Читать книгу The Secret Sin - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 9

R YAN W HITMORE leaned one shoulder against the bright-blue wall outside the examination room, making a notation on young Lindsey Thompson’s chart.

A pint-sized girl with a mop of dark curls stuck her head around a door frame down the hall from where he stood. She was about four years old. He waved. She giggled, her head disappearing back into the room.

As soon as he talked in private to whomever had brought in Lindsey, it would be the little girl’s turn.

The nurse who’d been assisting him came back, walking down the hall with another woman trailing her. Ryan blinked once, then twice, but his eyes weren’t wrong.

It didn’t matter that the nurse partially obscured his view and a baseball-style cap covered the second woman’s hair. He would have recognized her from a hundred feet away, which was about as close as he’d come to her since they were teenagers.

“Dr. Whitmore, this is the woman who brought in Lindsey,” the nurse said when they reached him. “Annie—?”

“Sublinski,” he finished, keeping his eyes trained on Annie, who had yet to meet his gaze. “We went to high school together.”

“Then you don’t need me,” the nurse said cheerfully. She excused herself as though the chance meeting was nothing out of the ordinary.

She couldn’t know he and Annie Sublinski had last spoken more than thirteen years ago on the telephone about giving up the baby she was carrying.

The nurse couldn’t possibly be aware of all the things Ryan had never said to Annie, or the guilt that never quite went away no matter how much he tried to live in the moment.

He shook off the memories and focused on the present.

“This is a surprise,” he said.

She raised her eyes. The color was an unremarkable mixture of brown and green. He was at a loss as to why he’d always found them so fascinating.

She’d been appealing as a teen but was even more so now that she was nearly thirty. Her bare arms and legs were toned and tanned, and she had a natural, clear-skinned look that could put a cosmetic company out of business—if not for her port-wine stain. He wondered why she’d never had it removed.

“For me, too.” Her eyes were guarded, as though she’d noticed him assessing her birthmark. He hoped she hadn’t. “A surprise, I mean. I didn’t know you were filling in for Dr. Goldstein.”

She clearly wouldn’t have brought Lindsey to the pediatrician’s office if she had. A few years back, while he was visiting family over Christmas, he’d spotted Annie coming out of Abe’s General Store. The downtown had been decorated with wreaths and festive lights, the perfect setting for an apology. Annie had spotted him coming and promptly crossed the street, rushing through the snowflakes drifting from the sky before disappearing into her pickup.

“About Lindsey.” She held herself stiffly, like a cornered animal ready to take flight. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

Now obviously was not the time to bring up the past.

“We can talk in there.” He nodded toward his colleague’s office. She hesitated, then complied, not looking at him as she passed. He followed her into the room, closing the door with a soft thud.

She winced at the noise, edged backward and crossed her arms over her chest. Her weight shifted from foot to foot.

Pretending her body language didn’t bother him, he hoisted himself up on the edge of the desk that dominated the room. “There’s nothing wrong with Lindsey a glass of orange juice and a sandwich won’t cure.”

“Excuse me?”

He tapped the girl’s file against his palm. “Her blood sugar was low. The last time she ate was this morning, and all she had was yogurt.”

“That’s all that was wrong with her?”

“Like a lot of teenage girls, she has some skewed ideas about how much she should weigh,” he said. “We gave her some juice and a granola bar one of the nurses had left over from lunch, but she could use a good meal.”

“I should have asked if she’d eaten.” Annie seemed to be talking to herself as much as him. “At the train station, I should have asked her.”

“The train station?” he repeated.

She nodded. “In Paoli. I picked her up an hour or so ago.”

“Who is she?”

Her eyes shifted, which they’d been doing a lot. “A friend of the family.”

That didn’t compute. Whoever had filled out the forms, and he had to assume that was Annie, hadn’t even known the names of Lindsey’s parents.

“I don’t know much about her,” she answered as though she’d read his mind. “I didn’t even know she was coming. She’s here to visit my father. Her grandfather’s a friend of his.”

That didn’t make sense, either. “Didn’t I hear that your father is in Poland?”

“Lindsey didn’t know that.”

