Perhaps the Fosters had been happy here.
He dragged a hand through his unruly black hair as he looked around. God knew the Callaghans hadn’t been, he thought.
As he remembered it, it had been a house of sorrow. A house filled with somber expressions and drunken recriminations.
A house of violence.
A shudder threatened to slide over him. He braced his shoulders, blocking it. Kirk frowned, wondering how wise it actually had been to return here. But to remain away from his past was to remain away from the solution, the key to why he had withdrawn so dramatically. Why everything had fallen apart for him. It was here. He knew it was here.
It had to be.
He needed to find himself, to discover who and what, after all these years, he was.
To rest and regroup.
And to attempt to untangle the skeins of his badly tangled soul by returning to where it had all begun. To the heart of it.
Or, if not the heart—for the heart had been all but beaten out of him here—then the creative force that had spawned him and molded him into the man he’d been destined to become.
Kirk passed the fireplace. His eyes were drawn to the rusting poker that stood off to one side like a discarded sentinel. Obviously the Fosters hadn’t been much for fires on cold winter nights, he mused. And they hadn’t discovered the extraneous uses of the poker, either, the way his father had.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, but he could still almost feel the sting of the iron on his back, on his flesh. All these years later, he could still feel it.
Restlessness pervaded his body, but he forced himself to remain, even though he had somewhere else to go if he chose. Cameron, now a detective with the Bedford Police Department, had given him a spare key to his apartment this morning before he left. The latter had sensed without being told that Kirk might not want to spend the night on his own territory.
They’d always been so tuned in to one another, Kirk thought. He and Cameron. And Rachel.
Tension had his body almost rigid as he roamed about. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and his fingers came into contact with Cameron’s key. He curved them around it, debating.
With a sigh, he pulled his hand out and hooked his thumbs on his belt as he continued to wander slowly about the house.
He hadn’t returned just to run again. The time for running had passed. He realized now that that was what he’d been doing ever since he left Bedford. Running away.
Echoes of memories whispered softly in the shadows of his mind as he moved silently through the rooms. The day was warm. Kirk felt cold. There had been no laughter here, no pride, no joy. Never once, in all the years that he’d known them, had he ever invited Cameron or Rachel into his house.
He hadn’t wanted them tainted.
He hadn’t wanted them to know his shame.
Neither of them had ever questioned, ever asked why. They had accepted the situation as a given and moved on with their friendship, treasuring Kirk, not any external trappings associated with him.
There was no air in the house, despite the fact that he had left the door open. He felt as if he were suffocating. Quickly he crossed to the closest window and threw it open to let in some air. He needed the feel of clean air sweeping away the dust, the stale cobwebs that had begun to form.
He wanted it to sweep away the debris of the past.
Looking out, he realized he was facing Rachel’s house, across the way. The structure was partially hidden from view by a squadron of towering Italian cypresses.
They had to be well over twenty feet tall by now, he judged. When he was a young boy, Kirk had thought of them as an armed military guard, fashioned in the likeness of the Wicked Witch’s guard in The Wizard of Oz. And he had believed that they, like those guards, had been posted there by his father to keep out the good. To keep the evil in.
On dark, moonless nights, the trees had appeared particularly oppressive.
Their heads nodding sagely in the light spring breeze, they looked pretty harmless now.
It had all been due to the overactive imagination of an unhappy little boy, Kirk thought detachedly. In a way, it was as if he hadn’t been that boy. As if he had never had a childhood at all. And perhaps, in some ways, he hadn’t.
In other ways, ways involving Cameron and Rachel, he had, Kirk recalled with a smile as he looked past the trees. He could just about make out the bright blue-and-white stucco house.
It seemed an odd twist of fate that she had chosen to move back into the house just at the time when he had returned to his roots. To either strengthen them or pull them out completely and replant them somewhere else.
Fate, he supposed, was a very strange thing. He only had to review some of the events of his life to be convinced of that.
The sun shone so that it threw his reflection back at him in the window. Kirk looked down at his rumpled work shirt and realized that he was wearing the exact same clothes he’d worn last night, when he had appeared on Cameron’s doorstep.
Kirk wrinkled his nose. If he didn’t watch it, he was going to become eccentric. Or at least gamy. He needed a shower, he decided, and a change of clothes.
He needed a hell of a lot more than that, but the shower was a start. Things had a way of propelling themselves if you gave them an initial push. He still believed in that. Sort of.
The window remained open as he walked away.
* * *
Ethan watched her move about the living room through sullen, dark eyes. Sullen eyes that held so little of the boy she’d adored in them.
As she approached him to straighten up the mess he had left behind while playing with his toys, he raised his chin defiantly.
“You’re dressed up.”
Did he know how much he sounded like his father? How the cadence in his voice emulated the man he’d hated? Rachel purposely tried to sound cheerful. She didn’t want to argue. Not tonight.
“That’s because I’m going out.”
Ethan dug fisted hands into the sofa as he sat up, his feet planted beneath him as if he were about to spring up at any second.
“On a date?” It wasn’t idle curiosity in his voice, but hostility. As if he were daring her to lie to him. As if he were daring her to tell him the truth.
