Carolyn McSparren - The Only Child

He thought of the cold chicken he’d planned to pick up on his way home, the silent kitchen in which he’d eat it, the lonely empty apartment, the broad empty bed. “All right.”

“Good. Want a drink? I don’t, but my friends do.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Okay, how about a soda?”

He nodded.

“Come into the kitchen while I fix the salad.”

“Your granddaughter is very beautiful.”

Molly snorted. “She’s nothing of the sort, but she’s going to be. She inherited Anne’s brains and her father’s metabolism.”

“You seem very comfortable with each other.”

“She doesn’t say ma’am or sir, if that’s what you mean. I want real respect, thank you, not the fake kind. She respects what I do. It’s going to be tough to lose her in a couple of years.”

Logan sat up. “What do you mean, lose her?”

Molly turned away from the refrigerator, a head of romaine lettuce in her hand. She said seriously, “Because sometime between now and age fourteen she will turn away from me for a few years. If I’m lucky and live long enough, I should get her back around twenty. We have entirely too good a relationship, so I’ll be one of the people she’ll have to rebel against if she’s going to grow up. Painful for everybody, of course, but teenagers are certifiably loony, anyway. The trick is to get them to adulthood without a pregnancy or a police record and definitely in one piece.” She glanced at Logan and gasped. “Oh, God, that was a stupid thing to say. I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Perfectly true. Unfortunately, I discovered too late that a parent actually has to be on site to accomplish that.”

Molly obviously had no idea what he meant, and he wasn’t ready to explain.

He watched her move easily and competently around the kitchen. She radiated warmth and a kind of inner composure that he didn’t think he’d ever encountered before. Suddenly a wave of panic swept over him. She touched him. Made him feel. He didn’t dare feel anything. If he allowed one crack in the protective shield he’d built around himself, all the pain might come crashing in.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’ve remembered I have an engagement. I must leave. I apologize.” He strode to the front door.

Molly stared after him, heard the door slam, the car start, and a moment later the alarm sound. She looked down at the lettuce in her hand and shook her head.

“That man is definitely a menace,” she muttered.

LOGAN STRUCK the heavy bag again and again. He felt each blow all the way to his shoulder, but he kept punching. Barely protected by light boxing gloves, his hands still ached from hitting the BMW. Sweat poured down his face, slid over his naked shoulders and chest down to the waistband of his sweat pants. The thrumming rhythm of the bag echoed off the attic walls.

He saw the face of George Youngman on the bag every time he hit it. He’d trusted the private detective. If the man had lied or screwed up, Logan intended to make him very sorry.

Eventually, his bursting lungs drove him to his knees. He rolled over on the mat and listened to his heart thud against his rib cage. Stretching out, he waited for his pulse to slow down.

Overhead in the wooden rafters a fat spider scuttled across its web.

Each night when he came up here from his apartment to use Jeremy’s exercise equipment, he felt close to his dead son. The place needed a good cleaning, but he liked it as it was, spiders and all.

His pulse rate slowed and stabilized quickly. He was in good physical shape for a man his age.

He stuck his left boxing glove in his right armpit to pull it off, then pulled the other off and dropped both on the mat beside him. His emotional shape was something else. He felt older than the pyramids and more battered than the Sphinx.

He rolled over, pulled Jeremy’s rowing machine to him, climbed in and began to row. He had to exhaust himself totally or he’d never sleep.

The cordless telephone on the floor beside him buzzed. He reached over and picked it up.

“Where have you been?”

“Zoe.” Wearily, Logan acknowledged the anger in his daughter’s voice. “Here. At least since about six.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been worried sick!”

“Why?”

“Sherry called looking for you and said there’d been some kind of a mess at Molly Halliday’s after I left. What was she talking about?”

Silently, Logan cursed Sherry. He hadn’t planned to explain anything to Zoe. “Nothing. A minor mix-up.”

“You broke something, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact…”

“Oh, Lord! Do we still get the dolls?”

“Why didn’t you tell me they were going to be on consignment?”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Would it have made a difference?”

“Of course it would, Zoe. I went there to get you a better deal. You know I don’t interfere with the store.”

“Oh, right.”

Logan sighed. He couldn’t ever get through to Zoe. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, shall we? I’m sorry I worried you.”

The phone slammed down. Logan listened to the dial tone.

She never called him by any name. She spoke of him to other people as “my father,” but when she spoke to him directly he was never “Daddy” or “Dad” or even “Father.”

She was right to blame him for all the mistakes he’d made, all the years when he’d dropped in on his family’s lives and dropped out again. But he had truly believed he was doing the best thing for them all. Good intentions didn’t count with Zoe.

At least Zoe had her plumber. Rick was a full-time husband to Zoe. He didn’t go running off to the Arctic Circle to work on a pipeline. Logan and Rick might not be on the same wavelength, but he could see why Zoe would choose a man like Rick after a lifetime spent with an absentee father.

He began to row again. His legs and arms hurt, his back ached, but he didn’t stop. He knew how tired he had to be to sleep. He hadn’t reached that point yet.

He was glad he’d walked out on Molly Halliday. Her eyes had a way of seeing into him that zeroed in on his pain.

Then he remembered her soft full mouth. A mouth made for deep, gentle kisses. Her breasts seemed created to pillow a man’s head.

His loins tightened. If one meeting with Molly could awaken longings in him that he had denied for years, she was very dangerous. She could infiltrate the protective wall he’d painstakingly constructed around his emotions.

He thought about the easy way she acted with her daughter and granddaughter. They treated one another casually, certain of the love they shared.

God, how he envied her!

“YOU DEMONIC LITTLE troll, I could just murder Sherry for bringing that man out here!” Molly jabbed at Quentin Dillahunt’s right eyebrow with a viciousness it didn’t deserve. She knew if she didn’t calm down she’d ruin the portrait and have to start from scratch. She didn’t have time.

“I keep seeing you with Sherry’s horns on you, you little beast.” She smoothed her thumb across Quentin’s pate as though the horns had begun to grow. She wasn’t really mad at Quentin or Sherry. She was mad at Logan. Whether she liked it or not, the moment he destroyed the Dulcy doll he became entwined in her life. She didn’t want anybody entwined anywhere, drat it!

Of course he had to find out the truth about Dulcy; he had to find the child—or try to find her—if she was still alive. The thought of a little girl dragging around the country behind an alcoholic felon of a mother was more than Molly could bear.

Maybe she had opened Pandora’s box. But like Pandora, she’d managed to keep hope alive for Logan. That ought to be worth something. He’d been living without hope for a very long time.