The Man From Her Past (5 page)

Aidan had moved the offices of Nikolas Enterprises to a small cabin down the hill from Beth’s fishing lodge, and they’d married just after the New Year. Now, deep in the next winter, Van was less than pleased to find himself driving down Beth’s gravel lane to beg for advice from his baby sister. He’d always been the one who took care of her.

He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He knocked again. Then he flipped his phone open and called her cell.

“Hey, Van. What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“Watching Eli’s hockey practice. Where are you?”

“At your place. When are you coming home?”

“Do you need me? I’ll come now.” She paused a moment. “No, wait. If Aidan and Eli are around, we won’t get a minute to ourselves. I’ll send them home after practice and you can meet me for coffee at the ice rink.”

“I’ll drive you home afterward.”

“Otherwise, I’d have to walk,” she pointed out. “See you at the rink.”

“Okay.” He was pathetically grateful. He’d never admitted how he still felt about Cassie, but Beth had always known. Far from empathizing, she’d suggested he get on with life instead of burying himself in the past.

Unfortunately, he’d never realized how smart his sister was.

A few minutes later, he parked in front of the ice rink. Across the glowing white surface, he watched Aidan and Beth and Eli saying goodbye beside the family SUV.

Aidan pulled her close. She patted Eli’s arm. He twisted away, and then Aidan, laughing, slid his hand across her belly.

Van observed, poleaxed. Eli made a gag-himself gesture and jumped into the SUV’s front seat. Beth and Aidan hugged each other a last time.

Van felt an outsider looking in on a real family. Lifting his face to the star-pinned sky, he searched for solace in the cold December night, in the smoke from every chimney along the town square, in the familiar evergreen scent of his life in the Virginia forest.

He could have taken his business anywhere. He could have made a life apart from the memories that had frozen him in time.

He walked around the fence that separated the ice from the playground. Beth met him near the concession stand.

She hugged him. “I’m starving. I think I’ll have a hot dog with my cocoa.”

“You don’t want to skate?”

Her eyes lit up, but then she twisted her mouth and grazed her stomach with her hand, betraying herself.

“You’re pregnant, Beth?”

Her eyebrows went up. “What are you, psychic?”

“Nosy. I saw you from over there.” He pointed to his car.

She grinned, her pride touching. “Don’t say anything yet, okay?”

He caught some of her happiness. “Who would I tell?”

“Small towns.” She lifted both hands to include their whole small-town world. But then she turned to him, grinning as wide as she could. “It’s so early we haven’t told anyone. Mostly, the only difference I feel is twenty-four-hour morning sickness.”

He held her close. “This time will be different,” he told her. She’d gotten pregnant with Eli in high school and had made a bad marriage. “This time, you’re with someone who loves you. I’m happy for you, little sis.”

“You look happy. A second ago, you didn’t.” She took his sleeve and led him in a beeline toward the concession stand. “You can treat me while I find a table, and after you bring me sustenance you can tell me what’s upsetting you.”

He took orders from her for the first time in his life. But there she was, all Mother Earth and I-have-a-plan, and he didn’t know what to do next.

He ordered hot dogs and cocoa, tempted because he hadn’t been able to choke down much of his meal with Cassie and Hope. He took the food back to the table Beth had snagged. “Should you be eating this?”

“Talk slow, and I’ll eat yours, too.” She unwrapped the mustard-smeared waxed paper and took a bite, sighing immediately with contentment.

“Cassie’s home.”

She sat up straight. “Good.” The hot dog went gently to the table. “Her father needs her.”

That simple, as if Cassie were anyone, not the woman she’d claimed as a sister and the best friend whose loss she’d mourned like a death.

“Didn’t you expect she’d come?” he asked.

“You’re looking for a fight.” She returned to savaging her hot dog. “I didn’t assume either way, so back off, brother. She left here plenty mad at both you and Leo. We all lost her because of her father.”

“And me?”

“I never understood the way she was with you after the—afterward. I always thought I’d have turned to the man I loved, but neither of us was in her shoes, so we can’t know what she was thinking.”

“Maybe she should have given me a hint or two.”

Beth looked up, startled, as she pried the top off her cocoa. “I’ve never heard you say one word against Cassie.”

“How do you blame a woman who’s been through that?” He shoved his wrapped hot dog across the table. “I don’t blame her now, but I don’t know how my marriage ended.”

“I was never sure it did end for you.”

“Cassie doesn’t want to hear that, either.”

“You told her?” Beth sipped cocoa, her eyes like half-dollars above the cup’s white paper rim.

A shout and sparks rose from the bonfire at the other end of the rink. They both stopped to inspect the knot of teenagers partying.

