#1-3--The O’Connells

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  “Ah, sure…” was all Jenny said, and he watched as she strode across the brownish grass, past a pile of weeds, and onto the porch, where she pulled open the screen and unlocked the door.

  When she went inside, he said nothing for a second. Marcus hadn’t pulled his gaze from him. It was the kind of look that said everything.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Ryan?” Marcus finally said.

  There it was. Not what he’d expected, but close.

  “Helping my neighbor,” he replied, amazed at how it rolled right off his tongue.

  Marcus pulled off his shades and looked over to him in the bright sun as if ready to call him out, but he must have decided it would be wasted breath, as instead he groaned and pulled his hand over his face. “Thought you were going to give your neighbor some breathing room, yet here you are, helping her out. The kid, by the way, in case you don’t already know, is trouble. Seen it before, and pretty sure getting a search party going is jumping the gun a bit…”

  “Look, there’s more to the story,” Ryan said. “I saw Jenny in town, and she was upset. Seems her daughter’s been skipping school, and she only just found out. Then the kid went radio silent. My guess is because she knows she’s busted. At the same time, the way those two go at it reminds me of how Karen and Mom used to go for each other’s throats. How long did that last, like two years, starting when she was sixteen?”

  Marcus winced. “It was six months, when she was fourteen, but it seemed longer. Yeah, I remember that better than you. Luke was the one always having to jump in. Karen had always been Dad’s favorite, and she was angry at Mom for Dad leaving. It was unreasonable, stupid. Nearly took the house down.”

  Right, his dad had been there one day, gone the next. They’d been young. It was just something they still didn’t speak of. He still remembered the conversation that had rocked all of them, when their mom had sat them down at the table and said their dad didn’t live there anymore. It was just them now, and they had only each other to depend on. Ryan had been angry. They all had, each showing it in different ways.

  He gestured to the house, hearing Jenny calling for her daughter inside. “The kid’s dad died, Jenny’s husband,” he said. “They just moved here from Atlanta.”

  Marcus leveled a hard look his way. “Recently? Guess that would explain a lot. Geez, that’s rough, uprooting and moving away from your friends and home, and losing a parent… Don’t know a teenager who would handle that well, or an adult, for that matter. Explains the chip on the shoulder. She likely just wants some space, so why not give it?”

  He heard the squeak of the screen door and spotted Jenny on the porch.

  “She’s not here,” she called out.

  Ryan started walking toward her, his brother falling in behind him. “Has she been here at all?”

  Jenny shook her head. “Not that I can see. Everything looks the way it was left this morning.”

  “You know, I hate to say this,” Marcus said, “but chances are she’s just keeping her head down. She knows she’s in a ton of trouble and will likely show up in a few hours. She probably decided to take off for an afternoon hike, clear her head, but she’ll show up. She’s a teenager. As soon as she’s hungry and tired and she’s had time to cool down, she’ll sneak in. Ryan filled me in. Sorry to hear about your loss, your husband. That’s tough on kids.”

  Ryan wasn’t sure what to make of her expression. She glanced away. That was definitely not the look of a woman who was grieving.

  “So you expect me to just sit here and wait?” she replied. “Her phone was in someone else’s backpack, miles down a trail. I guess I disagree. I know my daughter, and her needing space and then deciding to show up because she’s hungry is exactly what she wouldn’t do. Yeah, she’s angry at life, at the world, mostly at me, but I guarantee you Alison wouldn’t head off on an afternoon hike. She’s a city girl, grew up in Atlanta. The closest she’s ever come to nature was hanging out at the downtown park. She’s terrified of getting stung by bees, hates bugs and dirt and trees…” She rested her hand on her hips and let out a sigh of frustration.

