More Than Neighbors (17 page)

He flicked the porch light on then opened the door. “Ciara. Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Something is wrong.”

“Come on in.” He backed up, letting her storm across the threshold. His expression changed when he got a good look at her face.

She pushed the door shut behind her hard enough to make the glass rattle. “Mark told me you asked
a bunch of questions
today. About school and why he doesn’t see his father.”

“We talked,” Gabe said slowly.

“You don’t approve of me homeschooling him, do you?”

He looked stoic. “Did I say that?”

“I could tell you were shocked when I said I mean to keep on doing it.”

“I admit I’ve been wondering why you would.”

Her skin prickled with anger. Something else, too, but she couldn’t think about that. Protecting Mark was her first priority. Nothing else could be allowed to interfere. “Then you should have asked
me
. Not him. How dare you interrogate him the minute you have him alone!”

Gabe’s gray eyes narrowed. “I did ask you, but your answer didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“So you went behind my back?”

“We talked. That’s all.”

“You think I should have let him be bullied for five more years of public school?” she yelled. Oh, God. She probably sounded like a crazy person, blaming him instead of the vicious little thugs who’d persecuted Mark, the teachers and administrators who wouldn’t protect him, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. The sense of betrayal was huge.

Gabe stood four square in the middle of his kitchen, irritation setting his jaw. “I didn’t say that.”

“Then what?”

“Nobody in Goodwater has bullied him.”

She spun away then back to face him. “Oh, like the school here will be any different.”

“Why won’t it?” he said softly.

So softly that, too late, she realized he had set a trap. He wanted her to say,
Mark is why it won’t be any different.

The fact that she so much as
thought
anything like that scared her to death.

I don’t think it. I don’t.

She glared at him. “I’m not willing to take that chance.”

“He told me kids think he’s weird.”

“Which you totally understand, since
you
think there’s something wrong with him.” She crossed her arms tightly, and her fingers bit into her own flesh. Why had she ever let things between them get to the point where this
hurt
so terribly? But she couldn’t let those feelings matter. Nobody was judging Mark, she thought fiercely. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Nobody
.

“I apologized for my choice of word,” he said. “But Ciara, you have to know he’s not quite normal.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“Why?” he asked in a voice of reason. “What’s normal anyway? Hell, what’s wrong with not being normal?”

There. He’d said it again.
Wrong
.

“Not normal.” Her laugh sounded hysterical. “Isn’t that nice. A polite way of saying
weird
. Full circle. You know what?” She was yelling again. It was that or throw something. Or cry. “He thinks he’s weird because of people like you!”

Now he leaned forward, his sheer bulk suddenly menacing. “By God, you won’t tar me with that brush, lady. I don’t deserve it.”

A rational part of her mind knew he was right. Except for her, nobody had ever been kinder to Mark, more patient, more understanding. Something else she couldn’t let matter. The temper driving her, the fear that was at its heart like the eye of the storm, kept her from backing down.

“But you think I have no business homeschooling him. Why don’t you just say it?” she goaded. “It’s not a secret, is it?”

He swore harshly. “All right. I’ll say it. You’re making a mistake. You’re a fool if you think it’s healthy for him to be locked up in that house with no friends and his mommy his only teacher.”

He might as well have hit her. Stricken, Ciara backed up a step, then another. She saw his expression change to dismay, maybe even horror at what he’d said, but shock gripped her in cold talons.

“I don’t know why I ever thought I could trust you.” She shuddered at what she was saying, what it meant, but couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Ciara. Damn it, you know I didn’t—”

“I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing.” She fumbled behind her for the doorknob. “But my decisions about how I educate my own son are none of your business. Thank you for what you’ve done, but Mark won’t be back.”

They stared at each other. On a distant plane, she thought he looked as stunned as she felt. The next moment, he wiped his face clean of expression.

“Fine,” he snapped. “I have better things to do than let some kid hang around talking nonstop.”

