Читать книгу The Last Bridge Home - Linda Goodnight - Страница 10

Chapter Three

Zak wanted to say she was crazy. He wanted to yell, “No way!” He wanted to rewind to that blissfully ignorant time when he’d been admiring Jilly’s jaunty lawn mower grit and Tim Lincecum’s earned run average. If he could pitch like that he’d be in the majors.

Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to get himself under control while praying for a quick and easy resolution. None was forthcoming.

“This is sudden,” Crystal said.

“Sudden” was a major understatement that left him gaping. Sudden was when the runner on first took off for second. Sudden was when he’d pitched a no-hitter and his teammates dumped the ice bucket over his head. This wasn’t sudden. This was catastrophic.

“I wish I didn’t have to spring it on you this way, but…” The remainder trailed away, lost in the facts. Crystal was running out of time. He wasn’t cynical enough or cruel enough to question that part of her story. All he had to do was look at her ashen color, the black circles under her eyes and her emaciated body.

He tried to get a grip, tried to ignore the rampaging elephants in his chest and the shock ricocheting through his head to focus on the most important portion of this bizarre conversation. Crystal was dying. “The doctors can’t do anything?”

“They’ve done a lot. More than two years’ worth. Nothing worked. I waited too long.” She lifted one very thin shoulder, puckering the dragon logo on her pink pullover. “I thought the lump would go away. Instead the cancer spread.”

He could see her doing that. Crystal didn’t want anything to be wrong, so she pretended it wasn’t. This time, ignoring the problem would cost her everything.

“That’s why you have to take my children. They’re sweet kids, Zak. Not perfect, but you know what will happen if I don’t find them a home.”

“Foster care.” He knew how much she’d hated growing up in the social system and how she’d wished for a family she’d never gotten. Now, she had one, in these children, and she was losing them. “What about Tank?”

She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t seen Tank in a long time.”

That figured, but still. “They’re his boys.”

“He’s mean. He hit Brandon a lot.” Probably Crystal, too, from what Zak recalled of Tank Rogers. “I left him after Jake came along. I’ve made a mess of my life but I love my kids. They deserve better.”

The middle boy began to sniffle. The older one scowled and stared at the wall, a robot of a boy.

“Maybe the kids should go outside and play while we talk?” Zak suggested.

“Sure.” Weakly, she pushed at Brandon. “Take Jake and Bella outside. Stay in the yard.”

The stiff-backed boy trudged out, gripping his sister’s hand. Jake trailed them, sucking his thumb.

When the back door snapped closed, Zak held out his palm as an olive branch. He intended to be kind but firm. “I’ll help you in some other way, Crystal, but I can’t do this. I don’t know anything about raising children, especially a little girl.” The daddy word gave him cold chills. Maybe she’d see the folly of her suggestion if he laid out the facts about himself. “First of all, I’m single. They need a mother. And I’m gone a lot. My firefighter job comes with a crazy schedule. Plus, I play a lot of baseball.”

“Still?”

What did she mean “still”?

“Dreams die hard.” Hey, he was only twenty-seven. Roger Clemens won a Cy Young Award when he was forty-two. The majors could still come calling.

“The job, baseball, being single, none of that matters, Zak. My kids need you.”

All those things mattered to him! “They need a caring family, Crystal. There are people out there who will adopt three cute kids. A family, not some single guy without a clue about raising them.”

“Who? Name one person who would adopt three kids all at once.”

“I don’t know,” he said, exasperated. “Someone.”

If he told her to call child welfare, she’d go ballistic. He wouldn’t do that anyway. But what could he do? He was not the daddy type.

“You’re the only person I’d trust with them.”

Oh, man. She was killing him. He wished like crazy Jilly was here to help him out. She’d know what to say. “Ask me for something else, but not this. I can’t.”

Crystal pressed shaky knuckles to her mouth but didn’t cry. For that he was grateful. A crying woman was a powerful force.

On wobbly legs she rose, and with more dignity than he’d imagined she said, “I’m sorry to have bothered you. You aren’t the man I remembered, after all.”

Jilly heard car doors slam. She pushed off the grass, scratched at the itch on the back of her leg and carried Lucky to the corner of the house. From there she could see Zak’s driveway. She rubbed Lucky’s velvet ear and watched as Zak reached into his pocket, took out his wallet and offered Crystal some money. She must have refused because he leaned into the window to say something and tossed the bills inside.

