0758215630 (R) (31 page)

“And him?” Noah waved a hand in the general direction of Joe, who at that moment rounded a sharp bend in the road and disappeared from sight.

“Even harder to say. I don’t know him all that well.”
Except in bed.
Which of course made her a complete idiot. She should have seen this coming, should have been ready—or at least got some kind of promise from Joe about how he’d act when he met Phylly. Not that he’d done or said anything terrible, but God, did he have to look like Dr. Death when he came up those stairs? He’d been as rigid and straight as the steel girders supporting Noah’s wild see-through house. Phylly had taken one good look at him and collapsed in a manner fitting the most delicate of Victorian maidens. Then, after Joe had helped Noah and her get Phylly onto Noah’s bed, he’d taken off without another word.

April should have known Phylly would recognize him instantly from his striking silver eyes—so like her own. The family resemblance was uncanny—as it was between Cornie and Noah Bristol, which made April doubly grateful Cornie hadn’t come along to complicate things even further.

Standing here, cold and edgy, looking through a glass wall, with the father Cornie didn’t know she had, her mother in meltdown, and the man she’d come to care about more than was wise traipsing around in the woods somewhere, April was coming to believe their unknown stalker was the least of her concerns.

She didn’t know the precise moment her coping skills had evaporated, but they were long gone, leaving in their place only impotence and the sense she was tapped out. Dry. “Could I have a glass of water, please?” Better water than more of Noah’s questions.

“I’ll get it.”

He was back within seconds. Handing her the water, he said, “And you, April? Will you be all right?”

No. And I won’t be until Phylly and Joe are.
Which might well be never. That thought entered stage-left and she hated it, for Phylly’s sake, for Joe’s—and for her own. She sipped some water. “Yes, I’m okay. Thanks,” she finally said. And she was okay—for now.

“You knew about this? About Joe and Phylly.” He jerked his head toward the road Joe had walked away on. The day, what was left of it, was sinking deep into shadow, the cloud cover making it unusually dark and ominous looking. The curling mist between the trees, while still low, had coalesced into heavy gray billows of fog. Even the shine of Noah’s bright pine floors was graying down in the pallid light. “Some of it. Most of it, Phylly kept to herself.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Momentarily, he looked irritated.

“Phylly’s idea of dealing with unpleasant or difficult things is to pretend they never happened. Her premise being that if you don’t talk about it, it ceases to exist.”

“I’m learning that—or at least I’m trying to.”

“Her way works as well as any other, I suppose.” April said, compelled to defend Phylly. And herself. She hadn’t been above playing Phylly’s denial game herself—until the name Victor Allan reemerged, like some rabid disease out of a long remission.

“Depends on what your definition of ‘works’ is, I guess. But all that keeping secrets has a price. Sometimes too high a price. I don’t want that for her.”

April saw the concern in his face. “You and Phylly,” she started, choosing her words, knowing it really was none of her business, “what was between you was . . . special?”

“Is
special,” he corrected. He met her eyes, his own expression determined. “Very special. She just doesn’t know it.”

She raised a brow, wondered if Phyllis had told him about Cornie, but sensed she hadn’t. She also sensed Noah Bristol was a decent man, a stable, settled-down kind of man, who’d probably scared the sap out of the young, free-living, marriage-phobic Phylly.
You passed on a good one, Phylly.

He went on, “But none of that matters right now. What matters is getting those secrets of hers out in the open, whether she likes it or not.” He glanced at the closed bedroom door where Phylly lay, playing out her drama, and firmed his lips as though he’d made a decision. “Come with me,” he said.

Curious, April followed him upstairs and into his office, really more of a glass box that sat atop the larger glass box below it. The room faced a rolling Pacific Ocean. Stepping into the room, April said, “This is beautiful, but why so much—” she stopped, not her business really. But the idea of living this transparent a life surrounded by water and wilderness made her curious.

“Glass?” He finished for her while opening a bottom drawer in his desk, a desk that sat center stage in the room. Low shelves crammed with books formed a base on three sides of the office.

“Yes. It’s unusual.” She took a couple of steps, turned back to him. “You built it yourself?”

