Hope Street (42 page)

Bobby didn’t speak as he drove out into the street, his knees banging against the steering wheel. Stopped at a red light, he slid the seat back and tilted the rearview mirror to accommodate his height.

She considered asking him where they were going, then thought better of it. He was seething with anger, most of it aimed at Drew Foster’s mother but some of it reserved for Joelle, too. She knew Bobby well enough to understand he was furious with her for having spoken gently to a woman who had slapped her. Joelle should have been furious, too. But…God help her, maybe she deserved that slap. And maybe she deserved Bobby’s wrath. She’d made a choice so long ago, the only sensible choice she could grasp at the time, the only one that would enable her to keep her baby and her dignity. It might have been the wrong choice, but she wouldn’t have done anything differently if she’d had it to do all over again.

Next to her, Bobby said nothing. Random raindrops had accelerated into a drizzle and he flicked on the wipers. She could tell he was gnashing his teeth by the twitching muscle in his jaw.

He drove through downtown Holmdell, past Harley’s and the new Starbucks. He drove past where the A&W stand used to be. It was gone, replaced by a car wash. Farther down the road, a Home Depot had sprung up, a large concrete structure surrounded by an even larger parking lot. Bobby kept driving.

She realized where he was driving her when he veered off the main road and onto a two-lane strip of asphalt that snaked into the woods outside of town. Over one hill, a jag in the road,
up another hill and the trees thinned out, opening onto a stretch of dirt and gravel and beyond it the lake.

No other cars were there. Sunday at noon wasn’t exactly a popular time for teenagers to make out in cars—if they still did that sort of thing these days—and the damp day kept swimmers from gathering along the edge of the lake on the narrow strip of sand that Holmdell residents extravagantly called a beach. Bobby had his choice of places to park, and he angled the car to provide a clear view of the lake and the pine forest surrounding it. The water was slate-colored, pockmarked by the rain striking its surface. When he turned off the engine, Joelle heard the tap of raindrops against the roof.

“You never brought me here before,” she said.

“Yeah, I did.” He pushed his seat back as far as it could go and attempted to stretch his legs. “We’d bike up here to swim.”

“When we were kids. I meant…” She remembered the summer nights Drew drove her to the lake in his Corvette and she’d struggled to figure out how far she ought to let him go.

“I know what you meant.”

More silence. More raindrops pattering on the car’s roof.

Joelle stared at the lake and ran her fingers lightly over her cheek where Mrs. Foster had slapped her. “You wanted to kill Mrs. Foster back there, didn’t you,” she finally said.

“And you wanted to shoot the breeze with her.”

“I did not!”

“You treat the Fosters like they’re decent people. They’re not. They’re spoiled, demanding, manipulative users. And that woman hit you. I can’t believe she did that.”

“I can.”

“It’s her son’s fault she never knew about Claudia. She shouldn’t be blaming you.”

“Maybe she should.” Joelle felt as bleak as the grim, gray clouds lying low above them. A sob filled her throat and she gulped it down. “I did everything wrong, Bobby. I shouldn’t have had sex with Drew. And when I got pregnant…”

“Don’t say you should have gotten rid of the baby.” His voice was taut with indignation.

No, she shouldn’t have gotten rid of Claudia, either through abortion or adoption. She couldn’t imagine her life without Claudia in it, her precious daughter, her blessed firstborn. She couldn’t imagine her life without Claudia—or without Bobby. If it hadn’t been for Claudia, he would never have married her.

He reached across the gear stick and captured her hand in his. It was the first time he’d touched her voluntarily, with affection, since Drew Foster had entered their house a week ago. He pulled her hand toward him, sandwiched it in both of his, traced his thumb aimlessly over her palm. “You weren’t acting alone, Jo. If you did everything wrong, so did I.”

The caress of his thumb felt so good she wanted to moan. She wanted to vault herself over the gearstick and into his lap, and hold him and kiss him and believe he loved her the way she loved him. But there was no room, and her seat belt was still fastened and she was afraid to risk having him push her away. So much remained wrong between them, so much unsaid. “Maybe marrying you was just another thing I did wrong. But I can’t help feeling it was the right thing to do.”

