Читать книгу Her Daughter's Father - Anna Adams - Страница 8

“HAYDEN, I DON’T NEED YOU and Nettie to help me raise my own daughter.” Jack Stephens pushed away from the worn kitchen table and his half-eaten lunch. His former father-in-law scraped back his chair, too.

“We know you’re a good father to Colleen, but she’s grown even more rebellious since we were here at Christmas. While you’re busy with the boat, let us help you.”

Intense March sunshine flooding through the window hurt Jack’s eyes. The boat. Two months ago, a storm like the hand of God had pushed his boat ashore. Since then, he’d worked on a friend’s boat during the day and made repairs on his own in the evenings. Maybe Colleen had acted up more since then, but his busy schedule hadn’t started her one-girl rebellion.

No, she’d changed when Mary died. Nearly three years ago. He shied from the uncomfortable truth. Colleen had stopped talking to him after her mother died.

Jack shoved his plate onto the counter. “You’ve worked up to this all morning, haven’t you? No wonder Nettie wanted a girl’s day out.” Hayden Mason’s diminutive wife had insisted she and Colleen needed new clothes for the spring festival tonight. “Did Colleen ask you to talk to me?”

“Of course not,” Hayden said, picking up his own plate. “Unless you approve, we won’t even tell her we want to stay.”

Like a living, breathing entity, Jack’s small kitchen seemed to squeeze him. “What if I don’t approve?”

Hayden narrowed his gray eyes, Mary’s eyes, but Jack wouldn’t let memories of Mary soften his impatience with her managing parents. His parents, too, after all these years.

“I don’t want you to stay. You and Nettie come between Colleen and me. When you’re here, she turns to you first, and I can’t reach her.”

“Maybe she needs us.” Hayden took Jack’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you two can’t talk to each other anymore. You don’t understand each other.”

“She doesn’t have to understand me. She has to do what I tell her to do and be where I tell her to be. She forgets she’s fifteen, and I’m her parent.” Jack broke off. Tough talk, tougher than he meant, but his anxiety for Colleen made him feel weak, out of control. “How could you and Nettie do a better job? You pave her way with gifts. Look at that leather jacket Nettie bought her last weekend.”

Hayden sighed reflectively, as if the black and silver-buckled, biker-gang special clanged in his memory, too. “Now, Nettie made a mistake there. She swears Colleen showed her a different jacket. One with a velvet collar.” Hayden shook his head. “But Colleen also told her how much she misses Mary. Has she told you?”

“What kind of man do you think I’ve become?” Taking Hayden’s plate, Jack avoided his eyes. “I know how much Colleen misses her mother.”

“But has she told you? Has she cried in your handkerchief?”

At the sink, Jack stared out the window at the green-blue bay. Colleen hadn’t shed one teardrop in almost three years, not when the police called to say Mary’s car had gone off the road, not when he’d come home from Mary’s hospital bedside two weeks later to tell Colleen her mother was gone.

Colleen seemed to want him to believe she regarded her mother’s death with the same stone-cold apathy she extended toward every word he spoke, from “I love you” to “Call me before you stop at your friend’s house.”

“We’ll work out our problems.” He tried to sound sure. Colleen was his little girl. Why didn’t he know how to reach her? “Maybe you and Nettie should stop running interference for her.”

“You need time to get your boat back in the water. Colleen needs attention. We can give both of you exactly what you need. Let us stay, just until you finish repairing the boat and get your business back on track.”

Pressure beat behind his eyes as Jack stared at the older man. Maybe Hayden was right. If Colleen had talked to Nettie about Mary, maybe she’d find a way to talk about the other things she couldn’t tell him. “What about your house in Baltimore?”

“Nettie’s cousin in D.C. will check on it. Besides, we’re not so far away that we can’t go home if we need to.”

Even as Jack opened his mouth to give in, the front door slammed open. Colleen’s usual entrance. Leaving Hayden behind, he hurried through the kitchen archway. In the dim light, he saw what Colleen had done to herself while in her grandmother’s care.

Her hair, much darker than the honey-blond it had been that morning, stood on end. Exaggerated paleness painted on her cheeks and eyelids stopped Jack cold. She smiled through black lips. Behind her, Nettie hovered, cautious as Colleen ought to be.

“What have you done?” Jack clutched at his slipping temper. Who knew parenting could scare the hell out of a grown man? His daughter needed him, but he couldn’t figure out what she needed. “Colleen, what have you done to yourself?”

