A Father's Gift Page 7

  Jack sighed. “I’m sure she likes you. It has nothing to do with that. She’s just a very busy lady.” He kissed Mary Alice good-night, then Mary Louise.

  Mary Louise sighed loudly and turned on her side as he walked to their door. “I guess we ain’t never gonna learn to swim.”

  “It’s okay, Lou,” Mary Alice called over to her sister. “We’ll just get drowneded together.”

  Jack stopped at the door, his hand on the light switch. When had they learned to play hardball like this? He didn’t have a chance. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll ask her. But if she says no, I’m signing you up for lessons at the YMCA.”

  “She won’t,” Mary Louise sang out.

  “She’s nice,” Mary Alice added.

  “Good night.” Jack pulled the door until it was almost closed.

  How was he going to be able to drift away if he was having to ask Cassie for more help?

  * * *

  Cassie pulled out the last of the weeds and sat back on her heels, admiring her results. This bed almost looked perfect, with its impatiens and pansies and azaleas. All that was missing was time for the plants to grow to full size. Of the three houses she’d rehabbed over the past six years, this one had the best yard. As she gathered up her bucket of weeds, Ollie suddenly sat up, woofing suspiciously.

  Cassie turned around. A man was walking up the front walk—Jack. Her heart skipped a beat, but she forced a frown onto her face as he got close. Ollie stood, and woofed more definitively, then trotted over to meet him.

  “Hi, Ollie,” Jack said as he looked up at Cassie. “Hi.”

  “Hello.” She knew she sounded unfriendly, but she couldn’t help it. She needed to keep her heart in line.

  Ollie greeted Jack like a long-lost friend, jumping, panting, woofing until Jack bent over and scratched the animal’s fuzzy head. He sent Ollie into a delirium of happiness.

  Cassie walked down to join them. “You’re spoiling him, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking his hand away from the dog’s head. Unfortunately, Ollie wasn’t about to give up the attention and he bumped Jack’s thigh with his head until Jack went back to his scratching. “He’s too big to argue with.”

  “And I thought you were so tough,” she mocked. His eyes seemed to have a definite gleam today, and she felt a little tremor of concern. She would need to be extra strong. “So, can I do something for you?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure? “Did you want that wood after all?” she asked. “Watson’s came yesterday and cleaned it all up. I’d told them there was no hurry and that they should do the other storm-damage work first.”

  “No, that wasn’t what I came about.” He took a deep breath as if preparing to jump into deep water. “Is there some place we can talk?”

  She just paused. This sounded more serious—or more personal. She told herself not to be such a chicken and nodded. “We can go out back.”

  She led him around the house. The yard was small, but private. A picnic table sat in the shade of an old elm tree.

  “Want a soda or something?”

  “No, thanks anyway.”

  They sat at the table. The breeze carried the scents of summer on the air as well as the sounds—lawns being mowed, kids playing baseball and birds celebrating the day. Ollie wandered off, sniffing the bushes as if checking for intruders that might have snuck in during the five minutes he was away.

  “So, what can I do for you?” Cassie finally asked.

  Jack looked her straight in the eye. “I’m trying to convince the girls to take swimming lessons.”

  “They have to want to,” she said.

  “That might not be until they’re forty,” he said. “They keep turning me down.”

  “Like I said,” she told him. “They have to want to learn if it’s going to work.”

  “They are willing,” he said. “But only if you’re the teacher.”

  Her heart turned fearful. “How did I get into it?”

  “You said you’d taught swimming.”

  Ollie came over as if on some invisible leash, resting his head against her arm. She petted him slowly, but was almost suspicious of his presence. He was liable to play some trick on her and get her involved with Jack again.

  “I’m not sure this would be any wiser than you trying to teach them,” she said. Seeing Jack often wouldn’t be, she was sure of that. “The Y has any number of programs. They can help you.”

  “They don’t have anything until the end of June. I checked.”

  “That’s less than a month from now.”

