Finding Her Dad

by Janice Kay Johnson

  He was momentarily startled, having forgotten that he’d shared his mental imagery. “Yeah.” His voice came out hoarse. “It took a long while before I could lock that one away, though. I had to satisfy myself first that I couldn’t have done something different. Something that would have led to a better outcome.”

  “Usually we’re our own worst critic. Did you ever come to peace with yourself over it?”

  “Yeah.” He felt himself relax. Not physically, but inside, where he’d been braced for an unwelcome reaction from Lucy. He should have known better. “Yeah, I did.”

  She kept ignoring her cooling cup of coffee, just as he was his own. Her teeth worried her lip, and he waited to find out what was troubling her.

  Finally it came out. “I’ve been wondering. Is it your experiences as a police officer that have made you so…harsh when you talk about people who commit crimes? I mean, everyone makes mistakes. The way I grew up, I saw kids who never had a chance.”

  “Didn’t they? From what you’ve said, you had it pretty rough yourself. Did you steal cars? Burglarize your neighbors to support a drug habit?” His voice was hard. “Sell yourself?”

  Too late, he thought, Shit. What if she had? Was that what she was trying to tell him? That she’d done time in juvie? That her past wasn’t as pure as the driven snow? Had he made her afraid to tell him?

  He felt her retreat, although as far as he could tell she didn’t move a muscle. It was far more subtle than any obvious flinch. He was stung to realize that, however inadvertently, he’d hurt her.

  It seemed like a long time before she said quietly, “No. But I wasn’t physically abused, for example.”

  Still harsh, he said, “I was.”

  She nodded. Light shimmered on her glossy dark hair. “But you weren’t also poor. Nobody was selling drugs in the hallway outside your apartment.” She had started softly, but her voice gained strength. Anger resonated in it. “Your mother wasn’t turning tricks. You didn’t go to school knowing other kids would shun you because you smelled. You didn’t go hungry every day because there wasn’t any food in the house and nobody had money to give you for lunch.”

  He swore. “Was that you, Lucy? Did your mother—”

  “No.” She clamped her mouth shut. Eventually, she relented enough to say, “But we lived in some pretty crummy places. I told you that. I saw what was going on around me.”

  Jon felt sick. “You think I’m a son of a bitch.”

  “No.” Her expression softened. “Mostly, I wonder what happened to make you so unwilling to see that when a crime’s committed, the victim isn’t the only human involved.”

  “Most cops end up pretty hard-assed. It’s natural, when you arrest the same scum over and over again, when you see their victims.” He let out a huff of air. “But you’re right. I’ve never been sympathetic. I was on a…” He rarely fumbled for words, but he did now. This wasn’t something he’d been ready to share yet. But he could see that he had to. “A sort of quest, you might say, when I decided to go into law enforcement. To put away bad guys, and keep them put away where they belonged.” Jon grimaced. “Law enforcement was a sharp left turn for me. In college I majored in philosophy, believe it or not. Probably mostly to piss my father off. Then I got practical. Started work on an MBA.”

  “Really?”

  He grinned briefly at her astonishment. “Oh, yeah. At twenty-four, I was about halfway through, telling myself I was doing the right thing.” He paused. “I was engaged—Cassia and I were living together.”

  Lucy waited, her expression apprehensive.

  “I loved her.” He swallowed, composing himself. “My father didn’t. No surprise there. He told me she was a lightweight. He was wrong. Cassia was…happy. She always thought the best of everyone.”

  He struggled to continue, to tell the rest of the story when the very thought of what had happened to all that goodness almost brought him to his knees.

  “She had just graduated herself. She was doing her student teaching—first grade. She was going for elementary-school certification. She had a part-time job as a barista at a place down by Lake Union.”

  Lucy nodded, recognizing that had some significance.

