Her Sister (Search For Love series) (3 page)

As
Amanda glanced at Max, she saw the stunned look on his face.  This was
something
he'd
never expected. 
They'd
never expected.  Not in a
million years.  Clare looked...as if she were going to cry and Amanda could
feel her daughter's emotion in her own throat.

Unable
to stay in her seat, Amanda went to her daughter and knelt down beside her. 
"Are you okay?"

"I
don't know.  What if we go through all this and this girl, this woman, isn't
Lynnie?  What if she's so damaged—"

Max
leaned forward in his chair.  "Don't!  Don't do this until we know more. 
You could ask yourself a thousand questions and not have any of the
answers."

"How
am I supposed to
not
ask the questions, Dad?"  Clare's voice rose. 
"You didn't want me asking questions back then, either."

"Because
I couldn't answer them," he said evenly, "just as I can't answer them
now."  Max focused on Grove.  "Is the FBI helping you or getting in
your way?"

"Helping. 
That journal opened everything up again.  And police departments aren't
isolated like they once were.  But there's a lot of dust that's collected in
twenty-seven years and we've got to get that all brushed away before we can
find the truth."

"Is
there anything I can do legally to help push this along?" Max wanted to
know.

"No. 
Nothing.  I want you to stay out of it."

"This
is my
daughter
we're talking about."

"Maybe. 
Maybe not.  Light brown hair, brown eyes, height and weight that seem to match
isn't a whole lot to go on.  But put it together with the dates and
circumstantially everything seems to fit.  Bottom line is you know as well as I
do that those puzzle pieces might not match."

Grove
stood.  "I'll let you know more when
I
know more."

Max's
color was high.  He speared his fingers through his hair and Amanda saw his
frustration.  She
felt
his frustration.  But there was nothing she could
do about it.  Divorce changed everything.  It had taken her too long to
understand that.  But she did now.  She accepted it.  It had taken her years to
realize she could only change what was in her power to control.

"I'll
see myself out," the detective said, obviously understanding their state
of upheaval.

When Grove
left her office, Max swore.

A tear
ran down Clare's cheek.

As
Amanda stood by Clare's chair and put her hand on her daughter's shoulder, she
was filled with hope.  She'd never believed Lynnie was dead, although reason,
and Max and the world had told her over and over again to be realistic.  Her
reality had been different than everyone else's.  Hope would be her life raft
until they knew the truth.

Once
they knew the truth, she wouldn't need a life raft...because she'd have Lynnie
back home.

****

Chapter
Two

"This
is unusual.  Since when do you sit in your backyard, alone at night, studying
the stars?"

Startled,
Clare's hand went to her chest until she recognized Joe Lansing's voice.  She
hadn't paid any attention to him for the first year he'd lived next to her in
the west York neighborhood.  Then she'd been forced to.  One night he'd come to
her door, his hazel eyes serious as he'd told her he was a member of the Army
Reserve and he was being deployed again.  His dad would be looking after his
house on a regular basis, but Joe wondered if she'd keep an eye on it, too.  A
house standing alone for over a year at a time could use more than one
watcher.  He'd said it so easily and had been so laid back that she hadn't
thought of refusing.

When Joe
had returned from his stint in Afghanistan over six months ago, they'd
discussed changes in the neighborhood.  He'd told her he owed her for being his
sentry and if she needed help with something, as simple as putting out the
garbage, she should call him.  She hadn't, of course.  Clare and men simply
didn't mix.  Well, maybe they mixed, but the result of the experiment was
usually damaging.  So she hadn't called him until Shara's makeup swatches had
clogged up the toilet.  That had been last summer.  Since then, they discussed
the weather whenever they saw each other, or Joe's dad's health.  He'd had a
hip replacement after Joe had returned from Afghanistan.

They
weren't friends, yet they were friendly.  She knew much more about him than he
knew about her, although she sometimes saw questions in his eyes.

"Did
you ever feel claustrophobic inside your own skin?" she asked him now as
he loomed over her in the darkness.  She didn't usually like men to loom over
her.  It brought back memories of uniformed officers the night Lynnie had been
taken.  But Joe—  His looming seemed more...protective.

"Did
you ever feel so restless that if you sat, you couldn't stay sitting?  That if
you walked, you couldn't walk far enough?  If you breathed, you couldn't feel
the bottom of your lungs?"  Now where had all that come from?  He'd think
she was a nutcase.

He sank
down beside her on the redwood bench that accompanied the picnic table on the
patio.  He was a good six inches taller than she was, lean and fit.  So lean
and fit she usually took a second look if he wasn't watching.  He was a
landscape architect and a partner with his dad in a nursery.  She knew any
muscles he had didn't come from a gym.  They came from hefting trees, rotating
bushes, pushing carts loaded with supplies.

"I
felt that way after I came back from Afghanistan."

She
remembered seeing the lights on in his house very late, night after night. 
They'd never talked about the time he'd been away.

But
right now she was glad for any subject that would distract her from what was
really on her mind.  "Were you in Afghanistan the whole time?"

He
rested his hands on the bench and looked up at the sky.  "I was."

"Were
you hurt at all?"

"I
was lucky to come home with just a little bit of shrapnel under my skin.  Some
buddies weren't so fortunate."

She
thought about a man risking the life he'd made for his country.  "Can you
be called up again?"

"Possibly. 
But I might be out of the Reserve in six months.  I have to decide if I want to
re-up."

"It
has to be hard to have your life interrupted."

He
shrugged.  "Usually life is a series of interruptions."

