The Homecoming Baby
Kathleen O'Brien
The secret of the "Homecoming Baby" is about to be revealed!Patrick Torrance is shocked to discover he's adopted. But that's nothing compared to what he feels when he finds out the details of his birth. He's Enchantment's so-called Homecoming Baby–born and abandoned in the girls' room during a high school dance. All the folks in town think they know who his parents are, but he's determined to find out the truth.But uncovering the truth is going to mean using some of Enchantment's finest residents. And once he gets to know some of them, especially Celia Brice, he begins to wonder just how much it's going to cost him to get the answers he wants.
Patrick had come to Enchantment for one reason—to find enough information about Angelina Linden to track her down
It wouldn’t be easy. But someone knew where she’d run—and probably that someone was her sister, Trish, the receptionist at the birthing center.
Somehow he would find out the truth, and when he did—well, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do then. No point tackling that decision now.
Who would have thought that breaking down near a ghost town would get things off to such a promising start? He might have wasted days trying to meet someone connected with The Birth Place, someone who might be able to introduce him to Trish Linden.
And yet, all because of a broken hose, he’d met Celia Brice, who, it turned out, was the psychologist for the birthing center, and Trish’s good friend.
It was as if the gods had conspired to assist him. Celia was open and welcoming, and she had already offered to show him around her beloved town.
A real find. A woman who had lived here all her life and knew everyone might just make this whole hunting expedition very easy indeed.
With a satisfied smile he picked up the phone. He’d start with dinner. She’d made it clear she’d love to hear from him again, and dinner conversations could cover a lot of useful ground.
And after that…
Dear Reader,
A witty Irish newspaper columnist named Flann O’Brien once said that the most important things in life are “food, money and opportunities for scoring off one’s enemies.”
As cynical as that sounds, most of us probably have, somewhere along the way, nurtured a nasty little revenge dream or two. It might be for a small injustice—a boss who wouldn’t cough up a raise, a boyfriend who flirted with another girl. Or it might be something much bigger and harder to forgive.
But in spite of the columnist’s clever comment, most of us discover that revenge feels rotten in the end. It is, strangely, as sour and destructive as the original offense! That’s when we realize we should have put our energy into finding a way to forgive.
When Patrick Torrance comes to town, he is definitely looking for revenge. He has just learned the truth about his birth—that he is Enchantment’s infamous “Homecoming Baby.” Thirty years ago, while other high school girls were twirling in their boyfriends’ arms at the homecoming dance, one lonely teenager was locked in the bathroom, giving birth to a son she could never acknowledge. Patrick’s plan is to find that woman and make her pay.
Meeting Celia Brice is a lucky break. Patrick hopes he can use her to gain entrée to this close-knit community and unearth clues about the terrible night he was born.
He never guesses that Celia’s gentle warmth might somehow change his plan or that Enchantment might begin to feel like home. I hope you enjoy their journey.
Warmly,
Kathleen O’Brien
P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Please visit my Web site,
KathleenOBrienOnline.com. Or write me at P.O. Box 947633, Maitland, FL 32794-7633.
The Homecoming Baby
Kathleen O’Brien
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Darlene Graham, Brenda Novak, Roxanne Rustand, C.J. Carmichael and Marisa Carroll, for bringing such rich, inspiring humanity to The Birth Place—and to the time I spent within its adobe walls
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER ONE
MOST OF THE TIME, Patrick Torrance liked nothing better than taking crazy risks with the millions of dollars he’d recently, reluctantly inherited from his beast of a father.
Adopted father, to be precise. An important distinction, at least to Patrick, who didn’t particularly want to owe either his genes or his portfolio to Julian Torrance. Julian had been one brutal son of a bitch.
Several of Patrick’s friends, navel-gazers who had spent way too many afternoons on psychiatrists’ couches, had suggested that Patrick’s reckless investments were classic displaced resentment. Angry young man trying to free himself from abusive father’s memory by losing said father’s money.
The number one problem with that theory was that it wasn’t working. Patrick just kept getting richer. Movies that should have died quietly in art houses surprisingly lit up multiplexes. Companies drowning in red ink learned to swim. Oil rigs that had been spewing sand suddenly coughed up black gold.
No wonder he liked taking risks.
The one he was about to take right now, though, might just be a little too dangerous, even for him.
He stared down at white auction card he’d been holding for the past five minutes. Smoochy-Poochy it read in elegant script. Then he looked over at Smoochy himself, a patchy mutt who was wagging his tail and panting happily, apparently unaware that he was the single most hideous puppy in the entire history of puppies.
Patrick suppressed a shudder as Smoochy began to gnaw wetly at his own foot. Good God.
“Just fill in the number, sir,” the hired Beauty who was holding Smoochy, petting his wiry back with long, manicured fingers, said gently. “And of course your name.”
“Yes. I know.” Patrick knew, all right. In the two years they’d been dating, Ellyn Grainger had coaxed plenty of these little white cards out of him for one worthy cause or another. Over dinner last night he had promised her that he’d get the bidding started on Smoochy, who might be too homely to attract much attention from anyone else.
Gritting his teeth, Patrick filled in the card and propped it against the frilly blue basket. If he turned out to be the high bidder Ellyn had better have Plan B ready. He couldn’t care less about the five thousand dollars, but he’d be damned if he was going to let himself get saddled with a dog.
Especially not one named Smoochy. No half-breed, mangy mutt was going to come home with him and pee all over his Beauvais carpet.
He avoided meeting Smoochy’s gaze. Instead he scanned the estate grounds. Where was Ellyn, anyhow? He’d had enough. If he could find her, he’d make his excuses and say goodbye.
He fought his way across the emerald-green lawns, but it was slow going. Ellyn’s annual “Beauty and the Beasts” party for the Pet Adoption Society was always one of San Francisco’s most successful fundraisers, and the place was packed.
All around him, gorgeous women in lacy costumes were gliding along, carrying three-legged cats with jeweled collars, walking one-eyed dogs on braided-gold leashes and even dangling gilded cages filled with squawking cockatiels. Every few feet the Beauties stopped him, as they stopped every guest, to introduce him to the animals, relate the sad story of how they came to be abandoned and suggest in throaty tones what marvelous pets they would make.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve already bid on Smoochy,” he said when a blonde with a wriggling tabby cat strolled up. The sardonic edge to his voice was just thin enough that her face registered uncertainty. Apparently everyone knew who Smoochy was.
The guests slowed down his progress even more—the socialites, the businessmen, the social climbers, and, more rarely, the true philanthropists who, like Ellyn, were passionate about this cause. It was quite a gauntlet, and, though he caught sight of Ellyn once or twice, he never could make it to her side.
When he felt the tap on his arm, he assumed it was another Beauty, eager to interest him in some hideous iguana or hapless hamster.
“I’m sorry, I’ve really got my heart set on Smoochy,” he said as he turned around.
But it wasn’t a Beauty. A man Patrick had never seen before was smiling at him quizzically, a strange sort of sympathy in his brown eyes.
Patrick knew immediately this man wasn’t one of the guests. The guy wore an off-the-rack suit and loafers that had seen better days, which meant he didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend playing at rescuing abandoned animals. The expression in his eyes set him apart, too. Instead of inward, self-absorbed and self-congratulatory, his gaze was intelligent, curious and gentle.
“Smoochy?” The man’s smile was lopsided. “That’s one of the abandoned pets? A dog, maybe? Sounds cute.”
“You think so?” Patrick raised one brow. “Well, you’re in luck. If I win him, he’s yours.”
The man shook his head. “Already got four dogs. And a cat. And a pregnant gerbil.” He grinned. “And six kids. I bring one more living thing into the house, my wife says she’ll strangle me.”
Patrick refrained from observing that it just might be a mercy killing. He put out his hand. “I’m Patrick Torrance. Were you looking for me?”
The other man’s handshake was firm. “Yes, sir, I was. Your secretary said you’d be here. I’m Don Frost. Frost Investigations.”
Patrick nodded, his attention sharpening. He’d hired Frost Investigations two weeks ago, but all their business had been conducted via e-mail, snail mail and secretaries. He suddenly realized he’d done that deliberately. He hadn’t wanted to think of a real live human being prying into his background, unearthing the sordid details of his adoption.
It wasn’t that Patrick thought it shameful to be adopted. The embarrassment was more from being seen to care. It was pathetic, somehow, to yearn for a reunion with people who had abandoned you decades ago.
Not that Patrick longed for anything of the sort. If he craved anything, it was merely information. Julian Torrance wasn’t his father, thank God, but someone was. And Patrick had a right to know who.
Don Frost was squatting now, scratching the ears of a black-eyed mutt who had come by for an introduction. The dog was licking his wrist, and the investigator appeared to be enjoying the experience.
Patrick waited for the Beauty and her Beast to move on, fighting back a prick of impatience.
He had left instructions that he was to be informed the minute the firm had unearthed anything concrete—but he’d expected a call or e-mail. He wondered what it meant that Don Frost had felt the need to show up personally.
“It’s nice to meet you, Don,” he said. He put on his best professional poker face. “What brings you here? I assume you have news?”
Don paused. “I think I do,” he said, and it was clear he was choosing his words carefully. “Is there somewhere we could go? Maybe sit down? Anywhere a little more private?”
Patrick considered his options. He knew the owners of this estate casually, but not well enough to confiscate their living room for a private meeting. Down by the waterfront was a rather pretentious Greek folly, a small white temple climbed around with Don Juan roses. It was a ridiculous thing—but it had the benefit of being cold down there, and windy. They’d probably have the place to themselves.