The battered Chevy backed down the drive, children’s faces pressed against the windows, and left Zak standing with arms dangling at his sides as they drove away.

Had there been some sort of ghastly mistake? Was she Zak’s wife or not? If they were married, where was she going? And why was he tossing money into her car?

Hope sprang up like a tenacious weed. Maybe they weren’t married. Maybe she’d misunderstood the conversation. After all, she’d been in the kitchen with three talking children. She’d made a mistake. Thank goodness.

Or maybe the woman was a nightmare from Zak’s past and he’d paid her to go away. Maybe she’d come to extort money. Maybe…

Curiosity getting the better of her, she put Lucky and the other rabbits back in the hutch and went inside to wash her face and hands. She had to know. Yes, she was nosy, but Zak was her best friend. He needed her.

And she’d go crazy if she didn’t know the truth.

Please let the conversation be a misunderstanding on my part. Zak could not be married.

“You look better.” Her mother stood in the laundry room, folding towels into a green plastic basket. The smell of lavender fabric softener, moist and hot from the dryer filled the narrow space.

“I’m going over to Zak’s. Don’t get too hot back here. I can fold these later.”

Mom, who worried less about her blood pressure than her daughter did, said, “I saw that woman leave. I wonder who she was. All those children.”

“You had three children.” Jilly snagged a clean washcloth.

“Mmm. Didn’t seem that many back then.” Mom kneed the drier shut with a metallic bang. “You don’t think she’s Zak’s girlfriend, do you?”

Jilly’s stomach lurched. She fisted the washcloth into a wad. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Did you watch that movie on cable last night? The one I told you about?”

“Yes, Mom.” She’d watched the DVD a long time ago. The movie, about a girl who was always a bridesmaid and never a bride, could have been the story of Jillian’s life. Except for the part about finding the guy of her dreams. Or rather him finding her. Jilly had found hers five years ago when Zak bought the house across the street. Beyond sharing pipe wrenches and hamburgers, he hadn’t bothered to notice.

“That could happen to you if you’d stop jumping every time he calls.” Mom handed her a stack of clean, fragrant towels. “Zak likes you. That woman is the first one I’ve ever seen over there other than his mother and you.”

“Mom, let it go.” Jilly hid her reddening face behind the stack of terry cloth. “Guys don’t find me attractive in that way. Zak likes me for a friend.”

“Maybe he’d like you for more if you played hard to get. Men are intrigued by a woman they can’t have.”

Jilly chanted her mantra, the one she’d used since she was sixteen. “When the time is right, the Lord will send someone.”

Someone who didn’t mind her freckles or red hair, someone who saw the real Jillian Fairmont. Not some jerk like Clay Trent who’d called her “Spotty” in front of the entire junior class. “Men don’t find me attractive.”

“You’re too hung up about your looks, Jillian. You’re a beautiful woman.”

Even though her mother repeated the words often, Jilly didn’t believe a word. Years of playground torment had told her the truth. Boys weren’t attracted to her. They wanted to be her friend, her pal, but not her date to the prom.

“Bye, Mom.”

“Take some of those muffins. The way to a man’s heart…”

Jilly made a rude noise but dumped the towels in the linen cabinet and grabbed the muffins as she threaded her way around a pair of squirmy dogs.

With Mugsy and Satchmo at heel, she jogged across the street, her mother’s words ringing in her head. She wanted to believe Zak found her attractive, but he’d never treated her as anything but a pal.

She hammered on his front door. “Hey, open up. I brought Mom’s muffins and two of your buddies.”

The dogs alone usually brought Zak roaring to the door to engage in a mock battle with the terriers.

“Come on in. I could use a friend.”

Uh-oh.

Jilly gave the door a push and stepped in. Sprawled on the couch, a dejected-looking Zak took a gut full of rat terrier as both dogs leaped aboard. He shoved them off. The dogs plopped on their bottoms, heads tipped to the side in a comical questioning expression. Clearly, their friend did not want to play, an unusual turn of events.

“You don’t look too happy.” Jilly shoved his sneakered feet aside and scootched in at the end of the couch. She set the muffins on a lamp table out of the dogs’ reach. “Who was that? What happened?”

