Mother's Promise (37 page)

“No worries. Got the haircut, updated the wardrobe….” He pointed to the freshly pressed cotton shirt he was wearing. “I'd say I'm on a roll.”

“Job? Career? Future?”

“Got a job at the packinghouse that gives me enough to live on while I do what I really love—play guitar and write my songs. And as for the future? Who knows? The one thing I know for sure is that anybody thinking she has the least bit of control is fooling herself.”

His dark eyes met hers and held them.

“You don't want a family?” she challenged.

“I do indeed but first I have to find me a wife.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “You've got everything mapped out, don't you?”

“That would be the way you operate. You like to have a step-by-step plan, and that's probably a good thing in business, but in life … in love? Not so much.”

“For a man who—”

“You're tired, Darcy. Tired of the fight. That's something I know about. When I got back from my first tour of duty it seemed like everything had changed. I wasn't the same person. I'd seen too much of the way things really were over there. I came back and went to work for Malcolm, but more than a couple of months before, I had signed on for another tour.”

“And the second time you came back?” Darcy was fascinated in spite of her determination not to be.

“I didn't. I took some time off and hung out in Europe, then signed up for number three.”

The expression that crossed his face in that moment was so filled with pain and sadness that Darcy found she could not look away. Instead she reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “It must have been …” Her words trailed off.

“Nothing had changed,” he said, as his dark eyes clouded over with memories. “Nothing. In all that time. I had joined up after 9/11 because I thought I could make a difference. But it was the wrong fight, Darcy, for all the wrong reasons, and in that situation all you can do is tread water until you can pull yourself out.”

“So you came home and surrendered?”

His smile was one of pity. “You might think that. I prefer to think of these last years as a kind of strategic retreat, a time to regroup. As the Paul Simon song goes, ‘Make a new plan, Stan.' ”

“And that plan is …?”

He glanced around the café. “I'm thinking of buying this place.”

She couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing. “With what?” An image of the loose change accumulating in his guitar case at the farmers' market flashed through her mind.

He grinned. “I'm a Shepherd, remember? There's this little trust fund my dad left me. Wanna come be the chef when I get this place up and running?”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Think about it.” He got up then and laid some bills on the table to cover the cost of her coffee.

“You don't have to—”

“Ah Darcy, let a guy do the right thing, okay?” He cupped her cheek gently, waved to Millie, and sauntered out.

Darcy watched out the window, and as he passed by, he grinned and blew her a kiss. She put a hand to her cheek and realized she was blushing.

Chapter 22

J
ustin had begun to dread school. He'd made a huge mistake taking up with Derek and his group. Now that Derek had turned on him, he had no friends and whenever he approached Derek and the others they would turn around and walk away. He'd begun to live for Fridays when he knew he would have at least the weekend to stop trying to figure out what Derek planned to do with Sally's baseball glove.

He never should have taken it. If his mom knew—if she ever found out … Every night he prayed hard for a miracle, for some way that he could get the glove and return it to Sally's room before she got home from the hospital. He'd seen it hanging in Derek's locker where Derek had put it when Justin delivered it to him. If he could just get it back.

Oh, how he wished his mom had never taken this job, had never decided to move onto the Shepherds' property, had never left their little community in Ohio. No, that part wasn't true. He didn't miss Ohio all that much, especially living with his uncle. The truth was that there was lots about Florida that he liked—the weather and the beach and the fishing with John and Zeke. The weekends were great when he and his mom spent their time in Pinecraft shopping and visiting and going to church. A couple of times they'd attended programs at the bigger church on the edge of Pinecraft, and he'd even met some kids his age there—Mennonite kids like him. Being in Pinecraft was like being in a whole other world. He wished they could live there all the time.

Whatever came of this business with Derek and the baseball glove, it was up to him to fix it. He decided to talk to Derek and try to convince him once again that Sally had had nothing to do with Mortimer catching them cheating. What he knew for sure was that the conversation needed to take place when Max and Connor weren't around. With Derek it was all about looking good in front of the others.

So when Justin's mom got a call from the hospital right after breakfast that Saturday, Justin saw his chance. He assured her that he would take care of his chores, and then he asked her permission to take his bike and ride over to the park. What he left out was that Derek's house was on the way to the park.

As soon as his mom had boarded the bus, Justin mounted his bike and took off. He would have plenty of time to handle his chores later, but right now the important thing was to catch Derek at home.

He'd never actually been to Derek's house, just ridden by the long driveway guarded by an impressive pair of black metal gates that opened only when Derek—or his parents—entered some secret code. It occurred to him now that his first problem was going to be getting past those gates. He decided the best thing to do would be to wait across the street and hope that Derek would come out.

