The Promise of Rain (20 page)

“No,” she said softly. “It’s not that simple, and I won’t ask my dad for help. He didn’t even want me going to vet school. Medical school was more prestigious. Gave a better return on the money. He’s all about investments, not charities and research, or saving animals’ lives.”

Her dad invest in saving elephants? He hadn’t even cared enough to save her
mom
from suffering. And it would be just like him to demand a say in how Busara was run if he put money into it. She wasn’t about to give him that power. Not after she’d spent her life building endurance, proving she could take care of herself and her mother and every living thing that crossed her path since her brother died.

She raised her head and rubbed her palms along her thighs. “I’ll figure something out. I still have a few months.”

Jack reached out and took her hands in his. Anna started to pull away, but his hands felt warm, secure, all-encompassing. If only he could see her as more than a friend. More than an option. If only he could have loved her the way Ben loved Zoe. But he didn’t. Not then, not now. As with her father and Miller, it was every man for himself.

“Anna, there’s always a way. I know I can help, but I need to know if you believe that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Jack said. Anna looked at their joined hands and didn’t answer. Saying yes would be a lie. A second passed, then he let go and she slipped her hands between her knees, but it didn’t help. She felt cold, inside and out. More isolated than at Busara.

Jack rose.

“I, um, I’m going to take a quick shower and change before we go get Pippa. That way you can use the bathroom for her,” Jack said. Anna frowned. “To give her a bath. You said you needed to do that before going to your mom’s.”

“Oh, right. But there are two bathrooms.”

Jack’s nose turned red and his forehead scrunched. He pointed awkwardly toward the hall leading to the bath and bedrooms.

“I’m just gonna save time,” he said. Anna nodded and waited until he’d disappeared down the hall, then collapsed back against the sofa. She waited until she heard the water turn on, then pressed her hands against her cheeks and willed herself not to break down. This wasn’t happening. Maybe there was a way. Or not. She couldn’t think straight.

She got up, grabbed the mug off the table and downed the cooled coffee like water, then went to wash out the mug. A plan. That’s all she needed to start with. They had a few months worth of funds at most. They’d contact everyone they knew, for starters. No doubt Kam was already on that. Miller would want his equipment back, or its value. She needed to make a note of that before she forgot. One more thing to consider, but she didn’t care how many she got bombarded with. She wasn’t going to let everyone at Busara down.

Jack’s cell phone started ringing and dancing against the kitchen counter near the fridge. She ignored it. Then it hit her. What if his mom was calling? What if Pippa wasn’t doing well? Anna lunged for the phone and looked at the caller. Lake Real Estate? Jack was barely moved in here. The phone went silent and she set it back down, relieved it wasn’t about Pippa, but kind of curious.
Kind
of. Jack’s life and where he lived was his business, just as hers was hers.

Five seconds hadn’t passed before the house line started ringing. Anna could hear the shower still running. She went to the living room, thought twice and picked up the phone.

“Hello?...No. Can I take a message?...One sec.” Anna propped the phone against her shoulder. She grabbed the notepad and pen—both imprinted with a lab supply company logo she recognized—that sat perfectly aligned with the phone base. “Okay.” She put the pen tip to the pad and listened. Her feet went ice-cold and she set the pen down. “Of course. I’ll tell him to call you back right away.”

Jack. What have you done?

Anna put a hand to her stomach. She was going to puke. Pretty close to where Pippa had graced the carpet, too. Why that struck her she didn’t know. Because it had been the first day she’d woken up here? Because in some ridiculous, subconscious, repressed way, at the time she’d let herself believe in possibilities?
What have you done?

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Jack stood there, hair still wet and disheveled and his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose over his jeans. The corners of his eyes sank with the tension of his clamped jaw. The only movement was the repeating glide of his neck muscles as he swallowed, and the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

Anna licked her lips and squeezed them together. She hugged herself and shrugged her right shoulder.

