Temporary Father (Welcome To Honesty 1) (4 page)

A mixture of annoyance and embarrassment chased across his face. “Will you hurry?” he asked, struggling to hold on to Lucy. “She wants down, and she doesn’t know me.”

On the way to Eli’s room, Beth grabbed a couple of beach towels out of the linen closet. She burst through his door, and he yanked out his earbuds.

“What?” he asked, as frightened as she must look.

“Lucy’s had an accident.” She held out her hands and willed herself to calm down. “Aidan found her. He thinks someone accidentally—hit—her with a pellet gun, but she’s going to be okay.”

He tore out of the room. She grabbed at his shirt. “Eli, she’s bleeding. Try not to be afraid.”

“Lucy.” He slid down a couple of steps. The dog whined from below. Beth scrambled past Eli on the stairs and this time he held her back. “She’s mine. I’ll help her.”

Beth had no intention of letting him take care of their poor, sweet girl on his own. She reached Aidan first.

“Let’s wrap her in these towels and you can sit
with her on the back seat of my car, honey.” Using one of the towels, she wiped the dog’s forehead, revealing a gash that welled again. “Who the hell was shooting on your uncle’s property?” She pressed her cheek to Lucy’s ear. “Don’t worry, baby.”

The dog fought hard to reach Beth. Taking her out of Aidan’s arms, Beth let Eli help carry her, stumbling across loose gravel to the car.

He yanked the back door open. “Hurry, Mom.”

“Slide across the seat.” Together, they eased Lucy in. Beth arranged the towels on Eli’s lap, and Lucy laid her head on his thigh. He cuddled her the way Beth used to hold him when he was hurt.

She dug for her keys. Thank God she’d already tucked them into her pocket. She walked straight into Aidan’s chest, but he held her off, his hands big, unsettling on her shoulders. “You don’t have to come with us.” Slipping around him, she hurried to the driver’s seat.

“Are you kidding? I have to know if she’s all right.”

He jumped into the front passenger seat, and Beth hesitated only a moment. She didn’t want him to—but Lucy was hurt, and Eli’s empty stare in the mirror terrified Beth. She skidded backward through the gravel, but then straightened out to rocket down the driveway.

Aidan hooked his hand into the bar above his window.

“All right, Mom,” Eli said. “We’ll get you to the doc in no time, Lucy.”

“Eli, why don’t you get my phone out of my purse and call Dr. Patrick?”

Gently settling Lucy, he leaned forward, but her bag wasn’t there. “Where is it?”

She could see it—on the kitchen counter. “At home.”

“Mom, your driver’s license.”

Lucy whined, but more as she did when she couldn’t get comfortable on her bed. Beth glanced at her and then back at the road. “You worry too much for one so young, Eli.”

“So will the cops,” Aidan said.

“You’re flying, Mom.”

“They can join the parade. Lucy’s our girl.”

“Yeah.” Eli sat back with satisfaction and rubbed his dog’s side. She whimpered again and Beth pressed harder on the gas.

She glanced at Aidan. “If you’ve brought your wallet, you can drive us back.”

I
N THE VET’S OFFICE
, Eli paced awhile, and then Beth wrapped him in one arm and persuaded him to sit. Her fear for him spread around the room in a soft cloud of panic. She tried to be brave and self-sufficient, but her son was her weak spot, and she couldn’t hide it.

Aidan stared at his lap. At his hands. Neither vain nor overly modest, he knew he was a capable man. Normally strong as a horse, he wouldn’t think twice about taking charge of a last-gasp company
or a knock-down, drag-out brawl in one of the pubs where nobody knew his name.

But he hadn’t been wise or strong enough to save his wife, and he was tired of fighting grief and guilt.

Eli’s distress was familiar to him. It was like looking into a film of his own past.

How many times would he live it all again? His heart still thudded with the disbelief he’d felt as they’d told him about Madeline. Finally, he’d seen the letter they’d pushed into his open palm.

He scrubbed at his hand with the other.

She’d tried so long to tell him she was in trouble, but his idea of help—doctors, meds for her undeniable depression—had all been useless. He’d loved her. He’d held her while she’d cried, and he’d kept repeating he loved her. She’d sworn he didn’t even want to be with her.

