Echoes (8 page)

She shook her head. "Have you?"

"No." It seemed appropriate to offer some kind of reassurance with that, but he didn't. The mere mention of Tori France had left a bad taste in his mouth.

It began to rain in earnest as they bumped down the pitted dirt road. Beside him, Tori's sister gripped the edge of her seat and stared out of her window. The gray outside made a mirror of the glass. In the reflection he could see dirt on her face and mascara rings around her eyes. Above the black smudges, her blue eyes glowed like polished stones. She looked scared, lost. Alone. He touched her hand briefly with his own and she jumped, turning those wide eyes on him in confusion.

"You okay?" he asked, thinking that her hand was cold, wondering if the rest of her was too.

She nodded quickly and looked away. Turning his attention back to the road, he scratched the stubble on his chin and indulged himself in his weekly—
daily
—craving for a drink. If ever he'd been tempted to climb back into the bottle and stay there, it was this week. Each minute he held out was a victory because the struggle was touch and go.

Lightning split the sky into fragmented grays and whites as he pulled into the driveway at Tori's house. The storm had moved fast, even for the mountains. "You have a key?" he asked over the quaking thunder that followed.

"Key..." She looked at him, as if for assistance.

"Don't worry about it. The back door doesn't latch. I'll go around and open up the front."

"No, it's not locked. Caitlin's home."

"Then you can get in okay?" He posed the statement as a question, hoping for a reassuring answer, but her vacant nod didn't do it.

He couldn't just drop her off when she looked like she'd been to hell and back. Not when he'd nearly made road rash out of her. For all he knew she was in shock or had a concussion—or both.

Pulling his collar up, he jumped out into the pouring rain and escorted her to the door. As soon as she was inside, her gaze went immediately to the child sleeping on the couch.

"Oh thank God," she whispered, sagging against the wall.

Grant stood awkwardly by the door. Somewhere a fire was burning and the smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the air. His stomach rolled with thoughts of his dad and the sickening stench that had lingered in the corral long after the coroner had taken his body away. He took deep breaths, fighting the nausea.

"What's wrong?" she asked. Her voice sounded raw yet soft, unbearably gentle. She moved closer and he caught the scent of her perfume, fleeting but enough to pull him back from the horrible memories. He had the sudden desire to take her in his arms, bury his face against her skin and breathe in her sweet fragrance.

Quickly he stepped away. "Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked, hand on the doorknob. His voice sounded gruff.

"I'm fine." She crossed her arms defensively. "Thank you. And...and I'm sorry about your father."

He nodded. Would he ever be able to think about it without feeling like his guts were on fire? He pulled the door open and stepped out. The splash of rain felt good on his suddenly hot face.

"Mr. Weston?" she said.

The tone of her voice, her formal address, the fact that she was Tori France's sister and therefore trouble in the flesh, or maybe nothing more than his desire to touch her, made him hesitate while a feeling like ants parading beneath his skin urged him to bolt.

She looked like an orphan, small and defenseless, framed between the door and the cold gray world. "Yeah?" he said more sharply than he'd intended.

"My name is Tess. Tess Carson."

She said it forcefully, as if she expected he might argue. He searched his dwindling stock for a suitable response. An inadequate "Okay," was all he found.

Her nod was firm and decisive. The gesture seemed more like the seal on a bargain than a casual acknowledgment. He felt like he'd been slipped the wrong script in the middle of a shoot. She stepped back and firmly shut the door.

Soaked right down to his boxers, Grant climbed into the truck and began the ritual of reminding himself of all the reasons why he'd given up drinking.

Chapter Ten

Tess waited until she heard the truck drive away before collapsing against the wall.

Grant Weston.

As if things weren't bizarre enough, she'd just been picked up on the side of a road by a movie star. She brushed a shaking hand over her face. Outside, the world looked wintry and bleak, as alien as the stupefaction she felt inside. Wasn't it just a few hours ago that she'd thought it a day to lift spirits and renew faith? Now, it looked more like the end of the world.

At the far corner of the yard, the pine tree bent and shook in the pounding rain. Off to the left, the pale wood of the baseball bat gleamed in the sodden pine needles. Her thoughts slammed up against a wall of memory and stuck. When had she dropped the bat? She'd gone outside to look for the man riding the horse… That much she remembered. And she'd had the bat.

Her vision blurred and the tree became an unfocused mass of shivering green. What then? What happened then? She'd gone to the tree and looked at Tori's window…. She pushed open the front door and stepped onto the porch. She was freezing in her damp clothes but she didn't turn back to change. The rain pounded against the roof like gunfire. Mentally she tried to retrace her steps from the tree to Grant Weston's truck, but the last thing she remembered was. . . was. . . the man. The man on the horse.

Goose bumps raced over her skin as Tess chased the fleeting memory of him through the dark corridors of her mind. But he vanished in a confusing flash of fragmented images.

"Dammit."

The bat mocked her from the thick bed of needles. Why couldn't she remember dropping it? Why didn't she remember anything after she'd seen the horse and rider disappear in the woods? How could that be? And why did she feel like she'd been gone for hours after that, not minutes? Equally important, where had she
gone
to?

Spooked, she went back inside and closed the door on the storm. Somehow she'd ended up nearly a mile away before she'd run out in front of Grant Weston's truck. But she didn't remember that either.

Grant Weston.

He'd barely responded when she told him that she was Tori's sister, but she sensed his reaction just under the surface. He didn't like her sister, which in itself was strange. Usually men liked her too much. Damn, but she wished she'd tried harder to reach Tori last week. For all she knew, he was the sperm donor to her little pregnancy test upstairs.

