Kitabı oku: «Solemn Oath», sayfa 3
“They’re from a group of churches in the state that support our work. We’re here on furlough for three months.” He grew silent for a moment. “Now I wonder if we’ll be returning.”
“Try not to think about that right now. How’s the pain?” Mercy asked. “Do you need more medication?”
“I’m fine. A little woozy. Makes it hard to keep my prayers in focus. It’s a good thing God knows my heart.”
“You and your wife seem to have a very good relationship.” Mercy had found that when she could keep her patients talking about something that really interested them, she didn’t have to use nearly as many pain meds, and everything went smoother.
“That’s because of Alma’s sweet nature. She still treats me with the same consideration and patience she’s always shown. It’s just the kind of person she is.”
“And you make it obvious you adore her.”
From the side of his face, she saw him smile. What a handsome man, even cut and bruised as he was.
And what a rare thing—a happy marriage. The only other person she knew with a happy marriage was her nurse, Josie. Funny, Josie had the same last name, but Collins was a common name. And Mercy knew it wasn’t a shared last name that made the difference. Josie, too, was a devoted Christian. So was Lukas. Lately, as Mercy grew to know him better, she wouldn’t try to deny the fact that there was a noticeable difference between him and every other male she had ever met. And she felt more of an attraction to him than to any other male she’d ever met. She found herself wanting to spend more and more time with him, and being more and more disappointed when their busy work schedules prevented that.
Arthur’s smile wavered and disappeared. “I wonder how Alma’s doing. How long does it take them to fly a helicopter to Springfield?”
“About thirty minutes when the weather’s good and the wind is right.” Mercy laid a hand on his uninjured shoulder. “Don’t worry, Arthur, she’s in good hands. I know the flight nurse, and she’s one of the best. She took care of my daughter this spring when we had to fly her out for emergency surgery.”
“Your daughter?” Arthur’s voice grew more slurred. “Sh-she okay now?”
“She’s fine.” Physically.
“How old is sh-she?”
“Eleven going on fifty. Sometimes I wonder which of us does the most mothering and worrying. Tell me about your mission in Mexico.”
He talked for several moments while Mercy finished her two-layer closure. He had thick, wavy red hair that was already showing a lot of gray, and the lines around his eyes revealed that he’d spent a lot of time in the sun and that he spent a lot of time smiling.
Mercy checked his arm, then rechecked the wound. “Arthur, we’re almost finished with your head except for the CT. I’m hoping your shoulder will slip into place without much pain.”
He paused for a moment, and Mercy could see his eyes tear up. He was thinking about Alma again.
“Would you pray with me?” The words were soft, but not hesitant.
Mercy blinked. This one hadn’t ever come up in medical school. It hadn’t come up afterward, either. “Well…I’m not sure….” How was she supposed to turn him down? And yet, how was she supposed to pray when most of the time she refused to even acknowledge the presence—
“I’ll do the talking,” he said.
She heard the pleading in his voice, and she thought about his love for his wife. What could it hurt? Mercy had watched Lukas pray and watched her mother pray. All she had to do was bow her head. The only time she’d actually prayed was when Tedi nearly died, and then it had only been a “Please, God, please, God, please, God” out of desperation.
She nodded and bowed her head.
“Thank you,” Arthur whispered to her. “Dear Lord, we can’t know what’s going to happen to us next, and we’re frightened and in pain. Please, God, please go with Alma. Give her comfort and peace that only You can give her. And help me depend on Your strength. Help us, through this tragedy, to keep our witness pure for You, and hold our hearts firmly in Your sheltering arms. We praise You for Your constant presence and for the assurance that we will go through nothing without You. Lay Your special blessing on Dr. Mercy today, and thank You for sending her to us as one of Your ministering angels. Fill her with Your special Spirit, dear Lord, in a way that will last. In our Lord Jesus’s name, amen.”
He opened his eyes and looked at Mercy. “Thank you.” He gave a relaxed sigh. They heard a gentle pop. The shoulder was back in place.
Lukas finished assessing the lady with the broken arm, looked in quickly on Cowboy, then checked on Mercy’s progress. He was relieved to find her and Arthur chattering about children and mission work and the beauty of the Missouri Ozarks while Claudia bandaged the wound and removed the weights from Arthur’s wrist.