She fled, all but falling down the two steps from his back door, scrambling into her van. Grateful she’d left the key in the ignition to make her getaway quicker.

She turned the key with a shaking hand and then looked to see that he’d closed his door and turned out both the porch and kitchen lights. He’d meant it.

I have better things to do.

Not until she was safely at a stop in front of her own house did she let herself collapse forward, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, and think,
What did I do?

* * *

J
UST AS GODDAMN WELL
, he told himself. The woman and boy both had thrown a curve into the life he’d carefully built. The one that suited him, that protected him from ever again having to face utter devastation.

Feeling the need to get away, the next morning he loaded Hoodoo into the trailer and hauled him to the Coeur d’Alene area to a favorite trail. He refused to let himself remember that he’d intended to bring Mark this time. Solitary was good. Solitary was how he’d chosen to live since he was left alone by fate.

An hour into his ride, he realized he wasn’t settling like he should have been into the beauty of the wooded land studded with lakes, the sunny day with the bite of spring in this northern part of the country. The closest he came to any human contact was when he nodded brusquely as he reined Hoodoo to one side of the trail to let a couple of other riders pass.

Maybe he should have called around, found someone else who felt like a trail ride today.

He made a sound in his throat that had Hoodoo’s ears swiveling.

Sure, he thought, but then he’d have had to make at least occasional conversation, and he didn’t much feel like that.

Good thing he
hadn’t
brought Mark Malloy then, he thought savagely. The kid would have talked the whole way. Peace was what he was looking for, not a chat fest.

An hour and a half into the ride, he realized he was getting hungry. He hadn’t brought a lunch; he never did. Between one blink and the next, he saw himself sitting down at the table in Ciara’s kitchen. Before he could feel the keen edge of anticipation, he blanked the picture out. He’d get a burger on the way home. He hadn’t had a good, greasy cheeseburger and fries in weeks. Couldn’t think of a better meal.

Once he’d trailered Hoodoo, he stopped on the Idaho side of the border at a familiar hamburger joint. Got his lunch to go so the quarter horse didn’t have to stand around unnecessarily. His stomach rumbled as he took a first bite, but by the time he stuffed the last fry into his mouth, he felt queasy.

Fine. It went with the sick feeling he’d been carrying beneath his breastbone all day.

When he passed the old Walker place, his foot lifting from the gas to start slowing for the turn into his own driveway, he didn’t so much as glance that way. None of his business whether they were home or not.

Poor Mark. Would the kid ever work up the nerve to articulate to his mother how isolated he felt?

Frowning over the fact that his mind had taken a forbidden pathway, Gabe nonetheless followed it. He was aware of the irony that he, of all people, should be championing someone else’s need for companionship. But he thought all kids needed friends, and in his quiet way he still enjoyed riding in cutting-horse competitions partly because he was able to share that enjoyment with other people. Sometimes he went out to a tavern to watch a Mariners or Seahawks game because there’d be other people around to groan at a bad call or hoot and holler at a home run. He worked with contractors he considered friends. When he’d been alone for too many days, he looked forward to an installation where he’d be working with some other men. Even a loner like him needed other people.

Mark might have been miserable in school—but look how he’d leaped to join the group of kids at the ranch.

After parking in front of the barn, Gabe let down the ramp and backed Hoodoo out then led him to join an impatient Aurora in the pasture. He fed the horses, spent some time leaning against the fence listening to them whuffling and crunching, but brooded the entire time.

When it came down to it, Ciara was right. What he thought didn’t matter. She had a right to make the important decisions about her own son. He’d overstepped. The why didn’t matter, either.

Give him a couple of days, he decided, and he’d quit thinking about Ciara and Mark at all. He might really
be
glad to regain his former solitude. If anyone was the loser here, it was Mark.

Not my business,
he reminded himself, and set about backing the trailer into the barn.

* * *

C
IARA HEARD
M
ARK’S
footsteps stop in the doorway to her workroom. A jangle of metal tags told her Watson had come, too. Even without having heard Mark coming, she’d swear she could
feel
him hovering.

