Coast Road (3 page)

He pressed send.

The first ring was barely done when there came a fast and furious "Hello? " He lifted the phone. "Hi, Sam. It's Dad. Are you guys okay? " "How's Mom? " "She's okay." He kept his voice light. "I'm on my way to the hospital.

I just talked with the doctor. They've taken her into surgery. It sounds like she smashed up her leg pretty good."

"Katherine said it was her ribs, too."

"It may be, but the leg is the thing that needs setting. Refresh my memory, Sam. Who is Katherine? " "Mom's best friend, " Samantha said impatiently. "I gave her your number."

"You could have called me yourself." She grew defensive. "I didn't know if you were around, and if you weren't, you'd have had to book a flight and wait at the airport, and then if you missed a connection, you'd have taken forever to get here.

Besides, Katherine says Mom has good doctors, so whatucan you do? " "I can be there, " he said, but the words were no sooner out than he imagined her retort. So he added a fast "Let's not argue, Samantha.

This isn't the time."

"Are you telling me the truth? Is Mom really okay? " "That's the truth as I heard it. Is your sister sleeping? " "She was until the phone rang. We knew it had to be about Mom. My friends wouldn't call in the middle of the night, " she said with such vehemence that Jack suspected they had done it more than once. "Dad, we want to go to the hospital, but Duncan won't take us."

"Is he there now? " "He's asleep on the chair. Asleep at a time like this. Can you believe it? Wait, I'll put him on. Tell him to drive us up." She shouted away from the phone, and even then it hurt Jack's ears, "Duncan! Pick up the phone! It's my father! " "Samantha! " Jack called to get her back.

Her reply was muffled. "No, Mom is not dead, but that cat will be if you don't let her go. You're holding her too tight, Hope. You'll hurt her." She returned to Jack. "Here. Hope wants to talk."

"Daddy?

" The voice was a fragile wisp.

Jack's heart shifted. "Hi, Hope. How're you doin', sweetie? " "Scared."

"I figured that, but your mom's doing fine right now. I'm on my way to the hospital. I'll know more when I get there."

"Come here, " begged the small voice.

"I will, " he said, melting at the idea that at least one of his girls needed him. "But the hospital's on the way, so I'll stop there first.

Then I'll have more to report when I see you."

"Tell Mom�" She stopped.

"What, sweetie? " Samantha came on. "She's crying again. Here's Duncan."

"Duncan Bligh here." The voice was curt. "What's the word? " Jack wanted Hope back. But it wasn't his night. "The word is that I don't know much. I'll be at the hospital within the hour.

Don't drive them up."

"I wasn't about to." There was a muted protest in the background, then an aggrieved Samantha returned.

"Daddy, it's sick sitting around here while she's there."

"It's the middle of the night."

"Like we can sleep with her there? She's our mother. What if she asks for us? " "She's in surgery, Samantha. Even if you were at the hospital, you wouldn't be able to see her. Look, if you want to do something, help your sister. She sounds upset."

"And I'm not? " Jack could hear the tight panic that was taking her voice a step beyond brash. But Samantha wasn't Hope. Two years apart in age, they were light-years apart in personality. Samantha was fifteen going on thirty, a little know-it-all who didn't take kindly to being treated like a child. Thirteen-year-old Hope was sensitive and silent.

Samantha would ask the questions. Hope would see every nuance of the answers.

"I'm sure you're upset, too, " he said, "but you're older than she is.

Maybe if you help her, she'll help you. Give each other strength, y'know? " "I keep thinking about Highway One, Dad. Some of those places, if you go over the side, you fall hundreds of feet straight down, right onto rocks. Was that what happened to Mom? " "I don't know the details of the accident."

"She might have fallen into water, but that'd be nearly as bad. Like, what if she was stuck underwater in the car�" "Sam, she didn't drown."

"You don't know that. You don't know whether the only thing that's keeping her alive is a bunch of machines."

"Samantha." She was nearly as creative as Rachel, without the maturity to channel it. "Your mother has a broken leg."

"But you don't know what else, " she cried. "Call the troopers.

They'll tell you what happened."

"Maybe later. The doctor has my cell number. I want to leave the line open in case he tries to call.

And I want you to go to bed. It doesn't do anyone any good if you start imagining what might have happened. Imagination's always worse.

So calm down. I'm in control of things here. And don't sit up waiting for the phone to ring, because I'm not calling you again until after the sun comes up."

"I'm not going to school."

"We'll discuss that later. Right now, the one thing you can do to help your mother most is to reassure your sister. And get some sleep. Both of you."

"Yeah, right, " she muttered.

JACK CONCENTRATED on driving. The fog had stayed in the city, leaving the highway dark and straight. He pressed his middle in the hope that the warmth of his hand would ease the knot there, but his palm was cold and the knot stayed tight. Nerves did that to him every time. Lately, it seemed the knot was there more often than not.

He willed the phone to ring with the news that Rachel had awoken from surgery and was just fine. But the phone remained still, the interior of the car silent save the drone of the engine. He tried to distract himself with thoughts of all he had been agonizing over in bed less than two hours before�contract disputes, building delays, personnel losses�but he couldn't connect with those problems. They were distant, back in the city fog.

He would have calls to make, come morning. There were meetings to reschedule.

Or if Rachel woke up, he might be back in the office by noon.

That was likely, the more he thought about it. Rachel was the strongest, healthiest woman he knew�strongest, healthiest, most independent and self-sufficient. She didn't need him. Never had. Six years ago, she had reached a fork in the road of her life and gone off in a different direction from him. Her choice. Her life. Fine.

So why was he heading south? Why was he postponing even one meeting to run to her bedside? She had left him. She had taken ten years of marriage and crumpled it up, like a sketch on yellow trace that was so far off the mark it was worthless.