As he
studied her, tendrils of the porch light's yellow beams reached for them in the
yard, but didn't quite touch them.  They sat in shadows.  She was glad about
that right now.  If he could see her face, too much would show.  She wouldn't
be able to talk to him as a neighbor on a fall night if she thought he'd guess
what was going on inside of her.  She shifted, wiped her palms on her jeans,
tried to think about something other than the information Grove had given her.

"Is
something wrong, Clare?"  Joe's voice was quiet, interested if she wanted
to talk, but nonchalant if she didn't.

She was
ready to give her usual answer, the one that would tell Joe nothing and keep a
wall up between their lives. 
I'm fine.  I'm just tired.  I have something
on my mind, but I'll work it out.

She
made the mistake of turning toward him.  There was concern on his face.  Actual
concern.  She hadn't confided in anyone for longer than she could remember.

"Have
you lived in York all of your life?"  She thought he had, but she didn't
know for sure.

"Except
when I went to college."

"How
old are you, Joe?"

His
mouth twitched up at the corners.  "I'm sure your questions are leading
somewhere—"   When she didn't come back with a jibe as she usually did, he
replied, "I'm thirty-six."

He
would have been nine when she was five.  Too young, maybe...no way to know
unless she asked.  "Do you remember a child disappearing from Pine Hill a
long time ago?"  Pine Hill, a rural community, was located about five
miles outside of York.

Joe
looked blank for a moment.  Then, as if old movies were playing in his mind, he
murmured, "I remember conversation at dinner about a search for a little
girl.  My parents sat me down and gave me the lecture about not talking to
strangers."  His gaze searched her face.  "Did that have something to
do with you?"

"Lynnie
was my sister.  Someone took her from our house in the middle of the night.  We
brushed our teeth together.  We said our prayers together.  She gave me hugs
and—"   Clare rarely let emotion get the best of her.  She'd already cried
once today.  She was
not
going to cry again.

"Clare."

He said
her name so gently, so compassionately she had no choice but to stand up and
head for the house.

But Joe
was quick on his feet and clasped her arm.

She
shook him off. "I'm fine."

"Like
hell."

She
wrapped her arms around herself, trying to figure out how to end this
conversation and make her exit.

"You've
been dealing with this a long time and never gave a hint of it.  What happened
to bring it up now?"

He was
perceptive.  Too perceptive.  Maybe that's why she hadn't revealed much of
herself to him before.  Joe wasn't like the guys she'd
dated...avoided...rejected.  She couldn't even put her finger on why.  She just
knew distance was better than closeness, simple neighborliness better than any
type of familiarity.

Still,
she'd started this and she had to end it.  "It really doesn't
matter."

"Yes,
it does.  Why can't you talk to me?  It's not as if we're strangers."

"Aren't
we?"  Her question wasn't argumentative, just realistic.  "What do
you really know about me?  What do I really know about you?  We're neighbors. 
We're not friends."

His
expression transformed from concerned to blankly neutral.  His eyes, so gentle
moments before, became unfathomable.  His broad shoulders stiff now, he gave a
slight shrug.  "You know a lot more about me than I know about you.  Ever
since I moved in, I wondered why you kept to yourself.  Why the weather report
was our only conversation.  Now I know.  Apparently, you shut people out when
your sister was abducted, and you still do."

"Don't
make assumptions about me, Joe."  The walls she'd constructed brick by
brick shook a little.  Her neighbor had that effect on her, and that's why
she'd stayed away from him since his return.

Doing
quick math he calculated, "You were eighteen when you had Shara."

"I
was looking for love in all the wrong places," Clare quipped, wondering
why he was bringing up her daughter.

"So
her father wasn't your soulmate?"

If this
was his way of fishing, she was going to cut the line.  "There is no such
thing."

The
phone in her kitchen rang.  Relieved and so grateful, no matter who was
calling, she said, "I have to get that."

Joe
made no comment as she hurried away from him.  When she stepped inside her back
door, her neighbor still stood by the bench.

Would
he wait for her to come back outside?

He'd be
waiting all night.  She wouldn't return to their conversation again.

Yes,
she shut people out...with really good reason.

She did
not
intend to get hurt.

No
risk, no pain.

It was
her motto to live by.

****

What
was Brad Hansen's mo-ped doing leaning against the side of her house at one
o'clock on a Monday afternoon?
Clare asked herself as she
parked in her carport.

She
rarely missed work.  Rarely took a sick day.  Rarely asked for days off.  But
she'd arranged for someone to cover for her this afternoon because—

Because
the impact of what Detective Grove had told them on Saturday was hitting her
hard.  Yesterday she'd been in a kind of shocked haze.  Although she'd told
Shara about the meeting, she couldn't talk to her daughter about Lynnie.  It
just hurt too much.

She'd
hardly been at the hospital an hour this morning when the urge to delve into
the old boxes in her closet with photos of Lynnie had been so strong that she'd
decided just to take this afternoon to try and put the detective's news in
perspective, maybe even brush off her bike and go riding until she was
clearheaded again.  Until she could push away the fear and anxiety of what they
might find out about her sister.

However,
when she saw that mo-ped new concerns poured in.

She
didn't slam her car door, just quietly closed it, then mounted the two steps to
her kitchen door.  She heard music pounding from inside.  Music meant Shara was
home.  It meant she'd cut classes.

Trying
not to jump to conclusions, considering the fact she might have forgotten a
school holiday, teacher's meetings, early dismissal, Clare laid her purse on
the counter and headed for the primitive thumping of the bass.  The lyrics of
some of the music Shara listened to made Clare's skin crawl.  She could ban it
from the house, but she couldn't control what her daughter listened to outside
of the house...or when she wasn't here.