The Man From Her Past (8 page)

Miraculously, the tree lit up.

“Let’s open the curtains,” Hope said, and again Cassie lifted her so she could push the drapes away from the living room window. Dust sifted down on them, and they raced to the kitchen to get water and take turns washing each other’s faces.

“Time for dinner,” Cassie finally said. “It got dark when I wasn’t looking.”

“Not bedtime.”

“Pretty soon.”

Hope yawned over their soup and sandwiches. Afterward, Cassie ran her a warm bubble bath, and then they turned to a stack of books.

At last, Cassie sang Hope’s favorite good-night songs and traded “lights off” for a reading of
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Hope was asleep before the sleigh reached Whoville.

Cassie eased the bedroom door shut and then went back downstairs to clean the kitchen. Running hot water into the sink, she peered through the window at the sky.

The view had changed since she’d moved away. New trees branched against a blue velvet night, pressing bony fingers into puffy, moonlit clouds.

Cassie plunged her hands into the bubbly water. She’d always preferred washing dishes by hand. It was her quiet time, her few free moments to contemplate the world. Tonight, freedom didn’t sit well.

She’d lost her place in Honesty. The sky had changed. Her father had become a stranger. Van had insisted he didn’t believe they were over, but he’d looked happy with that other woman.

Tsking, like her mother before her, Cassie slid dishes beneath the water. He might have been helping, just the way he’d insisted on helping her and Hope since she’d come back.

He’d always been a guy who needed to do something. He hadn’t said “I love you” the first year they’d dated, but he’d washed her car and changed the oil and wipers, and shown up each Tuesday just to haul her garbage down the five flights of stairs from her apartment for pickup.

His first “I love you” had sounded more like a question.

The image of him asking someone else flashed through her mind.

She’d finished the plates when footsteps raced across the attic above her head.

A glass slipped. She swore but caught it just in time, and then backed up, holding it like a weapon. Crazy.

She set the glass on the counter and grabbed her mother’s rolling pin before she lit out on tiptoes for the stairs.

The footsteps above raced back, almost even with her head. Something fell over up there. Another clatter followed. An intruder tripping over whatever he’d run into?

Common sense told her those footsteps were too fast. They even sounded scratchy. An animal had to be in the attic, but she’d just been up there. She’d seen no openings other than the dormer windows, close enough to the trees to provide an entrance for a human.

She’d moved some boxes. Maybe she’d somehow unblocked an opening for an animal.

Either way. She grabbed her cell phone and hurried to Hope’s room, which had once been her playroom. She eased inside and locked the door.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“Are you awake?”

“Gonna read more?”

“Sure. Let me just make a call.” She slipped to the window and checked the lock, then went to the bathroom. “I have to go in here a second,” she said. “Choose a book.”

“Okay.” Hope rolled out of bed like a big drop of water, and then crawled across the rug to the bookshelf that still held most of Cassie’s childhood books.

Cassie tripped over a wet towel and Hope’s discarded clothes. She dialed the police.

“Honesty Police Department. Monica James,” the dispatcher answered.

“Monica.” They’d been in the same French class. “This is Cassie Warne. I think there’s an animal in my dad’s house.” She gave the address.

“What kind of animal?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated, not wanting to tell anyone about Hope, but she had to explain she had a child in the house. “The thing is, it could be a person—I just don’t think so, and I didn’t want to scare my daughter, so I thought I’d call the police. If you want to send Animal Control, that’s fine, but we’re locked in a bedroom until I’m sure what’s going on.”

“Maybe I’ll send a patrolman and a crew from Animal Control. You’ve heard no voices?”

“No—just really fast feet.”

“You know, the squirrels can’t find much food in this weather. You’re probably fine. Want to hold the line until someone comes?”

“No, thanks. My daughter hasn’t heard anything yet, and we’ll be reading until they arrive.”

“I’m not supposed to let you hang up if there’s any question in your mind about a human intruder.”

“Do you mind if I just leave the phone on? I’ll set it beside us.”

“That’s fine. When the car arrives, let me know.”

“Thanks, Monica. I appreciate your help.”

“Sure, Cassie. That’s what we’re here for. I’m betting on a four-footed visitor.”

The other kind couldn’t happen twice to one person? “Me, too.”

Hope had turned on the tiny lamp they’d set up beside her bed. She looked up, a glow from the purple shade on her face, a book about mining moon cheese on her lap. “Mommy, who are you calling from the bathroom?”

So much for subtlety. Cassie crossed to the bed. “An old friend, sweetie. Scoot over, and I’ll read to you.” She set the phone on the nightstand. “You picked one of my favorites.”

Hope held it up, open to a picture of a backhoe dragging cheese off the moon’s surface. “You wrote your name. Miss Tawny, at my school, says I’m not ’posed to write my name in books.”

