Читать книгу Twice Her Husband - Mary Forbes J. - Страница 9

Misty River, Oregon

Ten days later

I n the produce section of Safeway, Luke stared at the woman sizing up a bundle of bananas three bins away.

Ginny?

Blinking, he focused on his ex-wife. It had been over eleven years since he’d seen her last. She had the same pro file. Small, straight nose, concave cheeks, dimple in the one facing him. Hair the color of Belize beach sand, though the style looked as if those chin-length curls had frolicked with a breeze.

His heart boxed his ribs. His palms began to sweat. He took a step forward, her name in his throat.

A blond boy sauntered to her side. “Mama, can we make hamburgers in the backyard tonight?”

Adrenaline scooted across Luke’s skin as she tousled the kid’s hair. “We’re having spaghetti with meatballs, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Hey, Miss Jo.” The kid pulled a miniature thumb from the mouth of the baby sitting in the cart’s basket. “You want rabbit teeth?” Before Miss Jo could whimper, the boy screwed up his face and started gnawing on her neck. “Rawrrr-rawrrr-rawrrr.”

The little girl giggled, a sound light as a musical scale. “Ep-say, no.” She grabbed his hair and pulled.

“Ow.”

“Don’t get her started,” Ginny warned the boy as she set the bananas in the cart and moved to the oranges.

Luke backed away. He was an outsider, looking in on her family—on a life he’d shunned. Bumping into another shopper, he muttered, “Excuse me,” and hurried from the produce section. Near the electronic doors, he dropped his basket on a rack.

She had a family. A husband.

What was she doing in Misty River?

They had to be on vacation. It was almost May, after all. Some families took their vacations early, before school finished. They were simply stopping for a few groceries. Probably had a big Winnebago parked around the corner. Husband was likely reading the paper while she shopped with the kids.

Why that bothered Luke, he couldn’t determine. Virginia Ellen Keegan hadn’t been his wife in damn near a dozen years.

But she could’ve been.

The thought zapped in. Quick, sharp, leaving a ragged tear.

He strode to his silver Mustang convertible parked on a side street. He couldn’t get inside the vehicle fast enough—and when he did, he simply sat staring through the windshield.

Ginny.

Shutting his eyes, he saw her again, heard her voice. A stranger, yet…completely familiar.

He’d never forgotten her.

And if he looked closely, he’d recognize the hole in his heart, where once she had lived and laughed and loved.

At 8:20 Friday morning Ginny pulled in front of Chinook Elementary and turned off the station wagon’s ignition.

“What are you gonna talk to Mrs. Chollas about?” Alexei asked, worry between his eyes.

“I want to make sure she understands about dysgraphia, honey. That’s all.”

“Okay.” He stared at three boys chasing a soccer ball. “I don’t want her to think I’m special.”

“You are special, Alexei. The most special boy in the whole world.” She leaned over and kissed his hair.

“Mo-om! Don’t! People might see.”

“Oops.” She smiled away the tiny prick of hurt; her boy was growing up too fast. “I forgot.”

“Okay.” He opened the door and hopped down. “Bye.”

“Have a good day, ba—” The door slammed. “Baby,” she whispered.

“Ep-say.” Joselyn squirmed in her car seat behind Ginny. “Ep-say, go.”

“That’s right, angel. Alexei’s going to school.” She climbed from the car as her son ran toward the boys chasing the ball. “And we’re having a chat with his teacher.”

She found Mrs. Chollas waiting for her in the fifth-grade classroom. Immediately Ginny liked the woman’s kind eyes and gentle smile.

When they were seated at the teacher’s desk—Joselyn on Ginny’s lap with a notepad and a crayon supplied by the teacher—Mrs. Chollas said, “Alexei is doing quite well in this first week. He’s already made some friends, which really helps ease the transition. He loves math, and is very adept at oral communication in class. But as we discussed on the phone, his writing skills need a great deal of encouragement.”

Ginny understood too well. Offering a smile she didn’t feel, she said, “Have you ever dealt with dysgraphia, Mrs. Chollas?” Few teachers heard of the word, never mind grasped the tangled process that went on in a child’s brain. In Ginny’s experience, they recognized the problem, but many passed it on to a colleague specializing in learning disabilities.