He twisted in his seat to face her. She kept her eyes on the lake, but she sensed his movement. She felt his scrutiny, his gaze solid and warm. “We were nuts to think we could keep the truth about Claudia a secret forever,” he conceded.

“We kept it a secret for a long time.” At last she looked at him, but now he’d turned away and was staring at the lake, at the rain
streaking the windshield. “Unfortunately we never figured out what we’d do if the secret got out.”

“What should we do?” he asked.

“If I knew, we wouldn’t be here now.”

His lips moved, as if he wanted to taste his words before he actually spoke them. “You walked out on me, Jo.”

“We walked out on each other,” she corrected him. “I just traveled more miles.”

His thumb moved back and forth against her palm, exploring the lines, the skin worn dry by so many years of cleaning, digging weeds, sewing, demonstrating craft projects to her students, writing, hugging, clinging to her children and then prodding them out into the world. “All my life, I’ve tried to give you what you want,” he said, his voice low but steady. “I did the best I could. But I don’t think it’s enough.”

No, she acknowledged. It wasn’t enough. He’d given her so much, but not the one thing she truly wanted. “I need to know what’s in your heart,” she said. “That would be enough.”

He exhaled. “I—I don’t do that stuff. Baring my soul and all that. Talking to shrinks, punching pillows to get out the rage, meditating, chanting, whatever. That’s not the way I am.”

She agreed with a nod.

“But I’ve tried.”

She eyed him skeptically. “Have you?”

“I told you what happened in ’Nam. I didn’t want to, but you pushed me, so I told you. And when I was starting the business, I talked to you about the finances, the loans, everything I was worried about. Everything I dreamed the business would be.” He hesitated, and his voice emerged hoarse when he said, “I told you I hated my father. And I told you how I felt when Foster walked into our house last week. What more do you want?”

“I want…” God, she hated to beg. She hated to ask him for what he couldn’t give. But they were actually talking, and he was holding her hand and she couldn’t back out now. If the truth hurt…Well, it often did. She would simply have to endure the pain. “I want you to love me, Bobby.”

“What?” He half shouted the word, half laughed it.

“You’ve never said it. Not once in all the years I’ve known you, all the years we’ve been married. You’ve never told me you love me.”

“I tell you all the time. Maybe not in words, but—come on, Jo. You ask for a Prius—I buy you a Prius. You decide to try gardening—I give you a garden. Anything you want, anything I can give you—”

“Those are things, Bobby.” He might be laughing, but she heard anger in his words, as well. She herself was far from laughter. It was all she could do to keep from erupting in tears. “When you were in Vietnam, every time I got a letter from you, I’d say a little prayer that you’d signed it ‘Love, Bobby.’ Then I opened it, and it never said
love.
I was sure you were planning to divorce me as soon as you got home. That was the deal, after all—we’d get married and then we could get a divorce. You never said you loved me, so I figured you didn’t. But then you came back broken and wounded, and you couldn’t divorce me while you were in rehab, and then you kind of got in the habit of being married to me and—”

“Are you insane?” He tugged her hand, urging her to meet his gaze. “I’ve been in love with you since the first day of Mrs. Schmidt’s fourth-grade class.”

“You were ten years old. How could you have been in love with me?”

“Damned if I know. But I was.”

“You never told me, Bobby. You never even hinted—”

“Because you were Joelle Webber.” He sighed, his gaze pinned to the horizon. “You were going places. I realized even then that you were going to wind up someplace better. You were going to escape Tubtown. You weren’t going to tie yourself to a boy whose father drank a lot and knocked him around, who went off to Vietnam because even that hellhole was better than his own home. I loved you enough to stay out of your way.”

“I did wind up someplace better,” she said, wishing he didn’t look so distraught. “You were right about that.”