“Come with me,” he said. Don Frost nodded and followed without question. Patrick made better progress this time. He moved too quickly to allow anyone to stop him for a chat.
When they reached the folly, which was close enough to the pounding ocean surf to prevent them from being overheard, Patrick turned to the other man and raised his eyebrows. Time to get to the point.
But the investigator still seemed uncomfortable. He dug his hands in his pockets and chewed on the inside of his cheek for a long minute before beginning.
“Okay,” he said. “Here it is. In this kind of investigation I usually mail the results to my clients, just the names and the dates and enough documentation to establish the facts. Ordinarily it’s all pretty neat and tidy.”
Patrick leaned against one smooth marble column and smiled. “But this investigation, I gather, was not quite so tidy.”
Don met his gaze. “No, it wasn’t.” He sat down on the curving marble seat. “At first it was fine. I traced the adoption itself fairly easily, to a small town in New Mexico. A town called Enchantment.”
Patrick smiled again. “How quaint.”
The investigator didn’t return the smile. “Yes, sir. But the investigation got a little more complicated from there.” He began to chew on his cheek again. “You see, the accompanying paperwork doesn’t include the full complement of information, and several relevant particulars, items of significance pertaining—”
Patrick’s hand twitched. “For God’s sake, Frost. You sound like my lawyer, who thinks he gets paid by the syllable. Why don’t you cut to the chase?”
The investigator hesitated. But he didn’t need to be so miserable. Patrick thought he knew where this was heading, and he had of course already considered this possibility.
“Let me make it easier for you,” Patrick interjected. “Something’s missing on the birth certificate, right? There’s a blank where the father’s name should be?”
The man nodded. “Yes, that’s right. It’s not at all unusual in these cases. Frankly, the name on that particular line is ‘Unknown’ more often than not. But this birth certificate…” He cleared his throat. “This one—”
Patrick waited. It really was cold out here. The ocean breezes whipped through his wool-blend jacket as if it were made of gauze. Though the wind blew his hair onto his forehead, tickling his lashes, he ignored it.
“This birth certificate?” he prompted.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen! May I introduce you to Polly? Polly was found in Golden Gate Park on Christmas Day with a broken wing. She’d been abandoned—”
Patrick turned with a sudden tension, but it wasn’t just another hired Beauty soliciting bids. The smiling woman who stood at the foot of the folly, swinging a silver filagreed cage that held a ruffled blue parrot, was Ellyn.
“Hi there, stranger,” she said with a teasing note of remonstrance. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”
He smiled. “Sorry. Mr. Frost and I had some business to take care of. Ellyn Grainger, this is Don Frost.”
She smiled and shook his hand, but her face was troubled. An empathetic woman, she probably sensed that something wasn’t right. She was also smart enough to sense that Patrick didn’t want to talk about it.
Don Frost’s gaze was openly admiring. Patrick looked again, seeing her through the other man’s eyes. Yes, Ellyn Grainger was a prize, from her ivory skin to her wine-colored hair, from her flawless breeding to her generous heart.
As he had almost every day for the past two years, Patrick asked himself why he couldn’t be sensible enough to fall in love with this very nice woman. And, as usual, he got the same answer. He didn’t know how to love anybody. In that respect, at least, he truly was Julian Torrance’s son.
“The auction is almost over,” Ellyn said to Patrick. “I just came down to let you know that Karen has outbid you on Smoochy, so if you wanted to place another—”
Patrick had to smile. Ellyn was a terrible liar. She knew damn well he didn’t want that flea-bag. “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of being so selfish,” he said nobly. “Let Karen have him.”
Don Frost coughed suspiciously, and Ellyn’s lovely hazel eyes twinkled. “All right,” she said. “But you won’t be too long, will you? We’re going to have champagne and strawberries on the patio. Do come, Mr. Frost. It’s a very nice champagne.”
“Thanks,” the investigator said, though Patrick noticed he didn’t commit to anything. Don didn’t seem awed by the rich and beautiful, in spite of the scuffed loafers and tired jacket. “That sounds nice.”
Ellyn retreated gracefully, and as soon as she was out of earshot Patrick turned back to the investigator. “Go on,” he said. “This birth certificate?”
The other man squared his shoulders and dropped his social smile. Back to business.
“This birth certificate doesn’t name the father. But it also doesn’t name the mother. On this one, both parents are simply listed as ‘unknown.’”
Both parents? How? Patrick felt the sudden need to sit down, too. But he overcame it. When you grew up as Julian Torrance’s son, you learned early never to show the least sign of weakness.
“How is that possible, Mr. Frost?”
“Well, naturally I wanted to know that myself. I’ve been looking into it for the past week. I had hoped to find out something that would make the news a little more—” His gaze slid to the side. “A little more tidy.”
“But?”
“But I’m afraid this story just isn’t tidy. That’s why I came myself. I thought I should, in case you had questions.”
“I have nothing but questions,” Patrick said. “You aren’t providing much of anything but riddles. Surely when a woman delivers a baby, she has to give the hospital her name.”
“She does if she goes to a hospital. This mother didn’t. In this particular case, the mother delivered her baby herself. The baby was subsequently found and sent to the local birthing center. The adoption was formalized from there.”
The baby was subsequently found…
Patrick sat down. He had no choice.
“I’m listening,” he said. “Just go ahead and tell me everything.”
The investigator nodded. “All right. At about 1:00 a.m. on the morning of November 25, exactly thirty years ago, the owner of the birthing center, a Mrs. Lydia Kane, received an anonymous call. A female voice told her that a newborn baby could be found in the girls’ bathroom of the local high school. Mrs. Kane then went to the high school. The custodian was there late, cleaning up after the homecoming dance. He had already found the baby and called the authorities.”
Patrick noticed, with the vague back third of his brain, that Don Frost was careful to use impersonal terms. The mother. The baby. Never “your mother” and “you.”
The man’s eyes were round and sad. It dawned on Patrick that Don Frost pitied him. In an odd, confused way, that made Patrick angry. He didn’t need pity. He didn’t care about all this. He didn’t have the slightest recollection of lying abandoned on a cold bathroom floor.
“Still,” he said. “Someone must know who the mother was. High school girls can’t go through a whole pregnancy without someone noticing. That much weight gain shows, doesn’t it?”
Frost shrugged. “Unless they wear baggy clothes or starve themselves. Some do.”
“But they can’t just give birth at the homecoming dance without someone—”
Patrick stopped. He was being ridiculous. Of course they could. He read the papers. Every now and then a story like that would grab the headlines for a few days. The baby in the trash can, in the Dumpster, in the shoebox in the teenager’s closet, hidden behind the video games.
“Actually,” Don went on after a slight pause, “in this case there were a lot of rumors. The whole thing caused quite a stir in Enchantment, which is a fairly small town. People round there still tell the story of ‘The Homecoming Baby.’”
“And what do they say?”
“Well, they seem to agree that the mother was probably a girl named Angelina Linden. Pretty girl, from a good family, but a little wild. The authorities definitely would have checked it out—checked her out, I mean, about whether she’d given birth. But they couldn’t. She and her boyfriend both disappeared that night.”
“They ran away?”
“That’s what everybody thought. But then a couple of years later, they found the boy’s body. There’s an old ghost town just northwest of Enchantment, a place where the kids go to fool around. Some abandoned mine shafts up there, not too safe, actually. Apparently the boy had fallen down one of those. Broke his neck.”
The wind was picking up. Patrick heard it blowing across his ears, but strangely he didn’t really feel the cold any more. He felt slightly numb all over.
“And the girl?”
Don Frost must have had to deliver a lot of bad news in his career. He looked grim, but he didn’t avoid Patrick’s gaze. He met it squarely.
“They looked. No more bodies in the mine shaft. But no one ever heard from Angelina again. Her younger sister still lives in Enchantment. I met her, though of course I didn’t tell her who I am.” He smiled. “Nice woman. She works at the birthing center. But she clearly doesn’t have any idea what happened to her sister.”
Patrick stood up and moved to the edge of the folly. Turning his back on the ocean, he stared out at the crowded estate, where the pet auction was winding up. He couldn’t see Ellyn anymore. People were rushing to claim their winnings, hugging the poor, damaged puppies and kittens they’d rescued to the tune of thousands of dollars.
Ironic, wasn’t it? A little lost kitten could generate this kind of enthusiasm—all the do-gooders in San Francisco came running, their hearts bleeding for the poor abandoned things. But a real human girl could leave her newborn baby on the bathroom floor, one more piece of trash for the janitor to sweep away with the trampled corsages and dirty silver streamers.
She could do it. And then she could run away. And never look back.
He closed his eyes. What a fool he’d been to unearth this story! He hadn’t let himself toy with anything as stupid and dangerous as dreams since he was eight years old. Apparently he’d forgotten what a nasty sound they made when they exploded in your face.
“I’ve got all the information here,” Don said quietly. “All the names and addresses and such.”
Patrick turned. Don was holding out a plain white envelope. He must have retrieved it from his coat. That’s how petty the story was. It would fit in a man’s breast pocket.
For a moment, Patrick didn’t want to take it, but that would have looked ridiculous. He forced out his hand and accepted the slim envelope.
“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t sound like himself, so he made an effort to warm his voice. “Send the bill along. My office will cut you a check.”
The man hesitated. “Mr. Torrance—”
“Thank you, Mr. Frost. I do appreciate your fast work on this. You did a fine job.”
Frost knew he’d been dismissed. He wasn’t a stupid man, in spite of the six kids and the pregnant gerbil. And he didn’t seem to be a hard man, in spite of how routinely he must encounter the sordid side of the human race.
