She looked at Claudie. “You did a fine job raising that little girl.”
Claudie blinked fiercely, the pain behind her eyes unbearable. Her throat ached with unshed tears. Bo pulled her to his chest and comforted her until the dry silent sobs passed.
“I’d like to see her before I go,” Claudie said, her voice low and husky.
“How ’bout you all come for supper tonight?” Dottie suggested.
Claudie shook her head. “No. We’re leaving tonight.”
Garret spoke. “Sherry gets out of class at three-fifteen. I’ll call the school and give them a message to tell her you’ll be waiting by the track. Would that be better?”
Claudie nodded. She faced the man who had been her father. There was more to say, but she didn’t have the words. “Goodbye.”
He put out his hand but stopped short of touching her. “Thank you for coming, Claudie. Now I can meet my maker in peace.”
Claudie turned away. Bo’s hand never left her back; he paused when she did. She looked over her shoulder. “I can give you Zach’s and Yancy’s addresses if you want them. I guess you know where Val lives.”
Garret gave his wife a look that seemed so full of joy it made Claudie flinch.
Sniffling, Dottie answered. “We’d like that very much. You can give them to Sherry when you see her.”
Claudie started to leave, but Dottie gave a small cry and—almost as if she couldn’t stop herself—barreled across the short distance to envelop Claudie in a hug. Repelled, yet somehow also comforted by the motherly gesture, Claudie gave Bo a helpless look. He put a hand on Dottie’s shoulder and she backed away apologetically. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t contain myself. You truly are the answer to our prayers and you’re so much more wonderful than I ever dreamed. I see your mother’s spirit in you. From what Garret’s told me, Peggy was a beautiful woman who loved too dearly.”
Claudie looked from Dottie to Garret. “I have to go,” she said flatly. Her anger was gone, but so was her focus. Without her hatred what did she have? A wasted life. An empty shell.
Bo took her hand and led her through the busy casino. Pausing to let a man in a wheelchair pass, Claudie’s gaze was drawn to a brilliant Jackpot sign. A revolving board promised her a chance to be a Big Winner.
“A winner,” she said, bitterness dripping like acid from her tongue. “What a joke! It turns out I raced halfway across the country to save poor little Sherry from squat. I make Don Quixote look sane.” Her attempted laugh caught in her chest, doubling her over.
Bo pulled her to him, stifling her sobs. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Claudine St. James,” he whispered fiercely. “If that doesn’t make you a winner, I don’t know what does.”
She swallowed her anguish and pulled back, wiping her cheeks with the shirttail he offered. Beneath the soft plaid shirt she glimpsed a hideous green-and-brown camouflage T-shirt. Oh, Bo, you are so…
The understanding look he gave her made her breath catch. He touched her eyebrow and smiled supportively. “Come on, sweetness, it ain’t over, yet. Let’s get your game face back on—we have one more stop to make.”
CHAPTER NINE
CLAUDIE RECOGNIZED her sister the instant the girl stepped through the door of the school. Tall, blond, her carriage proud and graceful, she looked like a young Grace Kelly. Her outfit looked like something a businesswoman would wear—a sober black wool skirt and white turtleneck sweater with knee-high boots. Her calf-length coat of deep teal was topped with a hand-knit scarf of scarlet and gold. She carried a black leather backpack.
She never hesitated on her walk across the paved trail—a path Claudie remembered as mud and gravel. While she’d only attended this school for a year and a half—and had failed to graduate with her class, Claudie still thought of it as her alma mater.
Sherry didn’t hail her or display any outward excitement. Her smile seemed curious, but not apprehensive. Claudie surmised Garret had informed Sherry of her sister’s arrival.
Claudie rose from the metal bleachers and stepped down to greet her sister face-to-face. “Hi,” she said, grimacing when her voice came out garbled. “Do you know who I am?”
Sherry’s blue eyes seemed to sparkle with some underlying emotion that Claudie couldn’t read. “You’re Claudine. My sister.”
