Kitabı oku: «The Bride Said, 'Surprise!'», sayfa 3

Luke forced himself to concentrate on the dilemma at hand—how to satisfy her son’s growing curiosity about his male parentage. “But you will tell Jeremy about his father?” Clearly, Jeremy needed to be told something.

Meg nodded, reluctantly giving in just a little. “I’ll tell him the basic facts, that his father was someone I knew a long time ago. For a lot of very complicated, grown-up reasons he’s too young to understand, his father and I couldn’t get married to each other. So I decided to be both mommy and daddy to Jeremy and raise him on my own.”

Luke frowned. “I’ve talked to Jeremy, Meg. I don’t think that’s going to be enough to satisfy him.” Or me.

“It’s going to have to be,” Meg retorted, looked every bit as stubborn and determined as her son to have her way on this.

“And if it’s not?” Watching Meg finish the rest of her ice water, Luke pushed back his chair and stood, too.

“It will be,” Meg promised firmly. She looked him straight in the eye, and Luke felt the impact of their chemistry dragging him closer, like a rope around his middle, even as her defiant secrecy pushed him away. “Just as soon as Jeremy realizes I am not budging on this, either.” Brushing past him, she headed for the living room.

“Meanwhile, I want Jeremy in his own bed tonight.”

As she started for her son, Luke put a hand on her arm. “Let me do this,” he said quietly.

Meg shrugged off his concern and refused his help in a coolly determined way she never would have done six years ago, when they’d been the best of friends. “No, I’m used to carrying him. You stay with your girls.” Holding her sleeping five-year-old son in her arms so his head was on her shoulder and his legs were wrapped around her waist, Meg slipped out the door and headed across the lawn.

Luke watched her enter her house.

He knew Meg thought he had given up trying to help.

She was wrong.

Jeremy might not be his son; he still needed a man to look out for him. Whether Meg liked it or not—for the moment, anyway, until Jeremy’s real father could be found and held accountable to both Meg and Jeremy—Luke was that man.

“THANKS FOR LETTING THE GIRLS play over here today,” Luke told Patricia Weatherby the next day. Mother of five-year-old Molly Weatherby, Patricia was also a new resident to Laramie. Luke had met her at the chamber of commerce, where she now worked. Learning they had daughters the same age, Patricia had offered to have his three girls over for a play date as soon as it was convenient.

“Where are you going?” Patricia asked as Molly showed Luke’s three girls where she kept all her toys.

Luke handed over his cell phone and pager numbers. “I’ve got some business in Austin to take care of. I hope to be back around four this afternoon at the very latest.” He hadn’t done enough for Meg when her parents died. Instead of helping her through her grief, he’d foolishly and recklessly made love to her, thereby adding to her distress. Had he known then that she was already pregnant with what was probably—despite her denials—her ex-boyfriend’s child, he could have persuaded Kip Brewster to do right by Meg and their son. But he hadn’t known then.

He did now.

And, having made half a dozen phone calls and found out where Kip was, it was time to act. Hopefully, Jeremy was Kip’s son. If not, Luke decided, he would keep looking until he found the help Meg and her son needed.

THE DRIVE TO AUSTIN went swiftly. Two hours later Luke was being ushered into Kip Brewster’s office at the prestigious law firm where he worked. As they shook hands, Luke noted Kip had changed very little since they’d gone to school in Chicago. He was still physically fit, handsome in that aristocratic, male model way, and very well mannered. “Thanks for taking the time to see me on such short notice,” Luke said.

“No problem.” Kip offered Luke a chair, then circled around to sit behind his desk. “You said there was some sort of personal emergency…?”

“It concerns Meg Lockhart.”

Kip’s eyes lit up with interest, his reaction confirming, for Luke, the fact that Kip was not over Meg. Any more than he himself had ever gotten over Meg and the abrupt way their friendship had ended. “How is she?” Kip asked.

“Thriving, professionally.” Luke was pleased to report.

“And personally?” Kip’s interest sharpened as he waited for Luke’s reply.

“Never married.”

“Wish I could say the same,” Kip said with a rueful shrug. “I’m divorced.”

Luke nodded. He knew what it was like to have things work out in ways you never expected. “I’m widowed.”

“Sorry.”

Luke nodded. “Same to you.”

Silence. Knowing there was no easy way to broach this, Luke forged on. “Meg has a son.”

