Lightning Storm

by Anne McAllister

She was fortunate, she decided as she leaned against the rough stucco of the stairwell, that Manhattan Beach didn’t have the mosquito population of Galena. Otherwise she’d have been eaten alive during her four-hour vigil. As it was she read a best seller, first by sunlight, and then by flashlight, until eleven thirty when she heard the truck pull in below. Snapping out the light, she huddled in the dark and waited, confident that if he got this far, he wouldn’t dare turn around and walk away. She heard him kick the gate shut, then saw his silhouette as he turned the corner and ascended the stairs, Scott asleep in his arms. She waited until he was nearly to the top and fumbling for his key when she stood up and held out her hand.

  ‘Allow me,’ she said, taking the key from him and opening the door before he could protest. She preceded him into the room, switching on the lamp nearest the door, and took a look at him for the first time in five days. He was gaunt and haggard, as though he had been running a marathon without food or sleep, and angry, as though she had no right in his life. He shot her one fierce glance as he strode past her carrying Scott into his bedroom, laying him gently on his bed. Then he slipped Scott’s shoes and socks off and pulled a sheet over the sleeping child.

  When he came back out to the living room Torey was sitting on the couch idly flipping through an architectural digest, pretending a nonchalance she definitely didn’t feel.

  ‘We’ve missed you,’ she remarked into the silence.

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Running away,’ she agreed calmly, pleased to see him start and then jam his fists into the pockets of his jeans.

  ‘I am not running away.’

  ‘Then you’re doing a marvellous imitation of it.’

  ‘Damn it, I’ve been working like crazy all week, taking care of Scott—’

  ‘Instead of leaving him with us.’

  ‘You don’t want him. You said so,’ he accused.

  ‘Don’t bring up arguments that we’ve already settled, Jake. You know perfectly well Scott is welcome. You don’t want to leave him because you’re afraid Christy will see him.’

  Jake scowled at her. Then, when she met his blue-eyed stare with one equally firm, he dropped his head and turned his back to stare out the window into the blackness. ‘So?’ he growled belligerently after a long silence.

  ‘Why?’ There was no belligerence at all in Torey’s voice. She could see the bleakness in his face reflected in the window and knew that driving him into a corner would gain her nothing now.

  ‘She abandoned him,’ Jake said shortly, as if she should see the obvious soundness of his actions.

  ‘She was young then. Immature. She made a mistake. We all make mistakes, Jake,’ Torey argued, wondering, even as she did so, why she was. She should be on his side! But even thinking that didn’t prevent her going on. ‘She’s been here every day this week hoping you’ll let her see Scott. She even brought her fiancé,’ she added, hoping that would get a rise out of him, make him show some feeling towards Christy, whatever it might be.

  But Jake didn’t move. ‘No.’

  Stalemate. Torey stared at his T-shirt clad back, the taut muscles and stiff spine, as rigid and uncompromising as the word he just uttered. Fortunately, as she had no idea what to say next, the phone rang.

  ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ she asked after the fifth ring and he still hadn’t moved.

  ‘It’s probably Christy.’

  ‘And you’re not running away?’ she asked scornfully, hating to hurt him.

  ‘All right, damn it!’ Jake snapped, his voice angry. He snatched the receiver up. ‘Brosnan here,’ he barked, and Torey hoped it wasn’t Christy. After a week of no-shows from Jake, she didn’t need that.

  ‘When?’ Jake was asking, his fingers lacing through his untidy hair as he wrestled with some thorny problem. An editor? Torey wondered, sure it wasn’t Christy by his reaction. ‘What about Mathews? Or Terry?’ he asked, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Yeah, yeah. All right,’ he growled and banged the ‘phone down.

  ‘Not Christy,’ Torey ventured.

  ‘The lifeguard station. They need me tomorrow and Sunday.’ He looked at her bleakly, his fingers rubbing his eyes. Torey could almost see him considering his options.

  ‘What about Scott then?’ She knew what he was thinking: he couldn’t take Scott while he was lifeguarding.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, chewing his lower lip. ‘Damn.’

  ‘So why did you say you’d do it?’ she pushed him. ‘You don’t need the money. You have been a starving artist once, but not anymore.’

