Читать книгу The Only Child - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 8

MOLLY STOOD under a steaming shower, scrubbed her hair and body, then let the water course over her shoulders until it started to chill. She could feel the tension in her knotted muscles begin to ease. All in all, this had been some afternoon. What had started out as a simple showing for Zoe MacMillan had deteriorated into a Greek tragedy with Zoe’s father, Logan, as the tragic hero. Molly didn’t understand what had happened, but she planned to, for her own peace of mind, if for no other reason. She toweled her hair, and because she still had to feed the animals in the chill evening September air, blew it dry—something she seldom took the time to do.

She pulled on a pair of clean jeans and a teal blue turtleneck sweater, dug her windbreaker out from under a pile of flea-market clothes from which she intended to make dresses for her newest dolls and went out to the barn where Eeyore, the Sicilian donkey, and Maxie, her granddaughter’s pony, waited impatiently for her.

She dumped sweet feed in Eeyore’s and Maxie’s buckets, then tossed them a couple of flakes of hay. She scooped up corn to throw to the five geese that clambered honking out of the pond when they saw her coming and waddled toward her at breakneck speed, their necks stretched out so far, it was a wonder they didn’t tip over.

She flung the corn as far from her as she could. If she dropped it at her feet, they’d crash into her like bumper cars.

Absentmindedly, she put the feed away, hung up the scoop and strolled back to the house to fix herself a sandwich.

In the kitchen she sniffed basil and fresh mint from the pots on the windowsill. The wet-concrete odor of damp bisque was finally gone from the house together with the last of the dust. Her ex-husband, Harry, had hated the mess. In fact, he’d probably divorced her because of the dolls.

Molly poured herself a glass of iced tea and twisted a sprig of mint into it, enjoying the quiet. Sherry often teased her about being a hermit, but Molly did not regret for one moment spending most of her divorce settlement to buy her woods and pasture, to build her log house and barn. She never wanted to go to another fancy corporate function again, if she lived to be a hundred.

How could she ever have guessed when she let Sherry con her into taking that first doll-making class that she would find her life’s work? She was content for the first time in her life, and never lonely. Sherry dropped in four or five times a week. Molly’s clients loved coming out to see her. Her daughter, Anne, brought her granddaughter, Elizabeth, by nearly every day after school to ride her pony. Molly still missed her volunteer work at the Abused Children’s Center, but there wasn’t time, not if she expected to make a living. Funny that she’d started volunteering because Harry said she had to do something charitable to make him look good at his firm.

Molly sipped her tea slowly, so lost in her thoughts that when the doorbell sounded, she jumped a foot. Nobody came up her driveway unannounced. Although a person could walk through the woods to the house and bypass the gate alarm, dense underbrush and snakes tended to discourage walkers.

No, it was more likely that a car had driven up while she’d been in the barn.

The doorbell pealed again. She peeked through the front curtains and saw a black BMW Then she saw MacMillan on the front porch. She felt a stab of alarm. Should she open the door to him?

“Mrs. Halliday,” a deep voice spoke through the door. “I must see you.” It wasn’t so much a request as a command.

Molly sighed. Get the confrontation over with. Maybe she could get an explanation as well.

She opened the door and snapped, “Didn’t you do enough damage on your first raid?” Then, seeing his face, she reached out to him quickly. “You look as though you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” she said. “You need a drink.”

“Excuse me?” he asked. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes..

He was no longer immaculate. Besides the bisque dust, there was mud on his jacket, his tie was loose, his shirt gaped open at the neck. His hair stood on end as though he’d been driving his hands through it, and his skin had a gray caste that his tan couldn’t quite hide.

“Come into the kitchen,” Molly said, and took his arm. “You need a glass of orange juice, my friend, and you need it quickly.” She shoved him onto a stool, poured a glass of orange juice and ordered, “Drink it before you pass out.”

He peered into the jelly glass as though it held arsenic.

“Do it. It won’t bite you.”

He took a sip, then drank greedily.

“More?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Iced tea then? Or Scotch?”

