Losing Gabriel (25 page)

Sloan drove to the trailer park, turned in, and crunched slowly down the rutted road toward everything she'd run away from. She hadn't seen the place in almost three years, and yet it looked the same. No…if anything, it looked dingier and more run-down than when she'd left. Her stomach was tied in knots, her nerves hair-trigger taut over facing her mother. LaDonna would let loose with one of her tirades. She'd gloat, shovel out venom in spades. Sloan knew she'd have to stand there and take it and say what needed to be said in order to move into the trailer again. “I can do this,” she told herself. Survival. Whatever it took.

When she stopped in front of the trailer and turned off the engine, she saw two small children playing in the dirt. Sloan climbed out of the car, pasting on a cheerful smile. “Hi. I'm Sloan. Who are you?” The kids shrank against the side of the trailer. She saw her child-self in the girl's frightened eyes. “I won't hurt you.” She walked closer.

The boy, who looked to be the younger of the two, started to cry. The trailer door flew open, startling Sloan, causing her to jump backward. A woman rushed out babbling in another language, grabbing the kids by their arms and dragging them to the trailer door.

“Wait! Does LaDonna Quentin still live here?” Sloan started forward, but in a panic the woman stuffed the kids inside and slammed the door hard, leaving Sloan standing in the dust under a hot sun.

Sloan stared at the ugly green hulk of metal that had been her home once. LaDonna was
gone
? Where? When? She could ask the manager in the front trailer but discarded the thought. If her mother was gone, she'd probably left owing money. LaDonna's style. As the reality washed over her, Sloan got into the car and sat in the heat, hands clutching the steering wheel.
Now
what?
She tasted fear. What was she going to do? Call Bobby and Hal? Try to catch up to them? Yet she rejected that idea as soon as it formed in her head. No, she couldn't walk it back. Never. Too much pain. Tears welled in her eyes. She backed the car away from the trailer, left the park, and headed toward the only other place she could think to go for asylum.

Lani was wiping down the counters from lunch when she heard the doorbell.
Yikes!
Couldn't people read? She'd hung the
DO NOT RING
sign above the doorbell every day during Gabe's nap time, yet now someone was dinging it anyway. Before it could chime a third time, she tossed down the wet paper towel she'd been using and rushed to the foyer and the front door, flinging it open and saying, “Please don't ring—”

Her words stopped cold. The woman on the porch was blond, pretty, and totally recognizable. Lani was looking into the face of Sloan Quentin.

S
loan stared through the open door at the girl standing in the foyer. “I—I'm looking for Dr. Berke and…and his son.” She glanced toward the mailbox street side. “They, um, used to live here.”

Lani's mouth was cotton dry and her heart thumped like a drum. “They…he…Dawson still does.”

“Oh.” A potential truth hit Sloan. Maybe Dawson had
married.
Three years gone, anything could have happened. “Are you his wife?” She ventured a guess, her mind sucking on the idea like quicksand.

Lani squared her shoulders. “I'm a caregiver. To Dawson's son.” She attempted to keep her voice neutral, calm, matter-of-fact. Professional. But her insides were in turmoil.

My and Dawson's son.
Sloan's brain pushed against the memory. The baby she had blocked from thinking about for so long. Gabriel was alive. She found her voice. “Is…is Dawson here?”

“He's working.” Lani was holding the doorknob so tightly that her hand had gone numb.

“That makes sense…I mean, if you're the babysitter.”

More than a sitter.
Lani didn't correct Sloan, still trying to regain emotional equilibrium.

“Um…I'm a friend of Dawson's. We went to high school together. My name's Sloan.”

Still Lani said nothing. She saw Sloan's car, an older black Mustang in the driveway in need of a wash. Hadn't it once belonged to Sloan's boyfriend, Jarred?

Sloan studied the girl in the doorway, who was barring her entrance and withholding information Sloan needed and wanted. The girl wore an air of familiarity, something Sloan couldn't place yet tickled her memory. She gave up on placing the brown-eyed girl, too frazzled to care just now. She was going to have to pull information from this sitter, because nothing was being volunteered. “When will he be home?”

“Usually around five.” Lani held herself rigid, prayed that Gabe would stay asleep. She wanted to shut the door, push away the flesh-and-blood apparition in front of her. “Maybe you could come back then.”

“Can I wait for him here on the porch?”

What could she say? “It's just two o'clock. Three hours until—”

“I know it's a long wait, but I don't care. I need to talk to Dawson.” Growing impatient, Sloan heard her voice pitch higher. “What about his father, Dr. Berke?” Sloan recalled that Franklin had always been nice to her. Maybe he had an ounce of goodwill left for her.

“He isn't here either.” Silence.

Seething at the sitter, Sloan stepped to the side, walked over, and parked herself in a wicker chair. “I'll wait.”

Lani swiftly closed the door, leaned against a wall, and flexed her stiff fingers. Her body shook and she felt out of breath as if she'd run a race. And lost. Why was Sloan here? Lani retreated to the kitchen, found her cell phone on the counter, and sent Dawson a text. He shouldn't be blindsided.

A return text came quickly:

Do not let her in the house. Do not let Gabe see her. Coming ASAP.

Lani decided she would keep Gabe distracted in his playroom after his nap. She'd feed him a snack there too, tell him it was a picnic for just the two of them. Already the effort to protect him had begun.

