Precious Blessings (Love Inspired) (17 page)

She marched upstairs and he waited until he heard the click of her door shutting before he reached for the
phone. He punched in Katherine's home number and listened to it ring. The machine picked up. No message. He'd already left one.

Maybe she's home, monitoring her calls, and she doesn't want to talk to you, buddy. That was a distinct possibility. Maybe he'd zip over there and try to talk to her. Try to fix this before the sun went down.

Be real, Jack. There may be no way to fix this. Katherine had taken off on him. She'd been clear that she'd been wrong about them. If he thought about it much more, if he let this emotion settle, then devastation was going to take over. Take him down.

His pager vibrated. He wasn't supposed to be on call, but it didn't surprise him. The roads were a mess, the snowstorm in the mountains was working its way to the valley floor as the evening temperatures dropped. Black ice was everywhere.

Change of plans. He dialed up Mrs. Garcia, and on his way down the hall, he told Hayden he had to go out. She looked immersed in her schoolwork. A textbook was open. Her computer monitor glowed next to her.

“Bye, Dad,” she mumbled without looking up.

Something felt wrong. It was a hunch, that was all, but he couldn't put his finger on what was off. Probably it was his own turmoil that was behind it.

He closed his bedroom door and hauled out a uniform. On his way out the door, he took the sandwich and a few cans of soda. It was going to be a long night, he guessed, and he wouldn't get the chance to stop for a meal, much less for anything else. Dealing with Katherine would have to wait.

A
fter closing and bolting her front door, Katherine watched out the living-room window to see that Marin made it to her car safely.

“I'm taking a pillow from your bed, one of the squishy ones.” Ava ambled down the hallway in a pair of bright-pink flannel pajamas. “Aubrey wants you to know her electric blanket isn't working.”

“I have a new one in the back of the guest bedroom closet,” Katherine answered absently as she watched Marin open her car door and slip inside. “I wish she'd left earlier like Holly did or else stayed here with us.”

“She'll be fine. She's a most excellent driver. Unlike me.” Ava shrugged.

“You're just a disaster, sweetie.” Katherine couldn't help the pang of adoration she had for her sister. Ava
was
a disaster, but she was the best and nicest disaster in the entire universe. “Does Aubrey need help changing the blanket?”

“Nope. She'll have to endure my assistance. Come back after you make sure Marin gets off and we'll say our prayers together, okay?”

“Sure.” She listened to Ava pad off, and the muffled voices of the twins from the spare room, which held twin beds for just this sort of occasion. The merry chattering was a comforting sound, a living sound, chasing away all the echoing emptiness that so often filled her little home.

Thank you, Lord, for the precious blessings of my sisters and friends.
Katherine's heart wrenched, as if grabbed by giant pliers and twisted hard. It wasn't right that one decision to go on one date fifteen years ago could haunt her still. Make her afraid to trust.

Holly had been right. Her friends had rallied around her, the twins had shown up for support, Danielle had called and even Spence had made a rare brief stop to make sure she was all right. They had all mistakenly assumed she'd told Jack about the worst year of her life, and he'd rejected her. That he'd pulled a Kevin on her.

She'd seen the sympathy for her in everyone's eyes. Even sadness and disappointment. It was so hard for her to trust. Her illusions as an innocent, rose-colored-glasses college student had been shattered one cold night in November, along with her blind trust that a man would automatically respect a woman, value her and treat her accordingly.

Holly's question haunted her.
You don't know what he would have said. Now you never will. What if you're wrong?

Don't think about that, Katherine. This was like any
other guy she'd been briefly dating that hadn't worked out. No biggie, right?

Except for the tiny fact that she'd fallen irrevocably square in the middle of the point-of-no-return phase, and there was no going back. She could break up with Jack. Tell him it was over. Tell herself she needed to move on, but that didn't change the fact. She placed her hand over the wrenching agony in her heart. That's where he was, right here, his love an invincible light still burning. What about that?

Red lights flashed on the frosty window glass, catching Katherine's attention. Marin's sedan hesitated in the middle of the driveway, headlights flicked on to highlight the sheen of icy snow plastered everywhere, and then slowly she drove around the curve and out of sight.

“Katherine, help!” Ava hollered, her voice echoing down the hall. “We've got the control thing all messed up.”

“
You've
got it messed up,” Aubrey admonished. “I'm doing just fine, if you would let go of it.”