He’d begged her to come along when he’d traveled, but she’d refused to leave their house.

“Aidan?”

He looked up, his head as heavy as a wrecking ball. He shouldn’t like the sound of Beth’s voice so much. He hardly knew her, but he’d lost a woman who could fight no longer, and he couldn’t help being drawn to Beth’s inability to back down from a fight.

“Huh?” he said.

She glanced at the people around them. “Are you—” She stopped as she looked into Eli’s curious eyes, but she kept on, lowering her voice. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He might have preferred she pretend
nothing was wrong with him, but mattering to someone was good—even in a room full of strangers.

In the corner, an older man concentrated on his silent parrot in a cage on his lap. A woman who looked pretty pissed because their dog had gone before her solid, superior cat, sniffed.

“Fine,” Aidan said again.

Beth hugged her son. Eli endured her affection, but then shrugged out of her reach, sliding to the farthest edge of his steel-and-orange-vinyl chair.

Aidan read the boy’s mind.
Keep your hands off me, but please make this stop hurting.
Again, he made Aidan think of Madeline. She’d needed more affection than he could give unless he held her twenty-four hours a day. And even then…

Eli was desperate and blank all at the same time, need and aloofness that looked too familiar. He shifted his feet.

What was he thinking, really?

That Eli might be in trouble, the way Madeline had been? No one had to warn Aidan he was carrying a masochistic load of guilt, that he might be seeing phantoms. But what if he wasn’t wrong?

This family was raw. He couldn’t step aside when he saw someone else in trouble. He’d never intruded on anyone’s privacy. Too busy. Too smart. Far too comfortable with his own life.

Until Madeline had chosen to die.

He looked at Beth, needing to say her son reminded him of his wife. She walked to the plate-
glass windows. A couple of cars whispered past, filled with people caught up in their own errands or pleasure, oblivious to life going on around them.

He loved the idea of oblivion now that he couldn’t get any.

Beth took a few circuits around the brick-lined waiting room, and then she sat, far from him and Eli. The lady’s cat, two seats away from Beth’s new spot, stared at her a second, but then turned, wobbling as it balanced its bulk on four tiny-in-comparison paws, to face the other direction.

Eli paced next, his sneakers squeaking on hard linoleum. He collapsed beside his mother. The cat tightened all its muscles.

“It’s my fault, Mom.”

“What?”

“Everything.” Like her, he ignored the people glancing his way or looking studiously everywhere else.

Beth had eyes only for him. “Lucy’s all right.”

As she tried to put her arm around him, he pushed away. “Mom.” He put “I’m not a baby” into her name. “I shouldn’t have left her outside.”

Beth leaned into him. “Lucy got hurt in her own fenced yard. She might not have been safe at our place. She might not have been safe inside if someone had shot toward the house.”

“Nobody did.” He lifted his hand and angled his thumb toward his mouth and bit down.

The world pitched. Madeline had done the same
thing, how many times a day? She’d chewed the skin on the sides of her thumb until it bled. Then she’d start on the other thumb. Aidan’s stomach muscles clenched.

“Eli.” A force beyond his control dragged the kid’s name out of him.

Eli and Beth started and stared as one. This was not the time. Everyone else in the waiting room eyed him.

He looked at Beth’s soft face, her lovely half smile that invited him to say what was troubling him.

What jerk would have ever left a woman who could be scared half out of her wits for her child and their dog and yet spare warmth for a stranger who’d just yelled at her son in a vet’s waiting room?

He licked dry lips. “Lucy was running in the woods. You had nothing to do with her getting hurt.”

Beth’s eyes softened even more in a silent thank-you. Eli frowned, and then went on as if Aidan hadn’t spoken.

“You know those kids around Uncle Van’s house, Mom. They don’t have a curfew. They drive their ATVs all over the place. Do you know how many beer cans I’ve found in the woods? They drink ’em and then they shoot at the cans. They ran out of beer so they shot Lucy.”

“No.” Beth threw Aidan a distraught look. “Lucy’d hate it if you dragged her into the house every time you came in.”

“She’ll hate bleeding to death, too. And what about brain damage?”

