Second Chance Dad (12 page)

S
ophie stared at the sliding glass doors long after Josh left, then jerked her attention back to her father. “What have you
done
?”

He spun on his heel and glared at her. “I'm protecting my family. Something you apparently don't know how to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn't you hear? That man is probably a killer—even if he didn't go to trial. Let his own wife die. Just stood back and watched, the papers said.”

“That's not true.”

“What, did he tell you different? And you
believed
him? You were ignorant when you were twenty, falling for any lie a man told you. But it's time you grew up.”

Margie rose slowly. “Honey—”

He turned on her. “Shut up. This doesn't concern you.”

She paled, looking as stricken as if he'd slapped her. Then she grabbed her purse, shot an apologetic look toward Sophie, and stalked out the doors to the parking lot.

Years of anger and hurt welled up inside Sophie's chest, making it hard to breathe. How many years had he talked to her like this? For how many more could she allow it to happen?

“If that's how you treat Margie, then it's a mystery why she hasn't packed up her bags and left long ago.”

His face darkened to near purple with anger. “Now see here, young lady—”

“No. I have always respected you. I've listened to you, and I've tried to believe what you said. But you're wrong about Josh McLaren, and you've always been wrong about me.” She gripped the back of a wooden chair. “And now you've hurt a woman who loves you. Maybe I've made big mistakes in my life, but you cannot throw the past in my face any longer.”

“You want to be with someone like McLaren?” His voice rose, laced with venom. “And see our name dragged through the mud a second time?”

“And why would that happen? Josh McLaren is a client, and a friend. That's it, though I wish he was more.”

“A man who carelessly allowed your son to get hurt.”

“Not at all, because Eli just told me what hap
pened. He disobeyed. If he'd listened to Josh, it never would've happened.”

“Right. And you still think you can selfishly traipse off with a man like him. If you leave town, who's gonna take care of your grandfather?”

Stunned by what he'd revealed, she stared back at her father, the rage behind his words still echoing in her ears.

He must've realized his mistake, because he snapped his mouth closed.

“So that's what matters to you. I'm only a
convenience
.” She felt her heart shattering, piece by piece. “I've spent my life trying to please you. Trying to endlessly atone for what happened back in college. I married a man I didn't love, trying to make things right in your eyes, but instead of love and forgiveness, you just gave me guilt.”

“You were wrong,” he huffed. “I didn't raise you that way.”

“And you have led a perfect life? I know God forgave me years ago. I just wish you had, too.” Sadness welled up inside her, at the futility of trying to make him understand. “I just hope I can find Josh and apologize to him for what you said to him.” She glanced at her watch. “I've got to get back to Eli—he's probably back from his CT scans by now.”

She turned on her heel and went back to Eli's cubicle to wait for his return, and tried to will away her tears.

 

From the first moment he'd heard Eli scream, Josh had felt as if a hand had closed around his heart in a crushing grip.

He'd failed as a husband, when he'd focused only on his career. He'd failed again when he hadn't been able to save his wife and unborn son. Today, he'd been incapable of keeping a young boy safe. And each and every one of those failures was unforgivable.

There'd been no mistaking Eli's rapt attention when he came to Josh's house, or his eagerness to please. His longing for the companionship of a new father figure was palpable—understandable in any fatherless boy.

What business did Josh have, imagining that he could be that kind of man? Or that he could have a relationship with Sophie someday? With all of his failings, he didn't deserve a woman like her…and she definitely didn't deserve a man like him. Dean Miller, for all his lack of charm, was right.

She deserved far better.

At his cabin, he climbed out of his truck and looked around, feeling the emptiness of the place. It had felt right, before the days when Sophie had breezed into his life. It had been a place of penance. Of sorrow. But now it was too lonely for words.

He went inside to pack a duffel bag with his few
personal possessions. Grabbed his cell phone, made a couple of quick calls, then called for Bear.

It was time to move on.

 

Thank you, Lord, for keeping Eli safe
, Sophie whispered as she tucked the covers around Eli and bent down to give him a good-night kiss. “How are you feeling now, honey?”

“Okay.” He looked up at her with somber eyes. “Do you think Dr. McLaren will come visit me?”

“Someday.” Or maybe not. She'd called his cabin twice, since bringing Eli home from the hospital yesterday evening, and there'd been no answer. At first she'd figured he was out in his shop, working on the Harley, but now she wasn't so sure. Maybe he was screening her calls and would
never
pick up. That encounter with her father might well have been the last experience he ever wanted to have with her family, period.

“Do you think he's still mad at me?”

She smoothed back his dark hair, careful to avoid the four stitches above his left ear, and smiled. “I'm sure he was never angry. He was probably scared, and worried, and felt very bad about you getting hurt. He felt responsible for you, you know. I left a message on his phone yesterday, telling him that you're back home and just fine, though. I'm sure that made him feel better.”

