Janice Johnson - Everywhere She Goes

“I always assumed... Wow.”

“Cait.”

“Don’t snap at me!”

Now they were glaring at each other.

Well, what difference did it make? she reasoned. Colin and Mom never talked anyway.

“I had no idea back then. I thought he was a friend of Mom’s. But when I was sixteen, I was rooting in her closet looking for something.” She’d been snotty, and Mom had taken away her cell phone in punishment. The minute Mom left for work the next day, Cait in a fury had dug through all of her mother’s dresser drawers, looked inside coat pockets in her closet, then taken down every box on the closet shelf. In the second one, she’d found a couple of photo albums and letters and been distracted from her search. She remembered sitting on the bed turning pages in the albums. Already her memories of her dad and her brother were fading. But here were Colin’s and her school photos, as well as lots of family snapshots. Mostly those weren’t all that great—people were squinting against the sun or looked posed and uncomfortable. There were first-day-of-school pictures, when Colin or she were stiff in their new clothes. And some of Dad laughing with his arm around one of them. She’d felt strange, seeing those.

She hadn’t paid much attention to the letters, beyond dumping them out on the bed so she could look at the loose photos. There had been a bundle tied in ribbon with handwriting she’d recognized as Nanna’s. But then she saw that a picture of a man she had recognized was bundled with a few notes that weren’t in envelopes.

“I found some notes he’d written Mom,” she said. “They were...um, kind of explicit. And then in one he was pleading with her to leave Dad. He said he’d take us, too. In the last one, he said, ‘Why won’t you call me? You’re wrong, whatever you think.’” She remembered it word for word. “It freaked me out. I guess Mom slept with him, but then she ditched him when he got serious about her. Which made me wonder if there hadn’t been other men, too.”

Colin hadn’t moved. “Mom?” he finally said in a low, dark voice.

Cait bobbed her head. “I always thought...”

His eyes focused on her.

“That you must know. I mean, you were older—”

“No. I had no idea. What does he look like?”

She did her best to describe the Jerry she remembered from back then and the one she’d encountered today.

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“Maybe,” she said. “But it’s still mostly Mom I stumble over. I mean, she was married. She had us to think about.”

“You mean, she had you to think about,” he said, with less emotion than she suspected he really felt about being deserted by his own mother. But then his eyes narrowed. “Why would she have introduced you to him?”

“I guess sometimes they wanted to get together and she didn’t have any place to leave me. Or maybe they were playing family. I don’t know. I was a kid. I thought we ran into him by accident.” She told him about having lunch with the man, and the treat of getting to go practically out onto the runway to watch planes take off and land. “One time we had a picnic. I don’t remember where. We swam. I remember the water being really cold, but it was fun.” She shrugged. “All innocent, until I found out it wasn’t.”

“Goddamn it,” her brother said bitterly.

“Do you think Dad knew?”

Colin’s face was transformed by anger, his eyes the color of storm clouds. “I have no idea. I tried not to listen when they were screaming at each other.”

She nodded her understanding; sometimes she’d run to her room and pulled her pillow over her head. The yelling so often ended in crashes and grunts and sobbing. She hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her parents then.

Right now, she was feeling something of the same choking sense of anxiety.

A muscle ticked beneath Colin’s eye. “I may have to meet this Hegland.”

She seemed to have quit breathing. “You look like Dad right now.”

“I don’t look anything like him,” he said in a low growl. But he did. He did. Dad’s face had always been so flushed when he lost his temper, worse when he’d had too much to drink, of course. Right now, dark color suffused Colin’s face and tendons stood out in his forearms. His hand had fisted around his bread knife.

Just like Daddy’s.

“Yes, you do.” She bent her head so she didn’t have to see him. Oh, God. This was what she’d felt every time Blake started to get mad.

“Colin, you’re scaring her,” Nell said softly. When Cait sneaked a worried peek, she saw that her sister-in-law had laid a hand on Colin’s arm. He’d turned his head and was looking at her.

After a minute, during which Cait didn’t dare move, he said, “Cait.” His voice was gruff but also somehow gentle. “I know what you saw back then, but I’m not like Dad. I’ve never wanted to be anything like him. I fought with him to keep you and Mom safe, but I’m not a violent man.”

She looked up to find him regarding her ruefully.

“Seeing you look scared of me,” he said, “that’s one of the worst things you could do to me.” He made a rough sound in his throat. “I would never hurt you.”

She gave a quick little nod, and, after a moment, he answered it with one of his own.

“All right,” he said.

Embarrassed at her over-the-top reaction—could she call it a past life regression?—she told him she was sorry. Colin insisted she had nothing to be sorry for.

Nell interceded by getting them talking about something else, and later, when they were alone in the kitchen, she apologized to Cait for mentioning Jerry.

“No, it’s all right. I just had this sort of flashback.” Cait even managed a small laugh. “The perils of coming home.”

“Which I fully understand.” Nell bumped her shoulder against Cait’s. “You should go figure out what you’re going to wear tomorrow.”

“Oh, boy.” New anxiety instead of anticipation, and Cait didn’t even know why. Because this was Angel Butte? Because, in running away from Blake, she’d made a sharp right turn in her life? Or because she would be seeing Noah Chandler at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, and had no idea why he made her feel so edgy?

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN NOAH AND Cait walked into Chandler’s Brew Pub, a host rushed to greet them, and what other employees Cait could see were suddenly very busy. Cait would have been more amused if she didn’t now work for him, too.

He’d been nothing but agreeable all morning, from the minute he had walked her to her new office. After barely giving her a chance to glance around, he’d hustled her back out so he could introduce her to half the people who worked for the city. Within an hour, names were running together in her head. Perhaps seeing that her smile was growing strained, he had decided to drive her around in his truly enormous SUV so she could see ongoing projects.

“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he had then declared.

She felt a flutter in her chest at the idea of having to look at him over a table for an hour and make conversation. She found herself wishing he was married, maybe had a couple of kids she could ask about. Knowing he was single was part of what had her on edge.

Noah Chandler was an incredibly sexy man despite the fact that he was the next thing to homely. Or maybe that wasn’t it, she’d found herself thinking as she stole glances at him while he drove. Colin had said he was an ugly bastard, but Cait couldn’t imagine any woman agreeing with that assessment. No, he only surprised her because, except for the very sharp blue eyes, he looked like a laborer, not a politician. He ought to be operating a forklift or heaving heavy loads in and out of trucks or railroad cars, not wearing a beautifully cut suit and running a city. She wondered how he kept that powerful physique. Certainly not by scowling at his computer monitor and hammering the keyboard, the way he’d been when she had stepped into his office that morning.