Mary Forbes - A Father, Again

Pain lanced through him. “I can’t help what happened in the past. But I sure as hell can help what’s happening right now. If Brittany wants to be with me for two months, then she can. Neither you nor that jackass you’re marrying has a right to take that away from her. And—” his voice turned dark “—if you do, we’ll revisit this in court. Oh, and another thing. Brittany doesn’t like Allan playing dad around her. Tell him to lay off.”

“He does not play anything around her. He just wants to be a good father figure. Which is a lot more than her real daddy’s been over the last ten years.”

That stung. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but dredging up the past is useless. We can’t change it.”

“Tell that to your daughter when she cries at night for her brother.” The phone clicked off.

Jon had no idea how long he stood there with the receiver humming before he finally set it back in the cradle.

Blindly, he looked at the oak cupboards housing his few cracked dishes. He should go upstairs, take a long, hot shower. His clothes were sticky and cold on his skin from the rain, his hair knotted and damp. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be down with a bug and where would that get his plans to finish this house?

In a daze he looked around the room. Like you really need a place this size, Jon.

Where had his mind been when he’d bought it? Brittany was ten years old, a sprite with his blue eyes and her mom’s fair hair. A sprite who’d visit three times a year. Who required one bedroom, not five.

And when she went back to Seattle?

Here he’d be.

Lone wolf prowling inside four dozen tall walls.

Evenings, he’d sit out back. Sip a cool one as the sun dwindled. Day after day, year after year. He’d watch the grass grow, the trees spread wider, the hedge reach another ten feet toward the sky. All for what? Brittany?

In three, four years Seattle would be prime pickings for a teenager doing all the things young girls do at that age.

Misty River, Oregon, with its conservatism, offered piddly.

He didn’t fool himself into thinking she’d want to spend even a weekend with him when that time came.

Then why not let Allan-the-Great take over? Be the father figure she needs? A man home every evening, staying till morning. A family man. A man who could give Colleen another baby.

Another brother for Brittany.

Jon spun around and cursed. Stalking to the door, he yanked it open and stepped onto the back deck. The rain had quit and the moist night air struck like a frigid fist. Let him come down with SARS. Everything that mattered was lost already.

Job.

Marriage.

Family.

Nick.

The floorboards thundered under his socked heels as he paced from one side to the other.

Stopping abruptly, he gripped the new wood railing he had hammered into place two days ago. The rain slackened into a fine mist. He let it bathe his face, easing the pain. When he could think again, he hauled in a long breath and found himself staring across the dripping hedge. From behind frilly curtains, amber light glowed in the windows of the small house next door. A woman’s shape hovered in the closest window, then was gone.

Rianne.

Getting ready for bed? He checked the big, luminous digital on his wrist. Nine-forty-three. He fancied her changing into some cotton affair, cool for the upcoming warmer nights, but unadorned, unsexy, wholly feminine, wholly her.

He pictured himself there…her skin warm, soft like the down of the bed’s duvet…

He turned and strode into his barren house.

“Yo, Joe! Hang on a sec, man,” Sam called as his best bud passed him in the corridor of milling students and clanging lockers. They had five minutes before Friday’s last afternoon class started and Joey Fraser, Sam knew, was on his way to the upper level.

Slamming shut his locker, he turned and pushed through the crowd to where Joey waited near the outside doors. “What up, man? Aren’t you going to math?”

“Me’n a couple guys’re skipping,” Joey said.

“Skipping?”

Joey sniffed. “No big deal. I can catch up. Wanna come?”

Brown fuzz grew along his friend’s upper lip and on his pointy chin, and Sam had to raise his eyes an extra couple of inches to meet Joey’s. “Can’t, man. Gotta test. Old lady Pearson’ll have my butt if I don’t show.”

“Tell her you’re sick.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, like that’s gonna work. She just saw me two minutes ago in the library.”

“So?”

“So, if I don’t pass this lab, the witch is gonna phone my mom. I’ve already failed the last two.” He hadn’t really, but he might as well have. The marks barely skimmed sixty. Lately, his concentration was the pits. Studying was the pits.

He knew why. It was Joey. His pal. His best bud.

Who looked at Sam as if he had two heads. The way he was right now. What’s the matter, Joe?

His pal turned toward the doors.

“Want to do something after school?” Sam asked. Almost too eagerly, he realized, when Joey shrugged and looked away. Sam pressed on. “I have to baby-sit Emily till four. We can dunk some balls at my house.”

The week they’d moved in, Sam’s mom had bought a basketball stand for the driveway. Last summer, he and Joey had done a lot of one-on-ones and hung out at each other’s houses, watching movies, playing computer games, roller-blading.

Joey never saw Sam’s deformity as untouchable. In fact, the first time they met, Joe had given Sam’s hand its highest praise ever with his cool “suhweet.”

This last month, though, Joey acted squirmy whenever Sam suggested they do stuff together. When he called Joey’s house, Sam often heard other guys in the background. Twice he’d recognized Cody Huller’s voice. Cody with earrings, nose-ring and orange, half-shaved hair. What Joey saw in Cody was beyond Sam.

Joey said, “After school me’n the guys are hanging on Main.”

The guys. Did he mean Huller? Sam hitched a careless shoulder. “Sure, whatever.”

“Gotta go,” Joey said. “Later, okay?”

“Yeah.” Sam watched his friend push through the doors, toward the warm afternoon sunshine. “Later.”

Walking to class, Sam knew something had changed between them. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t describe it. Joey still looked like Joey, still walked like Joey, still talked like Joey. But there was a difference.

Like Sam was a big waste of time to his friend.

The cranky sputter of a lawnmower unwilling to catch grated on Jon. Tossing the crowbar he’d been using to rip apart the front veranda steps this particular Saturday morning, he considered his options. He could walk into Rianne’s yard and see about the problem, or he could jam in a pair of earplugs and pretend she didn’t exist.

Neither option appealed to his good sense.

But then, good sense had taken a hundred-year hike, so what the hell?

Scowling, he yanked off his battered leather gloves, shoved them into his right hip pocket and headed once more into her backyard. Four days and this would be his third visit. Soon, they’d be attached at the hip.

Was that as good as attracted to her hip—among other things? He scowled harder. “You’re depraved, Tucker.”

Adjusting the brim of his Seahawks cap over his brow, he rounded her road-weary car.

She was in pink cutoffs, bent over the machine.

Jon stopped. Shook his head. Blew a weighted breath. Hightailing it back to his house—or the Pacific—loomed like one grand invitation. The farther from this woman the better.

“Dang thing,” she grumbled, oblivious to all but the mean red machine squatting idle at her feet.

“Troubles?”

Her head jerked up. “Jon.” His name, a silken thread on the warm, sunny air.