“Oh, Shelby-girl will be all right,” she’d heard him tell the worried housekeeper. “It’s just end-of-the-year jitters. She’s worried about graduatin’ from high school, you know. All girls go through this kind of thing.”
“But—”
“Now, Lydia, don’t you worry. She’ll be fine. You’re not her mother now, are ya? You’re my housekeeper, and I appreciate how you’ve stepped in with Shelby, but she’ll be fine. Just fine. Give her time to adjust.”
That was always the end of the argument, though Lydia’s dark eyes had always been black with concern.
Nevada called, but Shelby didn’t answer, couldn’t face him or hear his voice. She avoided him in town and only once did she run into him a few weeks later.
She’d been driving home from school, her thoughts returning to that wretched night. Nevada, still working for the Sheriff’s Department, had pulled her over.
He strode up to her idling convertible and demanded answers she couldn’t give.
“What happened?” He stood outside her driver’s side window. Shelby had parked on a tree-lined street not far from her house. Oh, Lord, what could she say? She squinted up at him, but no words would form.
Nevada yanked open the door, pulled her out into the bright sunlight, stared at her so hard she thought she would melt under the harsh glare and repeated slowly, as if she were dim-witted, “What the hell happened, Shelby?”
“Nothing,” she forced out.
“Like hell!”
“Leave it alone, Nevada.” Oh, God, she wanted to tell him the truth, but she couldn’t. He’d never understand. No one could know. No one.
“You were supposed to call me that night. I was frantic.”
“I forgot.” She cleared her throat.
“You
forgot?
You know, I’ve heard enough B.S. in my life to know when it’s being slung in my direction.”
“Are you going to give me a ticket or something, because if you are, just do it, and if you’re not, I think I’d better get home.” It took all her strength to keep her tone even, her words emotionless.
“You’re shutting me out.”
She didn’t respond, watched a car pass as a couple of teenaged boys she knew rubbernecked, thought she was being cited and laughed over the roar of an engine and the thrum of heavy-metal music.
“I’ve called.”
“I’ve been busy.” Even to her own ears the excuse sounded frail.
“It’s your father.”
She didn’t answer.
Strong fingers curled over her forearms. “If it’s over, fine,” he said, and she wanted to sink into the asphalt. “But at least you owe me an explanation.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she said tonelessly, though for the first time since Ross’s attack, she felt something, a stir of passion deep within her numbness.
His jaw clamped shut. “Then what was it all about—you and me down at the creek a month or so ago?”
“Does it have to be about something?” She stared at the ground, noticed a smashed bottle cap in the gravel on the shoulder. Swallowed hard.
“Shelby?” Oh, God, was there a bit of desperation in his voice?
A part of her wanted to scream that she loved him, that she was sorry, that she knew it was irrational and pathetic to feel so ashamed of something beyond her control, but if she did, she’d have to tell him the truth and she couldn’t face it. Not ever.
“Does it have to be about something? Well, yes, Shelby, it does.”
“I
—
I can’t explain it.”
“Try.” The desperation was gone. Replaced with anger.
She took in a deep breath, found no words. A crow flapped its black wings and settled on a telephone wire that drooped through the branches of a gnarled oak tree.
“Look at me.”
With all her strength, she raised her eyes, forced herself to meet the questions in his gaze.
“Did I hurt you that bad?”
She wanted to die inside. The truth pounded in her ears. Shame drove it back. “No.”
“Then—?”
What could she say? Nothing. So she didn’t..
His nostrils flared and his lips twisted into a hard scowl. Storm clouds gathered in his gray eyes. “It’s not true, you know,” he said, his voice somehow permeating her haze of despair.
She blinked. “What?”
“That I’ve been seeing Vianca again.”
Her heart, already bruised beyond repair, took another sharp blow.
“I—don’t understand.”
“It’s just talk, Shelby,” he said, the brackets around his mouth deep and hard. From inside his cruiser the radio crackled.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell!” He yanked her close, pulled her roughly against him and kissed her so hard she couldn’t breathe, could barely think. When he raised his head, she looked at him through a sheen of tears. “It’s you I care for. Damn my soul to hell, Shelby, but that’s just the way it is.”
She sniffed, the C.B. crackled again—spitting static and orders, his number and then, through the static, ”... officer needs backup ...”
“Damn.” His grip lessened, he took off his hat and rammed impatient fingers through his hair. “You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said, trying to get over the hump of her ill-won guilt and degradation.
“No matter what happens, you’re the one.” Flinty eyes held hers in a gaze that was hot and pure. “You’re the one.” He strode back to his car, climbed inside, spoke into the microphone and flipped on his lights and siren. In a spray of gravel and squeal of tires, he was gone.
“Get over this,” she told herself, finding some shred of faith in his words, knowing that she had to trust him, to find a way back to that safe haven she’d felt in his arms, to rediscover her own self, her sense of vitality. As she drove to her house, she glanced in the rearview mirror. “Don’t let Ross McCallum do this to you,” she said, tears streaming down her face, mascara leaving black tracks. “You can’t let him win.”
She parked near the garage, dashed around the hedge, through the gate and up the back stairs. With each riser she felt a new degree of determination, her battered pride resurfacing, bruised but not broken. Nevada loved her. He’d as much as said so. What had happened that night six weeks ago was long over. It wouldn’t happen again. Ever. No man, including a scum bucket like Ross McCallum, would ever terrorize her again.