The quiet alto tone of Mercy’s voice drew Lukas like a symphony. He allowed his gaze to rest, just for a moment, on the strong, feminine lines of her face. He felt himself drawn into the glowing depths of her coffee-colored eyes as she chuckled at something Arthur said. Her long black hair was drawn back in a clasp, and several tendrils had come loose, giving the impression that she was always too busy reaching out to others to check a mirror during the day.
Mercy had a talent for mothering patients. She was good at helping them through difficult and painful procedures with a minimum of panic or pain medication. Her self-deprecating sense of humor put everyone around her at ease, including the staff. Including Lukas. He found himself watching her when she worked in the same room, and he felt himself drawn to her in a way he’d never been before.
She looked up at him questioningly. He smiled and opened his mouth to speak, but the E.R. doors jerked open and in stumbled a trio of dirty firemen—two extremely young trainees carrying singed and blackened veteran fire fighter Buck Oppenheimer between them.
Actually, Buck wasn’t being carried, but was trying valiantly to wrestle out of the clutches of his overeager charges, his soot-covered face filled with annoyance.
“Doc!” he called out to Lukas in frustration. “Would you please tell these kids I’m not dying?”
Lukas stifled a relieved grin. Buck worked a few shifts a month with the ambulance service as an EMT, and he was a first responder with the fire department, which meant Lukas and Buck saw a lot of each other. Buck’s down-home hillbilly charm—complete with butch haircut and ears that could paddle a canoe—belied a sharp wit and a deep compassion for others. Unfortunately for him, his leadership abilities had landed him the added responsibility of overseeing two eighteen-year-old members of an Explorer group throughout their training period. He’d grumbled about it to Lukas ever since the kids had arrived the week before.
Lukas led the way into exam room six and instructed the young men to help Buck onto the bed. “Ease him down gently, guys. No telling what he’s gotten into this time.”
“An explosion, that’s what!” Skinny Kyle Alder, whose hair was as long and curly as Buck’s was short and straight, kept a death grip on Buck’s arm as he and his buddy eased their grubby, smoke-stained patient onto the clean sheet. “Saved a gal’s life and almost died. Threw himself on top of her!”
“Oh?” Lukas stepped out into the hallway and caught Lauren’s attention from her workstation at the central desk. He motioned for her to join him in the exam room, then returned to Buck’s side. “And where is the victim?”
Buck fought off his overeager charges at last and started unbuttoning his shirt, still sitting up. “Roxie refused to come in, and believe me, I fought to get her in the ambulance. Should’ve just wrapped her in a straitjacket and shoved her in the back. You know how cantankerous she can be sometimes.”
Lukas looked at Buck in alarm. “Wouldn’t she let you check her out?”
“Barely. I listened to her chest and took her vitals. She sounded okay. She said she’s fine except for the ribs I broke pouncing on her like that.”
“What?”
Buck shook his head and frowned. “I think she was kidding, although with her it’s hard to tell. After all I went through to get to her, she asked what took us so long, because she’d called ten minutes before I got there. That’s the thanks I get for risking my life to—” He winced and bent forward. “I wasn’t even on duty. I didn’t know about any call.”
“I told you that you oughta have that looked at,” Kyle said.
“I’m having it looked at now,” Buck snapped.
“It’s his chest, Dr. Bower,” Kyle explained. “It’s been hurting him since the explosion. He says it’s just a scrape, but…” His attention refocused with sudden interest as blond-haired, green-eyed Lauren walked into the room and began her assessment.
“Let’s get a c-collar on him before you start that, Lauren.” Lukas reached out and felt the back of Buck’s neck for any step-off deformity. “Does this hurt, Buck?”
The fireman did not move his head. “Nope.”
“Good. We’ll go ahead and do a collar until we get the X-rays, just to be safe.”
“Oh, come on, Dr. Bower, I’ll be good. My neck doesn’t hurt.”
“You know it’s protocol.” Lukas leaned forward to take a look at Buck’s exposed back and felt hot air hitting his own neck. He glanced around to find Kyle and his partner, Alex, hovering over him, eyes wide, jaws slack.
“Why don’t you two go out into the waiting room,” Lukas suggested. “The police are around somewhere, and they might want to question you about the fire.”
With a look of sudden eagerness, the young men left, and Buck exhaled with relief. “Thanks. You can lay that collar on me now. Those kids couldn’t find a fire hose with their—”
“Okay, here you go.” Lauren positioned the stiff neck collar with Velcro, fastened it firmly and resumed her assessment.