“Half sister,” Claudie corrected. “We had the same mother, different fathers.”
Sherry’s smile took Claudie’s breath away. It was their mother’s smile. “You’re younger than I pictured. They said you left home when you were my age, and I guess I thought you’d be older by now.” She ducked her chin slightly. “You’re prettier, too.”
Claudie’s heart skipped a beat. “Well, that makes us even. You’re older than I pictured. My last memory of you was wiping your runny nose. You always had a cold.”
Laughing, Sherry exaggerated a sniff. “Allergies. Mom took me to a dozen doctors before they finally pinpointed the problem. Problems. Wheat, pollen, cat dander—you name it. I’ve outgrown some, but I still sneeze like crazy when the lilacs are blooming.”
“Almond trees do me in,” Claudie confessed. She took a breath and pointed to the bleachers. “Could we sit and talk a few minutes?”
Sherry frowned. “Daddy said you weren’t staying. I don’t think it’s fair that you just got here and have to leave right away.”
For the first time, she sounded her age. “I have to get home to my job.” She went on before Sherry could ask her what she did. “Do you have plans for after graduation?”
She took a seat on the cold metal bench—thankful for Bo’s jacket and the too big gloves he’d ordered her to wear. Sherry sat down folding her woolen coat around her in a ladylike manner that Claudie found endearing. “I’ve applied to three schools—two Christian colleges and Kansas State. Partly, it will depend on Daddy’s health. I hate to be too far away in case he gets worse. But he’s adamant that I go off and live my life, not hang around watching him die.”
Her matter-of-fact statement of Garret’s mortality struck Claudie as almost too healthy to be real. “Do his doctors give him long?” she asked.
Sherry rolled her eyes. “They told him he’d be dead two years ago. He says the Lord doesn’t necessarily consult with doctors when He makes His plans.”
Claudie was curious how much her sister knew of her reasons for running away. Oddly, she didn’t want to damage Sherry’s feelings for her father, so she asked, “Do you know why I left home?”
Sherry looked down. “Yes. It’s hard to have too much privacy when you’re living in a travel trailer.”
This was Claudie’s cue to unload her anger and bitterness, but for some reason she asked, instead, “Where have you traveled?”
“Just about everywhere.” Sherry made an encompassing motion with her hands. She had the poise and delivery of a professional speaker. Did she get that from Garret? “We started in northern Maine and worked our way down the eastern seaboard then across the south and Texas. We spent a year working with the Navajo—that was amazing—then we drove from the bottom of California to the top. It took us six months.”
“Did you go through Sacramento?” Claudie asked.
Sherry nodded with enthusiasm. “For sure. I home-schooled, and Mom was a stickler for geography and history, so we’d always spend two or three days in every state’s capital city.”
Was it possible they were in Sac when I was working the streets? Pushing the disturbing thought aside, she said, “I notice you call Dottie, Mom. I’m not surprised since she’s the only mother you’ve ever known, but I wonder if you’d like to know anything about your real mother.”
Sherry tilted her head thoughtfully. Her shoulder-length blond hair curled gracefully against her coat. “I’ll probably think of a dozen things once you leave, but…not really. I mean, Daddy’s told me a lot about her. How they met, how he talked her into marrying him.” Her smile seemed soft and romantic. “Daddy said he took her a different kind of flower every time he
passed through her town until he hit on the right one—a yellow rose.”
Claudie couldn’t remember ever seeing yellow roses in any of their homes.
“We have a big map on the wall at home showing all the places we traveled. The towns where you and the other kids lived when you were growing up are marked in red,” Sherry said. Her soft chuckle was full of fondness. “Daddy had the wanderlust even then, didn’t he? Only then he was selling appliances and baby furniture and pharmaceuticals. Now, he’s selling God.” She made it sound like a noble thing.
Claudie didn’t want to talk about Garret. She was still having a hard time understanding what happened in that casino. Who was she suppose to forgive? Why?