He stood and moved toward the stairs of the folly. But at the last minute he turned around. “I included all the pertinent names and addresses. I even included a map. You know. In case you wanted to—” He stopped. “It’s a pretty little town. And the sister. She’s nice, too. And if it’s all true, she’d be—”
She’d be Patrick’s aunt. But still Don Frost stopped short of using the personal pronoun. “Well, she’d be Angelina’s only remaining blood relative. She could tell you about Angelina and the boyfriend. Handsome kid, but from the wrong side of the tracks. No family. He had lived with an elderly father, but he died while he was still in high school. He ran pretty wild. Kind of a heartbreaker, they say.”
The man tilted his head, as if deciding how far to go. “Teague was his name. Teague Montague Ellis. They called him Tee.”
Patrick let the name settle in. Teague Montague Ellis. Handsome Tee Ellis, who broke hearts. Broke enough of them to end up broken himself, at the bottom of a mine shaft.
Teague Ellis and Angelina Linden. No matter how many times he repeated them to himself, the syllables were as random as nonsense words. What on earth had ever made Patrick think he wanted to know those names? They meant nothing to him.
Patrick gave the other man a cold smile. “Thanks, but I can guarantee you I won’t be making any trips to New Mexico,” he said. “I’ve already had one set of terrible parents, Mr. Frost. I certainly don’t need two.”
CHAPTER TWO
“OKAY,” CELIA BRICE SAID to her weeping patient. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s just lay the whole sad story out on the table and see how it looks.”
Celia smiled over at Rose Gallen, who had run through an entire box of Kleenex in the first thirty minutes of their session. Actually, Rose had used up four boxes in four sessions so far, and Celia had decided it was time to try a different approach.
“All right,” Rose said. She pulled out another Kleenex just in case, and stared at Celia with damp eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean let’s analyze the situation objectively. Let’s be sure I have the basic details right. Your thirty-two-year-old husband, who you said has a mean temper, iffy personal hygiene and a bad snoring problem, who got laid off nearly a year ago but still spends fifty-five dollars a week on liquor and cigarettes, ran off last month with a nineteen-year-old bimbo.”
Rose blinked. “Yes,” she said uncertainly. “But that’s just the bad stuff. He’s not always—”
Celia kept going. Usually psychologists just listened, but sometimes they had to redirect the flow.
“He did this, in fact, the day after you told him you were pregnant. You don’t hear a word for a full month. But now he calls. Collect from Phoenix. And what does he want? He wants you to wire him five hundred dollars to have the transmission in his girlfriend’s car repaired.”
Rose frowned.
“Yes,” she said again. She touched the Kleenex to her eye and wiped away a tear. “You make it sound pretty bad.”
“Just laying out the details you gave me, Rose.” Celia took a deep breath. “So my question is…are you sure that what you really, truly want to do right now is cry?”
Rose stared at Celia, as if the question mystified her. “I’m all alone. I’m pregnant.”
Celia didn’t blink. She didn’t say a word. It was up to Rose to consider the possibility that there might conceivably be another reaction. Celia’s instincts told her that the young woman was ready.
Rose seemed to be thinking hard. She sniffed once, then again, louder. She transferred the stare to the tissue in her hand, and then she slowly, deliberately crumpled it into her fist.
“You know,” she said finally, “you’re right.” Her voice was amazingly firm. “I don’t want to cry. I want to tell the son of a bitch to go straight to hell.”
Celia leaned back with a sigh. This was just momentary bravado, of course, but it was good. Very good.
She didn’t underestimate the difficulties ahead for Rose; the journey to true self-sufficiency was always long. And Celia should know. She was still traveling it herself, having decided just last month, after yet another particularly disappointing relationship, to take a complete vacation from men.
Frankly, the decision had been a relief. She spent all day solving the problems these women had with their husbands, boyfriends, lovers or sons. She didn’t have time for any man problems of her own.
Besides, who needed a man when you had work as gratifying as this? It was exciting to watch people take the first, most difficult step on that journey, as Rose had just done. She had admitted that she was angry, and that she didn’t deserve to be treated like dirt under Tad Gallen’s shoes.
“Okay. You’d like to tell him to go to hell. Let’s talk about that.” Under the table, Celia kicked off her shoes. This session was going to run late. But it was going to be worth it.
An hour later, when she said goodbye to a much happier Rose, it was almost dark and The Birth Place, the best birthing center within five hundred miles of Enchantment, New Mexico, was almost empty.
Though Celia wasn’t officially a clinic employee, she counseled many of the pregnant women who came here, helping them deal with the varied emotional complications that could accompany pregnancy, both pre-and postpartum.
One of the upstairs offices was set aside for Celia two afternoons a week. Often it was easier for the women to combine their medical checkup with their counseling session. So though Celia might not be on the payroll, she definitely felt like a member of the team.
Dangling her shoes from two fingers, she wandered through the quiet hallway now, stretching her back and neck, which were cramped from sitting so long in one place. As she passed the accountant’s office, she noticed that Kim Sherman’s light was off—a sign of the new, happier Kim, the one who finally had a life outside this clinic.
Lydia Kane, the director, was still here, of course. Her light rarely went off, no matter how late it got. In fact, sometimes Celia fancied that Lydia’s office was the beating, breathing heart of the clinic. Good for the clinic…but an enormous burden for Lydia, who, Celia thought, had been looking tired lately.
But telling Lydia to take it easy was like telling Niagara Falls to slow down. Though she was in her seventies, the amazing woman had the strength and determination of a mountain lion. Every pregnant woman in this clinic—and every staff member, too—relied on that strength.
Celia moved into the main reception area, looking for Trish Linden, the clinic receptionist. Trish and Celia lived in the same apartment complex and frequently rode home together. Over the past few years, they’d become close friends.
Trish must be running late, too. Celia could smell the sweet scent of peach tea around the reception counter, a sure sign that Trish had been there just moments ago. But she hadn’t cleaned up yet. Toys were still upended around the children’s play area. Magazines and cushions were haphazardly scattered over the comfortable sofas.
Celia loved the clinic at night. When the lights were low, shining on the Mexican tile floors, and things were quiet, you might mistake this reception area for the living room of a very happy home. Which, in a way, it was.
Celia neatened up a bit, and then she plopped onto one of the armchairs to wait for Trish. She curled her feet under her and pulled the big clip out of her hair, letting it tumble over her shoulders. She sighed as her tired body relaxed.
She hoped Trish would come back soon. She could use a cup of soup, a bath and about ten hours sleep. Good thing she’d given up men. If she had one at home right now waiting for a back rub or a gourmet dinner, she’d probably hide out here all night.
She almost did anyway. The classical music coming through the sound system was low and soothing, and she must have dozed off. She woke with a start, aware that someone nearby was quietly crying.
For a moment she imagined she was back with Rose Gallen, watching the Kleenex pile up. But, as the sleepy fog lifted, she realized she was in the reception area…and the crying was coming from behind the high reception counter.
She struggled to her feet. “Trish?”
The crying stopped. By the time Celia made her way to the edge of the counter, Trish had stood up and was smiling as she subtly dashed away wetness from beneath her eyes.
“Oh, hi! I’m sorry. I thought you were still back with Rose.”
Wasn’t that like Trish, apologizing for crying, as if she had no right to be unhappy, no right to inconvenience anyone else with her problems? Celia took her hand, which was still damp from wiping away tears.
“Hey. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing, really.” But Trish couldn’t quite pronounce her N. She’d been crying long and hard enough to completely stop up her nose.
“Trish.” Celia was worried. Trish wasn’t a big weeper. In fact, she was one of the least self-indulgent people Celia knew.
At forty-five, Trish’s life seemed to consist entirely of work. Long hours at the clinic, then more hours volunteering in the community. Up early to tend her beloved garden at home, up late to keep her little apartment spotless. It was as if she had assigned herself a perpetual penance.
“Trish, it’s not good to hold things in. Please, tell me what’s going on.”
“Honestly, it’s nothing.” But she must have seen Celia’s stubborn skepticism, because she smiled. “Well, it’s such a little thing. It’s almost nothing.”
She waved her hand toward a large box on the floor behind her desk. “You know how they were collecting old dresses for the vintage clothing auction?”
Celia nodded. The local Women’s Club was auctioning off vintage dresses to raise money for the Teen Center. She had donated a couple herself. One from her senior prom ten years ago, and a couple of bridesmaid’s dresses, which weren’t quite vintage, technically…but close enough.
She knew she’d never wear those stiff, uncomfortable gowns again. She hated dressing up—her daily wardrobe was all long, full skirts, gypsy tops and khaki slacks and blue jeans.
“Well,” Trish went on, her voice still thick and husky, “I gathered together a lot of Angelina’s old clothes and donated them. They were so beautiful, you know. I’d kept them all these years because…”
Her voice trailed off. But she didn’t need to finish. Celia knew why Trish had kept them. She’d kept them because they were all she had left of her glamorous older sister, a sister who had disappeared thirty years ago.
“Oh, Trish,” Celia breathed. “That was unbelievably generous.” She knew how hard it must have been to let them go. Only Trish, so schooled in self-denial, would have been able to do it.
“I thought they might bring in quite a bit of money. And you know the Teen Center needs all the help it can get.”
“They must have been absolutely thrilled.” That was an understatement. Heaven only knew what Angelina’s wardrobe must have been worth.
