"Stop it, Sarah."
"I can't! That's what keeps me up at night, wondering, wondering what if. What if in all your infinite wisdom you'd decided I didn't meet your standards for parenthood? Parents aren't perfect people. They yell and scream and sometimes make mistakes. And who knows what I might have done, what error of judgment could have sent you rattling off in the night while I never knew you were taking my son with you? For all I know, you probably thought I was running drugs out here."
Dull red mottled the planes of his cheeks.
"Good God. You did." She collapsed into the wicker chair. "I suppose I should be grateful you ever decided to tell me the truth." She beat the intricate wicker work in a tattoo of fury.
Jake planted his fists on each arm of the chair and leaned over her, trapping her. "My turn for a question, Sarah. Who are you really angry with? Me? Some corner of that angry, little heart of yours knows my only concern was Nicholas, and I think if you'd been in my shoes you'd have done the same thing." He paused, eyes pinning her to the chair. "Ted? Is all this anger really meant for Ted, who died before you could unleash your outrage on him?"
"I don't have to take this." She struggled to her feet, but Jake crowded closer, pushing her back into the chair.
He tapped her chest right above her heart. "Or are you really angry with yourself? Angry with the Sarah who wasn't all-seeing, all-protective, and so let her child be taken from her? Any of this righteous anger for her?"
"That's a terrible thing to say." She hunched her shoulders.
"But true." His shirt swung open around her, and the sweaty, warm male scent engulfed her. "I know what I did hurt you. I don't excuse myself. But as God is my witness, I'd do it again." Like a battering ram, his words struck her. "I didn't see any other way I could protect Nicholas. I took responsibility for him." The chair slid backward under the force of his shove. "So get your anger untangled, Sarah, before you come dumping it all on me."
Slamming the screen door behind him, he took the stairs in one long stride, calling, "Nicholas! Come here, sport. Sarah and I want to talk to you."
A small tornado, her son charged up the driveway, his bramble-scratched legs pumping for all they were worth. "Coming at you, Jake," he yelled and launched himself into Jake's waiting arms.
Sarah watched Jake's arms go around Nicholas in a comforting squeeze, saw his shaggy, dark head bend to her son. Jake loved her son.
"Come inside for a minute, sport." Jake's voice was harsh, but the tenderness he always showed to Nicholas shimmered under curtness.
"My boat's gonna sink." Nicholas slid down Jake's leg. "I hope this is real important."
"It is."
Sarah wondered if she should say anything, but she couldn't. Jake's accusation had stunned her. Was she angry with Ted? With herself? She listened as Jake told a bare-bones version of the events to Nicholas.
"Sarah's my real mom?" Nicholas frowned for a minute. "Or is this some more of that teasing, Jake? 'Cause I already told you I don't like teasing." He poked Jake's chest.
"No one's teasing you, sweetheart," Sarah murmured as Nicholas looked to her. Words stuck in her throat and she didn't know what to say, what to add. Why had Jake decided to tell Nicholas now?
"You love me." Absolute certainty rang in his voice.
"Oh yes," she whispered. "You can't know how much."
"Daddy was wrong, then."
"Yes." She swallowed the tears as she watched Nicholas work out this new development.
"Buck's my cousin, too?"
"Yes." Sarah couldn't look away from the pointy little face with its ridiculously earnest expression.
"I'm gonna stay here?" He stood up and fidgeted. "Me and Jake?"
"I don't know about that, sport." Jake tied Nicholas's shoe laces.
Sarah wondered what Jake was feeling.
"You're going to trip and break your neck one of these days if you don't watch out, kid. Keep an eye on those shoes."
"Listen, Sarah," Nicholas leaned on the chair arm, "me and Jake's a team."
She reached to touch him, but, straightening up as though confident he'd settled the matter, he sprinted out the door and back to his boats.
"Why did you tell him now?" Sarah wrapped her arms around herself to contain the trembling.