“She won’t have that.” Aidan sat on Eli’s other side. “And she won’t bleed to death. The doctor said a couple of butterflies would fix her up.”

Beth looked as miserable as Eli. “Sweetie, let’s stick to troubles that make sense. We’ll post more signs around Uncle Van’s property, but you can’t control his neighbors. I’m sorry we had to move across town and you’re missing your own friends. I’d be glad to pick them up if you ask them to visit.”

“The guys who live where Uncle Van does are snobs. They think they have the right to do anything. It doesn’t matter if they kill someone’s dog.”

“Call your old friends.” A hint of tears choked her voice. “It can’t be that bad. We’ve been there two months, and no one’s blasted anybody before.”

“You don’t get it.”

“I do,” she said, but her son shook his head, and Beth’s bigger concern seemed to be calming him down.

“I’m glad you never let me have a gun after all,” Eli said.

Beth glanced self-consciously at Aidan. “Fire-arms have been a bone of contention.” She patted Eli’s knee, but then linked her hands in her lap. “I was trying to keep you from getting hurt like Lucy.”

“It’s worse to be the one who didn’t get shot.”

Aidan stretched his nerveless legs in front of him and hoped the kid would never have any idea how true that was.

“Tell me about it,” Beth said.

Eli crossed the room again.

“I don’t know what I’m saying wrong.”

Aidan held still in case she was talking to herself. He fought an urge to push her hair behind her ear so he could see her averted face.

“That lodge,” he said. “Did your husband die in the fire?”

“No.” Her glance at Eli was a warning.

“You lost everything?” Had the boy started the fire? Was there something about her ex-husband that shamed her? She looked at Eli, and he stared back. Neither said anything that explained the pointed silence.

“We’re starting over literally from scratch,” Beth said. Her eyes skated over her son. “But I’m grateful it was just stuff and not people.”

Aidan waited. Then, “When will you be up and running?”

“We’re having some prob—as soon as I can.”

He cracked his knuckles, a nervous habit he’d conquered in sixth grade. “They’ll bring Lucy back any second.”

“That would help.” Beth turned toward the treatment rooms, and her elusive scent floated toward him. She made him uncomfortably aware—starting the moment she’d burst out of her brother’s hedge.

He’d climbed into her car this afternoon as if he were the only man on earth who could carry an injured animal. He wanted to be with her, in case he
could help. That was what he told himself as he found he couldn’t look away.

Even the shape of her lips intrigued him. Part wary smile, part frown. The curve of her throat, marred only by a thudding pulse made him want her and want to protect her all at the same time. He never went for a woman on an attraction-at-first-sight basis.

“Good God,” he said under his breath, facing what he’d avoided with all his so-called will. Guilt had nearly killed him, but he wanted Beth because life ran strong and dauntless in her desirable body. Just what he needed.

“Lucy!”

Eli’s happy shout startled everyone. The vet led her out by her leash. Underneath a couple of butterfly bandages, someone had shaved the short black fur on her forehead.

Eli slid into Lucy on his knees. She grumbled, but let him nuzzle her head with his. Beth was already beside her son, and they didn’t need Aidan.

“Look, Mom. She
is
all right.” Eli quizzed the vet with a parental glance. “She is, isn’t she?”

“Fine.” The doctor ruffled Eli’s hair. “I’ll ask Chief Berger to send a few patrols by your uncle’s house. Maybe put a little fear into anyone who might be shooting in the woods. Since so many animals started turning up hurt, even using a pellet gun is illegal within city limits.”

“Thanks.” Beth found Aidan with grateful eyes.
“And thank you. For bringing her to us and for coming along.”

He laughed, stroking Lucy’s fur. “You make me feel like a superhero.” Able to stop terrible tragedy by running a dog up a gravel driveway.

“Do you mind seeing Mr. Jingles now, Dr. Patrick?” The lady with the cat marched through Lucy’s admiring throng. “He’s suffering an excess of hairballs, and you need to tell me why.”

She double-timed the doctor back into his examining area. Eli stared after them. “That Mr. Jingles comes by his snotty attitude fair and square.”

