Close to Home (20 page)

All the dogs came closer, and while Gracie was literally in “doggy heaven,” Sarah seemed a little overwhelmed. “This is going to be tougher than I thought,” she said.

“It always is,” Lovey commiserated. “And it's not any easier with the cats, let me tell you.” With a shake of her head, she threw up her hands as if her workload were impossible. “A good thing I love animals. Now, here are the ones that I think might work best for you.” She pointed out the four dogs she'd tagged as possible pets, then ushered them into a small room partitioned by glass, where they met each one individually. Henry was a shy border collie mix, Shogun some kind of shepherd, while Brawn was a purebred husky, and Xena, the only female, was a blond mutt with Lab and pit bull traits visible.

“Can't we take them all?” Gracie asked their mother in her most angelic tone.

Sarah choked out a laugh. “I think we need to start with one dog.”

Gracie looked them all over. “Xena,” she finally decided, but she was clearly torn.

“Okay with you?” Sarah asked Jade.

Jade was honest. “I like Brawn.”

“Well, great,” Sarah said, heaving a sigh. “Guess I'm the deciding vote.” She glanced up at Lovey. “Xena, it is.”

Jade couldn't help saying under her breath, “Big surprise,” and caught a warning glance from her mother, which was probably earned. Truth to tell, she was being bitchy about the whole thing. The dog was for Gracie, and she should be able to pick it out. “Xena's okay,” she said. “No, I mean it. I like her.” She was nodding her agreement, and Mom seemed relieved.

Lovey actually clapped her hands together. “This is a great fit. Xena's a shelter favorite. Such a sweet girl.” Then she heard herself and added to Sarah, “But she's got a big voice.”

“Good,” their mother said.

“So let's get that paperwork rolling!” Lovey was already leading the way to the reception area where the same man who'd shown up at the pizza parlor, Clint Walsh, their neighbor, was waiting, a leash in one hand, and a wallet and bag of dog food on the counter.

Jared had set aside his broom and was running a credit card.

Walsh glanced up as the door opened and they walked through. His smile was less tentative than before, a crooked grin slashing across his face. “Hey, Sarah,” he said as the machine chunked out a receipt.

Jade's mother forced a smile. “I guess I forgot what a small town this really is.”

“I say it's bite-sized,” Lovey chimed in.

Walsh nodded at Jade and her sister.

“You two know each other?” Lovey asked.

“I grew up here,” Sarah explained, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Clint was, is a neighbor. We kind of grew up together.”

“Neighbors then. Neighbors now.” He slipped his wallet into the back pocket of his worn jeans.

“How 'bout that? What goes around really does come around,” Lovey said. Clint gave Sarah a look that could have melted steel, and she turned away quickly.

There was definitely something going on between them, Jade thought.

“See ya around,” Walsh said as he hauled the bag of food onto his shoulder and, with the leash in his other hand, walked out the door.

Jared, at Lovey's urging, left to locate Xena.

Meanwhile, the wheels in Jade's mind cranked furiously to that spot she usually avoided. Was it possible? Nah . . . no way . . . but she couldn't help doing the math surrounding her birth. It was a game she'd played with herself ever since she was old enough to understand sex and gestation and the fact that it took around nine months from conception to birth. She'd done the calculations and figured her mom got pregnant soon after graduating from high school. Mom had always mentioned a crush she'd had in college, but that didn't necessarily preclude this neighbor, did it?

Clint Walsh, with his strong jaw, rangy build, and gray eyes, was about the right age.

Mom was acting pretty damned weird, and the “neighbor boy” and “friend of her brothers” was someone Sarah had known in high school. Mom had gotten pregnant right after graduation, the way Jade figured it, so . . . ?

She couldn't help but stare at the man as he walked out the door.

Could it be?

Her throat went dry at the very thought that she'd just been face to face with the man who had sired her, and she walked to the window to watch him get into his truck.

After tossing the bag into the bed of his truck, he opened the driver's side door, then shooed his dog from behind the wheel to the passenger seat. A cowboy? Rancher? And building inspector?

Jade had always imagined her dad was someone famous, like the lead guitarist for a rock band or a movie star or something, a person with whom Sarah had somehow had one glorious, unforgettable night of passion that conceived Jade.

But the neighbor kid?

Friend to Uncle Joe and Uncle Jake?

Where was the romance and fantasy in that?

She watched as the truck's taillights faded away into the dark afternoon. Did he know about Jade? Had he rejected Sarah when he found out she was pregnant with an unwanted child? He was handsome for an old dude, in great shape, but he didn't look much like Jade at all, not that she could see. Then again, she didn't much resemble her mother either.