  “What about this Ollie Edwards?” Ryan said. “Marcus, can you find out who that is? Then we could track him down and likely find Alison, too, or least get an idea of where her head is. We’ll find anyone who knows them. You know the drill…”

  He’d taken photos of everything, the contents of the backpack, and then he’d taken one of the crumpled-up essays with Ollie Edwards’s name on it, but he’d put the backpack back where they had found it. If Alison was out there, he didn’t want her left with nothing, and the same went for this Ollie. If they were together, they’d likely go back to retrieve it.

  He really wanted to have a sit-down with the boy and get him to share what was going on with his neighbor’s daughter. He could tell by his brother’s expression, even though it showed very little of what he was thinking, that he didn’t agree. He wasn’t so sure, either, that Alison wasn’t just hiding out, but at the same time, he’d seen the way she’d acted. She was wild and out of control. Who knew what kind of trouble she’d managed to get herself into? If she got lost or hurt, it would be his problem.

  “I do know the drill, which is why there’s no investigation yet. She hadn’t been gone even twenty-four hours yet, and school just got out. You’ve already said she’s walking trouble. She’s angry, not the ideal level-headed kid, and as you said, she’s been skipping school. She knows she’s in trouble and is probably just biding her time until she thinks it’s safe to come home or until she’s driven her mother crazy enough. I think you and I both know that.”

  Ryan knew Marcus was thinking of their brother Luke, who’d done something not so different, but he hadn’t come home for three days. He’d camped out, making it all the way up the Absaroka Range. Their mother had been frantic, but Luke had been fine.

  “This is a kid from Atlanta,” Ryan said. “I can’t explain it, Marcus. Just humor me. It’s different.” He pulled the folded paper with Ollie’s name on it from his back pocket. “At least find out who this is. I could do it, but as you said, the town’s yours, and I want to have a word with Jenny.” He shrugged.

  “Fine, give it to me,” Marcus said and ripped the paper from his hand. It was covered with pencil, doodling and notes, he thought. Marcus started down the steps before looking back up to Ryan and then over to Jenny, who, throughout their entire back-and-forth, hadn’t pulled her gaze from them.

  “I’m not staying,” she said. “As you said, I’m not properly dressed or equipped, but I’ll change into a pair of sneakers, and then I’m going back up there. Maybe I’ll find her making her way down—”

  “It would be best, Jenny, if you stayed here,” Marcus said. “Officially, there’s no investigation, but unofficially, I’ll make some calls. Either of you hear from her or she shows up, call me.”

  Ryan watched his brother climb into his cruiser, then turned back to Jenny, who had her arms crossed, tense and uncomfortable. He had a feeling that was more about him, though, and if her daughter hadn’t pulled this Houdini, she’d likely have told him to get off her property.

  “What?” she snapped, maybe because of the way he was looking at her.

  “I have some questions, Jenny, and while we’re waiting, how about you answer them for me?”

  There it was, something in her eyes, her face. She’d stopped breathing. Yeah, he knew when someone was hiding something, but the problem was, he didn’t have a clue what her secrets had to do with him.

  “About Alison?” Her voice squeaked.

  “Sure, we’ll get to her, but how about we start with all these secrets you have? I can’t help wondering how much they have to do with your daughter and this situation. Then let’s work our way back to the night you slipped out of my bed and I never saw you again. I don’t know what it is about you, but something has me wondering what it is you’re hiding. Whether you’re running from something or you’ve done something, I don’t know, but what I d
o know is when someone’s evading me, and that’s exactly what you’re doing. So let’s start at the beginning and work our way up to today.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, so she gave her head a shake and pulled open the door, then stepped into the house, leaving him standing outside, alone.

  Yup, she was hiding something. Not really his business, but at the same time, he wasn’t about to let it go.

  Chapter Nine

  She was freaking out.

  This was something about her that Wren had always hated, her inability to keep a straight face. That was likely why he’d started keeping things from her, the deeds, the loans, the empty bank accounts.

  She heard the door and his footsteps as she rinsed off dishes in the sink and loaded them into the dishwasher. If she stayed busy, then she could keep it together. Ryan was just someone from her past. She didn’t really know him, and he had nothing to do with her and Alison. She just had to remind herself.

