The Secret Sin (7 page)

“She’ll hear the car engine,” he said.

“Not if she has her earphones on,” Annie argued.

“A lot of times teenagers say one thing and do another.”

She apparently couldn’t come up with a counterpoint, because she plopped down on one of the twin rocking chairs. The barest sliver of moon prevented him from seeing the nearby river but he could hear the distant murmur of white water. Annie’s face was cast half in shadows, the glow from the porch light enabling him to see her displeasure.

The hell of it was, he couldn’t blame her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her chin lifted, her eyes meeting his. The flare of attraction he’d lit when he kissed her ignited, reminding him of the secondary reason for his apology.

“Not for kissing you,” he quickly clarified. He wasn’t about to act contrite for being attracted to her. “For kissing you
when
I did. What you said hurt my ego, but I know why you said it.”

“You do?” She seemed skeptical.

He sat down on the second rocking chair, repositioning it so he faced her. Her hands gripped the arms of her rocker as though at any moment she might propel herself out of it and into the house.

“I never apologized for getting you pregnant,” he said. “I should have had a condom that night. I should have stopped myself before we went too far.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Annie said tightly. “There isn’t any purpose in rehashing the past.”

That was usually Ryan’s philosophy, but that had changed when he saw Annie again.

“In this case, I don’t agree.” He leaned toward her, his legs slightly spread, his hands resting on his knees. It was a casual position, but he felt anything but relaxed. She stiffened, but he kept talking, the words that he’d kept inside for so long spilling from him. “I should have found a way to come back to Indigo Springs to help you make the decision about what to do about our baby. I should have been there for you when Lindsey was born.”

She’d been staring down at the porch, but now her head rose, her eyes meeting his. “If you felt so bad, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

Her question threw him. “You wouldn’t take my calls. I was off at college and then at med school. When
we were in town at the same time, you made a point of avoiding me.”

“If you’d knocked on my door,” she said, “I would have answered.”

He fell silent, stifling the urge to argue that she would have slammed the door in his face. Even if that were true, she was right. He had no excuse for not seeking her out except that he hadn’t been ready for the responsibility of a baby or the repercussions of giving up that baby. And those were no excuses at all.

“I wasn’t fair to you,” he said. “I can see that now.”

“It’s over and done with. Neither of us can change what happened.”

He ran a hand over his lower face, not liking the truths she’d forced him to face. A particularly harsh fact was that a part of him had been relieved when she’d decided to give the baby up for adoption. It hardly mattered that he’d make different choices if he had to do it all over again. What counted was what he’d done.

“I don’t even know what happened to you when you left Indigo Springs.” He knew only that she’d departed before her pregnancy became visible. She was long gone when he returned to Indigo Springs from studying in Spain. “I don’t know where you finished high school or how you got the job at
Outdoor Women
.”

Even in the semidarkness, he could see her eyes narrow. “Why do you want to know?”

He could think of a dozen reasons but provided the most obvious. “You
are
the mother of my child.”

“Ted Thompson’s child,” she replied.

He wanted to disagree but acknowledged that her way of thinking about Lindsey was healthier than his. She showed no inclination to fill him in on her past so he tried a direct question. “Where did you spend senior year?”

After a moment, she said, “I didn’t have a senior year. I got my GED instead.”

Fresh guilt spiraled through him. He nearly apologized again for not trying harder to track her down, if only to extend his support. “You did pretty well for yourself. You write for
Outdoor Women
, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

He’d picked up a copy once at a newsstand and read one of her stories, about snow-machine racing. She had a style that was almost lyrical, making the reader feel the blowing snow and the thrilling exhilaration of competition. “I imagine a staff-writing job for a national magazine is hard to come by. How’d that happen?”

She seemed to be deciding how much to tell him. “I started out as an editorial assistant, but kept pitching story ideas. I finally got the green light to write one. They liked how it turned out, then let me do more. Eventually I got promoted.”

He could hear in her story all the things she didn’t include. Her determination to get ahead. Her willingness to pay her dues. Her pride in her accomplishment. The shy girl he’d gone to high school with had grown into an amazing woman he didn’t know enough about.

“Where’s the magazine based?” he asked.

“Erie.” The other end of the state.

“Is that where you had Lindsey?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you still live in Erie?”

“I live in Indigo Springs about a month of the year,” she said. “The rest of the time, I go where the stories are.”

He thought about how different her life would have been had she kept the baby. “I guess that’ll change now that you’re taking over your father’s business.”

