Читать книгу Yesterday's Gone - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 11
ОглавлениеBAILEY HUGGED HERSELF as Seth drove. “They still have my bed.” Why that blew her away, of all things, she had no idea, but it did.
She felt his swift glance. “I don’t think they changed a thing in your bedroom.”
“The whole room is pink.”
“You were only six. Little girls like pink and purple.”
She stole a look at him. “How do you know? Do you have children?”
Unless it was her imagination, his mouth curved. Because he liked knowing she was curious about him? “No children. Never been married. I have two nieces and friends who have kids.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “I always pictured this perfect bedroom.” Her voice sounded faraway, bemused. “It was pink, and I had a canopy bed. Like a princess.”
“You did.”
“So... I was actually remembering.” She was stunned to know those dreams had really been memories. Standing in the door of that bedroom had left her shaken in a way the faces of her parents hadn’t. And how weird was that?
As if he understood, Seth said, “Memories are odd. Unpredictable. A couple of my very earliest memories are of semitraumatic moments, which makes sense. Others are totally random. Why do I remember standing at the foot of a staircase in what my mother tells me was probably my great-grandmother’s house, feeling really small? It’s just a snapshot, but vivid. Couldn’t have been an earth-shattering moment. For you, maybe you really loved having a bed with a canopy.”
She gave a funny, broken laugh that didn’t sound like her at all. “I did. I mean, I don’t know that, but I used to think about what my bedroom would look like if I ever had a home. You know. I’d change the wall color as I got older, but the bed was always there.” She sighed. “I hurt their feelings, didn’t I?”
“When you wouldn’t stay?”
And sleep in that canopy bed, the idea of which had freaked her out. As in, if she’d tried, she just knew she’d have run screaming into the night. More irrationality—it wasn’t as if she’d been snatched from her bedroom and therefore had trauma associated with it.
“Or even agree to stay for dinner. And when I didn’t fall into their arms.”
“Maybe,” he said, driving with relaxed competence. “But they’re so happy that you’re alive, they’ll get over it. My impression is they’re good people. They probably had fantasies. They’ll adjust to the reality, which is that you’re essentially strangers. Any sense of family or intimacy will have to be built from the ground up.”
Bailey bowed her head and stared at her hands. “I don’t know if I want to join the construction crew.”
He was quiet for a minute, a small frown furrowing his forehead. But he looked thoughtful, not irritated.
“Why did you come here?” he asked. “What changed your mind?”
Would he understand if she admitted she didn’t know? That she’d have sworn her original decision had been final, except that knowing she could find out who she’d been had nibbled at her until she’d finally decided to make this trip?
“Curiosity,” she said at last. All she was willing to admit to.
He made a sound in his throat she couldn’t interpret.
“You in school right now?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t sign up for summer semester. It gave me a chance to work a lot more hours and save for the tuition. Fall semester starts the last week of August.” Which was a month away. She added hastily, “I should get back to my job, though.”
“How long did you tell them you’d be gone?”
“I...left it sort of open-ended.”
He turned into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department. She scanned the lot for her rental car and was reassured to see it.
“Have you found a place to stay yet?” he asked.
God. She almost had to stay for a few days, didn’t she? She’d raised expectations, and she didn’t want to hurt those people who had looked at her with such hunger and happiness and puzzlement. And then there was the whole press conference thing, which really scared her.
Aghast, she suddenly wondered whether Canosa would even want her back. The food and atmosphere were supposed to be the focus, not one of the waitresses. What if people stared? Went there just to see her?
Maybe she could change her appearance. But would brown hair or glasses fool anyone who had once seen a good photo of her? Say, on the cover of People magazine?
Her stomach dipped. With an effort, she dragged her attention back to his last question.
“No. I assumed there’d be a hotel in town, or I could drive back to Mount Vernon.” It was a county away, but straddled the I-5 freeway, making it busier than off-the-beaten-track Stimson, which wasn’t on the way to anything but the Cascade Mountains.
“There’s a Quality Inn.”
She nodded; she’d seen it as she’d turned into town.
“Also a more rustic place just out of town called the River Inn. And a couple of bed-and-breakfasts.”
No B and Bs. She didn’t want to have nosy hosts or have to share a breakfast table with other guests. “If they have a vacancy, the Quality Inn will be fine.” The more anonymous the room, the better.
“Until the press arrives,” Seth said. “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”
She shuddered.
He gave her a quick look as he finished parking, then gripped her hand again.
“Will you have dinner with me, Bailey?”
“You can’t possibly want—” she began in panic.