“Handsome devil, isn't he?” Lovey asked, and Jade jumped, realizing that she'd been caught staring.

“He's an old dude,” she dismissed quickly. She glanced at her mother, but Sarah seemed to be purposely looking at the wall with the dogs.

Lovey said, “Kinda keeps to himself these days, though. Tragic what happened to him.” She turned to Sarah, “Who can survive the loss of a child? I know I couldn't.”

Sarah just nodded, never taking her gaze off the wall, but Jade keyed in on Lovey. Clint Walsh
was
a father? There had been another child? A . . . a potential sibling? “What happened?” she asked.

“Car accident,” Lovey said sadly. “His wife was at the wheel.” Shaking her head, she added, “Single car and the boy . . . well, he didn't make it. It wasn't much of a surprise that the marriage crumbled and Andrea moved back home, somewhere in California, I think.” As if she realized she was gossiping, Lovey looked toward the door behind the counter just as Jared reappeared, this time leading Xena, who was pulling at the leash, straining to get to Gracie, who was already on her knees, arms spread wide to hug their new pet. “Yes, well, let's get to it, shall we? Jared, why don't you help Gracie and Xena get acquainted with the leash and crate and all, while we finish up the paperwork.”

Sarah and Lovey started going through the adoption process while Gracie petted and walked Xena around the interior of the building.

Jade could barely breathe. She had questions. A million of them. All about Clint Walsh. But she couldn't ask them here, not in front of Lovey or even Gracie, so she held her tongue, though it damn near killed her.

C
lint dropped the bag of feed near the back door, hung his jacket on a peg, then walked into the kitchen and to the cabinet over the refrigerator where he kept his booze. His dad and grandfather had used this same cupboard as a liquor cabinet, and he figured some of the dusty bottles inside were as old as he was. He found a bottle of Jack Daniels, eyed the contents, and decided a drink was in order. “ 'Bout that time, isn't it?” Clint asked and leaned down to scratch the dog behind his ears. Tex's tail whipped wildly back and forth, and he placed his front paws on Clint's jean-clad knee in order to reach Clint's face with his tongue.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I love you too,” he said, then grabbed a couple of ice cubes and poured a healthy shot of whiskey into his glass before taking a long swallow. Twice within a week he'd run into Sarah.

The two face-to-faces were just the tip of the iceberg. It was only going to get worse as he'd be up at Blue Peacock Manor, inspecting the construction work for God only knew how long. He took another long swallow of his drink and once again considered pawning the job off to Doug Knowles, but Clint knew, deep in his gut, he wouldn't go through with it. Then there was the matter of their co-owned fence line. He took another swallow.

The truth was that he actually liked seeing Sarah again. He'd found her fascinating in the past, and, he'd recently learned, his interest in her hadn't completely dissipated, no matter what he'd told himself over the years. “Idiot,” he muttered and crunched on an ice cube.

Tex, looking up, eagerly whined to be fed.

“Yeah, I know.” Using the pocketknife his dad had given him, he sliced the bag, measured out a ration for Tex, and as the dog devoured the morsels, poured the rest of the sack of feed into a big plastic bin.

All the while he was thinking of Sarah Stewart. No, wait. Sarah McAdams. She had an ex-husband tucked away somewhere in the South, if he'd heard right. He'd tried not to pay attention, convinced himself that she was out of his life forever, but now that she had returned to Stewart's Crossing and was once again living in the property abutting his, he'd been thinking about her more than he wanted to admit.

He deliberately set thoughts of her aside for the moment as he carried the remainder of his drink into the den, took a seat at his desk, paid some bills online, and checked his e-mail in case anything had come across his desk after he'd left for the day. His hours at the office weren't eight to five, as he was often on a jobsite and could do some of his work from home.

Nothing important.

Good.

Finished with paperwork, he decided it was time to check on the livestock. Night wasn't that far from falling, and the cattle would soon let him know that they wanted to be fed. He glanced out the windows to the barn where the three horses he kept were herded together. Beyond the outbuildings and pasture was a tract of old-growth timber that no one in his family had ever wanted to cut. Farther up the hill, toward the cliffs rising over the river, the third story, roof, and cupola of Blue Peacock Manor were just visible.

“A long time ago,” he reminded himself as his gaze dropped to the desktop again and landed on a picture of Brandon, his son, age five, astride a painted pony. Against a backdrop of a blue sky and the dry grass of summer, Brandon was wearing a Stetson that was several sizes too big, a cowboy shirt complete with pearl snaps, a kerchief around his neck, and rawhide chaps over his little, jean-clad legs. He squinted toward the camera's eye and still managed to grin, showing off teeth that appeared too small for his freckled face.