“They chattered like monkeys all the way here,” Buck complained. “They went on and on about how I was a hero, and they would pay better attention next time I tried to teach them something.”
“They’re just kids,” Lauren said. “Give them a chance.”
“I did the other day, and, boy, was I sorry.” Buck reached up and tugged at the collar. “Isn’t this a little tight?”
Lauren leaned over and checked it. “It’s perfect. What did you do the other day?”
“I got my model airplane stuff out of my locker and let the boys help me with it—or try to. Kyle spilled the glue, and Alex broke a wingtip, so it took us longer than I thought it would. My shift ended, but I couldn’t leave them there with everything spread out all over the table, so I stayed and worked with them a couple more hours.”
“Did you call Kendra?” Lauren asked, placing the blood pressure cuff around his thick upper arm.
“No, and I sure heard about it when I got home. She just about took my head off.”
“Would you have left if you’d gotten called out for a fire?” Lauren asked, pumping the blood pressure cuff.
“Well, sure, but…Hey, careful with that thing. Don’t squeeze my arm off. I apologized and told her I’d never do that again.”
Lauren let the pressure drop and watched the numbers, then wrote them down. “That’s what you said after you let yourself be talked into feeding Leonardo for Cowboy.”
Buck reached up as if to scratch at the small wound on his chest but stopped himself before he could touch it. “Hey, this was different…and worse. At least Leonardo couldn’t follow me out of his cage. I haven’t been able to get those kids off my tail ever since. Kyle, especially. I trip over him everywhere I go.”
“He seems nice enough to me,” Lauren said.
“So is a puppy, but I don’t want one making runs with me. I think it’s dangerous to take kids like that into a fire situation.”
“But how else will they learn?” Lauren asked. “You know, Buck, all of us had to get a break somewhere. You’ve got to be more patient. Maybe that’s why the chief put you in charge of these boys, so you could learn some mentoring skills.”
Buck scowled at her. “I don’t even know what that word means.”
“It means you have some finely honed instincts you could use to train others, and you can’t let all that go to waste just because you don’t want to spend time with those—”
“Uh, Lauren,” Lukas interrupted. “Quiet for a moment, please.” He saw the sudden relief in Buck’s expression and stifled a grin. Lauren was a great nurse, very caring, but when she slipped into chatterbox mode she could shut down traffic.
Lukas placed his stethoscope on Buck’s back and chest, listened to breath sounds and was satisfied. “Where’s the pain Kyle’s so concerned about?”
Buck gestured to the upper left area of his chest. “Just a little cut. I can’t understand why it hurt so much, but, boy, Kyle grabbed me there when they helped me get up, and I nearly tore his head off.”
Lukas found a very small wound just above Buck’s left nipple. With a peroxide-soaked 4x4, he wiped off some of the blood.
Buck jerked. “Ow! Watch it, Dr. Bower. I did get knocked around a little, you know.”
“Is that where your pain is located? Don’t tell me you weren’t wearing your jacket again.”
“Yes, I was. I grabbed it before I went back inside.”
Lukas frowned and checked the wound a little more closely. It wasn’t even a centimeter in length, but there was no telling how deep it might be. “Tell me about the explosion.”
“I was grabbing for Roxie when it hit. The manager keeps a barbecue grill back there in the storeroom to cook hot dogs and hamburgers to sell up front, and it runs on propane. It’s big enough to take out a wall if it explodes, and that’s what happened. Roxie told me she was cooking some stuff on it and had to go up front to answer the phone. When she hung up and turned around, she said she saw a lot of smoke coming in from the back. She says one of the new delivery guys placed some boxes too close to the fire, and Roxie couldn’t move them.”
“Did you feel anything hit you? How much smoke did you inhale?”
“I don’t really think I got much smoke, but I couldn’t tell you if anything hit me. I hit a lot of things, like Roxie, the wall, and then some shelves fell on top of us. I tried to brace myself on my elbows to keep from squashing Roxie. Do you think I could’ve pulled a muscle or something?”
“A pulled muscle doesn’t break the skin.” Lukas helped him lie down while he gave instructions to Lauren for routine trauma X-ray series with two-view chest. “What’s the O2 sat?”
“Good. Ninety-six,” Lauren said.
Judy stepped to the doorway. “Dr. Bower, we have a drunk three-year-old in room seven. It’s the Chapmans, who called you earlier.”