He interrupted. “I want.” There was the smallest of pauses during which she tried to interpret his enigmatic tone. “It’ll give us time to talk this out. You can ask some of the questions that must be on your mind. We can plan our strategy.”
“You can ask questions,” she said with quick hostility.
He did the eyebrow lifting thing really well. “I won’t tonight, not if you’d rather I don’t. We will need to talk eventually about what you remember about your abductor. I’m a cop, Bailey. If he’s still out there grabbing little girls, he needs to be stopped if there’s any way in hell I can locate him.”
What could she do but nod? She hated the idea he might have another little girl right now, who called him Daddy. She had spent most of her life blocking out those images, except they crept into her dreams.
“But this evening—” Seth’s voice had softened “—we’ll set that aside. I think it would be better for you to talk out what you’re feeling than go hide in a hotel room.”
“I’m used to being alone.” It burst out of her before she could think twice. “I like being alone,” she said softly. Not answering to anyone.
He turned off the engine and sat waiting, just as he had in front of the Lawson home. A patient man, he knew when not to push. And that made him a dangerous man, too, she thought, at least to her.
“Fine,” she said, disgruntled but grateful all at the same time. She hadn’t been ready to stay at the Lawsons’ for dinner, but the idea of getting takeout and eating in a hotel room by herself held no appeal, either. At least, Detective Seth Chandler offered distraction.
“Okay,” he said, as if the outcome had never been in doubt. “I need to go in and check messages, make a few calls. Why don’t you check in at the Quality Inn, and I’ll pick you up there?”
“Fine,” she muttered again.
He smiled and took out his phone. “Give me your number so I can call when I’m on my way.”
She told him. Apparently not trusting her, he touched Send and waited until the phone in her bag rang. Then, satisfied, he put his away. His hand emerged from his pocket with a business card, which he handed her. “My number.”
He insisted on walking her to her car. Bailey had no doubt he memorized the license plate number, just in case she ran for it. Then he let her go, but kept watching until she turned onto the main street and she could no longer see him.
At which point she pulled to the curb, put the car into Park and bent forward, resting her forehead against the steering wheel. And then she did her best to breathe as she struggled with the kind of roiling emotions she hadn’t let herself feel in something like ten years.
Strangely, it was a picture of the man she’d just left that she fastened on. His physical strength, his relaxed, purely male walk, the big hand he’d touched her with whenever he sensed she needed support.
How did he know?
Breathe.
He just did, she admitted. Somehow, those dark eyes saw deeper than she liked. Except today, she was grateful.
A new swirl of panic joined all her other fears. She couldn’t let herself depend on him. She shouldn’t have agreed to dinner. When he called, she’d make an excuse.
Bailey moaned, knowing she’d just lied to herself. Yes, she had to be careful where he was concerned, but right now, she needed him. She, who never let herself need anyone, wasn’t sure she’d get through these next few days without the man she’d met less than three hours ago.
* * *
EVE’S MOTHER—ADOPTIVE MOTHER—laid down her fork. “I keep thinking I dreamed it. But Hope really was here, wasn’t she?”
This was probably the tenth time she’d said something similar since they sat down for dinner. All she’d done was stir her food around.
Dad laid his big, scarred hand over hers in a gesture more tender than Eve remembered seeing. “She was. We’ll see her again in the morning.”
Eve didn’t have much appetite, either. She’d done a lot of scrambling to make up for opening her big mouth at the sight of her sort-of sister.
“I only meant biological,” she had explained.
Apparently that was good enough, because they immediately dropped the subject and went back to exclaiming in shock and awe.
Hope, Hope, Hope.
And I’m being such a bitch, Eve thought miserably. She should be grateful to Hope, whose disappearance had given her a chance to have a family. Nobody else had wanted the rail-thin, withdrawn eight-year-old she had been when the Lawsons had taken her in.
She’d always known the truth. They hadn’t taken her because they’d fallen in love with her, but rather as penance. They felt guilty because they had failed their perfect daughter. For their own spiritual salvation, they needed to save another child.
Which still didn’t mean she hadn’t been lucky to be that child.
She remembered her first visit to this house, when Kirk had opened a door partway down the hall and said, “This will be your bedroom.”
Now she knew it had been a guest bedroom before she had arrived. Then, given the way she’d lived before she got taken into the foster system, she’d been thrilled because she’d have a queen-size bed all to herself and her own dresser and closet and everything.
Karen had stepped into the room behind Eve and looked around. “We’ll paint and decorate once you’ve decided how you’d like it to look,” she said. “What is your favorite color?”
