that Jake felt he could not risk telling her anything that didn’t have a silver lining?
She stared at the pattern on the wallpaper, seeing nothing. How he must have quaked in his shoes when Michael showed up. He must have believed that the evidence of his indiscretion in Miami would send her around the bend. But he’d been wrong. She reached up to turn off the light above the sink. It had hurt, yes. It had been crushingly humiliating, but hadn’t she borne it with as much grace as could be expected? Yes, she had. What did it take to convince him she didn’t forever have to be held by the hand through life’s dark moments?
“Miss Rachel?”
She blinked and turned to find Michael watching her anxiously. She had not heard him come inside. He was wet from his swim, his chest heaving with youthful male vitality. Water glistened on his long, lanky limbs. “Yes, Michael. What is it?”
“Are you okay, Miss Rachel?”
“I’m fine. Just fine.” She rubbed her temples. Even Michael thought she was a fragile flower.
“Did Dad have to go back to work?”
“Yes. It was something to do with the phone call. Urgent, he said.” She gave him a smile, an artificially bright smile. “I think I’ll get ready for bed and then read awhile. I picked up a new book today. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I think I’ll wait up for Dad.”
“You do that.”
SHE WAS STILL MAD the next day. Michael could tell. He’d been worried when he’d gotten out of school and she wasn’t waiting for him. Miss Rachel was always on time, the most dependable person he’d ever known. It was one of the things he liked best about her. He liked a lot of things about Rachel, but he didn’t think she noticed. She was too busy grieving for little Scotty and making life miserable for his dad.
He wasn’t sure why he didn’t get mad at Rachel for being that way with Jake, except that he understood misery pretty well himself. She’d lost her little boy and was tormented by not knowing how or why. That alone was a rotten thing. Then her husband had cheated on her way back when, and the kid—he—had showed up on her doorstep in this small town and she had to be nice to him. She was nice, too. Down-deep nice, even though she could have been the original wicked stepmother if she’d wanted to. No, Miss Rachel wasn’t the type to be mean to a kid. Even her husband’s illegitimate son.
That made him even more worried that she wasn’t here to pick him up today. He waited fifteen minutes and then started out jogging to the hospital. Maybe she’d had to work late or something. Maybe she’d forgotten him. Mama Dee had done that sometimes, but she was old and forgetful.
He spotted Rachel at her car as he was cutting through the parking lot. Just before calling out to her, he saw that somebody was with her.
Ron Campbell. That dude she worked for. Michael knew who he was, because after Rachel and Jake had that fight over him, he’d sneaked up to the hospital to get a look at him. He was an all-right-looking guy, but Jake had said it best. Something about Ron Campbell was sort of wimpy. He smiled too much. Michael twisted his mouth into a grimace. Mama Dee had always said never to trust a man who smiled too much.
He moved a little closer, just to check everything out, he told himself. He wasn’t spying on Miss Rachel. It was more that he was curious to find out if Campbell was behaving himself around his stepmother. He hadn’t forgotten Jake’s remark that the man was coming on to Rachel.
“I can’t believe I did this, Ron,” he heard Rachel saying as he got close. “I’ve never locked the keys in my car. I feel like such an idiot.”
Ron bent slightly, trying to wiggle a slim flexible steel tool between the glass and the doorframe. “Don’t worry, we’ll have it open before you know it. Fortunately the guard had this tool on hand. Apparently this happens in the parking lot frequently.”
Rachel clutched the strap of her purse. “I really appreciate this. I called Jake, but he’s not in his office. He has a spare key, but what good is it if I can’t reach him?”
“The question’s moot because we’re going to take care of this little inconvenience in just a second or two,” Ron said, beginning to perspire a little as he struggled to jimmy the lock.
Rachel looked on anxiously as another couple of minutes ticked by. “Maybe I should—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I think I’ve got— Shoot! I felt it start to give, but something happ
ened.”
Rachel watched two more failed attempts, then said, “Ron, it’s hot out here. Let’s forget it. I’ll call a locksmith.”
At her words, he finally gave up the effort, still smiling amiably when he looked at her. “Well, it’s probably best. I might ruin the whole locking system, and instead of thanking me, Jake will charge me with malicious intent.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He braced his arm casually on the roof of the car. “Why don’t I just drive you home myself? I was just about to call it a day anyway.”