“I'm going to have some big bruises, aren't I!”

“Yes, you are…and you might have a couple of little battle scars, where you had stitches. But at least you didn't break any bones or have internal injuries.” She tapped him lightly on the tip of his nose. “You were extremely lucky. And now you'll have quite a story to tell your friends when school starts in the fall, about how you were attacked by a Harley.”

His eyes flew open. “What if I broke it?”

“If you did, then we're responsible for the damage, Eli, and that could be very expensive. That's why we should never play around with someone else's things—especially without permission.”

“I never even told him I was sorry.”

He looked so crestfallen that she wanted to give him a hug. But with the bruised ribs and shoulder, she gently took his hand instead. “That would be a very good idea, honey. It's very important to apologize if you do something wrong.”

Eli tried to prop himself up on one elbow, winced and eased back against the pillows. “Can we call him now? Please? It's only nine o'clock. He's a grown-up, so he'd still be awake.”

She hesitated. There were already two calls from her on his caller ID, even though she hadn't left a message the second time, and at some point, it was going to look like she was being a pest. On the other hand, she knew Eli would just get more and more worried and would never go to sleep if she didn't give it a try.

“One call,” she said firmly. “If he doesn't answer, then we will not dial his number again until tomorrow. Deal?”

He nodded. “Can I push the buttons?”

“All of my clients are in the phone book, so if you touch
J
you can scroll down until you find his name.” She handed the phone over. “Remember how you do that?”

Concentrating, Eli bit his lower lip as he punched the buttons and then held the phone to his ear. A moment later he handed the phone back. “Wrong number, mom. This one says ‘disconnected.'”

She gave him a patient smile. “Try again.”

“You try. What if he went away?”

“Silly. We just saw him yesterday afternoon at the hospital. He couldn't just pack up and leave that fast, and why would he?” Still, she clicked on his name in her cell phone's directory and hit Send.

The phone rang twice, then a recording announced that the number had been disconnected, just as Eli had said.

It had to be an error of some kind. Maybe…a phone line was down somewhere, or he'd forgotten to pay his bill. Or maybe he'd switched from having a landline to just his cell. Lots of people were doing that these days.

Though a quick call to that number wasn't answered, either.

“I think we should check on him, Mom. Maybe he's hurt or something.”

“He does have a cell phone, sweetheart. He could call for help.”

“Not if he's hurt. Maybe we should go see him. Please, Mom.”

She hesitated. “I can't leave you here alone. Maybe I should ask the sheriff to check on him.”

“No. I want to come with you, because we should make sure he's okay. Then I can apol'gize and everything.”

“Well…”

Eli gingerly pushed away the covers and awkwardly swung himself out of bed, then pulled on a pair of baggy shorts and a T-shirt over his short summer pj's. “See? Now I'm ready. Let's go.”

 

Josh had made remarkable progress over the past six weeks. He no longer relied on his cane unless he was tired, and the exercises for his core muscle groups and trunk stabilization had already reduced his lower back pain. There shouldn't be any reason for him to suffer a fall. It was logic that didn't keep her from starting to worry, though, as she drove up the long, darkened lane to his cabin. Why
wouldn't
he be answering his phone?

She pulled to a stop under the single security lamp set high on a telephone pole by the garage and trained her headlights on the house.

There weren't any lights on anywhere—not even the faint glow that one could see through the kitchen windows, from the light he left on above the stove. And all was quiet save for a fitful breeze rustling the aspen leaves. Bear always woofed when she arrived, and came running if he was outside. If inside, his woofs always alerted Josh, and soon the front door would open and Bear would launch through it to race out to her car.

The dead quiet of the place told her that no one, not even the dog, was here.

She backed around, trained her headlights on the shed, and stepped out of her car to peek in the windows. Sure enough, his car was gone.

“Where is he, Mom?” Eli asked in a quavery voice when she got back in the car.

“I don't know. He…could've gone to visit friends, or a relative. Or maybe he headed to Madison for some shopping. Now that he's feeling better, he probably has a lot of catching up to do.” She turned to look at him over her shoulder, and infused her voice with an extra dose of breezy assurance. “But since his car is gone, you don't need to worry about him. Right? He simply isn't here.”

The one explanation she didn't voice was the one that was weighing most heavily on her mind.

From the very beginning she'd been attracted to Josh—even when he'd so stubbornly resisted physical therapy. As the weeks passed, she'd discovered
hidden sides of him that she hadn't expected—and she'd found herself drawn to him more and more.

But it was when he'd gently taken Eli under his wing and had offered the kind of companionship her son craved, that he had truly touched her heart.