“Everything I did, Jo—buying a house, building a business, getting the damn college degree—I did it so you would never have to think you’d gotten ripped off. You had dreams, you had expectations, and I did everything I could not to disappoint you. You married me only because you were in a bad situation, but—”

“The day you asked me to marry you was the best day of my life,” she said. “I’d walked up that hill in the cemetery certain it was the absolute worst day of my life, and you turned it into the best day.”

“You didn’t know that at the time,” he argued.

“No. It took me a while to figure out, but I know it now.” She unclasped her seat belt and leaned across the console to kiss Bobby. “Tell me. I need to hear the words.”

“I love you, Jo,” he said. “I always have.”

They kissed, a deep, lush, loving kiss. His hand remained around hers and his mouth took hers, possessive, hungry…loving. She believed that. He’d said the words, and this time the truth didn’t hurt at all.

By the time they stopped kissing, she was half in his lap, one knee propped on her seat, the steering wheel digging into her
shoulder and the car’s windows steamed. Bobby cupped her face with his free hand, brushed her hair back from her cheek and peered into her eyes. “So here we are at the lake, and this car is too small.”

“It’s not too small.”

“It’s too small and I’m too old.” He smiled and caressed her mouth with his fingertips. “I’m sorry I never took you here to do anything besides swimming.”

“You were busy with half the girls in Tubtown. I don’t think you’re all that sorry.”

“I am,” he insisted. He grazed her lips with his, and then her cheek and then the sensitive spot just below her ear. Desire throbbed deep inside her. “I would have made it good for you if I’d brought you here,” he murmured, and she knew he would have. He’d made it good for her on their wedding night, when all she understood about sex was that it was unpleasant and painful and embarrassing. He always made it good for her, even when they were tired or angry or distracted. If only Bobby had told her he loved her back then, when she’d been young and hadn’t made any terrible mistakes yet, who knew where they’d be today?

As if he could read her mind, he let his hand fall still and his eyes grew darker. “I could say I love you nonstop for the rest of our lives, Jo. But that wouldn’t make things any better.”

“Why?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I’m still going to lose Claudia.”

If Bobby had loved Joelle as a teenager, Claudia would never have existed. They would never have had their wonderful daughter. “You won’t lose her, Bobby. She adores you.”

“She went for a blood test.”

Once again silence filled the car. The rain was falling harder now, drumming against the car’s surfaces, blurring the world beyond the windows.

“If she isn’t a match, it’s all over,” Joelle said, wishing she could convince them both of that.

“It’s not over.” His gaze slid past her and fixed on the silver shimmer of the rain. “She said he was her brother. Foster’s son—her brother.” He stared into her eyes, the sorrow and accusation in his gaze piercing her. “You told her about Foster, and now I’m losing her. You want me to bare my soul? Here’s what’s in my soul, then. I love you, Jo. I always have and I always will. But when you told Claudia that Foster was her father, you took her away from me.” He turned from her, once again staring out at the rain spilling down into the lake.

“She loves you.”

“She calls him her father.” He swallowed, his eyes distant, seeing not the scenery outside the car but something invisible, something inside himself. “I love you, Jo, but I wish to hell you’d never let Foster into our lives.”

“He was in our lives all along,” she pointed out sadly.

She felt Bobby’s withdrawal, a subtle motion, a slackening of his hold on her. He seemed to slip away from her like the rain slipping into the lake, water vanishing into water. “Yeah,” he muttered, nudging her back into her seat and reaching for the car keys. “He was, wasn’t he.”

Joelle watched him, struggling to read his expression. For one fleeting moment he’d opened to her and spoken his heart. Now he was locking himself up again, sealing himself away. What she’d said was only the truth, but like the truth that he feared had cost him his daughter, this truth might cost Joelle her husband.

Don’t close down,
she wanted to plead.
Don’t leave me.
But he was easing away, drawing back, in full retreat. She’d had him for that one precious moment, and now he was gone.

Two weeks later

“H
ERE YOU GO,”
M
ONA
said, entering Bobby’s office with a stack of application forms. “I put the three best prospects on top. One’s a college kid just back from a school program in London. He plans to make some money before he has to go back to college in September. The other two are cousins of Hector Cabral’s wife. Here legally. I checked their papers. They don’t speak English too well, but Hector vouches for them. They said he told them you’re a good boss.” She grinned. “You want to fire him for lying?”

