Loree Lough - Saving Alyssa

“I saw her looking at you that way, too,” Alyssa said.

“She did?”

“Uh-huh. Did it make you think of Mommy, too?”

He hadn’t noticed Billie looking at Alyssa in anything other than a polite, neighborly way. As for how she’d looked at him, impatience came to mind.

“Look there,” he said, leaning closer to the windshield. “Emily is loose again.”

Their neighbor’s goose was a regular escape artist. One of these days she’d waddle into the road, and that would be the end of her...if the county didn’t cite Meb for allowing her to violate the noise ordinance by honking at all hours. Noah parked on an angle, effectively blocking the alleyway as he dialed Meb’s number.

“No answer,” he said after seven rings. “You sit tight while I put Emily back into her pen.” After pocketing his keys, he uncuffed his shirtsleeves, then reached into the glove box and grabbed a pair of worn leather work gloves usually reserved for stacking wood in the back of the truck. Last time he’d tried to save Emily from getting run over by a car, she’d nearly blinded him with a flurry of fluttering wings. She’d bitten him, too, leaving nasty bruises on his forearms. To add insult to injury, she infected him with a bad case of mites. When Meb had found out about the mites, he had brought Noah a giant bottle of Listerine. “Shower, splash this on and take some antihistamine,” the farmer-turned-artist had said. The home remedy had worked...after two miserable, itchy weeks. This time, Noah wasn’t taking any chances.

It took nearly twenty minutes just to catch her, and another ten to ease her into the wood-and-wire pen Meb had built for her. After securing the latch, Noah noticed that Emily’s food bowl was empty, so he refilled it by pouring pellets through the mesh. The only human allowed near the enclosure was Meb. The only one allowed in the yard was Meb. To Noah’s knowledge, no one had ever tried to steal the iron and steel sculptures that were Meb’s trademark...and his livelihood. And no wonder, with a crazy, biting, mite-infested goose standing guard!

When he finished, Noah smacked the gloves against his thigh, then peeled off his shirt and dropped it into the nearest trash can. Better to lose it than risk bringing parasites into the apartment.

“So what are you in the mood for tonight, kiddo?” he asked, parking the truck in its usual slot.

“We haven’t had spaghetti in a long time. With meatballs, and garlic bread, too.”

Her mom’s favorite meal. “You got it, cupcake.”

The moment they were inside, Alyssa grabbed her crayons and a stack of construction paper.

“I’ll be in my room,” she announced, “drawing a picture of Emily. I might need help, spelling some things for Meb.”

“Soon as we finish eating. I’ll call you when it’s time to set the table, okay?”

He grabbed a T-shirt from his dresser drawer as she said, “Okay, Daddy.”

While he filled the pasta pot with water, he thought about what Alyssa had said earlier, and tried to remember how Jillian had looked at him. Nothing came to mind. Not even with his eyes closed. Worse, he couldn’t see her at all. Maxine, his Baltimore connection with the Marshals Service, had warned him about this three years ago, but he hadn’t believed it.

“What kind of man shares years and has a child with a woman—causes her death—and can’t raise a mental image of her?” he’d demanded.

“First of all,” Max had said, “you didn’t cause Jillian’s death. Senator O’Malley did. As for forgetting what she looks like? Trust me. It’ll happen. And when it does, it will prove you’re healing. Because you’re normal.”

If she thought a quote from some required psychology course would help alleviate the fear, she was dead wrong, and he’d told her so. Besides, how could a person who’d never lost a spouse know what was normal and what wasn’t?

Much as Noah hated to admit it now, Max had been right about one thing: the day had come. She’d been off beam about that other thing, though, because he felt anything but normal. He could call her, put George’s “she’s a good listener” claims to the test...again.

Water from the tap overflowed the pot’s rim, shaking Noah from his daze. He emptied half the water down the drain, then carried the pot to the stove. He turned the burner on high, thinking it probably wasn’t a good idea to call Max. She knew every hideous detail of his past. That if he hadn’t joined forces with the corrupt senator, it wouldn’t have been necessary to choose between jail time and testifying against the man. If he hadn’t testified, the accident intended for him wouldn’t have killed Jillian, which prompted the decision to move from a fourteen-room house in Chicago’s River North neighborhood to a four-room apartment above a bike shop, living under assumed names, afraid to get close to anyone for fear that what happened to Jillian might happen to Alyssa.

Yeah, Max knew the details of his story and accepted the facts without passing judgment. Not that she needed to...

Noah despised himself enough for both of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

BILLIE SAT AT her desk, trying to get comfortable as she keyed in html code on a client’s website. Not an easy feat with one foot propped on an open file drawer. She missed her exercise ball, but since the accident, she’d had to make do with her old, non-ergonomically correct chair. That alone, she thought, hobbling toward the kitchen, was incentive enough to keep the ankle iced and elevated, per doctor’s orders.

The doorbell rang as she grabbed a fresh ice pack. According to the wall clock, it was nearly nine o’clock.

“What kind of nut drops by unannounced at this time of night?”

A peek through the front door’s sidelights told her: Troy, the oldest of her twin brothers, dodging moths drawn by the porch light.

She threw open the door. “Holy smokes, Troy, what are you doing here?”

“I, ah...” He chuckled quietly. “Good to see you, too.”

“Sorry. That didn’t come out right at all.” She wrapped him in a hug. “I’m just surprised to see you.” Stepping aside, Billie waved him into the foyer and tried not to stare as he dragged a big, bulging suitcase inside. “Good grief. Is there a body in there, or are you planning a trip around the world?”

He looked at the bag and shrugged. “I kinda left in a hurry, and just jammed stuff in there.”

“Uh-oh. What’s up?”

“Can we talk about it later?”

“How much later?”

“Feed me, and maybe I’ll feel like dredging up the bad news.”

“Always the tough guy, huh?” Billie pointed toward the hall. “You know where to stow your gear.” On the way to the guest room, he nodded toward the home office space she’d fashioned in one corner of the living room. “I’ll stay out of your hair. Promise. You keep designing those websites as if I wasn’t even here. This is temporary. I just need to get my head straight before I go ho—” He cleared his throat. “Before I go back...” he frowned slightly “...to Philly.”

He’d started to say home, and changed his mind. That worried her almost as much as the notion that her big, rough-tough marine brother, who’d earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star in Afghanistan, had come here to hide. But from what? She hobbled alongside him and pointed at the hideous black soft cast the E.R. doctor had prescribed. “I’d never admit it to anyone else, but my ankle is killing me.” Silently, she acknowledged that if Noah Preston hadn’t insisted on driving her home earlier, it would hurt a whole lot more.

“What did you do to yourself this time?”

“Took a curve too fast during a race,” she said, limping along behind him. “You can have your Superman and Captain America. My hero is the tree that kept me from going over the edge.”