Expectations

by Brenda Novak

  Russ answered on the first ring.

  “You’re up early, Russ,” she said. “Any particular reason?”

  “Certainly not to talk to you.”

  “What’s the matter? Were you expecting Dennis?”

  Silence answered her question, and Jenna feared Russ would hang up. “Look,” she said, hoping to forestall him, “I’m not out to get Dennis. I know you don’t believe that, but if you don’t help us, your brother’s going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  “What makes you think you’re any better a parent for Ryan than my brother is? My ex pulled the same shit with me—”

  “This is different. You know that, Russ. And it’s not going to help anybody to fight our old battles again. I’m here with the police right now. Dennis just set fire to his car and abandoned it. He must be looking for some money or another car.” She paused. “I think you know what he’s up to.”

  “That’s bull. I haven’t heard from him.”

  Jenna squeezed her eyes shut and prayed she could get through to Russ. He was her only hope. “Too bad,” she said, “because the police know he couldn’t have left the car more than an hour ago, which means he isn’t far. They’re going to find him, and when they do, he’s going to jail.”

  “For taking his own son?”

  “It’s kidnapping, plain and simple. Dennis doesn’t have the legal right to take Ryan across the street, let alone out of the state. He lost that right when he broke my arm.” Not knowing how much Russ had heard about the physical abuse Dennis had inflicted, or how much he was willing to believe, she let that sink in, then offered her ex-brother-in-law a bone. “But I’ll make you a deal, Russ. If you help Adam and me, if you tell us where they are, we’ll intercept them. We’ll take Ryan and leave Dennis alone. Without Ryan, Dennis can slip away. I doubt the police will bother to keep searching for him.”

  Adam squeezed her arm. “Jen—”

  Jenna waved him to silence.

  “And how do I know you’ll keep your word? Just last week you had Dennis put in jail,” Russ said.

  “You’ll have to trust me. My way is Dennis’s only chance.”

  Russ Livingston sat on the other side of the phone for almost a full minute without speaking. Jenna could hear his steady breathing, felt him weakening, prayed he would give way altogether.

  “Russ, please,” she pleaded, ignoring Adam’s frown. “Do it for Ryan. Help me get him home safely. Then see what you can do for your brother. He needs to go into detox.”

  “I know.” Russ groaned. “Okay, okay, dammit. Dennis called not more than fifteen minutes ago. He’s at the bus station in Roseburg waiting for me to wire him the money for two bus tickets to Indiana. There, are you happy now?”

  “Not yet, but if I find Ryan I will be. And I’ll keep my word, Russ, I promise you that. Just get Dennis into detox.”

  She disconnected and stared up at Adam. She knew he didn’t agree with what she’d just done. If she were Adam, she’d probably feel the same way. “I know where they are,” she said hesitantly.

  “Jenna, you promised Russ you’d let Dennis go. He’s broken the law. We can’t do that.”

  Jenna searched Adam’s eyes, hoping he’d understand why she’d done what she had. How could she explain the unique blend of nostalgia, pity and guilt she felt toward Dennis? “I’m angry with Dennis, just like you are. But he’s still Ryan’s dad. He’ll always be Ryan’s dad, and that makes me want to do what’s best for him.”

  “You feel partly responsible for why he is the way he is.”

  “I’ve admitted that to you before.”

  “And I’m saying that’s crap. It’s also a hell of a reason to let someone escape justice.”

  “Do you think going to jail will help Dennis?”

  “It might teach him to obey the law.”

  “It didn’t do him any good the last time.” She paused. “What Dennis needs is to get some counseling, Adam. His alcoholism is at the bottom of everything. I’m sure that in your line of work you’ve seen what prison can do to a man, how rarely it changes behavior. Is that really where Dennis belongs? You grew up with him, too. You know he’s a weak person but not really a bad one.”

  Adam sighed and his expression softened. “I remember riding bikes with Dennis when we were kids. He had a gap-toothed smile for most of fourth grade, always wore a 49ers baseball cap and chewed an entire pack of gum at the same time.” Adam took Jenna’s hand and gazed down at it, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it. He was busy remembering. “The same details could have been used to describe me at that age.”