Since then her feelings for him had been growing, day by day, and she'd imagined the possibility of him coming to care for her, too. But the day of Eli's accident had been the last day of Josh's physical therapy…and now Josh was gone. Maybe he'd been planning to leave all along.

And his feelings for her?

Maybe he'd never had any at all.

W
hen she stopped at Josh's place the next day, while on her Friday rounds in the area, he wasn't home, either…and a peek in the garage revealed that his Cherokee was still gone.

Hurt niggled at Sophie's heart as she slowly drove down the long lane leading to the highway. During the past month, she, Eli and Josh had spent a lot of time together in addition to his therapy appointments. There'd been only the one kiss, but they'd slipped into a warm relationship that had started to feel just so right. Every accidental, random touch as they'd walked along a trail or when he'd opened a door for her had been laden with that extra zing of awareness that hinted at possibilities beyond mere friendship.

She hadn't even had an inkling that Josh would drop from sight like this.

At the highway, she waited for the oncoming traffic to pass by, then did a double take at the bright
yellow Nelson & Waterbury Realty for-rent sign by the mailbox.

Until this moment, she'd been able to talk herself into believing that he would show up again any day.

Now, her heart did a sad little somersault at the final evidence that Josh was not only gone, but that he'd wasted no time in closing this chapter in his life. Worse, he hadn't even thought their relationship was worth a courteous goodbye.

“I'm such a fool,” she whispered to herself as she drove slowly back into town to pick up Eli at his grandparents' place. “Such a big fool.”

When she stopped to pick up Eli, her dad was just inside the front door waiting for her.

“I was going down the highway this morning and saw that your wonderful friend up and left town.” The note of smug satisfaction in her father's voice was unmistakable. “I suppose he figured he wouldn't be welcome around here any longer.”

“He was one of my therapy clients, Dad. A good friend. And he did nothing wrong.”

“A ‘friend' you took quite a fancy to. I've had people asking me about who your new fella was, after they'd seen you with him in town.”

“Seen me in town? Doing what? Dating a client wouldn't be professional, and I would never do that.”

“So all of those folks lied?”

“Like I said, we were just friends. At least, I thought we were. I helped Josh when he fell in the grocery store. He was going to be alone over the Forth of July, so he came to the picnic at Gramps's place—and yes, Eli and I spent some time with him, and the two of them worked together on Josh's Harley. I talked it over with Grace to make sure she didn't feel I was crossing any client-provider lines.”

“Sounds like dating to me,” Dean snapped.

Sophie bit back a sharp reply. They'd already gone over this once before, and she certainly didn't want to descend into another argument in front of her son.

“Well?”

“As much as you want to believe otherwise, I did nothing wrong.” She fought to keep her voice even. “He's not a client anymore, though. And since I just saw him for physical therapy, not any sort of counseling, seeing each other now wouldn't be an issue.”

“See here—”

“But he obviously doesn't care about me at all, because he left town without a word. So it's over, and you should be very happy.”

Margie, who had apparently made her peace with Dean despite his cruel words at the hospital, appeared at the doorway into the kitchen wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Can you two stay for supper?”

“Another time, but thanks. I promised Eli pizza if he did his chores this week.” Grateful for her honest
excuse, Sophie waved and hurried out the door to catch up to Eli.

It had been a tough day, what with finding that Josh's place was already up for rent, another difficult appointment with her resentful teenage client Beau, and now this latest encounter with her dad. Doing battle with him during a meal just didn't have much appeal.

 

Sophie rapped on Gramps's back door the next morning, called his name, then sighed as she let herself inside.

No matter how many times she'd encouraged him to start locking his doors at night, he still maintained that anyone who wanted in could easily kick in a door or break a window anyway, so what was the point?

A quick inspection of the house and yard revealed no sign of him, and his car wasn't in the drive.

“Maybe he went to see Alberta for breakfast,” Eli piped up when Sophie went back into the house. “Do you think they'll ever get
married
?”

“Not any time soon. Sometimes it's easier to just stay friends when you get older and set in your ways.”

She flew through the house, stripping his bed and gathering laundry, started a load, and got to work on his kitchen.

By noon he still wasn't back.

Sophie called Alberta's house, and the feed mill on the edge of town, where Gramps and his cronies had gathered to drink coffee and argue about local politics for as long as anyone could remember.

After trying a dozen other possibilities, she dialed her dad's number. He answered on the second ring.

“I can't find Gramps anywhere. He wasn't here when I arrived at nine, and now it's been three hours. I've called his friends and all of the old haunts of his that I can remember.”

“Maybe he just took a drive.”

“For three hours or more?”

Dean made an impatient noise in his throat. “This is why I don't think he should live alone, Sophie. He's a disaster just waiting to happen.”