“Your Realtor just called. He said it was important and he was afraid you wouldn’t check your cell phone messages.” She smirked and cocked her head. “You must’ve been working with him for a while if he knows you that well. He tried to be cryptic, but I don’t know, Jack, how many ‘sellers’ would ask to up a closing date because their parents out West took a turn for the worse? Tell me it’s just a coincidence.”

Jack scrubbed his jaw and looked toward the patio door.

“Jack!” Anna paced like a caged lioness. “The animal park? What in the world were you thinking?”

“I was thinking it’s the perfect chance—the best way—for both of us to be with Pippa. You could do amazing things to that place. Run an endangered breeding program or something.”

“Or something? Are you insane? What in the freaking universe makes you think I’d want to leave Busara?”

“You know you can find care for the elephants, and the animals at this park are the ones who were about to lose their home. A man needed to be with his parents. It all makes sense. This could be your next project. Your research at Busara is essentially over. You don’t even know if you’ll find funding,” he said.

“How perfect for you. Was Miller in on this, too?” Anna rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, then pressed her fist to her chest. “Busara is more than research. It’s a rescue. It’s my life...and Pippa’s. I could never walk away from it. If I had money to invest in a place, I’d be putting it in Busara, fighting poaching and saving those dear, helpless babies. I don’t want any animal anywhere to suffer, but those ones are my responsibility, Jack. I don’t walk away from those who count on me or need me. I came here. I trusted you. And this is what you go and do? Pretend you’re taking Pippa to the park to play?”

“It
was
about taking Pippa to play, and making her happy. This idea came up after I suggested the park, not before. Pippa needs to come first. She’s a child, and having her parents spread across the globe isn’t fair to her. Not when there’s an easy way to have us both nearby. She comes first, Anna. Pippa does.” Jack sliced the air between them with his hand, before running it back through his hair.

Anna stopped pacing and stared at him. “Don’t you dare make me feel bad for caring, or imply that I don’t put her first. Why do you think I came here? Just because my heart is in my work doesn’t for one minute mean I don’t put Pippa above all. I would give my life for her and I’ve never put her second. I would have given anything as a child to have the kind of life she has at Busara. If
you
were putting her first, you would’ve put your savings into her future or into the only home she’s known—not that I would ever take a dime from you—instead of squandering it on a place you won’t even know what to do with.”

“I didn’t squander. I invested. In all of us. And I’m not some poor street kid,” Jack said, his underlying reference quite clear. “I’ve been a bachelor—through no fault of my own—with a good income and no real expenses until now. And against my will, Pippa’s education has been paid for. So I did put my savings in her future—by trying to make sure she’d have her mother around.”

Anna dug her nails into her scalp and let out a frustrated growl that could have challenged Pippa’s animal calls.

“Jack! Don’t you get it? You bought a park! An entire park without even discussing it with me. How could you do something so stupid?”

“Because you make me stupid!” Jack yelled back, flinging his hands in the air.

“What?”

“No. That’s not what I meant. I mean you make me do stupid things.”

“That’s so much better. Great to know we bring out the best in each other,” Anna said. She felt so deflated, disappointed and...dead. Feelings she’d promised herself she’d never experience again when she’d first left for Kenya, in the wake of her parents’ divorce and Jack’s hollow attempt at proposing.

Anna understood where he was coming from right now—she did. But why couldn’t he understand that she wasn’t some prop to move around just so he could have Pippa? Had he ever understood her? Had he ever cared?

She didn’t have the energy to fight anymore. All she wanted was Pippa in her arms and the warmth of Busara around them.

Pippa.

The little monkey in the middle.

Anna walked over to Jack’s man chair and sank into it. “I’ve killed myself trying to make right choices, and I’m finding out sometimes they don’t exist. And you find that out too late,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“I’d like to go get Pippa now,” she stated.

He didn’t speak, but began buttoning his shirt as he turned toward the bedroom.

“There’s only one thing I do need from you, Jack.”

He scoffed bitterly and stopped in his tracks. “What’s that?”