Hector had been working for DiFranco Landscaping for several years. Bit by bit, he was transporting his entire extended family from Brazil to New England, and Bobby had already hired several Cabral relatives. Over the years, he’d learned a lot about immigration law.

“You ought to move on these soon,” Mona continued, placing the stack on his blotter. “You really need some more employees. The price of success, Bob. You’ve got more contracts than you can staff.”

“I’m not complaining.” DiFranco Landscaping had landed a lot of jobs this summer. His staff size waxed and waned with the seasons, but this year the firm was in serious demand. He was desperate to add some more personnel, and he would.

He eyed the top application, from the college student. The words made no sense to him; the letters were just squiggly ink shapes. “Something on your mind?” Mona asked.

He shoved back the pile. “I can’t concentrate. My daughter’s undergoing a medical procedure tomorrow morning.”

Mona’s eyes widened. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“She’ll be fine.” Bobby was reasonably convinced of that, even though marrow extraction was a lot more complicated than getting a tooth filled or suturing a cut. Claudia would be given general anesthesia, and then a doctor would insert a needle into her pelvic bone and suck the marrow out. Bobby consoled himself with the understanding that Drew Foster would hire only the best doctors in New York City to treat his son. The doctors would know what they were doing with Claudia.

“If her procedure is tomorrow morning, those applications can wait until tomorrow afternoon,” Mona said, tapping the pile with her fingernail and giving Bobby a sympathetic smile before she turned and left his office.

He dug his thumbs into his temples and rubbed, trying to stave off the headache that had been circling his skull all morning. Claudia would be fine, he assured himself. She wanted to do this. It was her choice.

And he ought to review the applications and find some new hires.

He slid open the top drawer of his desk to get a pencil so he could jot down notes. His gaze snagged on the photo of Joelle he kept there, and he paused.

Despite the washed-out colors of the photo, Joelle glowed in her pretty prom dress, with her loose, loopy curls and her bright smile. She’d been so happy that evening, so excited about attending the prom.

With Drew Foster.

It wasn’t just the medical procedure that was eating at Bobby. It was the knowledge that Claudi a was about to meet her real father.

Foster had arranged for a car to pick up Claudia that morning and drive her to the city so the extraction could be done in the same hospital where his son was a patient. They were all going to meet with the doctor later that afternoon, ostensibly to discuss the procedure. She would spend the night as the guest of Foster and his wife and then get to the hospital by seven the following morning.

Bobby couldn’t obliterate the pictures in his mind of Claudia meeting Foster, acknowledging their kinship and believing that she’d finally found her real father. No matter that Bobby had been the only dad she’d ever known. There was a bond between her and Foster, and once they were in the same room, it would blossom.

Thinking about their meeting opened the doors to his headache, which rushed into his brain with booms and flashes of red. Damn. Claudia and Foster. Claudia and her father. Claudia and the guy who’d escorted Joelle to the prom the night that photo was taken, the night she’d worn that beautiful blue gown and worried about whether she had enough class to hang off the arm of a boy from the Hill.

Bobby shoved the drawer shut, locked his desk and stormed out of his office. “I can’t work,” he told Mona, who peered up at him from her desk in the outer office. “I’ll review the applications tomorrow. I just can’t do it today.” Before she could question him, he swept out of the building.

He was halfway home before he paused to figure out what the hell he was doing. His mind swam with images of Claudia and Joelle’s old boyfriend, Claudia searching the man’s face and seeing in it a reflection of herself. Bobby had tried so hard, since the day she’d phoned to tell him and Joelle that she was a match for Foster’s son, to be calm and reasonable about the whole thing. He’d tried to focus on his work, to make conversation with Joelle over dinner, to slip into the comfortable routines that had marked his days before Foster had barged in and screwed everything up.

He’d tried to be the husband Joelle wanted him to be.