"Because I'm sick and tired of the wounded deer look on your face. Because I'm sick to death of hearing you roam this house for hours at night. Yeah, I hear you. I know you're not sleeping." He raked her up and down with a derisory glance as he folded the loose waistband of her shorts. "Not eating." Glaring at her, he swacked the paintbrush on the can and began spreading paint with hard swipes.
"Jake—"
He cut her off. "And don't say 'thank you' in that polite voice you get every now and then." He wiped his face with his shirt tail and turned to the wall. "Now I'm going to be here for the rest of the afternoon painting this damned wall, so you don't have to keep me under observation." Viciously he slapped the brush against the wall. "Go away, Sarah."
The whack of his brush on the boards followed her. She knew some caged emotion was struggling up against its chains. She knew, too, that she had to think about Jake's accusation.
Very quietly she shut the door behind her as she went to join Nicholas. In back of her Jake muttered a low curse.
For several days she and Jake threw themselves into an orgy of cleaning and repairing. At one point as they passed in the hall, Jake lugging a ladder and Sarah carrying rolls of wallpaper, she wondered how much longer they could keep up the pace. Either they would give out, or the house would collapse from an overload of paint.
Nicholas wound between them in cheerful unconcern. He fed F. Roggie, swung on the tree and seemed relatively unaffected by his new status. Every now and then Nicholas
would look at Sarah appraisingly or rub his cheek against her leg before bolting off. He ran from dawn to dusk, eating everything Sarah put in front of him and staying stick-thin.
Sarah's jeans and shorts took on an alarming tendency to slide past her hips and with each passing day Jake grew surlier. He never went anywhere with Nicholas, however, without telling her and including her. She always went along. Some part of her now accepted that he wouldn't vanish with Nicholas, but at a deeper level she was no more able to let them take off without her than she could have flapped her arms and flown.
As the days drifted and Jake made no overt moves despite his moodiness, Sarah became less anxious. Gradually, as the corrosive anger drained from her, leaving her limp as seaweed washed up on the shore, she unwound and allowed herself to think about Jake's accusations. For the first time she tried to put herself in his place. What would she have done?
The days drifted on until one morning a blaze of sunlight woke her, and her stomach rumbled with hunger. She found herself smiling. Bright blue sky filled a corner of the window. Stretching in the early morning quiet, she yawned, filled inexplicably with well-being. Lying in sun-warmed sheets, Sarah wondered if maybe she had used Jake as a convenient focus for all the untapped anger she'd felt toward Ted. And, yes, for herself.
Maybe it was guilt and anger that had made her bury herself for so many years. What more, after all, could she have done to save her child? As Sarah watched the sunlight dapple the walls of her newly painted bedroom, she finally forgave herself. She could have done nothing. Nothing.
Scrambling out of bed, she pushed back her hair and shimmied into jeans and a lemon yellow sweater. She was hungry enough to eat anything not nailed down.
"Nicholas? Jake?" She knocked on the bedroom door. No more peering into half-open doors for her. She'd learned her lesson, she thought wryly.
The polished cotton bedspread lay militarily straight, the corners even. Lifting the edge of the curtain near the pillows lying smooth under their shams, a breeze teased her with the sense that someone had just slipped out the window.
In the empty, silent kitchen, a napkin floated to the floor.
"Nicholas!" She ran to the front door.
Jake's truck was gone.
The breeze lifted the oak leaves and stirred the sand underneath.
When Nicholas was playing outside, he left F. Roggie in his container there in the shade.
Sarah walked to the tree and sank onto the crooked swing. There was no sign of the frog. No sign of Nicholas.
Jake must have been waiting for her to let her guard down.
No. That didn't make sense.
Jake had said he could disappear without a trace.
Numb, her hands lying palm up in her lap, she looked around at the peaceful, deserted yard.
Jake wouldn't do that to her.
Like a beginning algebra student, Sarah plodded through simple equations. Jake loved Nicholas. Loving her son, Jake loved some small part of her. If he cared for her, at all, he could not deliberately destroy her like this.
Jake knew she wanted him to leave.
