Rush-hour traffic oozed through the tranquil streets of town. Much as Emmie wished she were home, she didn’t mind driving slowly, especially at this time of year, when daffodils and goldenrod lined the roads with a yellow as bright as sunshine and rhododendrons looked as if someone had splashed shocking-pink paint all over their leathery leaves. Her car lacked air-conditioning, but that was all right. She liked driving with her window down, smelling the season in the air. Springtime seemed more precious here in New England, since it inevitably followed a long, dreary winter.
It took her twenty minutes to cover the three miles from downtown Wilborough to her block. She waved at Glenn Drinan as he steered onto the driveway across the street from her house, then braked when she noticed the unfamiliar car parked in front of the Drinan house, blocking her normal swing and requiring her to make a tighter turn into her own driveway. She was touched that Claire had thought to leave the garage open for her. If she ever had real money, she would install one of those remote-control garage-door openers. After she bought a house, of course.
The garage was dark and cool, filled with the tart scent of fertilizer. How could the bank turn her down when she took such good care of this place? Most home owners wouldn’t have bothered to fertilize the lawn. They’d tell the landlord to take care of it, or hire a service. But she’d assured her landlord she would maintain the property, and he in turn kept her rent low.
She loved this house. She’d made it her home. She didn’t want to move.
She felt the sting of a few fresh tears and quickly batted her eyes. She didn’t want Jeffrey to see her upset. She’d have to put a cheerful spin on the news that he would be moving away from the only home he could remember, away from Claire, away from Adam Kessler, his very best friend in the whole wide world.
Once she was certain she wasn’t going to start crying, she got out of the car, pulled her briefcase from the backseat and stepped out of the garage, figuring Jeffrey had to be outside on such a gorgeous afternoon. She didn’t hear him, though. Maybe he and Adam were busy plotting some pirate activity in the backyard—when she couldn’t take him to the playground, Jeffrey improvised, pretending the redwood picnic table on the patio was his pirate ship.
She started toward the rear of the house, but a movement in the distance teased her attention. Glancing toward the street, she saw a man emerge from the car parked in front of the Drinan house. She turned away, then hesitated and turned back again.
The man was crossing the street toward her. He moved with a loping gait, his shoulders loose, one arm swinging at his side and the other bent, his fingers hooking the collar of a jacket slung over his shoulder. He wore khakis and a crisp blue shirt, open at the collar—a nondescript outfit.
But he wasn’t a nondescript man. His hair was blacker than ink, his skin a tawny bronze, his eyes almost as dark as his hair. She knew his face as well as she knew his lanky build, his easy stride, the defiant angle of his chin and the set of his mouth.
Michael Molina.
Momentarily her mind went blank. When it resumed functioning he was several steps closer, his long legs devouring the distance between them.
Michael Molina.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to grab Jeffrey, lock him in the house and barricade the door.
If there was anything she didn’t want, it was Michael Molina walking across the street and back into her life.
He was on her driveway now, just six strides away from her, five, four. He stopped at three—and thank God for that, because if he’d kept approaching she definitely would have flinched or fled for her life.
“Emmie,” he murmured.
She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. She had nothing to say to him, nothing she could say without feeling wretched afterward.
He drew closer. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Tell him to leave, she ordered herself. Tell him you hate his guts and wish him a life of misery followed by a painful death, and then tell him to get off your property. He doesn’t have to know you don’t own it. Tell him to leave or you’ll have him arrested for trespassing.
“I started searching for you more than a year ago,” he continued, evidently viewing her silence as permission to continue talking. “I finally hired a detective.”
“Oh.” Oh? That was the best she could do? A man who had all but ruined her life, except for her uncanny ability to find triumph in the ruins—and he’d hired a detective and tracked her down and all she could say, in a rusty, half-choked voice, was “Oh.”
“Can we talk?” His words were soft, lulling. Obviously he could talk just fine. She was the one reduced to grunting.