Anna’s eyes burned, but she managed to gather herself. In spite of everything, and given that she’d kept Pippa from him all these years, this was the hardest sacrifice to ask for. Anna could cope with many things, but everyone had a limit. She wiped her face on her sleeve and frowned. Her head was pounding in alternating waves of hot and cold.

“I need you to understand that I can’t let Pippa live here. I’d do anything to make up for not telling you, make up for all you missed, but not that. Anything but that. I need her with me. Busara is her home. She’s still so young, Jack. She needs her mother.”

Jack walked across the room and braced his hands on the edge of the kitchen table, his back to her. He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

“Please don’t fight me on this,” Anna said. She got up and took several steps toward him. “She can come visit you and spend summers here, or maybe stay here during our rainy season. She’d have plenty of time to—”

“No.” Jack jerked around and Anna’s heartbeat stumbled. “That’s not enough. Life here will be better and safer for her. She stays with me. I’ll pay you back child support, that’s a given, and you can have two weeks to let her say goodbye and get used to the idea of being here. After that, it’s up to you. We can settle this between us or bring in the lawyers.”

* * *

D
ROPPING
A
NNA
AND
P
IPPA
off at the airport for their scheduled flight back to Kenya left Jack feeling messed up. So messed up that the last set of instructions he’d left at the lab had his tech calling his cell phone in total confusion. Good thing Jack had answered it. He cringed at the thought of what would have been wasted had he not picked up. Lesson learned.

He really needed to get back on track. He needed to adjust his schedule for Pippa, but after that, he needed to put in his hours and make sure his research stayed on target. He had a career to maintain. He was a parent. He had responsibilities. Including a massive real estate purchase looming. Man, he’d been so careful about the paperwork in the envelope that day, yet of all things, she’d answered his house phone. He scrubbed his jaw. He needed to stop wasting time thinking about Anna.

I don’t walk away from those who count on me or need me.

Who had she really been talking about? What
was
he trying to do? Guard against abandonment? Prove life here was good enough? Prove
he
was good enough? Or care for his daughter?

They’d barely spoken after the argument. The car ride to his parents’ place had been silent, as was the ride to her mother’s, except for talking to Pippa. Both had managed to keep up a pleasant front around family. But now, sitting in his parents’ kitchen, because trying to get anything done at the lab was futile, he couldn’t pretend anymore.

He grabbed another peanut butter fudge brownie off the plate on the kitchen island and shoved it in his mouth in one bite. His mom pulled another tray out of the oven. He sat on the same backed stool he had as a kid. One of two. The other had been Zoe’s, but now Maddie and Chad used them. This kitchen held history. Generations of Harpers would build memories here. Good memories. He was going to have to find a matching third stool for Pippa and, come to think of it, one for Zoe’s new kid once he or she outgrew the high chair.

He watched his mom put a new tray in. She never stopped at one batch. She always made enough to pack some for Zoe, the kids, him and half the neighbors. When he was a kid, these brownies had appeared every time he came home upset after school, as if she had mood-sensing elves in the oven.

Jack hoped the thought-sensing ones were on leave, because he had no intention of telling her he’d gone under contract on a zoo. A man had his pride.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“Get what?” his mom asked. “Love?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, stuffing another bite in his mouth. He gulped. “No, what? Who said anything about that?”

His mom smiled as she sliced a grid pattern into the done batch. The aroma escaped along the knife’s edge. Man, those brownies smelled good.

“Who indeed. Certainly not you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jack asked, stealing the last cooled brownie off the plate before his mother took it for reloading.

“It means it’s about time you manned up and said it. For crying out loud, Jack,
love
isn’t a four-letter word.”

“It was the last time I saw it written,” he muttered.

“Wise guy. When are you going to let go and say it?”

“Say what?”

“Love! In all these years, you haven’t once said ‘I love you’ to any of us.”

Jack frowned and dropped his last bite on his napkin, suddenly losing his appetite. “Sure I have,” he said.