Into His Keeping (3 page)

“Please, both of you! This doesn’t have to be a pissing contest. Would you both sit down and let me explain? Sit! Now!” Jill barked at the two glaring males.

Drifter slid into the booth beside Jill, Holdin folded himself into the seat across from them.

“I had hoped to do this much more gracefully,” Jill started tiredly, “but life is seldom that kind. I wanted to call you and have a quiet chat about what happened fifteen years ago, not ambush you with information like this. I realize it’s totally unfair to expect you to deal with the reality of a fourteen-year-old son.”

“Tell me now, Jill.” Holdin glanced around the empty shop. There were several customers in the department store portion and the soda fountain clerk had gone to help one of them. They were relatively alone except for curious glances from people too far away to listen.

Drifter shifted and focused on his mother. “Mom, are you sure you’re up to this? You need to lie down. We’ve done what we came here to do and I’m fine with it. You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not exactly fine with anything, son. I’d like to hear an explanation,” Holdin interjected firmly.

“Don’t call me ‘son’.” Drifter’s head snapped back to the man. “I’ve done the math. She was barely eighteen when she got pregnant.” Drifter’s face was a bitter, accusatory mask. “We came here because she wanted to, not me.”

Jill laid a hand on Drifter’s arm, squeezing in a mother’s message to stop talking. “Drifter! Stop it. This isn’t his fault. It never was. I can’t believe you’re being so rude.”

“He’s protecting you.” Holdin shifted back, his big body relaxing with a slight smile on his face for the first time. “Don’t worry about it. I understand the instinct. Now, can you please tell me what’s going on? And why he thinks you can’t handle this?”

Jill heaved a sigh. There was no easy way to do this. “Okay, here’s the really short version of what happened back then. I’ll start there because it directly affects the situation now.

“My father was a bad guy on the run from worse guys. That’s why we moved around like we did. When I walked in the door after the Fourth of July fireworks show, he already had the car packed. We had to leave. I didn’t want to but I was terrified. Nineteen exhausting hours later and two states away, we had an accident. The car flipped and burned with my father in it.

“By the time rescue people got there I was the only person to take to the hospital. I was in a coma for fourteen days. There was no identification on me, the car and everything in it had burned. The car’s VIN number showed it was a stolen vehicle from New Orleans. No one had any way to figure out who I was. The only thing they had to go on was the necklace I was wearing with the name Jill spelled out in the charm. Also, I was pregnant.” Jill’s hand went to the neckline of her T-shirt and she smiled softly as her fingers traced the charm beneath the cloth.

Jill continued. “I woke with no memories. Everyone expected my memories to come back at some point but they didn’t. I wanted to keep my baby so the kind people at the hospital made my approximate age eighteen and put me in a program the city had for inner-city pregnant teens. Since I had no previous identity, I had to get a GED in the months before Drifter was born and qualified for technical education. I became a dental hygienist, a success story for the program and its funding.”

Holdin’s jaw clenched and he drew in a deep breath. “I should have put my name on the damn necklace,” he growled softly. He felt as if he were holding on to sanity by a thread. The shock of looking into her face today had nearly killed him for a moment. He’d gotten over the fear of that death as he watched a smaller version of himself stroll up to the booth. He’d been almost sure he was going to survive the afternoon but this abbreviated explanation was doing its damnedest to beat the life out of him.

At his center, each clipped sentence stabbed him. He recognized terrible pain behind the emotionless, unvarnished relating of facts. It was a common tactic used by victims to distance themselves from pain. That simple fact was almost too much for him to bear. Alone and abandoned, the beautiful girl had been forced into being a woman. Not just for herself, but to protect the child she didn’t even know how she’d conceived. He should have been there. She was his woman and that had been his baby. Holdin clamped down on the vortex of emotions, afraid she’d try to disappear as the boy wanted if she saw it.

Jill’s gentle, tired voice continued. “Two weeks ago I had an incident and minor head trauma. When I woke up, I remembered everything.” Jill spread her hands in a shrug. “I couldn’t just call you. I wanted to see this place and we needed to talk face-to-face. It seemed important to do this in person. You deserved to at least meet your son while I could manage it.” Jill leaned back and shut her eyes for a brief second of rest from the emotional storm silently raging around the booth.

The afternoon sun glaring in on them was beginning to stab at her along with the stress of this little meeting. It was all wrong. She’d imagined telling him so many times in the last few days. None of those times had it been in a rush with these two males growling at each other.

Holdin turned his gaze on Drifter. “Why are you concerned that she’s not up to this? What’s wrong with her right now?” he asked quietly in a man-to-man tone.

He restrained the impulse to lunge across the table and gather her into his arms. It was almost overwhelming as she wilted back in her seat and closed her eyes. He forcibly reminded himself that he didn’t have the right to shelter her, nor could he. The young man sitting beside her was doing his level best to be a man and that ripped a strip off Holdin too. He was proud as hell of the spirit he saw in his son and at the same time mourned this boy’s need to answer that instinctive call to protect his mother.

Jill opened her eyes in surprise. She’d expected questions, accusations, anger, not the calm inquiry that she’d just heard.

“Her accident was more serious than it appeared,” Drifter answered immediately. “A very small sliver of her skull bone is lodged against her brain. They think it’s stable but they want to do surgery to remove it. They also think that’s why she remembered everything. It’s possible she’ll forget again when it’s removed. Or if it moves on its own, she could…well, they don’t know for sure what will happen. The point is, she insisted on coming here before surgery.”