Lukas glanced at his watch. “They made great time. Get Claudia to meet me there and I’ll be right out.” He ordered serum alcohol and poison levels for the child. “I hate to do it, but get Respiratory to draw a blood gas on him.” Invasive procedures were a part of his job he had never enjoyed, especially when it involved causing pain for little children who were too young to even understand what was happening to them. Big needles that stuck deep and hurt were always traumatic, and this one needed an artery.
“Go on and see about the kid, Doc,” Buck said. “I’ll be fine as long as you can keep my young buddies from pestering me to death.”
Lukas grinned. “It comes with being a hero.”
“I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to do a good job. This mentoring is new for me.”
“It always helps to learn from the best.”
“I’m not the best. The chief just didn’t want to do it himself this time.” Buck lowered his voice and glanced toward the doorway. “I don’t want to be a jerk, but they’re not going to get a good review from me.”
“Come on, Buck, you were young once. In fact, you’re still young.”
Mercy walked into the room, greeted Buck as if she were used to seeing his burnt-to-a-crisp appearance every day and held the clipboards for two more patients for Lukas to see. “Want me to do these for you while I’m here? I called Josie, and she’s done a triage and sent some of my patients home.”
Lukas shot her a grateful smile. “Thank you, Mercy.”
“It’ll cost you a dinner.”
“Great. I’ll cook.”
“Hey! I’m doing you a favor here. Don’t threaten me.”
Lukas left Lauren to run his orders on Buck and walked out into the hallway with Mercy. He reached up instinctively to touch her shoulder, then hesitated and let his hand fall back to his side. He was already getting teased by the staff about his relationship with her.
“How’s Arthur doing?” he asked.
“I’m releasing him to his friends.” Mercy stopped outside the door, shook her head, frowned. “I didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t want to be so far from his wife. His CT’s fine.” She lowered her voice. “He’s something else. I don’t think I’ve met anybody quite like him.” She looked into Lukas’s eyes, then away. “Except maybe for you.” She turned and walked into another exam room.
Lukas was glad she didn’t see him blush.
The drunken child, three-year-old Jared Chapman, had a good serum alcohol level, which would counteract the effects of the antifreeze. The ethylene glycol and methanol levels were low enough that Jared wouldn’t need dialysis, so they could just watch him closely in the telemetry unit overnight on an alcohol drip. The parents were relieved and happy, and so was Lukas. Even with the needle for the blood gas, Jared was feeling a minimum amount of pain. The poor little boy would probably have treatment for a hangover in the morning.
The pharmacist was the only one who complained. When Lukas personally ordered the alcohol drip, the man replied, “You know you guys can’t be drinking on the job.”
Chapter Three
E leven-year-old Tedi Zimmerman answered the final question on her test paper as the bell rang for afternoon recess. Yes! She pushed the page to the top of her desk and looked up at Mr. Walters to see if he noticed. He nodded and smiled. He’d been watching.
She got up and started toward the door, but Abby Cuendet—her worst enemy last year, her best friend this year—grabbed her arm and stopped her.
Tedi turned back around. “Hey, what’re you doing?”
Abby pushed straight brown bangs out of her eyes, glanced out the window, then back at Tedi. “I thought you said your dad was locked up.”
“He is. He’s in detox up in Springfield.”
Abby scrunched up her face, pushed her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose and turned to point out the window. “That sure looks like him to me.”
Tedi caught her breath and stiffened, refusing to look. “That’s not funny.” Mom and Grandma had both said Dad was supposed to be locked up for a long time.
“So who’s that?”
Feeling the darkness of an old nightmare, Tedi turned slowly and looked in the direction Abby pointed. A man stood in the shade beneath the trees that surrounded the playground. His hands were in his pockets. Looking down with his shoulders slumped, he didn’t look as tall as Dad, and his clothes weren’t silk and wool with ties and dress shoes. But the shape of his head and the line of his face, even at this distance, were too familiar. Abby’s mom said Dad looked like a blond Pierce Brosnan, but Tedi had seen pictures of Pierce Brosnan, and he looked a lot nicer. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would try to kill his own daughter.
For a minute Tedi thought she was going to throw up. She tightened her hands into fists and took some deep breaths. It couldn’t be. Was she having another bad dream? She couldn’t take her gaze from the intruder as he watched the kids spill out of the school building onto the grass. When they quit coming, he turned and looked directly toward the windows of Tedi’s classroom, as if he knew she was there.