But just as Foster dreaded the possibility of losing his son, Bobby dreaded the possibility of losing his daughter. And in his case it was his own fault. His and Joelle’s. They’d lied, and now they were paying the price. He hated himself—and he hated Joelle, too.

He sped up the driveway to their house, slowing only for the automatic garage door to open. Slamming out of the truck, he took a deep breath to calm himself. It didn’t help.

By the time he reached the door to the mudroom, Joelle had opened it and was staring into the garage, frowning. “Bobby? What’s wrong?”

He strode past her, his boots thumping against the floor, and halted in the kitchen. Several shopping bags stood on the counter. Apparently she’d just arrived home from the supermarket.

“What happened, Bobby?” she asked, concern planting a flutter in her voice as she joined him in the kitchen.

He must have looked half-mad, because she shrank back when he turned to her. “She’s going down there today,” he said.

“Of course. I know.”

“She’s going to meet him.”

Joelle watched him. “Yes.”

“I can’t stand it.” He roamed around the kitchen, too edgy to stand still. “I’ve been trying to be a good sport about this, but I…” Emotions tore at him like thorns. “We shouldn’t have told her.”

“Who? Claudia?”

“We shouldn’t have told her about Foster. We should have kept the secret.”

“We couldn’t, Bobby.”

He bore down on her and she shrank back again, pressing against the counter, her eyes wide with alarm. Did she think he would hurt her?

His anger frightened him, too, and he wrestled with it, forcing it down into his gut. He would not become his father. He would not throw things, break things, hit the people in his life.

He spun away from her and moved to the window, hoping the sight of their perfectly landscaped backyard would soothe him. Joelle’s garden lay lush and fresh in the late-morning sunlight. He’d done a fine job of weeding and pruning it after she’d run off to Ohio, and she’d done a decent job of keeping it tidy since they’d returned home.

If only raising children were as simple as raising tomatoes and zucchini. If only maintaining a marriage was as simple as digging out a few weeds and adding a little fertilizer.

“We should have kicked Foster out of our house that day.”

“If we had sent him away…” Her voice sounded tight, breathy with anxiety. “He would have gone behind our backs to find her. He’d hired a detective, Bobby. He knew about Claudia. He would have found her, with or without our help.”

He refused to look at her. “You’re sure he’d do that? You know him that well?”

“I’m a mother,” she answered, her voice drifting across the room to him. “I know what a parent will do for a child.”

“You’re a mother. He’s a father.” What was Bobby? When it came to Claudia, what the hell was he?

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of Joelle’s thriving garden anymore. But closing his eyes left his mind free to see what he didn’t want to see: Claudia and Foster together, shaking hands. Hugging. Claudia calling that son of a bitch Dad.

“I’ve tried,” he said slowly, his voice breaking. “Ever since we got back from Ohio, I’ve tried to accept this. I’ve tried to forgive you and me both.” He sighed. “I just can’t do it.”

For a minute neither of them spoke. The hum of the refrigerator’s motor spread around them, and the hiss of one of the upstairs air conditioners cooling down the bedrooms. Then Joelle said, “All right. Let’s go.”

“Go?”

He heard the bell-like rattle of her keys and the clapping of her sandals hitting the soles of her bare feet as she headed for the mudroom. “Let’s go,” she repeated.

He had no idea where they were going. Away from the garden, away from the patio he’d built, away from the house in which he’d raised his sons—and his daughter. Away from this house Claudia had once called home.

Going couldn’t possibly be worse than staying. He followed Joelle out.

E
VEN WITH THE PASSENGER SEAT
shoved all the way back, Bobby seemed cramped in the Prius. He also looked forbidding, his eyes dark and brooding, his brow low as he stared at the road in front of them. Waves of tension, hot and pulsing, rolled off him.

She should have changed her clothes. She had on a pair of
khaki shorts and a cotton shirt with a pastel striped pattern. Her hair was arranged in a ponytail, but as she drove she tugged off the elastic and ran her fingers through the locks to loosen them.

