Secondhand Sinners (12 page)

If Emily and Daniel never had sex, then whose child was Abby?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Emily

The blood drained from Miller’s cheeks. He really didn’t know Daniel was gay. She always wondered if he suspected. By the look of horror on his face, she could tell he didn’t have a clue. He certainly seemed to be taking it harder than she thought he would.

“God, Miller, I’m so sorry.”

He stood, paced to the doorway of his room and back a few times. Then he plopped himself back in to the chair. “I…I don’t…” He was up again, back and forth, back and forth until he halted in the middle of the room. With his back to her, he rubbed the back of his neck and then adjusted his baseball cap.

“Miller,” Emily went to him, put her hand on his arm, and tried to turn him around to look at her. When he wouldn’t budge, she moved to face him. “I really am sorry. I promise it wasn’t about whether or not he trusted you. He was so scared and so messed up, you know?”

“So you never had sex?”

“Never. I thought you’d be relieved. I mean…not about the lying, but about hearing the truth.”

“No. There’s gotta be…” He snatched the box off the bed, dumped its contents out, and started rummaging through it.

“Miller?” Emily grabbed his hand. He pulled it out of her grasp. “What are you looking for?”

“An answer, an explanation.”

“There’s no answer, no explanation.”

“There has to be.”

“Daniel was gay. That doesn’t—”

“You don’t understand. All this time I thought the two of you had been together. But now…” Miller picked up a book, thumbed through it, and tossed it back on the bed.

“Now what?”

He sighed deeply and shrugged. “Abby.”

Oh that’s right. They were talking about Abby before she’d completely sidetracked them with her talk of Daniel’s funeral and her desire to see something of his. “You’re right. You were telling me about Abby. I’m so sorry. I should have waited until we had finished our conversation.” She scooped up a handful of Daniel’s stuff and put it back in the box. “This can wait. Let’s talk about Abby.”

“Mom!” Jack called out from downstairs.

“In a minute!” she called back.

“You gotta come see this!”

“I said, ‘In a minute!’” Emily sighed. With Jack around, minutes to talk with other adults were luxuries. The fog was creeping into Miller’s eyes. It must’ve felt like some kind of bombshell went off in his past when he heard the truth that she and Daniel had lied to him for so long. No doubt he needed time to survey the landscape and look for something familiar to pull out of the wreckage.

Something downstairs slammed, sending Emily’s senses into a heightened state of alert. “What was that?”

“Door slamming.”

“That was the screen door, wasn’t it?” Did someone come in, or did Jack go…“Oh, God. Jack. I’ll be right back.” Emily raced down the stairs. She shouldn’t have left him down there alone for so long. She should have gone to him the moment he called out to her. Did he go out the front door or the back? Did the front door even have a screen? She couldn’t remember so she rushed to the back door as soon as she hit the bottom floor.

She was relieved that Jack was only a few feet away from the porch. He was jumping up and down and flapping his arms, clearly happy about something. When she stepped outside and saw a police car ambling up the gravel drive, her stomach sunk under the weight of the bad news she knew was coming.

“A police car, Mom! A police car!”

“Yeah.” She put her arm around his chest and pulled him closer to her for fear he’d take off running for the car, too excited to consider his own safety.

“You think it’s coming to take me for a ride?”

“I doubt it, baby. That policeman is probably coming out here to tell me something important about your granddad or Uncle Levi.”

“Then I can go for a ride?”

“You can’t ride in the police car, Jack.”

“He’ll let me talk on the radio.”

“It’s not a toy.”

The car stopped about five yards away, and that was when Emily saw who was behind the wheel. Alan.

Shit.

She looked behind her to see if Miller had followed her down the stairs. There was no sign of him. Hopefully he’d stay in the house until she could get rid of Alan. Until a few days ago, when she walked into the police station and saw Daniel’s stepbrother standing behind the counter in that uniform looking like he was expecting her, she’d assumed he was still in the Air Force.

He got out of the car, put his cowboy hat on, and took long, slow strides to get to her. “Hey there,” he said after he stopped a few feet away and looked her up and down. “Damn. You make even Miller’s t-shirt look good.”

“Hi, Alan.” Emily moved Jack in front of her, creating a barrier between herself and the last man on Earth she wanted to see, hating the fact that it bothered her so much that he noticed she was wearing Miller’s shirt. Not that she cared if he knew she stayed with Miller. She didn’t want him to care where she stayed or with whom she slept. More precisely, she didn’t want him to make a big deal about it. Not in front of Miller, anyway.

“Miller here?”

“Yeah. He’s busy, though. You didn’t come out here to talk to him, did you?” She prayed he’d say
no
, hoping it was crazy to think Alan came out there to tell Miller about their one-night stand ten years ago. Even though it happened years after she ran away and Miller was already married to Sara, she wanted to be the one to tell Miller so she could explain herself, especially now that she knew Sara cheated on Miller with Alan.

“Why else would I come out here to his place?”

“I thought you were here to see me.”

His smile grew wide, optimistic. “Oh yeah?”

“Thought you had some word on Levi. Police only come out for a visit if there’s bad news.”

“Levi? Your dad’s the one in a coma. Maybe I’m here to tell you something’s wrong with him.”

“If something’s wrong with my dad, then something’s wrong with Levi.”

“I wanna talk on the police radio! I wanna talk on the police radio!”

“Shh.” Emily pulled Jack closer to her.

