A Family for Luke Read online

  Now, in the ever-shifting world of teenhood, she had suddenly decided the opposite.

  “Don’t forget your homework,” she said to Suzie as she got out of the car. “Grandpa said he would help you with math.”

  “Did you tell Grandma that I have to stay to work on my science project after school today?”

  “Yes. She said she would pick you up.” Janie glanced at her watch. She didn’t have to be at the shop at any particular time. All she had to do today was clean up, lock up and take the keys to the bank.

  But she wanted it over and she wanted it done. The sooner the better. And the busyness of winding down the shop would keep her mind off Luke.

  His name sent a needle of pain through her heart.

  Stop. Stop.

  “She doesn’t have to pick me up,” Suzie said. “Serena’s dad said he would bring me home.”

  Janie paused at the door, looking back at Suzie. “What? This is new.”

  “I told you.” Suzie’s face took on that mutinous look that Janie had seen too often in the past couple of weeks.

  It was as if she had picked up on Janie’s mood and was channeling a younger, more intense version of it. She knew the kids missed Luke, too. The first few days they had asked about him, had wondered what was going on.

  When she told them that he was busy, it seemed as if they caught the hidden meaning in her words. Todd retreated to his books, Autumn began carting her bear around and Suzie was even more ill-tempered than usual.

  This was why she had tried to keep herself heart-whole, she thought, the pain in her heart over her own loss matching the pain she knew was in her children’s. This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid. And she had failed miserably.

  The needle twisted, and Janie swallowed the pain down as the door opened.

  “You’re late” were the first words out of her mother’s mouth. “Well, come in children. Janie, you’d better get going. I’m sure you’ve got lots to do today.”

  Janie tried to ignore the veiled sarcasm as she kissed Autumn and Todd goodbye. Suzie had taken advantage of her momentary distraction to slip past her, neatly avoiding any chance for Janie to show her any type of affection.

  So the cycle continues, Janie thought, remembering how Suzie was complaining, just the other day, that she consistently favored Todd and Autumn. That she loved them more.

  Her words were like hot coals, burning through her head. Just what every struggling-with-guilt mother needs.

  “I have an interview this afternoon, and I was hoping to clean the house, so I’ll be by at nine o’clock to pick them up,” Janie said just before her mother closed the door.

  It would have been nice to get some words of encouragement, especially today of all days. Instead she got the full brunt of her mother’s secondhand shame.

  Janie turned and walked down the walk to her car. Unbidden came a picture of Luke behind the wheel.

  So close, she thought, holding her hand to her chest, as if to contain the hurt in her heart. For a brief and beautiful moment, she had thought her life was moving in a good direction to a place she wanted to be.

  With a man she wanted to be with.

  She drove away from her parents’ home to her shop downtown, parked her car and, for the last time, walked through the back door and into the shop.

  As she closed the door behind her, nostalgia washed over her with the pervasive scent of coffee. What would the next owners do with this place?

  Don’t go there. Don’t think about it.

  She grabbed the bucket, filled the pail and started cleaning up. Her ankle still bothered her but she pushed on through the pain welcoming its distraction.

  She thought the work would help keep her thoughts at bay, but, as was usual, her mind kept circling back to her conversation with Luke.

  Had she been too hasty? Was she wrong in breaking away from him while her heart was supposedly still whole?

  And how would you have felt if you carried on just a little longer? And he found out just a little more about you?

  He might have been able to stand it.

  Janie’s second thoughts circled back on themselves, counterpointed by Luke’s accusation as she walked out of the bank.

  “You’re scared of happiness.”

  She wasn’t. She wanted happiness as much as the next divorced/widowed single mother of three children did. She wanted to have a whole and fulfilled life.

  But she had found out the hard way that happiness was fleeting and ephemeral. That people’s love can turn on a dime to anger and disillusionment when the truth comes out.

  She didn’t want to see that in Luke’s eyes. She preferred to stay the woman who turned him down because of some flaw she saw in him, rather than the other way around. It was easier to let him keep his dream of Janie’s perfect family than to lay bare the realities she struggled with every day.

  She forced her thoughts back to the job at hand as she packed the leftover coffee and a few personal items back to her car.

  She had to go home and change and get ready for her interview.

  Two hours and two Advil later, she pulled up in front of her house.

  She was done. She had done what she could. The interview at the Inn went well. Tomorrow she had one scheduled at the bank. Though she was fairly sure she’d make more as a waitress, the hours were not conducive to maintaining a healthy family life.

  All she needed now was a few precious moments alone. A few moments to gather her thoughts. To let the fact of losing her business sink in before she picked up her children. She needed a break from the ever-present bickering that had entered her family ever since she had walked away from Luke.

  As she parked in front of her house, her eyes, as was her usual habit now, turned to Luke’s house.

  And the For Sale sign on the lawn.

  She felt a cold space in the center of her heart as she walked to her house and let herself in.

  It was over. Luke hadn’t bought the house from his partner after all. They were sticking to their original plan.