  “I was hoping you could give them a head start. You know, just take the two of them and show them how much fun they can have.”

  She needed to stay separate in order to stay safe. “I know the director of education at the Y,” she said. “I’m sure I can get her to recommend one of her regular instructors.”

  “My kids want you.”

  “I haven’t done any instructing for a few years now.”

  “That’s okay,” Jack replied. “I don’t want anything fancy. If they’ll get their feet wet without screaming, I’ll be happy as a pig in slop.”

  She wanted to laugh, but knew better. “You really have a way with words,” she said.

  “It’s that chip on my shoulder, always sticking its head out and daring someone to start a fight.”

  “Well, I’m sure not looking for a fight.” She wasn’t looking for anything even if her heart was saying the opposite. She wrenched her gaze away from him and turned her attention to the dog at her side.

  “I know you’re busy,” Jack said. “But I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

  Cassie let her eyes go back to his. A sudden thought snuck into the light. “I don’t need any money,” she said slowly. Here was her chance, if she dared take it. He was a lawyer. And he specialized in finding ancestors. “But there is something…”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  She stopped petting Ollie and closed her eyes, gathering all of her strength, before rushing ahead. “You said you specialize in hereditary law and learning about ancestors. Well, I want you to help me find out who my father was.”

  “Are you adopted?” he asked.

  She opened her eyes and looked his way for the briefest of moments. Concern was there, and compassion and a something else she couldn’t define. But it was the past that had a hold on her. It was weighing down so heavily that she could barely breathe, and somehow she knew it was time to ask for help.

  “Yes, but I know who my biological father was.”

  Suddenly she shook her head. She sounded like a lunatic and took a deep breath. “It’s coming out all mixed up. My biological parents died when I was eight. I know my father’s name. What I don’t know is where he came from, what his background was, or anything like that. I’ve found out that some of the things he told us weren’t true.”

  Jack frowned. She knew just what he was thinking. She could read his reluctance in his eyes, but she had gone beyond all these arguments already. She’d had twenty years to argue things out with herself.

  “People hide things for good reason,” he said. “Usually because the things hidden have the power to hurt. Maybe it would be best to leave well enough alone.”

  He didn’t understand. No one could—not unless they lived along an emotional fault line with a crumbling foundation beneath them. “There’re things I need to know.”

  The tension was almost thick enough to see. She could hear Ollie panting beneath the table and the sound of traffic out on the street, but mostly she could hear Jack’s silence. He had to help her; she had to make him understand that she needed the truth.

  She wanted to tell him more, but she hadn’t opened herself to anyone in years. She’d never even told Fiona or Sam any of this, yet now the words wanted to pour out to a relative stranger.

  “We were close,” she said slowly. “Fiona had Mom to talk to. I had Dad. I could tell him anything an
d he never made me feel stupid or silly or incompetent. One day after I got in a fight with some neighborhood kids who were making fun of Fiona, he called me his Little Warrior Princess. Said I was the strongest of them all, and that I should never change.”

  “It sounds like he loved you a lot.” Jack’s voice was quiet, a gentle balm on stinging wounds.

  She was tired of hurting. “He lied to us.” She whispered the words, but knew he heard them. “He said he and Mom were going to Milwaukee about a job, but they died in a car accident in Minnesota.”

  Jack said nothing. Thankfully, not even the old, You must have misunderstood.

  Cassie went on. “Alex—that’s Fiona’s fiancé—found out Dad was sick and thinks he was going to the Mayo Clinic for treatment. Some co-worker of Dad’s said Dad told him he was going to get his heart healed.”

  “And lied so you wouldn’t worry.” Jack nodded. “That makes sense.”

  She gave him a look and he backed down. “The people he was supposed to be descended from had no descendants,” she said. “He never talked about his childhood or his family or where he went to school. It was like he didn’t exist before he came here.”