“We all do things we’re not supposed to sometimes. Let’s open her up at the first page and see what else I did.”

They’d reached the backhoe when blue lights flashed onto the faded yellow wall paint.

Hope dropped the book. “What’s that?” She scrambled to her knees and then to the window, with Cassie tugging her back by her shirttail.

“I think there’s an animal in the attic. The police and some other people are coming to find out.”

“Police?” Hope looked scared. “I don’t want them here in my grampa’s house.”

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll talk to them. And you know, the police are the good guys.”

“I guess, but I don’t like that bad man we saw the last time we saw police.”

“They only came to help us with him.” Standing, Cassie peeked through the blinds. “These things are dusty, too. We still have a lot of cleaning to do for your grampa.”

“You’re not scared?”

“Nope.” Cassie smiled with total assurance. She and Hope had spent so much time together—alone—that lying to her daughter, even for her own good, rarely worked. Thank God they both believed in honesty.

“Okay.” Hope slid back under the sheets but then straightened again. “You’re not going out there?”

“Not yet. We’ll let the police and the animal people check everything out first.”

Downstairs, someone pounded on the front door. She should have unlocked it. She glanced from Hope to their door.

“I’d better go now, sweetie.”

“Lock my door, Mommy?” Hope asked, peeping out from beneath the flowered sheet.

“Oh, sweetie. Try not to be afraid. I’ll lock it. Come let me show you how to unlock, too.”

They had a demonstration, and then Hope zoomed back to bed. Cassie eased into the hall as the pounding downstairs grew more insistent.

She expected the police, and they were there, but Van was right in front of her, being yanked back by Sheriff Drake.

As soon as Van saw her, he pushed back to the front. “Cassie.” He swept her with a searching glance. “Where’s Hope?” For the first time, he said her name with care. With real concern—as if she mattered to him.

H
E TOOK HER
breath away.

“Hope’s in her room,” Cassie said.

The scratchy footsteps charged overhead again.

“Oh, yeah, that’s a squirrel,” Tom Drake said. “Maybe two.”

“Racing,” his deputy said.

But Van looked wary. “Can Hope hear that? It might scare her.”

Cassie shouldn’t have been surprised. Hope’s curiosity charmed even strangers. She loved easily, with a kind heart. Who could resist her?

“You’re right.” Turning, Cassie ran back up the stairs, the men at her back, though Tom reached for her shirttail the way she’d grabbed at Hope’s.

“What if it’s not an animal, Cassie?”

“The way I’ve been charging up and down these stairs, if it were a burglar or anyone else who wanted to hurt us, he probably would have shown up.”

“Where’s the attic door?”

“Down by the bathroom. Be careful. You have to pull the door, and a ladder drops down, but the hinges must be rusty. It’s hard to manage.”

The sheriff and his deputy went on. Van stopped by Hope’s room with her. His hand brushed her waist.

She stepped away from him and unlocked the door, mostly because she wanted his touch, and she was disconcerted to find she didn’t feel as if she deserved to be protected.

“Everything’s fine,” she said as she walked into Hope’s room. Her daughter yanked the sheets down from her two eyeballs staring like a Halloween toy.

“You’re not the police, Mr. Van,” Hope said. “Where’d you get the lights on your car?”

“That wasn’t my car.” Van eased down onto the end of the bed. Hope shoved the sheets down and crawled over the bedding on her knees.

Cassie watched them, bemused. She tried to remember Van with the woman and little guy in his car, but that image wouldn’t come. He looked too right taking the book from her daughter’s hand.

“Hey, look, this must have been your mom’s. There’s her name.”

“She wrote in it.” Hope’s disapproval dropped her voice low. “With a purple crayon.”

He half hid a smile, just like a father. Cassie turned away and drew up the dusty blind, but when the dust settled, she saw all three of them reflected in the glass. A family. Almost.

She dropped the blind.

“You okay, Cassie?”

“Hmm?” Suddenly, she wanted to ask him about that woman and her son.

“Read to me, Mr. Van.”

He waited for Cassie to answer. Finally, she tried to smile at him. He turned his head slightly, frowning. She knew the look. He knew she was hiding something. She smiled at her daughter.

“Let me fix this messy bed,” Cassie said.

He picked up Hope and moved to the rocker, which creaked as he sat. “Is this okay?”

“It was my grandmother’s. It’ll either last with you or break for good.”

She’d said more than she meant to, all but comparing the chair to their relationship. Van’s smile asked her what was going on. She closed her eyes and breathed, trying to gather herself.

“Mr. Van, my book.”

Cassie busied herself making the bed. So what if her father had asked her to give Van a second chance? Beth’s speculations about his feelings didn’t mean anything, either—except she had to wonder why Beth wouldn’t have mentioned another woman.