He loved Nicholas. He wouldn't leave Nicholas. It would take some unimaginable power to separate Jake from Nicholas.
Sarah stuffed her fist into her mouth to smother the scream tearing from her throat. A whimper escaped.
P
Jake would not take Nicholas from her. If there were any truth in life, that was it. He would not take her son away from her.
Time lost meaning as she sat in the swing. If she moved, she would bring disaster crashing around her. As long as she didn't move, her world was still whole, not shattered in a million, unrepairable pieces.
Sarah heard the truck first. Then Nicholas's giggle and Jake trumpeting an off-key, slightly bawdy song.
She stood, her muscles as stiff and aching as if she'd run a marathon, blood draining from her head.
From the driveway Jake saw her odd stillness and stopped singing. Uneasy, he slammed on the brakes. What had happened? "Stay here, sport." Vaulting from the truck, Jake ran to her. "Sarah!"
Her face was skim-milk white, and she swayed as he neared her. Damn it to hell, she thought he'd taken Nicholas. "Sarah, I left a note. We went for juice."
"Juice?"
"There wasn't any."
"I thought—" Her eyelids flickered. She was so pale he could see the blue veins.
Jake gripped her shoulders tightly. "I wouldn't have gone without telling you. You know that." He brushed the hair off her face.
"I didn't know where you were." Her voice was thready.
"Didn't you see my note? On the napkin?"
"No."
Sarah straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply.
Thinking she might faint, Jake cupped her neck and bent her forward. "I swear, I wrote where we were going. You were sleeping and I didn't have the heart to wake you. You've been exhausted. I thought you needed sleep. We were only gone twenty minutes, to the 7-Eleven and back."
"Just twenty minutes?" She shook her head. "It seemed so long." In her bleached, white face her lips were blue-gray and pinched. Turning away, she walked toward the swing.
Jake knew they couldn't survive this constant tension and doubt. He'd hoped she would forgive him if he gave her time to think things through. Clearly time hadn't brought trust, much less forgiveness, and he wouldn't be responsible for causing her this kind of anguish any more.
He'd lost.
"Did you phone Buck?" If she had, there was going to be hell to pay.
Her slow steps stopped. "No."
"That's something, I guess." At least she'd believed in him a little. That would be something to remember in the nights to come. He had to leave. He had no other choice. Not any longer. Not after seeing her sick white face when she believed he'd taken off.
"Sarah?"
She turned to face him. "Yes?"
Carefully he touched the soft skin of her throat. One last time, he thought. "I never meant to hurt you. I tried to keep from worrying you."
"I noticed." She twisted the frayed rope ends around her fingers.
Unwinding her hands, Jake raised them to his lips. The skin was cool and smooth. "I'm going to leave. No," he added as her fingers curled under his, "I'm not taking Nicholas from you. I could never do that to you. You should have known." Turning her palms up, he pressed a kiss into them. "I wanted you more than anything life's ever teased me with. But I want your happiness even more." He strode back to the truck.
He was dying inside. Nothing in his life had ever hurt this much. He had to finish before he lost his nerve.
"Hey, sport, come down from there and take a little walk with me. We have to have a talk."
Nicholas tumbled out and then reached back inside for F. Roggie. "Where we going?"
"Down to the lake."
'"kay."
It was harder than he'd imagined. Sitting down on the dock, Jake tugged Nicholas over to him. "Listen, sport, you know your dad wanted me to bring you back to America, right?"
"Yeah." Nicholas tossed a stick into the water that shone clear in the sunshine. Minnows zigged where the stick splashed.
"Well, you're here now, where you belong."
"Yeah, I like it a real lot, Jake. It's swell, all of us here." Nicholas belly flopped onto the dock and looked down into the water.
"That's the problem. I don't belong here." Jake cleared his throat. "This is your home." He placed his hand on Nicholas's back, feeling the bony spine under his fingers. Darn kid. Couldn't put an ounce on him. "Not mine."
"'Course it's your home, Jake," Nicholas scoffed, looking back over his shoulder. "Me and you are a team. I explained all that to Sarah."