  Jack sighed and reached over for her hands. His hold was tight and secure, as if he was willing his common sense into her. As if he were trying to hold her down to earth and reality.

  But she’d had a long tiresome dance with every version of reality over the past twenty years. What she wanted now was the truth.

  “Maybe he didn’t exist before,” Jack said. “Maybe he’d been in some kind of trouble and wanted to put it all behind him. Can’t you accept him as the man he was to you, not the stranger he was before?”

  “I’ve thought of all that,” she assured him. “I realize he might have a prison record, or maybe was on the run, or all sorts of things. But I still have to know. I have to know who he was to know if all the things he said were the truth or a lie.”

  Jack just sighed and she knew she’d won. She felt no sense of winning, just a deep certainty that somehow now she would know. A stillness settled on her soul.

  “What do you know about him?” Jack asked.

  “His name—Joe Fogarty—and social security number.”

  He nodded. “That’s good enough for a start.”

  “Great.” She hoped her voice sounded livelier than her heart felt. It was a trade-off—her need to know for her need for privacy—but it was a trade that had to be made. “When do you want me to start the swimming lessons?” she asked. “How about tomorrow evening?”

  “That should be fine,” he said. “You can use the swimming pool at the university. It has a shallow end for little kids.”

  “Seven o’clock okay?”

  “Sure.” He paused. “You know, looking into your father’s past will be like cutting open a feather pillow in the wind. Once it’s done, it’ll be impossible to put things back together the way they were before.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “I’ll pick the girls up and take them myself. Probably best if you’re not at the pool.”

  “Okay.”

  She had this urge to flee, to run from those blue eyes that were churning with her troubles. She didn’t want to see her secrets in his gaze, didn’t want to hear the sympathy in his voice. She didn’t want to feel so vulnerable and exposed. Those dark corners of her heart had been hidden for so long, just the very brightness of his gaze hurt.

  But she was good at pretending. She smiled at him and tossed a ball for Ollie as if the world wasn’t spinning the wrong way. Jack could be trusted. He wouldn’t turn on her, wouldn’t use her weaknesses against her. But even as she smiled and walked back to the front of the house with him, her heart was frozen with fear.

  Jack stopped at the edge of his property and, for some reason she didn’t understand, she stretched up and brushed his lips with hers. Maybe it was to prove how unaffected she was by their conversation or by his presence, but it didn’t quite work that way. Somehow it rocked Cassie right to the very core of her being. There was such gentleness in his touch, such respect and kindness and even a hint of something like awe. It felt like the beginning of something. Like the sprouting of a tiny acorn that would grow into a majestic oak.

  Like she needed a good night’s sleep and the return of her common sense.

  Jack couldn’t sleep. He was tired enough, but somehow sleep wouldn’t come. Moments from the past weeks kept replaying through his head. Cassie at her store with that annoyed little gleam in her eye when he’d wanted to talk plumbing with a man. Cassie at the pizza parlor. Cassie at the picnic. Cassie at her house. Every scene ending with his lips on hers—even the ones that hadn’t ended that way.

  He heard a truck with a bad muffler go down U.S. Route 31 at 1:34 a.m., then the ConRail train in the distance at 2:02 a.m. Two cars were drag racing down O’Brien at 3:14 a.m. and an ambulance went speeding off to a rescue at 3:54 a.m.. When the first twitterings of the birds sounded soon after 4:00 a.m., he gave it up and got out of bed. He slipped on some shorts and his running shoes and let himself quietly out of the house; then over to the deck where he couldn’t see Cassie’s house. An invigorating run would do him wonders, he thought, and leaned against the deck railing to stretch the backs of his legs.

  The day was just starting to come alive—just as he was starting to come alive when he was around Cassie.

  It was a disquieting thought; one that seemed to jar with the peace of the morning. He already was alive, he told himself. He didn’t need one certain woman to make him more so. Besides, how could you be more alive? Alive was alive; there was no more-or-less.

  Yet his heart beat faster when Cassie was near. His smile seemed nearer and the world brighter.

