Jack looked shocked. “Sarah, I hadn’t imagined this side of you. To let your sister be punished for your—”
“She wasn’t really punished, she was just scolded. And she started it, anyway, by snapping me with the towel. But about Damien...”
“Well, that I get. I mean the guy’s name was Damien—the evil one from The Omen movies.”
“He was also the speeding one. His younger brother was in my class and had just had to contribute his allowance to help pay Damien’s speeding ticket so his father wouldn’t find out. I really didn’t want Kate to end up in a crash.”
“Did she see it that way?”
“Of course not. She didn’t speak to me for a week. About your sisters,” she asked. “Find anything yet?”
* * *
JACK LIBERALLY SPRINKLED pepper flakes on his pizza. He was trying not to get too down about his search. He’d known it would be difficult when he started, but it would be so encouraging to get one little glimmer of either girl. Girl. They were women now, possibly with families of their own. Considering how their childhood had been, it occurred to him for the first time that they might not have the same interest in finding him as he had in finding them. They’d adored him as little girls, but they might have found worthwhile connections by now and be happy to just forget the past.
“Nothing yet,” he admitted. “I’ve tried every social media I can think of—Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and a few others I’d never heard of till I started searching. I’ve used the phone books with the last place I knew them to be and just can’t make a connection. Tons of Ochoas and Chapmans, but no right combination of middle initials and connected family. Of course, it’s been so long, I can’t claim to know their families. There were no names I recognized.”
“Do you remember their fathers’ first names?”
“I do. I tried that. Corie’s father was Miguel Ochoa, so I tried it and found an obituary for someone by that name in Odessa, Texas, who died fifteen years ago.”
“Could that be him?”
“Possibly. He was living in Mexico when she was sent back to him, but people run back and forth across the border all the time—legally and illegally. Corie’s name wasn’t among the family left behind, though.”
“I’m sorry. Miguel is a pretty common given name in Mexico. And there must be lots of Ochoas. What if Miguel was a middle name?”
He smiled wryly. “Yeah, but if he was Juan or José or Pablo Miguel Ochoa, it isn’t going to help me anyway. I also searched Michael and Mike Ochoa, but found nothing.”
“What about Cassidy’s father?”
“Donald Chapman. Don’t know his middle initial, so I tried to go by age, but the only one I could find that might be appropriate was in Paris, France. That seems unlikely, but who knows? I’ll just keep working on Corie because I’m deeply into it at the moment. They’re out there somewhere. I just have to keep trying.”
After dinner, she took over the cleanup. “I left about twenty dollars’ worth of chicken couscous ingredients on my stove top and kitchen counter,” she complained as she loaded the dishwasher. “When the fire started, I just grabbed my purse and ran. I wish now I’d thought to grab some of the food, but I didn’t think of it. Or the bear.”
“The bear?”
“Jerica’s bear. It was on my bed, but everything was catching fire so quickly, I didn’t think and just ran. When I remembered and tried to get back in, Ben pushed me out again.”
“I should hope so. I’m sure the bear is important to you, but...you’re important to Ben. He wanted you to be safe.”
She acknowledged that with a nod and then turned away from him to look through cupboards. He wasn’t sure why he’d reminded her that Ben cared.
Something about knowing she’d be here every day made her more appealing than ever, and filled him with a fatalistic acceptance of the fact that her presence meant big trouble. Ben cared for her and wanted to work out their relationship issue. Though whether or not to have children was a big issue, and Ben was on the wrong side of it. Then again, so was he.
And he’d thought the Middle East was complicated.
* * *
FOR AN HOUR Jack searched websites while Sarah padded quietly around the kitchen in his socks. Her slender frame swam in his sweatshirt, her small hands working among familiar kitchen things with a grace his eyes kept going back to. He sighed and forced himself to focus on his task. He was vaguely aware of her mixing something in a bowl and then pouring it into a pan that went in the oven.
Ben came home to take her into the living room and question her about the fire. He was gone in twenty minutes.
Sarah eventually came to look over his shoulder, drying her hands on a towel. “Are you finding anything?”
“No.” He closed his laptop and pushed it slightly away from him. Her nearness seemed to make the air crackle. “I’m done for tonight.” Pulling himself together, he made an effort to appear removed from this intimate moment in the kitchen. “Did you call your insurance company?” he asked.
Her eyes registered surprise at the sudden change in him. “I did. They’re investigating. They’ll be in touch.”
“Did you call your landlord?”
“He called me.” She smiled at his questions, apparently deciding the new mood was not a problem for her. “He was apologetic and also investigating. Margaret said you were a great big brother, always looking out for the girls. See, this familial relationship between us could work.”
Yeah. Right. “I’m going to clean up in the carriage house. I left a mess when Ben called me to come and get you.”
She looked slightly off balance again. “I apologize for the disruption to your life.”
He shook his head. “Please. It’s not a disruption. Well, not an unpleasant one, anyway.”
“Thank you. I’m baking blond brownies.” She made a production of hanging the tea towel in her hand on the oven handle. “I know, I know. Not the kind of food I generally eat. But you and Ben do, so... Want me to call you when they’re ready?”