Adolescence hadn’t robbed her of all her good sense. A hint of anxiety finally entered her eyes. “I had a make-over.”

“A makeover?” She looked like one of the living dead. Jack eased in a deep breath. Their arguments followed the same pattern. Step one—he lost his mind. Step two—she clammed up. Step three—silence deepened the gap between them. “Go upstairs and clean your face. We’ll talk about this in a few minutes.”

“I paid for the makeup, Dad.” Squaring her shoulders, Colleen lifted a Macy’s shopping bag. “I plan to use it.”

Jack stared at his daughter, pointedly ignoring Nettie and Hayden, who were blind to the fact they didn’t help Colleen when they financed her mistakes. “How did you pay?”

She hesitated, reluctant to involve Nettie, keeper of the moneybags. She bit her lip and shifted her shopping to her other hand. “Grandma gave me the money.”

Nettie scooted around her. “Now, Jack, honey, I know this looks bad.” She was as reluctant as Colleen to come clean. “I didn’t know—I thought, what’s the harm in a little makeup? I—”

“But where were you when she did this?” As he switched on the hall light to see his daughter’s hair, Jack’s fuse burned a little shorter. He turned Colleen’s head so that the spiky ends glinted. “Purple?” Appalled, he let her go.

“No. Burgundy.” Colleen tapped her palm gently over the points.

Her hair looked like an eggplant sunburst.

In one more rescue attempt, Nettie nudged Colleen farther behind her and lifted one hand to her own shoulder. Clenching her face in an exaggerated grimace, she rubbed her shoulder, as if her muscles ached horribly. With a sideways glance, she made sure she’d lured Jack’s attention away from Colleen. “I indulged in a short massage.” She tilted her head toward her granddaughter. “I’ve been under a little stress, you know.”

Hayden showed up at Jack’s side. “Nettie.” His voice dripped disappointment.

“I know. I know.” Her show of guilt made Jack want to laugh and shout at the same time. Nettie dropped her head. “I don’t know how I—”

“Dad, this isn’t Grandma’s fault.” Colleen stepped in front of Nettie. “I tricked her.”

“I’m the adult, Colleen.” Nettie muscled back in front of her granddaughter, forcing Jack to retreat a step or two. She patted her own perfect silver coiffure with delicate weariness. “I should have paid closer attention.”

Their protective dance softened Jack’s heart. Leaning against the wall, he pressed his palms to the cool plaster. Since Mary’s death, Colleen had held her emotions tight. The joy he’d loved in her seemed muted, and she showed him only frustration. He’d tried to give her privacy, because he understood her need. Later he realized she’d stopped telling him her troubles. Only when she’d begun to act out anger she refused to discuss had he realized he should have pried.

He couldn’t punish Colleen for withdrawing when he’d let her go to give her time. She missed Mary, but she refused to talk to him about her grief. He’d thought he understood because his own pain and sorrow had felt so private.

Maybe if he let Nettie stay, Colleen would find a way to talk to her.

Jack swallowed a huge lump in his throat. Why can’t she talk to me? But before she went and did something to herself he couldn’t undo, she had to talk to someone. And Nettie made her care more than anyone else could.

All three of them waited for what he’d do next. “Go wash your face, Colleen,” he said again. “I don’t want you to wear that stuff to the festival tonight.”

A slight, relieved smile curved her mouth, but she held it back. “I’ll do something about my hair, too.”

Reluctant to look too closely at the damage, Jack allowed himself a brief nod. “Your grandpa and grandma are going to stay awhile, until I finish the boat.”

Colleen hesitated, looking from Nettie to Hayden. “Great. Two more keepers.”

Jack pushed away from the wall. “Cut it out.”

She headed for the stairs, the heels of her ankle boots tapping on the pine floor’s wide planks. She whirled, planting her hands on the balustrade to look down with pink cheeks and stormy eyes.

“Don’t be mad at Grandma, Dad. I’ve tricked you before, too.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak until Colleen slammed her door, and its echo let the air out of him. He turned and took Nettie’s hand. “I’m sorry it’s not a more exclusive club.” He glanced from her to Hayden. “Are you sure you still want to stay?”

“YOU LOOK FINE, INDIA. Stop worrying, and try to have a good time. Tonight’s your chance to meet people who might tell you something about her.” Her father lowered his voice on the pronoun.