“If he has actually wandered, this will be the first time. But I agree—at the point he isn't safe at home we'll need to revaluate.” She rattled off the list of places she'd called. “Can you think of any other place he might be? Or, can you help me look for him? I was thinking about just driving through town, up and down the streets to look for his car.”

“He'll probably turn up. Margie and I have a two o'clock tee time at the golf course.” Sophie could hear Margie's voice in the background, then Dean came back on the phone. “She and I can both drive around town. With the three of us, how long can it take to find one old man in a '59 Chevy?”

 

It was apparently going to take longer to find Gramps than anyone first suspected. An hour later, Sophie notified the sheriff's department and the high way patrol, and a state wide bulletin was issued for Gramps's vehicle and license plate number.

At seven o'clock, Margie, Dad and Sophie converged at the sheriff's department, where a tall, slim deputy led them to a quiet conference room in the back.

Even her dad was worried. “He's never gone off like this, out of the blue. Until now, he's done pretty well on his own with Sophie's help.”

Jack Reece, one of the newer deputies in the department, nodded. “It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing happened. An older feller has been doing all right—then the first sign of significant trouble is that they take off in a car and end up two states away with no money, no plan and no recollection of how they got there.”

Margie twisted the straps of her purse in her hand. “There's only a couple hours of daylight left, and it's going to be a cool night.”

“And he's on heart medications,” Sophie added, worry clenching her stomach into a painful knot. “He left everything at home—even his nitroglycerin tablets.”

The deputy looked at the clipboard in his hand.
“Do you have any idea at all of where he might go—someone he might want to see?”

Margie and Sophie exchanged glances. “He has a sister down in Atlanta. He hasn't see her in years,” Sophie said slowly. “She's in the Hawthorne Hills Retirement Village there—I don't remember the whole address right now, but it's on Eighty-third Street.”

“Good. We can get the address on the internet and alert the highway patrol that he might be headed in that direction.”

“And maybe he might think of heading for Minneapolis or Madison…though I can't fathom why,” Margie added. “That poor man. He's been awfully reclusive these last few years.”

The deputy angled a comforting smile at each of them. “We've got a lot of officers aware of the situation, between the highway patrol and us. I'll make sure that the statewide bulletin is extended.”

“I'll keep looking myself,” Sophie said. “I couldn't bear to just sit home and wait. Beth is watching Eli, so I'll let her know.”

Margie rested a hand on Sophie's sleeve. “Let me go get him, dear. He and I can stay at your grandfather's house in case Walt shows up. Your dad can stay at our house in case he goes there.”

Over the years, there'd been a layer of reserve in Margie's demeanor, and Sophie had never been completely comfortable with her.

But now, at Margie's obvious distress over the
welfare of the father-in-law who had never accepted her, either, Sophie felt her heart starting to soften.

“Thank you,” she whispered, resting her own hand on top of Margie's.

Margie smiled. “Don't worry. He has to show up, sooner or later. Just how far could an old fella get?”

 

Josh wandered through the white Victorian house he still owned in Stillwater, feeling oddly restless and out of place even though it had been his childhood home.

When their grandparents passed away, his sister had inherited the sprawling log home up on the shore of Lake Superior, while he had been left this house.

But Julia had preferred their own high-rise condo overlooking Saint Paul, and had refused to even consider living in a quaint, scenic town on the Saint Croix river.

And so this house had sat empty for several years, with blankets tossed over the furniture and the ornate woodwork gathering dust. Was it time to sell it? Or move in?

That had been his first thought while driving back to Minnesota, knowing that staying in Aspen Creek, where he would encounter Sophie for years to come, would be too uncomfortable to bear. He'd called the Realtor who had handled the cabin and told her that
he would pay whatever penalties there were, in order to end his yearly lease early.

Months ago, he'd signed up for the two-day board exams required every ten years for his licensure in emergency medicine, unsure if he'd actually take the exams, much less practice again. But taking Eli to the hospital had jolted him out of his apathy and unsettled him in more ways than one.

He'd made it back to the Twin Cities just in time for the exams. And last night, he'd started to reevaluate his future.

Holing up in that dark, depressing rental cabin hadn't done him much good, even if it had afforded uninterrupted time to focus on the foundation in his late wife's name. Getting that project off the ground and perhaps continuing to manage it for years to come had seemed like enough. Appropriate penance, as it were.

But then Sophie Alexander had breezed into his life and turned it upside down, and nothing had been the same ever since. Sophie.

Leaving Aspen Creek had been the right thing to do. Hadn't it? He paced through his grandparents' home one more time, debating his next step. Then he locked the place up. Got in his car.

And started the long drive back, in search of his heart.