The Man From Her Past (11 page)

Van was relegated to the back wall of the director’s office, and then another back wall in Hope’s prospective classroom. Hope had been to “school” before so she approached the centers and tables like an old pro.

She even waved a yellow plastic cup crammed full of markers in his direction, like a hunter of old, brandishing her favorite trophy. He felt the teacher watching him.

Funny thing—he liked that they assumed he might be Hope’s dad. He tried to believe he only wanted to keep her from being picked on. Who wouldn’t go out of his way to protect a child from being told her father was a rapist? Time enough for her to deal with it when she was old enough to understand the labels.

“Do you want to finish the day with us, Hope?” Ms. Amy asked.

Hope started into the air on an excited jump, but Cassie caught her shoulders. “We don’t have her things yet. I’ll bring her back tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. Don’t worry, Mrs. Warne. Hope will be happy with us, and I always call right away with any problems—including a difficulty settling in. Welcome to Honesty.” She patted Hope’s head. “I’m so glad you’re joining us.”

“Cassie,” she said, not bothering to explain further. “Thanks, Ms. Amy. I’m not sure how long we’re staying, although I assume we’ll be here until the end of the school year.”

Hope kept up a prattle about crayons and the “pretty aprons” the children wore for art classes, and learning to play the violin, an extra class the little school offered.

Van kept his silence, and Cassie obviously had plenty on her mind, too. Back at the Warne house, he opened the car door for Hope. Cassie leaned in from the other side to urge her across.

“We’d better get inside and check on my father,” she said.

“Want to celebrate Hope’s new school with dinner out tonight?” Van put his all into sounding as if it didn’t matter.

When Cassie shook her head, disappointment formed a big lump in his chest.

“I have to get some things for Hope and then I need to call Washington. I’m not even sure Dad’s up to eating out yet.”

He nodded. “Some other time.”

Cassie seemed to hear his letdown. She turned Hope toward the small blue house. “Run and tell Grampa about your school. I’ll be right in.”

“Okay. See ya, Mr. Van.”

She ran, all legs and dark hair falling down her back. Van narrowed his eyes, dismayed at the softening of his heart. He was getting too attached to Cassie’s little girl.

Cassie shut the other door and came around the car. “I’m not just using you. I’m grateful for what you did today, but I have so much to do. We’re going to have to fly home and get some things so we can stay here for a few months.”

He noticed “home” was Tecumseh, not Honesty.

“No problem.” He climbed back into the driver’s seat. “I’ve been neglecting my own work. See you around, Cassie.”

He started the engine but couldn’t just leave her that way, watching him with a look he didn’t know, from the middle of the street.

He put down his window and leaned out. “Promise you’ll call if anything goes wrong—if you need help with Leo.”

She nodded, saying nothing. He forced himself to drive away, unaccustomed to sadness lingering like a nimbus around Cassie.

I
N THE GATE AREA
at Reagan National that night, Van’s cell phone vibrated on his belt. He read the number and hit the Talk button. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Cassie’s laugh sounded brittle enough to shatter. “I’ve been thinking of you all day.”

His pulse rocketed into double time. “What?”

“Not like that.” She was handy with a bludgeon. “I think you left with the wrong idea. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have dinner with you, and you know Hope thinks you and ‘Grampa’ are godlike.”

“Does she?” How did Hope’s mother feel about that?

“I guess she’s missed having men in her life.”

“I’m waiting for a flight, and I think they’re starting to board.”

“Oh. You’re leaving town?”

“Business.” He’d called a client who always appreciated a face-to-face on his Palm Springs golf course.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up.”

She sounded as if he’d slapped her, and he didn’t want that, either. “I’ll call you when I get back. Cass—call me if something comes up with Leo while I’m gone.”

“What could you do from wherever you’re going?”

“Palm Springs, and I’d come home.”

“We’re not your problem.”

“I’m getting that idea.”

“W
HY DO WE FIND
ourselves in flannel shirts, casting ten-foot fishing lines and throwing candy while Eli gets to ride with his mom in a ’67 Caddy?” The parade float, a fishing boat on a papier-mâché lake, jerked forward. Snow stung Van’s face as he tossed another handful of candy marked with Beth’s lodge’s logo into the crowd. “No one who lives here will stay at the lodge, anyway.”

