A Father for Danny

by Janice Carter

  “Danny—” Chase moved toward him.

  “No. It’s too late to say you’re sorry!” he cried. He spun on his heel and ran toward the bank of elevators. One opened and he jumped on.

  Sam hurried after him. “Danny, wait! Come back.” But the door closed.

  “Please don’t tell me this is my fault, too,” Sam said, looking at Chase.

  “No,” he said with a sigh. “I should have talked to him honestly about Emily and me.”

  “He’ll come back,” she said, feeling suddenly sorry for him.

  But when Danny didn’t return after fifteen minutes, Chase went downstairs to the cafeteria and gift-shop area to look for him. While he was gone, Sam took the opportunity to see Emily. She was sleeping, but Sam tiptoed into the room. She stroked the back of her hand, resting on top of the covers, and whispered, “Don’t worry, Emily. Danny will be fine. Chase will take care of him. And I will, too,” she added. Then she left the room to return to the waiting area, arriving as the elevator opened and Chase walked out.

  “Any luck?”

  He shook his head. “I called Minnie to warn her he may show up there, angry and hurt. She promised to call if he did.”

  “Where could he have gone?”

  “I don’t know. I know so little about him. Who his friends are or where he hangs out.” Chase chewed on a knuckle thoughtfully. “The park. Where we went last week, after the interview at his school. Greenlake.”

  “It’s a long way from here. He’d have to take a bus.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still on his way home. Anyway, he’s been gone half an hour. We have to do something.” He started for the elevators.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  He turned around. “You don’t have to.”

  “I know. I want to. Is that okay?”

  “There’s not room for three in the truck.”

  “Why don’t we take my car? I’ll bring you back here for your truck.”

  “Sure. Let me tell someone at the nurses’ station to call in case Danny comes back here.”

  They walked out to the parking lot. Sam thought back to everything they’d said, wondering how much Danny had heard. She was ashamed to think she’d accused Chase of running out on Emily when she knew he hadn’t known she was pregnant. And as for her rebuke that he ought to have resolved the problems in his past, rather than flee from them…. Well done, Samantha. Why haven’t you taken your own advice?

  She was glad to be driving. Concentrating on the traffic meant no conversation, and she figured she and Chase had said enough for one day. Occasionally she glanced his way, watching him stare out the window, lost in thought. Yet some part of him seemed to be constantly moving. His fingers tapped on his thighs and his leg jiggled impatiently, as if he were mentally racing the car to the park himself. Fortunately she managed to hit every green light.

  When she finally pulled in to the same parking area they’d been at a few days ago, Chase had the door open before Sam even turned off the engine. She watched him cover the asphalt lot with long, purposeful strides. He didn’t bother looking back to see if she was following. By the time she reached the picnic area beyond the take-out burger stand, Chase was heading along the water’s edge. In the distance, she saw a small figure hunched against the wind.

  Sam stopped by a picnic table and watched as Chase caught up to Danny. Chase put a hand on Danny’s shoulder and bent down, obviously talking. Danny threw off the hand and moved away. Chase waited, then extended an arm and drew the boy closer. Sam perched on the tabletop, shivering. It was past six and the temperature was dropping as the sun dipped toward the western sky.

  Eventually the two began to walk her way. Danny’s head was hanging and he shuffled along beside Chase, whose arm rested lightly across his shoulders. When they reached Sam, Danny looked up. His eyes were red and swollen.

  “I’m sorry I ran away, Sam,” he said.

  Tears welled up in Sam’s eyes. She opened her arms and wrapped them around Danny as he climbed up onto the table next to her. He lowered his head onto her lap and sobbed. Sam rubbed his back with one hand, using the other to wipe her own tears away. Chase sat on the other side of Sam and, without a word, draped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer to him. They sat like that long after the sun disappeared beneath the horizon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IMPULSIVELY, driving out of Greenlake Park, Sam suggested, “Maybe Danny would like to spend the night at my place.”

  She looked at Chase, in the passenger seat. He caught her gaze and nodded. Turning to Danny in the rear, he asked, “That okay with you?”

  Danny mumbled something that sounded like a yes.

  “Thanks, Samantha,” Chase said.

  “My family and friends call me Sam.”

  “Sam it is.”

  She felt his eyes on her and wondered what he was thinking. She hoped that he no longer thought she’d been conspiring with Skye. When they arrived at her place and Danny got settled in front of the television, Sam decided to do something to prove to Chase that she wasn’t teaming up with her sister against him.

  They were having a glass of wine, sitting at the small table for two in a corner of the kitchen when Sam excused herself, went into the bedroom and returned with the file Skye had given her. Chase frowned as he registered the name on the cover page.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “My sister copied it from the archives at her old office.”

  His face told her he was wrestling with that. “Have you read it?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “I didn’t see anything incriminating.”

  “May I?” he asked, indicating the file.

  “Of course. That’s why I’m showing it to you. And I’m hoping…”

  “I can explain it?” His face cracked in a half smile, as if he doubted he’d be able to.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling back at him.

