That Runaway Summer (17 page)

He sat up in bed. His head felt fuzzy, his eyes gritty, his mouth dry. He braced himself for the sharp disappointment that had ravaged him last night. The edges had dulled, leaving him with something resembling a hangover.

He got out of bed, then methodically went about his morning routine. Once he was in the kitchen, he switched on the overhead light, took some orange juice from the refrigerator and slugged straight from the carton.

The click of canine toenails against the hardwood floor preceded Starsky’s entrance. The dog trudged sleepily to Dan’s side, then rubbed the side of his head against Dan’s leg.

“You can tell I’m hurting, huh?” Dan reached down and scratched the dog behind his ear. “The thing is, I don’t know what went wrong.”

Hutch barked from the living room, then rushed into the kitchen, his tail wagging enthusiastically. The second dog dashed to the hook by the rear door where Dan kept the leashes, then ran back to Dan.

“A walk? Why not?” Dan had awakened early enough that he had time to kill before work, and the fresh air might clear his head even if it wouldn’t heal his heart.

The morning haze hadn’t yet worn off, causing the sky to appear indistinct. He held both leashes in one hand, letting the dogs set the pace while his mind drifted. The sun was a pale yellow blur rising above the horizon, the way it might look if viewed through a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription.

Dan’s perspective on the breakup with Jill had been similarly hazy the night before. One minute everything had seemed fine. The next she’d gone out of her way to tell him in no uncertain terms it was over.

But why?

He’d viewed the situation emotionally the night before. Now he tried to consider it dispassionately.

It still didn’t make sense.

He’d been caught unaware by Maggie, too. Yet in retrospect, Maggie had distanced herself from him with small steps. By the time she left, they hadn’t had a meaningful conversation in ages. It had been more than a month since they’d had sex.

Dan and Jill had had sex—no, made love—three days ago. He’d had every expectation they would make love again last night. Jill hadn’t grown cold until he mentioned that her brother thought their father was alive.

No, that wasn’t quite accurate. She’d started acting differently when Mrs. Feldman told her about the phone call.

Those two things must be related. But how? In retrospect he should have come out and asked Jill point-blank if her father were alive. He’d intended to, but then she’d said they were through and he’d gotten sidetracked. Had she distracted him on purpose?

Starsky barked and put on a burst of speed, running to the end of the retractable leash and pulling. Hutch followed enthusiastically so that Dan had to keep a firm hold on both leashes.

While thinking about Jill, Dan had walked in the direction of Mrs. Feldman’s house. There was little activity on the hilly block, with the cars that had been parked overnight on the street still in the same spots and the town just waking up.

He spotted a dark-haired woman up ahead, carrying something to her car. Jill. He let the dogs lead him closer, and it became clear she was toting duffel bags to a car that was already filled to overflowing. Bedding, a small television, Chris’s video game system and the giant teddy bear he’d won in Hershey already occupied the backseat.

Jill was leaving town. Not at some distant point in the future. Now.

She stood stock-still as Starsky and Hutch pranced around her, her eyes locked with his, her ready smile absent. She wore traveling clothes: worn, comfortable jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt he’d seen in one of the local gift-shop windows. The saying on it read “I heart Indigo Springs.”

“Starsky! Hutch! Sit!” His unyielding tone was one he seldom used with the dogs. They calmed down immediately.

Jill broke eye contact and proceeded to the car, setting down the bags on the road and opening the trunk. It, too, was nearly packed.

“What’s going on, Jill?” Dan asked.

She put the bags into the trunk, then closed it. She seemed to be avoiding looking at him. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” he said. “I knew you were thinking about leaving town, but you didn’t say anything about leaving today.”

“Goodbyes are hard.” She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I wanted to avoid them.”

None of this added up. She was part of the community, with good friends, a landlady who loved her and two jobs. Just this past weekend, she’d rejoiced that her brother was finally making friends his own age and had told the Pocono Challenge organizers she’d lead a bike ride if they chose Indigo Springs as a finalist.