  ‘I don’t do it for the money,’ he said wearily.

  ‘Why then?’

  He hunched his shoulders and looked away. Torey saw his dark eyelashes blink once, heard the faucet dripping in the sink. ‘Because of Mick,’ he said finally, his voice hollow and low.

  Mick. Torey closed her eyes, her throat tightening as she remembered Mick. Mick who had drowned, who had been Jake’s best friend, who had been dating the woman who was now Jake’s ex-wife. God, the tangles in their lives! She sighed, recalling Mick laughing, swigging a Coke, spiking a volleyball, talking enthusiastically about the jet planes he flew, giving her a sympathetic wink as Jake ambled past unaware. Mick with his blue eyes and white-blond hair, his sunburnt nose and cheekbones, his silvery furred legs, his flat midwestern accent not unlike Jake’s. She opened her eyes and looked at Jake, catching a faraway expression on his face, a mixture of sorrow and acceptance that told her his thoughts ran along much the same lines as hers. Finally he drew a long unsteady breath and let it out slowly, saying,

  ‘If you’ll watch Scott tomorrow, if Christy comes back, you can let her see him. But you have to be there.’ His voice was taut, slightly higher pitched than normal with a reedy edge to it.

  Instinctively Torey rose and went to him, wrapping her arms around him, holding him gently, trying to absorb his tension and fears. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she assured him, and wondered how she knew.

  ‘If you say so,’ Jake sighed, his cheek resting on her hair. But she knew as she undressed for bed that night that somewhere deep down, he really didn’t believe it.

  ‘How would you like to be kidnapped?’ Gino Martinelli asked, squatting down beside Torey’s beach towel where she lay, eyes closed, listening to Scott whooping as he raced through the surf.

  ‘Huh? Kidnapped?’ Torey blinked, sitting up and taking in the wide, even grin, casually tousled hair and suggestive blue eyes peering into her own.

  ‘Well,’ she said, gathering her wits about her. ‘All right. But only if I can bring the kid.’

  ‘Kid?’

  Torey nodded towards the surf line. ‘Scott.’

  Gino made a face. ‘Attack man’s son? Okay,’ he conceded. ‘But every time I go somewhere with you Brosnan or one of his minions comes along—in flesh or in spirit,’ he grumbled. ‘I thought we’d go sailing. The wind’s good today. Suit you?’

  ‘Wonderful.’ She got up, calling for Scott. Jake would probably be pleased for once that she was going out with Gino. This way Scott would be gone if Christy came by. ‘Just let me get dressed.’ She led the way across the hot sand. ‘Go play a game of Gin with my grandmother. She’ll love you for it.’

  Gino did, and Torey hurried into her room, whistling a nameless tune as she pulled on a pair of white cord shorts and a lemon coloured shirt over her bathing suit. Hooray for Gino, she thought as she anchored her hair with more pins than usual, even though she felt a bit guilty about removing Scott from any chance of Christy seeing him today. Still, Jake would be happy.

  Or so she thought until she opened the door again and ran smack into Gino who said, ‘Guess what. Scott’s mother is here. She and her fiancé are coming with us too.’ So much for Jake’s happiness, Torey thought, her stomach knotting as she walked into the living room and came face to face with Doug. Christy was sitting on the piano bench listening raptly to Scott who was talking a mile a minute, as if his mother might disappear an
y second. The look in his eyes said his fondest fantasy had come true.

  ‘She’s my mother,’ he told Torey, savouring the word like his favourite sweet.

  ‘Hello, Christy,’ Torey said, her emotions torn.

  ‘They just got here,’ Gino was saying, oblivious to all the undercurrents in the room. ‘She said she hadn’t seen Scott in about three years. It hardly seemed fair to take him away. So ...’ He lifted his hands expressively as if to say, ‘What else could I do?’ And Torey knew there wasn’t anything else, so she swallowed her fears and gave Addie a peck on the cheek.

  ‘We’ll be back before five,’ she promised. There was no need to say, ‘Don’t tell Jake.’

  For all her fears, the day turned out not badly after all. Scott was eventually more enthralled with Gino’s sloop than with his mother. And once he got over the initial thrill of having her there, he spent his time doing commercials for Jake.

