by Anna Adams
“My daddy is not a bad man,” Hope shouted.
Van was running. A car honked on his left. He didn’t bother to look. Hope was yanking her hand out of the little creep’s behind her with all her might.
Jonathan Barr’s kid. Not a creep, but a parrot for his father’s point of view.
“Mr. Van.” She said his name as if he’d swooped like Superman out of the sky to save her.
“What’s up?” He fought irrational anger toward the little kid who dropped her hand at last.
“That boy says my daddy is a bad man.” She charged him. Van caught her. A teacher from the school had noticed at last.
“Mr. Haddon, may I ask what you’re doing?”
“I’m—” He’d started to say Cassie’s husband. “A friend of the family’s. I saw her crying. May I speak to you?”
“Are you my daddy, Mr. Van?”
The other teacher approached, and her interest rivaled the first woman’s. Even the kids seemed intent. He only hesitated because Cassie was the first of his concerns, and she wasn’t going to like this.
“Yes,” he said. And to hell with Cassie’s anger. She’d understand when he told her this kid had hurt her little girl.
Both teachers goggled at him, fish in the small-town bowl they’d all grown up in.
“May I take her home?”
“We’ll deal with young Josh,” the first woman said, old enough to clearly think she should deal with Van, too. “Hope should stay. This is her class, and she’s as important as any of our other students.”
“You’ll keep an eye on the situation?” Would a real father feel any more reluctant to drop his daughter into a toddler’s version of a viper’s nest?
“Absolutely.” She reached for Hope, who clung to Van. “This is part of life, Mr. Warne.”
“She’s a little young for life lessons.”
“Sadly, not. And you’re not authorized to take her home from school. Certainly not in the middle of a field trip.”
On the verge of telling the woman to call Cassie, he noticed the other children nudging each other and realized he might make things worse for Hope. He set her on the ground, tugging at her coat and the pinafore that covered it.
“Don’t go,” she said.
He kissed her forehead and wiped her tears away. “I’ll see you at home tonight.” That was for Josh Barr, a reminder that Van was watching and he shouldn’t bully a little girl—no matter what his father’s habits might be. “Have fun on the rest of the field trip.”
“Come up here and walk with me, Hope.” The first teacher took her hand. “You can be our line leader.”
Immediately brightening at the promise of being in charge, Hope let go of Van and skipped beside the other woman.
Van’s anger dissipated with a thump in the region of his chest. He’d overreacted.
Even Josh took the hand of the kid in front of him without holding much of a resentful-eyed grudge.
Cassie. He’d better tell her before the neighbors began to congratulate her on finally bringing his baby home to him. He’d be lucky to survive his latest move.
“CASSIE, LOOK who’s here. Van.”
Her father’s excitement had given her no chance to guess. She looked up from sorting Hope’s socks on the living room floor to find her father and Van in the doorway.
“What’s up?” She tried to sound as if she didn’t care, as if she hadn’t spent three days—nights, actually—dreaming she hadn’t lost her nerve and sent him away. Three nights of dreaming she’d made love with the tall, lean man who loomed over her, worry creasing lines in the center of his forehead.
“Leo.” He rammed his hands into his overcoat pockets. “Can I have a few minutes with Cassie?”
“Take all you want.” Her father all but danced. He pointed upward. “I’ll be in my room.”
“You don’t have to—”
“He does, for just a few minutes.”
She stood, oblivious to her father’s quick exit.
“What’s the matter?”
“Hope’s fine,” he said, and that really scared her, “but I saw her with her class on a field trip.”
“They’re touring the courthouse.” As if that mattered. “What happened?”
“The kid behind her was bugging her. She kept trying to get away from him, but they were holding hands the way the kids do on field trips.”
“You’re terrifying me.”
“I told her and everyone in her class, including the teachers, that I’m her father.”
She saw it with perfect clarity. Miss Amy and Mrs. Doris, the other children pausing in the communal yelling of “fight” only to gape at Van, claiming to be the new girl’s dad.
“Oh, no. I knew she’d heard it there, but I never dreamed you’d say it.”
“I think I overreacted, but she was crying. One of the other kids was teasing her.”
Cassie stopped minding for a second. She scattered socks on her way to the door. “I’ll go get her.”
“Now you’re overreacting. I’m telling this badly because I’m afraid you’ll say you never want to see me again.”
“Tell me the right way, then.”
“She’s fine. The older teacher let her be line leader, and she skipped off, happy as a clam.”
Cassie’s relief felt like bubbles. “She’d rule the world if people would just get out of her way and let her go about her business.”
“But Josh Barr apparently told her either I was her dad or someone she interpreted as a bad man might be.”
“I don’t want her to think a bad man…” She gathered her wits as the enormity of Van’s false confession washed over her. “But now you’re her father in the eyes of everyone you know—of people you don’t know who just remember I was raped and we got divorced.”
“I don’t care about that.” He brushed it away with a wave of his capable fingers. “I just don’t want Hope to be more hurt when she finds out the truth.”