Zak dropped his feet to the floor and sat up. “I need to talk to you about something. Promise you’ll hear me out before you tell me how stupid I am.”

She’d never seen him look this worried. The hope that she’d misunderstood dwindled away. “So, is it true? You’re married?”

Shoulders bumping hers, Zak swiveled his long, lanky body in her direction. Green eyes stood out against a summer tan, bewildered. “You heard what she said?”

“If you mean Crystal, yes, most of it. At least, I think I did.” Sickness rose in Jilly’s throat. She fought it down, although every hope she’d ever had, every dream that Zak would wake up and see her as a woman instead of a pal died a quiet death. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t I know?”

“Because I didn’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, kneading tight muscles. She’d done that for him before, after a hard ball game when his muscles ached and his arm stiffened up.

Before she knew he had a wife.

“Please,” Jilly scoffed, even though nothing amused her. “Give me some credit here. She didn’t give you one of those drugs that make you forget, did she? You married her. A man doesn’t forget something that momentous.”

“I knew I had married her. I just didn’t know we are married.” He slammed his fist onto his thigh. “This can’t be happening.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Tell me about it. Nothing makes sense right now except I have a problem I don’t know how to solve.” He gripped the neck of his T-shirt and pulled, exposing the tanned skin below his throat. Jilly wanted to make him feel better, but how did a woman comfort another woman’s husband?

Mugsy, the empathetic one, lifted both paws lightly to Zak’s knee and cocked his head. Zak absently rubbed the pointed ears. Satchmo, not to be left out, leaped easily into Jilly’s lap, dog tags jingling.

“From the top,” Jilly said. “Explain this before I call your mother and tell her you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

“Whatever you do, don’t call my parents.”

“They don’t know?” This was worse than she’d thought.

“Not everything. I was in college, away from home, on baseball scholarship. Crystal was one of those girls who hung around college guys even though she wasn’t in school. Kind of a groupie type. She’d come to the ball games and jump up and down, all excited. After a good game, she’d rush up, gushing about how I was sure to get a call from the scouts.”

“She stroked your ego.”

“I guess. What did I know? I was barely eighteen and green as a frog.” He made a huffing noise.

“So what happened?”

“You know that old song about the candle in the wind? That was Crystal, blowing through life at the mercy of anyone and everything. She had problems and I felt sorry for her.” He shrugged, chagrined. “She was cute, too. Put the two together and I didn’t stand a chance when she asked me to marry her for the sake of her baby.”

“Her baby?” Even though the hated red blush crept up her neck, Jilly had to know. “Or yours, too?”

Zak’s eyes darkened to the color of rich moss, eyes that usually made her heart flutter. She couldn’t let that happen anymore. Even though it did.

“You have to believe me, Jilly. Those kids aren’t mine. None of them. Crystal and I were married about fifteen minutes. Shoot, most of the time I was at ball practice. I barely saw her.”

The unbidden vision of Zak and Crystal together stirred in the pit of her stomach as powerful as a canine virus. She hoped she didn’t throw up on Zak’s tennis shoes. “How could your parents not know?”

“I was working my way up to sharing the news.”

“They weren’t going to be happy about it?”

“Not even close. I was on scholarship, shooting for the big leagues. My dream was theirs, too. They would have been crushed.”

Jilly understood the feeling. She was crushed. Decimated. Shove a stick of dynamite in her heart and light the fuse.

“Her old boyfriend, the baby’s father, came by one day while I was in class and away she went. Her note said she’d filed for divorce to be with her soul mate.” He made a grim face. “Some soul mate.”

Jilly straightened, a fragile glimmer of hope flaring. “Then you aren’t married.”

“I don’t want to be. Never intended to be. At the time, I was too busy and dumb to consider she might not follow through.”

Jilly’s hope crashed and burned. “She didn’t.”

“No.” Zak let out an agitated sound. Mugsy licked his hand in consolation. “Looking back, I should have known. Crystal wasn’t the kind of girl who followed through with anything. Ever.”

“Oh, Zak,” she moaned. “You have a wife. You’re married.”

“No!” He slapped both hands to the sides of his head, fingers digging into his short brown hair. Surprised by the vehemence, the two dogs leaped to the floor. Zak dropped his arms, shoulders sagging, and on a long sigh said, “Yes. Technically, I guess I am.”