  “She had to close one night a week. It wasn’t a great neighborhood. Rougher than it is now. Sometimes I picked her up. I knew it made her nervous, waiting for the bus.” This was another story he hadn’t told in so many years that putting it in words now cast him back. Made him relive that night. “Some guys wanted me to play poker. I got pretty drunk. It was three in the morning before I made it to the apartment and discovered Cassia wasn’t there. No sign she’d ever gotten home. She didn’t carry a cell phone—not everyone did fifteen years ago.”

  “Oh, Jon,” she whispered.

  “I hammered on a couple of the neighbors’ doors. Nobody had seen her or heard her. I got one of the neighbors to drive me down to her espresso stand. It was closed up. Then I saw some flashing lights, right at the head of an alley a block and a half away. Not far from the bus stop.”

  He told the rest of the story. Running over there. Hands grabbing at him to stop him, but not succeeding. He’d made it far enough to see her sprawled beside a Dumpster, looking like a carelessly discarded doll, not at all like the vital, happy young woman she was. He didn’t tell Lucy the details. The way Cassia’s skirt had been shoved up to her waist, leaving her naked below it, her legs parted. Or her face. Dear God, her face. He later learned she’d been strangled after she was raped. The physical manifestations of strangulation were hideous.

  He’d begun to bellow, fighting those hands that pulled him away. He’d fallen to his knees eventually, hands braced on the rough sidewalk as he puked. Finally he had hammered a fist into a concrete wall until his hand was bloody.

  “She was murdered by a man who’d walked out of prison the day before. He’d been convicted of two rapes. He had started to strangle the second victim, but she was saved by some passersby who saw what was happening. He was a good boy in prison, though, and claimed to have been sexually abused by a stepfather when he was a kid. God knows how many women he’d raped before he was actually caught. Got parole the first time he came up for it. He had been out of prison for exactly thirty-six hours when he saw Cassia waiting at the bus stop. Alone.”

  Pain and empathy brimmed in Lucy’s big brown eyes. She groped for his hand on the table, and he let her take it although he felt physically unable to turn his over and return her grip. “You’ve never forgiven yourself, have you?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A SHOCK WENT THROUGH JON. Lucy had read him without any trouble, understood the guilt he’d carried ever since. “You think I should have shrugged and figured it was bad luck I picked the wrong night to get drunk?”

  “What if Cassia hadn’t been living with you? Wouldn’t she have been at that bus stop anyway?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted.

  Lucy looked at him with such compassion, he could hardly bear it. “Do you really think it’s so unforgivable that you didn’t go pick her up that one night?”

  “Yes.” The word scraped his throat. His face contorted. “Yes!” Then he took a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head. “No. I know better. I don’t think about it—about her—for months at a time. When I do… I’d give anything to go back and do it over.”

  “Of course you would.” Her thumb caressed the back of his hand. “And you’ve been trying ever since, haven’t you?”

  “That’s simplistic,” he argued. Damn, he felt raw inside and out. Exposed, and he didn’t like it.

  Her eyes were unbelievably soft, so tender he couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.

  “Yes, I know it is. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “Yeah.” He was still hoarse. “Hell. I can’t deny it.”

  He tugged at her hand, pulling her out of her seat. Lucy came around the corner of the table. Jon let go of her hand so that he could wrap his arms around her waist and bury hi
s face between her breasts. He closed his eyes and lost himself in her heartbeat, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Her scent. He felt her stroke his hair and neck. Not since he was a little boy had anyone comforted him like this. He couldn’t have accepted it from anyone else.

  He almost had himself pulled together when he heard the patter of footsteps and Sierra saying, “Did Dad forget to say goodbye?”

  Jon straightened with a jerk, his hands falling from Lucy. She had turned as if to shield him by the time Sierra bounced into the kitchen.

  Voice calm, Lucy said, “No, he was just thinking about going. We got to talking.”

  Jon stood. “I had better be on my way.”

  He sensed Lucy’s quick, worried look, but didn’t meet her eyes. The feeling of being stripped bare hadn’t left him. Did he regret telling her? No. He didn’t even think that was why he was so shaken. It was Lucy’s embrace that had rattled him so badly. Or maybe discovering how pathetically grateful he was to have her of all people want to hold him when he hurt.