The twins were cheerfully arguing, as always. For some reason, the damn broke in Katherine's carefully controlled emotions. Up they welled, despite the fortifications of the bowls of chocolate ice cream and slices of fudge pie, despite the comfort and sympathy of her loved ones. How had Jack come to mean so much to her? Why did it have to be him who'd taken down the walls she'd spent the last fifteen years building?

Because he was the one. Her soul mate. And Holly
was right. She'd blown it. She'd panicked and run because she thought he wouldn't love her unconditionally. Because she couldn't trust that he would.

The problem is with me, she thought. All me. I'm afraid to trust him with all my heart. Him accepting me or not is a separate fear.

“Katherine!” Ava called again. “Make her stop!”

She twisted away from the window. “You sound like you're three years old. Kindergarteners behave better than you two.”

“Hey, we were never well-behaved kindergarteners.” Ava laughed at something that had happened in the room. “Oops!”

Ava said that a lot. Katherine leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, taking in the chaos of one of the twin beds that had been so tidy ten minutes before. Ava had fallen hard onto her backside, her feet up in the air and the remote and cord to the blanket in her hands.

Aubrey snatched it out of her grip. “You are impossible. You're a burden to me. If I could, I'd auction you off.”

“There'd be no takers.” Ava pulled herself to her feet. “I have this reputation. It's why I can't get dates.”

“Then we'll never be able to marry you off. How sad is that?” Aubrey knelt down and managed to stick the plug into the prongs at the hem of the blanket. “See? I told you it was simple. But you had to go and make a disaster of it.”

“What can I say? I'm gifted.”

Tears stung Katherine's eyes and burned in the back of her throat. Oh, she loved her sisters. Their funny,
loving ways were exactly what she needed to get through the dark hours of the night. To help her pretend that she hadn't lost the best thing that had ever happened to her.

And it was all her fault. Her fault, and no one else's.

“There, it's put back together.” Aubrey rolled her eyes. “Notice how your bed is neat and perfect and mine is the wreck?”

“I was just trying to help.” Ava looked around, scanning the room. “I remembered to bring my Bible, but it's in my bag. O-okay, where did my bag go? I left it somewhere. But where?”

“We'll use mine.” As if greatly burdened, Aubrey pulled hers off the nightstand. “Come sit down, Kath. If Ava hasn't scared you off.”

“I'm fearless. I grew up with you two, remember?” Katherine eased back into the hallway. “I'll get my Bible and be right—”

The phone rang, startlingly loud in the late-night hush. Her first thought was Jack, and she froze. The phone rang again, and her second thought was Marin. The roads weren't good, and what if she'd had an accident? Katherine dashed for the nearest extension in her room before the answering machine could kick in.

The ID screen said it was from a pay phone. Nerves jerked into her stomach. What if Marin was hurt? “Hello?”

“K-Katherine?” It was a girl's voice that sounded small and unfamiliar and broken, as if she were crying. “Uh…this is Hayden. You know, Hayden Munroe.”

Adrenaline shot through her system. Images of ev
erything that could go wrong flashed through her brain in a single nanosecond. Jack shot on duty. A car accident. A robbery. A sudden medical problem. “What's wrong?”

A watery sniff. “C-could you come a-and g-get me?”

Get her? Wasn't she supposed to be at home or something? The bedside clock said it was ten minutes to eleven. Katherine's heart broke at Hayden's wrenching sob. A sound of genuine pain. “Sure. Where are you?”

“H-Hawthorne and White.”

“What happened, is your dad there?”

“N-no. You g-gotta h-hur-ry.” Harder crying. Utter misery.

“Are you hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”

“I'm o-okay. J-just c-come.
Please?
”

“Stay on the phone, okay? I'm going to give you to my sister. Aubrey!” She called down the hall. “Come take this and keep her on the line.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Ava, get your cell and start calling around for Jack. The numbers I have for him are in my address book in the desk with the bills. Aubrey, find out for sure if she's in trouble and call 911 if she needs it. I'm going out.” She talked into the receiver. “Hayden? I'm leaving right now, so talk to my sister until I get there.”

“H-h-hur-ry.”

“I promise.” Katherine shoved the receiver at Aubrey and grabbed her purse on the way out the door. She couldn't bear to think what was wrong, what had happened to Hayden, but she knew firsthand the sound of serious pain. Of hurt and broken trust and betrayal.

She was out of the garage before the door had opened all the way, skating under it by a scant inch. Ice was everywhere, coating the driveway that had already been carefully treated by the management. She couldn't imagine how bad the city roads were. Snow hadn't been forecast for the valley, but the wintry mix of snow, sleet and ice was freezing upon contact. Her tires skidded when she turned toward the exit, and she was going only a few miles an hour.