  ‘What a PR man,’ Gino laughed as he leaned against the stern of the sloop, his arm around Torey as they listened to Scott rave about Jake’s ability to swim, surf, ski, hike, draw, fish, paint, cook.

  Torey saw Doug lift his brows in query as if asking Christy why, if Jake was such a superman, she had divorced him, and Christy had squeezed his arm and said, ‘I love you, darling. Not Jake. But he is a good father,’ which comforted Torey. She felt her knot of apprehension ease until Doug, his face tipped back to catch the sun, said,

  ‘I suppose so. But it must be tough taking care of a kid, just one parent.’

  ‘He does fine.’ Torey sat up quickly and pulled away from Gino’s arm. ‘Fantastically well, in fact. Besides, Addie and I help him out.’

  Doug didn’t reply, but she had no doubt now what the real fear on Jake’s horizon was. Once Doug and Christy were married, what would happen if they decided to fight him for custody of Scott. She remembered Jake talking about the pressures of being a single parent the day they went to the tidepools. It must have seemed the personification of all his fears to come back and find Christy on his doorstep announcing that she was marrying again. No wonder he had fled.

  She gazed across the bottle green chop of the Pacific to the wide sandy beach at Hermosa, picking out the lifeguard towers and wondering in which one Jake was. Or was he in the water rescuing some child? The wind came up strongly and Scott flung himself on her, laying his head in her lap.

  ‘I’m sick,’ he moaned, and Torey forgot Jake, scooping up his son and holding him as Christy turned to Doug.

  ‘I need a bucket,’ she told him and proceeded to turn green herself.

  Gino rose and began adjusting the sails. ‘We’ll head back,’ he said easily. ‘No sense in discouraging a damn fine crew.’

  ‘You’re a saint,’ Torey said when he had them almost back to the calm water inside the harbour. There was no doubt that the day hadn’t gone at all as he’d planned, but he didn’t seem to care’. He just grinned and pushed his white cap back on his head.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said equably. ‘When do I get my celestial reward?’ His eyes sparkled with mischief beneath the strands of fair hair that whipped across his face.

  ‘In heaven,’ she promised, grinning back at him.

  ‘Brosnan’s a lucky guy,’ he said quietly, brushing brotherly lips against her hair. ‘A lucky guy indeed.’ He gave her a rueful smile.

  Torey tilted her head, thinking about luck, about Jake and Scott and Christy and herself, and wondering how it would all work out. ‘We’ll see, Gino,’ she said, her fingers stroking Scott’s soft hair as he curled in her lap. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  It wasn’t difficult to determine Jake’s view of the afternoon. He was furious.

  ‘Sailing! You took him sailing? With Christy and that ... that ... fiancé of hers?’ He sounded incredulous, as if Torey had completely lost her mind and sent Scott on holiday with Jack the Ripper or something. Jake slammed his hand against Addie’s kitchen cupboard and sent the dishes rattling within.

  ‘You told me I could let her see him,’ Torey reminded him quietly, not say that she hadn’t even been consulted about the decision to take Christy and Doug along. What good would it do if she did?

  ‘I thought it’d be here,’ Jake stormed. ‘Some place where you and Addie could keep an eye on things.’

  ‘I was on the boat.’

  ‘With that two-bit Casanova,’ Jake fumed, crashing around the kitchen like a panther in a parlour, growling and pacing, snarling every time Torey moved. ‘You were probably far too busy coming on to him to pay the least bit of attention to Scott!’

  Torey stared, astonished. Had Jake taken leave of his senses? Gino? A two-bit Casanova? She almost giggled at the thought, but Jake shot her a fierce look that left her no doubt that any giggling she did would only be interpreted in the worst possible light. ‘You are out of your mind,’ she told him calmly, refusing even to jump at the bait of his insistence that she must have been ‘coming on’ to Gino. Another time she might have clobbered him for making that assumption. Now she suspected that he was so overwrought that he had no idea of what he was saying. Or at least she hoped he didn’t.

  ‘You’re damned right I’m out of my mind,’ he snarled. ‘With half of LA County down at the beach today trying to drown themselves, I didn’t need this.’