The Lindens had once been the premiere family of Enchantment. Angelina had disappeared before Celia was even born, but everyone knew the story of the rebellious princess who roared through the night on the back of the town bad boy’s motorcycle, silky black hair flying in the wind, red sequins flashing in the moonlight.
“No,” Trish said. “They definitely weren’t thrilled. This box was delivered to me an hour ago. The Women’s Club thanks me for the offer, but they’re afraid they won’t be able to use the dresses after all.”
“What?”
Trish pointed to the box again. “They returned every one of them. Apparently they think Angelina’s clothes are…tainted.”
Celia was speechless. She looked at Trish’s pale face, and then she knelt next to the box on the floor.
She opened it carefully. Inside, wrapped in crisp white tissue, were at least a dozen of the most magical dresses Celia had ever seen. Peacock-green chiffon and Mandarin red silk. Deep gold satin encrusted with pearls. Ivory lace edging lavender ruffles. Wedgwood-blue and sunshine-yellow, sequins and flounces, daring necklines and flowing skirts.
Celia found herself holding her breath. She’d heard a hundred stories about Angelina Linden—who in Enchantment hadn’t?—but these dresses made the stories come almost eerily alive. As she touched these fabulous fabrics, she understood that Angelina had been exquisite and sensual, daring and vain and elegant. She’d been in love with life, color, movement, texture, sex.
And with an uncomfortable flash of insight, she realized that it was no wonder the Women’s Club had rejected them. Everyone who saw these dresses would ask the same question. Had she been wearing one of these that night? That terrible, bloody night the baby was born?
Even Celia, who loved poor Trish so much, found herself imagining that night. And wondering how a girl must have suffered, starved, squeezed her poor young body to fit it into her normal clothes when she was nine months pregnant.
A small catch in Trish’s breath warned Celia that tears were near again. Celia fought back a wave of fury toward the judgmental old bats who had refused these dresses. It was too cruel.
Trish deserved to be happy. Someone needed to take her in hand and force her to have a little fun.
On the spot, Celia appointed herself that someone.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. She folded the box shut again and stood with a smile. “There’s a full moon tonight. They say that if you stand on Red Rock Bridge at the full moon and make a wish, it’ll come true. Let’s go out and wish that every member of the Women’s Club goes prematurely gray.”
Trish smiled. “I’m pretty sure the legend says you have to stand out there naked with a live rattlesnake wrapped around your neck.”
“Well, one out of three isn’t bad.” Celia raised one eyebrow rakishly. “Maybe just every third member of the Women’s Club will go gray. That’s enough for me.”
Trish threw her tissue in the trash, obviously having overcome her momentary weakness. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “We can’t do that.”
Celia frowned. “Why not? It’s Friday night. If you can’t be silly on Friday night, when can you?”
Trish didn’t answer that directly, of course. Trish didn’t think that being silly was ever appropriate. Which was why her lovely face was always so pale and faded, Celia thought with a sudden frustration.
“I’m serious. Let’s go out there. We can stop off and buy sandwiches and some white zinfandel and eat dinner by moonlight on Red Rock Bridge. It will be beautiful and pointless and kind of scary—and great fun.”
Trish was already shaking her head. “I can’t,” she said. “This is the night I pay my bills.”
Celia squeezed her hand. “To hell with the bills. Be impulsive. Be foolish. It might make you feel better.”
“No,” Trish said, extricating her fingers. She patted Celia on the shoulder. “Being foolish doesn’t make people feel better. Working does. Being sensible and getting things done makes people feel better.”
Celia sighed. This was so unfair. And it was such a waste. Trish was only forty-five. She was healthy and intelligent and a very attractive woman. She wanted to grab Trish by the shoulders and say, No. You don’t have to atone for your sister’s sins.
But she couldn’t. Trish had made it clear years ago that any deep conversation on the subject of Angelina was pretty much off-limits.
For a few minutes, Trish busied herself straightening up the desk, and then she looked back up at Celia.
“Don’t pout,” she said, smiling. She was clearly herself again. “It really is Friday night, you know. Don’t you have a date?”
“Absolutely not. I gave up men, remember?”
Trish was still neatening the desk as she talked. “Of course I remember. I just didn’t believe it would last.”
“Well, it has. And it will. The Scratch and Dent Club is officially out of business.” That was what Trish had dubbed the long string of flawed boyfriends Celia had, over the years, mistakenly believed she could “fix.”
Trish chuckled as she arranged her pens in her drawer and lined up the paperwork with squared off edges. “Oh, sure,” she said. “It’s out of business. Until you meet another cute wounded puppy who needs saving.”
“Nope.” Celia sat on the edge of Trish’s desk, swinging her bare feet. “Never again. I’ve learned my lesson. No more losers. No more melancholics or workaholics, momaholics or liars. If I ever go back to dating—and I may not, I may become a nun—it would be because I found someone who doesn’t need any fixing up. No scratches. No dents.”
Trish raised her eyebrows. “The perfect man.”
Celia nodded. “That’s right. It’s the perfect man from now on. Or no man at all.”
Trish leaned over, hoisted the large box of rejected dresses under her arm and gave Celia a smile that was half-teasing, half-wistful.
“Then you’d better get on out to Red Rock Bridge and wish for one before the moon goes down,” she said. “Because here in the real world, there is absolutely no such thing.”
CELIA DID GO. Though she had been tired, when she got home she realized she’d been cooped up in the office too long. She needed fresh air and open spaces.
She brought along a foot-long veggie sub and a bottle of white zinfandel, a romance novel and a flashlight. She ate half the sandwich and drank a quarter of the wine. She read a few chapters by flashlight.
Then she walked out to the edge, right to where the formation grew narrow, forming the fragile “bridge” between the two red rock columns, and sang corny Broadway love songs at the top of her lungs.
She gazed toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, so silent and endless in the moonlight. Then she lay on her back and dreamed up at the purple sky, which looked like one of Angelina Linden’s dresses, velvety smooth, sprinkled with silver sequins and the round cameo brooch of the moon.
She heard a coyote howl in the distance, and she howled back, then laughed at herself because after that every tiny whispering noise startled her, as if the coyote might be loping her way, answering her call.
And then, after she stuffed her uneaten food and undrunk wine back into her bag, she stood up and walked back to the edge of Red Rock Bridge. She looked up at the moon, and she made her wishes.
She wished for rain to come and end Enchantment’s drought. She wished for courage for Rose Gallen. She wished for rest for Lydia Kane, prosperity for the clinic and swift, healthy deliveries for every pregnant woman in their care.
She wished, especially, for peace to come to Trish Linden, who deserved it. After all that, it seemed too greedy to wish for the perfect man, so she agreed to take one with a little dent, if necessary. A tiny scratch that didn’t go too deep would be all right.
Chuckling at her foolishness, she started to climb down from the bridge. But then she remembered one last thing.
“And if you have time,” she called into the vastness of the purple night, “please let every member of the Women’s Club wake up with nasty red zits on their pointy little chins.”
PATRICK KEPT TELLING HIMSELF TO TURN around. Go back. Give up. You must be nuts.
He had work to do. Deals to finalize. A client to visit in Santa Fe. He did not need to be squandering good gas and putting hard miles on his favorite Mercedes crawling through these winding mountain roads looking for a place called Enchantment, New Mexico.
But he kept ignoring himself—proving that the inner voice was right. Yes, sir, he was definitely nuts.
He couldn’t even find a decent radio station to help keep his mind off his own thoughts. He dictated a few notes into his digital recorder, but eventually even that grew old.
Finally, he decided to relax and take in the scenery. In fact, he was amazed by the verdant green mountains around him. He hadn’t spent much time in New Mexico before, and his mental image had been a cliché born of too many Westerns—flat, dusty-red deserts littered with bleached cattle skulls.
The colors here surprised him. Lots of red, yes, but not dusty and dried out. Instead, pinks and blues subtly mingled with the pure blue sky and the yellow wildflowers to create a rich sense of innocence. Like a box of crayons in a happy two-year-old’s hands.
And all this space…endless vistas down mountainsides and across valleys.
He wasn’t sure he liked it. It felt kind of…lonely.
He was a city man. For him “land developing” meant taking one highly coveted acre of land and erecting a building on it that would allow the maximum number of people to imagine that they “owned” it. It meant beehives and shopping centers and high-density ratios. It meant top dollar and bottom line.
So if he’d been expecting some kind of epiphany—an interior “Eureka!” that said this was his secret heritage, that he belonged in an adobe house with a horse in the front yard—he’d been sadly mistaken. He thought it was nice, but nothing inside went “click.”
To his annoyance, the only “click” he heard came from under the hood of his car. At least twenty minutes outside Enchantment, something began rhythmically slapping as he drove, and he smelled the metallic odor of water scorching against engine parts. The needle on the temperature gauge began to climb and finally steam rose from around the edges of the hood.
“Damn it.” He was going to have to stop.
He looked around. Where the hell was he? He could just imagine himself calling the auto club and asking them to come find him in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the side of some mountain.
He whipped his cell phone out of its carrier, looked down and cursed again. He really was in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t even have service up here. Probably one of these picturesque trees was blocking the signal.
He lifted the hood, stepping back to avoid having his face steam cleaned. He was no mechanic, but even he could see the problem. A hose dangled like a dead black snake. And, even more ominously, he could see water bubbling out of a hole in the side of the radiator. He stared at it, then glanced one more time at his cell phone.
Still no service. Probably out here real men didn’t need auto clubs. They probably just fashioned makeshift radiator belts out of grapevines and kept driving.
Okay, now what? Enchantment was still about ten miles away.