Holdin sucked in a hissing breath as he jerked in renewed shock. “What!?” He glared at Jill in obvious anger for a second then ruthlessly shut it down. Remaining calm was vitally important. Both Jill and the boy appeared ready to flee at any moment and he couldn’t allow that to happen. Perhaps it was that he didn’t really believe she was here. Whatever, he shoved his instinctive responses behind the mask he’d worn so long. “You should be in the hospital? How did you get here?” He glanced out the big window at the car parked in front. “You drove in this condition? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Stop yelling at me!” Jill snapped. “We drove. We live an hour away now and I needed to do this for my son. What if I wake up blank again? No memories of him even? I had to give him an option, some resource. I couldn’t make him do this alone, damn it. It’s too hard.”

Jill leaned forward across the red tabletop. “You’re his only hope if I’m gone. I came here to beg you not to let the state take him. That’s all. I couldn’t let them cut into my brain before I knew he was safe!”

“I can remember just fine for both of us, Mom. We don’t need to beg him for anything.” Drifter slung an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, you need to lie down. We’re done here. I’ve met him. He’s seen us. It’s enough.”

“I agree, you need to rest, Jill. Come out to the ranch and we can get you back to the hospital in the chopper as soon as you can travel.” Holdin ignored the aggressive half of Drifter’s statement, stood and moved back, obviously waiting for them to join him.

Drifter frowned up at the tall, stern-faced man beside him. “You have a helicopter?”

“Yep. Much smoother ride and a lot quicker than a car.” Holdin nodded.

“Wait a second. I’m not going out to the ranch. I had to drive here from Dallas, I felt pretty safe on paved roads but the dirt road out there is a bit risky. Besides, what about your family and everything? You’ve told us nothing and I understand it’s none of our business, but I don’t want to suddenly invade your home, Holdin. That’s not why we came and I don’t want to face that kind of stress at the moment. We’ll be fine at the motel.”

“My family is right here, Jill.” Holdin tried to relax as he continued. “The road is paved all the way out there. It has been for several years. Things have changed. What if we need to get you back to the hospital fast? Coming out to the ranch is the safest option.”

Holdin looked at Drifter and used the man-to-man talk again. “I know you want to take care of your mother. This is the safest option for her.”

Drifter searched Holdin’s face worriedly. “Are you okay with us?” he asked with more insight than a boy his age should have. “You can’t hurt her anymore. I’ll not let you.”

Jill answered before Holdin could. “Of course he won’t hurt me! I know I’ve only had a short time to tell you about your father but I thought you got him. He’d never hurt me. Never.” Jill glanced up at Holdin worriedly. “We can talk about this in the room.”

“Mom, you’ve been in pain over him since the moment you remembered. You haven’t told me everything but I’m not an idiot. I can read between the lines. That and I can hear you crying at night. Every night, since you got home from the hospital.”

“Oh geez, baby. No, not because…” Jill looked up at Holdin again. The man before her was so much more than the lover she’d known. He was a stranger. And yet, looking at that face, hearing his voice, all of it nearly cut her in half.

Her memories had been brand-new. Intellectually she’d been aware they were events from fifteen years ago, but that didn’t do a thing to distance her from the pain of them. She hadn’t really had fifteen years to get over them, to coat them with the protective cushion of time. Emotionally, she’d been ripped away from the love of her young life just two weeks ago. She’d lost her father at the same time.

Jill tried again as she turned back to her scowling son. “Try to understand. When I remembered everything, it was not fifteen years old for me.” She took a shaky breath as both sets of eyes watched her intently. “I lost my father, who I loved very much, Drifter. I’ve never mourned him. But you’re right, I also lost Holdin at the same time. For me, it all just happened and I was very much in love with your father. Then there was the urgency of everything. It’s overwhelming. I’m so sorry.” Jill’s shaking hands covered her face a moment. “I’m sorry I worried you. So sorry, baby.”

“Mom,” Drifter started, but Holdin interrupted him.

“Jill, relax. It’s going to be all right. This is a huge shock to all of us.” He dropped to his haunches beside them, bringing his big body to her eye level. One large hand rested on the table, the other on the back of the bench seat where both Jill and Drifter sat. “But you did the right thing coming to me, coming here. We can get through this. Now come home so we don’t have to do this in front of the whole town.” Holdin moved his hand to place on top of Jill’s, which were flat on the table.

The connection was warm and comforting. They hadn’t touched yet. Jill’s hands naturally turned over to grip his as she looked into his eyes and smiled a bit sadly.

“You’re doing it.”

“What?”

“Taking possession of me. You did it the first time I saw you.” Jill chuckled softly as she looked around her son into the eyes of a man who wasn’t quite a stranger but wasn’t her Holdin either. “I’m not eighteen anymore. It doesn’t work that way.”

Holdin’s head tilted to the side slightly, his grip tightened on her hand and his lips ticked up in a slight grin. “Yeah? Is that what I did?”

“You know it is. I was barely hired here and hadn’t even stepped out of the store’s office and you had an arm around me. Mr. Blain agreed you could show me the staff room, not take possession of me.”

“I was showing you around. As I recall, I didn’t get my arms around you for a week.” Holdin’s voice dropped as he looked into her eyes and remembered that first kiss. But she wouldn’t let him enjoy it.

“Bullshit. You might as well have hung a sign around my neck that said
Holdin
’
s girl
,” Jill accused in soft tones that sounded of youthful embarrassment and shy pride. Her smile and voice were at odds with the words.

“Hey, hey, can we not scar me for life?” Drifter interrupted, glancing between them. “I’m not old enough to hear this crap. We’ve all got whatchamacallits. So can we just figure this out right now? I mean what we’re gonna do in the next hour. Mom, you need to lie down somewhere.”