  “Why the hell are you acting this way?” he said. “You’re literally freaking out. It seems every time I ask you something, I see this fear in your face as if you’re afraid of what else I’ll ask. It’s the kind of expression I see from people who are trying to hide something, but I can’t figure out what this big secret is or why it would matter. Does it have something to do with why your daughter is skipping school and avoiding you and is now off on a trail, doing God knows what?”

  Ryan was direct, and he moved into the kitchen, filling space in her home in a way she’d never expected a man to do again. He was watching her, and she was having so much trouble keeping herself together. He was doing that cop thing, trying to figure out what she was thinking. She had to look away. She hadn’t ever expected to see him again, and she needed a minute to find her daughter and sit her down and set some ironclad ground rules.

  “Everyone has secrets, Ryan…and maybe with Alison, this is her way of getting back at me. I don’t know what’s going on with her or why she’s doing what she’s doing. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I’m sure you are, but you didn’t really answer my question. You do that a lot. So why did you leave Atlanta, Jenny? You said you had to, but what exactly does that mean?”

  She shut her eyes, seeing the blood on her hands, her husband in the ER, reliving the moment the doctor had told her he was gone.

  She turned away, back to the sink, and rinsed out the coffee grounds from the carafe. She took her time turning around, bending over, closing up the dishwasher, until she was forced to face him.

  “My husband died,” she said. “I told you that already. And my aunt left me this house. You know, you’re making me feel like a criminal, the way you keep asking questions about me, my life. I’m not sure what that has to do with my daughter. You know what? I’d like to just find her, and then we can go back to being neighbors from afar.”

  He wasn’t smiling, standing on the other side of the island. She didn’t remember his eyes being so blue. His hair was thick, and he was tall, broad shouldered. Nothing about him seemed anything like the clean-cut man she’d been married to. Wren had been tall, dark, and handsome, and so was Ryan, but not as polished.

  “How did your husband die?” he said. He wasn’t going to leave it alone.

  She pulled in a breath. “Gunshot. He bled out. And before you ask me when, it was four months ago. Yes, it shook my daughter up. Of course she’s upset that she lost her father.”

  He nodded. “And you lost your husband.”

  Right. She had to look away.

  “You said he left you a debt, that you lost everything…” He was still fishing, and she leaned against the sink, resting one hand on her hip. Ryan wanted a lot of answers, and he was still standing there. He should have walked out the door and left her. She didn’t understand why he was sticking his nose in her business, asking questions about topics she didn’t want to talk about. “You’re angry at him.”

  She gave him everything. “Of course I’m angry. He hid things from me. Is that what you want me to say? He showed me that he was a different person than I’d thought he was. Are we better off? Absolutely. Has it scarred my daughter? Without a doubt. Does she know everything about her father and the kind of man he was? No. She blames me.” She shrugged.

  Wren had shown only one side to Alison. To her, he had been a hero until the night he wasn’t. Jenny pulled her hand over her face, feeling her heart pounding and having to force his image from her mind.

  “Look, I don’t really want to talk about him,” she said, “because our life here has nothing to do with him. He’s gone, and everything about our life in Atlanta with him is also gone. There’s nothing left other than a few boxes of things and an empty bank account. I had no idea there was no money. Everything was leveraged. Those were words I didn’t even understand. I can honestly tell you, coming here, it was like a gift had landed in my lap, a house from an aunt I barely knew, and it’s mine. For me, it’s a fresh start. Anything else?” She could feel her confidence and took in the way he watched her.

  “Yeah, just one more,” he said. “What happened to you the night you slipped from my bed and left, no note, no nothing?”

  Was he serious? Of course he was. She made herself look him in the eye and not pull her gaze away. “You were a one-night stand,” she said. “Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that night was anything more than it was? You picked me up, I came over, and you took what I was offering. So what? We were both consenting adults. I left before you woke. It had been a slice, but it was time to go. I wasn’t a fool, thinking it was anything else. I didn’t even know your name, not really.”