“Nothing, thank you.” He set the empty glass down carefully. The bar stool put him for the first time almost at eye level with Molly in a room still flooded with western light from the setting sun. He took his first real look at her.

How could he have missed seeing her clearly before? The shock of recognition of her sheer femaleness startled him. He stood and strode back to the relative sanctuary of the front hall.

Molly followed him.

At the door he turned and took his checkbook from his inside jacket pocket. “I’ve come to pay for the doll.”

“I planned to bill you.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars will do. Use my desk.” She pointed at an aged plantation desk inside the living room.

He sat down, wrote the check and handed it to her.

She stuck it into her jeans without looking at it. “Sherry told me what happened. You must understand something, Mr. MacMillan. I am a craftswoman, pure and simple. I’m certainly not clairvoyant. In fact, I do not have a bit of ESP in my entire body.”

This time he did look up, and straight into those amazing blue eyes. They were full of intelligence and compassion. He kept his voice even. “The doll-”

“Please, let me finish. Sherry told me your granddaughter died two years ago. I’m sorry, that is simply not possible.”

This was the last thing Logan expected to hear. He was stunned and then anger began to take over. What right had this madwoman with the teal blue eyes to tell him his granddaughter had not died? He felt his heart begin to speed up. “I assure you, Mrs. Halliday, I have seen her death certificate.”

“I don’t care if you had all nine justices of the Supreme Court testifying to you,” she said. “I don’t make things—children—up. And I certainly don’t pull the names of dead grandchildren out of the air. I name all my dolls. It’s standard in the industry. It’s easier to keep them straight that way and the customers like it.”

“So?”

“So, that doll, the one you smashed this afternoon…I didn’t pull her name out of a hat, either.” Molly sat on a wing chair across from him.

It was as though a ghost had stepped into the room. He looked at the woman before him, noticing that she met his gaze head-on.

He stood up. “Mrs. Halliday, this is obviously some sort of confidence game. I won’t tolerate it.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, sit down before you fall down. Hear me out. Do it. There. That’s better.”

“Very well, I will hear you out, but I assure you—”

“Look, when I designed the Dulcy doll—”

“Stop calling her that!” he shouted.

The anguish in his voice took Molly’s breath. “Mr. MacMillan, Logan,” she said gently. “That’s her name. It has always been her name, ever since I saw her and decided to model her.”

She watched his hands curl into fists and hoped he didn’t plan to hit her, but she stood her ground. “I said I saw her and I meant it. Obviously I also heard her name. I told you, I don’t make up children in my mind and then model them. Within the last year, I saw that little girl and heard someone call her Dulcy. Who could forget a name like that?”

“Even if I believed you, what proof have you? Do you take pictures?”

Molly shook her head. “Only when I’m working on commission. Let’s face it, most children look a good deal alike. Shortly after my divorce four years ago I decided I wanted to devote my life to creating dolls, and in the beginning I tried to find a mold that had the same expression and bone structure as the child I was working on, then I either added or subtracted material to make the doll as much like the child as possible. I still use that technique sometimes, but after a while it didn’t satisfy me. I took some sculpture classes and began to sculpt my own molds. The Dulcy doll is my fourth attempt at creating a portrait from scratch, and the only one I’m really proud of!”

“That doesn’t explain…”

“I know. It’s a rather long-winded way to the point, which is that I know Dulcy’s face intimately. In my mind I’ve touched the curve of her cheek, the angle of her eye socket. And I know the Dulcy doll is a perfect reproduction of the child I saw. I have a photographic memory for faces. I may not know where I met you or under what circumstances, but I remember your face. In Dulcy’s case, I remember the name, too. Usually I don’t.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say that you did see Dulcy somewhere in Memphis, heard someone call her name. She was not quite two when Tiffany ran away with her three years ago.”

Molly relaxed. At least MacMillan was prepared to talk rationally to her now.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t project change on the faces I see. I couldn’t sculpt the way you looked at twenty or the way you’ll look at ninety. The Dulcy I saw was that age, that shape, that size and called by that name. How many Dulcys do you think there are in the United States, Mr…Logan? A few thousand? There is something I don’t understand, by the way. If you haven’t seen your granddaughter since before she was two, why are you so sure that the child I sculpted looks the way she would look?”

