Reason To Believe (4 page)

"All I know is when she got caught." As if to forestall another loss of control, she folded her hands tightly in her lap before she leaned closer. "I couldn't believe it. I try not to spoil her with a lot of stuff, but anything she needs or really wants..." Clara bit her lower lip, checking the flow of assertions that were not news to him. She looked him in the eye. "She took an umbrella. Can you imagine?"

"Christ." He shook his head. Under different circumstances, he would have been tempted to laugh. Annie? An
umbrella!

"Oh, Ben, we have to find her. I should have called you long before this, because we needed to talk, you know, all three of us, but I couldn't..." She didn't seem to realize she'd clamped her hand around his wrist. "We have to decide."

His throat went dry. He glanced away, studied the clock on the mantel and registered, not the hour, but the minutes, as though he were anticipating his execution. Five more, and it would be straight up. He nodded once, although he wasn't sure what he was agreeing to.

"It's cold out there, isn't it?"

Her question was almost as surprising as the fragile, teetering-near-the-edge tone of her voice. He nodded again, heavily. His neck felt stiff. "Gettin' that way."

"She's not wearing a very warm... She was just wearing a thin little..." She closed her eyes, lips atremble, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

He moved instinctively, planting one knee on the floor next to her feet as he reached for her. He could feel every muscle in her body coil up in her defense, but he was prepared to ignore any rejection. He needed to hold her now, and she needed to be held. She looked at him, tears rolling, and he could feel her resistance softening, melting like candle wax as he pulled her against his chest, absorbing her tremors into his own body. Her tears dampened the side of his neck. Her quick, ragged breaths warmed his chin.

Too soon she came to her senses and drew away. "I don't want to call the police. They'll think she's..."

"They'll think she's what?" He felt a little awkward reversing the motion of his rescue attempt as he backed into his chair.

"A troublemaker or something. But she's not. She's not." She hammered his folded jacket with her fists. "I hate it when they assume..."

He knew what they assumed, but unlike Clara, he knew from his own experience. He knew what biases his features triggered, what the color of his skin meant to the bankers, the sales clerks, and the cops who'd been brought up on Hollywood illusions. He had the classic Indian face, and he'd passed it on, with a few feminine refinements and a lighter complexion, to his daughter.

"Sometimes I just want to punch somebody," Clara said.

He smiled indulgently. "Who?"

"Anybody.
Except Anna. I wouldn't..."

"I know you wouldn't."

He nodded. She nodded.

For a long, gentle moment they looked into each other's eyes, acknowledging that they had that much faith in each other. Where Annie was concerned, neither wanted the pain they caused each other to spill over. But it did. They both knew it did.

She glanced away first. "I'm sorry I slapped you. I don't know why I..." Yes, she did, and so did he. But she turned to him again, her apologetic eyes glistening like sweet, warm maple syrup. "It's not like me. I don't do that sort of thing."

Granted. He smiled, giving her credit for holding off this long. "Bet it felt good, though."

"No, it didn't." Convincing herself required something physical, a firm shake of her own head. "It really didn't feel good."

"Then how did it feel?"

"It didn't feel like anything."

He knew better.

"It didn't feel like me, and it was stupid," she insisted. "A stupid waste of time and energy. We have to find Anna, and then we have to sit down and have a quiet, sensible talk about—"

He interrupted her with a crossing-guard gesture as he cocked an ear toward the back door. "There's somebody outside."

Clara closed her eyes and blew a deep sigh. "Thank God."

Pancho scrambled across the kitchen floor, barking his head off. Ben followed as far as the hallway, avoiding light switches, listening in the dark. "Two somebodies," he reported quietly.

Pancho made a growling beeline down the hall, tracking the movement outside.

Wide-eyed, Clara sprang to her feet. "Her bedroom window."

"I'll go around," he proposed, heading for the front door. She handed him his jacket on his way by. "You go back there to her room, but don't turn any lights on."

He felt a little like a thief in the night, even though he was sneaking around his own bushes. When he rounded the corner to his own backyard he spotted two shadowy figures. He couldn't tell much about the one on the bottom, but he recognized the one who was getting the boost up to the bedroom window. The braided ponytail, the impossibly long hands, and the smaller version of his hawk's-beak nose belonged to his daughter.

The tipsy giggle did not.

He squared his shoulders, stepped out of the shadows, and took a Matt Dillon stance. "What's goin' on here?"

"It's my dad!"

"Shit." The booster took two stumbling steps back, nearly dropping his burden on the ground. "I mean—"

"If you guys are playin' camel, you need a pool," Ben said, wishing for the days when he would simply be blowing the whistle on an innocent game.

"We're not playing camel. We're playing spyyyy," Annie intoned drunkenly. "Spy and see if Mom's back is turned."

Ben shut his eyes briefly, steadying himself. "But since Dad's back isn't turned, you might as well get down, Annie."

The boy took pains to extricate himself without letting her fall. He left her hanging on to the window ledge, turned, and faced the paternal music. "I was just tryin' to help her out, Mr. Pipestone."

"Who are you?"

"This is Larry Prit—" reaching for the boy's shoulder, Anna leaned away from the house like a windblown willow "—chhhert. I was gonna give him an Indian name. Larry Pret-ty Churt. Chit. Shit. Priddy Shit." She gave in to the giggles as Ben edged closer. "Larry Pretty

Shirt," she corrected, enunciating with exaggerated care. "Whuduhya think?"

"It's Pritchert," the boy said tightly.

The pungent smell of beer hit Ben in the face like a sack of cement. The crisp night air suddenly felt surrealistically thick and heavy. "Are you driving, Pritchert?"

"I just gave her a ride. That's all."

"I'm asking, should you be driving," Ben explained, summoning patience in the face of a strong urge to wring the boy's scrawny neck. "Are you okay?"