“Pink,” she had whispered, and then seen the expression on the face of a woman who was thinking about becoming her mother. “And yellow,” she said hurriedly. Yellow, she saw, was safe.
She had lived with them for a week before she worked up the courage to open the door to the other bedroom that nobody went in or out of. I want this bedroom, she’d thought, indignation swelling in her, but she never said a word, because she knew. It was her bedroom. The lost daughter the social worker had told her about. The Lawsons had insisted that of course they would keep Eve even if Hope was restored to them, but then, she wasn’t sure she believed that. She’d stared at the pink bedroom with furniture painted white and edged with gilt, and at shelves filled with dolls dressed in beautiful clothes, and most of all at the bed with tall posts and gilt-painted finials and a white lace canopy, and she had envied until she ached.
She had mostly been ashamed of that envy, because the pretty blonde girl in all the pictures was probably dead even though her parents kept her bedroom for her and told everyone that they knew she was alive and would come home someday. But the envy had crept into her heart and stayed no matter what she did to root it out, and today it had made her say, “The real daughter returns.”
Of course Mom and Dad were ecstatic. They’d been given a miracle. Eve loved them. She had dreamed of seeing them truly happy, and now they were.
Just not because of any accomplishment of hers, any gift she gave them. She’d always believed, in the back of her mind, that she was engaged in a competition. She’d just never let herself see that it was one she couldn’t win. Her bringing home a gold medal in athletics, being accepted to Harvard Law School or crowned Miss America, none of those achievements would ever have erased the grief that cast its shadow over both of them. Only the return of their precious Hope could do that.
And I am happy, Eve told herself. Just...envious, too.
She smiled at her mother. “Hope’s coming to breakfast?”
Karen Lawson’s face was both softer and younger than Eve had ever seen it. “Yes. But remember she asked us to call her Bailey. Oh!” She hugged herself. “I can’t believe it.”
Eve offered to come over and make breakfast, but no, Mom wanted to make it with her own hands, because she’d been cheated of the chance of feeding her daughter so many other breakfasts.
“Waffles,” she decided. “Or crepes. I have all those lovely raspberries. Oh, my. I should have asked her what she likes.” Her expression cleared. “But of course she loved raspberries. Do you remember, Kirk? That time we took her with us to pick berries, and lost sight of her for a minute?” That clouded her face momentarily, but the smile broke through again. “And when we found her she was stuffing herself with berries, and her hands and face were stained with the juice?”
He chuckled. “She tried to claim she hadn’t been eating them and was astonished we didn’t believe her.”
How touching, Eve thought. My little sister lied.
And I am a lousy human being.
* * *
DAMN, SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL. Seth didn’t understand this intense reaction to Bailey Smith and wasn’t sure he liked it. He didn’t want to think it was related to the triumph of finding her. As in, I’m the creator.
That was just creepy.
The corner of his mouth twitched. Frankenstein’s monster, she wasn’t.
He had been tempted to take her home and cook dinner for them, but had had a suspicion she wouldn’t like that. Plus, this might be their last chance to go out in public without being noticed.
So he’d taken her to a local diner with high-backed booths and asked for the one in the far corner. Once the waitress led them to it, he didn’t give Bailey the choice. Instead, he slid in with his back to the wall facing the room and the door. It would have been his preference anyway, but what he liked tonight was that no one not standing right in front of their table would see her face.
After they ordered, she looked at him with big, clear eyes that were more gray than blue in this lighting.
“Eve wasn’t thrilled by my appearance.”
He’d been waiting for this one, and found himself in a spot. He’d silenced a call from Eve on the drive here from the hotel. He’d have to talk to her, if only to tell her he wouldn’t be calling again. An uncomfortable conversation he’d been avoiding. The last time they’d had dinner was almost three weeks ago. He’d been taking the coward’s way out, hoping she’d clue in to his waning interest.
He’d made no promises and had nothing to feel guilty about, except that it was damn awkward to have these feelings for Eve’s sister.
“I noticed that,” he admitted. “In a way, I’m not surprised. What did surprise me was that she didn’t hide how she felt.”
“Her parents were really taken aback.”
“I was glad Eve wasn’t there when Karen said that about the two best days of her life.”
“Because they were both associated with the real daughter,” Bailey murmured. “The one who doesn’t remember them and isn’t sure she wants to be bothered to get to know them.”
The one, he suspected, who didn’t want to admit she hungered for family.
“You knew Eve, too?” she asked.
He hesitated. “She and I dated for a while. I actually became interested in your disappearance after hearing the story from her.”
“Really.” It was as if he’d confirmed something she had already guessed. “‘Dated.’ Past tense?”