“Shouldn’t her parents have known?”

Annie looked away again, heightening his sense that she was hiding something. “I don’t think they know she’s here.”

“Have you called them?”

She seemed to be clenching her teeth. “Kind of tough to do without a phone number.”

So that’s what Annie was concealing. Now that she’d admitted she didn’t have a home phone number for Lindsey, it was easy to piece together what had happened today.

Lindsey had gotten on a train without telling her parents she was leaving, which just might qualify as running away from home. He thought about the little girl who’d waved at him from the room down the hall. She was going to have to wait a little longer for the doctor to arrive.

“Let’s go see Lindsey.” He hopped down from the desk, yanked open the door, then let Annie precede him. There wasn’t much space between him and the door, but she managed to squeeze through without touching him. He caught a whiff of her clean, outdoorsy scent, and he was transported back years, to the single night they’d spent together.

“Second door on the right,” he told her, his mind thick with memories. How could that night, which had been so special, have had such shattering repercussions?

She hung back, wordlessly indicating he should enter the room ahead of her. He wasn’t as careful to avoid contact as she had been, inadvertently brushing her arm as he passed. She jerked sideways as though pricked by a porcupine.

Damn. He’d found it charming that she’d been flustered around him when they were in high school, but this was a new reaction altogether. She was nervous—and not in a good way.

The hell of it was that he couldn’t talk to her about it. Not now. As a doctor, his primary responsibility was to his patient. He had a more pressing matter to deal with than his regrets over the past.

His priorities back in order, he strode through the door to find that Lindsey had moved from the exam table to a chair in the corner of the room. Her color was better, but he read apprehension on her face when she saw Annie following him. What was that about? he wondered.

He smiled at her, an easy task. Lindsey was trying her hardest to act grown-up, but underneath her brave front was a rather charming child. “How’s that orange juice going down?”

“I’d rather have a Diet Coke.” Her quick comeback and smile reminded him of somebody he couldn’t quite place.

“Juice is a better choice,” Annie said.

Lindsey’s smile faded, her hand tightening on the half-full glass. “I like Diet Coke.”

“Annie has a point, Lindsey,” Ryan interjected. “You need nutrients to build up your blood sugar, and diet soda won’t cut it.”

He didn’t give Lindsey an opening to respond, pulling a piece of paper from her file and extending it to her. “I need some information for our records before I can release you.”

With obvious reluctance, she took the form and the pen he handed her along with it.

“I realize you don’t know your insurance information,” he added, “but it would help if you filled out what you can.”

Lindsey nodded before turning her attention to the form, her brow knitting in concentration as she wrote. Annie stood like a statue just inside the door, keeping as far away from him as possible.

Her low opinion of him smarted, although he didn’t blame her. He should have made his peace with her years before now. He could use the excuse that getting through med school and his residency had required total concentration and dedication, but that’s all it was: an excuse.

Within moments, Lindsey handed the pen and paper back to him. A quick glance at the form confirmed he’d achieved his objective: The girl had written down her phone number.

“So, can we go?” Lindsey asked.

“As long as you promise to eat something,” Ryan said.

Lindsey stood up, although her jeans were so tight he questioned how she could move. She held up the granola bar, from which she’d taken maybe two bites. “I’m already eating something.”

“Something more than a granola bar,” Ryan clarified.

“I’ll see to it that she has a meal,” Annie said.

Lindsey slanted her a dubious look. He wondered if Annie had any experience dealing with teenagers, but then he speculated about a lot where Annie was concerned.

Like whether she’d ever forgive him for that night.

“Bye, Dr. Whitmore,” Lindsey said.

“Bye, Lindsey.”

The girl strolled out of the examination room. Before Annie could follow, Ryan caught her arm in a gentle grip. She inhaled sharply.

“Let me go.” Her voice was an urgent whisper.

Stung, he did as she asked. “I was just going to give you Lindsey’s home phone number.”

She pursed her lips, mumbling, “Sorry.” She fumbled in the pocket of her shorts, withdrawing her cell phone. “What is it?”