“Someone will figure it out. Someday, someone will tell her. Or she’ll ask me, and I’ll have to tell her.”
“When she’s old enough to deal with it.” He came to her, also kicking balled-up socks. As if she couldn’t hear or understand without his hands on her. “I’ll be the first to untangle the mess I’ve made. I’ll explain to her, but how does a four-year-old cope with her classmate calling her a rapist’s daughter?”
Tears hurt Cassie. She never let herself cry. “That’s who she is, Van.”
“No.” He held her. A compulsive tangle of emotion. She hugged him back, trying for once to comfort him.
“Yes, but I love her, anyway, with all my heart—and I think you’re learning to.”
“I don’t care what he did. He’s never been her father.” He stepped back, enough to look down at her, with a new need. “I’ll be her father.”
As if that settled something for him, he dragged Cassie close again, and his mouth took hers with the force she remembered, with affection and need and the conviction of true, lasting love.
She tasted coffee and the texture of Van, wanting her, making love that made her forget the world as his hands drew her into the blessed contours of his beloved body.
She kissed him back, cradling his face, rediscovering her own soul in the wonder of touching him. He covered her hands, as if to keep her from pulling away.
His mouth traced her face, every curve, every angle, and she basked in his unconcealed longing. He kicked the door shut behind him, and they tumbled onto the couch.
“I want to see you.” He rolled until she was straddling him, one knee buried in the cushions, his arousal beneath her, pulsing with each beat of his heart.
She stroked his face again, exulting in his excitement, but when he arched into her, her own need ebbed, and the terrifying emptiness cracked open in her heart. A sliver of the pain it used to be.
Van pulled her down. He opened her mouth with his, but it was too late. How could he not notice? He moved against her, kissing her,
nudging the sides of her shirt aside with his questing mouth. He undid the top button.
She gasped for air.
He lifted his head, and she felt stubble against the rise of her breast, then his lips, drawing her skin into his mouth, his tongue tasting her.
“No.” She drew back so sharply she fell to the floor. “No.” She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, defending herself against any touch.
Van’s arms and legs relaxed in perfect, heartbreaking surrender.
“No?”
She shook her head. Who knew if he could see her as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling?
“Because of me or him?”
“I thought I could do it.” The words bubbled out of her, a confession she had no intention of making. “You were my husband. I know you, your body. You’re—”
“Safe,” he said.
“I thought so.”
He stood, his legs ungainly, as if he’d suffered a fatal electrical shock.
“I don’t want you that way,” he said. He staggered to the door. His footsteps went down the hall, and the front door opened and then shut again.
She fell into emptiness like a well. Cassie, who never let herself cry, couldn’t stop. She buried her face in the couch that smelled of must and her father’s house.
At last, as if she were hovering over her own head, she heard Van’s name, over and over, in her sobbing voice. She covered her mouth with both hands to keep anyone else from hearing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LATE THAT NIGHT, she called. He stared at her number on his phone and considered not answering.
They had to face the truth and learn to live without each other. After five years, it was about time.
He clicked the Talk button. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I won’t be your fallback position.”
“I’m not asking you to, Van. I want you. I want more children and a life.”
“But you can’t let me touch you. And you can’t make yourself touch me. I’m not safe, and you’re afraid no one else will be.”
“Maybe I need time.”
Her voice, drenched in misery, made him want to reach for her through the phone. Even in the old days, admitting weakness hadn’t been her strong suit. “I’m trying to say something comforting, but I’m tired, Cassie, and I don’t like thinking I’ve been wrong all along. I thought if we loved each other, it would be enough.”
“We never gave each other time.”
“You left,” he said, “and now that you’ve come home, we have been together but we found out today that time means as little as love.”
“Van—”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Can’t what?”
“Settle. I love you too much to pretend being your safety net would be enough. And since I can’t even be that, we might end up hating each other. I couldn’t live with that.”
“You love me?”
He nodded. Of course, she couldn’t see him. It didn’t matter. In the darkness of his own empty house, he pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed End.
“I HOUNDED the funding office until they found money for me,” Allison said over Cassie’s cell phone on Christmas Eve morning. “So, what do you say? You can start the second week in January, after we finish the drug testing and fill out all the forms.”
“That’d be great.” Cassie was waiting for Hope to come out of her school, but she wanted Allison to know how pleased she was.
Yet something happened when she realized she had to stay now. The wall she’d fought free of, that had separated her from the world and kept her from feeling anything, had emerged straight out of the ground again. “Thanks, Allison.”
“Is something wrong? Are you having second thoughts?”
She should change her name to Second Thoughts—or Total Doubt. “Are you kidding? I’m grateful. This job will be such a help to my family.”
“You’ll be a help to us. Drop by any time you want. I’ll call you after the holidays with a test date.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll be the ones thanking you. I see more time with my own family on the horizon. Your résumé was an unexpected Christmas present.”
“You’re making me feel welcome. I’m grateful.”
“We live in a small town, Cassie, but we have problems like any other place.” A silence waited for Cassie to fill it. “I’m sorry,” Allison said. “You know as well as any woman who’s come to us.”
