Dust Devil (3 page)

Taking
a deep breath, her green eyes flashing with vexation and
determination, Sarah marched inside, picking her way across the
littered floor as though it were a mine field. She deliberately
snapped off the TV, then switched off the power to the Nintendo set,
as well.

“
Mom!”
Alex wailed furiously, bouncing vigorously on the bed and stamping
his feet on the floor. “I was almost to the big monster at the
end!”

“
I
don’t care!” Sarah retorted, struggling to master the
urge she had to box his ears or shake him until his teeth rattled
right out of his head. “Didn’t you hear me calling I you?
You should have been downstairs thirty minutes ago! I woke you up in
plenty of time to get ready, and I
told
you
my hair appointment at Shear Style was at eleven o’clock this
morning. You don’t even have your socks and shoes on, and I
know good and well that you haven’t brushed your teeth yet,
either! Now, do you want to go into town with me, to the Penny
Arcade, or not?”

“
Yes.”
The response was curt and disrespectful, and her son scowled at her
in a way that enraged her further and at the same time wrenched at
her heart.

Instead
of rewarding him for his behavior, she should punish him, Sarah knew,
by insisting he remain at home today and clean up his room. But that
would only be stirring up already troubled waters, leading to further
hostilities between the two of them. Denied his weekend trip to the
Penny Arcade, Alex would either grow belligerent and rebellious or
wholly uncommunicative, shutting her out completely. And at the
moment, Sarah did not feel as though she could cope with any of that.

“
Then
get a move on,” she finally ordered him tersely, steadily
returning his glare, compelling herself to stare him down. “Because
I’m leaving here in ten minutes—with or without you!”

After
that, trembling from the force of her emotions, Sarah stalked from
the room. Outside in the hall, where Alex could not see her, she
leaned weakly against the wall, fighting to hold at bay the tears
that welled in her eyes and pressing one fist to her mouth to stifle
the sobs of anger, frustration and heartbreak that rose in her
throat, closing it up tight, choking her. She loved her son deeply.
He was all she had in the world, and she hated arguing with him.
Worse, she had begun to grow more and more afraid that the
townspeople who predicted he would eventually come to a bad end might
be proved right. That fear gnawed deeply at her at times like these,
when it seemed to her that Alex had slipped beyond her grasp and she
would never be able to reach him again.

Unbidden,
the thought that perhaps she
had
made
the wrong decision about her son all those years ago crept into
Sarah’s mind, horrifying her. Of course she did not wish he had
never been born! That she had given in to her parents and aborted him
as they had at first pressured her to do. God forgive her for
even
thinking
she
had not done the right thing in having Alex, in keeping him instead
of agreeing to sign the adoption papers that would have taken him
away from her forever, as her parents had then strenuously insisted
she do. It had been hard, so very hard, for her to stand firm against
them, to hold her head high in the face of the townspeople’s
stares and whispers. Even now, after all these years, she could still
hear the painful gossip that had rung ceaselessly in her ears back
then.

“
Did
you hear about Sarah Kincaid? Seventeen, unwed and pregnant!”

“
No!
And she seemed like such a nice, quiet, studious girl. Who’s
the father?”

“
Nobody
knows. She won’t tell. Hell, she probably
can’t.
Most
likely, she’s slept with every guy in high school. She’s
nothing but coal-mining trash—and you know what they’re
like! Ought not to be allowed to associate with decent folk. Should
have shut those mines down years ago and cleaned up all those miners’
shacks...such a god-awful eyesore. But what can anybody do against a
man like Nick Genovese? They don’t call him ‘Papa Nick’
for nothing, you know. So as long as he owns those mines, they’ll
continue to operate, I reckon.”

“
Yes,
to operate—and to breed more sluts like Sarah Kincaid! Still,
who would have thought it of her? Despite her background, she just
didn’t seem the type.”

“
Well,
you know what they say about still waters running deep. And no matter
what, there’s no denying the fact that she’s baking
somebody’s bun in her oven! Otherwise, the principal wouldn’t
have expelled her from high school.”

That
was what had hurt and shamed Sarah worst of all—that because of
her pregnancy, she had been promptly and inexorably expelled from
high school, unable to graduate with her class, despite that she had
been a straight-A student. It had been a real struggle after she had
given birth to Alex, but in the end, she had managed not only to
complete her GED, but also to win a prestigious scholarship to the
local state university. Her mother had
reluctantly
cared for Alex while, attending classes by day, working nights as a
waitress at a diner to pay for all the expenses the scholarship
hadn’t covered, as well as for her son’s upkeep, Sarah
had eventually earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism, with
a minor in art.

She
had a good job now, as the advertising-and-promotions director for
Field-Yield, Inc., which manufactured crop fertilizers, pesticides,
and other farm products sold throughout the Midwest. Lately, however,
most of her time had been spent planning the senatorial campaign of
former governor J. D. Holbrooke, who owned Field-Yield, Inc. Why the
governor had ever singled her out and taken such a shine to her,
Sarah didn’t know. But she was grateful he had. Except for Nick
Genovese, J. D. Holbrooke was the richest man in town, with
generations of old money and well-established roots behind him. In
winning J.D.’s approval, she had at long last managed to put
the scandal and social stigma of her past behind her. Nobody called
her a slut these days—or if they did, at least it was behind
her back and not to her face.

“
Mom,
are you all right?” Alex’s voice startled her from her
reverie.

