Darlene Gardner - The Secret Sin

“All our trips end here at base camp. That spot over by the flatbed trailer is the take-out point,” Annie said. “We load the boats so we can transport them to the put-in for the next trip.”

“Boats?” Lindsey asked.

“Rafts, kayaks, tubes.” She pointed to a pair of yellow school buses so old you couldn’t pay Lindsey to get in them. “We shuttle the customers in those.”

Annie acted like it was really important to her that Lindsey like it here, which was totally different from her attitude at the train station. Earlier, Annie’s main goal had been sending Lindsey home.

“Can’t you just drag a raft down to the river and go?” Lindsey asked, although there was no way she’d do that. The bugs wouldn’t be as bad out on the river, but she shuddered just thinking about the mud and the cold water.

“You could,” Annie said, “except the river’s like a one-way street. It only flows in a single direction.”

Whatever, Lindsey thought. That hadn’t been what sounded so cool when she’d heard about the business. “Uncle Frank said there was a store.”

“It’s more like a gift shop,” Annie said. “We sell T-shirts, waterproof sandals, sunglasses—that kind of thing. It supplements the income from the river trips and the mountain-bike rentals.”

Great, Lindsey thought with a sinking heart. Just great.

“Where does your dad live?” Lindsey asked.

Annie pointed to a tiny building behind the shop. “Back there. That’s where we’re going.”

Lindsey stopped walking. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Lindsey thought of the big, five-bedroom, two-story house she’d woken up in that morning. “I guess I just expected something different when Uncle Frank talked about all this.”

Lindsey made a face when she spotted the rocking chairs on the wooden porch, but the inside of the house turned out to be not so bad. A decent-sized room with a really old TV opened into a kitchen. The furniture was simple—a navy blue sofa and wood chairs. Beyond the kitchen was a smaller space with a washer and dryer.

Annie indicated the left side of the house. “There are two bedrooms with separate baths over here. You can sleep in my dad’s room.”

“Cool,” Lindsey said. She could stay here, she decided, which was a good thing because she had nowhere else to go.

“I need to finish up a couple of things at the shop,” Annie said. “Will you be okay for an hour or so?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lindsey said, but she ran out of things to do after putting her clothes in an empty drawer and checking her e-mail on the computer with an ancient modem.

She was flipping through a magazine from a nearby rack when Annie showed up. No way was she going to read Field and Stream, Outdoor Life and Backpacker.

“Don’t you have anything good?” Lindsey asked. “Like Vogue or Elle ?”

“Afraid not,” Annie said.

Lindsey held up an issue of something called Outdoor Women . On the cover was a picture of three women with fishing poles standing in river water up to their thighs, with mountains rising behind them.

“Who reads this lame stuff?” Lindsey wrinkled her nose.

“Enough people to keep me employed,” Annie said. Lindsey must have looked puzzled, because Annie added, “I wrote the cover story.”

“Get out!” Lindsey eagerly turned the glossy pages until she found the article. It was about something called heli-fishing, where helicopters flew fishermen to remote areas that couldn’t be reached any other way. “Oh, my gosh. Your name’s on this story. That’s really awesome.”

“Didn’t you just say the magazine was lame?”

“Well, yeah. But getting your name in a magazine is cool.” Lindsey rethought her lukewarm opinion of Annie. “Maybe one day you can write about something better.”

Annie looked doubtful. “The outdoors is pretty much my thing.”

“Not mine.” Lindsey rolled her eyes. “I’d take a mall over a river any day.”

Annie perched on the edge of the sofa near where Lindsey sat on the floor. “Then why did you come to visit my father? There aren’t any malls in Indigo Springs.”

Lindsey stuffed the magazines back in the rack. “I didn’t know that. I thought there were malls everywhere.”

“Is something wrong at home?” Annie seemed to be deciding what to say. “You can tell me if you don’t feel…safe.”

Lindsey had sat through films in health class about the different types of abuse. She knew what Annie was really asking. Wow. Was she way off!

“There’s nothing like that going on,” Lindsey said.

Annie seemed to relax. “Something must have happened to make you leave home. Your parents will be calling back soon. It would help if I knew what it was.”

Lindsey stood up. “I just needed to get away, that’s all.”

“Away from what?” Annie asked.

Lindsey waved a hand. “Away from everything.”

Now that Annie was on board, Lindsey wasn’t going to say anything that would get her sent back to Pittsburgh. She was staying put if she could help it.

Anywhere was better than home.

W ELL , that hadn’t gone well.

Annie watched helplessly as Lindsey retreated into the bedroom she was using. The girl had changed out of her jeans into a pair of gray jersey knit shorts with Princess printed across the bottom.

Princess. Yeah, Annie was way out of her league when it came to Lindsey.

She’d half feared that Lindsey would change her mind about staying and say she wanted to go home, but the girl had surprised her. Not that the visit would be a done deal until she talked to Lindsey’s parents.

Annie had left a second message for them and could barely concentrate while she waited for the phone to ring. Sometime between inviting Lindsey to stay and now, Annie had allowed herself to hope for time to get to know the girl.

No. Not hope. That was too mild a word.

She craved more time with Lindsey—and she was desperately afraid she wouldn’t get it.

The phone rang, making Annie jump. She hurried into the kitchen and picked up the receiver of the wall-mounted phone. “Hello.”

“Annie, it’s Ryan.”

Annie’s brain froze, her throat closed up and her legs almost gave out. She could only think of one reason for him to call.

He knew.

She put a hand on the counter to steady herself. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. She braced herself, struggling to decide whether she would admit the truth.

“I’m calling to see how Lindsey’s feeling,” Ryan said.

How Lindsey was feeling? His words didn’t compute. She’d expected him to say he’d guessed Lindsey was the baby they’d given up for adoption.

“Annie? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she choked out, feeling overwhelming relief. “I’m here.”

Her voice sounded raspy and unfamiliar with none of the maturity she’d strived so hard to develop over the years.

“How is Lindsey?” he asked.

A few more seconds passed. She closed her eyes briefly. She was handling the call poorly, arousing suspicion where there might not be any. She fought to regain her equilibrium. “Fine. She’s fine.”

“Good to hear. Just make sure she doesn’t skip meals and she shouldn’t have the problem again.”

“Okay. Sure.” She still sounded unsophisticated and unsure of herself, which was unacceptable. Especially with Ryan Whitmore on the other end of the line. Get off the phone, her brain screamed. The less you talk to him, the better. “Thanks for calling.”

“Wait!” Ryan’s appeal was loud enough that she heard him even though she was just about to hang up. She reluctantly held the phone back up to her ear.

“You’re guiding the ten o’clock white-water trip tomorrow morning, right?” he asked.