“Yeah, but she figures the Christmas parade draws in people from the surrounding counties, and Eli refused to fish.” Van’s brother-in-law, Aidan, lobbed some chocolate Santas and hard sugar ribbons at the onlookers on the square. “Besides, we’re secure enough in our virility that we don’t mind small children and teenage girls laughing at us.”

“I wish I’d taken your idiot wife up on that fake beard. My face is freezing.”

Aidan had grown his own for the past week, in his home office overlooking the real lake. “Too bad clients are put off by a guy who looks like he’s been on a bender, huh? How’d the trip go?”

“Fine.” Its real purpose had failed. He still thought about Cassie every half hour or so, but at least he hadn’t called her. “We celebrated the night Hank’s portfolio rose by more than my net worth.”

“The stock market’s been kind to all of us the past few weeks.” Aidan turned and hit Van with a Santa he’d meant to throw at the kids on the street. “You went to one of Hank Bloodworth’s parties? I thought you and Cassie—”

“Cassie and I are nothing.” Van handed the Santa back. “And a man can go to a party without partaking of all the canapés.”

“Yeah? In my experience, Hank doesn’t like when you refuse one of his treats.” Aidan laughed. “You’re an iron man.”

Just not interested in anyone except Cassie. He’d been asleep for five years, and that was already too long to wait.

“Mr. Van,” a voice that owned his heart shouted. “Mr. Van?”

He saw her on Cassie’s shoulders, holding Leo’s hand, about ten feet in front of the float. He didn’t let himself look at Cassie, though he was hungry for the mere sight of her face. Instead he dug a handful of candy from the barrel and over handed it Hope’s way.

Cassie caught most of it. He cast his fishing line toward Hope, and her giggle made him feel better. Leo waved an
okay
sign, curling his index finger against his thumb.

Beth, far too interested, had to slam on the brakes when the float in front of her stopped, and Van and Aidan had to grab the front of their boat to keep from toppling into the crowd.

“Next year, we get harnesses,” Aidan said, “and we don’t set foot on this thing until my wife shows us her graduation certificate from a driving school.”

“I
THINK SOMEONE
’
S MAD
at you,” Cassie’s father said as they skated behind Hope on the ice rink after the parade. “He waved at me and Hope, and he gave her more than her fair share of treats, but he didn’t even look at you. Pointedly.”

“Hope, not backwards,” Cassie called. “Van’s not my husband anymore. He’s allowed to like you and Hope, but not me.”

“You care about him. You’re too stubborn to say so. He’s not stubborn.”

“He’s still my friend. I’d have been lost without him since I came home, but I only need friends these days.”

“These years, you mean,” her father said in a return to clarity as unwelcome as it was unexpected. “You let that criminal take your marriage away from you.”

“Dad, you and I will never discuss what happened without more anger between us than we can stand. Hope, don’t skate backwards.”

“I’m good, Mommy.”

“You need more practice.” She thought again. “But not now.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said. “I was ashamed back then and I don’t know why, but I didn’t know how to change my feelings. I didn’t want the entire town thinking of you at that bastard’s mercy.”

“I was at your mercy. I needed you to love me, anyway. I felt at fault because I forgot to shut the window.” And yet she’d forgotten to lock the door the day her father had gone wandering, and nothing bad had happened. Life could surprise a woman that way sometimes.

“You were never at fault. I treated you unforgivably, and I didn’t know how to make up for it. I couldn’t even face myself after you left.”

She looked straight at him, maybe for the first time since she’d been home. She could see her father in his eyes. “Is that why you got sick?”

“Maybe.” He skated ahead. “Hope, honey, listen to your mom. You’re going to fall on your butt.”

Hope stopped so suddenly, Cassie ran into her. They both swirled in a circle, as Cassie fought to keep them upright.

“Grampa said butt.” Hope could hardly believe it. “Mommy, Grampa said butt.”

“Grampa’s a grown man. He can choose to say words little girls shouldn’t. When you’re older, you can say ugly words, too.”

“Butt, Cass? You don’t think that’s one bad word too far?”