Clint's throat grew hot, and his jaw tightened as he picked up the 5x7 in its silver frame to stare at his son's image.

I miss you, boy,

His heart twisted, and that familiar ache came over him again, a wound that never quite scarred over but still cut through him. Normally, in order to keep his sanity he tried hard not to review every detail of the tragedy, but just now he wanted to. Maybe it had something to do with seeing Sarah again . . . old friends and relationships. Whatever the case, he let himself remember.

Brandon had been gone for just over five years, the result of Andrea's lead foot and a faulty car seat. She'd survived the single-car accident when her Chevy had slid off the road and hurtled into an ancient fir tree; their son and marriage had not. Clint stared at the photo for a second; then, as was always the case, he set the picture back in its place on the dusty desk. He'd never get over his son's death, he knew that now, but he needed to keep living.

Though he'd consoled himself with the simple fact that Brandon had died instantly, he couldn't help replaying the hours leading up to the accident in his mind. If he, instead of Andrea, had taken Brandon into town—that was the plan, until the pump had stopped working and he'd made an emergency phone call—if he'd tossed Andrea the keys to his truck, newer than her sedan by a decade, if he'd hung up the phone as they were leaving and given his son a hug or a thumbs-up, or if he'd done any damn thing, changed even a second of that day, maybe Brandon would still be alive.

But, of course, he hadn't done any of those things, and that terrible, fateful day had played out, destroying his reason for living. Despite prayers and sympathy from friends, and regardless of more than a year of grief counseling, he'd never come to peace with what had happened.

He remembered arriving at the accident scene, where the first responders, firefighters and cops, the lights on their vehicles strobing the woods, were already prying open the door to the Chevy. The car was mutilated—metal twisted, glass shattered. The still, summer air had been pierced with shouts and orders from the men and women trying to save a boy who had already died. Those shouts, along with the soul-numbing screams and violent sobs of his wife, still echoed through his brain.

The EMTs had restrained her as she tried to scramble back to the car, where, he'd seen, the limp form of his son was being pulled from the wreckage. Blood. There had been so much blood. Clint had hurtled from his idling truck and ignored the shouts of rescue workers. Some cop had tried to hold him back, but he'd thrown the woman off to plow forward to his son's lifeless body.

He recalled falling to his knees, his own screams ringing in his ears, and then there had been a dead space, a void, no images in his mind until the grim doctor at the hospital confirmed what he already knew.

“Jesus,” he whispered now.

Squaring his shoulders, he told himself, as he had a thousand times since that day, that he would just have to deal.

Somehow.

Brandon would have been eleven this coming December, a boy starting into adolescence, had he survived. The kid would have been learning to handle the cattle and shoot a rifle, would probably have gone skinny-dipping in the creek, been working hard to perfect a shot beyond the three-point line on the basketball court, been having his first real crush on a girl whose teeth were in braces—

“Damn,” he gritted out, leaning hard on the desk as he forced himself to get a grip. Once the thoughts and memories rolled out, it was hard to hold back the tide, and as Clint struggled, Tex gave out a low, worried growl from his bed in the corner.

“It's okay,” Clint said to the dog, his words hollow. Tossing back the few remaining drops of his drink, he heard the sound of a truck's engine. Tex, with a low, quick woof, was on his feet, trotting expectantly toward the back door, where Clint found Casey Rinaldo, the man who helped Clint with the chores and livestock. With a nod to Casey, he said, “Okay, let's go,” then yanked his jacket off its peg. Slipping his arms through the sleeves, he added to the dog, who was already out the door, “We've got work to do,” silently locking up the haunting memories once more.

 

Sarah finally began to relax as she drove along the rutted lane leading to the house. Though Xena, the Warrior Princess canine, didn't seem much like a guard dog, her pure size might be a deterrent to anyone who was thinking about casing the house or causing trouble.

Except for ghosts,
No dog was going to scare away any otherworldly beings who happened to occupy Blue Peacock Manor.

There are no such things as ghosts, despite what Gracie says or what you may have imagined as a child, Nothing,

But her fingers gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly. As the trees gave way to fields, she noticed the wintry grass undulate in the wind that rushed down the gorge. Not for the first time, she felt as if someone were watching her, that unseen eyes followed the SUV as it emerged from the forest.

“Oh, crap! What's this?” Jade asked, straightening in the front seat as the Explorer rounded the lane's final curve and the house came into view. A white utility van with a metal sign slapped on the driver's door was parked in front of the guesthouse.