  He opened the file and thumbed through it. “You’re right, there’s not much here. Nothing incriminating, as you said. But what’s here raises a question, and the answer to that is what your sister missed when she investigated Trade Winds.”

  Sam was almost as intrigued by the fact that Skye might have made a mistake as she was by Chase’s cryptic reply. “How so?”

  He shuffled the papers, extracting two or three and showing them to her. “Here are two reports and an invoice all signed by me.”

  “Uh-huh.” She felt an urge to tell him to get to the point, but was beginning to realize he needed to work through the steps himself.

  “So if I were investigating this, I’d ask myself why a low-level clerk in a company was signing reports and invoices.” He paused for a long moment and said, “I guess I should start from the beginning.”

  “That would be good. Let me just see if Danny needs anything.” Sam went into the living room to check on him, though she really wanted to make sure the television was loud enough to drown out their conversation. But Danny had fallen asleep. She clicked off the TV and covered him with the throw on the back of the couch.

  “He’s sleeping,” she said on her return.

  “He’s had a rough day.” Chase rubbed his forehead. “We all have. Especially Emily.”

  She liked that he’d highlighted the person who made all the rest of their bad days seem minor. We must never forget Emily.

  “Okay,” he said, sighing, “to begin. My father and his younger brother, Bryant, inherited Trade Winds when I was just a toddler. It’s been owned by Sullivans for more than a hundred years and was originally a shipping company. But at some point, my father and uncle decided to get into the import-export business. They got commissions and contracts from various agencies and companies to import or export goods. Basically to act as brokers. Something like what you do, I think, but in a broader context.”

  He flashed a smile that, unexpectedly, warmed her.

  Then the smile faltered. “I don’t want to digress by getting
too far into the dynamics of my family, but they’re relevant to what happened. I had a rocky relationship with my father. When I graduated from university—in arts, not business as he’d wanted—my main goal was to get as far away from Seattle as I could. My mother was secretly on my side, but she didn’t have the wherewithal to stand up to my father. She gave me money for graduation and told me to see the world. I did, and came back two years later, broke. I couldn’t get a decent job, so when my father urged me to work for the company, I caved in. His health hadn’t been good and while I was away, he’d been diagnosed with angina. By the time I came home, he’d handed over the daily operations to my uncle, though he kept his title of president. Most of his time, however, was spent on the golf course and at his men’s club.” He paused to sip his wine, running a fingertip around the edge of the glass.

  “What did you do in the company?” Sam asked.

  “While I was away, my uncle’s two sons—Terence and Howard—came into the business. They started out in the mail room and spent time in every department. My father wanted me to do the same. Of course, by then they were already supervising—Terence was in accounts and Howard oversaw the administration part. Trade Winds has always been a family-run business. Back then, there were fewer than fifty employees. The smallness is important, because it meant that virtually all the important aspects of the business were controlled by family. Anyway,” he said, “I started out in the mail room and after a couple of months was moved into accounting. Because I had no background in that, I was basically a file clerk.” He grimaced. “My cousins felt I needed a lot more practical experience. I hated working there, but my mother persuaded me to give it some time. My cousins took every opportunity to give me a hard time.”

  “They were bullies,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. Always had been, even when we were little. They’d gang up on me and lie when I tried to tell my parents what they’d been doing. My mother suspected, but my father always took their side. I needed to toughen up, he’d tell me.”

  Sam recalled the school bullying incident with Danny and Chase’s refusal to rush to judgment about Danny’s role.

  “That part’s important, too,” Chase continued, “to what happened later. One day Uncle Bryant came up to me and asked me to sign a document. He told me it had to be signed by a family member, someone other than the CEO. I didn’t even get a good look at it and to tell you the truth, I didn’t care. That happened a few more times and probably I’d have continued to blindly sign away until one day the chief accounting clerk, a woman who’d worked for the company for several years, came to me with one of the invoices I’d signed.

  “It was from a company that Trade Winds had hired to do some consulting work as part of a government contract. Terence and Howard had both gone to private schools and had maintained a lot of powerful contacts. After they got into management, they used those old friends to secure some very lucrative government contracts. It was another thing my father threw up at me. They’d been networking for the business while I’d been backpacking around Asia. And I’d come home with nothing to show for my world travels but long hair and a tattoo.” He grinned. “Both of which I’ve since outgrown, though the hair was the easiest thing to change.”

  He lapsed into thought. Thinking of other changes? Sam wondered.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “the accounting clerk approached me about this invoice and wanted to know what kind of company it was. She wanted to ask about a figure on the invoice but couldn’t contact the company.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The phone number on the invoice was phony and when she sent something by mail, it was returned. She went through her records and found a handful of invoices from the same company and I had signed all but one of them. She was shocked when I told her I didn’t know anything about it. She said my signature indicated that I had received the goods and paid the company. Then she asked me why I would sign something I knew nothing about.” He sighed. “It was a good question and I had no answer except for my own ignorance and stupidity. That plus the fact that I really didn’t care at all. But when Big Nance—”

  “Who?”