“Last year, I would have assumed Eli was over there, looking for trouble,” Beth remarked.

“But this year, he’s a happy kid with a good father figure and a little sibling on the way.”

“Let’s hope he didn’t count on remaining an only child.”

He squeezed her hand. “Eli will love the baby, and besides, he has Dr. Maria to smooth over the rough edges.”

“Maybe you should talk to Maria Keaton. She looks like she’s sixteen, but she’s an able therapist. I’m not sure it’s healthy to still want a broken marriage five years after your wife walked away.”

“Don’t hurt yourself trying to pull punches, Beth.”

“Face it. You should have moved on and found someone else.”

“Okay, so I didn’t want your advice after all, but I do have a favor to ask.”

With a motherly pat on his shoulder, she leaned into the light.

“You have a whipped-cream mustache,” he said.

“Hunger is making you cranky. You should have eaten this hot dog yourself,” Beth said as she picked it up. “I already put together a tomato and cucumber salad. I left a roast in the Dutch oven, and I’m going to open some canned green beans from the garden. You could join us for dinner.”

“A third meal? I’ve wasted enough food already, and I can’t believe you plan to eat again after two of those.” She took another bite of her “snack.”

“I may not finish yours.” She chewed with closed eyes. “I need the facts. You’re surprised to feel the way you always have for Cassie?”

“You feel nothing for Campbell?” Her deadbeat first husband had been no one to pine for.

She shuddered. “But if I lost Aidan, I don’t picture turning everything off. You didn’t choose the divorce. You just didn’t fight it. Why?”

“I think she wanted me to prove nothing had changed between us.” He drank some cocoa and burned his tongue. As he waved a hand in front of his mouth, Beth grinned. “Everything changed except that I loved her. I was her husband. I was supposed to protect her. I know, Beth. Don’t lunge across the table—I’m a cliché and a caveman, but I loved my wife, and when I looked at her, I saw what that man did to her….”

Beth took his hand again. “This is why you need Dr. Maria.”

“I’m serious.” He’d been right to hide how much he still cared. If even his sister thought he needed therapy, maybe he did have a problem.

“Forget what happened then. Do what you have to now. And for pity’s sake, if you still love Cassie, tell her. Fight for her.”

“She has a baby—a little girl—she’s four.” He took another sip. Boiling liquid sawdust.

Beth stared at him, slowly comprehending. Tears floated in her eyes. “She took a baby away from you? I don’t believe it. Not Cassie.”

He shook his head and didn’t bother to hide his own horror. Beth grabbed her stomach.

“You’re sure she’s the right age?” Beth asked.

“Cassie told me. Hope is his. She didn’t believe she could stay here and raise the child.”

“I could kill him.”

“I should have.”

“How hard is it to get into a prison?”

Wind whistled between them, spiked with the laughter of the skaters. They stared at each other, both startled at the intensity of their hatred. But his was partly for himself as well.

“Hope is her name?” Beth shoved the rest of her food and drink away. “What’s she like?”

“Sweet. A kid.” She was more than that—trusting, gentle, happy to meet him, never knowing what he’d seen when he’d first seen her.

“What would any woman do in Cassie’s place?” Beth asked.

“I don’t give a damn about any woman.” Too hurt for too long, he had no room to be compassionate. “I want my old life, with my wife and my home and my family. By now we’d have had children of our own. Leo wouldn’t be stuck in a hospital bed in a world that never existed. Cassie would be safe and happy and loved.” He raked his hands over his face. “I can’t stand thinking.”

After a moment, Beth pulled his hands down to the table. “Is Cassie with her dad tonight?”

“No. I’m supposed to take her in the morning. I’m afraid he won’t recognize her so I wouldn’t let her go alone.”

“Let her? She stood for that?”

“Don’t sound all speculative. It doesn’t mean anything. I came to ask if you’d look after Hope while we visit Leo.”

“Did you tell her you were asking me?”

“She thought it was a good idea, too.”

“No mother would want her baby to meet a grandfather in the shape Leo’s in.”

“The thing is, you can’t—I mean, it’s not Hope’s fault that she’s—”

Beth looked confused.

“She doesn’t know the truth about herself.”

Beth sat back, grabbing the sides of her bench. “I’m no monster. I’d never hurt a child’s feelings.”

It was so easy for her? “I think I may be one.”

Again, he heard the crackle of fire, the scraping of skates and childish laughter that seemed unnatural and harsh. “She’s a good kid, and funny. I found myself laughing at her—with her. But I still see him. It’s why I lost Cassie in the first place. Every time I tried to touch her, I saw him, and she thought I didn’t want her.”