  For a few days she had harbored the secret hope, a slender wisp of expectation, that he might come over. Might once again cross the boundary she had placed between them.

  But he stayed on his side of the fence and she stayed on hers, waiting for the day that never came.

  Ignoring her tired feet and aching head, she rinsed the breakfast dishes she hadn’t had time to clean in the morning and loaded them in the dishwasher.

  The house seemed especially empty as she worked her way through the house from room to room, bottom to top. She felt as if she had been storing up exhaustion for weeks but didn’t dare give in. She was on her own. She had to keep going, power through this.

  She was just about to turn on the vacuum cleaner when the phone rang. Janie glanced at the clock. How did the time manage to fly by so quickly? It was already quarter to nine. She was going to be late picking up her kids.

  She dropped the plug and picked up the phone, ready to make her apologies to her mother.

  “Janie. Do you have Serena Allyson’s phone number? That girl that Suzie was going to after school? There are about four Allysons in the directory and I can’t remember which one Suzie was going to.”

  Janie frowned. “Why do you need it?”

  “She’s not home yet.”

  A flutter of worry started up in Janie’s midsection.

  “Did she say anything to you?” Tilly said.

  “No, but I did say she could stay a bit longer.”

  “I hope she’s not gotten into trouble.”

  So did Janie. “I’ll phone around. See what I can find out.”

  “You find her, okay?” As Tilly spoke, Janie heard an unfamiliar trembling in her mother’s voice, which immediately triggered mother-worry.

  Where would Suzie be? she thought as she pulled out her phone book. On impulse, she glanced at the calendar. Nothing was written on today’s date, a surprise in itself. Then she remembered Suzie’s nagging when
she’d dropped Suzie off.

  That little stinker, she thought, snatching the phone off the cradle. She punched in Serena’s number and paced the kitchen as she waited for someone to pick up.

  Serena’s parents were home, and they were watching a movie with the family. How nice, Janie thought as she waited for Serena to come to the phone. How very unlike her own messy family life right now.

  “Hey, Serena, have you seen Suzie anytime today? She said she was working on your science fair project,” Janie asked, keeping her voice light and cheery, trying to sound as if she wasn’t sick with worry about where her daughter might be and what she might be doing.

  “I heard her say something about going to Riley Watson’s place with Tabitha after we were done.”

  “Who is Riley Watson?”

  Serena lowered her voice. “He’s in high school, and I think he’s having a party tonight.”

  The party Suzie had been nagging her about for the past month.

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Up on the hill. In those fancy houses. That’s all I know.”

  That narrowed it down to about thirty or forty places, Janie thought, seeing herself cruising through the neighborhood looking for a potential party.

  “Thanks, Serena. That helps a bit.”

  “Hey, I told her not to go. But she really wanted to find out for herself what a high school party is like.”

  “And that she will,” Janie said.

  “I’ll be praying for you and her,” Serena said just before Janie said goodbye.

  Of course you will be, Janie thought. You have wonderful parents who do all the right things. A father and a mother who love you and want you and who don’t resent you and a mother who had probably never once harbored ideas of giving you up for adoption, or worse, sweeping you from her life.

  And, once again, the guilt rose up and accused her. It was her own fault, she thought as she ran down the hallway to the front door. She was no different than Luke’s mother.

  At all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Near as I figure, you should be able to clear your expenses and make a reasonable profit with this offer.”

  Luke switched the cell phone to his other ear as he shifted down. “Sounds good enough for me. I just want to move it.”

  “If you weren’t in a rush—”

  “But I am. So please, let’s get together with these people, and we can sign something.”

  “Okay. If that’s how you want to do it. Once again, I apologize for phoning you so late, but you did tell me you wanted to hear the second I had a potential buyer.”

  “Don’t worry about the hour.” Ten o’clock on a Friday night and he was fielding phone calls from a real estate agent. What a great life he had. “I’ll be available first thing Monday morning.”

  “And the building? The tenant has moved out—”

  The tenant being Janie. He resented the sense of helpless yearning that washed over him at the thought that she had to do this all alone.

  It was what she wanted, he reminded himself. She doesn’t want you in her and her kids’ life. Let it go.

  “Leave that for now. I’ll try to off-load it in a couple of weeks.” Once he got the house sold and he had hit the no-turning-back point, Riverbend and all the hopes and dreams he had pinned to it were gone.

  Luke put up with another apology, a few more pleasantries then said goodbye, but as he flipped his cell phone shut, he felt a lingering regret, a feeling that maybe he should heed the man’s advice and wait.

  For what? It had been over two weeks since Janie had walked out of his house, her words still shaming and condemning him.

  She had the perfect life and there was no room in it for imperfect him.

  He glanced down at his speedometer and pulled his foot back. A speeding ticket would be just the thing to top off an already stellar week.

  His cell phone rang again, and he glanced at the call display. Not a number he recognized.

  “Hey. Luke speaking.”

  “Luke. Is that you?”