At the top of the stairs she felt a little light-headed. She walked to her room as the first wave of nausea hit her. Her stomach threatened to empty. She raced to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet when she heaved.
Everything she’d eaten, which wasn’t much, came up.
She fell back on the cool tile, then steadied herself and stood, rinsing her mouth by holding her head under the faucet. What was that all about? But she knew. Deep inside, she’d been worried sick for a couple of weeks.
“Oh, no.” She hung her head.
In a second her world splintered and that which she’d tried to deny became impossible to ignore. “Oh, God, no.” She ran to her bedroom, picked up her calendar and stared in disbelief. “Please, no,” she whispered. “Not this ...”
She was late.
Not just by one month, oh, no, it had now been nearly sixty days since she’d had her last period.
“God help me,” she whispered and wished for the millionth time that her mother was still alive.
Maybe there was some mistake, maybe her cycle was just off kilter because it was the end of the year and she’d be graduating in a couple of months. She was tired and worried and stressed out and depressed over the rape and ... and ... and ... She gulped, stared at herself in the mirror. The excuses that she’d clung to for the past few weeks fell away as she gazed with worried eyes at her pasty-faced, nearly gaunt reflection.
There wasn’t much doubt about it: Shelby Cole was pregnant.
Chapter Nine
The present
And now, ten years later, Ross McCallum was back in town. A free man. Shelby shuddered. Lying on her bed, looking up at the lazily circling ceiling fan, she reminded herself that she was no longer afraid. Since the time she’d last seen McCallum, she’d moved away from a controlling father, spent countless hours with therapists and counselors, found her self-esteem and managed to finish college in California. Eventually she’d landed in Seattle where she’d taken the exam to become a real estate broker while earning her master’s degree. She’d never finished her thesis, but she was satisfied, successful, and long over the curse of her youth.
She rolled off the bed and flipped on her computer. As it warmed up, she decided to do some checking on her own. First she would try to find Nevada’s friend, the private investigator. Bill Levinson. It wasn’t much to go on. But it was a start, and Shelby was tired of waiting for someone else to do what she had to. She hadn’t stopped her quest for Doc Pritchart and anyone associated with him—relatives, other physicians, nurses or receptionists. Then there was her father’s attorney—what was his name?
Orrin something-or-other. Orrin ... Filkins or Fillmore or ... She remembered the Judge rustling around in his desk drawer earlier, searching for his Last Will and Testament. Like a shot, she was down the stairs and into his office, where the smell of cigars smoked long ago still lingered in the air. The Judge was nowhere to be seen. Not that she cared. If he found her searching through his private things, tough. As far as she was concerned, he was stonewalling her about her life. Her daughter’s life. Let him come unglued if he found Shelby rifling through his things. It served him right.
Without any qualms she opened the drawers of his desk, one after another. Finding no legal documents, she scoured the room for a Rolodex or address book or anything with the law firm’s name on it. She pulled on the drawers of his credenza, but the sleek cherry cabinet was locked. Surely there was something ... a piece of paper, letterhead, business cards ... She scanned the room and spied a ring of keys in a crystal dish near his humidor. She tried three keys before finally finding the right one. Unlocking the first drawer, she ignored a jab of conscience and started rifling quickly through files, some as old as she was. Over the sound of rattling pans, Shelby heard Lydia humming softly, the same Spanish lullaby she’d sung to Shelby as a child. From the comer of her eye she saw movement outside the window—Pabto Ramirez, the gardener who was raking the flower beds. Still there was no sign of the Judge.
Shelby’s heart was beating like a drum. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “It’s got to be here somewhere.” she told herself, then stopped short. Her breath caught as she found a file with her mother’s name on it. “What in thunder?” she whispered, her mouth drying of all spit as she realized there were slots for everyone who had ever worked for the Judge, all his relatives and even others ...
Cole, Elizabeth
Her baby!
Cole, Jasmine
Dee, Ruby
Estevan, Ramón
Hart, Nell
McCallum, Ross
Ramirez, Maria
Ramirez, Pablo
Pritchart, Ned
Smith, Nevada
Vasquez, Pedro
The pull tabs read like a census tally for the town of Bad Luck. A cold feeling swept through Shelby, and she suddenly felt as if she was intruding, wading into a dark pool where at any moment she could step off a hidden ledge and sink to unknown and treacherous depths. Then she saw her own name.
Her father kept a file on her?
“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered in despair and disbelief.
She heard the squeak of the back door as it opened, then her father’s voice speaking in soft tones to Lydia. She froze as she recognized his measured tread and the tap of his cane. Biting her lip, Shelby quickly extracted a few files from the drawer—just enough that they wouldn’t readily be missed. Stealthily, she shut and locked the credenza, left the key in its crystal dish and padded out of the room without a sound. Though she was ready to face her father if he caught her in his office, there was no need to tip him off that she was being so persistent, no reason to let him know that she intended to turn the house upside down and inside out as well as comb through every one of his papers in her quest to find out what had happened to her child.
His uneven gait sounded closer.
Damn!
Tucking the files under her arm, she left the door slightly ajar and, to avoid running into him, cut through the butler’s pantry, dining room and the living room to the foyer, where she beelined for the main stairs. She was on the landing when she heard his voice. She froze. Held her breath. Glanced to the etched-glass windows mounted high over the twin front doors. Outside the world seemed the same, the front lawn, green and lush in this dry, dusty heat, was being watered by automatic sprinklers, while inside the home where she’d grown up, her life was in a tailspin.