Either way, he wasn’t going to be pleased. She knew the signs by now.
Rachel stacked several videotapes on the television set. Tapes she meant to watch but never found the time to view.
“Not really.” She was going to remain calm, she swore to herself. Ethan was going to see that he couldn’t bait her. They were going to find a way to get along, or she was going to die trying.
Ethan cocked his head to see her face more clearly. “But it’s with a guy.”
Tension shimmered between her and her son, the way it always seemed to these days, without cause, without provocation. It was there, lying in wait for her, as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning. It was like attempting to cross a mine field. She had no idea how to successfully circumvent it. It was especially frustrating because she and Ethan had once been so close.
Until her divorce.
And the reason that had prompted it.
She smiled slightly as she concentrated on Ethan’s words and not the accusation behind them. A guy. Kirk was far from being “a guy” in the way Ethan meant.
“An old friend,” she told him.
Rachel brushed one hand against the other. The tape jackets were dusty. Showed how often she got to watch television, she thought. Life was galloping away from her. And taking Ethan with it, she thought with a deep-seated pang.
Ethan rose to his knees as he knelt on the sofa, turning to keep his mother in his range. “Old?” he echoed. “How old?”
Rachel stopped fluttering around and crossed to him. “Older than me.”
She ran her hand along Ethan’s cheek, then fruitlessly attempted to block the stab of pain when he jerked his head back, his eyes flat. She doggedly maintained he
r sunny tone of voice.
“He’s picking me up here in a few minutes.” She watched as Ethan rose from the sofa. He was retreating to his room. In the past six months, he always seemed to be either attacking or retreating. No middle ground.
“I’d like you to meet him,” she said softly.
Suspicion creased the smooth brow, mingling with his perpetual scowl.
“Why?”
She let out a breath. Where was the child who had been so happy? Who had enjoyed her company, and life? Don had destroyed that. And somehow, unintentionally, she had helped.
“Because he’s someone I grew up with. Your uncle Cameron and I were best friends with Kirk Callaghan for years. He lived in the house next door.”
Rachel looked in that direction now, though there were walls in the way that obstructed her view. If she tried, she could almost envision Kirk there now. Having him back, for however long, somehow helped her cope. In an odd way, it negated some of the worst parts of her life. The parts with Don in them.
She placed her hands on her son’s slender shoulders and held tight as he tried to shrug her off. He’d never succeed in that, she thought. Never. Tenacity was something she prided herself on.
Her eyes held his. “Ethan, I want to share things with you.”
The suspicion deepened its mark. Distrust and wariness were stamped all over his face. “Why?” he repeated, with more feeling.
She wanted to shake him, to shake this cloak of ugliness from him somehow. She restrained her impulse. It wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“Because you count. Because you’re my son.” Rachel stared down into the defiant eyes. Eyes that mirrored Don’s so well. “That should be enough reason. I don’t need any more reason than that.” Her grip tightened slightly, as if that would help him absorb her words. “You shouldn’t, either.”
This time Ethan succeeded in shrugging her off. “I’ve got homework to do.”
He did, she thought, but he wasn’t going to do it. He was just evading her. In the past six months, Ethan’s schoolwork had suffered. There had been a bevy of notes from a discontented teacher, littered with words such as potential and waste. And “failure.” And yesterday Ethan had dropped out of his Little League team. He’d turned his back on baseball, a game he adored. She was still trying to get to the bottom of that.
To the bottom of all of it. She had tried talking, pleading. When that had failed, she’d asked Cameron to talk to him. That hadn’t helped, either. It seemed inconceivable to Rachel that she was losing touch with her son, the person who mattered most to her in the world. And yet she was.
She had no one to blame but herself.
And she had no one but herself to rely on in order to win him back.
“Your homework can wait.” Her words stopped him in his tracks. “I want you here, with me.”
A defiant retort formed on his lips just as the doorbell rang.
Startled by the sound, Rachel’s eyes darted toward the front door as she sucked in her breath. She knew that Ethan was watching her reaction.
There was a sneer on his lips. “If he’s just a friend, how come you’re acting as if he’s a date?”
The accusation was sharp. And he was partially right. She was behaving as if this were something more than an evening with an old friend. But that was because she’d once had a crush on Kirk, because she’d been more than a little in love with him when she was in her teens. In some ways, she supposed, he was still her idea of Prince Charming. A brooding, troubled Prince Charming, but a Prince Charming nonetheless.
“That’s just your imagination. I’m excited about seeing him again after all these years, that’s all.”
Crossing to the door, she threw it open, a greeting hovering on her lips. It dissolved in a sigh as she stepped back to admit her brother.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Cameron kissed the top of his sister’s head as he walked in. “Nice to see you, too.” He looked around. Kirk was nowhere in sight. “Weren’t you expecting me?” Rachel had asked him to stay with his nephew while she went out with Kirk.
Rachel closed the door behind Cameron, chagrined at her reaction. “Yes, but...”
Cameron looked at her knowingly. “But I’m not Kirk,” he completed for her.