She would have to try harder. In San Pablo she’d never had any difficulty speaking her mind with him. She’d just have to do it now. “No,” she said. “We can’t talk.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“I haven’t missed you.” More tears beaded in her eyes. She told herself they were caused by the angle of the sun and her defeat in Ronald Petit’s office at the bank, but these were different tears. These were tears of long-buried anger and pain, tears of a woman who’d had her heart broken, tears of panic and dread at the sight of the man who had broken it invading her life all over again. “Please go away,” she whispered, wishing she sounded strong and forceful instead of teetering on the edge of despair.
Unable to look at him, unable to let him see the dampness in her eyes, she took a step toward the front walk. He reached out and caught her arm in his hand. She felt his fingers on her, warm and strong, and that made her hate him even more.
He urged her around to face him, his hand tightening on her wrist. He was too close to her, his eyes so dark and potent his gaze felt like a caress, like a slap.
“I saw the boy,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
SOMETHING LOCKED TIGHT inside her, a bolt sliding into place in her soul. Michael Molina would not gain entrance to where she and Jeffrey lived. He would not be allowed in.
She stared at him, his posture straight without being rigid, his height imposing even though he wasn’t extraordinarily tall, his angular features edged in gold by the slope of the fading sunlight. She remembered the first time she’d glimpsed him in the village square in San Pablo five years ago, the flutter she’d felt along her nerve endings at the sight of such a strikingly handsome man. Nothing about Michael’s appearance had been polished, nothing perfect; yet his face had come together beautifully—the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the sharp line of his nose, the slight hollows beneath his cheekbones, the sun-bronzed glow of his complexion. And his lean physique had reminded her of a cougar’s, fleet and graceful.
He was just as handsome now as he’d been then. His eyes were just as mysterious, taking in much more than they gave away. She knew his eyes, because she saw them every time she gazed into Jeffrey’s face, every time she greeted her little boy in the morning and tucked him into bed at night.
Michael wasn’t going to learn why she saw his eyes in her son’s face. Michael had no rights where Jeffrey was concerned. He had abandoned Emmie, and abandoning her meant abandoning any claim to the life she’d created since his departure.
Saying so flat out was impossible. She was too angry to find the right words, too afraid to force them out—and too aware of his fingers wrapped around her wrist to think clearly. His hand wasn’t hot, yet it sent a burning sensation into her skin and up her arm. She wished he would let go so she could race into the house and shut the door.
“Is he mine?” he asked.
“No.” She could say that without lying. Contributing sperm didn’t make a man a father. Jeffrey, wasn’t Michael’s, and he never would be.
“He looks like me.”
“He looks like a lot of people.” She tried to ease her arm out of Michael’s grasp without seeming too obvious. He didn’t release her, though, and she couldn’t free herself without jerking her hand so violently he would realize how upset she was.
“What’s his name?”
“I want you to leave,” she said steadily, holding her fear at bay and staring directly into Michael’s eyes. “We have nothing to say to each other. Please go.”
Michael ignored her request. “How old is he?”
“Go away, Michael. You don’t belong here.” She lowered her gaze pointedly to her wrist trapped within his hand. Sighing, he loosened his grip.
Oddly enough, she found it impossible to move away from him, even after he was no longer holding her. She smelled the familiar scent of his soap, a spicy, woodsy fragrance that caused a spasm of nostalgia to grip her. He’d used that soap in San Pablo. He’d always smelled so clean, even in the muggy, buggy heat.
She told herself she no longer liked his fresh fragrance. She no longer liked his long legs, his black hair. His soul was blacker, and she despised it. She despised everything about him.
“I’m sorry about what happened in San Pablo,” he said.
He sounded earnest. But she knew better than to believe him. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it matters. I’ve been looking for you for more than a year.”