Kip did a double take, looking just as shocked as Luke had been initially. “Meg—a single mother?” Kip asked in a low, stunned voice.

Luke nodded. He waited, but to his frustration, Kip did not leap to the conclusion Luke would have expected him to make. Which meant he was going to have to spell it out for him. “Jeremy is five now,” Luke said patiently. “His birthday is December first. He’ll be six.”

Kip’s brow furrowed. “Did Meg adopt this son of hers?” he asked finally.

“No.” Luke exhaled slowly. “Jeremy is her biological child.”

Another pause. “I don’t suppose she was artificially inseminated,” Kip guessed reluctantly after a moment.

Luke shook his head. Again, silence fell between the two men. Wondering what it was going to take for Kip to own up to his responsibility, Luke pushed on with difficulty. “The thing is, Jeremy’s a terrific kid. And he wants to know who his father is.”

Kip continued to look baffled. “You want my law firm to find this guy?”

“I want you to take responsibility for him.”

“Whoa.” Kip lifted both hands and held them in front of him like a shield. “No can do.”

Luke had been afraid he might be met with this type of reaction. If so, it explained a lot about what Meg had been going through. “This boy needs a father,” Luke said firmly.

“I understand that,” Kip said readily enough, leaning forward in his chair. “I even sympathize. And if he were mine, I wouldn’t hesitate to do right by him. But he isn’t mine, Luke.”

So Meg hadn’t told Kip she was pregnant with Jeremy, just as Luke had thought. “Going by the birth date, you were still dating Meg when Jeremy was conceived.”

“Which makes it all the worse.” Kip frowned.

Luke’s glance narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know why Meg and I broke up?” Kip rubbed the back of his neck, looking increasingly uncomfortable.

Luke shrugged. “All she would ever say on the subject was you two wanted different things out of life.”

“Sounds like Meg.” Kip shifted in his chair and shook his head. “Discreet to the max.”

Luke waited.

Finally Kip rubbed his jaw and continued, “It boiled down to a couple of things. One, I was jealous of her increasingly intimate friendship with you. And two, she wouldn’t sleep with me. Wouldn’t even come close, which in turn led to a whole host of other problems between us. So you see,” Kip concluded heavily, “whoever Jeremy’s father is, it sure as hell isn’t me.”

TWO HOURS LATER, Luke was back in Laramie and still reeling from what he had discovered. He called Patricia Weatherby on his cell phone—learned all was fine with the girls—and asked for a little more time.

He drove over to John and Lilah McCabe’s ranch. He knew as soon as they ushered him in that he was interrupting something important. They had paperwork scattered across the kitchen table and a laptop computer plugged into the phone line. “I should have called first,” Luke apologized.

“Nonsense. We’re just doing the paperwork for our trip to Central America in a few weeks. We’re doing medical relief there.”

Luke hadn’t known. “That’s wonderful,” he said as he pulled up a chair alongside them.

“What’s up?” John asked, as ready to help as ever.

Luke drew a breath and worked to ease the tenseness of his muscles. “There’s no way to broach this subject gracefully, so I’m just going to be blunt. I need to ask you a few questions in complete confidence, and they’re really important, or believe me, I wouldn’t be here right now, inquiring.”

Lilah and John exchanged concerned glances. “Go ahead,” John said as Lilah got up to pour them all some coffee.

“Was Meg Lockhart’s son, Jeremy, born here in Laramie?”

“Yes.” A quizzical expression on her face—clearly she didn’t understand why Luke was asking—Lilah set a stoneware mug down in front of Luke and filled it to the brim. Then she topped off John’s mug as well as her own.

“Was he born prematurely?” Luke forged on. “Say by about a month?”

Again Lilah and John exchanged looks that indicated they didn’t want to be in the middle of this “situation” between Luke and Meg any more than Luke wanted them there. “I don’t think that’s a question you should be asking us,” Lilah said finally, as she returned the glass carafe to the warmer and returned to her seat at the table. “Medical records are confidential.”

“I know that. I also know I could get the answer easily enough by asking around town. And I don’t want to do that. I figure enough eyebrows have been raised regarding Jeremy’s paternity as it is.”

Abruptly John McCabe looked as protective as any parent. “Have you asked Meg these questions?”

Luke nodded grimly. “I talked to her about Jeremy’s paternity yesterday. She was evasive, to say the least.”