“It’s not a problem. I don’t mind talking about it.”
She’d spoken of it many times, except with Van. She felt guilty when she tried to talk about the rape with Van. “My daughter’s preschool is letting out. I’d better go now.”
“See you in the new year.”
Cassie got out of the car and ran to meet Hope, who was sporting a Christmas-decorated bag of goodies. Cassie and Hope had provided cookies for the class.
“Lookie, Mommy.” Hope opened her bag and showed off candy canes and wrapped chocolates, a plastic bag of cookies like the ones she’d contributed, and a couple of pencils topped with Santa and Rudolph erasers.
“What a haul,” Cassie said. She rubbed Hope’s hands. “You’re freezing. Where are your mittens?”
“I lost them.” Hope hurried to the car, climbed behind the steering wheel and then crawled into the back and her booster seat. “Gotta show my stuff to Grampa. He likes cookies.”
Cassie checked to make sure she was secure and then drove home. Leo met them at the door.
“Cookies?” he asked Hope, who was already holding her bag wide for him to see. “Yummy. Those look almost as good as the ones you and your mom made, but I’m glad you got new ones, ’cause yours are almost gone.”
“Dad,” Cassie said as if she were the parent, “you’re not supposed to eat a dozen cookies at once.”
“I don’t think I ate them all.”
She didn’t argue. His clarity seemed to improve every day. The worst decisions he made were about diet and he was ultra aware of Hope when he looked after her, but Cassie was still grateful for the job that would allow her and Hope to stay.
“Let’s see what we have to leave Santa tonight. Then Hope and I want to visit Killarney’s Department Store. I’ve heard Santa’s there today.”
“I need to tell him what I want, Grampa.”
“Good idea. Go straight to the source, young lady. And maybe you should bring home some chocolate-covered cherries, Cass. Remember how your mom loved them?”
“Come with us, Dad.”
“Let me get dressed.”
Hope went to the bathroom and then got a glass of milk while they waited. In a little while, Cassie’s father called her from the top of the stairs.
She went to see what he wanted and found him in a dark blue suit with a strange—for him—chartreuse tie whose wrinkled ends he held up.
“I don’t know…” He moved the ends up and down again. “I used to be able to—”
“That’s okay. I can do it.” She ran up the stairs to tie it before he could get upset. “You taught me when I was a little girl.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I guess I was curious, so I asked you.”
“I forget things,” he said over her hands. “I don’t know why.”
“Everybody forgets.” She kissed his cheek. He’d remembered to shave. “Don’t upset yourself, Dad. I forget stuff all the time.”
“Guess that’s what happens when you live a busy life. Hey, did you hear anything on the job?”
“See? I forgot to tell you. I got it.”
“So you’re staying?”
His relief made her want to cry some more, God forbid.
“I’m staying, and Santa’s waiting for us. We’d better go.” She hugged him, trying to ignore a spurt of anxiety at the thinness of his shoulders.
“Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom again.”
THE LINE at Kil
larney’s took forever in Hope’s eyes. Surrounded by faux snow and Christmas carols blanded down to elevator music, and surprising knots of late shoppers, she grabbed the spirit of the season by the throat.
Despite Leo and Cassie’s best efforts at holding her back, Hope danced and sang and hopped and apologized when the people around them stared.
All the while, Cassie dreaded the moment. Hope had melted down before when faced with Santa in all his Christmas red-and-white abundance. When her turn finally came, she let go of Cassie’s hand and peered up at her, a picture of earnestness.
“Will you wait here?”
Cassie rocked on her heels, and the father of two anxious boys behind her sighed with gusto. She ignored him. “Are you sure?”
“I have to ask Santa a secret.”
“Oh. Okay. Call me if you need help.”
Hope started at a run up the red carpet. Her speed slowed as the green elf took her hand. By the time she reached Santa, she was a bowstring of reluctance.
She tried to climb into his lap, but as he held out his hands, she backed off.
“Maybe you should go,” the man behind Cassie said.
“Maybe.”
But Hope reached a compromise. She leaned into Santa’s leg and he leaned down to hear her request. He immediately stared at Cassie, and she found herself wondering what went on behind Santa’s cotton beard and white caterpillar brows.
Santa seemed to find a compromise, too. He said something to Hope. She grabbed him in a hug that practically unmasked him and a flashbulb went off. With a grin as wide as her face, she danced back to Cassie.
“Time to go, Mommy.”
“Little girl?” The elf chased her down, to hand Hope a small burgundy bag and Cassie a photo that was still developing.
“Thanks,” Hope said and Cassie echoed her.
The elf patted Hope’s shoulder and then took the two boys behind them and went back to work.
“What’d you get?” Leo asked.
She pried the drawstring open. “Ooh, look, a bendy Rudolph. And a teeny coloring book.” She shut the bag. “I’m sleepy, Mommy.”
Cassie held out her arms, amid a sea of yawning children. “Jump up here and I’ll carry you to the car.”