The Man She Once Knew (8 page)

That broke the ice as nothing else might have. “She’s a good child, that one. A blessing to me.”

Callie seized the opening. “As is David, I would imagine. The help he’s given you here.”

The woman’s eyes darted toward the porch, and her mouth tightened. “Girl talks too much.”

“She asked me to help him with his recent troubles, Mrs. Chambers, and she believes you’d want me to, as well. Why shouldn’t I know about the good he’s been doing?”

A shrug. “It’s his choice. Don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“Do others know?”

“He says it’s nobody’s business.”

“But if they did, people might not treat him so badly.”

“You can’t let on that you know, Miss Hunter. Not unless he changes his mind.”

Callie decided to go for broke. “Do you know what happened to David? The boy I knew…” When the older woman’s lips pursed, Callie veered from that path. Bringing up her past wasn’t likely to help. “Do you think he’s guilty of beating up Mr. Patton? Of starting the fight?”

Rheumy eyes sharpened. “I most certainly do not.”

“I don’t, either,” Callie said. “And I intend to help clear him.”

“Good for you.” A nod of approval. “Boy needs someone to care.”

“Will you help me?”

“How would I do that?”

“I’m not sure yet, but he certainly isn’t making it easy.”

“Why do you want to get involved?” The older woman looked at her curiously.

“Maybe I owe him.”

Another nod. “Maybe you do.”

Callie chose not to take offense as she had when David’s mother had first charged her with that debt. “All right. I won’t mention that I know he’s been helping you. Will you let us poke around? You’ve got enough on your plate, raising Jessie, without living in an unsound structure.”

“You really won’t raise the rent?”

“Would Miss Margaret have?” Callie turned the question around on her.

“Margaret wasn’t a softheaded fool, but she was fair. She tried to work with us as much as she could.”

“That’s what I want to do, Mrs. Chambers. I want to be fair. Will you give me a chance?”

The older woman studied her for a bit, then she smiled. “I do believe I will.”

“Good. Let me go get David and we’ll begin.”

B
Y THE TIME
he returned home, David thought a jail cell might be preferable to another day spent in Callie’s company. Not that she wasn’t pleasant to be with; they’d actually worked together surprisingly well, even peacefully at times. Getting along was worse, though—she was so damned beautiful, so tempting. He was aware of her every second. In another life…

But he was mired in this one. They’d covered only about one quarter of the homes on her list, and he’d wanted to shake her. Couldn’t she see that having him accompany her was like attending a tea party with a viper draped around her shoulders? None of those people, with the exception of Jessie Lee and her grandmother, wanted him within a mile of themselves or their families. That Callie insisted on acting as though he were simply her construction advisor and not the most reviled man in town was an advertisement for either her blindness or sheer pigheadedness.

He suspected the latter. He couldn’t imagine why she was putting herself through this. She had a job and a life in Philadelphia. She hadn’t bothered with Miss Margaret since the day she left.

Why, he asked himself for the thousandth time, was she getting so involved? He knew about the thirty-day provision of the will, but she seemed to be getting deeper into this than she needed simply to satisfy Miss Margaret’s condition.

She was so different from the girl he’d known, and he couldn’t get a bead on her. She was stronger and more confident, yes, but there was something vulnerable, almost wounded, about her. He’d considered digging to find out, but they’d be better off with less between them, not more. She didn’t need to climb into this tar pit with him.

He roamed the house that evening, edgy and itching for something he couldn’t define. He didn’t feel like reading, and television held no appeal. He thought, for a second, of his carving knife and almost went to the shed out back to search for wood.

Callie kept bringing up that angel, the last piece he’d done. He glanced outside and thought there might be enough light left for him to go take a look at it. See what he thought, years later. He hadn’t visited the baby’s grave since he’d returned.

He told his mother not to wait up, and though she appeared worried, she only nodded. He set out, needing to burn off energy he was surprised to possess after a long day’s exertions.

At last he crossed the grass and stood, thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets, staring at a boy’s attempt to smooth out the tangle of his feelings. A part of him lay beneath this ground, and sometimes he felt as if he
couldn’t draw enough breath as he recalled that pale, still form.
My son
, he thought, barely able to wrap his mind around the notion.
Did I love him?
He couldn’t say. He’d been so young, so confused. Callie had been inconsolable, and he’d tried to bury his own emotions to reach out to her, but he’d never had the words, never been able to ease her grief.