Jilly wondered if God believed in technicalities, but figured now was not the time to ask. Zak was more than freaked out. She gripped his forearm with her fingers. He was trembling. Or was that her?

“Okay, let’s think about this rationally,” she said. Yeah, right, and while we’re at it, let’s fly to Mars. “Why is Crystal here now? What does she want? A divorce? Like in that movie, Sweet Home Alabama?” Please Lord, let that be it. If Crystal divorced him, Zak would be free. Then another, much worse thought hit her. “Or did she change her mind after all this time and want you back?”

Jilly hated the thoughts running through her head. Ways to get Zak out of a marriage when marriage was ordained by God. What was wrong with her?

She knew the answer to that one. She loved a married man. She wanted him for herself. What kind of horrible person was she?

“Crystal has cancer,” he said flatly. “She doesn’t have much time left.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Guilt rushed in. The woman was dying and all Jilly could think about was how to steal her husband. “She’s so young.”

She wanted to ask what Crystal’s illness had to do with Zak, but guilt wouldn’t let her. “Why did she come to you? For money? Or what?”

“I don’t even know where she lives,” he said numbly. “Or what she’s been doing for the last ten years. It’s obvious she doesn’t have much. She’s broke and sick and alone.”

Compassion, usually welcome, rose in Jilly. As much as she disliked the words, she forced them out. “If she needs your help, you have to give it.”

“I know, but I can’t do what she asked. I just can’t.” He took her hand, a casual gesture.

“Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t think so.” He lifted her fingers one by one, traced a spray of freckles across the back and then gripped her hand with such force that she knew he was about to say something momentous. As if having a wife wasn’t momentous enough. “She asked me to take her kids—” he hesitated “—after…”

Jilly frowned. What was momentous about that? Crystal was desperately ill with little time left. “Until her family comes for them?”

He released her hand and sat back. “There is no family, Jilly. No one. She doesn’t have a single person anywhere to turn to. No one except me—the long-lost husband who didn’t even know he was one.”

Zak’s meaning seeped in, slow and deadly as arsenic. He not only had a wife, but he was also about to become a father.

Zak watched the color drain from Jilly’s face. Her freckles popped out like rust stars against a porcelain sky. She had beautiful skin, a fact he noticed every time she blushed, which was often. She made a tiny noise of distress and Zak resisted the urge to toss his arm over her shoulders and give her a hug. He didn’t like seeing Jilly upset, especially when he was the cause.

“You sent her away,” she said, blue eyes sad and dismayed.

“What else could I do? I’m not their father. I don’t even know her.”

“But now that she’s gone, you’re having second thoughts.”

“Yes, of course I am!” What kind of man would he be if he didn’t? He dragged both hands down his face and blew from his lips like a horse. “She’s dying, Jilly. I feel like a piece of scum for refusing her anything. At the same time, I’m not the person for the job. I can’t be a father to three strange, grieving, needy children. I don’t want to be. I can’t be. The whole idea is nuts.” He was starting to get hysterical. Zak Cool, the pitcher with ice water in his veins and fire in his left arm, was teetering on the edge.

Jilly pushed Satchmo off her lap. “Go lay down.”

“I wish I could,” Zak said and when Jilly rolled blue eyes at him, he grinned a little at his joke. “Dogs are lucky. When something upsets them, they can go to sleep and forget about it.”

Jilly wasn’t amused. If anything, she’d gone even paler. A tiny, worried pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. “You’re not a dog. You can’t go to sleep and forget about it. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I gave her some money. She was broke, exhausted, sick.” He scrubbed his face with both hands, not that it did a bit of good. “Man, I’m a jerk.”

Jilly pushed at Satchmo who tried to regain her lap. “Was she going back to her home?”

He hadn’t asked. He’d been so busy getting her out of his house, his driveway, his life that he hadn’t asked what she would do or where she would go. “She looked tired. I suggested she go to a motel.”

“Kitty’s place?”

“Yeah.” He’d soothed himself with the thought that Kitty Carter ran a clean, safe, reasonably priced motel. “Maybe I should call Kitty and ask her to keep an eye on them.”

“I don’t know, Zak. This doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Nothing is right today. I want a replay.”

