Temporary Family

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  “Yes.”

  “And there’s still no listed phone number, no name on the lease that anyone could connect to you?”

  “Nothing.” He had sublet a place from a friend who had left the country. Nick had intended to stay only long enough for the media attention to die down. Now that the whole mess was over, he didn’t see any reason to move. He didn’t care where he lived.

  “Good. Go there, and don’t come out until I call.”

  “Okay, you have the number?”

  “No, but don’t tell me on this line. I’ll have Carolyn get the number for me.”

  From A.J. Drew didn’t have to say that. He was being cautious, and he would have his wife do it.

  “Now,” Drew said, “this man who’s after the kid—do you think he’s a cop?”

  “He had a patrol car this morning.”

  “And what did he say his name was?”

  “He told Laura it was Welch. He didn’t give her a first name. We didn’t see any name plate on his uniform, and I didn’t get the license number on the police cruiser, but there was an ID number painted on the side. There’s a six, an eight and a four, in that order, on the end of it.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Drew said. “You go disappear. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t answer the phone. You have an answering machine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t pick up until you hear my voice on the machine. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”

  “Thanks, Drew.”

  “Anytime, buddy.”

  Laura tried not to let her fear show. Rico stood in front of her, stubbornly refusing to say a word. She knew he was frightened, and so very young to be in the middle of a mess like this. But surely he trusted her. Surely he knew that if she and Nick were going to help him, they had to know what was going on, that he had to help them by telling them what he knew.

  Laura tried to explain all that to him, but it didn’t get her anywhere with the boy. He must have seen something terrible and frightening, and fear alone must be keeping him silent.

  Had someone threatened Rico if he talked ? The policeman, perhaps, when he wheeled the boy out of the hospital? That had to be the reason for his silence.

  Laura hated to think about what he might have seen, but she had to get him to talk.

  “Rico,” she said, bending down on one knee to put herself at his level. “Where’s your mother? You said the policeman hurt your mother. Where is she now?”

  He stared straight ahead, as if he couldn’t even see Laura. His eyes were this murky, shimmering mass of tears and lights.

  “Come on, little man. You can tell me.”

  Still nothing. No words, no sounds, no gestures, merely mute acceptance of her pleas and her explanations.

  Laura hugged him close to her for a minute, then pulled back. “Can you tell me when he hurt her? Before you ran away? Was that why you ran away? Did you really spend three days on the streets? Can you just tell me that?”

  But he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. He just stood there, stiff and silent.

  Laura felt pretty miserable. The situation just seemed to get worse and worse. What could possibly happen next?

  Nick walked toward them. She prayed he had some kind of answers, some kind of plan, because she didn’t have any idea what to do.

  If it hadn’t been for him...she didn’t want to think of what would have happened. More than likely, Rico wouldn’t even be here. The car would have run over him yesterday.

  She accepted the fact now that she’d put tremendous faith in this troubled man, and if today was an indication, she’d chosen well. He deserved that faith she bestowed upon him.

  As for the rest of it, that totally unexpected kiss in the cab, the way he’d encircled her in his arms and pulled her up against him—that she was going to have to think about for a while, as soon as she had time to think.

  “Come on,” Nick said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Where are we going?” Laura asked.

  “My place.”

  That was how she came to find herself sharing an apartment with Nick for the evening. They took the train to a busy downtown stop, then walked six blocks to an apartment building near the heart of the city.

  No one seemed to follow them. No one seemed to pay any attention to them. And still Laura couldn’t bring herself to relax.

  Inside the apartment, they locked the doors, closed the blinds, kept the lights off and didn’t answer the phone. They let the machine handle two calls from people who declined to leave messages — experiences they both found incredibly unnerving—and two anxious calls from A.J.

  Nick wanted to answer those, but he’d promised Drew he wouldn’t talk to anyone.

  He and Laura rummaged through the cabinets. The contents of the refrigerator didn’t even merit a search. They found some not-too-stale crackers, a few canned vegetables, a couple of boxed pasta dishes and a dusty bottle of wine.

  “I take it you eat out a lot,” she said.

  “When I remember to eat.”

  “It’s been that bad?”

  Nick simply shrugged and turned back to the cabinets, which had nothing left to offer.

  “We’ll make do,” Laura said. After having a loaded gun in her face, a makeshift meal was of no real consequence.

  Nick surprised her by staying in the kitchen and proving to be fairly competent there. They warmed some vegetables, thawed some bread dough from the freezes, left the wine where it was. Rico ate more than either of them, refused once again to tell them anything, then fell asleep in the chair in the corner. Nick carried him to the darkened bedroom.

  “The bed is big enough for the two of you to share,” he said. “I’ll take the couch and listen for the phone.”

  Reluctantly, Laura followed him into the room, stripped bare of any personal possessions save for the pile of books in front of the overflowing shelves. He had everything — psychiatry, sociology, politics, as well as a wealth of mysteries.