She gasped and stepped back. “What’s he doing here?” Her voice shook. Her whole body shook. “He’s not supposed to be out of—”
“Girls?” Mr. Walters called. “Aren’t you finished with your papers?”
Tedi turned and looked hard at her teacher, at his wide middle and thick shoulders. “Yes, we’re finished.” He looked safe and calm as he gathered up papers and stacked them and turned to erase something from the chalkboard. One time he had stepped between a kid and an attacking dog and saved the kid from being bitten. He wasn’t going to let anyone hurt his students. “Go out and enjoy the sunshine while you can,” he called over his shoulder. “The rest of the week is supposed to be cloudy.” Which was another way of saying he wanted some time to de-stress and straighten the room. He’d told Tedi that once when she stayed behind to help him collect papers.
Tedi almost asked if she could stay and help him with papers again, but Abby nudged her. “Why don’t you just go and find out what your dad wants, dummy?”
Tedi shoved her friend’s arm away. “Why should I? If he wants to talk to me he can go see the principal first. He’s not even supposed to be here. No strangers on the playground, remember?”
“He’s not a stranger. He’s your dad. Come on, let’s at least get out of here.” She nudged Tedi again.
Tedi allowed herself to be pushed out the door and into the wide hallway. Together they walked to the side exit, where both of the double doors stood open to let in the cool late-September air. Maybe he would be gone when they got outside…or maybe it wasn’t even him. It just looked like him.
But when they stepped around the corner of the building in view of the broad, grassy playground, he was still in the same place in the shadows, hands in his pockets, head bowed.
Tedi felt her heart pound, the way it had that night when he shouted at her and raised his hand and hit her so hard it knocked her out.
“Don’t you want to find out what he’s doing here?” Abby demanded, nudging Tedi again with her elbow.
Tedi jerked away. “Stop it!”
“Gosh, Tedi, it’s no big deal. Just go talk to him.”
“You don’t know anything about it. You never saw him drunk.”
“He’s been in detox, hasn’t he? He won’t be drunk.” Eyes flashing with curiosity behind shiny lenses, Abby nudged her again. “Go on and find out what he wants. I’ll watch from here, and if he looks like he’s going to get close to you, I’ll run back in and get Mr. Walters.”
“Oh sure, and what’s Mr. Walters going to do, sit on him and crush him to death?”
Abby fell silent, giving Tedi her most stern look of reproach. Tedi stared back, hands on hips.
“Chicken,” Abby muttered.
“Shut up. I am not. I’m just not stupid.”
“Don’t you trust me, Tedi? I won’t let him hurt you.”
Tedi snorted. “Oh yeah? What are you going to do if he grabs me and runs?”
“Chase him down and kick his rear. Maybe throw a rock and hit him in the head, and you know I can do it, too.”
Tedi held her friend’s steady gaze for another few seconds. Abby had given Graham Kutz a black eye the other day for picking on her little brother and sister. She could also throw a ball better than anybody in the school. And she was a loyal friend, even if she was pushy and had a big mouth.
Tedi sighed, and Abby grinned triumphantly. “Knew you’d go. I’ll watch from here. Don’t worry.”
For a moment, Tedi couldn’t get her feet to work. She did not want to go talk to her father. She didn’t even want to think of him as her father. But she wanted to know what he was up to. It would be better to do it now, with Abby standing by, ready to conk him in the head with a rock, than to wait for him to catch her when she wasn’t expecting him.
When Abby pushed her again, she went, walking slowly, as if sneaking up on a dangerous animal. And he was dangerous. Tedi reached up and fingered the fading scar on her neck where the surgeon had cut into her throat to save her life after Dad had damaged an artery in his drunken rage. He’d also embezzled money where he worked. Everybody in town knew about him. Tedi knew the kids at school talked about her behind her back, and she hated it. She hated what he did to Mom and the way he’d threatened to ruin Mom’s practice again if she tried to get custody. And the only reason he wanted custody was because Mom had to pay so much child support. Tedi would never go back to live with him. She would rather die first.
Her heart was beating so fast now she could barely hear the sound of wind flipping the leaves around on the trees. Breathing hard, yet trying not to make noise, she stopped about ten feet from where he stood, and she studied him.
He looked different. Of course, he wasn’t drunk now, but he looked different from the way he had this spring even when he was sober. He looked smaller somehow. His blond hair looked more gray. He had more creases in his face.