“Then you wasted a year.” She heard as much sorrow as rage in her tone. “We’ve both gone on to other things. And now I’d like to go on to my house—” the house that, soon enough, would no longer be hers “—and my son—” the son who would always, always, be hers. Neither the decisions of bank mortgage officers nor the sudden appearance of Michael Molina would ever change that.
Somehow she found the will to turn from Michael, to stride up the front walk, enter her house and close the door without slamming it. She didn’t dare to peek through the window in the door to see if Michael was loitering in her driveway. Even if he wasn’t gone, she wanted to assume that he was.
“Jeffrey?” she called into the quiet living room.
Claire emerged from the kitchen, brisk and bouncy in her athletic apparel and tennis shoes. “Adam came over to play,” she reported. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Of course not.” Emmie walked down the hall that bordered the living room and led to the kitchen at the rear of the house.
“They’re in Jeffrey’s room,” Claire continued, following Emmie back into the kitchen but hovering in the doorway as Emmie tossed her tote bag onto the table and slouched against a counter. “They were playing outdoors, but...there was this man.”
Emmie raised her eyes to Claire.
“He asked for you. At first he said you could contact him at the Holiday Inn, but then he decided not to leave. He just stayed out there, staring at the house and waiting for you. It was kind of spooky, so I made the boys come inside.”
Emmie nodded, reached for her briefcase and rummaged in it for her wallet. “I spoke to him. I think he’ll leave now.” He’d better leave, she added silently. He had to leave.
“He said he was an old friend of yours. He’s way handsome. It was weird—he looked kind of like Jeffrey. His eyes were so intense, the way Jeffrey’s get sometimes. I wrote down the guy’s name.” She handed Emmie the message pad, which said “Michael Molina—Holiday Inn” on it.
“He’s an old acquaintance, not a friend.” Emmie tore the top sheet from the pad and tossed the sheet into the garbage pail. Then she pulled a ten-dollar bill out of her wallet to cover the two hours Claire had stayed with Jeffrey. “I appreciate your coming on such short notice, Claire—and bringing the boys inside when that man showed up. It was the right thing to do.”
Claire accepted the money with a grateful smile. “Well, it’s not that I thought there was anything wrong with him. It was just, like, his eyes. And he didn’t want to leave, you know?”
“I know.” He didn’t want to leave because he’d seen Jeffrey’s face, noticed the resemblance and decided to make a big deal out of it. The hell with him. If seeing Jeffrey was racking him with guilt over what he might have left behind when he’d fled from San Pablo, that was his problem, not Emmie’s.
Emmie’s problem was much more immediate: finding housing she could afford for Jeffrey and her. The last thing she needed was Michael Molina and his unforgivably belated explanations.
Claire observed her thoughtfully. “I can walk Adam home if you want,” she offered.
Emmie managed a weak smile. “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” A hint of her drawl slipped into her voice. It always did when she was weary, and right now she felt as drained as a punctured balloon. She hated for anyone to see her so deflated, and she forced some spirit into her smile. “I’ll go get Adam,” she said, turning and heading down the hall to Jeffrey’s bedroom.
She heard the boys’ giggles through the closed door. After knocking, she eased it open. They were engaged in a battle with Jeffrey’s plastic dinosaurs. He had a stegosaurus and an allosaurus in his fists; Adam was armed with a triceratops and an ankylosaurus. The landscape was littered with waffle blocks and the pillows from Jeffrey’s bed were on the floor, but the boys were both laughing too hard to wage a war with any effectiveness.
She allowed herself a moment to watch them. Jeffrey’s room was raucous with color. His rumpled bedspread was bright red, and above it hung a multicolored felt picture of Noah’s ark, the animals fastened to the boat with Velcro so Jeffrey could rearrange them. The bureau had a white frame and drawers of red, blue and green; Emmie had bought it and the bookshelf at the Salvation Army store, sanded off the scratched veneers and refinished them in bright colors. The footlocker where she stored Jeffrey’s winter sweaters and linens she’d found in the recycling area of the town dump; she’d whitewashed it and painted vibrant-colored balloons over the white background.