“Didn’t you tell her the truth?”

He nodded, or he might have shaken his head. He couldn’t tell which. “She never believed me.”

“Whatever happens now, you have a second chance to salvage something with Cassie, even if it’s only friendship. You just have to be a decent man. She knows how difficult this is for you. She had to face the truth about Hope’s conception, too.”

“I’m not allowed to equivocate. Cassie wants me to care for Hope without a second thought.” He stood. “Sorry. I didn’t actually plan to tell you all this. Can I pick you up at seven in the morning?”

“Are we leaving now?”

“I have to—yes.”

She came around the table to hug him tight. “You can’t help being a good man. I believe in you.”

“I’m not sure it’s enough.”

She patted his cheek, apparently overwhelmed by motherly impulses. “I’d bet it is.”

“She’s not even planning to stay here. I don’t know what kind of future—”

“Maybe you’ll have to go with her. She must have a job, and her daughter will have made friends. You can do your work anywhere.”

“Beth, she runs a shelter in Washington. After what she went through, she counsels other women who’ve also been raped. I hate the thought of her reliving that every day.”

“She was always going to do social work of some kind. Maybe treating other women helps her heal.”

“That’s pretty much what she said.” He hugged his sister, grateful for her common sense even if he couldn’t share her faith. “Let’s go, Beth. Is it okay if I pick you up at seven tomorrow?”

“M
OMMY
.” Hope’s voice, punctuated by a bounce that nearly tossed Cassie out of her bed. “Mommy, time to get up. I’m starwing again.”

“Okay.” Cassie tried to pry one sleepy eye open. “What are the numbers on the clock?”

Bounce. “A six.” Bounce. “A three.” Bounce, bounce. Cassie’s brains began to scramble. “And a circle.”

“A circle?” She pushed herself onto one elbow, searching for the digital display. “Six-thirty. We’d better get moving, punkin’. Mr. Van will be here before we know it.”

“More food.”

Cassie caught Hope’s arm. “You’re going to fall down and break your crown.”

With her sleeper-clad feet pointed as professionally as any ballerina’s, Hope collapsed backward in giggles. Cassie must be funnier than she knew.

Morning people. She rolled over to tickle Hope. “Are you really hungry? Oatmeal? Grits? Gruel?”

“What’s gru, Mommy?”

Cassie sat up, pulling her little girl into her lap. “I don’t actually know. You want some toast as an appetizer while I take a shower?”

“I watch Dora?”

“You wouldn’t take advantage of a mom for some TV time, would you?”

Giggling with a four-year-old’s joy, she nodded. “And choplit milk?”

“Yup, but only ’cause we’re in a special place, and you’ve never been here before.”

“When we go home, I have to eat normal and no TV?”

“Right.”

But when would they go home? She helped Hope into her robe and steered her down the stairs to the kitchen. They made toast together, smearing it with strawberry jam, and then they took the plate back upstairs.

Feeling just a smidge guilty, Cassie settled Hope in front of the TV with her toast. Then she sped through a shower, dressed and whipped up an egg-and-cheese omelet. Hope was digging in when a knock came at the front door.

“I get it.” Still chewing her first bite, Hope bolted, with Cassie hot on her heels. Hope yanked at the doorknob, but Cassie had to work the locks first.

Seeing Van set her heart pounding, but she didn’t have to like it.

Then she saw Beth. She stepped into the wood smoke-scented morning and threw her arms around the woman who’d been more sister than sister-in-law. She’d longed for Beth so many times in the past five years.

“Hi,” she said, acknowledging Van’s anxious glance over his sister’s shoulder. She moved her daughter in front of her and laughed as her little girl immediately offered a hand to shake. “Hope, this is Beth.”

Smiling with apparently unadulterated happiness, Beth squatted to meet Hope on her own level. “You look so much like your mommy. You know, she was my best friend when I was a little girl.”

“My best friend is Susie Banner.”

“Does Susie live in Washington?”

Hope nodded, and her hair fell around her shoulders. Cassie looked at Van, sharing her relief—her sheer joy—in Beth’s welcome for her child.

“She gives me hope,” Cassie said. Van’s grin was affectionate, proud of his sister.

“I can see why.” Beth straightened.

“I meant you,” Cassie said.

“Oh.” She looked startled. “I’d be proud to have such a little girl. My brother’s been telling me about you, Hope.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“Mr. Van,” Cassie said. “And Beth has a son named Eli.”

“Can I play with him?” Hope asked.

“He’s a big boy so he’s at school, but he might drop by after, if I’m still here,” Beth said. “Do you mind if you and I hang out today?”