Ponytail or no, she looked like a dowdy middle-aged suburban lady, someone who’d abandoned a pile of groceries on the counter and bolted on an insane mission. To save her husband, to save her daughter, to save her marriage—for all she knew, everything she cared about was beyond saving by now. At least she’d gotten most of the perishables into the refrigerator. She’d saved their groceries.

“Where are we going?” Bobby asked.

“I’m not sure. Do you have your cell phone with you?” At his nod, she said, “Call Gary.”

He eyed her dubiously but punched in his son-in-law’s number. After listening for a couple of seconds, he said, “Gary? It’s Bob. I…uh…” He flashed a quizzical glance at Joelle.

“Ask him Drew Foster’s address.”

Bobby’s frown intensified. He said nothing.

“Go ahead. Ask him. Somewhere in Manhattan. I need the address.”

Bobby continued to glare at her. Into the phone, he said, “No, I’m still here. I just…”

“Ask him,” Joelle ordered.

Twisting away, he spoke into the phone. “Do you know Drew Foster’s address?” He listened for a moment, then said, “Thanks. No, nothing’s wrong. I’ll talk to you later.” He folded the phone shut and grunted, “Nothing’s wrong? Add that to the mile-high heap of lies.”

“What’s the address?” she asked. “Write it down so we don’t forget it.”

“We’re not going to New York.”

“Yes, we are.”

Skepticism mingling with the tension that radiated from him, he opened the glove compartment, pulled out a pen and a wrinkled napkin with a fast-food logo on it and jotted the address. “I wrote it down. Now, turn the car around and take me home.”

“You don’t want Claudia to do this. You won’t admit it, Bobby, but it’s obvious you don’t want her to do it. So we’re going to New York to get her.”

From the corner of her eye she could see his disbelief. “We are
not
going to New York to get her,” he retorted. “This was her decision. She wants to do it. She’s a grown-up. If this is what she wants to do—”

“But
you
don’t want her to do it. You don’t want her to save that boy’s life.”

“That boy’s life has nothing to do with it,” Bobby snapped. “Of course I want the boy to live. Damn it, Jo…”

He seemed as furious as he’d been in the kitchen. But at least he was strapped in by a seat belt, trapped in a moving car. He couldn’t act on his anger as long as she kept her foot on the gas pedal.

She had tried to reach him through talk. She’d tried to reach him through food, preparing his favorite meals. She’d tried to reach him physically. Since their return from Ohio, their bed had seen its share of activity—but something had been wrong. There was no hostility when they made love, but there was no rapture, either. There was no life at all. The bed was like a garden without water. Nothing could bloom there.

She’d tried leaving him, and he’d chased after her and brought her home. He’d told her he loved her. But still the demons danced inside him. He was in agony, and in the pauses of their lives, in the quiet moments when conversation died, when sex
was over and they retreated to their own sides of the bed, she felt blame flowing from Bobby and spilling all over her.

If the only way she could save her marriage was by snatching Claudia away from Drew Foster, she would do it. She’d tried everything else.

Perhaps she should have thought through this mission a little better. She wasn’t sure she was ready to meet Drew’s wife—the woman who’d insisted she and Bobby were two corners of a trapezoid when they’d gone out for drinks. Drew’s wife would be sleek and chic, and Joelle would be frazzled and ragged. She’d be forced to tell the woman her son would have to find another donor, because until Bobby got his daughter back, he would never forgive Joelle for allowing Drew to cross their threshold. How could Joelle do that? How could she deny a woman the chance to keep her son alive?

“This is nuts,” Bobby muttered.

“I don’t care if it’s nuts. You want Claudia? We’ll get her.”

“This isn’t about Claudia,” he said.

Joelle was so startled she almost veered off the road. She straightened the wheel, glanced at him and refocused on her driving. “Of course it’s about Claudia.”

“It’s about you,” he argued, spite edging his voice. “It’s about you and Foster.”

Joelle took a minute to collect herself. All along, Bobby had been anguished about Claudia, about losing her, about losing his place in her heart. He’d never acknowledged that anything else was troubling him. Of course, that was Bobby. He never said anything at all, anything that mattered.