  Laura hoped to find some clue to the man, and maybe from the empty room she had. How much of him was empty, as well?

  “It’s not mine,” Nick said, after he caught her staring at the blank spaces on the dresser, the chest of drawers, the nightstand that didn’t even boast an alarm clock.

  He told her he hadn’t worked in a year, so she supposed he had no reason to get out of bed at any certain time. Still, the idea was hard to accept. Nick seemed to be such a purposeful man; she couldn’t imagine him sitting idle in this apartment and watching the world go by.

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said, all the while hoping that he would.

  “I mean, I live here, but it’s not really mine. It belongs to a friend—a colleague—who took off for a year to teach in London. I sublet it from him last year when the TV people found my address and started camping out at my doorstep around the clock. And once the reporters finally left me alone, I didn’t see any reason to find a new place.”

  Laura didn’t say anything. TV reporters outside his home, cameras chasing him as he went in and out, details of his life and the charges against him available to anyone for the price of a newspaper? She should have thought of those things.

  She should be capable of some sort of coherent thought when he was this close, but it was more difficult than she had ever dreamed possible.

  After all, he was just a man. She’d known lots of men, worked with them, gone to school with them, even dated a few. And Mitch, her ex-fiancé, was a terribly handsome man.

  So this thing between her and Nick had to be something more than that. She was drawn to him, fascinated by him, wary of making one wrong move and having him throw up all his formidable defenses against her, the way he must have fought to keep everyone away from him for so long now.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to analyze me.”

  She had the nerve to smile. “What’s the matter, Dr. Garrett? You d
on’t like being on the other side for a change?”

  “Not one damned bit,” he said.

  “I hated it, too,” she admitted, the words just slipping out of her.

  “You’ve been analyzed yourself?”

  She nodded.

  “Not going to tell me what sent you into counseling, are you?”

  “I wasn’t in counseling. That was part of the problem. He couldn’t stop analyzing me anyway.”

  “Who, Laura?”

  “A man I used to know.”

  “A man?”

  “A professor of mine in college, in Boston. I had an interest in psychiatry at one time.”

  “And he turned you off psychiatry?”

  She nodded. “Most definitely.”

  “And psychiatrists?”

  “I guess I do owe you an apology for that.”

  “You don’t hate most men on sight?”

  “I think ‘hate’ is a fairly strong word here.”

  “You don’t dislike most men on sight?”

  “No, I don’t. Do you distrust most people on sight these days?”

  He winced, but added, “Go ahead. Don’t hold back on my account.”

  “Do you, Nick?”

  She had him cornered. The dresser was against his back. He couldn’t retreat, if his pride would even consider letting him. His jaw fell into the light from the lamp, looking like something carved from stone. His lids came down, half shielding those wondrous, dark eyes of his.

  “Got it in one,” he said. “And, lady, you would have made one hell of a psychiatrist.”

  Nick knew he should get out of there as fast as he could. He should send her to bed—with Rico—and go into the other room.

  But he was enjoying talking to her. It had been a long time since anyone had come to this apartment and talked to him. He wasn’t ready to let this evening end.

  And he was infinitely curious about this other man she had mentioned so casually. It occurred to him now that he knew next to nothing about Laura Sandoval’s personal life. He knew some very important things about her—that she was devoted to the children in her classroom; that her devotion did not end at the classroom doors; that she was idealistic, tenacious, beautiful and kind to little boys and cynical, burned-out men.

  He was fairly certain she didn’t have a husband, but she might well be seeing someone. What if she had a lover waiting for her at home? And how did she feel about this professor in Boston now?

  “Why don’t we go in the other room?” he suggested, taking what was certain to be a very dangerous step, “so Rico can sleep in peace.”

  She hesitated for a second, just long enough to worry him.

  “All right,” she said.

  Nick sat down in one corner of the sofa, with his arm across the back, his body turned sideways toward her.

  “Tell me about this psychiatrist of yours” Nick couldn’t help himself, and he wondered if she saw right through him.

  “He’s not my psychiatrist.”

  Nick shrugged, thinking it might ease the tension coming over him.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked casually.

  “Everything. Where did you go to school?”

  She confessed the name of an Ivy League school where tuition was more than many people earned in a year.

  Nick whistled. “Pricey place.”

  “For a girl from the projects, you mean?”

  “For just about any girl.”

  She tried to take that at face value. It was true. Her education had come with a sticker price that would have shocked anyone. Still, she’d named one of the poorest, meanest areas in Chicago as her home. He wouldn’t be the first man to be surprised and dismayed to hear about her background.

  “I had a very nice scholarship,” she said at last.

  “You must have worked very hard.”

  He definitely got points for that comment. “I did.”

  “And your parents?”

  She tried saying it without any inflection or any emotion in her voice. It made people a little less uncomfortable that way. “They died when I was in junior high.”

  “I’m sorry, Laura.”

  His hand closed over hers for an instant and just as quickly pulled away. She fought the urge to reach out to him.