“
Yes...just
a little tired, that’s all.” Sarah abruptly straightened
up, wondering how long she had been standing there, leaning against
the hall wall, lost in the past She noted that Alex now had his socks
and shoes on, and that his face was puzzled and shadowed with concern
for her. His question was his way of apologizing to her, she knew.
Although tall and strong for his age, he was still only eleven years
old, she reminded herself, still young enough that the loving little
boy he had once been lurked inside him—and worried for his
mother. It was occasional glimpses of that little boy that gave her
hope that her son was not yet wholly lost to her, that she still had
time to find a way to reach him before it was too late. Her earlier
anger dissipated. Perhaps their day together could still be salvaged.
She smiled at him tenderly, reaching out to ruffle his tousled black
hair. “Time’s a-wastin’. Get your teeth brushed,
and let’s get going, pal. And when I’m finished at Shear
Style, we’ll grab some lunch at Fritzchen’s Kitchen and
maybe go shopping at Wal-Mart afterward. What do you say to that?”

“
I
say it’s a deal,” Alex answered, with more enthusiasm for
her company than he had displayed in weeks. “Can I get a new
Power Rangers figure while we’re out?”

“
May
I,” she corrected automatically. “We’ll see. Hurry
up, now. I don’t want to be late for my hair appointment. It
puts Lucille behind and throws off her entire schedule for the rest
of the day. And that makes her so cranky that she’s liable to
scalp me instead of just give me a trim!”

Alex
actually grinned at that, and Sarah’s heart turned over with
both love and anxiety. It seemed that with every passing day, he
looked more and more like his father. She marveled that other people
didn’t see it and make the connection. But then, the boy’s
father was long gone, and there was no reason to think anyone except
her remembered him. And she
did
remember,
no matter how many times she told herself he was never coming back,
and that he was best forgotten. He had been her first love....her
only love. Foolishly, she still ached inside whenever she thought of
him. Ached and felt a deep anger and resentment, too, that he had
made love to her and then within hours had abandoned her, had left
her behind that summer’s day so many years ago when he had fled
from town, with the law hard on his heels.

He
was no good, had never been any good, the townspeople had declared
afterward. He was the son of a smalltime, big-city mobster. So what
else could have been expected of him other than that he would take
after his hoodlum father and commit a murder? Just like his father—if
the law didn’t get him first—he, too, would wind up dead
in a ghetto gutter somewhere, gunned down during some violent gang
war, they had direly predicted.

Only,
he had fooled them all.

But
it did her no good to dwell on any of that, Sarah reminded herself
fiercely, giving herself another mental shake. There was no use
crying over what might have been. Alex’s father had never even
once in all these years made any attempt to get in touch with her, as
he surely would have done had he really loved her, as he had claimed.
He was out of her life forever, and she should be thankful for that.
He had taken her innocence and betrayed her trust, and she had paid
dearly for her foolish mistake in believing his lies. It was only the
fact that Alex clearly needed a man’s strong but gentle hand
that had made her think of his father today, had made her long
wistfully that she were not a single parent. It was just so hard,
being alone, trying to be all things to her son—and fearing
desperately that she was failing.

Sarah
wanted Alex to have better from life than what she herself had known.
And while her job ensured that she was able to provide for him
financially, in a way her parents had never been able to afford for
her, she knew her son paid the price emotionally for that security.
As a working mother, she wasn’t always there for him when he
needed her, so she had a tendency to spoil him in other ways to
compensate for her guilt over her absence. And now that he was of an
age to understand what it meant, he must endure the stigma of his
illegitimacy, too. More than once, he had returned home from school
to report that other children had started a fight with him, calling
him a bastard.

But
surely Alex could not doubt that she loved him, Sarah told herself,
troubled. Surely by now, he must know how she had sacrificed and
fought tooth and nail to hold on to him, that she wouldn’t have
done that if she hadn’t loved and wanted him with all her heart
and every fiber of her being.

Heading
downstairs to the kitchen, she gathered up her handbag and keys,
meeting her son at the front door. Despite everything, her heart
swelled with pride at the sight of him. He was such a big, handsome
boy, already nearly as tall as she, his T-shirt and shorts displaying
tanned arms and legs sturdy with muscle. Only his still-round tummy
reassured her that she had at least a few years left before she would
be compelled to deal with a young man rather than a child. She tugged
fondly at the baseball cap perched at a rakish angle on his head.

“
All
set?” she asked him, then, at his nod, said, “Well, let’s
be off.” After she had locked the door behind them, they got
into the Jeep parked out front on the circular gravel drive. She had
bought the vehicle for its practicality both on country roads and in
Midwestern winters. “Seat belt, Alex,” she reminded him
as she started the engine.

He
obligingly buckled up, as Sarah herself did. Then she rolled down the
vehicle’s windows to let out the hot, stifling air. Although it
wasn’t yet noon, the day was already a scorcher.

The
tires crunched on the gravel as she steered the Jeep down the wooded
drive and out on to the country road lined with hedge-apple trees,
which would take them to the blacktop highway into town. Except in
winter, when the roads were snowy and encrusted with ice, the trip
seldom lasted more than ten minutes or so, and Sarah never minded the
drive. She loved the beautiful old white Victorian farmhouse and the
acreage she had bought when Alex was seven, when the previous owner,
the Widow Lovell, had died. The property was close enough to town
that Sarah didn’t feel too isolated and yet far enough away
that she had some privacy in a place where everybody always knew
their neighbors’ business.