She’d never trust Van to love anyone she loved—or her again.

Yet a still voice at the back of her mind—the voice that refused to lie—asked why she felt safer with Van in the house.

After she finished making the bed, she moved to the bathroom to pick up the towel and wet clothes. Overhead, tiny feet and bigger ones chased each other. Something scraped, and Cassie leaned around the bathroom door to smile at Hope, who grinned and immediately turned her attention back to Van.

All the while, Van read about mining cheese on the moon and never knew he was altering her feelings toward that book. Would she ever read it again without hearing his husky voice instead of her own?

Several grunts preceded a shout and something slammed—a door, a window.

“I’m going upstairs to see what’s happening with the squirrels,” she said.

At the same time, a knock came at the door. She practically ran to open it. Tom lifted his hat, like a sheriff in an old movie. Cassie finally laughed out loud.

“Hysteria?” he asked.

“A little.” She pulled the door wider. “Come. The party’s in here.”

“Not for the family of squirrels my men have just given up trying to catch. The Animal Control truck just pulled up.” He nodded at Van. “Everything okay with you all now?”

“I think I’ll add a dead bolt downstairs and check all the window locks.” He tucked Hope’s head beneath his chin as if he’d held her every night of her life. “And tomorrow I’m calling someone to trim those trees back.”

Cassie’s smile faded. Van had shown up years too late to save her.

“The trees are my responsibility,” she said.

That woman this afternoon had shaken her. She and Van had seemed close. For the smallest frame of time after she’d talked to Beth and her father, Cassie had imagined she might find something of her old love with Van.

That was crazy.

“Thanks, Tom. I’ll walk you out.”

“I’ll do that,” Van said.

Good idea. It took him out of her daughter’s room to more neutral ground, where visions of a made-up family might not dance in her head.

“You need to go back to sleep.” Cassie took Hope’s hand as she slid off Van’s lap.

Her little girl was too slippery for her. She reached up for Van, who had no choice but to lean down and let her put her arms around him. “Thanks for reading to me.” She hugged him so tight her feet came off the floor. “I wasn’t scared.”

“You’re awfully brave,” he said. “But I liked reading. That’s a pretty good story.”

“Come on, Hope.”

She must have been tired. She climbed into bed and snuggled deep. Cassie kissed her temple and then ushered both men into the hall.

“She’s a good kid,” Tom said.

“I think so, too.” He said nothing more, and she was too tired to care what he thought—or wondered—about Hope’s possible father.

V
AN MET
the Animal Control officer at the door. Cassie had walked Tom down to his cruiser. “How long do you think you’ll be?” he asked the officer, an old acquaintance.

“At least an hour, usually. Why?”

“I want to change the lock on this door.”

He shook his head. “Because of animal infestation?”

“We thought it might be human. I’m changing the locks so I can sleep tonight.”

“In that case, we’ll take our time.” With compassion, the other man punched Van’s forearm.

Van met Cassie on the sidewalk, grabbing her as she slid on ice. “I’m running over to the Super-Center for a new lock and dead bolt.”

She moved away, trying to hide the fact that she didn’t want him to touch her, but he noticed. Ever since she’d opened the door, he’d longed to drag her into his arms until he was sure she was all right. How she couldn’t feel his need…

“You think the squirrels stood on each other’s heads with a set of lock-picking tools?”

“I expected you to laugh.” He let his tone show he was too tired to argue. “But I’m going.”

“It’s late. I’d like to get to bed after these guys leave.”

“It’s not that late, and I won’t even knock if they’re gone when I come back.”

“This doesn’t make things better,” she said.

He glanced up at the doorway, where the officer and a woman in a matching uniform were carrying traps inside. “I’m wasting time. Just let me do this, and I’ll stay away.”

“Because you have that woman I saw you with today?”

“Lexie? I
have
her? She’s a friend.”

“You buy Christmas trees with women who are just friends? That’s not the way it works in Honesty.”

Was she jealous? “Her car wouldn’t start so we moved her tree and her son into mine, and I took them home.” Cassie’s doubt felt like two fists banging at his chest. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” she said, too quickly. “
Care
is a strong word, but why do you keep coming here if you and your ‘friend’ are buying Christmas trees together?”

“You heard me. Lexie bought the tree for her home, the one where she lives with her husband. I gave her and Spence a ride, but that’s it. And even though I’m tired of you treating me as if I’m stalking you, I don’t want you to think I’d be asking you to—”
Try again
would be two strong words. “To at least talk to me about what went wrong between us if I was involved with someone else.”

“Why aren’t you involved—” she rubbed her face “—with anyone else?”