“I’m not taking over his business,” Annie denied. “I don’t know why everybody thinks that. I’m going back to
Outdoor Women
as soon as my dad gets back from Poland.”

“Back to living out of a suitcase, you mean,” he said. “Sounds rough.”

“It suits me.” She fidgeted, causing the chair to rock. “Let’s talk about tomorrow.”

“There’s still more—”

“It might be tough for you to spend time with Lindsey,” she interrupted. “I’ll be guiding trips for most of the day. I’m going to try to get Lindsey to come along, but if she won’t she’ll probably help in the shop.”

She clearly intended the subject of their past to be closed, even though it felt as if there was so much more to say. With difficulty, he thought ahead to the future.

“I have plans until late in the day,” he said.

She didn’t comment. Since they’d come outside on the porch, she hadn’t shown any curiosity about his life at all.

“Why did you tell me about Lindsey?” He asked the question that had been rattling around in his mind since that morning.

The crescent moon disappeared behind a cloud,
leaving the porch lamp the only illumination in the dark night. Her face was turned away from the light, her expression impossible to read.

“You had a right to know,” she said softly, “and I didn’t have the right to keep it from you.”

She stood up, walking to the front door and pausing with her hand on the knob. “I think we’ve spent enough time alone. Good night, Ryan.”

He sat there on the porch for long moments after she went inside the house, thinking about how her answer reflected her honesty and integrity. She was a person of substance, someone he’d like to get to know better even if not for Lindsey.

It bothered him that he’d given her good reason, both in the past and tonight, not to feel the same about him.

A
NNIE
usually enjoyed being out on the river, with the splash of the white water cooling her sun-warmed skin and the beauty of the outdoors clearing her head.

On Sunday, working the trips had been an ordeal.

She’d designated another guide as the lead so she could bring up the rear, which usually involved nonstop action helping rafters who got stuck on the rocks break free. Both groups were surprisingly competent, giving her too much time to think about Ryan’s apology of the night before.

Why hadn’t it included the bet? He’d blamed himself for the past and the present—although saying he was sorry for bad timing in kissing her hardly qualified as an apology—but had ignored the humiliation he’d dealt her.

He must not know she’d found out about the wager, she concluded. Not that she should let it matter now, fourteen years later. Except it did, enough that she hadn’t risked resurrecting the pain of his betrayal by bringing up the subject herself.

Because of Lindsey, she’d be forced to get used to having him around. Annie could handle that as long as
she didn’t do something stupid, like allow him to kiss her again. She couldn’t let him into her heart, where she’d already made a place for Lindsey.

Lindsey, whose refusal to take either of today’s white-water trips could have had something to do with Jason.

Lindsey walked alongside him while he helped Annie lug the paddles that had been used on the last rafting trip to the storage room.

“Like I told you before, I’ll be here at least a week,” Lindsey said brightly. Her hands were free, all her attention focused on Jason. Annie felt stupid for not considering Lindsey’s ulterior motive for spending the day in the shop until now. “So you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”

Annie could already see too much of Lindsey. The girl wore tennis shoes with pink laces, a clingy pale-pink T-shirt and a pair of very short white shorts.

She might be too thin but she had curves. She probably already wore a bigger bra size than Annie.

Jason shook the long hair from eyes Annie had overheard a female teenage customer describe as
dreamy
and said, “Cool.”

How could Annie have been so preoccupied with her reaction to Ryan that she’d neglected to have that talk with Jason about Lindsey? She set down the paddles in the storeroom, then motioned to him. “I need to see you in the shop.”

“We’re not done yet,” he said.

“This can’t wait,” she said. “Lindsey, can you put away some of the paddles for me?”

“Okay,” Lindsey said, but she didn’t sound enthusiastic.

Jason grinned at Lindsey. “Be right back.”

Annie marched inside the empty store, on the door of which they’d already posted a closed sign, and waited for Jason to catch up to her. He’d started out the day wearing an Indigo River Rafters T-shirt but had changed somewhere along the line to his traditional black.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You’re eighteen, right, Jason?”

“Yeah.”

“How old do you think Lindsey is?”

He shrugged and pushed his long, wavy hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know. Sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Thirteen.”

“No way! Wow! That’s wild.”

“Thirteen, Jason,” Annie repeated. “Need I say more?”

Jason put his hands up. “Got it. Stay away from the thirteen-year-old.”

Annie could suddenly breathe easier. “Exactly. Lindsey and I can finish putting away the paddles so you’re free to go. You’re off the next two days, right?”