  “We’ve all been through a lot since then.”

  “I know. Maybe you’re right. Dennis needs a different kind of help than he’d get from the judicial system.”

  Jenna smiled and brushed a quick kiss across his lips because it was the most natural thing in the world to do, and started running to the car. “Let’s go get my boy.”

  THE BUS STATION smelled of cigarettes and stale sweat. Adam scrutinized the tired faces in the old building, the ones bloated from alcohol, the eyes that glittered through the smoke of an endless chain of cigarettes, the bewhiskered vagrants who loitered at the entrance, the nervous mothers struggling to control small children. But he saw no sign of Dennis.

  Her fingers laced through his, Jenna walked beside him through the large echoing lobby with its high ceilings and dirty tile floor. She gripped his hand with the same fear and nervousness he’d sensed in her since Ryan’s disappearance, but this time he felt something more in her touch, a kind of confidence that had not been there before.

  He could sense the subtle change in the way she looked at him, too. He found it strange that he’d never felt happier at the prospect of getting so close to a woman. In every other relationship he’d reached a point where he became uncomfortable and unsettled and wanted to back off. Why things were different with Jenna he didn’t know. He was just glad they were. Maybe now he could have the family he’d always wanted and experience the type of commitment other men did.

  “There!”

  An announcement over the loudspeaker, about the departure of a bus heading to Las Vegas, nearly drowned out Jenna’s voice, but her hand tightened in his, and Adam knew instantly that she saw Dennis or Ryan or both. His eyes flickered over the rows of chairs that faced nothing more interesting than a beige wall with vending machines, until he, too, spotted Dennis. Jenna’s ex-husband sat slouched in a chair, his mouth gaping open as he slept.

  But there was no sign of Ryan.

  “Damn.” Adam let go of Jenna to reach Dennis in a series of long strides. Grabbing the other man by his stained and wrinkled shirtfront, he hauled him out of his chair without giving him a chance to wake up first.

  “Where is he?” he ground out.

  Dennis blinked in bewilderment, then his face reddened as recognition dawned. He started to struggle and tried to take a swing at Adam, but Adam neatly blocked the blow and twisted Dennis’s arm behind his back. “If it’s a fight you want, I’ll be happy to give you one, but first I need to know where Ryan is.”

  Jenna had had to run to keep up with Adam. She stood staring at the two of them with both fear and hope shining in her eyes, but did nothing to intervene.

  Dennis cursed. “I don’t have him! Let me go!”

  Adam tried to keep his voice from attracting any more attention than his actions already had. “And where would you go, Dennis? I’m the one with the money you need to get on the next bus. You tell me where Ryan is, and I’ll give you the money before the police get here to haul you off to jail.”

  Dennis’s eyes darted around as they scanned the lobby. “He was here. I don’t know where he went.”

  “Are you sure?” Adam shoved his arm higher up his back, causing Dennis to curse again.

  “I swear it. Where else would he be?”

  Mumbling Ryan’s name like a prayer, Jenna turned in circles, searching the lobby. Suddenly she stopped and her eyes went wide as she gazed at a cir
cular bank of pay phones. Following her gaze, Adam saw the jeans and tennis shoes of a small boy extending below the pedestal on the far side.

  “Ryan!” Jenna called his name and closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds.

  Hearing his mother’s voice, Ryan ducked around the pay phones and ran to meet her. “Mom! How did you get here so fast? I was just trying to call you.”

  Cautiously Adam freed Dennis, half expecting him to run away, but he didn’t. They stood and watched a laughing Jenna swing her son up into her arms. She staggered beneath the boy’s weight, but didn’t let him down until the two of them had kissed and hugged and cried together.

  “You’re safe,” Jenna said. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” Ryan said.

  “I would never have stopped searching for you, you know that, Ryan? Never,” Jenna told him.

  The boy nodded. “You just seemed so far away. Hey, that’s Adam!”

  When Jenna finally let him go, Ryan raced over to Adam, who hunkered down and returned the boy’s fierce hug.