India smoothed the hem of her new plaid skirt over her thighs and felt conspicuous. “She might be out there.” India nodded at the festival crowd that snaked around the cavernous high school gym. “I feel like a kid, myself, in this. Maybe I’ll call Mom tonight and ask her to send some of my things.”

Mick handed her a plastic cup of pink stuff. “Try this. A little girl wearing that same skirt poured it for me. I’ve never seen hair her color—purple, I swear. I’m not sure I could mix paint to match.”

Smiling despite choking tension, India held the glass at her lips. “Thanks, Dad. I feel better now.”

Mick ran his hand over her gauzy sleeve. “Your eyes look like big blue marbles. Relax.”

India shifted away. After all these years, she hardly knew how to accept her father’s comfort. She twisted the blond strands of her ponytail. She’d tried so hard to protect her parents, she’d forgotten how to go to them when she was afraid.

And she was scared stiff. What would she say if she met Colleen? Nothing. She couldn’t intrude in Colleen’s life. She had to run away as she had so long ago.

She’d kept running until those few terrifying moments on a burning plane had taught her what was important. Family. Living down the past before it ate up the future. She’d been all appearance before, but now she wanted to feel the emotions she’d hidden from, as long as she did nothing to hurt Colleen. “What if she’s here? What if I meet her accidentally?”

Mick sipped his own drink, somehow understanding her mid-thought conversation. “She might also be at home, tucked up in her own bed. She might be out of town. Don’t get your hopes up.”

India rubbed her index finger through the condensation on her plastic glass. “I’m not secretly hoping to run into her.”

Hurt bruised her father’s gaze. “I’m not saying you’d try to see her, but you’re my daughter, and I don’t want you hurt.”

India took a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the matters between them. “I know what you’ve done for me.” After he’d dragged his business back from the edge of bankruptcy, he’d put away his brushes to manage his company from a desk in a comfortable office. Until now. “I know you only came back into the field to give me an excuse to come here, but we could be lucky. Maybe we’ll meet someone tonight who’ll tell us Colleen lives in a fairy tale, and we can finish painting Mr. Tanner’s house and go home.”

“You could walk right into her, and she wouldn’t know you.” Mick turned, almost blocking out the mob behind him. “We can leave now if you want, if you have second thoughts.”

“No.” A woman in a bright red dress floated on a clear path for Mick. Their landlady at Seasider Inn looked different tonight, without her square white pinafore and her cat’s-eye, tortoiseshell glasses. India shoved her cup into her father’s hand. “Here comes Viveca Henderson. I need some air.”

Warily Mick turned. “Yeah, she likes me too much. I think I’d better mention your mother to her again. Where are you going?”

“Outside, to the high school’s dunking booth.” Reluctant or not, she’d come here to find out about Colleen’s life. “The sooner I find someone who’ll gossip about her, the better.”

Bright lights illuminated the parking lot. India passed an apple-bobbing barrel and a kissing booth, manned by girls in cheerleader uniforms. Could one of them be Colleen?

In the booth’s shadows, India glimpsed a young girl in the same skirt she’d bought. India smoothed her hem again. In this light, she couldn’t tell if the girl’s short cap of hair was purple. Suddenly the girl tried to pull away from the boy at her side, but he held on. Leaning down, he spoke close to her ear, and she slid her arm around his waist.

Hesitating, India studied the crowd around the girl and boy. No one else seemed to see trouble. When the boy turned the girl toward the parking lot, she went willingly.

The cool breeze brushed a paper hamburger wrapper past India’s ankle. What would Colleen be like? Would she have a boyfriend who looked too old for her? Would she seem even younger than the girl with the purple hair?

Rubbing her goose-bumped arms, India watched the people enjoying themselves too much to notice the weather or the children. She wished she’d brought her jacket along. Even if it hadn’t matched her froufrou lacy blouse and plaid skirt.

She’d vowed not to meddle in Colleen’s life, and keeping vows was her strength. Yet deep inside, she had to admit she’d thought she might see Colleen here tonight. She couldn’t help wanting to look “cool.” After she’d sorted through her serviceable though faded jeans, the painting overalls her father had provided, or the one good dress she’d packed for just in case, she’d trekked to the nearest mall on the mainland.

Ridiculous.

What would Colleen Stephens care about a stranger’s wardrobe?