"It's not that simple for grown-ups, Nicholas." Jake rubbed Nicholas's head brusquely.
"You're teasing, right?" Anxiety darkened Nicholas's eyes.
"No." Jake cleared his throat again. He couldn't swallow.
"You promised you'd never leave me, Jake! You promised!" Nicholas scrambled to his feet and stood over Jake. "You can't go back on a promise."
"I have to leave."
"Then I'm gonna go with you." Nicholas plopped onto Jake's lap and hung an arm around his neck. "You don't get along so good without me, Jake. You get scared of light-
ning and stuff. And I can help now that I know stuff like fishing." He searched Jake's face eagerly. " 'kay?"
"No."
"You can't go without me, Jake."
"You have to stay, Nicholas. You'll be going to school, you have to take care of F. Roggie. He can't go where I'm going, you know." Jake wrapped his arms around the scrawny little body. "And Sarah needs you, too. Think how lonely she'd be without you."
"You'll be lonely, too, Jake," Nicholas said tearfully, burying his head on Jake's shoulder.
"Yeah."
"Don't leave, Jake. I love you." Nicholas's tears were soaking Jake's shirt.
Jake swallowed the hot lump in his throat. "I have to leave, and you have to be strong and help Sarah and study hard." Jake couldn't go on. Lowering his head over Nicholas he fought for control. He rubbed his face against the shining softness of Nicholas's hair, so like Sarah's, and refused to think of how close he'd come to happiness. "Nicholas, I can't stay."
He stood up and carried the weeping boy in his arms back to Sarah.
Her eyes were enormous in her pale face and Jake looked at the two people he loved more than anything on earth and wished the ground would open up right then and close over him. He couldn't leave them.
He couldn't stay.
While Jake shoved stuff into his bag, Nicholas clung to him and wept uncontrollably, eyes puffy and swollen. Like a ghost, Sarah tagged behind, the blue of her eyes deep and glittery. He almost grabbed her and kissed her hard when he saw the misery on her face, misery he had caused and was trying the best he could to erase. But he was afraid if he kissed her he'd never be able to leave.
■M
At the last moment, Jake thought Sarah was going to say something.
She was clutching Nicholas to her as if her life depended on it. Nicholas's sobs shook his body and Sarah patted his back as she looked at Jake. He thought her lips were trembling.
She blinked.
"And, yes, I think I know what love is now. I never knew anything could hurt so much. I said once that I'd never hurt you, but all I seem to have done is cause you heartache. You told me that pain's part of life, but God help me, I can't live with what I'm doing to you."
Tracing the contours of her face, the soft chin, the sweet forehead, Jake memorized Sarah, her shape, her texture.
He stooped to enclose her and Nicholas in his arms, enclosing them with all the love he'd never given before. Lightly Jake touched a spot above her left breast. "There's my home, Sarah, the only one I've ever wanted."
He wouldn't look back. Starting the rackety engine, he kept telling himself not to look back at Sarah and Nicholas and the house. But he looked in the rearview mirror and saw Nicholas tear loose from Sarah's arms and run down the driveway after him.
"Jake, don't go! Don't go!"
Jake's truck turning onto the highway snapped Sarah out of the strange immobility she'd been in since she found her house empty. Why hadn't she stopped Jake? Why had she indulged herself in the luxury of anger and hurt? She waited for Nicholas to trudge back to her.
"Sarah, I want Jake to come back." He rubbed his eyes, leaving streaks of dirt.
"Me too, honey."
Too late she realized what her anger had blinded her from seeing. She loved Jake and she'd let him go. Sarah wanted to sob right along with Nicholas. Instead, she picked him up and carried him home.
Night came, and the house seemed empty. Sarah wandered through the halls conjuring up Jake in every room. In Jake's bed, Nicholas woke up screaming there were monsters in the closet. Trying to calm him, she opened the door and showed him there was nothing there.
Except there was. A flat, purple-and-white striped box was tucked into the corner. Reluctantly Sarah brought it out and opened it.
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