“E
LI
,
DO YOU NEED
to talk about anything?” That afternoon, Beth filled her pockets with dog treats and bearded her son in his den. She knelt beside the bed he’d made for Lucy in a corner of his room. Lucy had run for the door the second Beth opened it, but she returned, deeply interested in the dog biscuits Beth set down.

“Mom, you’re driving me crazy. What are you, a cop?”

“If you thought something was wrong with Lucy, wouldn’t you be like that lady with Mr. Jingles? You’d expect Dr. Patrick to fix things. Right away—not when he got around to it.”

“I didn’t give birth to Lucy.”

He’d recovered his adolescent aloofness. She cursed herself for not striking while he was susceptible. “Is it school? Is someone harassing you?”

“Only in my own bedroom. Go away. I want Lucy to take a nap.”

Reluctant to leave, she backed toward the door. At least he was his old self. Nothing bad could
happen for a while. “I’ll be downstairs, but I have to say one thing. You can talk to me.”

His face said it all.
Get out.

Lucy, crunching the last of her biscuits, gathered her feet beneath her and followed Beth.

“See?” Eli said. “Now she wants more to eat.”

“I think that means she feels better.” Beth scratched Lucy’s back and hurried down the stairs. Eli followed.

Lucy nosed around the kitchen for more biscuits. Eli tried to tempt her with a half-gnawed bone and her squeaky football.

This was more like it.

Unable to resist smiling, Beth found she was like her son. She wanted her wounded loved ones around her. With everyone almost in place, she took her papers out of the desk drawer to peruse her finances again.

“Come on, Lucy.” Eli grabbed a couple of biscuits and she crowded him out the porch door. “Here comes Uncle Van, Mom.”

He disappeared before Beth could ask where he was going.

Her brother came in, looking back at Eli. “Where have you all been? Where’s he going in such a hurry? Did he put something on Lucy’s head?”

“He’s sick of me questioning him.”

“So give him a break.” He grabbed water from the fridge. Sweat from running ringed his T-shirt and his forehead. “Where’ve you been?”

“Someone shot Lucy with a pellet gun. She has two bandages on her head.” He hurried back to the door. “You saw she’s all right.” She looked down at her papers. “Aidan found her in the woods and brought her up. We all took her to Dr. Patrick’s office.”

“You sure she’s all right? What do you mean Aidan went with you?” He turned, the water halfway to his mouth. “What the hell goes on here the second I turn my back?”

“I guess Aidan likes dogs.”

“I’ve never heard that about him.”

Beth flipped a page over. What Aidan liked didn’t matter. She had a son to care for. Full-time.

“You sure Lucy’s okay?”

“Check her out yourself.”

He shrugged, set his bottle on the counter and left. In a few minutes, he came back. “Has Eli been hanging around at the cottage?”

“Why?”

“He sang Aidan’s praises. I thought he must know him better than a doggie handshake and an emergency trip to the vet.”

She sat back. “He didn’t say anything to me. I don’t want him getting attached to Aidan.”

“I don’t want either of you hurt.”

She smiled. “Cut it out, big brother. I know he’s only here for a temporary retreat.”

“Good.” Van finished off his water. “Not going to the lodge after all?”

“No.” She set aside a spreadsheet and rested her chin on one hand. “Eli is so upset I don’t want to leave.”

“I can look after him.” His eyes veered toward the big, old-fashioned clock hanging above the fridge. “I have a few hours before I need to leave.”

“Thanks, but I’m staying.” She continued, unseeing, to the next spreadsheet. “He won’t talk and I wish I could ground him until he comes clean. Maybe I’m hypersensitive because of Lucy.” She shuffled her papers in disgust. “It’s not as if this stuff’s going to change.”

“Keep at it, Beth. You’ll make things happen.”

She stacked her papers, comforted by his faith. Only for a second did she fear it might be misplaced.

“I’m going to shower, and then I have some work, too.” He ran up the stairs.

The rest of the day slipped by. Beth tried to pick up the house, but kept straying back to her paperwork. No brilliant idea came to save her or change the bottom line.

Eventually, she set a bowl of water and another couple of biscuits beside Lucy’s makeshift bed in Eli’s room to help him convince Lucy to sleep with him. The dog usually kept a prone vigil at the front door—where intruders would fall over her.