He read off the ten digits, which she entered, never once glancing up at him. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She started walking away from him, rebuilding the distance she’d kept between them all these years. “Annie?”

He thought she’d pretend she hadn’t heard him and keep on walking, but then she turned. “Yes?”

“It was good to finally talk to you again.”

He supposed it was too much to hope that she’d echo the sentiment. She nodded once, then pivoted, as though eager to get away from him.

He didn’t stop her retreat. Not this time. But now that she was back in his life, he wouldn’t let her walk out of it again until he said his long-overdue piece.

A NNIE had never held the baby she delivered.

After a lengthy, tough labor, she’d heard a lusty cry and felt like weeping herself. The nurse had brought the infant close enough for Annie to see her, but she’d only gotten a brief look.

She’d been awed that she had helped create someone so tiny and perfect, but she’d tried to pay attention to the baby’s red, wrinkled skin. Anything to take her mind off the enormity of what she was giving up.

Even though her heart was aching, she hadn’t protested when the nurse claimed it was best for the separation to be immediate. From her experience with her own mother, who’d popped in and out of her life before finally disappearing for good, Annie knew the nurse was right.

The nurse had whisked the baby away, and Annie had fully expected never to see her again.

“You’re staring at me,” Lindsey accused.

Annie blinked, and the snack counter at the back of Abe’s General Store came into focus. They were sitting on red vinyl stools, their reflections bouncing back at them from the stainless steel of the old-fashioned soda machine. She smelled grease from the grill and the hot dogs on the rotating rack.

Annie had been taking a mental snapshot of Lindsey that she could call to mind in the years to come. It wouldn’t be difficult. The shape of Lindsey’s face, the spacing of her eyes, the arch of her eyebrows and the even whiteness of her smile were all reminiscent of Ryan.

Ryan, who brought out the nervous, insecure teenager in her that she’d desperately wanted to believe was gone forever.

She fought the feeling that she’d been unfair in not revealing who Lindsey was. It was better this way. If Ryan never knew Lindsey was the baby they’d given up for adoption, he wouldn’t have to lose her all over again.

The way Annie was going to.

“I can’t eat when you’re looking at me like that,” Lindsey complained.

They’d swung by the snack counter after leaving the pediatrician’s office. Annie had given Lindsey a ten-dollar bill, then stepped outside to phone the girl’s parents, nervously wondering whether they’d recognize her as Lindsey’s birth mother. The call had gone straight to voice mail.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said. “I didn’t realize I was staring.”

“Well, you were.” Lindsey set her nibbled-on sandwich back down on her bare plate.

Annie worried that the girl should have ordered something more substantial than turkey on rye bread and a Diet Coke. If the woman who’d prepared the food hadn’t left the counter, Annie would ask her to throw in potato salad or at least a bag of chips.

“You should finish that.” Annie nodded at the sandwich.

“It’s not very good.”

Of course it wasn’t. It contained no cheese, no pickle, no lettuce, no tomato and probably no condiments. Annie pursed her lips, unsure of what to do or say next. Uncertain how to get a teenager to do anything at all.

“Dr. Whitmore would tell you to eat your food,” Annie said, dismayed that she’d resorted to using his name.

Lindsey’s mouth twisted, but she picked up her sandwich and took a bite.

Was there already an invisible connection between Ryan and Lindsey? Is that how he’d succeeded in getting the girl’s phone number when Annie had failed?

How would he react if he knew the truth? Surely he’d noticed how edgy Annie was, so why hadn’t he guessed? A reason occurred to her.

“How old did you tell Dr. Whitmore you were?” she asked.

Lindsey didn’t look up from her food. “Fifteen.”

Now that Annie knew the truth, it was easy to see through the lie. “Is fifteen how old you need to be to travel alone on the train?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey mumbled.

“I think you do know,” Annie said. “That’s why you said you were fifteen when you’re only thirteen.”

Lindsey’s head jerked up. “How do you know I’m thirteen?”

“My father told me.”

Lindsey swiped strands of her long hair out of her face and sat up straighter, an eager light in her eyes. “Is Uncle Frank back? Did you ask him if I could stay?”