  “Hey, Ryan,” Adam murmured. “Are you okay?”

  “I am now. I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Take him, then!” Dennis snapped. “I don’t want him, anyway. Jenna’s poisoned him against me, just like she’ll try to do to the baby. But when I get my life together, I’ll be able to get partial custody of both my kids.”

  Noting the sudden chalkiness of Jenna’s complexion, Adam slowly released Ryan. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know all about the baby. Ryan told me.”

  “But the baby isn’t yours,” Adam said. “You have no right—”

  Dennis turned on him, a triumphant gleam in his eye. “Oh, yeah? How do you know it’s not mine? Jenna and me, we had a grand time together, a right memorable occasion. What’s it been, three months or so, honey?”

  The way Dennis’s hooded eyes moved to take in Jenna’s body made Adam’s hand flex into a fist. “Be careful,” he warned. “I don’t want to hit you in front of Ryan, but I won’t allow you to talk about Jenna like that again.”

  “Adam.” Jenna covered his right fist with her hand, keeping it at his side, and something about the look on her face told him the truth. There had been no one-night stand, no stranger capable of sweeping Jenna away into unspeakable passion. She’d lied to him. Jenna had slept with her ex-husband three months after the divorce, and it was he who had fathered her baby.

  “A paternity test should prove it easily enough, if you want to push it that far.” Dennis smiled. “Or maybe we can strike a deal.”

  Adam studied his old buddy, wondering what had induced Jenna to be intimate with him again. A weak moment? Loneliness? The hope of keeping her family together? “What kind of deal?”

  “You were offering a $25,000 reward for Ryan’s safe return. I don’t think that’s too much to ask in exchange for both my kids.”

  “No! Dennis, please!” Jenna put out a beseeching hand, visibly shaken that her ex-husband could put a price on his own children.

  “You heard me, rich boy,” Dennis said to Adam, ignoring Jenna altogether. “You give me the money and I’ll leave the two of you and the kids alone.”

  Jenna’s brows drew together as she worried her lip. “Dennis, you could go to jail for kidnapping. Adam doesn’t have to give you anything—”

  “Jenna, would you please take Ryan to get a candy bar out of the machines over there?” Adam turned to her, willing her to trust him. If for no other reason, he hoped she’d comply with his suggestion because no son should have to hear what Dennis was saying.

  “Adam, don’t. This isn’t your problem,” Jenna hissed, but she finally took Ryan’s hand and led him away.

  When they were out of earshot, Adam said, “If you want something like this, Dennis, you’re going to sign papers that will permanently relinquish your rights to both children.”

  Dennis paused and something flickered in his eyes that said his show of nonchalance wasn’t as easy as he made it look. Pride was doing his talking now, along with an innate sense of survival. But Adam knew there would be times throughout his life, probably many of them, when Dennis would regret this moment.

  Finally he shrugged. “Why not? I might as well get something.”

  “Then I’ll buy you a ticket to Portland. Your brother’s expecting you. When I get back to San Francisco, I’ll have adoption papers drawn up so that all Jenna has to do, if she ever marries again, is fill in the blanks.”

  Dennis laughed. “Who’re you kiddin’, Adam? You want the name in those blanks to be yours. I’ve never been able to compete with you, and I can’t now.”

  “The ironic thing is that until you started drinking, you’d already won.”

  Dennis glanced at Jenna and Ryan and rubbed the whiskers on his cheek. “Just take good care of ’em, okay?”

  Adam watched Jenna bend closer to her son, pointing to something in the vending machine. “I will,” he promised. “And when I receive the papers back, properly signed and notarized, you’ll get your money.”

  Dennis nodded, and with that, Adam handed him two hundred dollars, gathered Jenna and Ryan, and walked away.

  AFTER STOPPING at a fast-food restaurant and ordering Ryan enough breakfast to feed three grown men, Jenna drove them back to Mendocino so Adam could sleep. Although she wondered how he could rest while holding a wriggling eight-year-old on his lap in the cramped space of the Mercedes, he seemed to be having no trouble.