Beth considered running down to the grocery store for the makings of a cobbler for tomorrow night’s dinner—and chicken tenders. Eli loved them.

In the yard, the orange of afternoon seeped into the sky. She searched for her son. “Eli?”

His head popped out of the tall grass where the manicured part of Van’s lawn drifted back to nature.

“I’m going to the store. Want to come?”

“No.” He dropped again.

“Okay, but go in soon if the grass gets wet.”

Beth breathed deep of the fresh air. Such a hard day, but they were all okay now.

H
AVING WRESTLED
with the new laptop to no avail, Aidan paced through the woods again as afternoon fell to evening. He made no effort to be quiet, bending the branches out of his way, kicking through the pea gravel on the path. Still, Eli’s voice stopped him unexpectedly.

At first he didn’t understand what he was hearing.

“I wouldn’t want to live if something happened to you, Lucy. You’re the only one who knows.”

Aidan eased closer, making no sound. Eli and his dog lay with their heads touching on the mossy ground beneath the green canopy of trees. Lucy shook her head and her ears flopped, a reassuring doggy sound. Eli must have thought so, too. He rolled over, and pine needles clung to his back. He patted the dog’s neck.

“When it’s too hard to live, a lot of people decide they don’t have to. I’m tired and I’m no good. I almost let you die.”

Aidan splayed his hand across his stomach,
almost sick on the spot. Madeline’s last, scrawled words screamed at him.
I want to die. You don’t want me, and I need you so much I can’t breathe.

Shaking like the half a man he’d been for her, he backed away from Eli Tully. He had to find Beth.

What he’d heard meant getting involved, and that kind of pain was too familiar. He should have been nosy and intrusive and demanded Madeline get the kind of help that would have saved her life.

A man didn’t make that mistake twice.

B
ETH HAD FOUND
all of Eli’s favorites. Chicken strips, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes to make the soufflé he loved and all the ingredients for his favorite apple cobbler. Not exactly a gourmet combination, but perfect in her son’s eyes.

If she’d known how to whistle, she would have given forth with the “1812 Overture” as she dragged the groceries out of her trunk. She hummed instead.

“Beth, I have to talk to you.”

She banged her head into the trunk lid. “Aidan— I didn’t know you were there.”

“Now.”

His pale face scared her. “Are you in trouble?”

“Can we go inside?” He reached for her bags, but she drew back.

“You can’t carry this. I’ll call the doctor.”

“Listen to me.”

“Where do you hurt?”

“It’s Eli.”

His tone, totally disengaged, cut straight through her. The bags slipped out of her hands.

Aidan picked up her stuff with robotic determination. “Don’t let him see you like this. You have to get him help before he knows you know.”

“What’s wrong? Stop fooling with those things and tell me where my son is.”

As if she were standing outside herself, she wondered at her shrill tone. Aidan kept scooping up the groceries she’d dropped, and then he coaxed her up the porch steps.

He set the groceries on a table in the hall, not noticing when a can of dog food rolled across the cherry surface. He chose an open door and pulled her through, shutting it behind them.

“He’s not hurt right now,” Aidan said. He let her go and she tried to push past him. His face darkened. “Not physically.”

Aidan took her elbows and eased her into a chair. They were in the living room.

She stared at him, half her mind on murder. If she could only get all her body parts working at once. “Where’s Eli?”

“I have to tell you some things.”

“You look terrible. Something’s wrong with you.” Something besides a cruel streak.

“I was walking in the woods and I heard Eli talking to Lucy.” He explained what Eli had said, but she seemed to hear him on a weird delay, where she understood him about five words after he’d spoken.

“You can’t be right.”

“I know how you feel. You’re tempted to let it go because pretending your son can get better on his own is less frightening than looking a possible suicide in the eye.”

She refused to acknowledge that word. “Kids say crazy things when their pets are hurt.”

“You’re afraid for him. I’ve felt it since the first time I saw you together.”

No one looked that somber without reason. She stood, angry that he should read her mind. “Do you get off on saving the day?”

“I was waiting for you to say something like that. Listen to me. I’ve been through all the stages.”

Fear chilled her. She burrowed into the soft leather chair.

“You want to think I’m wrong because you should have seen if your son was in trouble, and I don’t know you well enough to drive when you rush your dog to the vet.”

