by Jillian Hart
“Car trouble?”
Amy recognized Heath’s voice even as adrenaline jetted into her bloodstream and her hand was curling around the strap of her purse to use it as a weapon. He’d scared ten years off her life.
She shoved open the door. “Would you stop doing that?”
“Want to hit the hood lock for me, and I’ll take a look.” He flicked on a flashlight, the small beam reflected with eye-stinging brightness in the thick fog. “What’s the problem?”
“In order for the car to go, the driver has to put it into gear.”
“You mean you’ve been sitting here on purpose? It’s almost four in the morning and it’s starting to freeze. The roads are already dangerous enough.”
“I never thanked you for the hot chocolate.”
“That can’t be why you’re sitting out here alone in the dark. Even in a town like this, it can’t be entirely safe.” The mist turned into translucent flakes as the water froze in midair, shrouding him with a strange dark light. It made Amy remember how he’d seemed in the kitchen after Westin had left.
“Maybe I’d better drive you,” he offered.
“I’m not afraid of a little ice on the road. Goodness, I learned to drive in the winter.”
That polite shield again. Heath took in Amy’s picture-perfect smile—not too wide, not too bright but just enough. There was nothing appreciably different about her, she was still wearing her thin jacket, and at least it had dried hanging above the heat duct in the restaurant. Her hair was still yanked unevenly back in a quick ponytail that was beginning to sag. Her flannel pajamas were very eye-catching.
“Isn’t that Saturn?”
“As you may have noticed, my little boy is into astronomy. He got me these for Christmas this year. Wasn’t that thoughtful? They are the softest jammies I’ve ever had.”
They sure looked soft, quality combed flannel bottoms fell to the tops of her sneakers, and he was shocked that he noticed the way her slim ankle showed, just a bit. She was wearing knitted cable socks that would have made anyone else’s ankles look less than slender and shapely.
Not that he ought to be noticing Amy’s ankles—or any woman’s.
He rubbed his left hand, where the ring hadn’t been ever since he’d tossed it off the bridge after leaving the hospital. When he’d almost gone in the water with the ring.
Lord knew he hadn’t had the courage then. He’d been naive enough still to believe that there would be hope somewhere, someday. Hope for what, he couldn’t have said. Maybe it seemed impossible that something so sudden and horrific could be real.
He’d been in too much shock to realize that traumatic things happened all the time. Bad things happening to other people is what had made him, if not well off, then doing better than most. A new car, a nice house, a boat for Sunday afternoons on the lake.
But time had shown him one thing. His losses were real, death was final and his grief and guilt were never going to end. Every day since, he’d regretted not jumping off the bridge when he’d had the chance.
Although he wasn’t much of a churchgoer, not any more, he was still a believer. And his faith taught that it was against God’s law for a man to take his own life…in the end, as much as he’d wanted it, Heath had not been able to choose his own death.
Not that he had chosen to live either. He’d stopped being alive in every way that mattered long ago. What he wanted was oblivion—to keep from remembering, from feeling, to hide from the guilt that rose up like a tsunami. How could he have oblivion if everywhere he went, children made him remember? It wasn’t Amy’s fault that she was lucky enough to be a mom, that her little boy was alive and well, that he’d picked out pajamas for his mom with a planet design and he was as cute a little boy as Heath had ever seen.
And looking at Amy’s son led Heath down the only obvious path. If Christian had lived, what would he have been interested in? Planes? Or trucks? Football or baseball? Would he color with those big chunky crayons made for little kids or would he prefer to finger paint? Would his big brown eyes have sparkled with joy over pancakes and sausages? Would he carry around a stuffed toy everywhere he went?
The tsunami overtook him, obliterating him. Heath took the hit and tried not to let it show. He didn’t trust his voice, so he didn’t say anything. It was better just to let it pass. It always did…eventually.
“Look at you.” There was sympathy in her dulcet voice and her grip settled around his wrist, but it felt distant as if she were touching him through yards of Jell-O.
“What are you doing up at this hour to notice that I’m freezing to death in my car?”
He didn’t answer. The air he breathed in scorched the linings of his nose and sinuses and stung deep in his chest. Maybe he could be like the fog, freeze up and just let the pain slide right off his soul.
“You did so much for us tonight.” She left the engine idling as she stood and, shivering, searched him as if trying to figure out what was going on inside his skull.
It was private, not her business. He watched the ice particles in the air fall like the tiniest specks of snow and cling to her hair and eyelashes and melt against the softest creamiest skin he’d ever seen on a woman. Her soul shone in her eyes, and as she studied him, he felt as if the deepest part of him had been revealed. Without words. Without communication of any kind.
Sadness shadowed her eyes. “Let me take you upstairs.”
“What about your boy?”
“He’s asleep in his bed, and he’ll be fine for a few hours more. After Rachel came over to look through the books with Paige, we got to talking. Suddenly it was midnight and so she made up a bed on the air mattress. She does it all the time, which worked out fine tonight, since the tavern called to let me know they’d called the cops and it was providential she was there to stay with Westin.”
“That’s pretty amazing. Frank told me he’d been called by someone hearing threats.” Heath felt as cold as the outside air. “Not a lot of folks would get involved like that.”