My son
. His dad, the man David remembered as a smiling, laughing, all-powerful presence in his life, had spoken those words proudly. When he’d died, David’s mother had wept many a night in her bed. David had tried to be the man of the house, as much as a boy of eight could understand what that meant.

He saw now that he’d been a child who’d grown up very fast. He’d known the love of a father, and he’d thought to provide the same to his own child, even though he’d had no idea if he could be any good at it.

There was still, David discovered, a dark, empty place inside him where the father in him should have set roots.

Was every parent stunted by the loss of a child? Did they all feel amputated? For him, there was also the shameful scrim of relief he’d felt that he could continue being a kid, that he could go to college—if not with the scholarship that had been promised—believing that a different world, a bright future awaited.

But nothing had turned out that way. Callie’s mother had snatched her away without giving him the chance to say goodbye. He’d gotten lost inside his confusion and his grades had continued to plummet. He’d even gotten in some fights.

Then his mother had married Ned Compton to give him a father figure, she’d said, but Compton’s brand of fatherhood bore no resemblance to that of the man David had adored. On top of everything, Compton moved them into his fancy house and turned David’s mother into someone David didn’t know anymore.

David had been lost, so lost. He’d found himself visiting a baby’s grave, a baby he hadn’t really wanted, and many a night he had tried to speak to that little lost soul.
I’m sorry. I would have done right by you, I swear.
Although maybe it was more accurate to say he would have tried.

In an act of contrition, he’d sought to ease his sense of failure by carving this angel to watch over the child he’d been so ill-prepared to protect.

David squatted before the angel now, his fingers itching to touch it, to trace the lines of it like a blind man. To see if the contact could smooth away the burred edges on his heart.

“It’s beautiful, David.”

Callie’s voice startled him to standing. “What are you doing here?” he said more harshly than he should have.

She retreated a step, looked away from him and into the distance, sadness a heavy veil over her features. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I—” He swallowed hard. “It’s your right to be here.”

She shifted and stumbled on the uneven ground. He grabbed her to steady her.

At the contact, both of them went preternaturally still.

It was an innocent touch, holding her upper arm, his
palm absorbing the warmth of her skin. Yet the feel of her was like a door opening to a room with a crackling fireplace and the heady scent of welcome.

He’d been cold for a long, long time.

This was the time of night called the gloaming, when shadows were purple and details disappeared, but she was as real to him, as vivid as at high noon.

Safely shielded inside the violet and umber cocoon, he could focus on her wide eyes, the pupils dark and huge, and hope she didn’t notice. He felt the stir of a sense of possibility, the slightest tendril of hope.

“Callie…” His voice wasn’t even a whisper, but her nostrils flared. Her lips parted a little, and he leaned toward her until her face blurred and it would be so easy to forget, to cast out doubts, to lose himself…

“David…” Her voice soft and husky, her breath sweet on his face. Her hand rose, touched his side.

Brushed a bruise and plummeted him into the present.

He released her and backed away.

“Please don’t.” But she, too, closed in, her shoulders rounding. “Don’t go yet. I won’t…” Her voice trailed off, but he knew what she had been going to say.
Won’t touch you again.

He hungered for the contact though, the humanity. For kindness, but anyone extending that would pay a price. However misguided her good intentions, he couldn’t let her fall into that trap. He should be looking for a way to send her running.

Right now he was desperate to be alone, and it was almost completely dark. “It’s been a long day.” He
managed to make his tone carefully neutral, didn’t meet her gaze. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”

After a brief hesitation, she fell into step beside him. They walked side by side, if separate in their thoughts, for nearly a mile, the moon their only light. When a rut in the road loomed, he took her elbow to guide her around it, letting go the second she was past.

Not a word was exchanged between them, but the night hummed with all they weren’t saying. He was unequal to the task of sorting out his own emotions, much less those she might have.

“I would have been a terrible mother,” she said suddenly.

He heard the wobble in her voice and stirred himself to respond. “You’d have done fine.”

A sad chuckle. “Your memory must be impaired. Don’t you remember how utterly screwed up I was? What on earth did I think I could bring to a baby?”

Love
, he started to say, but everything he’d felt tonight was choking down his chest, squeezing his heart until a response was impossible.

She didn’t speak again for a minute or two, then, “What happened after I left, David?”

For an instant, he actually considered unburdening himself, but the instinct shouting
Danger!
was far too loud. He forcibly reminded himself that he did not know this Callie, could not afford to trust her no matter what yearning this night had stirred in him. He noted their position with relief. “Here’s your place. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“David—” But she didn’t finish, and he didn’t respond before he turned away.