  Chase smiled. “Nancy Wicks, the accounting clerk. Those of us she considered friends called her that. If you saw her, you’d get the irony. She’s a tiny thing, but very tough. Anyway, Nancy said that there might be something going on and if I had signed off on everything, I’d be implicated. So I thought about it and gathered up all the documents I’d signed and took them in to my uncle. He assured me everything was kosher and not to worry. But there was something in his manner that made me think he was lying. Things started happening quickly after that. I was sent off to a trade show in Portland, which surprised me because no one had had any confidence in my business sense up to that point. While I was gone, an FBI agent dropped in to the office—your sister, Skye. She told my uncle they were investigating a complaint of fraud against the business. Apparently there had been an anonymous phone tip. In the meantime, Nancy Wicks was advised that she’d been made redundant. I knew none of this until I came back from the show.”

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “It’s getting late. I’ll try to wrap this up quickly. To sum it up, I came back to find Nancy gone and my uncle, father and cousins furious about the inquiry. Uncle Bryant accused me of tipping off the FBI and my father believed him. Uncle Bryant spun the whole thing to make it look like I’d been involved with what was going on. And my name was on a lot of those documents. There was a huge fight and my father accused me of betraying the family. I took off, leaving the whole mess behind me. Running away from my problems.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “I hung out in the city for a bit, got a construction job and that’s when I met Emily. A month later, my father had a fatal heart attack.” He stopped. Then, “I never had a chance to prove my innocence. After the funeral, I wanted to get as far away from Seattle as I could.”

  “When did you come back?”

  “Two years ago.” He stretched and yawned. “And that’s another story, which I’m much too tired to get into now. I should go—have to get my truck.”

  “Oh, right, I’d forgotten all about it. I was going to drive you there, but now that Danny’s asleep—”

  “Leave him be. I can take a taxi.”

  She almost invited him to stay over, too, but held back. Although she now had a more complete picture of his past and who he was, it was best to not rush their developing friendship.

  On his way out, Chase asked, “Are you busy in the morning?”

  “At some point I should check in at my office, but I can drive Danny to school if that’s why you’re asking.”

  He frowned. “Oh, right. School. I guess I have a way to go before I automatically think like a parent.”

  Sam patted his arm. “You’re doing just fine, Chase. Give it time.”

  His eyes connected with hers. “Thanks. But the reason I asked is that I’d like you to meet someone. Danny, too. I’ll call his school to say he’ll be in later.”

  “All right.” She was intrigued.

  “Great. Meet me at Harbor House about nine-thirty. You remember where that is?” His grin was teasing.

  He wants us to meet his mother. “I do.” She smiled.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

  He grasped her hand and Sam stiffened, thinking he was going to pull her toward him. But instead, he held it lightly, as if he were about to lead her onto a dance floor. Then he gently let go, turned and left.

  Sam stood by the closed door a moment, thinking that something had just happened between them. Exactly what, she couldn’t say. But she realized a barrier had been removed. He was no longer an adversary, but someone she wanted to work with to help Danny.

  Yet sometime in the middle of a restless night, she asked herself if perhaps she’d simply been conned. After all, she’d heard only one side of the story. As she finally dropped off to sleep, she could hear Skye’s more skeptical voice reminding her that people—especia
lly criminals—tell you only what you want to hear.

  HE GOT THERE EARLY, mainly because his mother had good days and bad days. Plus his routine was off, this being midweek.

  “She’s having a good day so far, Chase,” the receptionist told him. “Nurse Andrew said she ate some breakfast, and right now, she’s sitting in the solarium. Do you want to visit with her there?”

  “Yes, thanks, Mrs. MacDonald, but I’m expecting a couple more visitors, so I’ll wait for them in the hall.”

  When Sam turned up with Danny in tow, Chase was amused by the expression in Mrs. MacDonald’s eyes. She obviously remembered Sam—and not kindly, judging by the downturn of her mouth. But her professionalism took charge and she managed a thin smile as they passed her desk on the way to the solarium.

  Outside the entrance, Chase paused to say, “My mother has Alzheimer’s, Danny. I don’t know if you know what that is but—”

  “Yeah, I do,” he snapped. He obviously wasn’t happy about the visit.

  Chase bit back a retort. He tried to think how he’d have felt at the same age, being forced to go to a nursing home to see an old woman he didn’t know. But this old woman was Danny’s grandmother, and like it or not, he was going to meet her. His gaze met Sam’s, above Danny’s head. She shrugged and gave a sympathetic smile.

  “Why don’t you go in first and we’ll follow a minute later, give you time to greet her?” Sam suggested.

  He felt an unexpected warmth for her, realizing not for the first time in the past couple of days, how badly he’d misjudged her. “Good idea. She might be alarmed if we all troop in at once.” He glanced at Danny, who was busy surveying the paintings on the wall. Chase smiled inwardly at this new interest in art.

  He stepped into the solarium, scanning the small group of elderly people in wheelchairs until he saw his mother sitting in a wing chair in a corner. It was her favourite place, giving her a clear view of the gardens outside and angled away from the rest of the room. Martha Sullivan had always been an introvert and even now, in the mental fog of Alzheimer’s, that part of her personality remained. He walked toward her, and as he drew near, said, “Hello, Mother,” as he always did, so as not to startle her.