  He managed the goodbyes, and the drive home. It wasn’t until he was turning into his own driveway that Jon pulled back from his own emotions enough to think about Lucy’s and start wondering. Why the passion when she’d cried, You didn’t go to school knowing other kids would shun you because you smelled. You didn’t go hungry every day because there wasn’t any food in the house and nobody had money to give you for lunch.

  Frowning, he waited for his garage door to rise. How had she put it?

  Everyone makes mistakes.

  Something told him she wasn’t really talking about everyone. She was talking about someone.

  But who? Herself? Or someone else?

  OH, WOW. Lucy gripped the seat belt crossing her chest as though it were a climbing rope and she was dangling on a rock face. She was really close to chickening out. What had made her think she was ready for this?

  Almost at random, she blurted, “You’ve never said where you lived.”

  Driving with his usual casual competence, Jon glanced at her. “Willis. It’s not exciting. I have a town house. Almost no outside maintenance. It’s not someplace I’d want to raise a family, but…” His big shoulders moved. “I work long hours.”

  “Gardening isn’t maintenance.”

  “My mother would say the same thing. Me, I’ve never had time to catch the gardening bug.”

  “I guess most men don’t.”

  “After tasting vegetables right from your backyard, I might be inspired to wield a hoe.” Accelerating when a light turned green, he glanced at her again. “You’re a better cook than I am.”

  She laughed, despite her attack of nerves. “Is that a warning?”

  The curve of his mouth was irresistible. “Afraid so.”

  She’d known she was agreeing to more than dinner when he suggested he cook for her this time. Or at least…she assumed she was agreeing to more. And she was ready. Except she was scared, too, because she shouldn’t be preparing to make love with a man she couldn’t trust. And she didn’t, or she would have been able to bring herself to tell him about her mother.

  She should, before they got naked, but…she wasn’t going to. She wanted this. Him. Even if it was only this once.

  In one of those peculiar moments of clarity, Lucy understood that she trusted him with her body, but not with the wounded part of her that had never healed.

  The turn signal went on, and he announced, “My neighborhood.”

  He sounded so relaxed, it made Lucy mad. His tone suggested that first-time sex with a woman he was dating wasn’t that earthshaking an event for him. In the fifteen years since his fiancée had died, he’d probably had dozens of relationships. Of course he wasn’t nervous.

  Knowing she was being irrational, Lucy peered ahead at the street of town houses. They were new, designed in the currently popular Craftsman style, distinguishable from each other mainly by individual paint colors. He made another turn, and she discovered that an alley ran behind the homes and the garages were accessed via the alley.

  He reached up and pushed a button, then drove right into an almost completely bare double garage. A rolling tool chest was positioned against the rear wall, but there was no workbench, no lawn mower, no rack to hold rakes and shovels and hoes. No clutter.

  “You really don’t garden.”

  “I pay a yard service for what little has to be done.” He turned off the engine and closed the double door. “Have I disillusioned you?”

  “No. I just…hadn’t thought.” Couldn’t imagine was what she meant.

  They both got out and he held open a door, gesturing her through. Landscaped with an elegantly shaped Japanese maple and a few shrubs, the backyard was tiny, separated from the neighboring ones by a cedar-slat fence. A deck with built-in benches held a couple of big tubs filled with fall-blooming flowers.

  “I do water them on the days no one from the service comes,” Jon murmured.

  “They’re beautiful,” she admitted. “I never fertilize my hanging baskets enough.”

  Unlocking one of the French doors, he shot her a wicked smile. “I never fertilize mine.”

  Lucy laughed. “Then you have elves who sneak around when you aren’t here and do it.” She admired the beautifully cared for yard. “They prune, too. And bark.”

  “I put out bowls of milk for them.” He ushered her inside.

  The interior was beautiful, but not really personal any more than the yard was, she discovered. Partly because there was no clutter. Either he was really tidy or he had a martinet of a housekeeper.