Dawson drove home from the job site in his pickup as fast as he dared. After he had brought Gabe home as a newborn, he'd wondered if this day would come. Now it had. After Sloan left Windemere, he'd created scenarios in his head about her begging to return. For months he'd written and rewritten what he'd say and do. He'd reject her, refuse to let her see their son. Then he'd think of Gabe growing up without a mother, and he'd change the scenario and relent. After the first six months of Gabe's life, once Dawson mastered the skill set of tending to a baby's basic needs, and with Paulie's grandmother's help, he overcame his fear of raising this baby on his own. That was also when he'd shoved vengeful thoughts of Sloan into the far corners of his mind. Her choice to leave. Her loss. So why in the hell was she back? What did she want?

He turned into his driveway, pulled alongside the black Mustang. Jarred's car. It cleared up the mystery as to how she'd disappeared. He checked the car to make sure Jarred wasn't sitting in it because if that a-hole got near him or Gabe…Sloan rose from the chair. He took his time exiting the truck and going onto the porch, all the while measuring her with his eyes, balancing his anger and his fears. Her hair was shorter, she was thinner, her cheekbones more angular. A small stud embedded on the side of her nose caught a spark of sunlight. She looked wary and worn out but held his gaze. “Hello, Dawson.” Her voice, barely a whisper.

In the few years since she'd seen him, Dawson's body had filled out. He was tanned and well muscled, his black hair shaggy, his dark eyes as cold as black ice.

“Why are you here, Sloan?”

He stood like a stone wall and she shrank against the force of him. Her lips quivered, but she gave him her honest answer. “I need help.”

He glanced to the black car. “Boyfriend dump you?”

She winced, knowing there was too much to explain just now. “Long story.” She realized she must first reassure him. “I haven't come to cause trouble for you. I swear. I tried to go back to the trailer, but it seems my mother no longer lives there.”

He grunted. “Good thing. She put us through hell after Gabe came home from the hospital.”

Sloan's heart seized. “What did she do?”

“Long story.” He tossed her words back to her. “And now's not the time to tell it.”

Sloan closed her eyes and felt her body weave, and she realized she hadn't eaten all day, not even breakfast at Sy's. “Can we sit?”

She sat again. He did not. She looked pale, but he refused to feel sorry for her. She'd made her choices.

Dawson's body language screamed obscenities at her. Maybe she deserved it. Resigned, she prepared to scale the wall that separated them and shifted in the chair. “How's Gabriel?”

“I'm surprised you remember his name.”

She bristled, went hard inside. “F you. I thought of him every day, Dawson, until I couldn't think about him anymore and not go crazy.”

“As proof from all the times you called to check on him.”
And me,
he thought, but didn't say.

“I knew he'd be all right with you and Franklin. I knew he wouldn't be all right with me. Not because I didn't care, but because I didn't know how to be his mother.”

“I didn't know much about being a parent either. He didn't come with instructions.”

“You had Franklin. I had LaDonna. You've already told me she caused trouble.” She fired back a volley that stopped him cold. “And he has you. He has a home, a babysitter—”

“She's his caregiver. Lani's a third-year nursing student and works at the hospital.”

The message was ominous. “He's sick? He isn't well?”

“Well enough.”

Maddingly enigmatic.
She wouldn't beg for details. Not yet.

“Since you're not here to cause trouble, and you're not interested in being Gabe's mother, what do you want from me, Sloan?”

Her nerves were so frayed she wasn't sure she could continue. Why had she thought he would ever forgive her? “Mercy” was all she managed to say.

Dawson lowered himself into the chair across from hers, leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs. The day of hard work was nothing to the emotional exhaustion he felt. The air was hot, stagnant, and he longed to be inside the house drinking a big glass of sweet tea and listening to Lani talk about Gabe's day and watching Gabe playing with his race cars on the kitchen floor. He glanced up, studied Sloan's face. She looked truly frightened. Something bad had happened to her, something that had driven her back to a place she hated and to him because there was nowhere else she could go, no one else she could turn to. He'd been so intent on making her pay for her past, her desertion of him and Gabe, he hadn't heard her out. He felt no satisfaction in the way he'd been treating her and blew out a breath. “Tell me what you need.”

His voice was gentler this time, so Sloan began her story about their years apart, about the band, the career that almost was and now wasn't. And she told him about Jarred, breaking down when she told of him dying. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, ashamed of not holding up. “I…I just need a place to stay until I get on my feet. I'll get a job, save up money until I can afford to move out on my own. I won't be in your way. I'll do whatever you say. Will you…help me?
Please,
Dawson.”

The news about Jarred was jarring, but Dawson had no way to comfort her. He couldn't be vindictive. He couldn't dismiss her. Sloan—a girl he once wanted and loved. Gabe's mother. “I…I need a little time. Give me some time to think this through.”

“Okay.” She rose, legs unsteady, anxious to retreat from this emotional firestorm inside her. “Will a couple of hours be long enough? I'll go get something to eat.” At the edge of the porch, without turning, she asked, “Should I just call you?”

“I'll call you. What's your number?” He took out his cell, waited for her answer.

She shrugged. “The same as when we were in high school. I should have changed it while I lived in Nashville, but I never did.”

Somehow her admission undid him. She had
always
been a phone call away, but because he'd been nursing his own anger and hurt, he had never once attempted to reach her. Once she drove off, Dawson sat in a wicker chair, brooding. What would his father do? No-brainer. Franklin was a doctor who lived by the credo
First do no harm.
But he wasn't his father. He wanted to protect Gabe, but he couldn't ignore Sloan's plea for help. Could he trust Sloan to keep her word? He straightened, realized that he had an ally inside the house. Lani. She was dedicated to Gabe, and extremely fond of him. She could be his safety net…
if
he could urge her to stay on until Sloan moved out. Making up his mind about what to do, Dawson rose and went into the house.