But he remembered passing a small road sign just a few yards back. It had directed him to turn left to get to some place called Silverton. Whatever that was. He unfolded the map and finally found it. Very small, but definitely there.
And it was only about a mile away. That he could handle in a heartbeat. San Francisco might not have classes on how to turn a rabbit’s pelt into a radiator belt, but it had health clubs, and he jogged five miles a day at his.
As he walked, he checked every few yards to see if his cell service had returned, but no luck. No cars, either. This must be the most deserted stretch of road in the entire state of New Mexico.
He had decided to stop at the very first house he saw—the suburbs of Silverton were fine, any structure that had a telephone was fine. But there were no suburbs. Suddenly, without warning, without signs or billboards or outlying development of any kind, there it was. Just a small, ornate, old-fashioned metal plaque.
Silverton.
He kept walking, but his mind had stalled. What the hell was this? It wasn’t even a town, really. It was just an X carved into the land. Two small, crisscrossing streets of dilapidated old buildings.
Some of the structures had obviously been vandalized. Whole walls of wood had been stripped away, and doors stood in their isolated frames, entryways to open air. Some of the buildings were leaning toward the ground as if they wanted to lie down and rest. A few seemed intact, but they all were completely, unquestionably deserted.
Deserted. He stopped in his tracks. By God, he had stumbled onto a ghost town.
He should have been furious. There was obviously no telephone to use in this town. No gas station to drive him back to the car and repair the belt. But for the moment, the radiator belt seemed oddly unimportant.
He wandered through the buildings, fascinated, his imagination running ahead of him. Silverton. Silver Town. Of course. All little boys read dozens of books about these things, and he was no exception.
The wind blew through the buildings now, so dried and damaged were the walls. And the windows lay in daggers of glass on the ground, too dusty to sparkle even in this bright spring sunlight.
But, as an investment advisor, he was accustomed to transforming run-down companies and places in his mind, and it was easy to do that here. He could almost see the dirty, tired miners, digging all day, and maybe all night, too, hoping to find that tiny glimmering thread that meant freedom. Treasure.
And their families, having arrived here from a hundred different places, banding together to make their own version of civilization. Music from that building, perhaps, at night. And in that larger one, whose faded lettering pronounced it the general store, bolts of cloth and jars of candy and cans of food.
Dreams and courage and, eventually, the long death of hope. Obviously the silver had dried up—and the town had followed. The miners and their families, and the bank and restaurant and boardinghouse that had supported them, had moved on to another place, another, more promising, hole in the ground.
And now, all these years later, he was the only living human being listening to the echoes in this sad, forgotten place.
He walked around the back of the boardinghouse, drawn by the glitter of a small stream tumbling over rocks. As he rounded the corner, a bird screeched, startling him. His heart knocked once. He had grown so accustomed to the silence.
When the stream came into view, his heart seemed to skid to a halt.
He had been wrong. He was not alone.
A woman, maybe just a girl, maybe just a dream, stood barefoot in the brook, hazy and ethereal—like a trick of the sunlight. He couldn’t see her face—she was looking toward the trees—but her hair fell like silver water down her back. Her long, graceful legs were pale and her skirt, which she held up around her thighs, was filled with flowers.
For one paralyzed moment, he couldn’t speak. He just stared, lost in the beauty.
And then, slowly, she turned her face toward him. He took a breath. She was beautiful, her sweet, full mouth and her round blue eyes shining in the shaft of sunlight.
She looked at him, blankly at first, and then with a growing, widening horror. “No,” she said.
She swayed strangely. She put out one hand to balance herself, but there was nothing to grasp. She took a halting step. The other hand let go of her skirt, too, as if her fingers were numb. A rain of flowers fell, forgotten, into the dancing stream around her feet.
“No,” she said again, but she obviously wasn’t distressed about the flowers. She was frightened. She was blanched and frozen, as if she’d seen a ghost.
And the ghost was Patrick.
CHAPTER THREE
LIFE WAS BEAUTIFUL, especially in a ghost town.
Celia had a skirt full of flowers, and the brook was cool and clear as it slipped around her toes. She decided she might never go home. She might just go into the roofless old boardinghouse, make herself a pallet of wildflowers and sleep under the starry sky.
Actually, she was one of the few people who truly wouldn’t be afraid to do such a thing. She had grown up on ghost stories of Teague Ellis. In Enchantment, no giggling sleepover was complete without a spooky tale of how, if you were daring enough to go to Silverton at night, you would hear the rumble of Teague Ellis’s motorcycle as it invisibly prowled the deserted streets.
Some said he walked the corridors of the high school, listening for the sound of a baby crying. Through the years, half a dozen hysterical girls had sworn they’d seen him at the Homecoming dance, a dark, angry, handsome face in the crowd, searching for Angelina.
Celia had always laughed at the stories. Useful for boys who wanted their dates to shiver and cling to their strong, protective arms, but pure fantasy, of course. She never felt the slightest bit skittish in Silverton, though Teague’s poor body had been found there only two years after his disappearance. She’d never heard the ghostly motorcycle, or the moans that were said to waft up through the planks of the boarded-over mine shafts.
Celia was very levelheaded. She did not believe in ghosts.
But this…this was different.
As she stared at the stranger who had materialized there, just ten feet away, a primal fear rippled along her nerves, as if an unseen hand played them like the strings of a harp.
He…he looked exactly like Teague Ellis. How could it be? And yet…
She’d seen pictures of Teague often enough. The sexy, bad-tempered mouth, the wavy black hair that fell into deep-set, deep-blue eyes. She’d never forget the scruffy animal glamour—like James Dean, she’d thought. James Dean drawn in a palette of devil-black and bedroom-blue.
And oh, those eyes…those eyes said the boy had known pain and would know, in turn, how to inflict it.
But, in the space of a couple of seconds, she came to her senses. The man in front of her smiled, and the hypnotic vision shifted to something more prosaic. An eerie, but coincidental, resemblance. Similar height, similar coloring…and the rest was the product of overactive nerves and the haunting power of this place.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. His voice was cultured and deep. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He moved toward the pebbled edge of the stream. As he bent over to help retrieve the wildflowers she’d dropped, he looked up at her and smiled, the sun beaming straight into his amazing blue eyes. “I walked in just now. My car broke down a little way down the road, and I was looking for a telephone.”
She smiled back, feeling finally returning to her fingertips. Not Teague, of course not. How could she have been so idiotic?
For one thing, Teague had been nineteen the night he disappeared. This man must be nearly thirty, though that sexy mouth and brooding eyes certainly gave his looks the gut-kick virility of a hot-blooded teenager.
“You didn’t startle me,” she lied, hurrying to pick up the rest of her flowers before the stream carried them away. “Or rather, it’s just that I thought I was alone.”
“Yes.” He turned and scanned the dusty, broken buildings. “This place could make you feel you were all alone in the whole world, couldn’t it? I could tell right away I wasn’t going to find a phone, but I couldn’t resist the urge to explore. It’s fascinating.”
She nodded, pleased that he seemed sensitive to the atmosphere—and that he didn’t find it depressing or ugly. She’d always thought the intense solitude was one of Silverton’s charms. It was a good place to think things over.
“I’m afraid there’s never been a single telephone in the town of Silverton,” she said. “The mine closed up at least ten years before it was invented.”
He handed her the flowers. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Well, I guess I’d better start hiking back, then.”
He smiled again, and the smile was so open and friendly that his resemblance to Teague Ellis faded even further. You could tell from Teague’s picture that he had rarely smiled, and when he had it probably had possessed a sinister, wolfish quality.
“Maybe,” the man who wasn’t Teague said, “you’d be willing to point me in the direction of the nearest town that isn’t a ghost town.”
She hesitated just a second. She could almost hear Trish now, ordering her not to be naive. You couldn’t go giving a man a lift in your car just because he was handsome, wore an expensive suit and had a nice smile. Bad guys didn’t come equipped with neon signs that said Danger. Murderers and thieves sometimes looked exactly like bankers and lawyers.
Still, if this man had wanted to harm her, couldn’t he have done it already? If he wanted to bash her over the head and steal her earrings, or toss her down in the chilly stream and ravish her, there certainly wasn’t anyone in Silverton to stop him.
After sharing a deserted ghost town with him, would letting him into her car really be so much more dangerous?
“The nearest gas station is in Enchantment,” she said. “That’s only about ten miles from here. I’d be glad to give you a ride.”
He tilted his head with a well-bred diffidence. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way.”
“It’s not out of my way at all. I live in Enchantment.” She transferred the flowers to her left arm and held out her hand. “By the way, I’m Celia Brice—” she looked down at the flowers “—wildflower enthusiast.”
His handshake was strong and warm, but entirely civilized and respectful. There was really no reason for Celia to start shivering.
The spring wind must have decided to turn cool, as it sometimes did up here in the mountains. Of course it didn’t help that she was standing ankle deep in a running brook.
Or that this was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.
“Patrick Torrance,” he said, letting go of her hand at the perfect moment. Obviously he wasn’t harboring a single, solitary, ravish-related thought. “And I would be very grateful for a ride into Enchantment. I was actually on my way there when the car broke down.”
“You were? Why?”
She hadn’t meant to sound so astonished. But Enchantment was a small town, and while it attracted its fair share of tourists, this man didn’t look like a tourist somehow. Enchantment’s other claim to fame was the birthing center, which was the best in the region. She paused, irrationally disliking that idea. He hadn’t mentioned having anyone with him. Surely he wouldn’t have left a pregnant wife back at the stranded car all alone.
