Her Kind of Hero. Diana Palmer
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“I learned to cook in the last foster home I stayed in,” she said with a smile. “It was the best of the lot. Mrs. Toms liked me. She had five little kids and she had arthritis real bad. She was so sweet that it was a joy to help her. She was always surprised that anyone would want to do things for her.”
“Most giving people are,” he replied. “Ironically they’re usually the last ones people give to.”
“That’s true.”
“What else did she teach you?” he asked.
“How to crochet,” she recalled. She sighed. “I can’t make sweaters and stuff, but I taught myself how to make hats. I give them to children and old people in our neighborhood. I work on them when I’m waiting for appointments with Dad. I get through a lot.”
It was another reminder that she was taking care of his father, something he should have been doing himself—something he would be doing, if Callie’s mother hadn’t made it impossible for him to be near his parent.
“You’re still bitter about Dad,” she said, surprising him. “I can tell. You get this terrible haunted look in your eyes when I talk about him.”
It surprised him that at her age she could read him so well, when his own men couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
“I miss him,” he confessed gruffly. “I’m sorry he won’t let me make peace.”
She gaped at him. “Whoever told you that?”
He hesitated. “I haven’t tried to talk to him in years. So I phoned him a few days ago, before you were kidnapped. He listened for a minute and hung up without saying a word.”
“What day was it?”
“It was Saturday. What difference does that make?”
“What time was it?” she repeated.
“Noon.”
She smiled gently. “I go to get groceries at noon on Saturdays, because Mrs. Ruiz, who lives next door, comes home for lunch and makes it for herself and Dad and stays with him while I’m away.” “So?”
“So, Mrs. Ruiz doesn’t speak English yet, she’s still learning. The telephone inhibits her. She’ll answer it, but if it’s not me, she’ll put it right down again.” She smiled. “That’s why I asked when you called.”
“Then, Dad might talk to me, if I tried again,” he said after a minute.
“Micah, he loves you,” she said softly. “You’re the only child he has. Of course he’ll talk to you. He doesn’t know what really happened with my mother, no more than I did, until you told me the truth. But he realizes now that if it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other younger man. He said that, after the divorce was final, she even told him so.”
“He didn’t try to get in touch with me.”
“He was upset for a long time after it happened. So was I. We blamed you both. But that’s in the past. He’d love to hear from you now,” she assured him. “He didn’t think you’d want to talk to him, after so much time had passed and after what he’d said to you. He feels bad about that.”
He leaned forward. “If that’s so, when he had the heart attack, why wasn’t I told?”
“I called the only number I had for you,” she said. “I never got an answer. The hospital said they’d try to track you down, but I guess they didn’t.”
Could it really be that simple? he wondered. “That was at the old house, in Nassau. It was disconnected three years ago. The number I have now is unlisted.”
“Oh.”
“Why didn’t you ask Eb Scott or Cy Parks?”
“I don’t know them,” she said hesitantly. “And until very recently, when this Lopez thing made the headlines, I didn’t know they were mercenaries.” She averted her eyes. “I knew you were acquainted with them, but I certainly didn’t know that you were one of them.”
He took a slow breath. No, he remembered, she didn’t know. He’d never shared that bit of information with either her or Jack Steele.
“I wrote to you, too, about the heart attack, at the last address you left us.”
“That would have been forwarded. I never got it.”
“I sent it,” she said.
“I’m not doubting that you did. I’m telling you that it never got to me.”
“I’m really sorry,” she told him. “I did try, even if it doesn’t look like it. I always hoped that you’d eventually phone someone and I’d be able to contact you. When you didn’t, well, I guess Dad and I both figured that you weren’t interested in what happened back here. And he did say that he’d been very cruel in what he said to you when you left.”
“He was. But I understood,” he added.
She smiled sadly. “He loves you. When this is over, you should make peace with him. I think you’ll find that he’ll more than meet you halfway. He’s missed you terribly.”
“I’ve missed him, too.” He could have added that he’d missed her, as well, but she wasn’t likely to believe him.
He started to speak, but he felt the boat slowing. He smiled. “We must be coming up to the pier. Come on. It will be nice to have a comfortable bed to sleep in tonight.”
She nodded, and followed him up to the deck.
Her eyes caught sight of the house, on a small rise in the distance, long and low and lighted. She could see arches and flowers, even in the darkness, because of the solar-powered lights that lined the walkway from the pier up to the walled estate. She caught her breath. It was like a house she’d once seen in a magazine and daydreamed about as a child. She had the oddest feeling that she was coming home…
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