“I designed it and had it built.” He put a burgundy-colored journal with a cream spine on his desk, and began to leaf through it, adding without inflection. “As a child I spent a good portion of my time locked in a closet. This”—he waved a hand around the airy room—“as a shrink would no doubt confirm, is the result of that experience.”

“A closet. Really?” April was aghast.

“Really.” He opened the journal. “We all have things that shape us—that closet was one of mine.” He flipped a few more pages, swiveled the book, and shoved it toward her. “Chances are what you’re about to read in this journal will shape yours.”

An hour later, April, with hands so shaky they barely kept the thick journal she held from crashing to the pine floors, took a breath, and opened Noah’s bedroom door. Although the room was dim in the darkening twilight, Phylly hadn’t turned on the bedside lamp.

She sat in shadow on Noah’s bed, propped up by pillows, a box of tissue beside her and a wad of them in her fidgety hands. She’d obviously splashed her face with water, because her usually meticulously made-up face looked pale and tragic.

Clutching the journal to her chest, April walked to the bed and sat down on its edge. “You look like you were run over by a truck,” she said to Phylly. “In forward and reverse.”

“Thanks for that.” Phylly’s eyes found the journal. “Oh, God.” She pulled herself higher against the headboard. “Noah’s told you.”

“Yes.”

Her expression stark, Phylly said, “I didn’t know, April. If I had—”

“You’d have told me. I know that. I’m not here to blame you for anything. This”—she patted the journal she still held to her breasts—“doesn’t take away from what you did for me. You saved my life. I won’t ever forget that. Ever.”

Phylly’s eyes went soft with tears. “In some ways, baby, I think you saved mine. Back then I was such a screw-up, if I hadn’t had you to look out for—make me act at least a little bit better than I might have without you—I don’t know what I’d have done. What I would have become.” She touched April’s face. “I love you, kiddo, and I swear if I’d have known . . .”

“Will you stop beating yourself up. You didn’t know, and it was a long time ago. Another time. Another place. So let’s not go there.” She rubbed the journal idly, her heart feeling thick and full—and scared. “Victor had someone go back for Gus, did Noah read you that part? But he was gone.” April didn’t know where he had gone, but at least it wasn’t to the hell Victor planned for her. She hoped he’d found a safe place, a good heart—as she had with Phylly. Her heart ached with the desire to see him again, had ever since Seattle. She’d felt so close to him there.

“Good for him.” Phylly dabbed at her eyes. “You always told me your brother was a smart one.”

“He was. Very smart. And handsome—at least to my nine-year-old eyes. He was my best friend.”
Only friend.
“He gave me a skipping rope . . .” Thinking—and hurting—at the memory of losing Gus those long years ago, she faltered. Everything was confusing and the pain of it heightened, mixed up as it was with new family, yet to be met. But later when everyone was safe . . .

Phylly’s eyes were cast down, as though ashamed. She was twiddling with her tissue.

Resting the journal on her lap, April looked at the only mother she’d ever known. Her crazy, kind, wild, loyal, and loving mother-like-no-other—and her dearest and most cherished friend. “I can’t believe I never caught on to you not being able to read.” She paused. “Rusty knew, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, Rusty knew.” Nodding, she closed her eyes against the grief that came with the name, then coughed as if to shake it off. “Plus we illiterates are pretty damn smart,” she said, shooting her a quick glance. “Not to mention sneaky. I got by with signs, a few simple words that I memorized, stuff like that, and staying close to home and friends helped. You helped, too.” She smiled a bit. “Not that you knew it—you just thought when I asked you to read things to me out loud, it was reading practice.”

“Definitely sneaky.” She smiled in return, remembering how adamant Phylly was about her going to school. Getting her smarts, she’d called it. She had to be near death and running a thermometer-breaking fever before Phylly would let her miss a day. She’d go on and on about her report card, do a dance when she brought home A’s and nag her with ferocity if a grade slipped. “But you cared—you always cared. And you let me know it.”

The smile dropped from Phylly’s face, and she grasped April’s hand, held it tight. “Cared? Yes, but I wasn’t smart. Too busy covering up, playing the dumb blond party girl to go to school, do something about my own ignorance. If I’d done that, I’d have read Victor’s journal, and I’d have told you about Gus . . . called your grandfather. You’d have had a real home instead of living with an airhead showgirl and having to earn your college tuition by doing the bare-assed Vegas thing. I mean that was okay for me—I didn’t mind it. But you . . . I know how hard it was.”