  Hogwash.

  He straightened. The hell with stretching. He would just let a gentle jog stretch things out for him and he started down the driveway, determinedly keeping his eyes from the dark house next door.

  It was just moving to a new place, that was all. Everything was unsettled so it was hard to sleep. Things would settle down in a few weeks.

  He turned up the street—away from Cassie’s house—and enjoyed the early-morning solitude. The birds’ singing had grown but the light was only beginning. Fingers of morning were just starting to reach out across the dark sky. He waved at a sleepy-looking man in a van, stopping at occasional houses to deliver the newspaper, and then at a dog in a backyard who took offense at Jack’s freedom.

  Cassie would be coming by tonight for the girls’ first swimming lesson. He needed to figure out his strategy before then. He turned down a side street and smelled bacon cooking. He passed a house with warm light spilling out of kitchen windows, then slipped back into the shadows. With each step he took, he felt a growing sense of confidence. He was in control of his life.

  It didn’t matter how much he and Cassie were thrown together; he was in control of his feelings. His heart wouldn’t go soft and tender anymore. It wouldn’t fall for a laughing smile and chocolate-brown eyes.

  He had nothing to be afraid of. Love held no attraction for him anymore. He had seen it at its worst and knew he wanted none of it. He would be Cassie’s friend. But that was all.

  Around another corner and suddenly he was back on his own street. The day was coming faster now; there was no stopping it. Like a dam bursting, the morning sun was cascading into the shadowy dawn and sending the darkness away.

  He slowed to a stop as he neared his house, an uneasiness catching up with him again, now that he could see her house ahead of him. He could also see Cassie’s smile in the sunshine and the glow of her eyes in the coming day. He could hear her laughter in the song of the birds and taste the softness of her lips in the morning air. Her image in his mind was playing hardball.

  But then as he stomped up the walk, he knew the answer. This was all because he hadn’t paid her back. If he would pay his plumbing debts, he would be left in peace. It was just that simple.

  Cassie rang Jack’s doorbell and then looked
around the yard as she waited. She’d spent a restless night, regretting confiding in Jack, yet knowing that she’d had no choice. So now what? Were they close friends now that he knew the secrets of her soul? Or were they only business acquaintances who just happened to know a little about each other? Cassie was going to opt for the latter.

  “May I help you?” Aunt Hattie’s gray hair was pulled back in a bun, giving her face a severe expression that her voice didn’t dispel. She looked like an aunt who knew that she would never make grandma.

  Cassie quailed slightly. “I’m here to pick up the girls,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Cassie’s stomach danced nervously. Aunt Hattie seemed to know a lot, but it didn’t look like she agreed with any of it. What was bothering her? Did she object to Cassie, to the swimming, or to all of the above?

  “Won’t you come in, please?” Aunt Hattie stepped back from the doorway to let Cassie in. “My nephew and the girls will be here in a moment.”

  Cassie walked into the foyer and stopped there.

  “Won’t you sit down, please?” Aunt Hattie had waved toward the living room. “I’ll tell them you’re here.”

  Cassie looked into the living room. All neat, everything in its place, and not a speck of dust. Even the throw pillows were straight. Walking in there would be like sending Ollie into an operating room.

  “I’ll just wait out here,” Cassie said.

  “Very well,” Aunt Hattie replied, before disappearing up the stairs.

  Cassie waited until the woman’s skirts disappeared from view before leaning against the wall and breathing a sigh of relief.

  Aunt Hattie reminded Cassie of their first foster mother—a stern woman who believed that the world was divided into ladies and gentlemen. The woman had respected Fiona and doted on Samantha but had kept telling Cassie that she acted like a wild animal, had kept insisting Cassie would have to acquire some manners if she hoped to find a good husband. The woman’s attitude had made Cassie act up all the more; but deep down, even though she hated to admit it, Cassie had always been intimidated by the Aunt Hatties of the world.