John rubbed his jaw and continued to regard Luke thoughtfully. “And yet you still think this is your business?”

Luke took a sip of Lilah’s hot, delicious coffee. “If Jeremy was born prematurely, it is.”

John and Lilah exchanged troubled glances. “You’re saying you two…that Jeremy might be…?”

Luke sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “Meg and I got to be very good friends when she was doing graduate work in Chicago. It was a strictly platonic relationship because we were both romantically involved with other people—except for the night her parents were killed. That night pretty much ended our friendship, at least as far as Meg was concerned.”

John and Lilah looked at each other again, sighed and linked hands. “This explains a lot,” Lilah said eventually. “Like why Meg was so upset when she learned John had met you at a medical conference and recruited you to take over for him. And why she’s been ducking you ever since.”

“I wouldn’t be asking you this if it weren’t very important to Jeremy, Meg and me.” Luke went on to explain about Jeremy’s running away the previous evening. “Despite Meg’s denials to the contrary, I assumed by Jeremy’s birth date that his father was Meg’s former boyfriend, Kip Brewster. I know Kip. I know Kip can be a little arrogant or over-the-top at times when it comes to getting what he wants, but I also knew he would want to take responsibility for his son, if he knew about him. But I just got back from talking to Kip. He says it’s not him—he never slept with her. If it wasn’t him…” He paused before stating, “I know Meg.”

She was not, had never been, promiscuous. She wouldn’t have slept with someone on the spur of the moment under normal circumstances. The only reason they had been together that way was that she had just found out her parents had died, and she was out of her mind with grief. Helpless to do anything about the circumstances that had robbed Meg and her sisters of their parents, helpless to get Meg back to Texas any sooner than the first flight out the following morning, Luke had been desperate to just get her through the night and comfort Meg in any way she wanted or needed. It had only been later, after they’d experienced such mind-blowing passion, that Luke had discovered that hot, ardent lovemaking hadn’t been what Meg wanted or needed, at least not on any rational level. Rather than lessen her despair, he had added to it.

“I know she is the kind of person who gives help, not the kind of person who asks for it,” Luke continued. He was determined to help Meg now in the gallant way he should have helped her before, even if it meant marrying her so Jeremy could have both a mother and a father. “If I am the father, she probably thought—back then—that because I was engaged to someone else, she was doing the right thing in not telling me. But she’s not. Not anymore. Not when her son wants answers so badly he’s resorted to asking anyone and everyone he thinks might know something. Whether Meg wants to admit it or not, the situation is only going to get worse until she levels with Jeremy and tells him who his father is.”

“Have you come right out and asked Meg if you’re Jeremy’s father?” Lilah asked.

Luke thought back to what had actually been said initially. “I asked her what Jeremy’s birth date was. She told me. And that seemed to eliminate me. Now I’m not so sure.”

“So she never actually said you weren’t Jeremy’s father,” John determined.

“No.” Luke rubbed the tense muscles at the back of his neck. “I asked her point-blank who Jeremy’s father was but she refused to answer the question directly. And instead, talked about making a series of mistakes that couldn’t be undone.”

“So she could still be talking about you,” John theorized bluntly, quickly realizing what Luke was getting at.

“If Jeremy was born prematurely, yes, then Jeremy could very well be my son.” Luke waited, hoping they would reveal what he needed to know. To his disappointment they didn’t.

“I understand what you want us to tell you, but…you really should get this kind of information from Meg,” Lilah said.

Luke had been afraid they’d have this reaction. “And if Meg still won’t tell me?”

John shrugged and exchanged a long, thoughtful glance with his wife before advising, “Then you wait until she trusts you enough to do so.”

Luke sighed unhappily. “That might never happen.” Which left him with even fewer options—find out on his own by whatever means necessary if Jeremy had been born prematurely or hire an attorney and demand a paternity test. Neither option appealed to him. More important, neither option was something Meg was likely to condone. Feeling more frustrated and shut out than ever, Luke knotted his hands into fists and shoved them in his pockets.

“We understand how you feel,” Lilah said gently. She reached over and patted his hand. “We’ve tried to get Meg to unburden herself to us. Or at least to do right by Jeremy’s father and tell him about his son. For a while I thought we had succeeded, because a few weeks after she learned she was pregnant she went off, determined to tell him.”

Luke’s hopes mingled with the fear that he wasn’t the only person Meg turned to in her grief and her need…fear that he might not be Jeremy’s father after all. “And?”