“Computer simulation.” Logan leaned forward. “How much did Sherry tell you?”

“She filled me in on as much as she knows.”

“She knows most of it. I guess I owe you an explanation for the rest.”

Molly realized that even that small an admission had cost him dearly. It was clear that he wasn’t used to accounting to anyone.

“When my daughter-in-law, Tiffany, ran away with Dulcy, she was out on bond awaiting sentencing for vehicular homicide. She was probably facing a sentence of five to eight years in prison. Even with good behavior, she’d have served two years, maybe more.”

“Sherry told me about your son’s death.”

A flash of pain crossed MacMillan’s face, but he continued stoically. “My son, Jeremy, wasn’t the only one killed in the wreck. Edward Valdez, a cardiologist, was changing a flat tire when Tiffany hit his car. His family is rich and prominent. They demanded the prosecutor go for the maximum sentence possible. No plea bargains, no lesser charge, no probation or credit for jail time served. They wanted Tiffany’s blood. They would have gotten it.”

“Please, I know this is hard for you…” Molly reached a hand out to touch him. He drew back as though any physical contact would shatter his iron control.

“I have told the story many times since Jeremy was killed, Mrs. Halliday.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“In an odd way it does. While I’m talking, I can almost convince myself that the entire thing happened to someone else. It’s only afterward that the full force of Jeremy’s death hits me again. Do you have children, Mrs. Halliday?”

Molly nodded. “A daughter, a son-in-law and a granddaughter. I’d go nuts if anything happened to any of them.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve remained sane. Madness might be easier. Did Sherry tell you that Jeremy was an alcoholic?”

Molly nodded and felt a chill as she looked into his eyes, as flat and bleak as an Arctic ice floe.

“My granddaughter, Dulcy, was not even two,” he continued. “Tiffany’s mother is dead, her father has remarried and lives in Spain. At the trial, her lawyer argued that since Tiffany grew up with a drunken mother and an absentee father…” He stopped speaking a moment and closed his eyes. “An absentee father,” he repeated, “she was not responsible. The jury looked at the size of her trust fund and were not impressed by his argument.”

Molly wondered whose side Logan had been on. Most men would feel vengeful for the loss of an only son. She couldn’t tell from that careful voice, that stony face, what Logan felt about his daughter-in-law.

“My wife, Sydney, and I were the obvious ones to take custody of Dulcy,” he went on. “Tiffany signed the custody papers willingly. We made plans to help her get her life back on track after she was paroled.”

“Then why did she run away?”

MacMillan sighed. “I can only guess. I think she couldn’t bear to face us or prison or the world or perhaps most of all, her own guilt. She was used to running away from problems that she couldn’t buy her way out of.”

“But she didn’t leave Dulcy behind.”

“No.”

“You never suspected she planned to leave?”

He shook his head. “She was very careful. All the time we were worrying about how she would survive her prison sentence, she was setting up the mechanism to disappear. She was to be sentenced on Monday. On Friday afternoon, Zoe was baby-sitting Dulcy at the store. When Tiffany came to pick her up, she’d been drinking again, and she and Zoe really got into it. Zoe didn’t want to let her have Dulcy, but couldn’t really stop her. In the end, Rick drove Dulcy and Tiffany home in Tiffany’s car while Zoe followed in theirs. Tiffany swore she wouldn’t drink or drive anymore that night. Zoe and Rick had to be content with that. It was the last time any of us saw either Tiffany or Dulcy. When she didn’t show up in court on Monday, the judge issued a warrant for her arrest, but she and Dulcy had simply vanished into thin air.”

“The police couldn’t find her?”

“They came up empty. We found she’d raided her trust fund, so she had plenty of cash with her. The private detective we hired traced her partway. He’s the one who discovered that Dulcy—” MacMillan’s voice broke. He cleared his throat and continued in that same cool way he had before.

This time Molly wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t cool. He was being torn apart inside. She knew she couldn’t offer him sympathy. He’d hate it.

“Why do you think the child is dead?”