A sudden, urgent cry stopped India beside a large wooden planter. She stared back into the crowd, waiting for another cry, but she heard nothing. Just children’s voices and party sounds.

She scanned the little ones weaving in and out of the festival booths. All happy, many laughing. But that one voice, for a moment, higher than the rest—India pushed nervous fingertips through her hair. While the frightened cry still echoed in her head, she turned toward the parking lot’s edge.

With so many cars here, every house in town must be empty. She craned her neck, searching for—what? Almost before she realized she was hearing it again, the thin, high voice arched over the fun once more.

India made a beeline for the sound. In the weaker light beyond the open lot, cars stood in rows. Three rows back, the tall, gangly boy from beside the kissing booth tried to tug the purple-haired girl into a cherry-red sports car while two more girls dragged at her other arm. They all struggled in silence now.

Suddenly the two other girls broke away and ran toward the festival crowds. India had eyes only for the girl who still clung with both hands to the roof of the boy’s car.

“Get in,” he shouted. “Get in or you’ll never see me again.”

Intimately familiar words, in a different context, in a more dangerous situation than when her long-ago boyfriend had threatened her with them, deepened India’s instinctive rage.

“I won’t go with you when you’re like this.” The girl tried to arch away from him, but he only pushed harder.

Her friends ran up to India. Their great relief hurt her. They were just little girls, caught in a bad game of grownup.

One intercepted her. “He’s been drinking. Our friend—Please help us.”

India broke into a run. “Go get more help.”

“Okay.”

With heightened senses, she heard their footsteps fade behind her. In the false light, the paint on the boy’s car looked warm and wet. As she rounded the hood, India slapped her palm on the metal. She would have jumped on it to make him turn away from the girl. He whirled, fists clenched.

“Hey! That’s my car.” Slurring the words, he flailed his arms, to reach for India.

But she bowed her body out of his reach and stationed herself between him and the girl, who stood now, stunned and still.

“Do you think you’re a big man, because you can bully a girl like this?” India sized him up at about seventeen. At least six inches taller than she, and forty pounds heavier, he was mad and drunk enough to be plenty mean. She didn’t dare break her gaze from his to check on the girl.

Completely unintimidated, he marched toward India, his fists again at his sides. “Who are you?”

“The woman you’ll have to go through to get to her.” She braced her hands on her hips and hoped the girl stayed behind her. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, India waited for him to strike—and for instincts that had dragged her this far to tell her what to do next.

The boy stopped. “You don’t know her. You don’t belong here. Who are you?”

“We’ve covered that. Where are your parents? Do they know about you?”

“Know what about me?” He stumbled forward. “You hit my car.”

Backing into the girl, India eased her away from the car. She risked a quick glance inside. No keys on the seat. She couldn’t see the ignition.

“Go home.” India pretended she wasn’t afraid. “Before this girl’s friends bring the police back. And next time, pick on someone your own size.”

“I’ll—” Before he could say what he planned to do, a man appeared out of darkness.

“Keep your filthy hands off my daughter.” He hauled the boy around to face him. With his fists full of the kid’s collar, the man studied the girl behind India. “Colleen, are you hurt?”

India stiffened. Her heart lodged in the back of her throat. Go now. Run, before she sees you.

Somehow, she couldn’t move.

“Colleen!”

“I’m fine, Dad.” The girl edged around India, her voice a young echo of India’s mother’s. Rachel sang like an angel. She sang lullabies her grandchild would never hear. And this child spoke with Rachel’s voice.

India wobbled. Plaid skirt and purple hair brushed into a thick cap. The girl who’d served Mick the glass of pink punch.

More than one Colleen might live on Arran Island.

India stared at the man. Strong and inflexible as granite, from wide, high cheekbones to the dent in his chin, his face softened as he searched his daughter for injury.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Her father, he had the right to stay and make sure. He would take her home and comfort her—and hopefully talk to her about boys who drank too much and threatened young girls.

Before Colleen could answer, her friends slipped through the cars to surround her with tears and relief. She collapsed into their arms, instead of in her father’s.

Why? Teenaged angst? Or something deeper, some problem that might motivate a young woman to look up to a boy like Colleen’s bad choice.

India lifted her hand to the girl with the fuzzy purple hair. More than one Colleen might live on Arran Island, but she doubted it. She took one step backward and then two more. Before anyone noticed her again, she faded into the darkness.