“I dunno.” Hope scuffed the lined foot of her sleeper. “Are you a nice lady, Miss Beth?”

Again, Cassie glanced at Van as Beth laughed, totally engrossed in Hope. He was smiling, his eyes softer on her little girl.

“The nicest,” Beth said. “Do you have favorite books? I love to read, and later we could take a walk.”

“Walk,” Hope said. “Walk, Mom?”

Her first thought was no. Someone might see Hope and get curious enough to ask a neighborly but blunt question of Beth.

Who knew how long they’d have to stay in Honesty? She couldn’t sequester a four-year-old child inside the prison walls of a house in the name of protecting her.

“A walk is a great idea. Thanks, Beth—” But Hope had already started hauling her new friend upstairs for a sweater.

“Hope, you have to finish your breakfast.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out,” Beth said. “Take your time. We’ll be fine, and Van knows my cell number if you need to call.”

Cassie ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Hope, I need to talk to you.”

“Don’t worry.” Beth read her mind. “If anyone asks questions, I’ll put them off. I’m good at that.”

“She is,” Van said behind Cassie as Beth and Hope disappeared. “No interrogation too tough for her.”

Cassie dropped her hands onto the banister. Without the others, the foyer felt too small. “Thanks for asking her to look after Hope.”

“She was glad to.”

“I owe you a lot.”

“You owe me nothing.”

She turned at last to face him. His face was rigid, but he dragged his hand across his mouth, and the lines around it eased.

“I care about you,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m not even sure what it means.”

“I can’t think about going back to the way we were. I’m just relieved because I’ve been afraid to come home, and it’s not as bad as I expected.”

“The rape happened a long time ago, and no one ever blamed you.”

“Let’s not start this again.”

“Once more,” he said. “So you know where I stand. I think I’ve been in shock, trying to do what you wanted all these years.” He stuck out his chin—at just the right angle for punching if she felt like it. “I was married to you, and I didn’t want the divorce. I lost you because I couldn’t stop seeing that animal hurting you.”

“And now you see that when you look at Hope.” He shook his head, but Cassie knew better. “Did you tell Beth the truth about her?”

“I had to when she thought Hope was mine and you kept her away from me.”

“I understand you don’t want people thinking she’s yours, but that’s not the worst thing they could think about me. No one will look at her with anything except sympathy if they think you’re her father.”

“You think they’d look at her differently if they knew the truth?”

“Don’t sound so incredulous.” She opened the closet door and yanked out her coat. “My own OB thought I must have lost my mind.”

“People are going to ask.”

“And if they do, I plan to make sure they know Hope is none of their business.”

She tried to get her arms into her sleeves, but they refused to go. When Van reached out to assist, she jerked away. She couldn’t stop herself. She started down the porch stairs as if she hadn’t seen his helping hands.

“Cassie, I didn’t mean to upset you. This is going to be difficult enough.”

“I’m all right.”

He said nothing, holding the car door for her. He’d always done that, as if he hadn’t noticed hardly any other guy still did those things.

He drove in silence. She was grateful. Anxiety crowded the breath in her lungs as they got closer to the hospital.

She stole a peek at Van as he parked. “Maybe I picked that argument,” she said. “I’m scared about my dad.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “But it doesn’t change what I said.”

The nurses watched them as they passed. It was such a small hospital there was hardly ever a rush, even in the E.R. Cassie recognized several of her high school classmates. Her chemistry lab partner, in a white coat, looked at her twice as he stepped onto the elevator when they got off on her father’s floor.

“Cassie?” the guy said, surprised as the door began to close.

She smiled at him, but her mouth felt numb, and she was glad the doors shut before she had to speak. “Van, let’s go straight to Dad’s room. I don’t think I can talk to anyone.”

Nodding, he led the way, turning at a door on the right. He stood back for her, and she looked up, selfishly searching his eyes for comfort as she walked inside.

With unnecessary kindness, Van took her hand. She didn’t want to find strength in his fingers twined with hers, but she squeezed back. At the last minute, she thought she might have been wrong to abandon her father.

Beyond a bathroom that jutted out into the rest of the room, she saw a small man, lying limp beneath ultra white sheets. Without Van, she might not have known him. He was ghostly, peering out of hollow, dark eyes. The bed swallowed him whole.

“You never told me…” She turned to Van. Was her father about to die?

“Mama,” Leo said.

Horror washed over her, but her father’s voice, rich with terror, seemed to belong to the child out of whose frightened eyes he stared.

Cassie made herself breathe. She half turned toward Van, her legs threatening to give.

“Mom?” Her father sounded less sure.