But men sometimes did come to the birthing center alone, looking for their wives or their girlfriends, looking to mend a rift, to claim their unborn children…
No. She didn’t believe it. This man was too confident, too poised and powerful. He wasn’t the type who had to chase women anywhere. If anything, he was probably running away from one.
He chuckled softly. “You’re frowning—and you sounded pretty shocked. Is there something wrong with Enchantment? I had planned to spend a week or two there. Should I rethink?”
She flushed. “No. Of course not. It’s just that—Well, we’re not big and famous, not like Taos or Santa Fe. During the winter, when the ski slopes are active, things get pretty busy, but this is spring, and I just wondered why someone like you would—”
She broke off, embarrassed. She sounded as if she were fishing for personal information, which, she realized, she was. She couldn’t help it. She found him very attractive, and having him materialize before her like this had created an artificial sense of intimacy.
But artificial was the important word. What did she think—that Patrick Torrance was her own personal ghost, and now she could take him home and keep him?
“I’m sorry,” she said, fidgeting with the flowers. “I was just being nosy. Forget I said anything. Let me put on my shoes, and we’ll get started.”
He didn’t argue with her, or insist on spilling his plans. He obviously wasn’t used to explaining himself to anyone, least of all some kooky, barefoot woman he stumbled over in the local ghost town.
He followed her to the rocky bank of the stream, where she’d left her shoes. He watched as she sat down on a large, fallen tree trunk, which made the perfect bench, and began to brush the sand and leaves from the soles of her feet.
When she picked up her shoe, though, a simple white sneaker, she found that a spider had crawled into it. She tried to tip him out, but he crawled farther into the toe. She hadn’t seen his markings, so she hesitated to reach in and whisk him out with her fingers.
She shook the shoe. “Come on out, darn it.”
“Here,” Patrick Torrance said, coming closer and holding out his hand. “I’ll kill it for you.”
She looked up at him. “Kill him? Why would you kill him?”
He tilted his head, and then he smiled. “Did I say kill it? I mean to say I’d get it out for you. A purely harmless relocation.”
She smiled back and handed over the shoe. “Okay.” For a city boy, he caught on quickly. “Thanks.”
He had found a curved twig on the ground, and he maneuvered the point into the toe of her shoe. He had good hands. Gentle. He angled his wrist subtly a couple of times, with a minute scooping movement.
He tilted the shoe up to his face and peered into the shadows. Finally he eased his hand out, bringing the twig free, with the little spider clinging to it.
He walked over to a nearby patch of dead leaves—the ideal new home for a spider—and then he lay the twig and spider down, so deftly that the spider didn’t even scurry away. The little guy probably thought the whole move had been his own idea.
“Well done,” she said with a smile.
Then he came over and knelt on the ground before her. “Your slipper, my lady.”
Oh. Flushing, she found that she almost couldn’t let him do it. It was too personal, too oddly sexy. Besides, she wasn’t much for fancy clothes and shoes, and those sneakers had tramped many a mile around the dusty roads of Silverton and Enchantment.
Darn. She hoped her foot was clean enough. For the first time in her life, she wished she wore toenail polish.
But he was waiting, so she stuck out her foot. He was just kidding around. She was getting way too worked up. Maybe she shouldn’t have given up men after all—it had left her too susceptible to the slightest flirtation.
He took her calf in his hand, and shivers went all the way up her leg. She laughed a little, just out of nervousness. Just to distract him from those pale goose bumps under his fingers.
He slipped on the sneaker, then cupped his palm around her heel, rocking it to be sure the shoe was seated properly. Then he pulled gently on the tongue, took the laces between his fingers and tied a quick, nimble bow.
He met her gaze. “Why, it fits perfectly,” he said, smiling in a way that crinkled the edges of those remarkable eyes.
Oh, dear. She definitely should not have given up men. It made you kind of crazy.
Still smiling, he stood, and he held out his hand.
“And now,” he said, laughter gilding the edges of his pleasant voice, “If your pumpkin is waiting, maybe you could take me with you to the land of Enchantment.”
Celia sighed. Oh, heck, why fight it? Whoever Patrick Torrance was, and whatever he was here to do, wasn’t all that important, was it? She knew he had laughing eyes and gentle hands. And she knew that the moment she’d laid eyes on him, even when she still thought he was a ghost, she had been washed with an attraction more intense than any she’d ever felt.
She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. They stood there a minute, just smiling at each other. Something warm and golden moved inside her.
He’d be here a week, he’d said. Or two. Two weeks of reckless magic—and then the clock would strike midnight.
Oh, it was insane to even consider it—it was completely unlike her. Trish would have a fit. And besides, technically Patrick Torrance hadn’t even asked.
But he would. He felt the magic, too. It was in the warm touch of his fingers. It was in the surprised sparkle of his eyes. Oh, yes, he would ask.
And maybe, just maybe, she would say yes. Because sometimes even two weeks of magic was better than none at all.
THE CLINIC WAS OPEN ONLY half a day on Saturdays, unless one of the mothers was in labor. This Saturday was slow, so Trish had decided to give the windows of the reception area a thorough spring-cleaning. The clinic had a good professional cleaning crew, of course, but Trish had her own standards.
Cloth and vinegar solution in hand, she knelt on the sofa cushions and rubbed at the front multipaned window, giving each of the rectangles special attention. The cleaning crew sometimes ignored the edges.
Through the shining window, she could see the front parking lot, where a couple of cars sat, drowsing under the spring sunlight that filtered through the pines.
After a few minutes, Celia’s silly little Volkswagen Bug pulled in. Celia leaped out and executed a happy twirl in a shaft of light, arms outstretched as if she wanted to gather in the spring day and give it a hug.
Trish’s hand stilled, and she watched with a deep, vicarious pleasure. Even at twenty-eight, even though she was well educated and smart and dealt with real problems in her patients every day, Celia was in many ways as innocent as a child.
She believed the whole world was as good and gentle as she was. She picnicked in the mountains alone at night, she picked herbs in ghost towns, she made wishes on Red Rock Bridge in the moonlight and expected them to come true. It worried Trish, but she could never find a way to stop her.
That was because Celia had never known anything but love and affection. Her physician father was a little arrogant, and her mother was just a touch subservient, but nothing truly wicked ever happened at the Brice household.
Celia’s brother lived in Seattle and her parents had recently moved to Santa Fe, but they all were in constant contact with letters, e-mails, phone calls and visits.
A happy family created a happy child, and the happy child became a happy woman. It was like a mathematical equation. And of course the opposite was just as inexorably true, as well.
Trish didn’t envy Celia, not really. But as she watched the young woman skip up the front walk as if someone had drawn a hop-scotch board on it, her waist-length hair dancing in the dappled sunlight, Trish couldn’t help the pang of…something…that tightened around her heart.
She couldn’t remember ever, ever feeling that light and full of joy.
“Trish!” Celia swept open the clinic door and blew in on a gust of spring sunshine. “I hoped you’d be here!”
Trish smiled. “Why? Did you want to help wash the windows?”
“No, I wanted to tell you about the wonderful, amazing thing that happened to me out at Silverton!”
Trish put the spray bottle down on the windowsill. “You went to Silverton alone again? Celia, you know how dangerous—”
“No lectures, please,” Celia said. She plopped onto her knees on the sofa beside Trish. “I’m fine, honestly. See? Completely unscratched. Virtue intact.” She grinned. “Unfortunately.”
Trish frowned. “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means I met the most marvelous man. His car broke down and he needed a ride. His name is Patrick Torrance.” She said the name on a sigh of delight. “Even you would approve of him, Trish. Not a scratch or dent in sight.”
Trish rolled her eyes. “For a psychologist, that’s a pretty dumb comment.” She picked up her spray bottle and moved to the next windowpane. “If you just met him this morning, you have no idea what the extent of his dents might be. He’ll probably turn out to be an emotional wreck, which of course you’ll find irresistible, and he’ll become your next pet project.”
But Celia had no intention of coming down to earth. She wrinkled her nose at Trish and smiled like the Cheshire cat.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said, arranging her full blue cotton skirt around her knees. “The beauty of Patrick Torrance is that he’s just here for a week or two. He’s a tourist. On vacation. Temporary. Even if he had dents the size of golf balls on every inch of his psyche, which he doesn’t, I couldn’t turn him into a project. In two weeks, he’ll go right back where he came from.”
“Which is?”
Celia hesitated, plucking at her skirt. “I’m not exactly sure.”
“Oh, great.”
Celia sighed again. “Don’t be such a grump. He’s gorgeous and smart and funny and a gentleman. What does it matter where he comes from?”
“Well, if he comes straight from San Quentin, that would matter.”
“He doesn’t.”
“Or if he comes straight from his wife and three kids. That would matter.”
“He doesn’t.”
“The loony bin? An AA meeting? The unemployment line? Would any of that matter?”
Celia leaned her head back and smiled at the ceiling. “He doesn’t.”
“Celia, listen to me.” Trish was nervous now. She’d seen Celia make plenty of mistakes with her love life. She was always taking on hopeless cases, sure that she could mold them into better people. But her attitude had always been half Mother Teresa, half Florence Nightingale—and Trish had understood that Celia’s heart wasn’t really touched at all.
This was different. Trish knew what that sparkling smile, those waves of energy, those restless movements, meant. They meant that this time there was nothing maternal about it. Patrick Torrance had somehow, perhaps quite by accident, perhaps simply the lucky chemistry of giving off the perfect pheromones, had found the trigger that turned on an electric current inside the beautiful Celia Brice.