Did he? No. “Yes. Please.”
In the carriage house he worked like a wild man, filled with a new energy he hadn’t experienced since he’d been home. He swept up sawdust, threw odds and ends of molding in a bucket, scrubbed down the shower stall and decided it didn’t have to be replaced, though new doors would be a good idea.
The main room and the bedroom were in good structural shape and he’d replaced a broken window. He looked around and tried to imagine someone living here. It was small, but the fireplace would make it comfortable, and the stylish details his father had added—elegant molding, woodsy light fixture overhead, a window seat in the bedroom—lent it the same turn-of-the-twentieth-century air the main house had. His mother had picked out paint before she and his father had left for Arizona.
Sarah called from the open back door, then wandered in. She looked around the main room, apparently noticing the nice lines visible even with construction clutter all around.
“Wow,” she said, stepping carefully around a tarp-covered vanity that was going in the bathroom. She stopped in front of the stone fireplace he’d cleaned with trisodium phosphate. “This is going to be so elegant,” she said, squatting to study the old filigreed fire screen he’d buffed up.
“There should be flowers in there in the summer,” she said. “Those blue hydrangea from the bushes by the back gate. Then you can put them on the mantel when it’s time to build a fire.” She straightened, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright. She avoided his eyes.
“Did you know,” she went on, wandering around the room, “that you can put hydrangea in water and just let the water evaporate and they’ll dry beautifully?”
“I didn’t know that.” He wasn’t sure he cared, but she seemed to, and as long as she was wandering and talking and avoiding him,
he could continue to watch her move around in his clothes and pretend that their situation was less complicated than it was.
She peered into the bathroom and then headed for the bedroom. It was small and empty, wood debris from the molding he’d replaced in one corner still piled there. “I used to painstakingly hang the flowers upside down, one by one, from a clothesline I’d strung in the bathroom over the tub...” She kept talking as she looked. “And then a nurse friend told me I didn’t have to go to all that trouble. That they’ll dry beautifully all by...them...selves.”
He’d been watching her from the doorway and she turned to come out. It would have been simpler if he’d just moved, but no part of his life had been simple—ever—and he held his ground. She was forced to look at him. Her blue-gray eyes were soft and a little wary in her roses-and-cream face, a few wisps of light brown hair at her forehead and temples. If he ignored the sweatshirt and sleep pants, she looked like a woman from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. He couldn’t stop staring.
“She said...she saw it...on Martha Stewart’s show.”
“Who?”
“My nurse friend.”
“Yeah. What?”
“The flowers.”
“Yeah.”
He wanted to kiss her more than he wanted anything, but he wasn’t sure that she felt the same. The warrior in him wanted to kiss her anyway, but he was trying to put that guy away and live in peace. Peace with Ben. Peace with himself.
He leaned toward her because the moment stretched, her eyes widening a little, her pink lips parting. The tension seemed to heighten his senses and draw his mouth toward hers.
Then it snapped back painfully as a voice shouted from the doorway. “Jack? You still working?”
He straightened away from Sarah at the sound of Ben’s voice. Sarah walked out of the bedroom and stopped in front of Jack to greet Ben.
“Ben!” She spoke with surprise, as though she’d never seen him before. Jack guessed there was a little residual tension in her, too. “Hi. I thought you were working tonight.”
In uniform, Ben always looked like a poster for the perfect cop. His eyes went from Sarah’s face to Jack’s with that incisive gaze that never missed anything. Jack was sure he saw their mutual attraction, if not in Sarah’s eyes, then in his.
Ben arched an eyebrow. The glance that fell on Jack held an element of angry surprise. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
“I am working,” Ben said. “But I asked the fire department to be on the lookout for this and they found it. I’m sorry it’s in bad shape.” He pulled a scorched, foot-long blond teddy bear out from behind his back. One side of it was black, the ear missing, and the rest of it was soaked, one button eye in place.
Sarah took it from him and caught it to her. All she must have felt at the time the little girl died passed through her eyes and she let out a strangled sob. Then she reached up an arm to wrap it around Ben’s neck. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m so happy to have it.”
“Sure. You’re welcome.” Jack caught Ben’s glance over Sarah’s shoulder. His expression was difficult to read. It might have been triumph, but it was possible Jack was just feeling paranoid. “I’ve got to get back to work,” Ben said.
“Your pizza’s in foil in the refrigerator,” Jack heard Sarah tell Ben as she followed him toward the house. “You should take it with you.”
Jack stayed behind, unwilling to get in the way. The hug, he thought, was just gratitude for the mangy bear that was so important to her. She’d thought Ben hadn’t understood her need for it, but he had. When he’d made her leave the burning building, he’d just been doing his job as a cop to keep her safe. Or had it been his job as the man who still loved her?
Great, Jack thought. Now I’m jealous of my brother. Well, that should be grist for an interesting nightmare tonight.
* * *
AND IT WAS, although Ben didn’t figure in it. Jack stood atop the turret, trying to stop Curry’s bleeding, when the woman in white appeared again. From behind the dream, he tried to tell himself that she was his mother, that he should fire in her direction and hope she runs away. But his dream self couldn’t hear him. He drew his weapon but watched her come as he had before, demanding that she stop. But she didn’t.
