Their Child?. Karen Rose Smith
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Heck and Enid didn’t seem to care in the least that he really didn’t need to be there, that the news he had for them wasn’t news at all. And when he asked to see Brody, Enid popped right up and pushed in her chair. “Oh, he’ll be so pleased. He was asking about you, just before he went to bed.”
Tucker heard himself muttering, “Uh. He was?”
“Well, of course. You made quite an impression on him.”
“I did?”
Heck chuckled. “Bound to impress a boy, when you save his life—and his mother’s, too.”
Enid added, looking misty-eyed, “Impresses a boy’s grandparents, as well.”
Heck said, “Damn, man. Believe it. You’re almost as popular with Brody right now as that ugly mutt of yours.”
Enid’s misty smile widened. “You come on, now. This way…”
Tucker set down his coffee mug and fell in step behind her. She led him out of the kitchen, into the central hall and up the stairs, where she stopped at the first door on the right. She tapped lightly. They waited. No sound came from inside.
Enid put her finger to her lips, grasped the door handle and slowly pushed the door inward.
Light from the hallway poured into the room, a wedge of brightness across the single bed opposite where they stood. Brody was sound asleep, sprawled on his back, the covers kicked away.
He wore blue short-sleeved Bart Simpson pajamas. That persistent cowlick Tucker had noticed the afternoon before stuck up against the pillow—the cowlick so much like the one Tucker himself had always fought to tame. The light accentuated the shadow that defined the cleft in his chin—the cleft like the one Tucker saw every morning when he looked in the mirror to shave.
And not only the cowlick and the cleft chin. There was also the shape of his face and the curve of his mouth when he smiled.
Mine, Tucker thought.
There was no doubt about it. He should have seen it before. It really was damned amazing, how the truth had been right there in front of him for two weeks now, and he’d never seen it. He’d seen only what he expected to see.
Like Lena, that long-ago night…
He’d expected to see Lena that night. Lena, a vision in pink, whirling in his arms. Lena, nervous and so sweet, so achingly eager, naked beneath him, her soft lips forming his name.
Even that night, his senses had rebelled. He’d noticed—how different she seemed; her eyes softer, and her voice, too. Gentler, quieter; in a strange way, more feminine. That night, she wasn’t the Lena he knew.
Because she wasn’t Lena at all.
Silently, Enid pulled the door shut. She whispered, “Sorry. I hate to wake him…”
“It’s all right,” said Tucker. He’d seen what he needed to see.
Chapter Ten
The story of the twister that brought down the clubhouse on top of three hundred wedding guests made the first page of the Abilene News-Reporter. It also made the Dallas Morning News, though not the front page. Some eager newshound had gotten a great shot of the collapsed clubhouse under a lowering sky, with a bedraggled little knot of drenched wedding guests surveying the ruin. The picture was picked up by the wire services and popped up in papers all over the country. The story—a sound-bitesize version of it—even made it onto CNN and MSNBC.
Sunday afternoon, Dr. Zastrow released Lori into the loving care of her parents. Once she’d hugged her son and let her mother fuss over her for a while, Lori retreated to her room and called the Double T.
Miranda answered and asked her to please wait a moment.
Lori said, “Sure,” and knew, beyond the last fading shadow of a very scary doubt, that Tucker would refuse to talk to her.
Then he picked up the phone. “Lori. Hello.” And she didn’t know which was worse: if he’d refused to talk to her at all, or his voice as it sounded now. Distant. Cool. Dangerously polite. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Better all the time.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Tucker I…um…” Oh, God. How to even begin?
“Yeah, Lori?”
“Well, you know,” she said, her voice wobbly and weak. “We really have to talk.”
“Talk,” he replied, as if mulling over the meaning of the word. “Yeah. I guess we do.”
“I’m home—I mean, at my parents’ house. I was thinking maybe you could come over and—”
He finished for her, “Have it out? Now?”
Have it out? Dread curled through her, burning a guilty path. “Well, yes. We could—”
“No,” he cut her off again. “Not now. We’d better wait.”
She put her hand against her bandaged head. Suddenly, it was aching like a sonofagun again. She dared to ask, “Wait for what?”
“How’s your head? I’ll bet it’s still hurting pretty bad.”
It seemed like a dangerous question, somehow. She started to lie and say no, it was fine. But then she reminded herself of how she would never lie again—not even a little one. “Yes. It still hurts.”
“I thought so. We’d better wait a while.”
“Until?”
“Until you’re feeling better—in fact, I’m thinking you’re going to want to cancel that appointment we had for tomorrow. You remember that appointment, Lori?”
“Of course I do.”
“Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
“Yes,” she said, out loud and clear. “I remember that we had an appointment tomorrow.”
“An appointment to discuss the little matter you’ve known for, oh, eleven years or so that you really should talk to me about. Right?” She pressed her lips together and swallowed convulsively. He prodded, pumping up the volume, “Right?”
“Right,” she said tightly. “Yes. To talk about—”
“Wait. Not now. Later.”
She echoed, miserably, “Later?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Oh, come on, Lori. You’ve waited such a long time to tell me. It’s not going to be any skin off your nose to wait a few more days.”
His words hit home. Squarely. She wanted to crawl in a deep, dark hole and stay there—but she forced herself to argue, “I know Lena already told you, about that night. And I think you have to see that we—”
“I want you feeling good. Strong. When I talk to you.”
“Tucker. Please. I just—”
“Thursday. I’ll call you Thursday. We’ll see how you’re doing then.”
“But I—”
“And in the meantime, I’d like to see Brody. Would that be all right with you?”
“See Brody?” She didn’t know why that surprised her. Of course, he’d want to see Brody.
“Is that a problem for you?” Beneath the fake-cordial tone, his deep voice vibrated with subtle threat.
“No. Not at all.” God. They sounded like a couple getting a divorce and