  ‘Bad day, huh?’ Torey asked, going to put the kettle on. Perhaps a cup of tea and a little sympathy would accomplish what rationality didn’t seem able to at the moment. At least she needed to get him calmed down before he saw Scott. Any descriptions Scott gave Jake of his mother and Doug were likely to be enthusiastic, and Torey sensed that Jake’s present frame of mind was not conducive to receiving such reports with equanimity.

  ‘A very bad day,’ he agreed. ‘I doused fifty or so people with ammonia for jelly fish stings, took one to the hospital for a shock reaction to the stings, removed a fish hook from a three-year-old’s foot, dragged thirty or so “swimmers”—and I use the term loosely—out of a riptide, broke up a brawl between a bunch of young thugs arguing over a supposedly stolen surfboard, and carried another kid to the hospital after a surfing accident.’ He sank down in one of the chairs and rested his elbows on the table, cradling his head in his hands. Then he looked up, his chin in his hands, his eyes a stormy sea. ‘And now you tell me that you’ve taken Scott out sailing with my dear ex-wife.’

  ‘She has visitation rights, Jake,’ Torey reminded him even though she felt a tug of sympathy for him. The kettle whistled and she made the pot of tea, keeping her back to him but sensing that his eyes were on her all the while.

  ‘She never wanted them until now,’ Jake said bitterly.

  Torey poured a cup of tea and carried it across to him, setting it on the table as she said, ‘But now she does. And you have to let her.’

  ‘Why do I?’ He was scowling into his cup like an angry child.

  ‘Because he is her son. Honestly Jake, you’re acting like a little boy with a toy he won’t share. If you don’t let her see him at least part of the time, she may decide to try to get him all the time.’

  Jake jerked his head up, his face suddenly pale. ‘Custody?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Did she say that?’

  ‘No,’ Torey admitted. But she remembered what Doug had implied about one-parent families. The conclusion was an easy jump.

  ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ he pressed. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing really. I don’t know that she would. But if you were my ex-husband trying to keep my son from me, I know what I’d do,’ she told him.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he muttered, his head bent over his tea, the words almost lost in the cup.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Torey said slowly. ‘They are truly nice people. Jake. I don’t know what happened during your marriage. I’m sure it must not have been easy, but Christy doesn’t seem to be evil through and through. If you don’t give her a chance to see Scott on your terms, she may try to take him away from you.’
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br />   ‘Damn.’ His voice was low, shot through with a pain that Torey could not completely comprehend. There was so much about what had happened to him when he was married to Christy that she didn’t understand, that no one had ever explained to her. All she could see was the present—the pain and tension of a little boy about to be torn two ways. She wanted to comfort Jake but she didn’t know how. He had locked that part of himself off from her. She knew that the last five years had been hard, that he had brought up his son basically on his own, had been both mother and father to Scott and loved him more than life itself. And she knew that now his world was being threatened, or he thought that it was. But she didn’t see any way to help. If only she knew more about his relationship with Christy, then maybe she could. Or at least she might .be better able to understand the passion with which he opposed Christy having anything more to do with their child.

  Jake picked up the cup again and drained the rapidly cooling tea, then set it down with the finality of a condemned man. ‘I have to guard again tomorrow,’ he said heavily. ‘Will you watch Scott again?’

  ‘Yes, of course. What if Christy and Doug come?’

  Jake sighed and rubbed his hand across his eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘I just don’t know.’ He shoved back the chair and got to his feet, straightening up one vertebrae at a time as though the effort were almost too much for him. ‘Send Scott home for supper, will you?’ he said as an afterthought as he went out the door. ‘G’night.’

  Goodnight? Torey stared after him worried. It wasn’t even six o’clock. But Jake was shambling across the yard with the demeanour of a boxer whose gone several rounds too long. There was none of his confident swagger left. He looked completely defeated and, as far as she knew, so far there hadn’t even been a fight.

  When Torey poked her head out of her bedroom the next morning it was to find Addie and Scott stirring up a cake. ‘What’s the occasion?’ she asked as she paused to ruffle Scott’s hair.

  ‘It’s Jake’s birthday,’ Addie explained as she poured the batter into two round pans and motioned for Torey to open the oven door.