Rachel waved her hand, dismissing his comment—and the blatant meaning beneath it. She’d just gone through all that with Ethan. She wasn’t about to live through an instant replay. “Sorry. Ethan and I were talking, and I was preoccupied.”
Cameron nodded, accepting the excuse. He looked at his nephew. The boy’s slender build clearly indicated that he took after his mother, rather than his athletic father. Or him, for that matter, Cameron thought. Only the scowl belonged to Don.
“How’s it going, Ethan?”
“Okay, I guess,” he mumbled.
“I ran into Pete Kelly.” He mentioned the name of Ethan’s baseball coach as he made himself comfortable on the sofa. “He tells me that you quit the team.”
Ethan studied the worn creases on the toes of his sneakers. “Baseball’s for dorks.”
Cameron and Rachel exchanged looks. Ethan had lived and breathed baseball for the past three years. It was because of him that Cameron maintained season tickets for the Angels and Dodgers.
“I don’t know. Some of those dorks can hit pretty well,” Cameron said.
Ethan jammed his hands into his pockets. “I don’t like baseball.”
“Since when?” Cameron asked, his surprise evident in his voice.
“Since now,” Ethan spit out. Before Cameron could say anything further, Ethan looked at his mother accusingly. “What’s he doing here, anyway? I’m eight years old. I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“No,” Rachel countered evenly, “what you need is someone to teach you some manners. But for the time being, your uncle is going to stay here with you while I go out.”
Frustration had tears welling up in her eyes, and she turned away, walking toward the dining room.
Torn between attempting to talk to his nephew and coming to his sister’s rescue, Cameron seemed to decide that she needed him more. Following her into the other room, he placed his hands on her arms. Rachel was forced to look up at him. Both were aware that Ethan was hovering in the background, looking annoyed with them. And with himself.
Diversion had always been a good tactic to employ in emotionally charged situations. Cameron had learned that on the force. It was no less true in personal matters. “You look awfully good tonight, Rach. Trying to make him see what he missed out on?”
Rachel sniffed once to draw back the tears that threatened to fall, and looked up in surprise at Cameron’s obvious attempt at diversion. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“No?” Humor curved Cameron’s generous mouth and moved into his eyes. The young, vulnerable Rachel had been too frail to tease. That was no longer the case. “Then I guess you didn’t lead the same life I did.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. She had the uneasy feeling she knew what he was getting at. “Cameron...”
He ignored the warning note. “Seems to me I remember a very starry-eyed younger sister who would have very easily sold her soul if she could have gone out with Kirk Callaghan as something other than just a friend.”
So, she hadn’t been that successful in hiding her feelings, she thought, her amusement rising. Trust Cameron to make her feel better.
She pretended to sniff at his scenario. “Scanlon’s has a dress code. No bag ladies allowed.”
Cameron dropped his hands and stepped back to give her a thorough once-over. She was wearing a simple black dress that accented some very unsimple curves.
“You’re a hell of a long way off from being a bag lady.” He grinned at her, then grew serious. “All kidding aside, you look great, Rach. It’s about time you put your life back into gear.” He looked toward the living room. Ethan was back on the sofa, flipping channels on the television set. “For both your sakes.
”
Rachel shrugged, smoothing down a wayward curl. “That’s not how Ethan sees it.” She glanced over her shoulder at her son. “He thinks of it as a betrayal.”
Cameron looked at his godson. He’d witnessed a bright, happy boy descend into his own private hell in the matter of a few baffling months. “Whose? His?”
“Yes.” She could only guess at the rest of it. “And perhaps his father’s.” There wasn’t anything else she could think of.
“Don’s dead.” Cameron set his mouth grimly. “Besides, he wasn’t much of a father when he was alive.” If the man hadn’t died, Cameron was afraid of what he might be driven to do. Every time he thought of Don mistreating Rachel, of what he had put her through, a rage seized Cameron that was in direct contradiction to the affable man he usually appeared to be. “You should have told me sooner about him, you know.”
The words were said mildly, as if merely in passing, but Rachel heard the suppressed emotion. She shrugged, helpless either to combat the past or to change it. Helpless to change the effects it had had on her life, and her son’s. That was the worst of it. The way it had affected Ethan.
“I thought he’d change.” Hoped. She raised her eyes to her brother’s face. “And maybe I was ashamed to let you know. I honestly believed that I could straighten it all out.”
She pressed her lips together, her heart aching as she attempted to push back the memory of those days.
Her voice lowered, choked with emotion. “It wasn’t until I saw him raise his hand to Ethan that I knew we had to get out.” A sad smile twisted her lips. “Even then, Ethan wanted to stay. Now he acts as if I was the heavy, instead of Don.” She sighed. “I don’t understand that boy.”
Cameron placed his arm around her shoulders in a familiar, comforting gesture. “He doesn’t want to be understood. This is what they call the difficult age.” He released her and crossed to the living room.
The difficult age. A popular phrase that served as a catchall for any and all problems that couldn’t be addressed or solved.
“How long does it last?”
“I don’t know.” Cameron laughed softly. He saw Ethan raise his head in his direction, his suspicions refreshed. “I’m still in it.”
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