His little sisters weren’t there this time. Just her. And she kept coming. Then she was on the turret with him and when he struggled with her this time, she tried to take his gun.
He put a foot to her stomach and kicked her ruthlessly off the Humvee. She sailed off with a scream, as though free-falling off a cliff.
He awoke with the shrill sound of it in his ears, his breath coming in rapid gasps, beads of sweat on his face. Then there was absolute silence. No sounds of running feet, no door flying open. No Sarah pinned to the mattress.
Pity. On several counts.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I CALLED MY DRUMMER,” Vinnie announced while Sarah applied a medicated skin cream to an angry dry patch on the sole of his foot. “And found my old guitarist. We’ve decided to do a Sinatra medley.”
“Everyone loves Sinatra.” She worked the residue of cream into her fingers and capped the container. “That should make you very popular with the romantics in the audience.”
“Margaret’s doing ‘Among My Souvenirs,’” he confided, his tone suggesting a complete lack of interest. Odd, she thought, since he’d brought it up.
“How do you know that? I thought the two of you don’t speak.”
“Her friend June Wheeler is friends with Jasper. He told me.”
“Hmm. She’s good. Probably be stiff competition for you.”
“Nah. We’re better. The girls used to swoon over us in the old days.” He laughed. “I can’t imagine forty years have made that much difference. So I’m two inches shorter and my hair’s white instead of black. So’s hers and it’s sprayed so hard you could wear it into battle.”
Sarah stifled a laugh. It was true. Though a wonderful woman, Margaret could use a little loosening up.
“Be nice. She’s a lady, and you can be a little much sometimes.”
He rolled his eyes. “She thinks she’s better than everybody else.”
She put his white cotton sock back on and handed him his shoe. “No, she doesn’t. She’s just reserved.”
“Stuffy, you mean.”
As much as she wanted to see her favorite clients become friends again, Sarah had to agree that was true. She washed her hands at the counter and started Vinny’s breakfast.
“What’s on the menu?” he asked, tugging on the Velcro strap on his shoe.
“Omelet with green onions and turkey sausage.” She smirked at him over her shoulder. “Can you eat that, or would you see eating turkey as cannibalism?”
He opened his mouth to reply, then, realizing he was being teased, made a face at her. “Is harassing your clients part of your job description?”
“Come on, this has to be fun for me, too. Grated cheddar or Swiss?”
“Swiss. This conversation is full of holes, anyway.”
* * *
MARGARET DIDN’T WANT to talk about Vinny.
“I just asked,” Sarah said, slicing the raspberry-cream-cheese coffee cake she’d brought, “because you’re doing that Sinatra number for the show, and I know Vinny and his band will be doing a Sinatra medley. Would you rather be scheduled before him to make a big impression or after him so that your performance will linger in the judge’s mind?”
Margaret studied her suspiciously, her helmet of hair catching Sarah’s attention. “It isn’t like you to show preference to one client over another. You’re doing this to try to make me sing with him, aren’t you? It won’t work, Sarah. We hate each other. Why are you looking at my hair?” She put a hand up to it, patting it, checking for disorder.
Sara
h shrugged, carrying coffee to the bar. “I just think it would be very elegant to have an entry that was a throwback to the forties. You know. The big band era with heart-tugging music from a handsome band with a beautiful chanteuse at the microphone. We’d have to put a little movement into your hair, so that it gleams under the lights.”
The elderly woman looked embarrassed. “Please. Beautiful? Gleaming hair? I’m way past all that.”
Sarah sat opposite her and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Is a woman ever past all that? Is a man ever past noticing that she’s still got it?”
Margaret frowned. “I haven’t got it. I never had it.”
“Margaret, you do.”
* * *
AT JASPER’S PLACE, Sarah did a load of laundry and folded sheets before making lunch. Jasper played a reading of Walt Whitman he’d gotten at the library. “Did you know he had a romantic side?” he asked, stopping the disc. “We love him for his patriotic works and his Americana, but he wrote love poems, too.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Does that mean you have a romantic side, too, Jasper?”
“No, it means I happened upon his by accident. I had the love of my life as a young man and now I’m just...a student of the world, I guess.”
Sarah dropped the sheet into a plastic basket. “What happened to her?”
“She left,” he said without offering further explanation. Sarah smiled at the thought that he didn’t know her very well if he thought she’d settle for that answer.
“When?” she asked. “After your accident?”
“Yes. She was wild and free and I loved that about her. So when I could feel the change in her, I told her she could go.”
“If she went—” Sarah carried the basket to his bedroom, then came back “—she wasn’t the love of your life. If she was, she’d still be here.”
He hunched a shoulder. “I guess there are times when someone can be the love of your life, but you’re not the love of theirs. I couldn’t see the things she saw, we couldn’t talk about them in that way, remember them, let them be part of a shared experience. I was out of the equation. And that diminished life for her.” He smiled a little self-consciously, admitting, “Then, of course, there was the confinement of having my hand on her arm all the time so she could guide me, the limiting of our world a little bit.”
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