Lilah sighed. “Meg never said what happened when she returned, but it was easy to see she was absolutely devastated by whatever had transpired while she’d been gone.”

Luke’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. “You think Jeremy’s father abandoned her?”

“That was our guess. In any case Meg told us then that she was going to bring up Jeremy on her own. She didn’t want to do it that way, but she had no choice. We told her we would always support her, and we have.”

“Meg never came to talk to me,” Luke said, sad to realize all over again that he might not be Jeremy’s father after all. “If she had…you have to know I would have been there for her and for Jeremy.” It wouldn’t have taken a baby to get him to marry her, either. All Meg would have had to do was give him the slightest sign that they had a chance to be together, and he would have waited for her forever. As it was, seeing no reason to hurt Gwyneth with the truth, he’d broken off his engagement to Gwyneth without a decent explanation, hurting her unconscionably. And only following through on his promise and marrying her six months later because she was still so devastated and determined to wait for him, and he didn’t want to be responsible for ruining Gwyneth’s life, too. The bitter irony of it being, of course, that he had ended up more or less ruining Gwyneth’s life anyway, despite his efforts to be the best husband and father to their children he could possibly be.

“I don’t want to hurt Meg,” Luke said, meaning it with all his heart.

“Then be there for her now,” Lilah said gently.

John nodded. “Be her friend.”

The problem was, Luke thought, he wanted so much more than that where Meg was concerned. He always had. Always would.

Chapter Three

Monday morning, unable to shake the suspicion that Jeremy was his son, that Meg just wasn’t telling him, Luke sat in front of the hospital computer in his office staring at the screen. As a physician on staff, he could access all patient files with the push of a button. It would be as easy as that to find Meg’s medical records and discover not just if Jeremy was born prematurely, but also the estimated date of Jeremy’s conception. He could learn Jeremy’s and Meg’s blood types and match them up against his. With that knowledge he could swiftly either confirm his paternity or eliminate himself completely.

But it would be wrong to violate Meg’s privacy that way, Luke thought as he went back to the new-patient files he was supposed to be reviewing. It would be a breach of the medical ethics Luke had sworn to uphold. And Luke could not do that. No matter how much he wanted to know the truth.

“You didn’t go to Meg and ask her those questions we talked about, did you?” John McCabe asked Luke as he walked in several minutes later for their scheduled meeting.

Luke looked at the man he would be replacing as chief of family medicine. John McCabe had come over to make sure the transfer of patient files was complete and discuss the particularly difficult cases so Luke could start seeing patients later in the week. Luke was glad for the help and any wisdom John could impart about the patients Luke would now be caring for in John’s stead. He just wished John McCabe weren’t so efficient at sizing up his mood.

“No, I didn’t.” Unable to completely hide his frustration, Luke closed the folder in front of him and sighed.

“How did you know?”

Clad in a sport shirt, slacks and casual boots that fit his newly retired status, John sat down opposite Luke. He laid his Stetson across his knee. “Because I saw Meg a few minutes ago, down in the emergency room, and she looked fine. If you’d asked her what you asked Lilah and me and told her you’d been to see her ex-boyfriend, well, I figure she’d be looking as troubled as you do now.”

Luke frowned and turned a brooding glance to John. “I meant to confront her. I wanted to.”

John looked momentarily concerned. “Then why didn’t you?”

Luke sat back in his swivel chair and braced both palms against the edge of his desk. Feeling more tense and frustrated than ever, he recounted the events of the weekend. “By the time I got home Friday evening all her sisters were there. There was zero chance to talk to Meg privately. As the evening wore on, I had my hands full with my girls. Meg and Jeremy were gone all day Saturday and Sunday—where I don’t know.” Which had left him cooling his heels all weekend, still hoping he was a father to the son he had always wanted—a son who needed him desperately—yet unable to do anything to confirm or refute it without Meg’s help, which she was unlikely to give.

John settled back with a sigh. “Meg spoke at a nursing conference in Dallas over the weekend. She took Jeremy with her, and they spent the rest of the weekend going to Six Flags and the big water parks there.”

Glad to have that mystery solved, Luke nodded thoughtfully, then woefully continued his recounting. “By the time Meg and Jeremy got back last night, it was late, and I knew we both had to come into the hospital today, so…” Luke spread his hands wide and let his voice trail off.