Sarah said, “The guy I hired to oversee some of the subs. He's hands-on and does a lot of the framing and trouble-shooting himself.”

“Longstreet?” Jade asked, almost slithering down in the passenger seat.

“Yes. Keith Longstreet. Why?” Sarah parked in her usual spot. The minute the Ford stopped, Gracie and the dog bounded out of the back, the two already fast friends.

Jade, however, didn't move.

Sarah asked, “Do you know him?”

“No, no. Of course not.” Jade peeked her head up and sneaked a look through the passenger window. “Does he have a son?”

“Yeah, a couple, I think. Maybe a daughter too.”

“Great,” she mumbled.

“So, you know Keith's boy? You met him?”

“No. I mean, not really. He goes to my school. He's just some hotshot soccer player, I think. Oh, God!”

The passenger door of the van opened, and a tall, lanky boy of about eighteen in jeans and a sweatshirt with “Crusaders” emblazoned boldly across the front walked up to Keith.

“I take it that's the boy in question,” Sarah said dryly. A good-looking kid with an athletic build and even features, the boy glanced at their car as he flipped his hood over a mop of thick brown hair.

“Yeah.”

“And you have a problem with him?” Sarah guessed.

“No problem.”

“Then why do you look like you just died a thousand deaths?”

“He doesn't know me.”

“So he's not bullying you?”

“God, Mom, no!”

“Then you like him,” she decided, adding, “He's kind of cute.”

“Stop!” Jade shot up in the seat and grabbed the handle of her door. “Why do you always do this? Jesus,
nothing's
going on!” Jade was almost yelling, and she must've heard herself because she lowered her voice. “He and I don't know each other, okay? He's just the temporary biology TA!” She blew out a harsh breath. “Forget I said anything!” Then she was out of the car in an instant and storming up the front path, her long coat billowing in the breeze.

Bemused, Sarah climbed out of her Explorer. Keith raised his hand in greeting, and his son, cell phone in hand, watched Jade's backside as she stormed up the steps to the porch.

“Sorry I'm late,” Sarah called, zipping her jacket. Damn, it was cold.

“No problem. We just got here. Hey,” he said to the boy when he caught him texting. “What'd I tell you about that? Put that danged thing away. We're on the job now.”

The kid slipped his cell into the front pocket of his battered jeans. “Give me a sec, Dad.” Then he yelled to Jade, “Hey, wait!”

Sarah smothered a smile. So much for not knowing her.

Jade, hand on the doorknob, froze for a second, then slowly turned. Her demeanor as he took the steps two at a time was cold fury.

“What the hell is that all about?” Keith wondered aloud.

Though Sarah couldn't make out their brief exchange, she saw the kid holding out a hand with his fingers splayed, as if he was trying to explain something to Jade, who was having none of it. Her jaw was set, her lips flat over her teeth, and she glared up at him in anger. He said something more, and she shook her head. A snippet of the conversation reached Sarah's ears: “. . . and just keep that freak away from me! Got it?” Before he could respond, she yanked open one of the double doors, stepped through, and slammed it behind her.

For a second the kid stood stock-still. Then, hands in his pockets, nose red from the bite of the wind, he turned and jogged back to the area of the driveway where Sarah and Keith were waiting.

“What was that all about?” Keith demanded.

“Nothing,” the boy said.

“Didn't look like nothing.”

His son shifted from one foot to the other.

Longstreet dragged his gaze from his son and said, “This is my boy, Liam. He works with me once in a while. I'm hoping that he'll learn the business. Liam, Mrs. McAdams.”

The kid actually met her eyes and shook her hand with a firm grip. “Nice to meet you,” he said quietly.

“You too, Liam.”

“You're Jade's mother?” His gaze slid back to the house.

“Yes. You go to school with her, right?”

He was nodding, his Crusader sweatshirt confirming the obvious. Liam cast another quick glance at the main house as if to catch another glimpse of Jade.

“Your daughter goes to Our Lady too?” Keith asked, and before Sarah could answer, he added, “Great school. Terrific athletic program. You know, Liam here is the star striker of the soccer team.”

“Dad,” the kid warned, shaking his head.

“Well, you are,” his father bragged. With a knowing smile, he punched his son on the arm. “How many goals have you scored this season?”

“I don't know,” Liam said and blushed.

“Fourteen and counting.” Keith sent a “how about that?” look in Sarah's direction. “A school record already, and the season isn't over. He scored the winning goal against Molalla last week.”