“Uh... I haven’t called her in a few weeks. It was never more than casual.”
She scrutinized him for an unnerving moment. “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business.”
Sure it is. His reaction was immediate and powerful. Seth didn’t share it.
“I don’t blame her if she resents me,” Bailey continued, sounding thoughtful. “When you first mentioned her, I couldn’t help thinking, So they replaced me. I’d have resented her, if I cared. You know.”
He knew. She had felt a pang of resentment she refused to acknowledge.
“When Eve first told me the story,” he said, “she sounded offhanded about it. ‘Here’s something out of the ordinary.’ I don’t think it crossed her mind I’d go anywhere with it, even though she told me because she knew I regularly work cold cases. Once I dug into it...” He hesitated, then shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. If I asked a question, she’d claim she didn’t know anything. Some bitterness may have been building...” He frowned. “I was going to say because her parents were suddenly obsessed with their loss again, but that isn’t really what happened. The truth is, I doubt an hour has passed in the last twenty-three years that Karen and Kirk didn’t think about you. They’d quit talking about it, that’s all. Until I gave them hope.” He grimaced at his choice of words. “Sorry.”
“I think I could hate that name.” Her voice was sharp. “It’s sappy. And, God, so wrong, considering what happened. And so wrong for me.” She pointed her thumb at herself. “The me I am.”
“Who are you, Bailey Smith?” he asked softly.
Her gaze clashed with his. “I’m not a nice person, in case you haven’t already figured that out. I don’t make close friends. I don’t have boyfriends.” Her warning was clear. “Don’t trust people.” Her tone curdled. “I am what he made me.”
Speaking of bitterness.
“That’s not true,” he said calmly, reaching for a roll, tearing it open and buttering it.
Her chin jutted. “You don’t know.”
“You enrolled in college. Did he have a single thing to do with making you the woman who’d do that?”
“My major. There’s nothing subtle about that.”
“No, I guess there isn’t. You’re trying to figure yourself out. Maybe him. But he wouldn’t have liked you doing either, would he?”
She finally looked away. “No. But my interest is because of him.” She didn’t have to say how much she hated knowing that. “If it never happened, if I’d grown up here as sunny Hope Lawson, who knows? I’d have probably gone off to college at eighteen and majored in literature or biology or dance. But psychology?” She shook her head.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “You’re a more complex person than you would have been. I won’t argue with that. Given what happened to you, I think it’s remarkable what you’ve become.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, the edge present.
“A smart, self-aware, poised woman who may claim she isn’t nice, but who was kind today to two people when she didn’t have to be.”
“Of course I had to be,” she grumbled.
He looked past her. “Dinner is coming,” he said quietly.
The diner did decent American basics—burgers, steaks, fries, onion rings, roasted chicken. He’d been glad she didn’t order one of their salads, which he felt sure came mostly out of a bag. He could be wrong, but he didn’t see her as a waitress at Denny’s or anyplace like that. With her looks and air of class, she could make a lot bigger bucks at someplace upscale.
Once their meals were in front of them, he asked about her job, thinking it might be a good idea to dial back the tension.
Of course he’d never heard of the restaurant, but it sounded expensive. “Do you get free meals?”
A surprised smile curved her mouth. His heart skipped a couple of beats.
“Of course I do. One per shift. Saves me a lot on the groceries, plus their food is really good. And I love Italian.”
“Me, too.” He glanced down at his steak. “Unfortunately, Stimson does not boast a fabulous Italian restaurant.”
She chuckled. “Nothing wrong with a hamburger.” She took a big bite of hers.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d dined out with a woman who ate with gusto. And red meat and French fries, no less. Apparently she didn’t worry too much about her weight. Not that he saw any reason she should.
She got him talking about the town and what it had to offer, seeming intrigued once Seth admitted he hadn’t grown up here.
“City life isn’t for me. I like to hike and I enjoy white-water rafting. I run to stay in shape and would rather not have to pound the pavement or go to the gym.”
“Do you ski?”
“Alpine on occasion—lift tickets aren’t cheap. Otherwise Nordic. We don’t get a lot of snow at this elevation, but we don’t have to drive very far to find it.”
She exercised at a gym. “Actually, the university, now. Saves me having to pay a membership. I do the elliptical, treadmill, swim laps. And most semesters I take a phys ed class. I like to try different things. Spring semester, it was African dance. Which turned out to be really good for the thighs,” she said ruefully.
He laughed.
Their conversation was starting to feel as if they were on a date. When she suddenly scowled at him, he wondered if she’d had the same thought and was fighting it.