The teacher nodded. “In my twenty years of teaching, I’ve seen almost everything, Mrs. Franklin. Alexei’s case isn’t entirely unusual. We have a laptop he might want to use—”

“He doesn’t want to be labeled,” Ginny interrupted. His past teachers had done exactly that by sending him to resource rooms or modifying his workload. Ginny had tried to boost his confidence by saying that holding a pencil differently, writing in short backward strokes, was okay. “He prefers to handwrite whenever possible.” She looked straight at the teacher. “If you don’t mind deciphering what he’s written.”

Mrs. Chollas smiled. “I’ll have Alexei read his material to me if it’s too illegible. And I’ll work with him after school for a few minutes each day showing him tricks that will make his letters more readable. Would he be willing to do that?”

“Oh,” Ginny said. “He will.” She hoped. Joselyn on her hip, Ginny stood. “Thank you. For putting both Alexei and me at ease. His other teachers… Well. He hated being singled out.”

Mrs. Chollas rose as well. “I understand. Unless it’s a dire situation, my students stay with me in my classroom. Why don’t we start next Monday, say for fifteen minutes or so after school? Does he catch the bus?”

“I drive him.”

“Good. Pick him up at three.” She shook Ginny’s hand. “I promise you my best, Mrs. Franklin.”

Relief washed through Ginny. “Thank you.” She offered a small smile. “By the way, would you know of a trustworthy babysitter?”

“Sure. Hallie Tucker. She’s wonderful with little ones. Loves babies.” The teacher tickled Joselyn under her chin.

“Hallie Tucker?” Ginny watched her baby smile at the older woman.

“She’s the police chief’s niece. Goes to Misty River High. Want me to write down her number?”

Calling the home of her former brother-in-law and speaking to the child who’d once been her niece had Ginny’s belly tailspinning. But she needed a reliable babysitter and Hallie had come with a lofty recommendation.

The delight in the girl’s voice at hearing who was calling chased off Ginny’s apprehension. Most of all, Hallie met her explanation about Boone’s death and the children’s needs with adult grace and understanding. Most importantly, Ginny couldn’t ignore the love-at-first-sight gazes from her children when the young woman stood on their doorstep a half hour after school.

“Be good,” Ginny told Alexei, then kissed Joselyn. Rushing to her green boat of a car—the only vehicle she could find that had cost less than eight hundred dollars—she added, “I should be home by four-thirty, five at the absolute latest.”

Her main stop was the grocery store. Everything else could wait until the weekend. Alexei, her all-day grazer, could not.

Forty-five minutes later, the groceries stored in back of her car, she drove down Main Street checking stores she might want to visit in the near future. A small, old-fashioned facade with Waltzin’ Paper in quaint, lopsided lettering over the little display window caught her eye.

Why not? she thought, pulling to the curb. Her kitchen cried for wallpaper; she’d give the shop a five-minute boo, then head home.

Boone’s chuckle followed her into the store. He’d never been a fan of papering walls. For him nothing compared to the ease and immediacy of paint.

Boone. Today was his birthday. He would have been sixty-three. The more than two decades between them had never been an issue. She’d fallen in love with his kindness. A big gentle man—jogger, kayaker, skier, daddy—who loved children and whose eyes misted when her eleven-day-old baby lost the battle against his tiny underdeveloped lungs.

The baby she’d conceived with her first husband, Luke Tucker.

The baby he’d never known existed.

The night Robby had been conceived, she and Luke were in the throes of divorce proceedings. He’d come to the apartment to plead with her, and she’d cried for all their lost hopes. Because Luke had been afraid of failing. In work, in life and, irony of ironies, in his marriage.

And that night, as icing to an already imploding cake, he’d become a father.