“What are you doing here?” She said it, then held her breath, arms straight at her sides, anger and fear mingling within her. If he moved toward her, she would turn and run.
He swung around, and his pale blue eyes widened, his lips parted slightly in surprise. “Tedi.” He breathed the name. He did not move a muscle, but stood staring at her as if she were a bird he was afraid would fly away.
Her gaze darted toward the kids on the playground, and at the teachers refereeing, and at Abby watching from the door of the school building, hands clenched at her sides, gaze fierce, as though she were getting ready to thwack a baseball.
“I’m sorry, Tedi. I didn’t come here to scare you.” Dad’s voice drew Tedi’s attention back to him, and his blue gaze held her, roving over her face, as if he was studying it. “I wasn’t even going to let you know I was here. I just wanted to see you again. I thought you’d be out on the playground with the rest of the kids.” He sounded hoarse, as if he hadn’t been talking much lately and wasn’t used to it.
He wouldn’t stop looking at her.
“But why are you out?” she demanded.
“The judge released me.”
Tedi felt a fresh surge of anger and fear. What kind of a judge would release a man who’d almost killed his own kid? “Why?”
“I dried out, no booze since…None all summer.”
“Oh, sure. How can you get to the booze when you’re locked up? That doesn’t prove anything.”
“That’s what I asked them. I was afraid to leave. I didn’t trust myself because I can’t forget what I did to you.” He slowly took his hands out of his pockets and spread them, taking care not to get close to her. “The judge assigned a new, young attorney to my case, and the guy got me out on bail because I had a good record at the detox center, and I’d never been in trouble with the police before, and—”
“But I almost died!” Tedi crossed her arms over her chest. How could they just let him go like that? “Mom said you couldn’t get out to hurt me again.”
He winced as if someone had slugged him. A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I won’t hurt you again.” Now he seemed to study the ground as closely as he had been studying her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I just wanted to see you, see for myself how you were doing…. I guess I had to make sure you were really okay. I was so scared that night…so sure that…And the police took me in while you were being flown out for surgery.” He looked up then, and his gaze pinpointed the scar at her throat. “I did that and so many other things. All these months in detox I’ve realized how much I did to destroy what I had with you, and…and I was the one who destroyed the relationship I had with your mother. I’ve been forced to admit so much this summer, so much I didn’t want to see, but that I can’t afford to forget.”
Tedi watched his face and listened to his voice. He’d apologized before. Maybe he’d meant it when he said it, but what good had it done?
His gaze drifted again to her throat, and she knew he was looking at the scar, then he closed his eyes for a moment, squeezing them tightly shut, as if he were afraid they would burn out if he kept them open any longer. He looked old. He was the same age as Mom, but he looked a lot older than she did. His eyes looked wrinkled, and they turned down at the corners, the way his mouth did.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, and he raised his head and gazed into her eyes again. “I can’t ever make it up to you, Tedi, and I’m so sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But I’m going to try anyway. Tedi, I’m not supposed to be here, but I want to get permission to try to see you again. Before I do that, though, I want to know if it’s okay with you. If not, I’ll wait.”
She didn’t move, didn’t speak. She was too shocked, not by his words, but by the fact that she realized she didn’t hate him totally. Mostly, but not totally.
“I’d like a chance to talk with you, Tedi. Your mother would have to be there with us.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re talking to me now .”
“What I mean is that I want to start seeing you again, regularly, like the kind of visitation you had with your mom when you lived with me.”
She took a step forward, feeling braver. “Mom would never let you take me away from her again. Never! And I will never go back.”
He sighed and held her gaze steadily. “I wouldn’t try to get you back. If I got to visit with you, I wouldn’t even touch you. I promise. I just want to find out if it would be okay with you before I ask for permission from your mother.’ His light blue eyes filled with tears, and he looked away for a moment. “It’s going to take a long time to become friends again, but I have to try.”
Friends? Ha! A friend didn’t try to kill a friend. And a friend didn’t try to keep a friend from her mother or try to ruin her mother’s name in town just out of spite. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
He reached up with the back of his hand and brushed his tears away. “Of course you don’t. I’ve been talking with my counselor about it, and he said it would be unreasonable for me to expect that. I just felt like I had to make contact.”
So now he’d made contact. What else would he want? When Dad was nice, it was always because he wanted something. Why was she even listening to him? Why was she talking to him and thinking about what it might be like to see him again? She should hate him for what he had done to her and Mom. She shouldn’t’ve even come out here.
