by Julia London
Asher stepped out onto the balcony and looked up at the night sky.
A movement caught his eye and he looked down. He could see Jane below in the light of one of the solar lamps, watering Levi’s tomatoes. It was strange, watching her. With Susanna, it had been about what they could do for her. With Jane, it was . . . well, it was something he needed to get over, that was certain.
He thought of the vulnerability he’d seen in her tonight when she’d talked about searching for her birth mother. It had sparked something deep in him, a need to protect, to help, to do for her. And then he’d actually touched her, had put his hand on the small curve of her back, had felt the heat of her body through her thin cotton dress, and it had felt good.
Ridiculous. He was forty years old, well past the point of adolescent cravings and meaningless flirtations. There were boundaries to respect here. He was her employer. She was his nanny. There was a man who wanted to marry her, and Asher thought too much of her to have some summer fling.
But God, he wanted her.
For that reason, he was glad his parents were flying in later this week for Riley’s birthday. It wouldn’t hurt to have something to remove the distraction of Jane from his thoughts.
22
Apparently, Jane liked flirting with disaster. In spite of the long, hot bath she’d taken last night in which she’d engaged in some strong self-counseling, her head was not any clearer this morning. She kept thinking about Asher’s hand on the small of her back, the way his smile crinkled the corner of his eyes. And then she ran a couple of extra miles Saturday morning. She told herself it was making up for lost time after she’d sprained her ankle. But the real reason was that she hoped Asher would appear on the trail.
He did not appear on the trail Saturday. Or Sunday.
Jane didn’t see any of the Prices, actually, and by Sunday evening, she’d convinced herself that she’d really made a huge thing out of nothing. He was growing more comfortable with her, that was all, and with comfort came a sense of familiarity. She was not living out her own private version of Pretty Woman. Asher was not going to sweep her off her feet into some meaningful relationship. Even if he tried, she still had all the same issues that prevented her from committing to Jonathan. Why would she jump from the frying pan into the fire?
God, what about Jonathan, good, loyal Jonathan? He was the man Jane had believed herself in love with the last two years, and suddenly she had trouble even thinking about him. It was the height of self-destruction, and she owed Jonathan so much more than this.
Jane didn’t know herself anymore. It was her face staring back at her in the mirror, but the person inside was beginning to feel like an alien to her.
Her doubts about her judgment did not keep her heart from skipping a beat Sunday night when she heard a knock on her door. She jumped up from the table, where she was mindlessly surfing the Internet, and opened the French doors. Asher was standing there with Levi before him, his hands on his son’s shoulders.
“Hey!” Jane said brightly. “What are you guys doing? You want to come in?”
“I do,” Levi said and started forward, but Asher held him back.
“Thanks,” Asher said, “but we just came out to tell you that my parents are coming in Thursday for Riley’s birthday. We’re going to head out to their ranch for a long weekend, so if you want to knock off a couple of days, that would be fine.”
“Oh.” Jane pushed her hair behind her ears. “Okay . . . I guess I’ll head for Houston early then, if that’s okay.”
Asher’s gaze shifted to Levi, who was twisting back and forth. “Of course. It sounds like you have a lot to work out there.” He lifted his gaze to hers.
“Right.” Jane couldn’t quite meet his gaze. She had no hope that she’d work anything out, but she was determined to try.
“Okay, then, Levi and I are going to water his garden now, so . . . I guess we’ll see you later.”
“Come on, Daddy! I’ll show you the cucumbers!” Levi broke free and raced around the corner of the house. Asher hesitated; he looked at Jane, his gaze intent. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Jane said and watched him walk on.
That was it? Not even an invitation to come check out the plants with them? Jane slowly shut the door and walked to the living area, collapsing onto the couch. “You are such a moron,” she said aloud and fell, facedown, onto the couch with a groan of exasperation.
Monday was off to a roaring start when Riley caught Levi playing with her laptop and the two argued loudly.
“Calm down,” Jane commanded them, retrieving the laptop from Levi. “It’s not the end of the world, Riley.”