Annie’s fingers clenched into fists. How could her father not have told her about Lindsey? She’d confided in him when she got pregnant and trusted him to handle the adoption arrangements. Her faith in him had been so absolute that she’d signed the papers severing her parental rights without reading them. She’d never dreamed he’d give her baby to someone Annie might possibly know.

“I talked to him on the phone,” Annie said. “He’ll be in Poland for at least another month.”

Lindsey’s head dropped again. “What else did he tell you about me?”

“Not much,” Annie said. If she was alone, she’d call her father back and demand answers, the six-hour time difference be damned. “I don’t even know what grade you’re in.”

Or if Lindsey knew she was adopted.

“I’ll be in eighth grade in September,” Lindsey said. “I’m almost fourteen, you know.”

Her birth date was in mid-March, which meant Lindsey wasn’t yet thirteen and a half. She wondered if Lindsey had written down her true birthday on the medical form or whether she’d tried to preserve the fiction that she was fifteen.

She also wondered how closely Ryan had looked at the form.

“And you live in Pittsburgh?” Annie asked.

“Not in Pittsburgh exactly,” Lindsey said. “We live in Fox Chapel. It’s near Pittsburgh.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to ask my phone number next?”

Annie had been attempting to fill a desperate need to find out more about Lindsey, but that wasn’t what the girl had asked. “I already called your parents.”

“But…but how did you get the number?”

“The form in Dr. Whitmore’s office.”

From the shocked expression on Lindsey’s face, she hadn’t considered that possibility.

“I left your parents a message,” Annie continued. “They’re probably worried sick about you.”

“They don’t even know I’m gone,” Lindsey said. “Dad took Timmy and Teddy to Kennywood, and Gretchel’s working. She’s supposed to pick me up at a friend’s house at five o’clock.”

Kennywood, Annie knew, was a popular amusement park near Pittsburgh that was one of the oldest in the nation. “Who’s Gretchel?”

“My stepmother.”

“Are Timmy and Teddy your brothers?” Annie asked.

“Sort of,” Lindsey said. “I’m adopted. They’re not.”

Annie bit her lower lip to find it trembling. Lindsey had been matter-of-fact in stating she was adopted, but she considered Annie’s father to be her uncle and not her grandfather. Lindsey obviously didn’t know the truth about her birth, and it wasn’t Annie’s place to tell her.

“That doesn’t make them any less your brothers,” Annie said.

Lindsey blew air out her nose, but stayed quiet. Neither did it seem as though she planned to eat any more of her sandwich. Yet she needed nourishment. She was too thin and still pale enough that she looked as though she might topple off the stool.

“You could have another dizzy spell if you don’t eat,” Annie said. “You don’t want to go back to the doctor, do you?”

Lindsey’s blue eyes flashed. “At least Dr. Whitmore was nice to me. If I came to visit his father, he wouldn’t make me go back to Pittsburgh.”

Her words were like blows. Annie had tried to forget about the daughter she’d given up, but now that she’d met Lindsey she realized how miserably she’d failed. The clawing need to know the girl was as fierce as the unconditional love that nearly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t give in to that love without risking that somebody would figure out Lindsey was her birth daughter. If only the girl knew how desperately Annie wanted to keep her around. Annie swallowed, pushing words past the lump in her throat. “It’s for your own good.”

“Annie Sublinski,” a deep male voice announced from behind them. “What brings you off the river?”

Annie swiveled on her stool to see Michael Donahue moving toward them, his tall frame dressed in jeans and a work shirt, his thick, dark hair slightly sweaty. Since moving back to Indigo Springs earlier in the summer, he’d gone into business with the Pollocks, who owned a local construction company.

She’d always felt a certain kinship toward Michael because he’d been another of the outcasts of Indigo Springs High. An incident at this very snack counter had landed him in juvenile detention. Fathers, including hers, had warned their daughters to stay away from him.

He’d since redeemed himself in dramatic fashion, although very few people knew he was the hero who’d rescued a child from drowning during an Indigo River Rafters trip earlier that summer. “Hey, Michael,” Annie said, then turned to Lindsey, preparing to introduce her.