  Most of the first story was a single open space, with generous windows front and back. The floor was gleaming hardwood except for the kitchen area, which was ceramic tiled. Lucy trailed her fingers over the leather sofa to discover it was buttery soft. She wondered how often anyone sat on it. The big recliner facing the large-screen TV looked more used. A cordless phone, the TV guide section from the newspaper and a couple of remote controls covered an end table next to it. Bookcases flanked a fireplace that was so clean she wondered if Jon had ever sullied it with a fire. Books filled the shelves that weren’t occupied by a state-of-the-art stereo system.

  Aware that Jon was watching her, Lucy went to examine the spines of books to see what he read. Science fiction, biographies, history and—maybe not surprisingly—philosophy.

  “No mysteries?”

  He grunted. “I find myself critiquing them.”

  “I suppose so.”

  She followed him toward the kitchen. The space flowed into a dining area with a long table she thought was cherry and six matching chairs. The kitchen was separated from it only by a breakfast bar, tiled in rust. The cabinets were cherry, too, she thought—nice, but probably not custom. She suspected he’d added very little to the house—furniture, books and a few pieces of artwork. While he began opening cupboards and getting things out, she wandered to look more closely at the paintings that hung on white walls. They were interesting, Lucy decided. Jon must have chosen them himself.

  One, she was intrigued to see, was an oil or acrylic of a garden scene in fall. The colors and textures were glorious, although it was plain that leaves were rotting on the ground and flowers fading. The artist had captured a moment of peaceful decay, and yet there was also a hint of something more melancholic. After frowning at the painting, Lucy turned her head to see that Jon stood watching her, a frying pan in his hand.

  “Does your garden ever look sad?” he asked unexpectedly.

  “I don’t think of it that way. I would have been cutting these plants back, starting to mulch. Putting it to rest. This garden looks…neglected.” That was it, she realized. It was as if there was no human hand around to touch it.

  “Pretty doesn’t always appeal to me.”

  No, she could see that. The other paintings weren’t conventionally pretty, either. She wandered from one to the next, pausing longest at a watercolor of a couple scarcely visible in dense fog on a beach. There was so
mething terribly lonely about these two people, even though they were together. Maybe, she reflected, it was because they weren’t holding hands or touching in any way. They were together, but…not.

  Eventually she pulled out a stool at the breakfast bar and perched on it. “Can I do anything?”

  “Nope. I marinated steaks, made a salad earlier and I’m sautéing baby potatoes. Nothing complicated.” His crooked grin was rueful. “Which is all I’m capable of.”

  “Oh, I think you’re plenty complicated,” Lucy teased.

  He lifted one dark eyebrow. “I’m not the only one who is.”

  “Maybe not,” she admitted. She didn’t think of herself as complicated, but she also knew that what people saw on her surface wasn’t quite what they’d get.

  They chatted easily enough while Jon cooked. He poured them both glasses of wine, and finally consented to let her set the table while he removed sizzling steaks from the broiler.

  Over dinner they talked about movies and books and music. Lucy firmly steered him away from the subject of family, even though she would have liked to know more about his. His relationship with his mother had seemed cordial, but not without underlying strain. He maintained an indefinable distance, and Lucy had seen the flicker of hurt on his mother’s face a couple of times. Did he still harbor anger that she hadn’t protected him better, or was something else wrong between them? Or maybe, Lucy thought, she was misreading them altogether. But she couldn’t ask, because then he would have wanted to know about her mother, and she didn’t want to talk about her mom.

  Not yet.

  She kept losing track of what he was saying. She’d find herself watching his lips move, and remembering the last time he’d kissed her. Or she would be captivated by his hand, wrapped around his wineglass. His hands were as large and graceful as the rest of him. He was long fingered, and yet his palms were broad, his wrists twice the thickness of hers. The backs of his fingers were lightly dusted with hair, as were his forearms and wrists. He wasn’t a particularly hairy man, but she’d seen brown curls on his chest when he undid several buttons on his shirt.