But he felt her eyes on him every step down the road, as he cursed himself. And fate.

And Ned Compton.

C
ALLIE WATCHED
David go, fighting the impulse to race after him, but she didn’t know if she wanted to invite him in or yell at him or simply hold him. Be held by him again.

When last their bodies had come together, it had been the night they’d buried their child. That night, filled with heartache and pain beyond measure, wasn’t one she cared to relive. Especially here and now when she’d stood with him once more over the baby’s grave, had seen David reaching out toward the angel as if some sort of salvation waited.

He touched me. Willingly.
For a second it had almost been like before.

No, nothing like before. They were different, both of them, but at last—
at last
—the gap had been bridged, if only for seconds.

Some part of him wanted her. Maybe needed her. The yielding of his body, the longing that had arced between them…oh, God, how sweet, how fraught with possibilities.

Her body still echoed with need and yearning. She hadn’t been a nun while in Philly, but there had been no one special. No one who reached her as David had, deeper than the physical.

If only she hadn’t touched him where he was almost
certainly still bruised from the beating, likely reminding him of his present reality. That had to be why he’d turned away so abruptly.

More and more, she didn’t believe he’d started the altercation with Mickey Patton. So why was he fighting her at every step when the deepest yearning of his life had to be freedom?

Such a tangle, their pasts and their presents.
You don’t have enough strikes against you, so you jump right into a lost cause?
Ted’s questions lingered. But if anything in the world supported her gut sense that he was innocent, that almost-kiss did. For precious moments, they’d been David and Callie again, the connection between them alive and more powerful than ever.

She was reminded of their first kiss years before, how awkward it had been, yet the sweeter for that. She’d been trying to seduce him for weeks, throwing herself at him as inexpertly as only a fourteen-year-old virgin could. She’d done everything possible to give the illusion of experience because she’d seen something in him that had spoken to her heart’s deepest longing.

He’s good, truly good,
that tiny wisdom inside her had murmured.

She’d overplayed her hand. At three years older, he’d been in some ways a typical sex-crazed boy, yet he’d possessed a wisdom beyond his age.

She’d never met a boy like him, and somehow she’d understood that his goodness would fill some of the gaping holes inside her. Her mother was a lost cause, and her father was nonexistent. Callie had lived in too
many places and belonged to none. In the only way a mixed-up teen could figure out, she’d used sex to get what she needed.

David had been a gentleman, damn him.

She’d put her crude power on full stun. The lowering fact was that the day he’d finally capitulated had been the day she’d cried. Rough, tough, leather-bedecked and fully pierced Callie had come undone at the sight of an abandoned kitten who’d borne more resemblance to Callie than she wanted to admit. She’d picked it up, and David had driven them to the vet, but the kitten was beyond saving, rail-thin and flea-bitten.

That could have been her, abandoned by her own mother, who’d chosen the party life the second she thought Callie was old enough to stay alone. Callie’s final act of rebellion had come after her mother’s latest lousy boyfriend had followed her to her room and nearly shoved in the door before she could lock it.

Callie understood now that an inner survival instinct had led her to become enough of a problem to merit drawing attention from those who would demand changes. When her mother was faced with a visit from the authorities to investigate, she’d shuffled Callie off to Miss Margaret’s.

And Callie had, unlike the kitten, been saved.

Or she’d thought she had been—until she’d fallen too hard and taken David down with her. The grown Callie grieved that David’s descent had begun with her and hadn’t yet ended.

But the survivor in her didn’t give up easily. It was
the one lesson she’d learned about herself—she was many things, but she was not weak.

She looked off in the distance where David had disappeared, and made a vow.

It stops here, David. Your future will be brighter than your past.

S
HE’D SEEN
Carl’s Corner from the outside before, but Callie had never even attempted to go in it all those years ago. To the kids in Oak Hollow, the bar had seemed a forbidden fruit, enticing perhaps but also a little scary with its nose-wrinkling aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke escaping every time the door opened.

Now as she entered, Callie looked around with more than a little trepidation. She was no teetotaler or prude, but she preferred her bars to have lots of mahogany and brass, subdued music and sophisticated lighting. This place was the polar opposite—scarred knotty pine walls gone dark with age, neon beer signs on the wall, yellowed light fixtures turning complexions sallow. She was long past the age to be titillated by the rough-and-tumble; she saw plenty of that in her job.