  “It was a long time ago,” she said. “And we were very happy together before they died. I had more than a lot of kids do these days.”

  He nodded. “So you were in foster care.”

  “Eventually. I had aunts, uncles, cousins. Tons of cousins. And they did what they could at first, but... in the end, that’s where I ended up.”

  Laura took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Nick was watching and waiting. “It wasn’t that bad,” she added, “although I have to confess, I made it sound dreadful when I told the scholarship committee my life story. They ate it up. Loved the idea of rescuing this poor little girl who’d suffered so much in her young life. That coupled with the fact that I’m Hispanic and they look so forward to the stats showing they have such a diverse student body had them doing back flips in the interview room.”

  That won her a deep, husky laugh that sent shivers down her spine. “I wanted out very badly,” she confessed.

  “And it got you to Boston.”

  She nodded.

  “Where you met the psychiatrist.”

  So, he was interested after all. That definitely pleased her. “I almost married him. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  He tried his Mr. Innocent look on her. She didn’t buy it for a second.

  “I’m curious,” he said. “Tell me about being ‘almost married’ to this man.”

  “We were engaged.”

  “You could be more specific.”

  “His ancestors came over on the Mayflower. His mother was vice president of the DAR. His father was president of a bank. They were horrified at the thought of having grandchildren whose skin wasn’t as lily white as theirs.”

  He turned to the left and swore succinctly before turning back to face her. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I’m damned glad you didn’t marry the guy.”

  “So am I. He said all the right things, but underneath, he was just as bad as his parents.”

  “How did you end up back here?”

  “I worked for a year after graduation in this terribly exclusive girls school in Boston, when I was still thinking of marrying Mitch, but it just wasn’t what I wanted to do with my degree. They didn’t need me the way the kids at Saint Anne’s do.

  “I kept remembering this teacher I had the first year after my parents died. She was incredible. She was like an anchor for me. Everything around me was so crazy and unreliable and unpredictable, yet there she was. Every day, right there, whenever I needed someone to talk to. She... she believed in me. She told me I could do anything I wanted, and eventually, I started to believe it myself.

  “Don’t get me wrong. Those little rich girls in Boston didn’t have perfect lives, but they didn’t need someone as desperately as the Saint Anne’s kids do. Their whole world is crumbling around them. The drugs, the gangs, the deaths, the poverty—someone has to try to help them deal with those things.”

  Nick’s hand came down off the back of the sofa. His thumb made little circles on the top of her shoulder through her blouse. Laura found it hard to breathe.

  “So,” he said, “you’re a one-woman social-services agency.”

  “What if I am? You couldn’t be that much of a cynic if you worked at Hope House.”

  “There was a time when I wasn’t such a cynic,” he corrected.

  Laura shook her head. “Are you trying to convince me again how bad you are?”

  “Maybe I am bad.”

  “No, Nick, I’m not buying it. The truly bad people in this world normally try to hide that fact from other people.”

  “So I’m the exception to the rule.”

  “Then I guess I am, too, because I’m not buying your act.”

  He sighed a
nd looked away. She thought he must be fighting against letting some semblance of a smile spread across his darkly handsome face. And then he gave in to it.

  “I don’t know what to do with you, Laura. Why don’t you help me out? Give me some ideas.”

  It was one of the most tempting invitations she’d ever received, but she managed to let it pass. She’d made real progress with Nick today. And she had hope. She didn’t need to be greedy right now. “Just don’t push me away, all right?”

  He went so still she thought he’d stopped breathing. Then he turned all serious on her. He came to sit beside her, took both her hands in his and stared down into her eyes.

  “You are one amazing woman.”

  He bent his head over her hands. His lips, warm and soft, moved fleetingly over her curled fingers. She felt the touch all the way down to her toes.

  “I want you to know something. I don’t deserve your trust right now, but it means the world to me.”

  Laura managed to swallow past the lump in her throat. She blinked back the tears that flooded her eyes, but didn’t let them fall. She didn’t think he wanted her tears.

  She searched for something to say, something that wouldn’t seem too threatening to him but would tell him a little of what she was feeling. Before she could do that, Nick dropped her hands and stood up, shattering the intimacy of the moment.

  “Look, it’s late,” he said, backing away from her as quickly as he’d moved forward a moment ago. “We don’t know what we’ll face tomorrow. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  She nodded and tried to hide her disappointment. She’d much rather be with him. “Could you hand me my tote bag over there on the floor beside the couch?”

  Laura wasn’t watching as closely as she should have when he handed it to her, and she grabbed only one of the handles. The bag was open at the top. It tipped sideways, its contents spilling over the sides and onto the floor, leaving her feeling like a klutz.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “My fault.” He reached down and started putting things back into the bag.

  The last item was a series of folded sheets of copying paper. Laura felt her breath catch in her throat. She’d forgotten they were even there, and she made a grab for them. But she was too late.