“I’m sure Crystal does, too.”

“Thanks for kicking me in the teeth,” he said wryly. “I deserved that.”

“Maybe you should go over there and bring them back here.”

“Here? To my place? Are you nuts?”

“Regardless of the particulars, regardless of when or why you married her, she’s legally still your wife.”

“What if she’s lying?” he asked, desperate to be free of this problem.

“Wouldn’t that be easy to check?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe she’s only saying this because she remembers me as a soft touch.”

“Zak,” Jilly admonished softly.

“I don’t want to be married, Jilly. Not to anyone, but certainly not to a woman I don’t remember very well who is dying of cancer and wants to give me three kids.” He could hear how shallow and selfish he sounded, but this was his life she was talking about!

“That’s exactly the point. Crystal is dying. She needs you right now. Don’t you think it’s terribly, pathetically sad that she has no one else in the world to turn to but a man she’s not seen since college?”

Put that way, Crystal’s plight looked even worse than it was. And it was bad. “I told her I’d help her. In some way. We can ask at church. Maybe someone will take her in. Maybe someone will want the kids. Or I can hire a nurse to stay with her.”

Jilly put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know, Zak. Something about that seems wrong to me.”

“I can’t move her in here. I don’t even know her. I have a life, too. What are people going to think if I move a strange woman into my house?”

“What about the kids? Where do they go? What happens to them? They can’t care for a dying mother.”

He closed his eyes, blew out another breath. “There’s the kicker. They have no one to turn to and no place to go.”

Jilly bit her bottom lip and he could see the wheels turning inside her head. “Look, all of this has happened too fast. You’re reeling from shock. Maybe you need some time to think it over.”

“I don’t think Crystal has the luxury of time.”

“Oh, Zak.” She swallowed, pretty face tragic. Jilly was a woman with a heart as big and warm as the sun. She took in all kinds of strays and rejected animals, nursed them to health and found them homes when she could. But three children weren’t puppies she could fatten up and farm out. “She’s in a desperate situation.”

So was he. “I know.”

“Can you live with yourself if you don’t do something?”

He wished the answer was different but admitted, “I don’t know. Probably not. God help me.” And he meant that voiced prayer with every cell in his weak brain.

“She’s dying, Zak. She must be scared. For herself. For her kids.” She squeezed the back of his hand. “I can’t imagine how terrible her life must be right now.”

“You’re killing me.”

“I’m trying to put myself in her position. What would I do? What would I need? How hard would it be to ask a near stranger for charity? You can’t turn your back. Even if the marriage is on paper only, the two of you are connected. You made a vow to her, even if it was ten years ago. You have an obligation, under God and the law.”

Jilly was his best friend. She wouldn’t steer him wrong. She wanted the best for him and she wasn’t any happier about this than he was, but her head was clearer. His was as tangled as spaghetti. As a Christian, he wanted to do what was right. As a single man, he wanted to jump in his Titan 4x4 and hit the road.

“I can’t take on three kids. I won’t.”

“It’s a huge decision.”

“Exactly. Those kids need a family. They need someone who wants them and can give them the attention kids deserve. That is not me.”

Jilly patted his shoulder. “You’re a good guy.”

“No, I’m not. I’m struggling.”

“You’ll do the right thing.”

He turned his head to look at her. “Why weren’t you around ten years ago to say that?”

She smiled a funny smile. “I wish I had been.”

Zak figured he should do some serious knee time, but God hadn’t gotten him into this mess in the first place. If he’d been living right back in college, he might have been smarter. Or not. The fact remained, he hadn’t been.

“A motel room is no place for a sick woman and a pack of rug rats,” he conceded.

“She can’t stay there indefinitely, and if she has nowhere to go… You need to find out, Zak. Does she have anywhere else to go?”

“I’ll talk to her again.”

“And then what?”

He sighed, weary and confused, a load of responsibility bearing down with colossal weight. “I don’t know.”

As a Christian, his conscience said he had to help Crystal, even though their relationship ended years ago. If helping meant bringing her into his home where she could be at peace for her remaining days, maybe he could do that. But the arrangement was temporary. Only temporary.

Maybe, just maybe, a miracle would happen and a family would be found for three orphaned children.

Because he couldn’t keep those kids. No matter what.