Her back to him, Ciara continued ironing open, newly stitched seams, even though she tensed, knowing what was coming. They’d had the same conversation repeatedly in the intervening days since her confrontation with Gabe.

“I wish I could go to Gabe’s,” he said wistfully.

Yep. Here they went again.

“I don’t understand why I can’t.”

She pressed down hard. Too hard. Steam burst from the iron, and she hastily lifted it. “I explained.”

“I was making something. It was going to be really great.”

Hearing his sadness, she closed her eyes but felt her face momentarily convulse. She had to take several slow, careful breaths before she could speak.

“I’m sorry, honey. I know you don’t understand, but I’m trying to make the best decisions I can for both of us. Gabe was—” Oh, Lord, that sounded as if he was dead. “He’s probably a nice man.”
Probably?
“But I didn’t like the way he asked you all those questions when he had you alone. Those were the kind of things he should have talked to me about.”

Mark shifted from foot to foot. Claws clicked on the wood floor. “It wasn’t like that, Mom. We were just talking. I’m the one who told him stuff.”

She unplugged the iron and set it on the stand then turned to face him. “About?”

“Just...stuff,” he mumbled. “You know.”

She waited.

“It makes you sad when I—” He screeched to a halt.

Alarm flashed through her. Were there things he wasn’t telling her, because he thought she’d be upset?

Stupid thing to think. Of course there were. He was almost a teenager. And a boy. What boy told his mother everything? Heck, she hadn’t told her mother everything, not by a long shot. Mildly chagrined, she thought,
I still don’t
. She talked with her parents weekly, but had been very careful to make any mention of Gabe casual. She sure hadn’t said anything about an earth-shattering kiss.

But to Mark... What had he told Gabe but not her that had him looking so appalled right now, after his near-slip?

Find the right words.
“Of course I’m sad when I find out someone hurt your feelings, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to tell me. It’s easier for me to make the right decisions for you when I know how you really feel about a particular teacher or school or friend.”

“You mean, like how I feel about Gabe?”

Oh, dear God, no. Not about Gabe. She was too afraid she knew.

“Sure,” she said, crossing her arms in a relaxed way. “I have to warn you, though. I won’t swear to change my mind about him because of what you say. Sometimes there are factors you don’t know about.”

His chin jutted out in a way she recognized from her own mirror. “How come? If it has to do with me, shouldn’t you tell me?”

“When you’re a parent, you’ll understand.” Oh, boy—how many times had she heard her mother say that?

“You don’t want to hurt my feelings,” he said. “That’s why you won’t tell me everything.”

It struck her, suddenly, what a startling conversation this was to be having with her son. His heart was always in the right place—he’d never hurt her feelings on purpose—but he definitely wore blinkers. He never noticed what anyone else thought or felt. She’d have said he had never had an insight into someone else’s behavior or motivations in his life.

But apparently, she’d been wrong.

“Sometimes that’s true,” she admitted.

“Like when Dad said I’m a retard.” He shot it at her like a bullet, and she reeled as the words struck, her hands falling to her sides.

“You heard?” she whispered.

He looked down at his too-large feet and shrugged.

“Oh, Mark. I’m sorry you heard. Especially since he didn’t mean it. Not the way it sounds.”

He lifted his head, and his eyes looked older than his years. Too old. “How did he mean it?”

“Only that—” The words stuck in her throat. “That—”

His shoulders jerked again. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” Damn, she had to blink hard to hold back tears. That bastard, she thought viciously. How could he do this to his own son?

“He didn’t mean he thought you were dumb,” she managed finally.

Still in the doorway, Mark slouched, head down, body language saying,
I’m not listening, and I don’t believe you anyway
.

“Really,” she tried, scrambling for a convincing yet nonhurtful way to explain. “The thing is parents always assume their kids will be like them. Especially since you’re a boy, he expected you to share his interests and abilities.”