“It is a big deal. I have personal stuff in there,” Riley said sharply. “Anyway, he has his own computer—why does he have to mess with mine?”
“Where’s my computer, Jane?” Levi asked curiously.
Jane sighed. “I don’t know. Let’s go look for it.”
But Levi’s computer was not recovered before Levi left for camp. Riley’s good mood was not recovered for the rest of the day.
Monday afternoon, while Levi was parked in the playroom with his Play-doh Backyardigans Playset, and Riley was shut in her room, Jane was picking up Levi’s cars—they seemed to multiply overnight—and was surprised when Tara walked into the house. “Hello, hello!” Tara said cheerfully, as if they were pals. “How are you, Jane? How was your weekend?”
“Ah . . . fine,” Jane said, looking at her curiously. “I didn’t know Asher was here.”
“He’s not,” Tara said. “I just ran out to pick up a few things. Asher has to pop up to Dallas tonight.”
“Tara, is that you?” Carla called from the kitchen. “I’ve got it all right here.” Carla appeared, rolling an overnight bag behind her.
Jane looked at the bag, then at Tara. “Tonight?”
“It was a very last-minute thing,” Tara said. “But not to worry, Jane! Mrs. Freeman, his mother-in-law, is coming to get the kids this afternoon. They’ll spend the night with her, but she’s got a golf game in the morning, so she will drop them off, then swing around again in the afternoon.”
“No, wait,” Jane said a little frantically. Tomorrow was her appointment at the Cedar Springs Standard. “When will Asher be back?”
“Tomorrow night. But he is not going to impose on you. He was very clear about that. ‘Do not impose on Jane,’” she said, playfully mimicking him. “Mrs. Freeman will be here. Trust me, it’s all worked out. Can you have the kids ready to go at five?”
“Yes, but tomorrow . . . tomorrow I have an appointment I absolutely cannot miss.”
“You won’t,” Tara said cheerfully. She took the bag from Carla. “Okay, I must run. Have a great day, you two!”
“Good-bye,” Carla said and shut the door behind Tara. She turned around to Jane. “Helen Freeman will be late to her own funeral,” she said matter-of-factly and walked back to the kitchen.
Jane would not miss her appointment, even if she had to drag Levi and Riley with her.
That evening, Helen Freeman arrived at seven o’clock, exactly two hours late. “You must be Jane. What a sweet thing you are! Sorry I’m late, but the traffic from Austin is horrendous. I’d love to stay and get to know you better, Jane, but Bill is probably ravenous. Come on, kids! You know how Grandpa Bill can get when he’s hungry! I’ll have them back here at eight. I’m playing golf with Derinda, and she fades in the heat.”
Helen did return the next morning as promised. But not at eight. At nine. “I’ll be back at three,” she promised Jane.
Jane spent a frantic forty-five minutes getting Levi ready for camp.
She’d been home an hour and was trying to coax Riley into a trip to the Saddle-brew when Charlotte called her. “We’ve had a fight,” she said bluntly.
“Oh, my God. With Jackson?”
“Yes. Both boys are being sent home. I am going to recommend that Levi be moved to one of the afternoon camps. Will you call Mr. Price, or would y
ou like me to do so?”
“I’ll call him,” Jane said. On her way back to camp to pick Levi up, she called Asher’s cell, which was answered by Tara. “Oh. Hi,” Jane said uncertainly.
“Surprise!” Tara chirped. “Asher’s cell has been forwarded to me.”
If Jane didn’t know better, she’d wonder if Tara had kidnapped Asher. “Is he around? I need to speak to him about Levi.”
“Oooh, ’fraid not. May I give him a message?”
“Is it possible that I might speak with him?” Jane asked.
“It’s possible, but it’s going to be hard. He’s in back-to-back meetings all day, and then he’s catching a flight back to Austin at four.”
“I really need to speak to him, please,” Jane said. It irked her that she couldn’t get through to him without going through Tara. This man was such an enigma! He’d been warm and charming and fun Friday, so much so that she’d believed that, at the very least, they could be friends. More than friends. Not that she wanted to be more than friends, but what did it matter? He had completely closed her off.