“You wouldn’t believe how kids her age use it. With face and head and colors and—well, it’s best if we just go with it as an avoidable word.”

“Sorry, Hope.” He parted them. “Shall we continue, ladies? Hope, I remember skating here with your grandmother and your mom.”

“What was my grandma like?”

“A queen. As beautiful and regal as a real queen. I don’t know why she ever looked at me. And then one day she married me and we had your mommy.”

“Lo-o-ove,” Hope pronounced it with three syllables. “Jeff McClaren loves me.”

Cassie nearly fell through the ice. “Who’s Jeff McClaren?”

“A little kid,” her father said, and tugged her back to give Hope more room. “Who probably won’t be planting a ladder against her window.”

His joke distracted Cassie from the pint-sized philanderer with his eye on her daughter. “You’re feeling better,” she observed.

He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave me.” His plaintive tone was unfamiliar.

“I’ll stay until I’m sure you’re okay.”

“Why don’t you want to live here? We’re family. Van is your family.”

“Van is my ex-husband.” She glanced at Hope and then said a grateful prayer of thanks that she didn’t turn around and demand to know what an ex-husband might be. “But
you
are my family, and you can count on me and Hope.”

“Until you think I’m well enough to get on by myself.”

“Not because I don’t want to live around you. I’m not sure this is a good place to raise Hope,” she said.

“Shouldn’t Van have some say?” He lowered his voice. “As much as you?”

Cassie wriggled inside, uncomfortable with the lie her father believed. She disliked lying. For one thing, the truth always showed up, no matter how you tried to discourage it. But this truth might drive her father all the way back to the depths of his illness.

“Van understands,” she said.

“No man would, and Van is a family man.”

“Mommy, my hands are cold.” Hope skated back to them in a wobbling circle.

“Let’s get some cocoa to warm them up.” She hugged her daughter close. “And you can tell me about this Jeff guy. A Casanova, you say?”

“
Casa
means home in Spanish. I’m learning in my brand-new school.” Hope giggled. “You’re funny, Mommy. Jeff isn’t a house.”

“Grampa, are you up for cocoa?”

“Mmm. I love it.”

He grabbed Hope’s hand and off they skated, together. Anyone else would think him a patriarch, showing off the third generation. But Cassie had seen the dullness come back to his eyes. Just that quickly, he was more Hope’s buddy than Cassie’s father.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
, there was another parade, this one with candles and carols.

“You don’t think Hope’s too young?” Cassie asked her father as they packed a thermos of hot chocolate in her bag.

“We’ll bring her home if she doesn’t like it,” he said. “Come on. I want to go.”

Just then the doorbell rang. Leo made for it. “Who could this be? We’re not letting anyone hold us up.”

While he answered the door, Cassie leaned into the kitchen stairwell. “Hope? Are you ready?”

“Yeah, but I wanted to wear my skirt.”

“Your legs would have frozen. Put on the clothes I gave you.”

Hope stomped down the stairs in cords and a pale green sweatshirt, her ponytail half-undone on one side and skewed to a spot just over her ear.

“Better let me fix your hair.”

“We’re gonna be late ’cause you keep fixing me.”

“We’ll catch up with everyone wherever they are when we arrive,” Van said behind them. “As long as we find parking. Everyone gets there at different times.”

Cassie turned, the ponytail band in her hands. “What are you doing here?”

Van veered toward her father, who busied himself with a tea towel. “Leo? What happened to Cassie asking me to drive you?”

“Dad?”

“I thought he’d have more room in that big car for us all. We’re wearing coats, you know.”

“Grampa, you’re in trouble again,” Hope said as he scurried up the back stairs. Hope took too much joy in her grandfather’s machinations. “But I like Mr. Van’s car. Who’s the present for, Mr. Van?”

Cassie hadn’t noticed the lumpy package. He asked her with a look if he could hand it over. She couldn’t turn down something for Hope.

“Couldn’t get Beth to wrap that for you?” she asked under her breath.

“That’s not nice,” he said.

“Sorry.” She swept a hand toward Hope. “Be my guest.”

“It’s for me? Oh, boy. Up, Mommy.”

Cassie hoisted her onto a stool by the island. “You’re getting bigger, my girl.”