  “Suzie?” He hardly recognized the teary voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it your mom?” His heart thudded in his chest. He knew he should have checked on her once in awhile.

  “Not my mom. Luke, can you help me?”

  “Yeah. Of course. What’s wrong?”

  “Can you come get me? I’m at a party and, well…” Her voice faltered, and in the background, he could hear laughing and then the distinctive sound of glass breaking.

  “Where are you?”

  She gave him an address, which meant nothing. “Just give me directions from the bridge,” he said. “Hopefully I can figure it out from there.”

  “Keep going past Main Street, past the feed mill, across a ravine, then up the hill a bunch. There are some new houses. That’s where I am.”

  He pushed his foot down on the gas, hoping no Mounties were cruising around here. From the sound of the party, they might even be there already.

  “I’ll pick you up at the front of the house.”

  The only reply he got was a sniff.

  “Suzie. Did you hear me?”

  “Can you hurry up?” The plaintive note in her voice caught him in his solar plexus.

  He swung around a slow-moving car, passed a truck pulling a stock trailer and ignored the honking horn of a truck that he cut off.

  A few minutes later he headed up the hill toward the houses he presumed were the ones Suzie meant.

  He swung up the first street, but things looked very suburban and peaceful. Ditto the next street. On the third, he hit pay dirt. Cars and trucks lined the street, and one house was ablaze with light. Even from inside his truck he could hear the music. But no police. Yet.

  He parked at the end of the street, got out of the truck and surveyed his surroundings. No sense in jumping directly into a party full of teenage boys and rampant egos greased with liquor.

  But the urgency in Suzie’s voice hurried his steps.

  A girl stood at the end of the sidewalk, staring at the house, as if trying to make up her mind if she should go in or not.

  Suzie?

  No. This was an older person—probably another parent. As Luke came closer, he realized he was right.

  Then his heart started up again. The parent was Suzie’s mother.

  Janie. He swallowed down the knot of expectation her presence caused. So quickly, he thought. So easily she could do that to him.

  He didn’t need to be here. She could take care of this himself, but he couldn’t stop, drawn to this woman like a moth to a flame.

  “Hey, Janie,” he said, raising his voice above the music pounding from inside the house.

  She spun around, her hand on her chest, her face lit up by the lights blazing from the house. “Luke. What are you doing here?”

  “Suzie called me.” Because he had to yell, he was sure she couldn’t hear the way his pounding heart made his voice tremble.

  “Why did she call you? What was she thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay. You can go. I’ve got this under control.”

  Of course she did. His emotions morphed into anger, and all the frustration and hurt he’d been pushing down spilled out as his words exploded into the night. “Right. Like you’ve got everything else in your precious life under control.” He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but spending two weeks away from her had been an exercise in frustration. Especially when, the entire time, she was often no more than forty feet away.

  Many times he’d had to stop himself from wanting to go over to replace that loose faucet in the kitchen that she said she was going to buy. Fix the shingles on the roof. Paint that peeling trim.

  But she would never ask.

  “I don’t need your help,” she said. “My family doesn’t need your help.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why did Suzie call me and not you?”

  The hurt on her face almost made him regret his anger.
Almost. She was so independent. So incredibly, stubbornly independent.

  “I didn’t have to come here, but I did because I care about Suzie and I care about you. I want to help you and have wanted to help you ever since I first saw you. And not because I feel sorry for you or see you as a charity case. It’s because I care. And when you care about someone, you want to make their life easier. You want to do things for them. And you shouldn’t let their precious pride get in the way like I have with you.” The relentless onslaught of words spilling out of his mouth caught him by surprise. He stopped right there and took a breath to calm himself.

  Janie kept her eyes straight ahead. He had no idea what was going on behind that tight expression or those narrowed blue eyes. He’d made a special trip to help out her daughter, and this was the thanks he got?

  In the meantime, Suzie was inside and she needed help.

  A crowd of kids spilled onto the front lawn, backlit by the lights of the house, laughing and dancing in time to the music pouring out the front door.

  He started up the walk, but Janie caught him by the sleeve, stopping him. “Why are you getting involved? This isn’t your problem.”

  “Who says?” He was still angry with her, but as she glanced from the noisy house to him, the worry on her face eased his frustration.

  “I…I don’t want you to see this,” she said.

  Luke had to strain to hear her.

  “See what?”

  “The mess. My daughter, who you think is so perfect, messing up. Me, a mother, messing up.”

  “How is this you messing up?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  His anger spilled out again.

  “You think I wouldn’t understand. You don’t want me to understand. You want to keep yourself all safe and contained,” he said. “You want to keep everything in your life to yourself and make sure that no one steps over that boundary you defend.”

  Stop, now. She doesn’t need this lecture. Not coming from someone like you. And Suzie is in that house and needs your help.

  But he was angry, frustrated and had nothing to lose.

  Because when Janie had walked out of his house, he’d felt as if he had lost everything he had wanted in his life.