“No! I wanna talk on the police radio!” Jack was leaning so far forward, she thought he might break free from her grip and fall flat on his face.

“Well?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

“I was out at Levi’s. Your car was there. You weren’t. Naturally I got worried. Thought I’d drive around and make sure you were okay.”

“Why were you at Levi’s?” she asked.

“Looking for something,” Alan said, readjusting his belt.

“What?”

He smiled. “You.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Smile at me like that. You know it creeps me out.”

“Come on, Em.” Alan took a few steps closer. She tried to step back, but Jack was an anchor. “How many times do we have to go over this? Ain’t nothing wrong with what we did. Daniel was my
step
brother.”

“This has nothing to do with Daniel. You know that.”

“I care about you.” He took another step. At least now he was close enough to whisper to.

“One lonely, drunken night ten years ago does not entitle you to care about me.”

With his final step he was close enough that she could see his pulse beating in his neck as he looked down on her and said, “I wasn’t drunk.”

She gulped. How the hell was she going to get out of this before Miller came looking for her? What would he think if he saw her like this, standing so close to Alan, with that hungry look on his face that would announce to anyone around that he was standing face to face with something he thought he owned?

“Excuse me, Mister Policeman?” Jack’s voice came from below.

“Yeah, kid?”

She looked down, more to break eye contact with Alan than to see what Jack was doing.

Jack was pulling on Alan’s pants leg and looking up at him. “Can I talk on your police radio?”

“Sure. Why not?”

She pulled her arm tighter around Jack’s chest. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Come on, Em. Let the kid talk on the radio. What’s it gonna hurt?”

She looked behind her to the back porch. No sign of Miller. Would appeasing Alan get him out of there sooner? “Well, okay. Make it quick. We have lots of stuff to do today.” She let go of Jack and backed up to regain some ground while Alan sat behind the wheel and hoisted Jack onto his lap.

“Did you save money by switching to Geico?” Jack asked Alan.

“Did I do what?”

“You can save money by switching to Geico.”

He ruffled Jack’s hair. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now this here…” Alan started with the police radio, “…is what we use to talk to the people back at the station.”

“What do they say?”

“They tell me what’s goin’ on around town.”

“Like when there’s a robbery?”

“Uh huh. Or when there’s an emergency.”

“Cool.”

Alan put the walkie talkie up to Jack’s mouth. “Now why don’t we pretend there’s an emergency. Who would you call?”

“My mom,” Jack answered into the speaker.

“Say your mom can’t come. Who would you call?”

“My mom always comes.”

“What about your dad?”

“I don’t have a dad anymore.”

“No dad?” Alan raised an eyebrow at Emily. “A boy’s gotta have a dad.”

“He has a dad.”

Jack held Alan’s wrist and leaned into the speaker a little more. “He moved to Seattle because he didn’t know what to do with me.”

There was only one way Jack would know to say that. He must have heard more of those fights she and James had in the final days of their marriage than she thought.

“That’s not true, Jack. He got another job.”
And another wife, another kid, another life
. She held her hand out and motioned for Jack to take it. It was time to put a stop to the probing questions. “We’ve taken up enough of Officer Dupree’s time. I’m sure he’s very busy.”

“Ah, man.” Jack pounded his fists on the steering wheel. “No fair.”

“Your mom’s right…” Alan lifted Jack off his lap and lowered him back to the ground. “I’ve got a lot of work to do today. I’m working on a very important case.”

“Was there a robbery?” Jack asked.

“Nope. Attempted murder. Poor victim took a turn for the worse last night, so we might be looking at murder.”

Emily could feel her blood drain from her face straight to her heart, which was beating harder to accommodate. Did he just say her father had gotten worse? What if her father died before she found out what really happened with Levi?

“What are you talking about?”

Alan got out of his car and stepped closer to Emily. He was too close, trying to lasso her attention with his intense stare. She took another step back, already losing the distance between them she thought she had secured. “That’s why I was at Levi’s,” he said. “To tell you your father had a stroke last night. Your mom’s been tryin’ to call you. She’s been worried sick. We all have.”

Trying to call? Why didn’t she hear…Oh. That’s right. She’d left her phone at Levi’s when she and Jack went out to look for rocks that looked like planets. She hadn’t even thought about it until this very second. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Don’t know for sure. Sherriff Owens says it’s not looking good. You might wanna head on out to the hospital.” He put his hand on her upper arm and rubbed gently. “I can take you there right now, if you like.”

“Thanks, but no.” Emily put her free hand on his chest and tried to push him away. When he didn’t budge, she moved back, aware that she was in full retreat. She didn’t care. She’d wave a white flag if he’d just moved back a little.

“Well okay.” He stared at her a little while longer, still trying to lock her gaze into some kind of commitment to his.

Surely he didn’t think she was going to look longingly into his eyes? She really didn’t want to have to say it…not again. Because she’d already said it once. Was there any better way to tell someone you weren’t interested than leaving them alone in the bed in the middle of the night? Yes there was. She could have stayed out of his bed in the first place. She’d run from this long enough. It was time to deal with Alan and his crush.

“Listen, Alan. About that night, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out the way you hoped it would. I was really messed up back then, and when I bumped into you at that bar, I didn’t mean to lead you on. I really appreciate that you’ve driven out here to find me and tell me about my father. I think it’s best if you go now.”

“Well shit, Em.” He frowned and looked away. Now he was the one who couldn’t make eye contact. “I thought you got scared, that you needed more time. I thought you meant all that stuff about being so happy to see me.”