“I’ll let him know,” Tara said.
By the time Asher returned the call, Jane was on edge. She was waiting for Helen to arrive, was feeling nervous and even a little flighty, preoccupied with what she might find at the paper.
Asher sounded rushed. “What’s up?”
“Levi was fighting in camp today,” Jane said bluntly. She could hear a tapping noise in the background. Computer keys, she thought.
“Jackson again?”
“Yes. Charlotte said she didn’t know how it started, but both boys were to blame. She wants to move Levi to the afternoon camp.”
The tapping sound stopped.
“Levi doesn’t want to do that. Apparently he’s made a friend in the morning camp he doesn’t want to lose.”
The tapping noise started again. “Why Levi?” he asked irritably. “Why not move Jackson?”
Jane winced. “According to Charlotte, because of child care issues. Apparently, his mother works mornings.”
“Bullshit,” Asher said abruptly. “I’ve got to run, but I’ll call Charlotte. Thanks, Jane. See you.”
“What did he say?” Levi asked when Jane clicked off her phone.
To her it was more what he didn’t say. She looked at Levi’s worried face and cupped his chin. “He said he was coming home later. Do you want to tell me why you fought with Jackson?”
Levi frowned. “No. But he said Mommy was crazy and so am I.”
“Oh, Levi, I—”
“Is SpongeBob on yet?” Levi asked quickly and moved his head away from her hand.
Jane’s heart ached for the little guy. In spite of Levi’s part in the dustup, which she could not excuse, it was obvious to her that he was unsettled, and for all her training and education, she felt powerless to help him.
Levi was tucked in front of SpongeBob and Riley on her laptop when Helen arrived, still dressed in her golf clothes. “Look what I’ve got!” she said happily and held out two stuffed McDonald’s bags. It was only ten after three. Jane supposed that was Helen’s idea of an afternoon snack.
Jane had no time to worry about their nutrition at the moment—she had only a small window to work with, and she hurried out to her car. As she turned the ignition and put the car in drive, she felt a whole new level of disquiet in her bones. This was it, the moment she’d been wanting for so long. “Don’t be nervous,” she said to herself. It was just information. It wasn’t as if her birth mother was going to meet her at the offices of the Cedar Springs Standard.
The jarring ring of her phone startled her; she grabbed it, thinking, for some deranged reason, that it was Asher.
“Hi, sweetie,” her mother trilled.
Not Asher. “Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“I have an easy day shift, so I’m good. Your father, however, twisted his ankle playing basketball with the boys yesterday.”
“Is he okay?”
Her mother laughed. “His pride is wounded—they trounced him. But his ankle is fine. Never mind that—I wanted to call because today is the big day, huh?”
“Yes.”
“How exciting, sweetie!”
“I’m nervous, Mom. What if I get a name, the real, actual name of someone who gave birth to me?”
“That would be great! Isn’t that what you want?”
It was so hard to explain the emotions Jane was feeling—the desperate need to know mixed with the fear of knowing. “I do . . . but at the same time, I’m afraid of finding out why I was abandoned.”
“Oh, Janey, I wish you’d stop saying that. Abandoned, given up, whatever. Can’t you just accept that it was part of God’s larger plan for you? It happened for a reason. A good reason.”
Jane didn’t say anything. She didn’t know that, and she didn’t know that it was a particularly good reason.
“It is what it is,” her mother said. “Just remember that you don’t have to do anything with the information you get. You can stop this at any time, or you can go forward. Just don’t expect there to be a silver lining, or anything at all, really, and you’ll be okay. And know that your father and I will always be here for you.”
“That is about the only thing I know for sure anymore, Mom,” Jane said. “I’ll call you when I find something out, okay?”
“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” her mother assured her.
At the Cedar Springs Standard offices, Jane didn’t allow herself to think; she pushed through the glass doors into cool, moist air, the smell of old paper, and the sound of a baby fussing.
“Jane, is that you?” Emma called from somewhere behind the filing cabinets.