John’s wise dark-brown eyes narrowed. “You’re having second thoughts about grilling her at all, aren’t you?”

Luke shrugged, not sure what he wanted except maybe a life with Meg and his son. He’d already missed Meg’s pregnancy and a good chunk of Jeremy’s childhood. He didn’t want to miss any more. And knowing what a delicate situation he was in if he was Jeremy’s father—and he still hoped there was a chance he might be—he was afraid of screwing things up even more than they already were. Which was exactly what would happen if he pushed Meg too hard.

“The more I think about it, the more I think confronting her now with what I found out from Kip is a bad idea. She resents me enough as it is.” With good reason. Guiltily Luke pushed on. “I have to wait for the right time. I want her to get to know me again, wait until she trusts me and wait until the kids settle in, before I tell her I went to see Kip and I want her to confide in me.”

“Don’t wait too long,” John warned. “Meg’ll be angry if she finds out you’ve figured out for certain that Kip Brewster is not Jeremy’s father and kept this from her.”

Luke scowled. He knew that was true. And it wasn’t fair. “How is this any different from her not telling me in the first place if I am Jeremy’s father?” he demanded irritably.

“It’s not any different. A lie of omission is a lie just the same. But we don’t know for certain that Jeremy is your child. Meg was very confused that summer. Upset. She made it clear to everyone that she made not just one but a whole series of mistakes.”

I’d do anything if I could go back and do it all over…do it differently…but I can’t. Meg had said. And because I can’t change things…I think it’s best that I leave those mistakes in the past. Had she been talking about their brief tryst? Luke wondered, upset. Or something…someone else? And would he ever know? If that really was the case, did he want to know?

All Luke knew for certain was that Meg was not only responsible to a fault, she was one of the most selfless people Luke knew. She was always the one giving help, whether it be as a nurse, a sister or a friend. She never asked for help for herself. But that didn’t make what Meg had done right, either, in cutting not just Jeremy’s father, whoever he was, out of her and Jeremy’s lives, but Luke, as well. As a friend he could have helped her. Sure it would have been difficult if he wasn’t Jeremy’s father, but he had still loved her and wanted to be with her and they would have figured out a way to work everything out.

“In any case,” John continued, oblivious to the direction of Luke’s thoughts, “this situation is going to take very careful handling, Luke.”

Wasn’t that the case, Luke thought, as footsteps sounded in the adjacent waiting room. Seconds later, Kate Marten—the hospital’s thirty-year-old grief-and-trauma counselor—rapped on the door to Luke’s private office and popped her head in. Looking as pretty and capable as ever, she said, “John, one of your nephew’s boys is down in the E.R. Apparently, Kevin—the six-year-old—fell off a porch roof into some bushes. His brothers rescued him and brought him in. They’re all pretty shook up and they’re asking for you.”

“Where’s Sam?” John asked, frowning. Both men rose simultaneously.

A baffled expression on her face, Kate lifted her hands and spread them wide. “According to Meg Lockhart, no one’s been able to locate your nephew thus far. That’s why they want you. They figure if anyone can track Sam down, you can. They want Luke, since he’s now the family doc of record, to take a look at Kevin.”

Together the three headed to the E.R. at a brisk clip.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do without you when you leave next fall,” John McCabe told Kate affectionately.

“Where are you going?” Luke asked curiously.

John was quick to fill him in. “Kate’s getting married to Major Craig Farrell. He’s an air force pilot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Luke held the elevator door for them. “When?”

Kate suddenly looked a little uneasy. She situated herself at the back of the elevator between John and Luke, while Luke pushed the button for the first floor. “We haven’t set the wedding date yet.” Kate smiled and turned her eyes to the closing doors. “But we will as soon as Craig knows when he can get leave.”

“And after you marry?” Luke asked, seeming to recall someone telling him that Kate had spent her entire life—except college—right there in Laramie, first as a guidance counselor at the high school, where her dad still worked as the football coach, then as a crisis counselor at the hospital.

“Craig is career military,” Kate elaborated as the elevator came to a stop. She continued casually as the doors opened and they headed out, “So he and I will go wherever he’s stationed for the next twenty-five years. Then he’s going to leave the service and work for a commercial airline—hopefully one based in Texas.”

“Sounds like an adventure,” Luke said as the trio continued making their way through the halls.