  Adam had phoned his grandmother as soon as they’d left the bus station to tell her they had Ryan back safe and sound. But Ryan wanted to call her now just to talk and, Jenna suspected, to play with Adam’s cell phone. Knowing Adam wouldn’t mind and not wanting to wake him to ask, she gave her son permission, as long as he kept his conversation brief. She smiled at the warmth in Ryan’s voice when Gram answered the phone.

  “I’m okay. It wasn’t so bad,” she heard him say. “Yeah, it’s all over now and I’m on my way home…No, my dad wouldn’t dare try that, not with Adam around.”

  The pride in her son’s voice emphasized how important Adam had become to him. Jenna leaned forward to see around Ryan, wondering if Adam had noticed, but his eyes were still closed, his head propped against a bunched-up coat. Even with his hair tousled and dark beard shadowing the lower half of his face, Jenna thought she’d never seen a more handsome man. Nor had she met a finer one. His strength and resourcefulness in the face of her desolation over the past two days had convinced her it was hopeless to barricade her emotions against him. He knew every path, every angle, possessed all the keys to her heart. He had from the beginning.

  But ever since Dennis had blurted out the truth about the baby, Adam had seemed remote. Jenna longed to explain to him why she’d said what she had about the baby’s father, but they couldn’t talk in front of Ryan. So she contented herself with the hope that they’d have some time together once they reached the Victoriana.

  “That’s enough now,” Jenna cautioned when Ryan had had a chance to talk to Pop after his conversation with Gram. “Every minute costs money, and we don’t want to take advantage.”

  Reluctantly Ryan said goodbye and hung up, then leaned over and nuzzled her shoulder. Putting her arm around her son, Jenna kissed the top of his head. “I’m so glad to have you back,” she whispered.

  He grinned up at her. “Does that mean I don’t have to make my bed every day?”

  “Only if you want to make mine and Gram’s and Pop’s, instead, and eat spinach every night for dinner.”

  As her son heartily, and wisely, rejected this less than even trade, Adam shifted. Jenna wished he’d awake and reach across to take her hand, but after moving Ryan to his other knee, he settled again and slept until she drove into the Victoriana’s parking lot.

  “We’re here,” she announced, touching Adam’s arm.

  Adam blinked awake, but when he met her eyes, he didn’t smile, and Jenna again w
ished she could talk to him about the baby. He helped Ryan climb out to meet Gram and Pop, who were already standing on the front porch waiting for them. Then, with a yawn and a stretch, he got out of the car and headed across the lawn, too. Jenna collected the wrappers from Ryan’s meal and followed.

  Gram and Pop hugged Ryan and told him how happy they were to have him back. Then Pop surprised them all by turning to Adam. “It’s good to see you again, son,” he said gruffly, and gave him an awkward embrace.

  As if embarrassed by this uncharacteristic display of emotion, Pop immediately retreated into the house, but Gram gave Adam a radiant smile. “This terrible experience with Ryan has taught us a thing or two,” she admitted.

  Adam gaped at her. “Like what?”

  “Like how devastating it would be if something happened to you. You’ve been our baby, our own son since your mother died. We’ve been wrong to chase you away with guilt.”

  Feeling as if she was eavesdropping on a private conversation, Jenna edged away. She wanted to go inside so she could leave the two of them alone, but Gram’s portly body blocked the entrance.

  Adam ran a hand through his unruly hair. “Maybe I feel guilty because I should. You’re my only family. I should probably have stayed and taken care of you.”

  “Nonsense! We’ve always known you’d take care of us if we really needed you. You merely wanted to build a life that was different from the one we envisioned for you. And we didn’t want to let you go.”

  Adam shook his head. “I keep telling everyone that San Francisco is only a couple of hours away. You’ve visited me a few times—come more often. It’s not like I live in France.”

  “Speaking of San Francisco,” Gram said. “That partner of yours has called and called. He says he needs to talk to you as soon as possible. You should go in and phone him.”

  Adam sighed. “I know. He’s been trying to reach me on my car phone every few hours, but I have caller ID and haven’t been answering. I’m not ready to talk to him yet, but I’ve got to get back. I left things in a mess. I just came up to say goodbye.”