“Just think about it a little bit, that’s all I’m asking. Go slowly.” But Celia was hardly listening. She was still staring at the ceiling as if it were a night full of stars. “Celia, what exactly are you considering here?”
Celia brought her head back down. The dewy gleam in her blue eyes said it all. It seemed a shame even to try to break this bubble of joy.
“What are you considering?” she repeated.
“Nothing dangerous,” Celia said. “Honestly, Trish. Stop worrying so much. Just…I don’t know. A fling. A spring fling. A short, exciting two weeks of dinner and dancing and flirting and—”
“And?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. He might not be interested. But if he is…then maybe a little fantastic sex.”
“Celia—”
But Celia laughed, a golden trill shot through with sensuality and excitement. She reached out and grabbed Trish’s hand.
“Come on, Trish,” she said. “I’m twenty-eight years old, not eighteen. I’m— Well, I don’t know how to explain it. He’s very exciting. If you could see him, you’d know. Would it really be so wicked for me to have a brief, lovely, extremely safe romance with an extremely exciting man, especially since there could be absolutely no long-term complications whatsoever?”
Trish shook her head. “No. Not if there were any such thing. But as any of your patients could tell you, there isn’t.”
PATRICK’S SUITE in Morning Light, the bed and breakfast his secretary had found for him, was surprisingly elegant.
The sitting room was spare but comfortable. A small, graceful fireplace filled one corner, and the sofa, which was covered in Navajo textiles, faced a picture window that overlooked the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The bedroom was large and cool, with an equally stunning view. Pueblo pottery dotted the tables, and fine Mexican art filled the white-washed adobe walls with color.
He found himself whistling as he unpacked. He hadn’t expected to find this strange adobe hotel even marginally acceptable. From the outside, it seemed to come out of the ground like a piece of lumpy, rounded earth, not a normal building at all. From the outside it looked dark and cramped.
But inside the proportions were generous, and the cool light was strangely soothing, the simplicity relaxing. You could focus your mind in a place like this. He thought he might get someone to redecorate his office when he got back to the city. Suddenly the dark oak paneling he had now seemed oppressive and heavy.
It seemed like something Julian Torrance would have picked.
The change in his mood surprised him on several levels. Just a few hours ago he’d been fairly grim, focused on the unpleasantness of his mission.
He hadn’t come to Enchantment for R&R, as he’d told Celia Brice this morning. He’d come to Enchantment for one reason only—to find enough information about Angelina Linden to track her down.
It wouldn’t be easy. But someone knew where she’d run—and probably that someone was her sister, Trish Linden, the receptionist at the birthing center.
Somehow he would find out the truth, and when he did—well, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do then. No point tackling that decision now. Later, when he knew more, he’d make up his mind exactly how to proceed.
But he had some documents he just might like to show this Angelina Linden. It just might give him a great deal of satisfaction to tell her exactly what he thought of her.
Not, at the heart, a pleasant task. But for the first time since he’d made the decision to come to Enchantment, he realized that there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t enjoy himself, at least a little.
Especially since things seemed to be going so well. Who would have thought that breaking down near a ghost town would get things off to such a promising start? He might have wasted days trying to meet someone connected with the birthing center, someone who might be able to introduce him to Trish Linden.
And yet, all because of a broken radiator hose, he’d met Celia Brice, who, it turned out, was the psychologist for the birthing center, and Trish’s good friend.
It was as if the gods had conspired to assist him. Celia was open and welcoming, and she had already offered to show him around her beloved town.
A real find. A woman who had lived here all her life and knew everyone might just make this whole hunting expedition very easy indeed.
That she should be gorgeous, too, seemed like a good omen.
With a satisfied smile, he picked up the telephone. He’d start with dinner. She’d made it clear she’d love to hear from him again, and dinner conversations could cover a lot of useful ground.
And after that…
He hesitated. After that, he had to be careful. She really was unusually attractive. She radiated both sensuality and innocence, which was a fairly irresistible combination. And he was only human.
It was a damn fine line—acquiring the information without exploiting the woman. But he’d just have to walk it. He had no intention of leaving Enchantment, New Mexico, with any ugly blotches on his conscience
He called down to ask for the number of the local birthing center. He stared at the mountains as he dialed it. A breeze blew in the open window, and in it hung the scent of wildflowers.
Vanilla and lavender and something like chamomile tea. He shut his eyes, and he saw pink and purple and white, soft petals spilling into a tumbling crystal brook.
And the sweet smell of sunshine. Yellow hair tumbling across ivory skin.
He tightened his hand around the phone. He opened his eyes, and then he lowered the receiver into its cradle.
Not yet. He needed to put together a careful plan. And there was no rush. Somehow he knew that whenever he was ready, Celia would be waiting.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE STAFF MEETING at The Birth Place was almost always held at the noon hour on Fridays. Lydia ordered in pizza loaded with vegetables, and Trish brought fresh fruit and cheese. They ate while they talked over clinic issues. It was friendly but focused. Clearing even an hour of everyone’s schedule at once was difficult. Any more would be impossible.
Celia, who wasn’t technically on the birthing center’s staff, attended only every now and then. Often she was busy seeing patients at her own small downtown office. But this time she’d been lucky—the meeting had been moved to a Monday, and she’d been able to schedule patients around the staff meeting.
It was great to see everyone and to feel a part of the team. She watched the Birkenstock-and-earth-mother midwives chatting comfortably with the button-down administrative staff and smiled to herself. The atmosphere here was really very special.
If she ever had a baby, she wouldn’t think of delivering it anywhere else.
If she ever had a baby. But given how her life was going, how likely was that? She popped a piece of pineapple into her mouth and wiped her hands on her paper napkin briskly, aware that the meeting was coming to an end.
She wandered over to Trish’s reception counter, which, as always, was neat and organized. Papers wouldn’t dare get out of line on Trish’s watch.
Trish looked up with a smile. “Penny for your thoughts. Surely the debate over the new copier didn’t put that pensive look on your face.”
“No.” Celia picked up the snow globe of Venice that sat beside Trish’s keyboard, the one frivolous note amid all the streamlined practicality. She shook it, sighing. “I guess I was just wondering when I’ll ever get to see The Birth Place from…from the other side.”
“Not anytime soon, I hope.” Trish raised her eyebrows, took the snow globe from Celia’s dreamy fingers and set it back on the desk. The snowflakes sank around the delicate Venetian gondola and died. “Unless…is there something you’re not telling me about that episode in the ghost town?”
Celia laughed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, no. I meant someday. I do want a family, you know. A big one. I was just thinking that sooner or later I’ll find Mr. Right, and—”
“Not if you keep going on like this, you won’t.”
Annoyed that Trish had seemed to read her mind, Celia scowled. “Don’t start that. Didn’t I tell you I’m through picking men who need fixing up?”
“Right. And now you’re picking traveling salesmen.”
“Patrick Torrance is not a—”
“Whatever.” Trish lowered her voice, obviously not wanting the others to overhear. “I don’t care what it says on his business card. He may not be a scratch-and-dent, but he’s a hit-and-run. Here today and gone tomorrow.”
She gave Celia a straight look. “And you can’t tell me that’s a coincidence. If ever a woman was hell-bent on staying single, you’re it.”
“I—”
But she never got to finish her sentence. The front door to the clinic opened, and two patients entered, waddling over to sign in with the slow contentment of the heavily, happily pregnant. At the same time Kim Sherman, the clinic accountant, stuck her head out from the administrative office suite. “Trish,” Kim said, “can I steal you a minute? This statement is a mess.”
It was just as well, Celia thought as she watched Trish walk away. She hadn’t known how she was going to finish that sentence anyhow.
Trish would simply have to see Patrick Torrance for herself. Then she’d understand.
The clinic door opened again, but this time it wasn’t one of the slow, smiling mothers-to-be coming in for a routine checkup. This time it was Rose Gallen, and the young woman was in obvious distress.
Rose was crying, limping slightly, her sobbing face half buried in the crook of a man’s arm, her hands holding tightly to his shirt.
Celia excused herself to the women who were still signing in and began to move around the counter. “Rose,” she said. “Rose, are you all right?”
Rose didn’t lift her face from the man’s chest. The face of the man himself was obscured by one of the lush potted plants that flanked the doorway, and the sunlight was so bright it was hard to be sure…
But he couldn’t possibly be Rose’s husband, Tad. Tad had a beer belly that made him look several months pregnant himself.
This man, on the other hand… He bent his head, obviously saying something comforting to Rose, and Celia’s heart did a strange wiggling maneuver. He looked up when she arrived at Rose’s side, and their eyes met.
This man was Patrick Torrance.
“She’s all right, I think,” he said. “But someone should look at her. She was arguing with some bastard in the parking lot, and he ended up knocking her down.”
“It was Tad,” Rose said in a voice muffled by Patrick’s soft blue shirt. “Tad is back. He’s so angry, Celia. He said—he said—”
“It’s all right, Rose,” Celia said, taking the young woman’s hand. She looked up at Patrick. “Is Tad still out there?”
“Might be,” Patrick said. “When we left, he was on his hands and knees. I think he was trying to remember his name.” He gave Rose’s shoulder a quick, light rub. “Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe he never will.”
Rose tilted her face up at Patrick with a watery smile. “That would be great,” she said. “Thank you so much for—” She sniffed. “You were so nice to—I don’t know what I would have done if—”
“It’s okay,” he said with a smile. That smile. Rose blinked as if she were looking straight into the sun. “I promise you, it was my pleasure.”