Gathering everything left of her fleeing strength, she stood on her own two feet and faced the truth about her father.

This was not going to be a fly-by-get-everything-organized trip.

He’d either have to come back to Washington with her and Hope, or they’d have to stay in Honesty with him.

She made it to the side of his bed and took his hand between both of hers. “It’s me, Dad. I’m your daughter, Cassie.”

His eyes slowly closed and then opened again as he scoured his faulty memory. “No,” he said. “You won’t come home. You hate me.”

“I never hated you.” She’d only craved the medicine of his unconditional love to heal the wounds that monster had opened in her soul.

Images fluttered through her mind, snapshots of a childhood she seemed to have borrowed. She saw her father kissing a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid on her elbow. She saw him climbing the knobby oak tree beside her window to coax her orange tabby back to the ground, while she and her mother, hand in hand, tried to talk them both down to safety.

Suited up like Andrew Carnegie, he’d talked to her third-grade class about being a bank teller when he’d been the bank’s president, because Cassie had said his job was boring. He’d waited up for her the first nights she’d gone out with Van, despite the fact he’d loved her date as if he were a son.

Love refused to be predictable or reasonable.

Staying to help him because he was ill meant people would ask about Hope, but what else could she do? She couldn’t even invite him to Washington until his health improved.

She hooked a chair with her foot and pulled it to his bedside so she didn’t have to let go of his hand.

She settled next to him on one curled foot. “I love you, Dad. Tell me what’s the matter and maybe you’ll feel better.”

V
AN LEANED
into a corner beside the door. His throat closed as Leo struggled to articulate what was wrong but finally contented himself with clutching Cassie’s hand.

As the silence grew painful, she fixed a smile on her face and talked about herself. She talked about the Kind Heart, her shelter. She described her town house, the landscaping in her meager yard, her wish to buy a real house. At that, Leo became anxious and she backed off.

She never mentioned Hope.

“Do you remember him?” Leo pointed at Van.

She nodded. “I’ll never forget, Dad. You won’t either, will you?”

“I’ve been mean to him. I walked the other way when I saw him coming. I pretended I didn’t know where you were, that I hadn’t hired someone to find you.”

Cassie’s eyebrows went up. Leo’s confession startled Van, too, but he was mainly grateful that the other man had remembered anything at all.

Maybe with Cassie holding his hand, Leo stood a chance.

“I thought you were my mom when I first saw you.” His uncertain gaze roamed her face again. “But you’re my daughter.” He half shook his head. “Aren’t you?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Her low-key answer made his question sound reasonable, even though her throat vibrated with the sound.

“Can I get you anything, Cassie?” Van felt the need to do something.

She stood. “Actually, I’m going to get some water. Dad, can I bring you some?”

Leo used both his shaking hands to rub his throat. “I’d like that. Thanks, honey. You’ll come back?”

“Sure.” Smiling, she took his large water cup and pushed through the door.

Van followed, wanting to pull her close. She was still Cassie. He still needed to make life right for her, a job he’d failed at.

“You don’t have to stay, Van.”

“You sound angry.” He’d be pissed as hell with fate, too.

“No.”

“It’s all right, Cassie. Anyone would be upset.”

“Nothing’s all right.”

Several heads turned their way. She lowered her voice. “I want to help him. Even I can see the past doesn’t matter now.” She straightened her shoulders as if her skin no longer fit. “He needs me and I do love him, but I thought Hope was going to be my biggest responsibility.”

“He may not stay so childlike if we can get him healthier. Wait until you talk to his doctor before you fear the worst.”

“I’m caught between my father, who barely knows me, and my daughter, who’s bright enough to notice everyone in this town staring at her, wondering about her. I can’t take her home and leave him like this, and I’m wondering if taking him from the place he knows would be wise.”

“No one will hurt Hope.” It’d happen over his dead body.

She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he was so naive. “You can stop it?”

“I’ll do what I can. She’s a little girl. No one would hurt her.”

“Not on purpose,” she said, “but people are cruel without thinking. I learned that before I left.”

“You have to tell Leo about Hope.”

“How can I? He thought I was his mother.”

Van held very still. For the first time, they were talking, not fencing. “He seemed clearer after you talked for a while.”

“I babbled. I just want to know what happened.”

“I never got him to talk about anything except your mother or the house getting robbed.”

She twisted her mouth. “I hate seeing him like that. And you were his son for a long time.”

“If I’d ignored what he wanted and stayed in touch, maybe he wouldn’t be in this shape.”

She looked up. “It’s not your fault. After the divorce, we weren’t really family anymore.” She stared at her father’s cup. “But what changed him?”