Kate smiled, a little less enthusiastically than Luke would have expected, and said nothing else. Clearly preferring not to talk any more about her personal life, Kate led the way around the corner, past a big sign advertising the hospital’s annual chili cook-off, to the emergency room admitting area.

Four boys were gathered anxiously in the waiting room. The oldest looked like a senior in high school and was wearing running shoes and athletic clothes. The next tallest was dressed in neatly pressed khakis and a shirt—his hair was blow dried to perfection and he radiated expensive cologne. The third tallest was wearing trendy clothing and had an air of mischief about him. The youngest of the four standing out in the hall looked to be about twelve or so and wore glasses and clothes that could only be described as nerdy. All four boys rushed forward out into the hallway when they saw John McCabe. All spoke at once.

“You gotta do something, Uncle John! Kevin’s bleeding!”

“I can’t find Dad—I forget where he’s supposed to be today.”

“I know we were supposed to be baby-sitting him, but it wasn’t our fault.”

“No one told Kev he could go on the roof. Honest.”

Immediately taking charge of the situation like the veteran doc and family man he was, John held up a hand.

“I’ll locate Sam. You see to Kevin,” John told Luke. “You four,” John regarded his nephews sternly, “calm down, and don’t go anywhere until I get back to you. Kate, maybe you’d like to stay out here with the boys?”

“Sure thing.” Kate smiled.

Luke couldn’t help but note Kate looked a lot more comfortable and enthusiastic about her professional duties than she had about her pending nuptials.

“C’mon boys.” Kate herded them off to the waiting room sofas while Luke headed inside the examining room.

Meg was bending over Kevin, talking quietly, as she gently tended to lacerations on his face and arms. Although his face was streaked with tears, Kevin McCabe was no longer crying. Impressed by the tenderness Meg showed their young patient, Luke strode forward. “Hi, Kevin, I’m Dr. Luke. I heard you took a tumble this morning.”

Kevin said nothing.

Noting the boy seemed alert and that his pupils were equal and responsive, Luke tried again to engage him in conversation. “Must have been something pretty important to get up on the roof. How’d you get up there, anyway?” Luke continued, noting Kevin’s pulse and blood pressure were okay.

His face registering no emotion, Kevin turned his glance away. Luke looked at Meg. “Has he been talking since he arrived?”

“Not a word, but apparently that’s not unusual.” Meg’s voice was calm but her expression radiated concern. “His brothers said he hasn’t talked much since his mother, Ellie, died, six months ago.”

Luke continued his examination. To his relief he found no evidence of any neurological, internal or permanent injuries. “Okay, Kevin,” Luke smiled down at him, “you just take it easy. We’re going to get you fixed right up.” To Meg he said, “I want to get his right wrist X-rayed. I think it’s just a sprain but let’s be sure. We’re going to need some stitches here on his forehead. And he’s got some pretty nasty abrasions on his arms and legs. Let’s get some antibiotic ointment on them.”

Meg nodded. She was already preparing the suture tray. “No problem. Stitches first?”

Luke put the immobilizer back around Kevin’s wrist. “Yes.”

Meg smiled down at Kevin, squeezed his uninjured left hand. “You just hold on to me. This will all be over before you know it.”

With Luke and Meg both working to put their young patient at ease, Kevin weathered the procedures well.

Luke left Kevin with Meg and was looking at the X rays of Kevin’s wrist when Sam McCabe finally arrived. The successful Texas businessman bore a striking physical resemblance to the rest of the McCabe men. But Luke thought he looked awfully young—he guessed mid-thirties—to be widowed and the father of five boys, a few of whom would soon graduate from high school. Luke knew how tough it had been on him and his three girls when Gwyneth died. Judging from the looks of things, for Sam McCabe and his five boys it had been even tougher.

Sam looked harried and upset as he stopped briefly at the admitting desk, then strode toward Luke. “How’s Kevin?” Sam demanded, concern etched on his face.

Briefly Luke explained. “We had to put seven stitches in a cut on his forehead. He’s probably going to have a little scar, but it’s right at the scalp line so it won’t show, unless someone is really looking for it. He’s got a sprained left wrist and some nasty abrasions on his arms and legs that are going to require a bit of care for a few days. But other than that he’s one lucky kid, considering the kind of injuries that could have occurred if his fall hadn’t been broken by those shrubs.”

“Thank God for that,” Sam McCabe sighed, the shadows of fatigue around his eyes becoming even more pronounced.