“Wait a minute. Don’t tell me why you’re here. Let me guess.” Michael placed three fingers on his forehead and closed his eyes before snapping them open. “It has something to do with a young brunette.”

Lindsey giggled at Michael’s antics, but Annie’s breath caught. Did he know about the child she’d given up for adoption? Could he? Surely there’d been talk when Annie had abruptly left town before her senior year of high school. Had somebody figured out that the real reason she’d moved in with her ailing grandparents was because she was pregnant?

“I’m Michael Donahue.” He jumped in with an introduction before Annie could untie her tongue. “And you are?”

“Lindsey Thompson,” she supplied. “I came to visit my uncle Frank, but he’s in Poland.”

“I heard something about that,” Michael said. “You took over your dad’s business, right, Annie?”

His question stopped Annie from denying her father’s relationship to Lindsey. “Actually, I didn’t. I’m just filling in while he’s gone.”

“My bad. Some people in this town like to talk even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.” He spoke from experience, Annie thought. At one point town gossip about him had been rampant. He winked at Lindsey. “Pretty soon they’ll be spreading stories about you.”

Annie willed her heartbeat to slow down. It had been an innocent remark.

She and Lindsey didn’t share a strong resemblance, and Annie was barely old enough to be the mother of a teenager.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” She forced her voice to sound normal. “Lindsey’s a family friend.”

Michael pulled open the glass door of the refrigerated unit beside the counter, then paused. “I thought she was your Dad’s niece.”

“We’re not really related,” Lindsey interjected before Annie could panic. “I just call him uncle.”

Michael nodded, accepting the answer. Some of the pressure inside Annie’s chest eased as he removed four bottles of water from the refrigerator.

“We’re finishing up a remodel job down the street and the crew is getting thirsty,” he explained. “Good seeing you, Annie. And a pleasure meeting you, Miss Lindsey.”

“He was nice,” Lindsey said as he walked away.

“Most people in Indigo Springs are,” Annie said.

Lindsey looked unhappy. “Then why can’t I stay here?”

So far three people who’d known Annie as a sixteen-year-old had seen her with Lindsey and none of them had put the pieces together. In all probability, nobody would, ensuring that Lindsey wouldn’t have her world inadvertently turned upside down.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Annie said slowly. “Maybe you don’t have to go back just yet.”

“You mean I can stay?” Lindsey asked excitedly.

The thought of letting the girl go without spending at least a little time with her was like a dagger through Annie’s heart. Staying in Indigo Springs was clearly what Lindsey wanted, too. Annie simply wasn’t strong enough to fight fate and what she so desperately wanted anyway.

“Only if your parents say yes,” Annie said.

“They’ll say yes.” Lindsey smiled and took a big bite of her sandwich, unaware she’d agreed to a visit with her birth mother.

That was exactly the way Annie intended to keep it.

M AYBE SHE’D messed up in coming to Indigo Springs, Lindsey thought.

Uncle Frank had made it sound really cool, but the downtown was nothing but a bunch of old buildings. Once she and Annie had gotten back in her truck and headed out of town, all she’d seen was trees.

The parking lot they’d pulled into wasn’t even paved, and the building they were approaching looked like a grungy warehouse. A couple of dozen sturdy-looking bikes were parked in neat rows off to one side. On the other were nine or ten faded picnic tables.

Lindsey read the sign over the door: Indigo River Rafters.

“ This is your father’s business?” she asked Annie.

“This is it,” Annie said.

Lindsey slowed down but didn’t dare stop. If she did, the gnats that were flying around her hair might attack her eyes. She supposed the setting was okay, although there weren’t a lot of trees close to this part of the river and the grass around the shop was trampled down dirt. The water was maybe fifty yards away, with a flatbed trailer blocking part of the view.

“All our trips end here at base camp. That spot over by the flatbed trailer is the take-out point,” Annie said. “We load the boats so we can transport them to the put-in for the next trip.”

“Boats?” Lindsey asked.

“Rafts, kayaks, tubes.” She pointed to a pair of yellow school buses so old you couldn’t pay Lindsey to get in them. “We shuttle the customers in those.”