“That’s really not necessary. I’m sure—”
“It would be my pleasure. Matter of fact, we could stop at Kelly’s and have a drink.” He laughed softly, intimately. “After the hassle we went through today putting together the quarterly report, not to mention locking yourself out of your car, you deserve a crisp, frosty margarita. We both do. What do you say?”
“I have to—”
“You said it yourself, Rachel. It’s hot.” He reached for her purse. “Come on, my car’s right over here.” With his other hand, he took her arm, then slid his palm all the way down to lace her fingers with his.
That was when Michael made his move. He stepped from the shadow of a souped-up four-wheel drive. “Hi, Miss Rachel.”
Campbell dropped Rachel’s hand.
“Oh, Michael!” To her own ears, Rachel sounded flustered. Guilty. “How did you get here?”
“I jogged. It’s only a few blocks.”
She took her purse from Ron. “You haven’t met Ron Campbell, have you?”
Michael gave him a look that, coming from an adult male, would have been a declaration of war. “No, ma’am.”
“Ron Campbell, Jake’s son, Michael.”
Ron grinned engagingly. “Hiya, Mike.”
Still unsmiling, Michael nodded once, briefly. “Mr. Campbell.”
Neither made a move to shake hands. Rachel’s agitation increased. “We have a problem, Michael. I’ve locked the keys in the car, and Jake’s not in his office. Mr. Campbell was trying to jimmy the lock with this tool, but we weren’t having much luck. It looks like—”
“I’ve got a key, Miss Rachel.”
She paused, staring. “What?”
Michael fished in his pocket and came up with a key ring from which several keys dangled. He wiggled them in the air. “The house, the boat, both cars. Dad gave them to me in case of an emergency.” His sudden grin was meant for Rachel and only Rachel. “I guess this is an emergency, huh?”
“Yes,” Rachel said faintly. “I guess it is.”
Stepping between Rachel and Ron, he inserted the key into the lock and opened the door with a flourish. Ron, standing too close, scrambled hastily out of the way.
“Lucky for us Dad thinks of things like this,” Michael said, standing back while she eased into the driver’s seat. He waited until she’d started the car before closing the door. Then, pocketing the spare key and standing guard with a protective hand on the door handle, he looked at Rachel’s boss.
“I think everything’s under control now, Mr. Campbell.”
Ron shrugged. His smile, still in place, didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Sure, kid. Okay.”
Michael waited pointedly while Ron retreated a couple of feet and, unable to catch Rachel’s eye, turned reluctantly and headed toward the entrance of the hospital.
For a few more seconds, Michael simply stood and watched. Then, with a careless tap of his hand on the top of the car, he loped around the front end and got in beside Rachel. He was looking straight ahead as they drove off. He didn’t say anything, but he appeared satisfied. More than satisfied.
RACHEL PUT THE INCIDENT of the locked car out of her mind. She wasn’t sure how much Michael had overheard, but she knew he’d heard enough to be suspicious of Ron. Oddly enough, it bothered her for Michael to see her in that light. She hadn’t encouraged Ron, but a little voice in her head that was excruciatingly honest whispered that she hadn’t discouraged him, either. The fact that thought of an affair had even crossed her mind seemed cheap and demeaning when seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy. Especially if that boy liked and respected you.
The feeling was mutual, Rachel discovered in the weeks that followed. Michael was very appealing. Sometimes she found it hard to remember the house without him in it. At times like that, she was swamped with guilt and confusion. How could she feel that way? Michael had only come to them after Scotty had been lost. But sometimes…sometimes when she heard Michael’s laughter deep in the house or out on the patio or the pool, she almost lost the sense of pain and deprivation she carried in memory of Scotty.