“What makes you think you know me?” she challenged. “Smart, self-aware, poised. Kind?” She said it as if the very idea was ludicrous.
He swirled a fry in ketchup. “You denying any of that?”
“Yes.”
“Which part?”
“I’m not kind. I’m...oh, I suppose I’m mostly a decent person. I mean, I don’t go out of my way to slap people down. But I don’t go out of my way to extend a helping hand, either.” She glared as if to say, How dare you put that label on me?
Seth didn’t let himself smile. “We’ll see,” was all he said.
Her eyes narrowed, but she abruptly shifted gears. “You said my... Karen was a teacher. Elementary or high school or what?”
“Kindergarten.”
Looking stricken, she breathed, “Oh.”
“You were about to start first grade.”
“How...awful.”
“That’s safe to say.”
He stayed quiet, letting her process what he guessed was a real hit: her first true understanding of what losing her had done to them, the couple she didn’t want to say were her parents.
“And Eve? Do you know what she does?” She tilted her head. “Of course you do, since you had a relationship.”
“Calling what we had a relationship is a stretch.” He tried to sound mild. Easier because he and Eve had never made it to bed. Thank God they hadn’t. He’d known she was willing and, at first, he’d fully intended to take her up on it. And why not?
He had a sharp, unsettling realization. I saw Hope’s face, the woman she would be if she had lived to grow up. That’s why not. God. Eve had had good reason to resent his sudden, obsessive interest in the sister who must have haunted that house. Today, he’d had trouble making himself meet her eyes. He hoped she hadn’t noticed the way he was looking at Bailey.
He grimaced. Yeah, what were the odds of that? Of course she’d noticed.
“What’s that face you’re making?” Bailey looked wary. “You don’t want to tell me what she does for a living. Why?”
“No, I don’t mind telling you. I had a passing thought, that’s all.” An epiphany. “She’s a social worker with DSHS. Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. She oversees kids who are dependents of the court.”
“Foster children,” Bailey said slowly.
“Some of them. Some she supervises in their own homes, making sure the families are showing up for counseling, keeping their kids clean, not abusing them.”
She gave a funny laugh. “I suppose she majored in psychology.”
“I don’t know. She has a master’s degree in social work from UW.”
“And me, I still have another year just to get my BA.”
“Bailey.” He waited until she was looking at him. “She’s a year younger than you, but she had advantages you didn’t. She had parents who put her through college. She didn’t have to earn her own way. She had support.”
After a moment, she nodded.
“You do have something in common. She lived in foster homes for several years before your parents took her in. All I know is that her mother died, but I don’t get the feeling her life was any picnic before that, either.”
“So on that watershed day, the seesaw flipped.” And she sounded flippant when he knew she felt anything but.
“You know it isn’t that simple.”
“Kinda seems that way.”
“It was three more years before your parents took in Eve.”
She scowled. “I wish you’d quit calling them that.”
“Your parents? Why? They are.”
“Were.”
“Ah.”
The scowl morphed into a glower. “What’s that mean?”
He gave into impulse and took her hand again. “It means I get it.”
“Does it mean you’ll quit calling them that?” She tugged to get her hand free, but half-heartedly.
“I’ll try,” he said. “No guarantee.”
“Great,” she muttered.
He smiled, squeezed her hand and let it go. “Hey, you want dessert?”
“Are their pies as good as they look?”
“Why do you think I come here?”
He hadn’t seen many of her smiles yet, but he especially liked this one.
“Of course I want dessert.” She pushed away her plate, only a few fries uneaten. “I don’t suppose you’d like to have breakfast with us tomorrow.”
Despite the tone that said, Of course I’m not serious, he felt a glow of warmth beneath his breastbone. She might deny it, but she wanted him at her side in the morning.
“I wasn’t invited,” he pointed out.
“I noticed.” She sighed. “And I know I have to do this. It’s just...” After a moment she shrugged. “Will you think I’m even more of a coward if I confess I hope your Eve isn’t there?”
“Not my Eve,” he said curtly, then frowned at his own vehemence. Damn, he had to call Eve. “And no, I don’t blame you. I doubt she will be. She’ll understand they want time with you. To get to know you, and...” He hesitated.
“Stare at me?”
His mouth quirked. “Probably. I was going to say, to rejoice.”
“Fine,” she finally said. But then she looked at him, dead serious. “Will you be masterminding the press conference?”
“Yes.”
“Can we, um, talk about it?”
“Yeah.” He waited until they’d both ordered pie and the waitress was walking away before he took her hand again. “Here’s the plan.”
She held on tight.