“Does this have something to do with the guy who called the bar? Are you in some kind of trouble?” He posed the questions he should have asked the night before.

She finally looked at him. He thought he read despair on her face. A muscle twitched in her jaw. She opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “I need to get Chris.”

She pivoted and walked away from him, getting halfway up the sidewalk before the front door of the house opened. Mrs. Feldman emerged wearing a housecoat and slippers. Her entire face seemed to sag.

“Dan.” She perked up a little when she spotted him. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been trying to get Jill to change her mind about leaving for the past hour. Have you had any luck?”

Jill didn’t give him a chance to respond. “I’m not going to change my mind, Felicia. I need to leave as soon as I get Chris.”

“I came outside to tell you about Chris.” Mrs. Feldman shuffled forward, stopping at the top of the porch. Hanging flower pots flanked her. “He just took off out the back door. He said something about saying goodbye to those goats.”

Jill’s shoulders visibly slumped. “I should have expected that.”

“He’s upset. He says he doesn’t want to leave.” Mrs. Feldman took a shuddering breath. “I don’t want you to leave either.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Jill did nothing to console her landlady, cementing Dan’s impression that something was seriously off. “I’ll pick him up and leave from Dan’s house, then.”

“Oh, please don’t do that!” Mrs. Feldman cried. She clutched at the porch railing, as though for support. “Chris left so suddenly I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. Please bring him back here before you go.”

“I don’t think—” Jill began.

Mrs. Feldman sniffled, and Jill didn’t finish her sentence. Jill nodded. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.” Mrs. Feldman wiped under her eyes with the pads of her fingers, then nodded toward the house. Her voice wavered, as though she was struggling not to cry. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

The landlady disappeared inside the house with Jill watching. Jill’s shoulders seemed to shake before she squared them, turned back around and headed for the sidewalk that ran adjacent to the street. Dan was quicker than she was, stepping in front of her and blocking her path.

“Get out of my way, Dan.” She didn’t raise her head, but there was a definite quiver in her voice. He tipped up her chin. Moisture swam in her eyes.

“Not until you tell me what’s really going on,” he said.

She hadn’t anticipated Felicia tearfully claiming her life wouldn’t be the same without them, Chris stealing away to be with the pygmy goats or Dan showing up.

Most of all, she hadn’t counted on this being the moment she realized she loved him.

The feeling had been coming on gradually since that barbecue with the Pollocks. It had crystallized over time as she’d watched his dealings with Chris and gotten to know him as a man of substance.

Yet she’d refused to put a name on her emotions. Admitting to herself that she loved Dan would have meant telling him the truth. For how could she love a man if she couldn’t trust him with her deepest secrets?

“Tell me what’s going on, Jill,” he repeated, his fingers still touching her chin. There were smudges under his eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Because of her, no doubt.

Thoughts swirled inside her head like leaves in the wind.

No matter how much she ached to explain her predicament, that would take time and she had a terrible sense her time was running out. The moment when she should have confided in Dan was already past.

“It’s too late,” she whispered.

He flinched as though she’d struck him. He dropped his hand from her cheek, his eyes grew hooded and he stepped back from her.

Blood roared in her ears, nearly obliterating the sounds of his dogs panting and an approaching car. She should say she was sorry, except she wouldn’t be able to explain what she was apologizing for.

A car door opened and shut. Someone had parked along the curb and was walking toward them. She looked past Dan and gasped.

It was her father.

He looked older than when she’d last seen him, his hair considerably grayer, his posture not quite as erect. Unfamiliar lines bracketed his mouth and eyes.

“I found you, Jill.” Her father had never been a volatile man, but anger vibrated from him. His voice shook. “It’s over.”

She’d had nightmares about this scenario. In those dark dreams she was always alone, a solitary woman determined to keep fighting for her brother. Now Dan positioned himself between Jill and her father, looming over the older man by a good five or six inches.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned in a low, ominous voice.

Despair reached inside Jill and burrowed. Not only had she failed Chris, she was about to introduce Dan, a man who was ready to leap to her defense, to the father she’d claimed was dead.