“Yes . . . Emma?”
Emma appeared with a baby in her arms and a happy smile. “Come on back.”
Jane followed Emma around putty-colored filing cabinets, her sandals silent on the blue carpet.
Behind the cabinets was a woman sitting in a chair at Emma’s desk, a portable car seat at her feet. She had a very pretty smile and gold blonde hair and green eyes. She resembled Emma.
“Jane, this is my sister, Macy Lockhart,” Emma said, handing the baby to her. “And this adorable little munchkin is my niece, Grace. Or, as I like to call her, the-reason-I-am-stuck-here.”
“Oh, Emma,” Macy said cheerfully as she put the baby in her car seat.
“Your baby is beautiful,” Jane said to Macy, and bent over the infant to have a look. Grace was only a month or two old, and her mother beamed down at her with an expression full of love. A bit of jealousy pricked Jane—it was not the first time she’d felt jealous of a baby. When Jane saw mothers with babies, she couldn’t help wondering what her birth mother had seen. Had she loved her at first sight? Had she counted her fingers and toes? Kissed her?
“Okay! Here’s the microfiche we found that includes 1980!” Emma said proudly.
“We? You mean me,” Macy said as she dangled a pair of tiny bears above the baby.
“Okay, you. It would take the entire rocket science lab from UT to make sense of this mess. I mean, really, can’t y’all hand this over to someone and get it straightened out?” Emma complained to Macy. She handed the film to Jane. “The readers are just there. Do you want me to show you how to use it?”
“No, thanks. I used them at school,” Jane said.
“Okay. We’ll leave you alone. The files are not indexed, except by year, and there are three decades on each roll, so you’ll just have to dig.”
“Thank you,” Jane said.
A pair of readers sat side-by-side in a dark, cool corner of the office. Jane could hear the sisters chattering and laughing softly, the baby cooing as Jane began to scroll through the years of Cedar Springs history.
Emma was right, Jane quickly discovered—not much had happened in Cedar Springs in the last several years. It seemed there had been a big rain and flood about a year ago that had fed stories for a month. Disaster on the Lake, followed by Cleanup Begins, and then later in the mo
nth, Mold a Problem on Ave A. The high school sports teams got the most coverage, with highlights of every game followed by profiles of the key players.
Jane scrolled through the last two years, but when she reached 2008, she was startled to see the headline Local Women Die. She gasped softly at the picture that accompanied the small article—had it not been for a tire lying in the road, Jane would not have realized she was looking at two cars. The only thing left was a heap of twisted, burned metal. Behind the wreckage, cows grazed in a field as if nothing had happened.
December 5, 2008: The Cedar County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a fatal collision that occurred about midnight Tuesday on Highway 16 near the intersection with Highway 71. Sheriff’s deputy James Penn said that a Mercedes driven by Susanna Price, 43, of Cedar Springs, was traveling north at a very high rate of speed when her vehicle crossed the lane divider and collided head-on with a Chevy Tahoe driven by Sandra Fallon, 64, of Fredericksburg. Both drivers were pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators suspect alcohol was a factor and are awaiting the results of DNA tests. The sheriff’s office is asking any witness to the accident to call the county hotline. This is the county’s fourth fatal accident of 2008.
Jane read the article again. Drunk driving? That was not something Jane would have guessed in a million years, and certainly no one had mentioned it to her. It was startling to think that Susanna’s life had ended that way, or to imagine that the beautiful, sophisticated woman might have had a drinking problem.
But then again, maybe that explained things. Maybe Susanna had been different from people around town, and had drunk too much from time to time, and people had put a label on her. Linda Gail had said she was strange. Little Jackson told Levi she was crazy, which he’d obviously heard from somewhere. Crazy was such a harsh word, so full of indictment. It reminded Jane of Crystal Ross, an administrative aide in the school where Jane worked. Everyone said Crystal was crazy. They made remarks about her “being off her meds.” Jane wasn’t sure how Crystal had gotten that reputation, but the result was that everyone cut a wide berth around her, fearing she’d go off.