Even if Scotty and Michael had been the same age, they were so different that comparisons were difficult. Scotty was bright and blond and rambunctious, swaggeringly confident as only a six-year-old child could be. Michael was more hesitant, more introverted and, yes, more sensitive to others’ feelings. Kind and nonjudgmental, too. Those friends he brought home…
There had been several since Todd Stewart. With the end of the regular school year, Michael had enrolled in summer classes to make up the credits he’d lost when he’d left Des Moines. It seemed there was an unending stream of teenagers underfoot after school, misfit types for the most part, and Michael seemed to want to befriend them all. Not that Rachel had any serious objection to his generosity. It was just that her days seemed so different from the way they used to be. Other summers had been spent chauffeuring Scotty to swim lessons or chaperoning camp outs and trips to the zoo and museums, or any of a dozen other activities dreamed up to entertain the already overindulged children of herself and her friends. Observing the delight Michael’s friends took in his upper-middle-class surroundings, Rachel was ashamed to admit how little she’d been aware of the number of needy kids in Tidewater. Until Michael came to live with her and Jake, it seemed she’d gone through her life with blinders on.
Looking out the kitchen window, she swallowed her dismay as Michael offered one of her very best guest bath sheets to a boy who looked as though he’d never seen a swimming pool other than at the YMCA. He was tall with scraggly blond hair, a wispy excuse for a beard and several tattoos. And he was thin to the point of emaciation. Did these kids ever get three square meals a day or did they just look starved? Definitely the misfits of the world, she thought. Whatever their backgrounds, all of Michael’s friends had that one thing in common. They were the lost or neglected or simply different kids who didn’t quite fit in with Tidewater High’s privileged, apple-cheeked, designer-clad offspring of good families.
“How many are we feeding tonight?”
She started at Jake’s voice and returned to cleaning vegetables for a salad. “You, me, Michael and Michael’s friend.”
Leaning around her, Jake looked through the window. “Hmm, looks like that one could use a square meal.”
“Among other things.”
Jake smiled. “Yeah. Where the heck does he find these kids?”
“Detention hall?” Rachel held a scrubbed carrot on the cutting board and began chopping it. “Where else would there be such a motley collection? Some of these kids look as if they’ve never seen a house with a real lawn in front and back. One of them—the boy last week whose family were migrant fruit pickers—said that he’d never eaten with utensils that matched.” She dropped a handful of sliced radishes into a bowl. “Surely there’s a magazine or two in his house.”
Jake leaned against the counter, legs crossed at the ankles, watching her fingers fly. “I doubt he has much access to House Beautiful. There are lots of indigent families who can barely put food on the table. Magazines are luxuries for those people.”
For a second, she stared at her hands. Then, looking at him, she said quietly, “I sound like such a snob, don’t I?”
Still smiling, he touched the side of her face gently. “The truth?”
She nodded, knowing what was coming.
“You do.”
“I don’t mean
to. It’s just that I’ve never met children like this. I’m ashamed to say that until Michael started bringing them home, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about the unfortunate innocents of the world.”
“Then that’s one good thing to come from having Mike with us, hmm?” With his thumb, he traced the line of her surprisingly firm jaw.
“Yes, it is.” She smiled with sudden ruefulness. “Although I could wish he wouldn’t be so generous with my expensive bath sheets.”
Jake looked again at the boys, each wrapped in a luxurious taupe towel, and laughed. “Generous to a fault, isn’t he?”
Rachel studied Jake’s expression as he watched Michael. “But you don’t really think so, do you?”
“Think he’s too generous? No.” He moved away from her, settling once more against the counter. “Truth is, I think he’s a special kid. I suspect he identifies with the friends he brings here. Like Mike, they’ve been dealt a hard hand. But he’s one of the lucky ones, having been taken in by you and me. I think he enjoys giving them a firsthand look at life as they’ve always fantasized it. He gets a kick out of letting them swim in a private pool, plying them with whatever you fix for dinner and showing us off as the perfect couple. He’s got a sweet nature, Mike has. I’m proud of him for it. The world needs more people like him.”
When she remained silent, he looked slightly uneasy, as though uncertain how she would react to his glowing assessment of Michael.
But all she said was, “We’re hardly perfect.”
THE NEXT DAY, she had lunch with Suzanne.
“I’m going to have to do something, Suzy. We can’t go on like this.” With her forefinger, she traced the top of her water glass. “You know what I’m reminded of when I’m at home with Jake?” She pushed the glass aside. “The eye of a hurricane. It’s like we walk on eggs with each other, because to say what we really think or feel would open the door to a storm of anger, hurt and pain. So we both keep everything all bottled up. I’m not sure how much longer I can do that.”