“I can’t get smaller.” She folded her hands in her lap, all demure as Van handed her his gift.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you again before Christmas.”

She opened the package with uncharacteristic deliberation, plucking the bow off first and then gently peeling the tape back from the paper. But when she unfolded the paper, a white, fluffy stuffed cat tumbled to the floor, followed by a massive box of crayons and a beautiful journal bound in pink leather, printed with white kittens jumping for a ball of yarn.

“Mr. Van.” She slid down and scooped up the cat and hugged it so tight her mouth stretched with the effort.

“Hey,” he said, his voice thick, “don’t I get one of those?”

Tears started in Cassie’s eyes even before she saw them welling in Van’s. He lifted her girl high and the two of them hugged as if they’d been best friends from the day of her birth.

If only.

The words whispered in Cassie’s head, a temptation and an accusation all at once.

She couldn’t have stayed. Van hadn’t wanted her. The attack had made her stop trusting marriage. She’d known she was carrying a child who’d need unconditional love.

But that part seemed to be coming ridiculously easy to Van.

“Look, Mommy.”

Van set Hope down and she brought her haul to Cassie, who knelt beside her. “Wow.” She flipped through the journal. “It’s perfect for writing your alphabet and for drawing.”

“Just like a big girl’s.”

Cassie couldn’t help smiling over Hope’s head at Van, whose jaw seemed locked tight. He managed a grin, but then went to the window beside the door.

“Mommy, can I take Kitty caroling with us?”

“Sure. Will you run up and get Grampa? You can show him Kitty.”

Hope bolted up the stairs, her kitty’s tail flapping beneath her elbow.

With his eyes on Hope’s ascending back, Van moved in front of Cassie. “I really didn’t know your father was matchmaking,” he said.

“I’m not complaining.” For the first time in five years, she put her hand on his. “I sent her after him because I wanted to thank you for thinking of my daughter. She’s not used to a lot of gifts. Our money’s stretched, and sometimes I can’t give her things like that beautiful kitty. It’s so soft I know it was expensive.”

His smile seemed to grow from inside him. Again, he looked away. “Thanks, Cass. That was the nicest thing you could have said.”

“But you should be careful about my dad. He thinks you’re Hope’s father, and he might say so in front of people. He thinks I’m doing you wrong—not giving you enough say in my decisions about her.”

He brushed his hand against her sleeve. “I may have made more trouble for you with my quick-thinking but not very well thought out solution.”

“I’m thinking of the trouble for you.”

“I don’t care what anyone says.” He leveled his gaze on her. “I never did.”

“Cool cat, Van,” Cassie’s father said as he negotiated the stairs, hand in hand with Hope. “You’re going with us to sing carols?”

“Dad, you know Van already gave you away.” She laughed at Van’s tensed stance. “Accidentally.”

“He used to be faster on his feet.” At the bottom of the stairs, he tried to lift Hope, but Cassie stopped him.

“You need to get a little stronger, and she likes to walk with you.”

“You hold my hand so I won’t get lost,” Hope said, but she glanced at Cassie as if to say she’d be the one keeping an eye out.

Cassie watched them head for the door, bemused. What a family. All looking out for each other, all sure they knew what was best.

“They’ll leave without us, Cass.” Van hurried her. “I wouldn’t put it past Hope to jump behind the wheel.”

“Me, neither, with Dad instigating.”

V
AN SEARCHED
for a quiet moment to caution Leo about trying to set him up with Cassie. She was reluctant enough without her father’s overly wholehearted approval.

All night, through countless days of Christmas and about a thousand first Noels, Leo hovered just out of Van’s reach, hand in hand with Hope. And always, when Van least expected it, Cassie drifted back to him.

As they sang, she leaned against his arm or smiled into his eyes the way she used to, as if they had a secret that excluded the rest of the world.

Surprise became a slow ache. He knew this woman who still felt like his wife too well. Five years ago this would have been a night for locking the doors and turning off the phone.

They’d have climbed the stairs to their room, still half-furnished because they were waiting to move into their real house, and he traveled so much and she worked just as hard. They’d have switched off the lights and opened the drapes, and the sun would have set on their lovemaking. The moon would have risen on their bodies, twining with devotion only to each other.