Why was he heading south?

He was heading south because her friend had called him. And because it was his job as a father to help out with the girls. And because he was terrified that Rachel might die. His life with her had been better than anything before or since. He was heading south because he felt that he still owed her for that.

THE VERY FIRST time Jack had laid eyes on Rachel, he decided that she wasn't his type. Oh, he liked blond hair, and she had endless waves of that, but he usually went for model types. Rachel Keats didn't fit that bill. She looked too pure. No long eyelashes, no glossy mouth, no flagrant sexuality, just dozens of freckles scattered over a nose and cheeks that were vaguely sunburned, and eyes that were focused intently on the most boring professor Jack had ever heard.

The subject was rococo and neoclassic art. The professor, renowned in his field, was the man whose grant was paying for Jack's architectural degree. In exchange for that, Jack graded exams and papers and helped with research and correspondence to do with the textbook for which the grant had been given.

Jack was only marginally interested in rococo and neoclassic art and even less interested in moving from Manhattan to Tucson, but the slot had been the only one open that offered a full ride plus a stipend.

Being penniless, Jack needed both.

The job wasn't taxing. The professor in question had been delivering the same lectures, from the same printed lesson plan, for twentyplus years. Since Jack read the lectures beforehand, his presence in the lecture hall was more for the sake of fetching water or a forgotten book or paper for the professor than anything educational for himself.

He sat far off to the professor's side, where he could be easily accessed. It was a perfect spot from which to view the fifty-some-odd students who attended a given class, out of three times that many enrolled in the course.

Rachel Keats attended every class, listened raptly, took notes. Jack told himself that his eye sought her out for the simple constancy of her presence. It didn't explain, though, why he noted that she went from class to lunch at the smallest campus cafe, where she sat alone, or that she drove an old red VW bug and put a sunshade on the dash that was surely hand-painted, since he had never in his life seen as large or vividly colored a bug sitting behind the wheel of a car as her sunscreen hilariously depicted.

She was an art major. She lived in an apartment complex not far from his. She was a loner by all accounts and, if the easygoing expression she wore meant anything, was content.

Not only wasn't she his type, but he was dating someone who was.

Celeste was tall and leggy, loaded up top and sweet down below, asked precious few questions and made precious few demands, liked the sex enough that he could do what he wanted when he wanted in between. She cooked and cleaned his bathroom, but he hadn't been able to con her into doing his laundry. That was why he found himself in the laundromat on a Tuesday night when Rachel came through the door.

Those waves of blond hair were gathered up in a turquoise ribbon that clashed with her purple tank top, but her shorts and sandals were white and as fresh as the blush that stained those sun-stained cheeks when she saw him there.

In the extra-long heartbeat that she spent at the door, he could have sworn she was debating turning and leaving. Not wanting her to do that, he said, "Hey! How're you doing? " She smiled. "Great." The blush remained. She sucked in her lips, raised her brows, and seeming self-conscious, hugged an overstuffed laundry bag as she looked down the row of washers for raised lids. "Ah, " she said, spotting two side by side. She smiled at him again and headed toward them.

Jack's heart was pounding. He didn't know why. All she'd done was smile. There hadn't been anything remotely sexual in it. She wasn't his type at all. But he slid off the dryer he'd been sitting on, and following her, he leaned up against the machine that backed on one of those she had chosen.

"Rococo and neoclassic art? " he prompted. He didn't want her to think this was a blind pickup, because it wasn't a pickup at a. She wasn't his type. He assumed that was why she intrigued him. It was safe.

No risk. Just an innocuous hello.

She acknowledged the connection with a simple "Uh-huh." She was blushing still, pushing dirty laundry from the mouth of her laundry bag into the mouth of the washer.

He watched her for a minute, then said, "Mine's in the dryer." It was probably the dumbest line he'd ever handed a woman. But he couldn't tell her that she was pushing reds and whites together into her machine. He couldn't ask if the reds were shirts, bras, or briefs. He couldn't even look directly at those things, because she would have been mortified. Besides, he couldn't take his eyes from hers. They were hazel with gold flecks, and more gentle than any he had seen.

"You're Obermeyer's TA, " she said as she filled the second machine with things that went way beyond red. Her current outfit was conservative by comparison. "Are you training to teach? " "No. I'm in architecture." She smiled. "Really? " "Really, " he said, smiling back. She really was a sweet thing, smiling like that. The sweetness remained even when she suddenly opened her mouth and looked around�left, right, down, back.

Jack returned to his own possessions and offered her his box of soap powder.

He was rewarded with another blush and a soft-murmured "Thanks." When she had both machines filled with soap, fed with quarters, and started, she asked, "What kind of things do you want to build? " The question usually came from his parents and was filled with scorn.

But Rachel Keats seemed genuinely interested.

"Homes, for starters, " he said. "I come from a two-bit town, one little box after another. I used to pass those little boxes on the way to school and spend my class time doodling them into something finer.

Those doodles didn't help my math grade much."

"No. I wouldn't think it." She shot a glance at the text that lay open on his dryer. "Is the book on home designs? " "Not yet. Right now we're into arches.

Do you know how many different kinds of arches there are? There are flat arches, round arches, triangular arches, pointed arches. There are hand arches, back arches, groin arches. There are depressed arches. There are diminished arches. There are horseshoe arches. " She was laughing, the sound as gentle as her eyes. "I don't think I want to know what some of those are." She paused for the briefest time, said almost shyly, "I was a doodler, too." He liked the shyness.

It made him feel safe. "Where? " "Chicago, then Atlanta, then New York. My childhood was mobile. My dad takes old businesses and turns them around. We move when he sells. How about you? " "Oregon. You won't have heard of the town. It doesn't make it onto maps. What did you doodle? " "Oh, people, birds, animals, fish, anything that moves.