"I didn't have nuthin' to do with this," the boy said, backing away. "She's a friend of a friend, and I'm just tryin' to help her out."

"Yeah, Dad, he's jus' a fren, jus' sorta helpin' me out. So what's yer excuse for buttin' in, Dad? Jus' passin' through?"

"I got a distress call from your mom." He spared the retreating boy a quick wave. "Thanks, Pritchert. Take it easy, now."

"Yeah."

Larry Pritchert backpedaled a few steps, then turned and ran, disappearing around the corner of the house.

Anna grabbed her father's arm, dragging his attention back to her sad state of affairs. "What's she so 'stressed about? I wuz out wi' sum frens. Don'cha want me to have any frens?"

"There's friends, and then there's drinkin' buddies," he said, reaching out to steady her. "Which kind was that guy?"

"He's nuthin'. Jus' a way to get places." The statement, Ben realized, echoed her mother's cavalier attitude toward cars. Nothing important. Just a way to get around.

Anna giggled. "Ol' Larry Pretty Shit," she repeated, enjoying the fruits of her liquored-up wit. She started slipping toward the ground.

Ben caught her by the shoulders and hauled her up on tiptoe. But her legs had gone rubbery. She giggled and went limp again. "Cut it out, now, Annie, we're goin' in the house."

"Can't say Pretty Shit in th' house, ya know.
She'll
have a damn piss fit over it."

His little girl slumped against his side. Tucked under his arm, she dragged the toes of her tennis shoes in the grass, the way she had years ago when she didn't want to quit playing and go inside for supper, a bath, homework, or any number of other fun-killing demands parents were wont to make. Silently Ben cursed Iktome for punishing him with the vilest trick imaginable. Of all the lessons his child might have learned from him...

"Is she mad?"

"You had her worried."

Anna tipped her chin to look up at him, and her head fell back like a hinged lid. "How 'bout you? Were you worried?"

"Yeah."
Worried
would do for starters.

"Never thought you'd see th' day," Anna mocked with a child's knack for hitting the nail on the parental head. "Course, I've seen you a whole lot worse off."

Drunk as she was, her aim was true. But he'd never felt any worse than he did right now, supporting his thirteen-year-old daughter while she tried to find her balance on flat, solid ground. God, how he wished he could do it for her.

"So how do you like it so far?"

"Got your attention, din' I? Jus' like you use ta get ours whenever you..." She pressed her face into the open front of his jacket.

He paused, knowing how rocky the motion made her feel at this point. He brushed his palm over her forehead, as though he thought his baby might have something easily treatable, like a fever.

She groaned. "I don' guess I feel so good, though. I think I'm gonna—"

She jerked away from him and vomited behind a rosebush.

He was glad he was there to keep her from falling in it face-first, even though the stench was an unwelcome reminder of a past that still nipped too closely at his heels.

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she muttered as he wiped her chin with a wool glove from his pocket.

"Me, too." He lifted her into his arms. Still his baby, he thought. Still his long, lanky little bit of a thing who needed her daddy to pick her up and put her to bed tonight.

"I promise I..." Her head lolled against his shoulder. "I won't do it anymore. Don't tell Mom."

"Don't have to." He glanced up at Clara, who was standing on the doorstep holding the door open for them. "She knows."

"She always knows... everything."

Not quite, he thought. Clara worried, but she also hoped for the best. And she was trusting. At least, she had been, once upon a time.

"We're going to put you to bed," he told his little girl, laying his chin against her forehead as he stepped past his wife. They exchanged a look, sharing the bittersweet heartache. "Me and Mom, the way we used to. We're going to tuck you in."

"You're going to stay?" Anna's arms tightened around his neck, her innocent hopes tormenting his ear.

"I'll come back tomorrow."

"No, don't go." She wedged her head beneath his chin, pressing hard against his Adam's apple. He could hear the dog panting at his heels as he made his way down the hall, sidestepping to keep her shoes from touching Clara's wallpaper. "Daddy, I wanna go on that ride. Want you to take me."

"What ride?"

"The one Grandpa's going on. Wanna see my Lala."

"Tomorrow," he promised as he bent to lay her on her bed. He held off until Clara had pulled the covers back, then settled her down in the nest of ruffled pillows.

"No, you stay home, Daddy." Suddenly almost lucid and nearly desperate, Anna gripped his jacket sleeves. "Sleep here tonight. Stay... stay home with us, Daddy."

"I'll make up the spare bedroom."

He stared, his disbelief fairly bulging out his eye sockets. He hadn't spent the night under the same roof with her in almost two years. He wasn't sure he ought to now, especially with the offer couched in such a duty-ridden tone.

"I can come back tomorrow."

"It's too far to drive."

"I've been drivin' it, haven't I?" Something about the way she'd dismissed his offer sounded like one of her indirect reprimands, the kind that set his teeth on edge. "Maybe not often enough, but I always try to get up here whenever—"

"I think you ought to be here when she wakes up. I've dealt with you in that morning-after state often enough.
You
can deal with
her."

He scowled. "Fine."

"Fine." She smiled, tentatively satisfied. "Are you hungry?"

He shook his head, wondering how a referee might have scored that round. She'd gotten her digs in, but he'd gained more than a foot in the door, plus a free bed for the night. He didn't feel like making that hundred-mile drive.

"My stomach's not too steady," he explained. "She threw up all over the side of the house."

Despite the strain at the core of his remark, Clara expected, almost hoped for, a little Indian humor at this point, some ironic comment about him being sober and still feeling sick. Then she'd get after him for making light of a serious situation, and he'd tell her the problem was only temporary. Part of her would believe him, and the other part would be consigned to ready-reserve status, in case she needed to worry some more.