Ginny hadn’t known of her pregnancy until she’d moved across the country to West Virginia—as far as possible from Luke and the memories they’d made together. For seven months she’d debated telling him about their baby. In the end, eight years of marriage hadn’t tempered his ambitions or his fears, and while she understood and absolved all his regrets and excuses, Ginny could not bear hearing them again. Nor could she imagine the guilt her child would shoulder, hearing the reasons for absenteeism or requirement for perfection from a career-driven father.

So she kept her secret—and birthed her son alone.

For almost two agonizing, worrisome weeks, Robby’s doctor had been Boone Franklin, the hospital’s head pediatrician.

Her solace. Her saving grace.

Today, on Boone’s birthday, she would’ve woken him with a kiss and maybe, if the hour was early enough, unhurried lovemaking. She inhaled long and slow. Sex hadn’t happened in a long, long while. Not that she was looking, but someday…when the kids were older, when she had an established income, when there was money in the bank, perhaps then intimacy would be a part of her life again.

The store owner approached. “Anything of interest?”

“These I like.” She pointed out bold, yellow sunflowers.

“I have more catalogs in back,” the woman offered. “The patterns are last year’s, but they include classic sunflower designs that never go out of style.”

“Thank you, maybe I’ll have a peek.” She followed the clerk into a back room which held shelving, a couch and a coffee table.

Fifteen minutes later, she made her purchase. An archetypal country-kitchen border of sunflowers, which she’d hang below the crown molding above her refrigerator, stove and eating area. The walls beneath she’d paint in spring-green.

She wanted her kitchen welcoming and wholesome. The way it had been in West Virginia with Boone. He had loved green. A healing color, he’d said. Although it hadn’t healed him.

Outside on the sidewalk, she blinked against the late-afternoon sun and hefted the roll of wallpaper under her arm.

At the big, sprawling homestead house, a mile and a half from where Ginny stood, Hallie would be tossing a garden salad for her and smearing grape jelly over bread for Alexei and Joselyn. Time to get in her clunker station wagon across the street, go home where her children waited—and where her loneliness for Boone wafted from the corners.

From between two pickups, she dashed across the street.

A sound like raptors escaping Jurassic Park screeched in her ears. She glimpsed a sleek silver nose.

Not raptors. A car!

The wallpaper roll lurched from her arms as if alive. Her body flung of its own volition through the air, banging onto the pavement. Pain clawed up her spine, shot through her skull.

The last thing she saw was the snarling tread of a tire.

Ginny! Oh, God, Ginny!

Luke leaped from his Mustang and rushed to kneel beside the woman lying on the street inches from his front tire. He hadn’t realized he’d shouted until two men materialized at his side.

“Call 911! Oh, jeez. Ginny! I didn’t see you. I didn’t see you!”

Her right leg angled crookedly from her thigh. Her eyes were open, sightless. Crouching down, he pressed a finger to her neck, seeking a pulse. Please.

There. Faint, rapid under the softness of her skin.

Luke curled her hair behind the delicate shell of her ear, ran a shaky finger down her smooth cheek. Please be okay. Let her be okay. Words tumbling into prayer. Oh, God. Hurry!

If he hadn’t been cruising town looking for her car, she wouldn’t be on the pavement. If he hadn’t been so anxious to see her again after those moments in Safeway five days ago, she would be okay. If he’d gone home after work, let bygones be bygones… If, if, if.

A small crowd gathered.

“Is she okay?” someone asked.

“What happened?”

“Did she jaywalk?”

“Who is she?”

My wife, Luke wanted to shout. Get help! She needs a doctor!

A woman spoke. “That’s Ginny Franklin. She was just in my store, buying wallpaper.”

“Franklin?” a man said. “Any relation to Deke?”

“Don’t know. But she’s been living in the old house at Franklin’s mill site for the past week or so.”

“She’d better watch out then,” a gruff-voiced man said. “Place is spooked.”

Another woman piped up. “My Allan redid the roof when they were doing all those renovations this spring. Said two guys wouldn’t hire on because of what’s happened on that land. Likely why the place’s been abandoned forty years.”

“Wouldn’t catch me out there,” a third woman squeaked.

“Me, either,” Gruff Guy said.

“Is she dead?” asked Squeaky Voice.