“It paid the bills, Phylly. And I loved that ‘airhead showgirl.’ She taught me”—she smiled a bit—“how to strut my stuff, not to be shy, or afraid.”

“Now that, I’ll take some credit for.”

They smiled at each other and Phylly sniffled.

April tapped the journal. “And now, thanks to your thieving ways, I know I have a grandfather.”

“He’s probably ten feet under by now, April. That journal is over twenty years old.”

She shook her head. “He’s alive. Noah checked. And when this other ugly business is over, I’ll go see him.” She again rested the book on her lap, took a breath. “Funny, I remember my grandmother. She always smelled like flowers, and I remember her hugs and how she’d kiss my hair, but I have no memory of a grandfather.”

“Your mother’s dad, from what Noah read me,” Phylly said, looking brighter now. “I guess the only reason that entry was in the book was because Victor found out he had money. That had him dithering about where he’d make the most profit, carrying out his original shipping plan or going for some kind of reward for getting you back to your grandfather. What’s his name again?”

“Peter Malloy.”

“Right.” Her lips sealed tight. “I guess the Asian deal won out because the customer had already made a down payment on you, and Victor was afraid of getting his skinny throat cut if he didn’t produce you on schedule.” Her expression shifted to triumphant. “He had to give back the money, you know—after I took you. He was so pissed.”

“But if he knew where you were—after taking me—why didn’t he come after us? Try to get me back.”

Lifting a shoulder, she said, “Too late. It was a year before I, uh, talked to him again. And it wasn’t as if I gave him our address, you know. And I went to him to get the money.” She rolled her eyes. “God I must have been crazier than I was broke. Anyway, he did find out where I lived eventually, but me having that journal held him off. Funny, huh? Me not even able to read it.” She shook her head. “Hell, he even asked me to come back to him. The sick bastard. I made a lot of mistakes in my time, but taking up with Victor Allan was the topper.”

“I won’t argue with that.” April hesitated to broach the subject of Joe, but someone had to. “Something else we need to talk about is Joe. Noah asked about him, and I told him everything I knew—which isn’t much, as you know. But it’s
you
who has to talk to Joe, Phylly. Only you. You owe him and you know it.”

“Oh, shit . . .”

“And when you’re done telling him—I want you to tell me. Everything.”
Because I need to understand the man who I’m falling in love with.
When that wily, inescapable truth infiltrated her normal good sense, April’s mouth went dry. If there was ever an inconvenient time to get dumb brained over a man, this had to be it. Crazy people after Phyllis—maybe herself, the black-eyed man, a chance to find a grandfather she didn’t know she had, it was too much.
I have to be totally insane. I don’t have room for love . . .
but damned if love cared about her emotional agenda.

When Phylly started to turn away, April tugged on her shoulder, persisted. “After your face-to-face with him on the deck and that movie-star swoon of yours, Joe took off.

He’s been gone for a couple of hours, but I just heard the dog bark, which means he’s probably back. So get your beautiful self together and go in there.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, and you will.”

“He thinks I’m the bitch from hell, and he’s right. I’m the mother who left him. He hates me, April. I can see it in his eyes.” The tears started again.

“Eyes exactly like yours.” April paused. “He has your eyes because he’s your son. Your blood, Phylly. You owe him an explanation. Either he accepts it or he doesn’t— that’ll be his choice—but it’s past time he got the chance to make it, knowing all the facts.”

“God, I’ve fucked up so many lives, April”—Phylly squeezed her eyelids shut, then opened them, her gaze blank, stark—“and I know I’ve got stuff to face. To own up to. But of all the things I’ve done—or not done—leaving Joey like that . . .” She lowered her head, looked away. “I just don’t know where to start.”

April squeezed her hand. “At the beginning, Phylly. It’s the only place
to
start.” April rose from the bed and looked down at the distraught woman. “And after you’ve talked to Joe, you have to talk to Noah. He’s a good man—and he deserves to know that he has a fabulous daughter.”

Walking out of the bedroom, she heard Phylly groan.