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Authors: Kathleen Eagle

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BOOK: Reason To Believe
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She offered a handshake. "I'm Clara Whiting. Mr. Pipestone's expecting me." She glanced briefly over her shoulder, reconsidering the distant two-lane highway. Not a car in sight. "Maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere. The directions were—"

"Where you comin' from?"

"Bismarck."

"Not too many turns between here and Bismarck," he drawled, deliberately reeling out the words as though he couldn't spare too many. "Pretty hard to get lost."

"But it's a long drive. I hope I don't have to..." She unfolded the paper and quickly scanned its contents. "If you could just tell me..."

"If
you
could just tell
me
why Clara Whiting would be lookin' for Dewey Pipestone, I might be able to help you." She looked at him expectantly. "The name's Ben Pipestone. You're lookin' for my dad."

"Oh." She acknowledged her relief with another pleasant smile. "Good. I didn't think I could've missed the turn. There was only—"

"Dewey's away from his desk right now," he said, tucking his thumbs into his belt as he eyed the wispy steam rising from her car hood.

"Pardon me?"

He chuckled. "He's not home."

"He must have forgotten, then." Her gold wrist-watch glinted in the sun. While she checked the time, he glanced at her car, which was still running. Barely. "Of course, I am a few minutes early. Maybe he..."
Changed his mind
didn't seem to be a possibility. "Do you know when he'll be back?"

"When he's done what he set out to do, I guess. Have you met him, face-to-face, or did somebody point you in his direction?"

He wondered if she realized that the steam wasn't a real good sign.

"I met him at a powwow," she said absently as she glanced down the road again. "I hope I've got the right day. I'm sure I do."

"You hope you do, you're sure you do." Ben smiled. Just because Dewey Pipestone was well beyond prime didn't mean he didn't enjoy looking. And Clara Whiting was a damn sweet eyeful, from the curve of her lips to the curve of her hips. The ol' man would have her thinking he was the be-all and end-all of Indian wisdom. "He'll be here."

"You're sure?"

"Oh, yeah." He tipped his head to the side as he stepped back and checked out the puddle gathering between the dry clay ruts under the front of her car. "If you're gonna wait around for him, you might think about shuttin' your engine off. Looks like you're runnin' pretty hot."

"Hot?"

He indicated the telltale steam with a chin jerk, and she finally turned to look. "I'm also sure you're overheating, Clara Whiting."

"Oh." She said it as though he'd told her she'd dropped a nickel. "You know, I
thought
there was something funny going on, but I wasn't sure."

"Sure enough. Funny as hell."

"Not funny ha-ha. Funny
strange."
Accordingly, she approached the car with caution, checking to make sure Ben wasn't far behind. "And something really is going on. It's steaming, isn't it? I thought maybe it was a mirage." She shook her head and gave a merry little laugh that tickled his ears and made him smile outright. "I'm afraid I don't know much about cars except how to get places in them."

"And this one got you all the way here without its gauges going nuts? It must love you." He nodded toward the driver's side. "You wanna pop the hood once? I've gotta see what's under there." His sly grin was meant to tease. "An engine or a bleeding heart."

"I always forget about those gauges," she muttered as she opened the door and reached inside to shut the ignition off. She bent down a little more to pull the release latch, accentuating yet another of her assets.

He took his time about retrieving an oily rag from his toolbox. He didn't want to miss any of her cute moves as he ambled back over to lift the hood.

Using the rag and a deft touch, he released the pressure on the radiator cap without scalding himself. Once the steam had dissipated, he was quickly able to locate the problem.

"You've got a busted hose."

She looked at him skeptically. He wasn't sure whether she was maintaining that safe distance from the engine, its trouble, or him. "How bad is that?"

"Bad enough." The assessment pretty much covered all three. "This is as far as this baby can take you until
somebody
takes care of
her."

"Oh."

"But it could be worse. If the pump was busted, that somebody wouldn't be me." He walked away. He could feel her eyes on his back as he tossed the rag into the open toolbox. "Not that I couldn't fix it. I just wouldn't have the parts."

"You
can
fix a hose?"

"I can rig something up. Come on in." He jerked a nod in the direction of his father's three-room house. It wasn't much, but it was shade. "I'll make us some coffee. I'd offer you a beer, but the ol' man won't have it in the house."

"I'd really prefer a glass of water, if it's not too much trouble."

"That's exactly what your car wants, and you're both in luck." He sneaked another peek at those legs. "But I just might be in deep trouble."

"We'll be out of your hair before you know it." She smiled sweetly. "Promise."

As far as he knew, that was the only promise she'd ever gone back on. She'd taken root in his hair and permeated every nook and cranny in his brain. Not that she was part of his every conscious thought. Far from it. He worked hard at excluding her most of the time.

He did think about Annie a lot. He thought about his father once in a while, his friends occasionally, and his business was always right there in his face. He thought about himself. Hell, he thought about himself the most. But no matter what else he might be thinking about, Clara was still there, always there, firmly embedded in his head, thoroughly rooted in his hair. And she probably always would be.

He didn't want to go back to her now, tonight, not without Annie in tow, but his search wasn't getting him anywhere but edgy. It would have been nice to be able to save the day, to bring his daughter home safely, see the old my-hero sparkle in Clara's eyes. He liked that much better than that damned raging wounded look. But when he got back to the house and walked in empty-handed, he saw worse. He caught Clara crying.

Tucking her chin into the cowl of a soft blue sweater, she did her damnedest to hide the evidence behind the fall of her side-parted hair. Hanging her head was so unlike Clara that it unnerved him.