Hawthorne and White wasn't far, but it would take forever for her to get there. She eased to a stop at the end of the driveway, but the tires couldn't get a grip. Luckily no traffic was coming on the main street, so she turned into the skid, kept the car going, and made the turn.

Please, Lord, watch over her until I can get to her. Keep her safe.
Katherine didn't know if her prayer could rise at all above the hard downbeat of the ice and snow. Anything could have happened to Hayden on a night like this.

Where was Jack? And why wasn't he with his daughter? More questions ate at her as she slid through intersections and up inclines toward the outskirts of town where the foothills, only a few hundred feet higher than the valley floor, were coated in snow as if a blizzard had hit.

Her studded snow tires should have been adequate, but they weren't. All she could do was pray with each slip and slide, each skid around a curve, that she'd stay on the road. She had to get to Hayden. She prayed harder when she met a car on the road, having the same difficult time keeping in its lane.

The snow flew dizzily at her windshield, knocked aside by the wipers. The constant whap, whap, whap knelled like seconds ticking by. She felt as if she were taking too long, running out of time.
Please, let Ava find Jack.
Maybe the state patrol was on its way.

Suddenly she saw the street sign. White. She was at the intersection on a stretch of country highway that led to the upper-class homes northeast of the city. Hawthorne shouldn't be too far. She slowed down, grateful that she was the only car on the road, looking for…she didn't know what she'd find.

She squinted through the thickening snowfall. There was the haze of a streetlight hovering ahead, growing stronger, giving way to a street corner with a small strip mall. A gas station and convenience store's outside floodlights glazed the ice and snow with an eerie gleam. There, against the night-dark parking lot, was a phone booth, wedged between the store and another building, dark except for a single security light.

Panic ratcheted through her. Hayden had called her from here. Where was she? Katherine slowed down, leaning over her steering wheel, squinting for any sign of anyone.

A shadow moved in the darkness and there was Hayden, in the narrow cut of the headlights, white with snow, bedraggled and dark with…blood. It stained the front of her ripped jacket.

Katherine was out of the car before she remembered stopping. “Hayden, what happened? You're hurt.”

Hayden just stood there, tears rolling down her face,
her voice high, near hysteria. “I'm so glad you came. Your sister said you were c-coming, but what if you cr-crashed, too.”

Crash. “Were you in a car accident?” When Hayden nodded, Katherine felt fear shear through her soul. “Where's your dad? Was he driving? Was anyone else hurt?”

“N-no. He's at work-k.” Hayden sobbed. “He l-left and then J-jan and her boy-f-friend c-came by a-and—”

“You need an ambulance. Why didn't you call 911?” Katherine led Hayden to the passenger side and opened the front door. “We have to get you warm, and let me look. You have blood on you. We're going to need to call for help—”

“No! I'm not hurt. Dad c-can't know!” Terror paled her stark face. “Please. You have to help me.”

“I will, Hayden. But you're hurt.”

“It was a nose bleed, that's all. I swear. It's s-stopped n-now.”

“Did you tell my sister about this?”

“A l-little.”

“Good.” That meant help was on the way. Aubrey would have made sure of it. The overhead dome light showed no wound, only a faint trail of dried blood above Hayden's upper lip. She was scared and cold.

Katherine reached for a blanket she kept beneath the seat. She shook it open and wrapped it around the girl. She seemed so young, so small. Katherine couldn't help the fondness rising up. “Is that a little better?”

Hayden's teeth were chattering, but she managed to
nod. “K-Katherine? You c-can't tell anyone, okay?
Please?
”

“You know I can't do that.”

“Yes, you can. You could take me h-home and Dad would never have to know. I'd work more hours at the store to make up for it. Not hours, weeks. Weeks and weeks.”

“I'm not someone who can deceive your dad like that.” She said the words gently, because she remembered what it had been like to be a teenager, but firm enough so there was no doubt. “You could have been seriously hurt tonight. You've been sneaking out on him all along, haven't you? That's not right, and it's not safe.”

That's when she heard the faint scream of a siren above the rush of the storm. Jack. Katherine knew it even before she recognized the colors of a state patrol cruiser roaring their way, because of the shadows turning to light within her like a sun rising.

The cruiser skidded expertly alongside them and the door popped open. Katherine was already stepping aside, making way for Jack as he charged toward his injured daughter.

“Daddy!” Hayden's cry was both pain and relief.