As if reading her thoughts, Sherry said, “Daddy told me on the phone the only reason you came back was to find me.” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “Claudie, I think that is the sweetest, most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard. My heart nearly broke in two when he told me.”
The thing to do was hug, but Claudie held back for some reason. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I didn’t want you to have to go through any of what I’ve done. You deserved a chance at a normal life and…”
Wiping her tears with the tips of her gloves, Sherry sniffed and said, smiling, “That’s so brave. I’m so glad you’re my sister.”
Claudie closed her eyes against tears of her own. Oh, hell. She looped one arm across the young girl’s shoulders. With a small cry, Sherry turned and embraced Claudie with both arms, squeezing ingenuously. “Thank you for coming back, Claudie. You don’t know how much it means to me…and my dad.”
Claudie stiffened. She couldn’t help herself.
Sherry pulled back. She gave Claudie a look too empathic for her age. “I’m sure it’s hard not to hate him after what he did.”
How does someone so young see so much? Her silent question must have shown because Sherry said, “I’m a peer counselor in school, and we had a girl who was date raped by a college boy. It was awful. She had all kinds of problems afterward dealing with her self-worth.”
She smiled. “But now she’s got a new boyfriend—he’s a junior—a really sweet guy, and she seems happy.”
Claudie didn’t know what to say. I’ve got a boyfriend. I’m happy…some of the time.
“Dad told me two men were with you today. Is one of them your boyfriend?” Sherry asked.
Claudie swallowed. “He thinks he is.” Her answer came out sharper than she’d intended.
Sherry giggled. “Don’t they all? I’m going with a guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”
“Have you been together long?”
She shrugged. “Two months. We’re at that stage where he wants sex but hasn’t come right out and asked.”
“What will you tell him when he asks?” Claudie asked, knowing it was none of her business.
Sherry smiled serenely. “Same thing I’ve told all the boys who want me to do things I’m not ready for—God will tell me when—and I’ll know it’s right because of the ring on my finger.”
Claudie shook her head, mystified. “Wow. I wish I’d have had half your poise when I was your age.”
Sherry’s smile faded. “God gives us our path, Claudie. Yours was much harder than mine has been, but it was the one you needed to travel. Part of who I am is because you loved me and cared for me when I was a baby. I went from you to my mom. You made that possible even though you didn’t know it at the time.” Claudie blinked against the cold breeze that was making her eyes tear up.
“My mom—Dottie—is a wonderful lady, Claudie. She’s an angel, really. You’d like her if you stayed around and got to know her.”
Claudie swallowed. “I have to go. My job, my friends…” All true, but she suddenly realized leaving this beautiful young woman wasn’t going to be any easier this time than it had been when she was six. “My friends are waiting,” Claudie said, rising.
Sherry stood up. Although a good five inches taller, she suddenly seemed small and sad.
“You can e-mail me,” Claudie said.
“Really?” Sherry brightened. “Cool. I’m online a lot with my Christian chat groups, and I’m taking an advanced humanities class from K.S.U.”
They talked about her plans for college as they crossed the now abandoned parking lot. Sherry pulled out a pen and paper from her pack and wrote down Yancy’s address and Claudie’s e-mail. In the far distance, Claudie saw a late model sedan with the engine running. Dottie, no doubt. When they stopped beside the station wagon, Claudie spotted her little camera on the dash. “Can I take your picture?”
“Sure,” Sherry said, smiling. “Daddy says I’m half ham.”
After snapping three shots, Claudie glanced once more at the waiting car then said, “I’m sorry your father’s ill. Tell him…not all my memories are bad.”
Sherry’s eyes filled with tears and she hugged Claudie fiercely. “You are so wonderful. That will mean so much to him. Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Sherry,” Claudie said, stumbling on words she hadn’t used for what seemed like a hundred years. “Take care. Keep up those grades, and tell any boy who gives you a problem your big sister will come back and make him very, very sorry he was born male.”