“I hope you’re a raving lunatic.”

“I
feel
your fear for Eli.”

She tried to lick her lips. She couldn’t. Her mouth had gone completely dry.

“You can’t put your finger on it. You’ve talked to him, but he acts as if you’re the one with the problem.”

“You’ve been eavesdropping—are you a peeping tom?”

“My wife, Madeline, killed herself a little over a year ago.”

“No,” Beth said. “I knew she died, but—”

Aidan came closer. His body warmth reached out to her. All her blood must have drained somewhere. “I tried to help her, but she thought I was her problem—that I used the doctors and hospitals to get her out of the way.”

“Aidan, you must be seeing things.” No wonder his features looked honed by every second he’d lived. “That doesn’t mean my son—”

“You’re absolutely right.” He knelt in front of her. “Prove me wrong. Take him to a doctor. Force him to talk. Lock him in a room where he can’t hurt himself, but make sure.”

Her errant blood rushed back into her brain. She leaned over to still the spinning room.

“I don’t want you to live as I do, wishing I’d left Madeline no choice but to get well.” Stumbling like a sleepwalker, he went into the hall.

He couldn’t be right. It was his guilt talking.

“Eli.” She yelled his name, running to the front door, hearing only the too-slow slap of her shoes on the wooden floor. “Eli?”

He and Lucy loped out of the woods. Beth ran to meet him. She pulled him into her arms, finding enough strength to lift her son, whom she hadn’t been able to hoist off the ground for over a year.

“Mom, let me go.” He flailed for freedom. Thinking she was missing out on a game, Lucy jumped on both of them.

“Stop, Lucy.” Beth let Eli go, and the dog fell
back, cowed at her unusual sharpness. Beth stared at her son, aware she was doing everything wrong. “You have to be honest.”

“About what, Mom?” Fear entered his eyes. “What did you find?”

“Find?” More important questions pushed his out of her mind. All the times he’d said he was tired, or his “stupid” teachers had given ridiculous homework. His refusal to have friends over and his matchmaking scheme to replace himself. “Are you so upset you’d think of hurting yourself?”

He backed up, tripping in the grass. She grabbed his arm to keep him upright. “What?” He shook her off.

“I heard something that scares me, that maybe you feel as if you didn’t want to live.”

“Who told you that?”

“I need to know.” He wasn’t confused. A child should be confused. He stared straight at her. “I want to help you.”

“Are you nuts? I’m eleven years old. Why would I kill myself?” He darted around her. “I’m a kid.”

She felt as if she were falling. Around her the plants waved their tender heads in earth warmed by early spring sun. Life went on, growing, flourishing, while her world imploded.

An eleven-year-old couldn’t claim he was too young to consider suicide unless he’d thought hard about it.

She’d been mooning over Aidan Nikolas when
Eli needed all her attention. She covered her eyes and tried to think.

I
T COULDN’T HAPPEN
. Not to Eli. Eli wouldn’t do that….

She had to do something. If there was even the smallest possibility this was the reason for Eli’s troubling behavior, she had to do something.

She tore up the stairs and listened outside Eli’s door, afraid to go in, afraid to stay out. Something thumped the door. Something else thudded to the floor. It wasn’t Eli, throwing himself around. Even her beloved, injured eleven-year-old boy couldn’t move that quickly.

She reached for the doorknob, trying to find words. She’d have to accuse him, and he’d already belittled her suspicions. She’d better find out more than she knew about teenaged boys in this kind of trouble.

Beth went to her room and opened her laptop. Before she reached the Internet, she swore at her own blank-mindedness and reached for the phone.

Brent Jacobs had cared for Eli since the day he was born. When his receptionist, Lisa Franklin, answered, Beth asked to speak to Brent.

“Can I help you, Mrs. Tully?”

“No—please let me talk to him. If he’s busy, ask him to call me as soon as he can.” She didn’t want Eli labeled. Honesty was such a small town—not necessarily filled with small minds—but Eli’s
teachers probably also used Brent, and gossip sometimes traveled in the guise of concern.

“Hold on.” Lisa’s annoyance crisped her voice. “I’ll see if Brent’s in consultation.”