  Then, three weeks later, she’d met Wren, and nine weeks later, she’d found out she was pregnant. Wren had said it was fine. He’d be Alison’s father. After all, Ryan O’Connell had been nothing more than a mistake one night. She’d had no intention of ever seeing him again, and she had no intention now of him ever finding out that Alison was his.

  Yet here he was in her kitchen, in her house, in her life, and she was feeling guilt over keeping something from him even though he likely wouldn’t have wanted to know.

  “Well, that’s the thing, Jenny. We’ll never know, will we?” he said. Then his phone dinged, and he pulled it from his back pocket, giving everything to the screen.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He exhaled. “It’s Marcus. He’s found Ollie Edwards and is talking with him now. I’m going to head over there, have a word with him too.”

  She was shaking her head. “Well, that’s the thing, Ryan. I’ve had enough of men trying to keep me in the dark, telling me I have my place, thinking I don’t need to know about things when I do. I have a mind. I can figure things out myself. You seem to forget this is my daughter, so if anyone is going to be talking with this Ollie Edwards, it’s going to be me.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Wren would have told her no and left her, and that would’ve been the end of it. There was something she’d never liked about a man telling her what to do, how to feel, how to think. After a while, she had begun to feel herself drowning.

  Ryan walked around the island until he stood right in front of her, looking at her, still trying to figure her out. She wasn’t going to go quietly into the night and be a good girl, as Wren had often told her, as men expected her to be.

  “Jenny, I’m not keeping you in the dark about anything,” he said. “You’re misunderstanding. As you’ve pointed out, how well do we really know each other? So don’t automatically jump to conclusions about what I’m doing. I sense there’s more going on here, and maybe this has to do with whatever went on between you and your husband.”

  What was it about him? As he stood there, doing that alpha thing, she wanted to talk to him, to share with him, willing him to maybe reach over and touch her, but that was a mistake, and she was angry with herself for wanting it.

  “Listen to me, Jenny. I’m not asking you to stay here for any other reason than for yo
u to be here when your daughter walks through that door, which is more than likely what’s going to happen. I also know that with the way you two go at it, maybe you’ll need a referee to keep you from really getting into it and saying something to each other that you won’t be able to take back.”

  “Ryan…”

  He lifted his hand when she tried to interrupt him. “Let me finish, Jenny. You’re right, I don’t know you well, or your daughter, but what I do know is what I see here. She’s angry, and you’re running, hiding. You’ve both suffered a loss you’re trying to make sense of. Don’t think I’m in any way trying to tell you what to do. I’m just trying to solve this quickly. I hope you and your daughter can sit down and iron out whatever your issues are. I’ve seen it before. I’ve lived it. Saw my mom go through much the same thing. Instead of thinking I’m the bad guy, how about just working with me here?”

  She didn’t say anything for a second. Instead, she glanced away. When she felt his hand reach over and touch her shoulder, it was exactly what she hadn’t wanted him to do, but it was a touch that felt way too good. “Okay, fine,” she said and shrugged, and he pulled his hand away. “I’ll stay here, but you’re wrong, you know.”

  Ryan rested both his hands on his waist, above his holstered gun. “About what?” he said. The uniform seemed to only add to how good looking he was.

  She exhaled. “This isn’t about my husband.”

  He said nothing at first, just stepped back and then pulled in a breath. Then he said, “Okay, call me if you hear from her,” and he walked out the door.

  What was it with Ryan O’Connell? Why did he insist on being the good guy, helping her out? She couldn’t help wondering what her life and her daughter’s would’ve been like if she’d walked away from Wren and found Ryan and told him about Alison.

  “Stop it,” she said out loud, once again angry, because there was no point in going down that road of what could have been. Her choice had simply turned out to be the wrong one.