“No,” Luke snapped. “Did someone call an ambulance?”

“It’s coming, Luke.” This from Kat, owner of Kat’s Kitchen across the street. The granny-aged woman bent on one knee, opposite him. “I called soon as I saw it happen through the window.” Her eyes were kind. “You weren’t at fault, honey. She just stepped out from between those two trucks. Poor dear. Must have had something powerful on her mind to not pay attention.”

Sirens wailed. The crowd shifted as the ambulance arrived. Three paramedics sprang from the vehicle.

Within minutes, Ginny lay on a gurney. The medics hoisted her inside the van, closed the doors.

A hand clapped Luke’s shoulder. It was Jon, his brother and police chief of Misty River.

“She just—just— Jon, it’s Ginny.” Luke ran trembling fingers through his hair.

For a moment the brothers stared at one another. Jon nodded. “Want me to drive you to the hospital?”

The ambulance had left. The crowd dispersed.

“No.” Luke sighed. “I’m okay.” He headed for his car. “If you need a statement…”

Jon waved him off. “Later.”

Later, when she was well again. If she got well again.

Why was an IV hanging from the ceiling? Ginny closed her eyes, then opened them again. A motor. Was she in a camper truck? Beside her sat a man—no, a paramedic. She remembered the car…the silver car…

“Hey,” the medic said. “You’re awake.” He smiled. “You’re going to be fine. Just a little bump, but the doctor needs to check it out at the hospital first.” He fiddled with the IV. “Got a bit of saline to stabilize you.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Apparently you stepped in front of a car.”

Puzzled, she studied the medical paraphernalia around her. “I wouldn’t… Why would I…?”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ginny Franklin.”

He held up his hand, fingers spread. “How many?”

“Five.”

“Now?”

“Two.”

“What’s the name of your town?”

“Misty River. Look, all my faculties are in place. I just—” She attempted to rise. Pain bloomed behind her eyes.

“Take it easy.”

“My head—”

“I know.” He checked her pupils with a small light. “We’re almost there. Doc’s waiting.”

“My kids…”

“Where are they?”

“With a sitter. Hallie…”

“I’ll call her. Got a number?”

She gave it. The ambulance rolled up to the hospital’s emergency doors.

“Really,” she said, “I’m fine. Can’t I just go home?”

“Not yet, Mrs. Franklin. You might have a broken leg.”

Because of her concussion, the doctor wanted to keep her for the evening, possibly overnight. She couldn’t afford to stay overnight. At First National, her bank account had dwindled to a mere ten thousand. Boone’s first wife had drained his savings with her illness just as Boone’s cancer had marked every dollar of his health insurance and most of Ginny’s account. In the last months, when he’d known he would not return home, she’d sold the house to pay off the remaining debts and moved into a rental duplex. Ironically Boone had the Oregon house repaired—unbeknownst to her—with a fund they’d saved for Alexei’s college.

Their worst—and final—argument.

I want you safe and secure, he’d said.

From what? she’d asked.

From whatever happens.

Premonition? Who knew.

But he hadn’t counted on her jaywalking.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Tonight her kids could be alone for the first time in their lives, without mother or father. Sure, they’d have Hallie. But they’d just met, and she wasn’t mommy. Ginny imagined Joselyn’s cries, saw her rosy mouth pucker, the tiny tears.

And Alexei. Would he hide in his bedroom with his music, the way he had while cancer ate Boone’s brain?

She studied the cast on her right foot, tractioned and swinging above the bed to keep the blood from pooling the first hours. A nice, clean break, the doctor had told her. How are broken bones nice or clean? Was it the same as having a nice, clean brain tumor? Nice and clean didn’t warrant painkillers. Didn’t warrant a young boy’s horror.

The door to her room opened. A bouquet entered—an immense fireworks-like display of deep gold sunflowers. Then the door closed and a face peered around the ribboned, blue vase.

Her heart jolted. “Luke,” she whispered as if she saw a phantom instead of the man who had once been her husband.

“Hey, Ginny. How are you?”

“I’m…” Amazed. Her mouth worked without words. “What—what are you doing here?”