“I don’t think Dulcy is dead. I know she’s dead, dammit! Do you think that if I thought there was the slightest chance Dulcy was alive, I wouldn’t be combing the country—no—combing the planet, to find her?”

Molly raised her hands. “Okay, let’s leave that for a minute.”

He looked at her appraisingly. “You haven’t asked the usual question.”

“Which is?”

“Why Tiffany took the child when Dulcy would be better off with us.”

“I can guess the answer to that one already.”

“Because you’re a mother?”

“No, I used to volunteer at the university center for disturbed and abused children.”

Logan sat up very straight and said, “Dulcy wasn’t abused.”

“Not in the usual sense. But I’ve seen drunken mothers, drugged out on crack, hooking, with AIDS and TB. They love their children and will kill to keep them, even if they’re doing massive and irreparable harm to those children in the process.”

“It’s difficult for me to excuse a parent who would knowingly do something against a child’s best interests. Jeremy and Tiffany must have known what their alcoholism would do to Dulcy. They never managed to stop drinking even after Dulcy was born.”

“It seldom stopped the mothers at the center, either. Alcoholism is a disease, Logan, but it’s not like the mumps. You don’t get over it after a week of bed rest. It takes strength and a good support system. From what you tell me, Tiffany didn’t have either.”

“We were her support system, or wanted to be. Unfortunately, we weren’t enough.” He took a deep breath and stared at Molly as though seeing her for the first time. “You are a remarkable woman, Mrs. Halliday. I admit I underestimated you. Frankly, a woman who spends her days making dolls…”

“Let me finish for you. I make dolls, I hide in the woods, I live in a log cabin…”

“Hardly a cabin.”

“Not a suburban ranch, either. Come on, admit it, you thought you were meeting Beatrix Potter.”

“Actually, you have a great deal in common. I seem to remember she retired to a farm.”

Molly laughed, then said, “But she never worked again.” She shrugged and grinned at him. “Hey, I’m divorced, middle-aged and my only talent is my dolls. I didn’t choose harsh reality, it chose me. Now, tell me why you think Dulcy is dead.”

“The private detective we hired discovered that Dulcy had died of viral spinal meningitis at a small hospital in the Midwest. He brought us her death certificate.”

“You flew there? Saw the body?”

Logan shook his head. “My wife was in intensive care by that time. I didn’t even tell her. What was the point? Besides, the whole thing had happened three months earlier. Someone—I can only assume Tiffany—had abandoned. Dulcy at the local clinic. They tried to save her, but it was too late. They tried to trace her parents, but eventually they gave up and buried her there.”

“What made your detective think that was Dulcy?”

He shrugged. “He said he showed her picture to the nurses who had worked to save her. They identified the picture. It was Dulcy, all right.”

“I see.”

“They were certain. They had no reason to lie.”

“Nor do I.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes. The lamplight carved his face into its essential planes. Looking at him, afraid to speak for fear of disturbing his small moment of repose, Molly longed to model that face. Every ounce of grief and loss were carved into him. He had a massive head, and the short gray hair revealed the fine sculpting of his skull. His was a face constructed of angular planes—the angle of bone strong over the eyes, the high sharp cheekbones, the eagle’s nose, and finally, the strong jaw.

He sighed, shook his head and opened his eyes.

Molly felt the shock of his gaze deep inside her. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, the shock went to a part of her body she had thought long dormant. She was reacting to him the way a woman reacts to a man. Not possible. She didn’t even like him. The day her divorce was final, she stepped out of the sexual arena without a moment’s regret. The last thing she wanted was to climb back into the ring.

Not that it would be possible with someone like Logan. He was probably no more than two or three years older than she. Middle-aged men went for twenty-yearold trophies.

Now, one glance from those gray eyes of his sent awakening shivers straight through her body and straight as an arrow to her groin.

Hoping that he couldn’t detect the blush she felt spreading up her face in the lamplight, she found herself babbling. “You said you saw a death certificate. What name did it have?”

“Jane Doe. But the picture, Mrs. Halliday. They identified the picture.”