“We’d better get you looked at,” Celia said. She and Rose had a scheduled session this hour, but her physical safety must come first. Rose was only about four months pregnant. If Tad had been knocking her around…
She looked toward the door to the administrative area, wishing Trish would come out of Kim’s office. She wasn’t sure where to take Rose. Which of the examination rooms was open? And she ought to tell Lydia the situation, considering it had happened on the clinic grounds. But she didn’t want to leave Rose alone, even with Patrick standing by. The young woman’s emotional state was clearly fragile.
Luck was with her. At that moment, Lydia and Katherine Collins, the clinic’s full-time midwife, came through the door. They looked over at Rose, saw that there was a problem and hurried to her side.
Lydia could handle any emergency, and Celia expected her to handle this one with her usual dazzling efficiency. But to her surprise, Lydia stopped about five feet short of where Celia and Patrick stood, with Rose between them, and seemed to freeze in place.
Lydia never betrayed much emotion, especially in front of the patients. Her years of running the clinic had taught her to project calm control at all times. So this was completely out of character, and Celia watched curiously as Lydia stared at Patrick Torrance.
A clear jolting shock changed Lydia’s face, but only for a split second. Her gray eyes widened, then narrowed, deep crow’s feet appearing at the edges. Her angular, weathered face slackened momentarily, then tightened, closing in, as if creating a mask to hide her reaction.
Only her hand, which was fisted at the base of her throat, betrayed how the sight of him had affected her.
Katherine looked at Lydia, then stepped forward, her long, graying ponytail swinging down her back. “Rose, you poor dear, are you all right?”
“I think so,” Rose said shakily. “It was Tad. He—” She began to cry again.
“Of course. Tad,” Lydia said dryly. “Now there’s a man who could use some anger management classes. You might want to consider offering a workshop soon, Celia.”
Celia smiled, glad that Lydia seemed to be recovering her equilibrium. The older woman had relaxed her hand, let it drop from her throat and put it out toward Patrick.
“Well, it looks as if we have you to thank for taking care of our Rose, Mr….?”
She paused, giving him time to introduce himself.
“Patrick,” he said, accepting her hand and shaking it. For a moment their gazes locked, gray steel against blue ice. Celia, watching, felt a strange chill.
“Patrick Torrance. I’m from San Francisco.”
Lydia’s gaze dropped first, but she seemed completely composed again. So calm and normal, in fact, that Celia began to wonder if she’d imagined that first, lightning-struck reaction.
“And I’m Lydia Kane. The founder of The Birth Place. Thank you again, Mr. Torrance.”
Without waiting for an answer, Lydia removed her hand and turned to Celia. “I want to take Rose back and check things over. She might like to have you along. Do you have time?”
“Oh, yes, please.” Rose looked up with tired, red-rimmed eyes. “I’d like Celia there, too.”
“Of course,” Celia said. “I have time.”
Patrick was still looking at Lydia. “Mrs. Kane—”
“You’ll have to excuse us, Mr. Torrance,” Lydia said. “But I know Rose thanks you, too, for stepping in to save the day.”
Obviously that was an understatement. Rose hadn’t yet peeled her hands from Patrick’s shirt. She looked as if she’d like to drag him into the examination room. As if she’d like to cling to his strength for the rest of the day—or the rest of her life.
Celia had to smile. She wished Trish could be here to see this. Apparently Celia wasn’t the only woman who found herself eating out of Patrick Torrance’s hands the minute she met him.
Celia looked at him, wishing things were different, wishing they could have even a few moments alone. She wondered why he had been in the parking lot. Had he come here to see her?
But her patient must come first.
“Yes,” she added, equally polite, knowing Lydia was watching. “Thank you so much.”
“It was nothing,” Patrick said, completing the circle of courteous formality. “I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time.”
Lydia extracted Rose from his arm. She shot one more quick glance at Patrick’s face. “Yes,” she said. “That was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it, Mr. Torrance?”
Patrick looked at Lydia, tilting his head so that the spring light caught the brilliance of his eyes and picked out the blue glistening in his black, black hair. His smile was enigmatic and had sharp edges that seemed to gleam.
“Actually, Mrs. Kane,” he said with a peculiar flatness in his voice, “I don’t believe in coincidences. Do you?”
Lydia didn’t answer. She pretended she hadn’t heard him, busying herself with Rose. But Celia knew she had heard, and had chosen not to respond.
Which Celia, staring over at the older woman thoughtfully, decided was very strange indeed.
AT THREE-THIRTY, PATRICK PARKED his car along Cooper Avenue, just down the block from the J. P. Linden High School. Impressive. The Linden family must have been big stuff around here once. Don Frost’s report had said that both Linden daughters had been disinherited. Patrick wondered why. Maybe the old man had found out about the baby and didn’t much approve?
School was just over. Patrick watched the kids come pouring out of the building like a liquid rainbow. Some of them lined up, noisily jabbing and teasing, to climb into big yellow buses. Others trudged along stoically, watching the sidewalk, heavy backpacks dragging on their shoulders.
A few others, the ones with straight white smiles, shining, well-cut hair and expensive designer clothes, danced in groups toward the parking lot. Their trucks and sports cars waited like rows of lapdogs, ready to perk up at the sound of their masters’ remote control chirps.
He knew what their lives were like, those lucky ones. Back at San Francisco’s elite Master’s Preparatory Academy, Patrick had been one of them, the envy of even the richest of his friends. Out of all the top-of-the-line sports cars in the Academy parking lot, Patrick’s Mercedes had been the coolest.
High tech sound, alloy wheels, gliding sunroof, global positioning system before anyone else had ever heard of it. Low slung, with lots of attitude. Shining black on the outside, deep, rich maroon interior.
Red and black, wasn’t that perfect? Red and black to match the bruises that had once colored his arms, to match the bloody vomit that came up whenever Julian Torrance’s fists caught him in the kidneys.
He waited until everyone seemed to have left. He waited until the gray stone building stood motionless against the huge blue sky. And then he opened his car door, headed down the sidewalk and went inside.
J. P. Linden High School. A carved stone archway proclaimed the school name. The double doors were unlocked. Though a sign asked him politely, as a visitor, to check in at the front office, no one stopped him when he passed by without a glance.
The dimly lit hallway lined with sports trophies and “State Champion” banners, smelled like all high schools. Part chalk, part textbook, part musty old building. And under everything the lingering smell of the kids—cheap cologne and sweaty gym clothes, hair spray and hormones.
His footsteps echoed as he walked. The school seemed huge for such a small town; it must draw from nearby communities. That would account for all the buses.
Still, it didn’t take him long to find the gymnasium, where, according to Don Frost Investigations, the Linden High Homecoming Dance had been held every November for more than thirty years.
The gym was deserted, as well. It was too late in the year for basketball, too early for the prom. Today it was just a big empty floor and stacks of collapsible bleachers. Streams of dusty sunlight struggled in through high, dirty windows. The floor was well worn, overdue for replacing. Obviously this school hadn’t been new even back when The Homecoming Baby was born.
He stood at the gym door and surveyed the nearest hallway. Two doors were set into the far end, maybe twenty yards away, just far enough to hide the weak wails of a newborn. Boys, the first door read. And the second, Girls.
He moved toward the second door. But as he stood there, uncertain whether to go in, he suddenly wished he hadn’t come. What had he been thinking? This was exactly the kind of sentimental nonsense he ordinarily despised.
And it was illogical, too.
Hell, he didn’t even know that this was the bathroom the wretched girl had used.
And even if it was… What good would it do him to see it? It had all happened thirty years ago. Nothing would be left to mark the event today.
“Sir?” The voice behind him startled him. Patrick turned, aware that the echoing emptiness of this building had affected him more than he’d like to admit.
A man was in the hallway, holding a large push broom and a cleaning cart. A light-skinned Mexican, the man was probably sixty years old, but he had a barely lined face, as if he didn’t let life bother him much.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said. He’d known he might run into questions, and he had his story ready. “I hope it’s all right for me to look around. I’m thinking of moving to Enchantment, and I wanted to check out the school my kids would be attending.”
If he had any. But of course he didn’t add that part.
“Oh, sure. The staff don’t mind. Though things are stricter nowadays than they used to be.” The custodian leaned against his broom, clearly pleased to have an excuse to chat instead of sweep. “It’s a good school. Good kids. I moved away once, went to work in Taos, and what those kids wrote in the bathroom stalls you wouldn’t believe. Disgusting.”
Patrick smiled and nodded. “I’ll bet. But no serious problems here? Nothing for a parent to worry about?”
The man shrugged. “Well, they’re teenagers. At sixteen they all think the f-word is pretty funny, you know? But still, I’m glad I came back. This was my first real job, and I guess it’ll be my last.”
“Your first job?” Patrick did some quick calculations. “How long ago did you start working here?”
“’Bout forty years. The school was a lot newer then, easier to clean. Course I was younger, too. That might be why.”
Suddenly the older man’s gaze slid toward the bathroom door, and, as if he had finally registered how peculiar it was for this stranger to be standing outside the girl’s bathroom, he narrowed his eyes.
“Listen, what did you say you were—”
A look of understanding passed across his face.
“Oh, I get it. You’ve heard the rumors, haven’t you? You heard that a girl had a baby in that bathroom. It was a long time ago, but still, you’re wondering if it’s true, aren’t you? You’re wondering if it’s safe to let your kids go to a school where things like that happen.”
Patrick smiled, hoping he was pulling off the right amount of paternal concern and normal curiosity. “You’re right. I did hear about it. But I don’t know—I thought it might be some kind of urban legend, just a good creepy story to tell at sleepovers.”
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