“Seeing you.” He walked to the window where a high-rolling table stood, and placed his summer bouquet upon it before scooting the table near her bed.

As he moved about, she stared openly. If possible, his shoulders had grown broader under the cloth of his expensive teal shirt, and at his temples silver reeled into his clipped, pecan-brown hair.

Tucking his hands into the pockets of tailored black slacks, he looked down at her with the same somber gray eyes she had fallen in love with at seventeen.

She struggled past the fumble of her brain. “How did you know I was here?” she managed.

He studied her leg. “I live in Misty River. Have a law office just down the street from where you…from where I… Ginny, it was my car.”

That had struck her. That she’d walked into, mindlessly.

They hadn’t told her who, and she hadn’t asked.

She closed her eyes against the grim lines around his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” His warm hand covered her cool one on the lightweight blue blanket. “It was my fault. I should’ve been paying attention.”

A laugh escaped, short and bitter. She slipped her hand free, curling it into the palm of its twin. “Okay, so we agree to disagree. Like always.”

“Ginny.”

She opened her eyes, studied him while he studied the casted leg. His Adam’s apple worked. His hand found its pocket again.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “That wasn’t called for. I’m being a shrew.”

“You have the right.” For the first time his mouth shifted and she caught a half smile before it vanished.

She said, “The doctor figures it’ll be healed in six weeks. Only a hairline fracture in the tibia, just above the ankle.”

He swallowed. “Only. Right.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks, Luke.” She forced a smile. “I’m not dying.”

“Huh.” He surveyed the room.

“I’ll be released tonight,” she said, aspiring toward the positive.

His eyes wove to her. “Who’s with your kids?”

He knew she had children? “They’re with a sitter. Your niece, actually.”

“Hallie?”

“Yes.”

Relief loosened his shoulders. “Good kid. You won’t find anyone more responsible. I’ll check on her. Or…where’s your husband? Shouldn’t he be here? I asked at the desk, but no one’s come to see you. It’s like no one knows you in this town.”

Her chest hurt at his offhand remark. “We moved here eleven days ago. Hard to make friends when you’re uncrating boxes and setting up a home.”

Those gray eyes remained sober. “Is there a Mr. Franklin?” he repeated.

She glanced at the flowers, lustrous and cheerful in the window’s light. “My husband passed away.”

Luke tugged at his thick, short hair. “I’m sorry. I mean… Hell, I don’t know what I mean.”

“It happened three months ago.”

“Sudden?”

“I suppose six months of cancer is sudden by some standards.”

His eyes held hers. Seconds ticked away. “I won’t say a bunch of banal words for something I don’t understand and never experienced. But I will say you and your family have my deepest sympathy. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thank you.”

Silence. A food trolley rattled past her door. He said, “Heard you’re living on the old Franklin property.”

“We are.”

“Why?”

Because Boone wanted me there. “Because it’s my husband’s land—was his land.”

“I meant why did you come back to Misty River?”

“Boone wanted our kids to know their heritage.” At least that was what he’d told her. “Both of us have roots here. Why are you here and not in Seattle?” Where rewards had knocked on his office door more than on the door of their marriage.

He stroked a finger along the petals of a sunflower. “I left Seattle after we divorced. Things weren’t… Well.” He dropped his hand. “They feed you yet?”

“Just the saline and some painkillers.”

He turned for the door. “I’ll get you something from Kat’s Kitchen. She’s got the best food in town. Anything in particular?”

Ginny couldn’t help but laugh. Luke was still Luke, ready to rudder the barge of discomfort toward happy land. He’d been an excellent lawyer because of the trait. “Would she have a spinach salad with focaccia bread?”

He gave her a thumbs-up. “Still your favorite lunch, huh?” Then he was gone.

Ginny leaned back against the pillows, her eyes settling on the bouquet. She hadn’t thanked him for brightening her room. A dozen years, and still he remembered—remembered her favorite flower, her favorite lunch.

Ah, Luke. What haven’t you forgotten?

Recalling the expression on his face when he first walked into the room, she was afraid to contemplate the answer.