Mondays and Tuesdays were generally the two slowest days of the week. “Right,” he said. “See you Wednesday.”

He banged out the front door, letting it slam shut behind him. Annie made a mental note to adjust the hinges, then turned back in the direction of the storage room.

Lindsey stood just inside the door, tension radiat
ing from her. “I can’t believe you just did that! How could you?”

Annie swallowed and composed an answer. “All I did was tell him how old you are.”

“You told him to stay away from me!”

“Because you’re thirteen.”

“He wouldn’t have known that if you hadn’t said anything!”

“He needed to know.”

“Why? It’s just a number. Everybody says I act way older.” She clenched her small hands into fists and thrust her lower lip forward like a petulant child who wasn’t getting her way.

“You’re not older. You’re thirteen.” Annie started to say Lindsey was still a kid but thought better of it. She tried another tactic. “I told your stepmother I’d take good care of you. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“You’re just like her!” Lindsey retorted. “I thought you were different, but you’re not.”

She pivoted on her pink-laced tennis shoe and stormed away. Annie pressed her lips together.

She should have made sure Lindsey wasn’t in the vicinity when she confronted Jason. Failing that, she should have refrained from trying to reason with Lindsey—that had just given the girl more ammunition to argue with.

And now there was a very real possibility Lindsey would ask to cut the trip short. Lindsey’s stomach formed a knot. She couldn’t let that happen. Neither did she have a clue how to prevent it.

R
YAN SANK
into the swivel chair outside the exam room and scribbled a prescription, the first chance he’d had to sit down since arriving at the health center in Philadelphia early Sunday morning.

The sights and sounds were familiar from the year he’d spent working at the inner-city Philadelphia location, with a pawn shop and a coin Laundromat in the same block: the cramped space, the patients without health insurance jamming the waiting room, the bright-yellow walls, the cheerful chatter, the friendly staff.

“I still don’t know what you’re doing here, Ryan.” Joy Markham, his favorite nurse, halted beside his chair. She was a grandmother in her early sixties with a no-nonsense attitude and gray hair she defiantly refused to dye. “I thought you were in the Poconos helping out your sister.”

“One of the other volunteers cancelled,” he said, “so I’m filling in.”

She shook her head. “You have got to get yourself a life. I’ve never once heard you turn down an extra shift and now you’re stepping in for volunteers. You don’t work here anymore and they’re still calling you. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Because I’m thirty years old and single?”

“You’re gonna keep on being single if you don’t stop working so much,” she sassed. “Do you even have a girlfriend?”

He thought of Annie. “Sort of.”

“Sort of? Does that mean you’re having trouble convincing some woman what a great guy you are?”

He started. “You think I’m a great guy?”

“Who doesn’t?” she said. “Some patients will wait an hour or more to see you, and you know how people hate to wait.”

“I didn’t know that,” Ryan said.

“’Course you didn’t. Shouldn’t have told you now. We don’t want you getting a big head.” She rested a hand on an ample hip. “So tell me about this sort-of girlfriend. What’s the problem?”

Annie’s opinion of him was the problem. Ryan usually didn’t get into his personal life in the office, but what would be the harm in getting Joy’s take on the situation?

“She doesn’t think very highly of me,” he said.

Joy’s eyes bugged out, wordlessly asking him to continue.

“We went to high school together,” he explained.

“So you’re saying you used to be kind of a jerk?” Trust Joy to get to the point.

“Yeah.” It didn’t escape Ryan’s notice that
jerk
was the same word he’d applied to himself after he kissed Annie at the miniature gold course. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, then, that’s an easy enough fix.”

“It is?”

“You’re not a jerk anymore. Anybody who spends time with you is gonna figure that out.”

“I’m not following you, Joy.”

“Stop working so much and make time for her,” Joy said. “You’re a doll for coming in today, but you call her right now and tell her you’ll see her tonight.”

He saluted her. “Aye, aye, captain.”

She pointed a finger at him. “Just do it. And another thing. It wouldn’t hurt to bring her a little something.”

“Flowers?”

“Damn straight. You can never go wrong with flowers.”

Luck was on Ryan’s side. The patient load at the health center was lighter than usual, enabling him to depart ahead of schedule. He left a message on Annie’s answering machine that he’d come by later, then stopped at a grocery store and picked out a colorful bouquet.

He resisted the urge to stomp down on the accelerator, keeping his speed just above the limit until he left the interstate for the back roads that led to Indigo Springs.

He was rounding a bend on one of the hairpin turns common in the mountains when he caught a flash of movement in his peripheral vision.