“Logan, I’m going to ask you something you are not going to like. Please don’t get angry.”

“I’m too tired to get angry.”

“Do you trust that private investigator?”

He drew himself up in the chair. “Mrs. Halliday, I have no reason to doubt the man. First, why would he end a lucrative contract? I had every intention of pursuing Tiffany until I either went bankrupt or found my granddaughter.”

“Yes,” Molly conceded. “There is that.”

“Second, he has a good reputation. My lawyer recommended him. He has been successful in several other cases. I checked his clients. They were satisfied.”

“Better and better. Still, either there was some mix-up about the picture and the identification, or something’s going on we’re not aware of.”

“I doubt whether the entire staff of a hospital would lie. What would be the reason? Some sort of misguided loyalty to a criminal?”

“We don’t know who made the mistake. Another thing that puzzles me is how Sherry was able to recognize that doll as Dulcy.”

“She and my wife worked together to decorate Sherry and her husband, Leo’s latest house. She saw a great deal of Dulcy when she was a baby, and she’s been a good friend ever since. She’s seen all the computer enhancements the detective produced. She’d have known Dulcy’s face at almost the same moment I did. What I don’t know is why she didn’t recognize the doll earlier.” He considered. “Or why Rick and Zoe didn’t.”

“I just put her out today when I knew you were coming.” She sighed. “Ironic. I really rushed so that she’d be there especially for you.” She leaned back and closed her own eyes, trying to recall where she had seen the child, remembering instead only the child herself. She wasn’t certain she should tell Logan about the picture in her head.

He seemed able to read her mind. “If you saw this child, tell me where, how, what she looked like.”

Molly opened her eyes, looked at him and made her decision. “She was the saddest, gravest little girl I have ever seen in my life.”

He sucked in his breath. He gripped the arms of the chair as though he’d like to rend the leather with his bare hands. “Sad how?”

Molly closed her eyes again. This time she saw more. “It was in a park somewhere. I remember there were lots of children swinging, sliding, one of those little merry-goround things, I think. A friend of mine and I were on a bus tour with a bunch of other local people on our way to Aspen and Vail. We must have stopped there to picnic. This child was sitting alone on the grass. She had a book in her hand—not a children’s book. It was thick and there were no pictures on the cover.”

MacMillan snorted. “Come now, she would hardly have been reading a book.”

“Why not? Children learn to read early these days. Maybe there were pictures inside. She wasn’t smiling. She looked up at me, right into my eyes. I wanted to stoop down and hug her, but something warned me she wouldn’t allow that.” She looked up at him. “That’s when I heard someone call out ‘Dulcy’ and she closed the book, stood up, brushed off her jeans and walked away. She didn’t run, she walked, quite calmly, the way an adult walks to a business meeting. She wasn’t like any child I’ve ever seen. So self-contained. I knew I had to try to capture that self-possession.”

“Where was this?”

Molly threw up her hands in frustration. “I simply can’t remember.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word for all this over a licensed private investigator’s?”

“Look, let me go through my photographs from my trips. Maybe something will click.” She hesitated a moment. “You never tried to find your daughter-in-law after the detective said Dulcy was dead?”

“No.” His voice was flat, hard. “She made her choice. I stood by her throughout her trial even though she killed my boy. Zoe has never forgiven me for that. But when I found out she’d abandoned Dulcy to die…” He cleared his throat. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn what happens to her.”

“But if Dulcy is still alive and with her?”

“If—and I still think it unlikely—there was a mix-up or a cover-up, then I will hunt them down and bring my granddaughter home. Tiffany can go to Outer Mongolia for all I care.”

Molly saw the muscles along his jaw tighten until they stood out like steel cables. She shivered. This man would make a dangerous enemy.

“Will you tell me something?” she asked. “I can understand that you were startled when you picked up the doll, but frankly, I thought you overreacted big time. It’s only a doll.”

“Only a doll?” He stared at her in genuine surprise. “It was a.corpse!”

“But…”

“I felt as though you were playing some sort of sick joke at her—my—expense. I see now that wasn’t true. Please accept my apologies. I don’t usually fly off the handle like that.”