She brushed back her hair and pulled out a piece of grass. Her hands still shook, her muscles ached and the skin on her arms felt as tender and raw as her emotions. She must have scraped herself when she'd fallen. She needed some dry clothes and some semblance of order and she needed it now.

Taking a deep, calming breath, she turned down the television. Caitlin made a soft, mewing sound and snuggled into her blanket. Some terrific guardian Tess was turning out to be. Thank God Caitlin hadn't awakened while she was gone.

There it is again. Gone where, Tess? Gone where?

Checking that the front door was locked, Tess went upstairs to the bathroom. Without a window, the beige room seemed dingy and bare. After a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she wished it was dark, too. No wonder Grant Weston had looked at her like she'd crawled out of a cave.

Blocking everything from her mind but the mechanics of changing into dry clothes, Tess shrugged out of her drenched sweatshirt and dropped it in a heap on the tile. Wincing, she did the same with her t-shirt. Shoes and pants joined the pile. She was freezing and her mind felt numb.

As she reached for her dry shirt, the bathroom mirror caught her reflection and bounced it back. She stared at herself in stunned disbelief.

Dark purple and green bruises made a terrifying psychedelic madness out of her shoulders, ribs and thighs. She twisted around to see the splotches on her back as well. Her right arm had an abrasion from elbow to shoulder, adding texture to the color. She was lucky she hadn't broken anything when Grant Weston's truck hit her. Except...he'd said that he didn't hit her.

She stared at herself in the mirror as something shifted deep in her memory. She tried to grasp it but it sifted through her fingers like dust.

What in the hell had happened to her today?

Chapter Eleven

Craig Weston was directing traffic in the rain when Tess and Caitlin arrived at Mountain Bend Elementary School. He wore a bright yellow raincoat and held an umbrella with a downpour of colorful ABCs on its dome. By ones and twos he escorted children from the overhang by the school's front door to the waiting cars in the circular drive.

Tess saw him look their way as she and Caitlin parked in the lot and raced for the door under their own umbrella—blue, no alphabetical adornments. She waved but didn't stop.

A plump secretary with Doris Day hair and buckteeth smiled sweetly at Caitlin and told Tess to wait in the chairs outside of Mr. Weston's office. The school was small. Tess would have been surprised if it had more than two hundred students. Crayon artwork offered some relief to the beige and brown color scheme, but not much. The hall smelled of pine, green beans and wet wool.

After a few thinly veiled glances,
Doris asked, "Have you heard anything from your mother, hon?" in a voice filled with long southern vowels and soft twangy consonants.

Caitlin shook her head.

"Aw, don't you worry sweetie. She'll be home soon. She won't be able to stay away from you for long."

The implication that Tori was gone by choice was not lost on Tess. She glanced at Caitlin from the corner of her eye, but her niece didn't seem to have caught the double meaning in the words. Caitlin nodded and continued to watch her swinging toes. For the first time, Tess wondered what Caitlin thought of her mother. Was she aware that others perceived Tori in a less than flattering way? Or was she as oblivious to any negativity directed at her mother as she appeared to be now?

A moment later, Craig pulled opened the door and blew in with a gush of rain. "Damn, where did this storm come from?" he muttered, shaking off the ABC umbrella. He pulled back the hood of his raincoat and shrugged it off. Beneath he wore navy blue trousers, blackened by water to the knee, and a white button down shirt. This morning his formal suit coat had hid his tie. Now the jacket was gone and Tess could see there were frolicking Mickey Mouse characters down the length of it. He'd loosened the knot and rolled his sleeves back to the elbows. He looked tired. She wondered why he'd come to work at all. Surely the school would have understood if he'd stayed at home.

"Tess," he said, smoothing back his wet hair. "And Miss Caitlin. I wasn't sure if you'd brave the storm after all."

"It didn't seem so bad when we left, but then it was like the sky just opened up," Tess said.

He nodded in agreement and squatted down to Caitlin's level with a look of concern on his face. "How are you doing, Caitlin?"

Caitlin gave him a tiny smile and a shrug.

"Yeah. Me, too. But we've got to hang in there and hope for the best, don't we?" He ruffled her hair and stood straight again. "How about you, Tess? How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine." She brushed her hair back from her face and looked away.

"You don't look fine. I mean—of course you look fine, but—" He stopped. A faint blush crept up his face and an awkward pause echoed in the hall. Doris Day watched them with unbridled curiosity.

"I suppose Mrs. Sanders is waiting for us," Tess said.

"I'll show you where her office is. Will you stop by after you see her so we can talk?"

Looking forward to that with the same enthusiasm she had for dental work, Tess agreed and fell instep beside him. Silently Caitlin moved around to slip her hand into Tess's.

* * *

Mrs. Sanders had iron gray hair, black glasses and no chin. One of her hands was curled into a permanent claw by arthritis and Caitlin blatantly stared at it. But she gave them a kindly smile and extended her other hand for Tess to shake. For the first few minutes she spoke cheerfully, explaining that she was counselor, music teacher and occasionally, cafeteria worker.

"We don't get the luxury of one job here."

She had legitimate credentials though and an easy manner that inspired trust. She instructed Tess to wait while she and Caitlin went into her office.

Tess glimpsed panic in Caitlin's eyes as the door closed and it was all she could do not to jump up and insist on going in with them. The minutes felt like hours while she waited, wondering if she
should have
insisted, wondering what Tori would have done. She shifted in her seat, remembering how the Colonel had taken her and Tori for regular psychiatric evaluations after he'd had their mother committed. Tori was convinced he was looking for the merest excuse to have the girls put away too. She warned Tess not to trust the kindly doctors. She'd told her not to talk to them—never tell them anything they could use against her. If it meant crying for the whole hour to make them back off, do it.