“We’re a small community. I send the tavern a lot of business, you know, tourists looking for cocktails or a cold beer after a hot day in the car. We don’t have a liquor license, so I send customers over. They do the same. It works out. I guess it’s a small-town thing. Now, will you go upstairs before we both freeze? Or will I have to carry you up?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I bet you’ve got a steel core, Amy McKaslin, but there’s no way you can carry me up the stairs. I’ll drive you home.”
“I don’t need a chauffeur.”
“Humor me. I won’t get a wink of sleep unless I know you’re home safe.”
“I’ll call—wait, you don’t have a phone.” Amy shook her head, scattering the tiny wisps of golden silk that had escaped her disheveled ponytail. She looked like a waif in her too-big coat and her flannel pants. “I’ll be all right.”
“You never know that for sure. You can take all the precautions you want, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. So, do me this favor, okay?”
“Driving me home isn’t a favor.”
She didn’t understand. He didn’t need any “should-have”s that resulted in more tragedy. He prodded her around the hood of the frosty sedan. The blacktop and then the concrete sidewalk beneath his feet were slick. “Is this my imagination, or is it snowing?”
“It’s snowing.”
“It’s May.”
“Welcome to Montana.”
At least Amy’s nearness gave him something else to think about. She smelled faintly of hot chocolate and shampoo and of the spring snow caught in her hair. A small blanket of faint freckles lay across her nose and cheeks, but that wasn’t what made her cute. What drew him and held him was the quiet lock of her gaze on his. Although she said nothing, he sensed it. She’d seen the duffel bag, of course. She knew what he intended to do. She ought to be angry, but she wasn’t.
“You have to wrench on it or it won’t open.” Her hand bumped his as she grabbed onto the door handl
e. “Just yank—there it goes. It sticks.”
“I see.”
Her car was pretty old. They’d stopped making this model, oh, about ten years ago, he figured, not that he was a car expert. But she kept it clean and in good repair. As he held the door while she settled into the bucket seat, he noticed it was clean and repaired with duct tape, which wasn’t so noticeable on the gray upholstery.
She wasn’t raking in the bucks at the family diner. He didn’t need to see her car to know that. The restaurant did a healthy business, but this was a small town. It sounded as if it supported three sisters and their families, and it couldn’t be easy.
He thought of the life he’d left. The suburban acreage in Lake Oswego, a nice tree-filled suburb of Portland. He’d even had a stretch of lakefront beach. It was a view his wife had loved. It was why he’d bought her the house. Thinking of home made his knees go watery as he crunched through the ice and snow to the driver’s side. The house was gone. Everything was gone. Even if he wanted to, there was no going back.
She waited until they were safely across the railroad tracks and a few blocks from her trailer park. “Are you going to tell me why you’re so eager to go?”
“You aim straight, don’t you?”
“I don’t see any point in pretending I didn’t see the bag. You were going to slip out, weren’t you, when you came across those horrible men.”
“That’s pretty much what happened.” He kept his gaze on the road. It was tricky, he had to go slow because the fog absorbed the light and reflected it back, so the town streets were nearly invisible. Plus, he wasn’t familiar with this stretch of highway.
He didn’t offer more of an explanation. He figured she deserved to rant and rave or silently fume…or just accept it—whatever she needed to do. He was wrong. There was no denying it.
Amy McKaslin had a real life. What would she know about his? She had sisters and a business and a son, maybe more kids. He didn’t know. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, so he figured she was divorced. His guess was that she struggled to make ends meet, like any family.
He really didn’t want to know anything else about her. He was already part of the fog, rolling with the rising wind. Already anticipating the dawn and the snowy drive through the state. Where he landed next was anyone’s guess.
He’d leave it up to fate, or God, if He was still noticing.
“You’ll need to turn right up here.” Amy broke the silence and leaned forward against the restraint of the shoulder harness to help look along the road’s shoulder. “There’s the sign. Right here.”
He caught a flash of a small sign, the kind apartments and house developments use. Oak Place, it said in snow-mantled letters on a spotty green background. He followed the narrower lane along a windrow of shrubs and turned, as Amy indicated, by a line of small mailboxes mounted on a two-by-four.
He saw the first trailer house. It was neat and maintained, but a good thirty years old. Then a second, newer one. And more, all quaintly lined up along the road, windows dark except for the occasional floodlight blinking on as the car drove by.
“Mine’s the one with the rose arbor. Just pull in under the awning.”
He did, noticing the single-wide was modest, and its front yard was white with snow. Another vehicle, which he remembered was Rachel’s, had nosed in beneath a makeshift carport, and the whole passenger’s side was covered with ice and snow.
“Home sweet home.” Amy reached for her purse from the floor behind his seat. “Did you want to come in? I’ll make you hot chocolate this time.”
“No, I just wanted to see you were safe.”
“So you could leave?”
“Something like that.”
Amy wished she could be angry with him, but it wasn’t that easy. How could she be angry with someone that wonderful? He spoke so well and knew how to make hollandaise sauce without checking a recipe and stood tall when danger called. Not the usual wanderer looking for a job. And that left the question, why? She instinctively knew it was a question that would only make him turn away.