He leaned his bike on a patch of grass and then sat down on the curb to wait. No more than five minutes later the gates slowly swung open. A minute later a car came toward him, a woman driving. She saw him waiting there and frowned. “Are you lost?” she asked, her voice high and tight when she rolled the window down.

“No ma'am. I'm a friend of Derek's. Is he home?”

She glanced at the rearview mirror and then back at Justin. “Do we know you?”

“Well, no—I mean you never met me exactly. I'm Justin Kaufmann. My mom and I live …”

Her smile was one of pure relief. “Oh, you're the boy who has helped Derek with his math assignments.”

“Yes ma'am.” Justin was confused. His mom didn't know what had happened? He knew that Mr. Mortimer had met with Derek. Surely he'd also asked to see his parents like he had asked to see Justin's mom.

“Go on through,” she said with a wave toward the gates. “Derek is having his breakfast on the terrace. Tell our cook that I said to prepare anything you want—pancakes, eggs—she makes wonderful waffles.” She glanced both ways and then turned onto the street. The car window glided silently closed, and Derek's mom waved as she drove away. Justin mounted his bike and got through the gates as they started to swing shut.

It was pretty clear that Justin was the last person Derek expected to see that morning.

“How did you get in here?” he snarled.

“Your mom …”

Derek rolled his eyes and attacked the stack of pancakes in front of him. “So what do you want?”

Suddenly Justin had no words. He should have thought this through more thoroughly, practiced what he would say, how he would make his case. “It's about Sally Shepherd,” he blurted.

A slow smile spread across Derek's face as he leaned back and fixed his gaze on Justin. “What about her?” He pinned Justin with a glare. “Is she home? Why didn't you tell me she was coming home today?”

“She was supposed to come home a few days ago, but now she's in the hospital where my mom works. Something about her blood counts not being right.” He was hoping that Derek might feel some tiny bit of sympathy “She's coming home for Thanksgiving if everything goes okay and I was thinking maybe …”

“You were thinking about letting her off the hook for what she did to us?”

“No. Yes. I mean …”

“Spit it out, Kaufmann. I haven't got all day.”

“I want you to give me back the glove.”

Derek made a show of looking around as if searching for something. “Gee, now let me think. Her glove?”

“It's in your locker. I want you to give it back to me Monday so I can return it.”

“And I would do this because?”

“It's me you should be blaming for getting in trouble with Mortimer. Sally had nothing to do with it.”

“Right.” Derek stood up and moved around the glass-topped table to tower over Justin. “Let's get something straight here, freak. What I do or don't do to Sally Shepherd or her precious glove is no longer any of your business. You need to think about what I'm going to do to you.”

He walked past Justin, picked up Justin's bike, and casually tossed it into the deep end of the swimming pool that took up most of the backyard. Then he turned and walked into the house without another word.

Now that Rachel had entertained the first hint of a romantic thought about Ben Booker, she could not seem to get the man out of her mind. Of course, the more time that passed without James the more the idea that someday she might love again lingered there. In addition to Hester pointing out the eligible men Rachel's age living in Pinecraft, John had teased her about one older man in their congregation who seemed to have his eye on her.

But how shocked would her friends be to discover that the man she felt drawn to was Ben Booker?

It was impossible of course, and the sheer impossibility of the match made it all the more difficult to turn her thoughts elsewhere. He was not of her faith. He was not of
any
faith, really, although she had been touched to hear him admit that he did pray.

She had seen him with his patients and their parents. She could never forget the hours he'd spent checking up on the boy whose arm had been nearly severed by the shark, sitting with him in the days following the surgery and stopping by to encourage the teen as he struggled through weeks of rehabilitation. And that was only one example of his devotion to his work. Surely, in spite of the fact that he did not seem to be a churchgoing man, he was ministering to their emotional and spiritual needs as much as she or anyone else was.

But daydreaming about a future with Ben Booker was pure folly. Even taking the issue of religion out of the discussion altogether, a man of the world like that in love with a plain woman like her? It was—as she'd once heard Sally say—beyond ridiculous.

Determined to put aside any fantasy of what it might be like to love Ben, Rachel turned her attention to other matters. She spent hours working to finish the course work for her state certification. She identified and then tried to avoid those places at the hospital where she was most likely to see Ben. She timed her visits to Sally and her parents when she knew he was otherwise occupied. Twice when she saw his car parked in his sister's driveway, she had suggested to Justin that they take a bike ride down to Pinecraft for ice cream and see if any new rental listings had been posted on the bulletin board outside the post office.