“Apology accepted. Listen, maybe the child who died looked enough like Dulcy so that the hospital staff made an honest mistake.”

Logan shook his head. “Forgive me. I stopped hoping a long time ago.”

“Don’t let yourself hope then. But for pity’s sake, check it out.”

“I plan to. If Dulcy is alive, I must find her and bring her home. But I’m not sure how much more disappointment I can take.”

Looking into his eyes, Molly realized how difficult it must be for such a man to reveal this sign of weakness, not only to a woman but a comparative stranger. She felt sympathy for him in the same moment she knew how deeply he would resent her expressing it.

Molly sighed. She couldn’t leave this problem alone any more than she could abandon this strange, lonely man. “I think the first thing to do is talk to your detective. See if you still believe him. Maybe take Rick and Zoe with you.”

“I don’t plan to tell Zoe any of this until I’m certain the child is alive and we have some hope of finding her.”

“Then I’ll go with you.” There. The die was cast, the words were spoken. She could only hope he’d refuse her offer. But he didn’t—not exactly.

“I can’t ask you to—”

Just then, the driveway alarm sounded. Logan MacMillan started as though she’d stuck him with a pin.

A moment later, Molly went to the front door and opened it.

“Gram, I know it’s late, but I had to say good-night to Maxie.” A coltish prepubescent girl with chestnut hair straight down her back flew into the room, followed by an exasperated woman who might have been Molly twenty years earlier. The child stopped when she saw Molly was not alone.

“Sorry, Mom. We were in the neighborhood. I tried to stop her,” the woman said, and grinned.

“No sweat. Anne Crown, this is Logan MacMillan. Logan, my daughter.” She smiled at the child. “And this is my granddaughter, Elizabeth.”

Logan, who’d stood when Anne and Elizabeth came in, nodded.

“Hello,” Anne said. “Hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

“Hi,” Elizabeth said, then turning to Molly, “Got any carrots in the fridge?”

“Yes. Don’t forget Eeyore,” Molly called after the child, already disappearing into the kitchen. They heard the refrigerator open and a. moment later shut. “And don’t slam the—”

The back door slammed.

“Please sit down, Mr. MacMillan,” Anne said. “We can only stay a minute. I have to get home to fix dinner.” She glanced at her watch. “Phil will probably have to go back to the office. It’s the end of the quarter. No rest for the poor tax accountant.” She shrugged. “I had to pick Elizabeth up at the Fitzgeralds’. Anytime we’re close to Mom’s, Elizabeth insists on stopping by.”

“The attraction is Maxie, her pony, not me.” Molly laughed. Looking at Logan, she realized he had retreated into his shell.

The back door slammed once more. “Okay, old mom. Maxie pig and Eeyore pig are stuffed. We can go home now. I’ve got tons of homework.”

“You spending the night Friday?” Molly asked Elizabeth as she followed the pair to the door.

“What’re you offering?” the girl said. “Pizza, maybe? A movie?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of brussels sprouts and barn-cleaning.”

“Yech!” Elizabeth made a face. “Can I bring Karen?”

“Sure. Maybe pizza. Maybe popcorn. Definitely barn-cleaning.”

“Deal. ‘Bye, Gram.” The child leaned over and kissed Molly. Anne raised her eyes to heaven and waved goodbye as she followed her daughter to the car. Molly stood in the door and watched them until she heard the driveway alarm go off as they turned onto the road. Then she came back into the living room.

“I must be going, as well,” Logan said. “I’ve taken up entirely too much of your time.” He stood by the window. Molly realized he’d watched the pair into their car and down the road.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve barely started. I’ve got a couple of steaks in the refrigerator. I’ll whip up a salad. Stay.”

“I couldn’t.”

Molly had visions of a turtle pulling back into his shell. “Why? Because it’s on the spur of the moment? You’re a vegetarian? You really do have plans? What?”

Logan stammered, “I…uh.” He looked across at Molly in the doorway, her hands on her ample hips, her feet wide apart, peering at him with those marvelous eyes as though she could see right into his soul. She didn’t seem pleased at what she saw.

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.