Ben greeted Pancho with a passing pat on the head as he strode into the living room. "Did... did somebody call?"

Her hair shimmied with her stiff headshake. "No."

"Is Annie—"

"She's not back yet, no." She dragged the heel of her hand quickly over the high curve of her cheek and sighed deeply. "I guess we'll have to call the police."

"I hate to do that." He peeled off his jacket and tossed it over the wing back of the "papa" chair.

"You don't have to." She snatched up the jacket before it had a chance to settle into place.
Let her hang it up if it bothers her that much,
he thought, but she seemed to have forgotten what she'd had in mind for it. She folded her arms around the black poplin and confronted him, hugging his jacket fiercely beneath her breasts. "You don't have to go with her when she has an appointment with a probation officer. You don't have to listen to her teachers' complaints."

"I will. Be glad to. She can stay with me, too, you just say the word."

"The word is no." Moving as though the weight of that small word exerted a terrible pressure, she eased herself into the chair, the mama chair, the smaller one, the one that fit her. Even so, it seemed to swallow her up when she sighed. "But just don't tell me what you hate to do, Ben, because you don't know the half of it. You don't know what it's like. Every day it's something else. She lies. She talks back to me. She—"

"Teenagers," he said sympathetically, seating himself in the chair that felt as though it could be his again, even with its sissy new disguise. "We always said she was gonna be a handful, remember? She always had a mind of her own, even when she was just a little squirt."

"She's not a little squirt now," she firmly reminded him, folding his jacket in her lap as though it were part of her laundry. "And it's certainly not cute anymore."

"Having a mind of your own isn't supposed to be cute. It's supposed to happen that way if you're gonna grow up to be your own person."

"Well, it's not happening that way. She isn't her own person. She's hanging around with a different bunch of kids lately. I don't know them. I don't know their parents. This Jennifer Hardin has a much older boyfriend, I know that. And she
smokes.'"

"Annie?"

"No, Jennifer." She shrugged, now seemingly intent on aggravating a hangnail on her right thumb. He noticed that she'd been biting her nails again. He noticed, too, with a rush of relief, that she still wore her wedding band.

Her voice thickened as the list of concerns mounted. "Maybe Anna does, too. I don't know. I hardly know her anymore. It's something new every day. It's... it's just..."

"It's what, Clara?" The threat of her tears always made him feel clumsy, especially when they were basically on the outs with each other. He didn't know whether to try to touch her, or how to comfort her without touching her. "Tell me what it is. Tell me all of it."

She glanced at the ceiling, blinking furiously. "She pretends to be sick."

"Pretends?"

"I
think
she's pretending. I don't know for sure. It's so awful to have to take her to the doctor when she has symptoms nobody can seem to explain."

"Why?"

She shook her head, again furiously. "I don't know. They've done all kinds of tests. They keep asking the same questions, and she's—"

"No, I mean why is it awful to take her to the doctor? She says she's sick, you take her to the doctor, right?"

"Yes, of course." She squared her shoulders and glared at him. "Of course I do."

"It's not an inconvenience, is it?"

"Never!"

"Or an embarrassment to you?"

The fury in her eyes pinned him still, and the quickness of her lunge caught him off guard. She slapped him, hard enough to sting them both. They glared at one another some more, but neither could turn away because the hurt was so strong. And it was better than nothing.

Finally he closed his eyes, willing the fading sting to thicken his skin. It was such an unusual move coming from Clara, and so charged with emotion that he almost took pleasure from it.

"How can you suggest such a thing?" she hissed.

"How can it be awful to take her to the doctor?" he asked again, quietly this time.

"You said to tell you. You said to tell you all of it, but you don't really want to know, because you don't have to deal with this... this..." She gestured helplessly. Her cheeks blazed with the rosy color of chaotic emotions.

"How can it be
hard
to take her—"

"They don't have any answers," she wailed softly. "She has stomachaches, headaches, sometimes nausea, and nobody seems to know whether it has something to do with her menstrual cycle, or..."

His jaw dropped slightly. He managed to lock it right back into place, but not soon enough. She saw that he'd been unprepared for the news. His male ignorance steadied her. Suddenly she had that earth-mother look in her eye, designed to convince him that she knew the secret of all life and he hadn't a clue.

"Well, naturally," he muttered. He tried to ward off the memory of the day he'd taught a flat-chested little beanpole with knobby knees and skinned elbows how to ride a bike. Annie was his little girl, wasn't she? She could have any bike she wanted, he'd told her, and she'd picked a little racing bike that he couldn't afford. But he'd bought it anyway. For his little girl.

"She's thirteen. She's, um..."

"She started almost a year ago."

"Really?" He cleared the frog from his throat. "So that probably has a lot to do with it. I mean... wouldn't it?"

"She says it doesn't."

"What does the doctor say?"

"We've seen three doctors. They say..." She shook her head and sighed. "They say a lot of things, but they haven't solved the problem. And I want it solved. I
want
the problem solved. I want Anna to be able to concentrate on school and get her grades back up to where they should be. I don't want her to be sick."

She glanced away quickly, and it took her two tries to get out the last heartfelt gasp. "I don't want her to be unhappy."

"I don't either."

"So... so where do we go from here?" She needed a concrete plan. Knowing Clara, she would find her salvation in some sort of plan. "We're going to have to call the police soon, and I just
hate
to..."

They exchanged a look. He cocked one eyebrow, and she acknowledged his prior claim to that statement with another terrible sigh. "Because she's already in so much trouble."

"For what?"

"Shoplifting for one thing."

"Shoplifting? Annie?" The surprises were coming in droves now. "Jesus. When did she start that?"

BOOK: Reason To Believe
10.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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