Some things were better left in the past where they belonged. She thought of the foolish girl she used to be. Everyone deserved at least one free pass, one “do over.” Maybe that’s the way it was for Heath.
“If you want to come in for a second, I’ll write you a paycheck.”
“It wouldn’t be right. I’m running off and leaving you shorthanded again.”
“You work, we pay. It’s that simple.”
“Nothing is ever that simple.”
“This time it is.” Amy wished she didn’t like Heath so much. That’s what this was—she couldn’t lie to herself anymore. And why bother? He was leaving. “Come in for a few minutes and warm up, before you head back.”
“I’d appreciate that. It’s a long walk.”
“And cold.” All the way up the slick steps, she wondered what she was going to say to Paige. Her older sister had been upset they’d hired a man with no references; they hadn’t even asked him to fill out an application, just the paperwork required by the state and federal government.
Amy fit her key in the lock and wiggled it until it gave way enough to turn—it was tricky in the freezing weather. The bolt clicked and she opened up, grateful for the warm air fanning her face as she entered. Peace. It wrapped around her every time she came home. The pile of toys neat in the corner by the couch. The pictures of family—of her sisters, of Paige’s son and dozens of Westin from the moment he was born on up.
She noticed Heath closed the door behind him, looking neither right nor left as he followed her into the kitchen. While he set the keys on the corner of the counter, she filled two cups with tap water and set them in the middle of the mounted microwave. It hummed as she extracted items from the cupboards. Aware of Heath watching her the whole while, his presence shrank the small space until it seemed there were only the two of them and the walls pressing in.
For some reason, he must have felt it, too, because he didn’t look comfortable. Maybe because he was a big man and the alley kitchen was narrow. He hardly fit in the walkway between the counter and the corner of the stove. Edgy, he didn’t seem to know where to look, glancing quickly from the toys to the pictures to Westin’s artwork tacked on the fridge.
Maybe it was the trailer—a lot of folks looked down on them, as if they were only for poor people. But she wasn’t poor. Not when she had so many blessings.
Maybe it was because she was still in her pajamas and they were more strangers than friends. She reached for the business checkbook and a pen. “Did you want to take a seat?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t look any more comfortable in the small chair at the little dinette set that had once been her mother’s. The set was a bright Valentine’s-Day-pink with metal sides and legs. It was a very feminine-looking table—and if that wasn’t bad enough, all six-plus feet of him barely fitted in the small chair that was as pink as the little table.
The microwave dinged. She removed the steaming mugs and ripped open two packets of cocoa mix. “I know, it’s not sophisticated but this kind does have the little mini marshmallows.”
His jaw clamped and a muscle jumped along his jaw.
Okay, maybe he didn’t like marshmallows. “I can scoop them out if you want.”
“No, it’s all right.”
It didn’t look all right, but she didn’t say anything more. She stirred the mix until it dissolved and spooned the tiny marshmallows from his cup.
“You think I’m looking for a husband, don’t you? That’s why you’re bugging out of here as fast as you can go. No, it’s okay. I’m not mad.” She slipped the mug in front of him.
It had flowers on it and said in rainbow-colored writing, The Best Mom Ever! with, I Thank God for You printed beneath it.
Heath stared at it as if the cup were the single most horrible thing he’d ever seen.
“It was the only one without a chip in it. I have a six-year-old boy and no dishwashe
r. Being hand-washed around here is hazardous for mugs.”
The color drained from his face.
Maybe it wasn’t the femininity of the cup that was bothering him. If she’d been thinking, she would have remembered there was also the Bible passage on the mug. He wasn’t a churchgoer. She knew how it felt to feel pressured about one’s faith or lack of it. Through her own experience, it seemed God came to those who needed Him most when they needed him.
Heath surely looked as if he were a man hurting. She switched the cups and reached for a spoon to transfer the frothy marshmallows. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind this one as much. It’s just got a little chip.”
“No, don’t bother.” He nudged the damaged mug back. The tendons stood out like ropes in his neck.
“Look, I can’t do this.” He pushed away from the table. “Keep the money. I appreciate the job, I do. I just—” he glanced around, the light draining from his eyes as he headed to the door “—can’t.”
She hadn’t even had the chance to finish the check. Where was he going? And on foot? She grabbed the keys, for she meant for him to drive back to town. He could leave her car at the diner and she’d catch a ride to work with Rachel. It was too cold for him to walk all the way to the diner. She hated to think of him cold and alone and miserable.
What would make him bolt out of here as if he’d been set on fire?
Then she looked behind her at the wall. Westin’s framed baby pictures decorated the space between the fridge and the wall. Adorable pictures of her son when he was first sitting up and learning to walk.
In those pictures, it was hard to miss his downy soft platinum hair, sparkling blue eyes and the way he was all boy. Westin at that age had a spirit as sweet as spun sugar….
Looking at those pictures, she realized exactly why Heath’s heart was as lost as one of the black holes Westin was always reading about. Tears wet her cheek before she realized they were falling.
Please, Father, she prayed, help him.
There was no answer in the endless silence.