It was a dog, loping alongside the shoulder of the road, its tongue lolling. Ryan had barely missed hitting the animal, who might not be so lucky with the next car to come along.

Ryan brought the car to a stop along the shoulder of a relatively straight stretch of road. He checked his rearview mirror. The dog was still coming.

He opened the driver’s door and got out. The dog picked up its pace, running toward him, its tail wagging. Ryan could tell it was a puppy from the way it moved and the size of its paws. A mutt, probably part collie, part beagle and part a breed that grew really large.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” Ryan bent down to pet the dog. It wore no tags. Grass, leaves and bits of sticks were caught in its fur.

They were miles from a residential neighborhood. Had some bastard abandoned the dog to fend for itself?

The most sensible course of action would be to drop off the dog at the nearest animal shelter, except the only one he knew of was twenty miles away. It was nearly six o’clock. If the shelter was open on Sunday, it wouldn’t be by the time he got there.

The alternative was to take the dog back to his sister’s house, relegating the rest of the evening to feeding him, bathing him and getting him settled for the night.

The dog looked up at him, its big eyes full of trust.

Ryan sighed because there was only one decision he could make. He opened the back door on the passenger side, glad he was driving his own car instead of his sister’s Lexus.

He couldn’t follow his nurse friend’s advice tonight. He’d have to call Annie back and tell her he couldn’t make it after all.

“Get in, Hobo,” he said. “It looks like you just ruined my evening.”

A
NNIE
would make a terrible mother.

Good mothers did not propose after-dinner trips into town for ice cream to a teenager who had behaved badly, not to mention barely touched her dinner, yet that’s exactly what Annie had done.

Annie could have argued the trip to the ice-cream parlor was a ploy to get Lindsey to take in more calories, but that wasn’t the main reason. She was desperate to smooth things over so the girl didn’t leave town early.

“How’s that raspberry flavor?” Annie asked.

Lindsey had ordered low-fat frozen custard in a baby cone, which was the smallest portion available.

“Okay,” she said.

They’d opted not to eat their frozen treats inside the parlor, or at least that’s what Annie had chosen. She’d envisioned Lindsey sitting sullenly across from her and had suggested they stroll down Main Street.

The street was fairly busy for a Sunday night in August, with the tourists who made Indigo Springs a popular summer destination ducking in and out of the bars and restaurants that had been renovated with careful attention to historical detail. Only a few tourists availed themselves of the perfect night for a stroll in the town that seemed stuck in a time that had already passed.

A couple with two young boys passed them, giving Annie a conversation starter. “How old are your brothers, Lindsey?”

“Five and six,” she answered without looking at Annie.

Annie did some quick mental calculations. Lindsey’s father must have remarried and gotten his new wife pregnant fairly soon after his first wife died. She wondered how that had affected Lindsey, but didn’t ask. A question like that could shut down their lines of communication completely.

“I bet things are never boring at your house,” Annie said.

“It’s a zoo,” Lindsey said. “My brothers run wild.”

“Then you must be a big help with them.”

Lindsey snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“Don’t you babysit?”

“My parents never ask me to,” Lindsey said.

“Then who watches your brothers when your mom and dad go out?”

“Nobody,” she said. “They take Teddy and Timmy with them everywhere.”

Annie wondered if Lindsey’s brothers were a sensitive subject. She licked her ice cream but hardly tasted it, concluding that Annie’s chat with Jason was just as likely the source of Lindsey’s short answers.

They crossed a side street and entered a block with single-family row houses interspersed among the gift shops and the florist.

“Don’t you just love these stone facades?” Annie asked. “I hear this block looks pretty much the same as it did one hundred and fifty years ago.”

She sounded like a tour guide showing off the city. Lindsey polished off her baby cone, affording the architecturally significant buildings only a cursory glance. Annie let the tidbit about the city getting its start as a transportation hub for the once-booming coal industry die on her lips.

She finished her ice cream in quick order and threw her napkin in a decorative black metal trash can. The silence between them grew so pronounced Annie could hear her own breathing and the soft sounds her flat-heeled sandals made on the pavement. Her hip ached where she’d fallen on it.

“Who lives there?” Lindsey finally broke the silence,
pointing up the side street they were crossing to a large, well-kept Victorian house beautifully situated on a spacious lawn.

“Quincy Coleman and his wife,” Annie replied, although she stopped short of sharing the drama that had swirled around Quincy earlier that summer. “He used to be president of the local bank, but he’s retired now.”