Sherry laughed and waved goodbye before dashing across the parking lot. Claudie watched her go. This wasn’t the way she’d seen any of this little drama unfolding, but she wasn’t sorry her trip had been in vain. Sherry was a beautiful gift, and Claudie felt a tiny bit of pride that she’d helped raise her.
Smiling, she hopped in the car and turned on the heater full blast.
“I’d forgotten how much I hate winter,” she said, shivering. “I wanna go home.”
STRETCHED OUT on his bed, Bo glanced at the alarm clock. Four-thirty. His bags were packed. The bill paid. Matt was on the phone in his room, trying to arrange a flight to New York. If he couldn’t get a plane until morning, he might opt for another night at the inn, but regardless, Bo and Claudie were headed west. And, frankly, Bo couldn’t wait.
He didn’t know what to expect from Claudie when she returned from meeting her sister. He figured it could go either way. She’d either be a basket case who needed him to comfort her or a clam—her nefarious alter ego.
A swift knock preceded Claudie, who rushed in and slammed the door behind her. She shed her coat and gloves before turning around to lock the door.
Bo sat up, reclining on his elbows. “Are you okay?”
She kicked off her shoes. “I’m fine,” she said, strolling forward. “I’m better than fine, actually.”
Bo swallowed. “Good,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Are you packed? We should probably hit the road.”
“Not just yet,” she said, kneeling at the foot of the bed. She slipped off the dark-plum cardigan leaving the short-sleeved sweater top behind. For Claudie, this practically constituted a negligee.
“What are you doing?” Bo asked, scooting back until his shoulders encountered the old-fashioned beaded headboard.
“Healing. I think.”
If she’d have left it at “healing” he might have been able to buy it, but that little quaver in her voice that accompanied the “I think” told him she wasn’t ready for this.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said, even though his body thought otherwise.
She stretched out her hand, lightly brushing the front of his canvas trousers. “A part of you disagrees.”
He snorted, crossing his left leg over his right the best he could. “Well, sure, but if I listened to that part of me there’s no telling what kind of trouble I’d be in.”
“Trouble can be fun, if it’s handled right,” she said, not so subtly stressing the double entendre.
He shifted positions. “Really, Claudie, after the hell you’ve been through toda—” He choked on his words when she shifted to all fours, a graceful feline, stalking her prey. The scooped neck of her sweater afforded a gre
at view of ivory lace and peachy skin. The golden locket swung like a pendulum between her breasts.
“Claudie…”
She ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip.
His damn knees parted without so much as an “Open, sesame,” and she moved forward, straddling him.
Bo groaned. “Sweetheart. Please. Don’t do this.”
She nuzzled the side of his face, her hair tickling his nose. “Why? Isn’t it what you want?”
“Yes. Of course. But you need time to get some perspective on what happened.”
She sat back, her weight resting in the most perfectly designed position imaginable. Bo felt his control slipping. His mind started charting the fastest way to remove her slacks—until he looked in her eyes and saw the shattering pain and doubt he’d always known haunted her.
“Oh, honey,” he whispered, sitting forward to wrap his arms around her. He rolled them to the side so they were facing each other. Without her resting quite so provocatively against his groin he could actually think. “You just got back from hell, baby. It’s natural to want to prove to yourself you’re still alive, but maybe we should wait until—”
She exploded out of his arms, scrabbling back to the far corner of the king-size bed. “Goddamn it, Lester. Make up your mind. When I don’t want you, you want me. When I throw myself at you, you play hard to get.” Her chest was heaving and he could see she was close to tears. “What are you?” she growled. “A woman?”
Bo would have laughed but he was afraid she might find his gun and use it on him. He bent his elbow and rested his head on his palm. “I’m a coward.”
That shut her up. For a minute. “No, you’re not.”
He nodded. “Yes, I am. Where you’re concerned. I’m so afraid I might screw up I don’t know what to do.”
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