Annie acted like it was really important to her that Lindsey like it here, which was totally different from her attitude at the train station. Earlier, Annie’s main goal had been sending Lindsey home.

“Can’t you just drag a raft down to the river and go?” Lindsey asked, although there was no way she’d do that. The bugs wouldn’t be as bad out on the river, but she shuddered just thinking about the mud and the cold water.

“You could,” Annie said, “except the river’s like a one-way street. It only flows in a single direction.”

Whatever, Lindsey thought. That hadn’t been what sounded so cool when she’d heard about the business. “Uncle Frank said there was a store.”

“It’s more like a gift shop,” Annie said. “We sell T-shirts, waterproof sandals, sunglasses—that kind of thing. It supplements the income from the river trips and the mountain-bike rentals.”

Great, Lindsey thought with a sinking heart. Just great.

“Where does your dad live?” Lindsey asked.

Annie pointed to a tiny building behind the shop. “Back there. That’s where we’re going.”

Lindsey stopped walking. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Lindsey thought of the big, five-bedroom, two-story house she’d woken up in that morning. “I guess I just expected something different when Uncle Frank talked about all this.”

Lindsey made a face when she spotted the rocking chairs on the wooden porch, but the inside of the house turned out to be not so bad. A decent-sized room with a really old TV opened into a kitchen. The furniture was simple—a navy blue sofa and wood chairs. Beyond the kitchen was a smaller space with a washer and dryer.

Annie indicated the left side of the house. “There are two bedrooms with separate baths over here. You can sleep in my dad’s room.”

“Cool,” Lindsey said. She could stay here, she decided, which was a good thing because she had nowhere else to go.

“I need to finish up a couple of things at the shop,” Annie said. “Will you be okay for an hour or so?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lindsey said, but she ran out of things to do after putting her clothes in an empty drawer and checking her e-mail on the computer with an ancient modem.

She was flipping through a magazine from a nearby rack when Annie showed up. No way was she going to read Field and Stream, Outdoor Life and Backpacker.

“Don’t you have anything good?” Lindsey asked. “Like Vogue or Elle ?”

“Afraid not,” Annie said.

Lindsey held up an issue of something called Outdoor Women . On the cover was a picture of three women with fishing poles standing in river water up to their thighs, with mountains rising behind them.

“Who reads this lame stuff?” Lindsey wrinkled her nose.

“Enough people to keep me employed,” Annie said. Lindsey must have looked puzzled, because Annie added, “I wrote the cover story.”

“Get out!” Lindsey eagerly turned the glossy pages until she found the article. It was about something called heli-fishing, where helicopters flew fishermen to remote areas that couldn’t be reached any other way. “Oh, my gosh. Your name’s on this story. That’s really awesome.”

“Didn’t you just say the magazine was lame?”

“Well, yeah. But getting your name in a magazine is cool.” Lindsey rethought her lukewarm opinion of Annie. “Maybe one day you can write about something better.”

Annie looked doubtful. “The outdoors is pretty much my thing.”

“Not mine.” Lindsey rolled her eyes. “I’d take a mall over a river any day.”

Annie perched on the edge of the sofa near where Lindsey sat on the floor. “Then why did you come to visit my father? There aren’t any malls in Indigo Springs.”

Lindsey stuffed the magazines back in the rack. “I didn’t know that. I thought there were malls everywhere.”

“Is something wrong at home?” Annie seemed to be deciding what to say. “You can tell me if you don’t feel…safe.”

Lindsey had sat through films in health class about the different types of abuse. She knew what Annie was really asking. Wow. Was she way off!

“There’s nothing like that going on,” Lindsey said.

Annie seemed to relax. “Something must have happened to make you leave home. Your parents will be calling back soon. It would help if I knew what it was.”

Lindsey stood up. “I just needed to get away, that’s all.”

“Away from what?” Annie asked.

Lindsey waved a hand. “Away from everything.”

Now that Annie was on board, Lindsey wasn’t going to say anything that would get her sent back to Pittsburgh. She was staying put if she could help it.

Anywhere was better than home.