The room was wonderful, as exuberant as the boy who lived in it. The shelves were crammed with all Jeffrey’s essential stuff: toy construction trucks; a bucket of Legos; assorted Matchbox cars; his stuffed bears, Teddy and Frumpy; Candy Land; Checkers; half a dozen other plastic dinosaurs; and books. Lots of books. Picture books and alphabet books and a few simple storybooks he could already read by himself, and the books she read to him at night before bed. She and Jeffrey were halfway through Winnie-the-Pooh, and it lay on the top shelf, a bookmark protruding from its pages.
She couldn’t bear the thought of having to pack up all Jeffrey’s things and move them to some other bedroom in another house. Would another bedroom let in so much afternoon sun? Would another bedroom occupy a corner, with windows on two walls, so the room would cool down at night in the cross-ventilation, the breezes lulling her little boy to sleep? Would she ever find a house with a room Jeffrey would fit into so perfectly?
“Adam has to go home now,” she told the boys. “Please clean up the floor.”
“Can he stay for supper?” Jeffrey asked, his eyes large and pleading.
Emmie pursed her lips. She’d scolded him about inviting friends over for meals and sleepovers without first checking with her. Tonight was definitely not a good time to have a guest for dinner, even if dinner was going to be nothing more elaborate than macaroni and cheese. She was strung too tight, ready to snap. “I’m sorry,” she said, exerting herself to remain calm, “but he can’t.”
“Well, but we had a plan,” Jeffrey said, his hands still curled around his dinosaurs. “We thought we could have a picnic—”
“We could eat outside,” Adam elaborated.
“On account of the monster—”
“What monster?” she asked.
“The one outside.”
A picture of Michael materialized unbidden in her mind. Was he the monster? Had he frightened the boys? Had he spoken to them? Dear Lord, had he told Jeffrey who he was?
“He’s got poker-dot hair,” Jeffrey continued, “and he lives in the crab-apple tree.”
“We were gonna feed him some food,” Adam explained. “From our supper. We were gonna share it cuz sharing is good.”
Emmie was relieved to learn the monster was only a polka-dot-haired denizen of the crab-apple tree. Better that than the man who had wreaked havoc with
her life once, and could do it again simply by pressing her for information about Jeffrey.
“I’m afraid the monster will have to go hungry tonight,” she told the boys. “Or he can eat crab apples.”
“There’s no crab apples,” Jeffrey reminded her.
“Only flowers.”
“Then he’ll eat those. Anyway, monsters mostly eat little boys who refuse to clean up their messes. So what do you say, boys? How about picking up all those blocks?”
The boys conceded, looking only mildly disappointed. She suspected Jeffrey had known all along she would say no to his plan to have Adam stay for dinner, if for no other reason than he hadn’t cleared it with her first. The boys bent to the task of gathering up the blocks, and she herself pitched in and scooped up a few. She didn’t want to make Claire wait, and besides, she wanted everyone out of the house, everyone but her and Jeffrey.
She needed some peace and quiet. But even after Claire and Adam were gone—and Michael, too, she noticed when she waved off the baby-sitter and Jeffrey’s friend—she could not quell her agitation.
Michael was gone, but not really. She felt his presence even in his absence. She felt his nearness like a shadow, just beyond her peripheral vision, hovering. It chilled her to the depths of her heart.
She honestly felt she could have handled losing her home. Not happily, not willingly, but she could have found a silver lining in that cloud, a positive outcome to that calamity. Perhaps she could move to a rental unit in a condominium complex that had a pool. Then Jeffrey could go swimming every day in the summer, and there might be more friends to play with, friends whose homes he could walk to by himself. Perhaps the utilities would be cheaper in a smaller place. Perhaps the shopping would be more convenient.
So what if it wouldn’t have a crab-apple tree with a monster dwelling in its branches? She could deal with moving from this house. She’d dealt with worse.
Found: One Son Page 3