“It’s all right, Dan.” She laid a hand on his arm and felt the tension in his coiled muscles. “This is Mark Jacobi. My father.”

“Your father.” He repeated the words without surprise, yet his head shook back and forth. Once again she couldn’t look him in the eye, afraid of what she’d see.

“Who are you?” her father asked him.

Dan moved his arm, and she was forced to drop her hand. “Dan Maguire. I’m a…friend of your daughter’s.”

Her father’s gaze flickered to the packed car. “A friend, huh? If you were a true friend, you wouldn’t help her. You would have told her to give me back my son.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dan said flatly.

“Jill took Chris without my permission.” Her father stood just off the sidewalk, in the dewy grass. He didn’t seem to notice his shoes were getting damp. “That was more than a year ago.”

Jill dared not try to gauge Dan’s reaction. She needed to keep her wits about her in case an opportunity presented itself to give her father the slip. “How did you find me?”

“Ralph Tomlin said his daughter ran into you. My P.I. made some calls and came up with this address last night. This morning I chartered a plane. I couldn’t risk that you’d run again.” Her father relayed the facts with what sounded like barely controlled fury, but Jill wasn’t fooled. Stark pain shadowed his eyes.

“I never meant to hurt you, Daddy.” Jill felt as though a vice was gripping her heart. “But I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t leave Chris in the same house as Arianne.”

“Chris lied about that!” her father cried. “Arianne never did anything to him.”

“How would you know?” Jill retorted. “You have such a blind spot about her, you can’t see anything clearly.”

“Would someone tell me what’s going on?” Dan still stood between them, closer to Jill than her father, his expression unreadable.

She tried to explain, but her father interrupted every time she said something negative about Arianne. Clearly his feelings about his third wife hadn’t changed. Finally she gave up, unsure if she’d been able to convey to Dan the gravity of the situation.

“You can see that the story’s preposterous.” Her father took a step toward Felicia’s house. “Where’s my son? Is he in there?”

“No,” Jill said while she desperately tried to figure out how to keep her father and brother apart. If the two of them crossed paths, she’d be unable to prevent her father from taking Chris back to Atlanta.

“Don’t lie to me,” her father warned. “I know Chris is living with you.”

“I’m not lying,” Jill said. “He’s not inside the house. He’s somewhere safe.”

“I haven’t called the cops because you’re my daughter. But believe me, this time I will.” He abruptly turned to Dan. “Do you want to see her go to jail?”

“Don’t threaten her,” Dan said in a low growl.

“Then
you
tell me where my son is,” her father demanded.

Jill intercepted Dan’s gaze, silently pleading with him to remain quiet. She thought of her ex-boyfriend Ray Williams, insisting he had an obligation to tell her father Jill’s plans. She waited for Dan’s response.

“Your son’s somewhere safe.” Dan repeated the same words she’d used. “If you want him back, you’ll have to give your daughter some assurances.”

It had been so long since Jill had had someone in her corner fighting for her that she almost wept with relief.

“What!” her father exclaimed. “That’s not the way it works. I have the law on my side.”

“Then let’s sit down and talk. Your daughter wouldn’t have done this without good reason. You owe it to your son to hear her out.” Dan had no reason to believe in Jill, yet spoke with conviction.

“Why should I?” her father retorted. “Look, Social Services already investigated. They found nothing.”

“They must have been wrong,” Dan stated forcefully. “You could at least listen to Jill’s reasons.”

“I already know her reasons.”

“Not until you let her talk without interrupting her, you don’t,” Dan said sternly, and she fell a little deeper in love with him. “Listen first, then tell your side of the story.”

Her father said nothing for several long minutes, a muscle working in his jaw. “Okay,” he finally said.

The pressure on Jill’s chest lessened. There were no guarantees talking would work, but at least it was a start. She tried to catch Dan’s eyes, to convey how extremely grateful she was, but he wouldn’t look at her.

The vice on her heart tightened again.