Because no matter where he looked, he only saw her. And that was too much truth for her. “I’ve told you,” he said. “I think time stopped for me when you walked out. In the back of my mind, I expected you’d come to your senses and see I didn’t think you—that it was the rapist who bothered me—the thought of him—” He glimpsed Hope’s window and put all thoughts of that monster out of his head. He’d cared about Hope, needed to see with his own eyes that she was safe. “Talk to me when I get back,” he said. “I want to change the locks tonight.”

He veered around her, looking over his shoulder at the window again. An extraordinarily mindful daughter, Hope had stayed in bed.

Or maybe like any child with mischief in her soul, she’d already worn herself out today and she’d fallen asleep once the danger had passed.

Van had only one thought. He wouldn’t talk tonight about the man who’d raped Cassie and fathered Hope, because nothing should poison the tender roots of his hard-fought affection for the child who should have been his.

C
ASSIE CLEANED
the kitchen until it shone, believing Van about Lexie, but troubled by her own feelings. A light tap came at the front door. She braced herself and opened up for Van.

“Do you know where your father keeps his tools?” He seemed to find a point above and between her eyes too interesting to look away from.

“They were always in the garage. I’ll look.”

“I will.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ve already been out there, and I didn’t find more stashes of anything odd.”

Van’s expression softened.

“I love him, Van.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry about the past five years. And he’s really anxious to meet Hope. Maybe I was wrong.”

“To leave? I think you were.” He turned away. She ached to reach for him, but she let him go.

While he was in the garage, the Animal Control officers brought down a squirrel family of three. One of the men paused on his way out. “I have some plywood in the truck. I’ll come back and hammer in a temporary barrier.”

“It’s late,” Cassie said, uneasy with everyone’s helping hands. “I hate to trouble you.”

“If I don’t put up something, you’re liable to call me back in the wee hours,” he said. “There’s a clean square in the dust in front of the hole. Someone must have uncovered the opening lately, maybe moving a box.”

“Me,” she said. “I thought I was tidying things while I was hunting for Christmas ornaments today.”

“Yeah, these old houses. You try to get them in better shape, but you often uncover bigger problems.”

“You have experience?” Cassie asked.

“I live in one a lot like this on the next street.” His squirrel prisoner kicked up a fuss, reminding them he wasn’t a natural cage-occupant. “Better get our little friend out of here.”

Hope slept through Van wrestling with painted-over lock plates and the Animal Control officer hammering the squirrel door shut. After he finished and refused coffee for himself and his colleague, they all left.

Cassie felt too alone with Van.

He brought a lock into the kitchen. “Last door,” he said. “Then I’d just like to check the ones on the windows.”

“I have.”

They stared at each other through thickened air.

“I’m mostly over it,” she said, “but I’ll never leave a window unlocked again.”

“Do you admit that to everyone?” He knelt in front of the existing lock.

“Who needs to know?” She washed the counter again.

“I didn’t,” he said, “not really. But I’m glad you confided in me.”

“I just didn’t want you to make pointless rounds at the windows.”

“I wish I’d been around that night to do it.” He set the screwdriver in the painted screw’s head and fought to turn it. “You’ll never know how much—”

“I wished a long time, too, but that was futile and painful.” She folded the tea towel into increasingly smaller squares. “A woman should be able to leave the shower window open to air out steam. It wasn’t an invitation.”

Van’s head snapped up, but at last she saw his anger was directed at the man who’d hurt her. Not at her. “No one ever blamed you,” he said.

“I’m the one who forgot to close that window.”

“He’s a criminal, and if he ever comes out of prison, I’ll—”

“Do nothing.” Cassie cut him off.

“What if he came back? Do you know how many nightmares—”

“Of course I do. I have them, too, but I don’t talk about them. I don’t want you hurt, and I sure don’t want you sharing a cell with him.” She kept her own counsel about what she knew of that man. No news about him ever restored her sense of safety.

“You’d care about me?”

He must be out of his mind. “I always cared. I left because you couldn’t care anymore.”

“I wanted to kill him. Every time I looked at you or touched you, I dreamed of new ways to make him hurt.”

“I can’t.” Until that moment, she hadn’t known she couldn’t talk about that night. Not with Van, not when she’d screamed his name in her head over and over. And been grateful he wasn’t there.

The man had held a knife to her breast the entire time. A knife he might have used on Van.

She shook her head and saw herself as if in a dream. That was the way she’d dealt with the rape back then, acting as though it was happening to someone else. She’d felt like a stranger afterward.

Van stood and came to her, his eyes intent.

“What are you thinking? Tell me.” He’d asked so many times before she’d left. She’d hated those words.

“That I don’t want to relive that night again. I want to be back in my own body.”

He took her arms. “What are you saying?”