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“We’ll talk about it at home,” the man interjected.
Putting her hand on her father’s face, Ariel pulled it around to make him look at her. “She’s nice, Daddy.”
The man stopped to unlatch the gate. “You know the rules, Scooter. You stay at the school until someone picks you up.”
“Daddy—”
“No exceptions.”
Shooting Margo one last piercing glance, Ariel’s father carried the little girl across the back alley. He opened a gate into the yard immediately behind hers.
Only when they’d disappeared inside their house did Margo’s legs collapse under her. She crumpled onto the ground, right where she’d sat in blissful ignorance and enjoyed his daughter’s company. God. A cop. The sheriff to be precise. And she’d ripped into him without the slightest concern for the consequences.
Damn. Hadn’t she worked for years to overcome her old tendency to let passion rule her actions? Hadn’t she identified when and where she was most susceptible? Hadn’t she made a science of the self-control she longed to have?
Obviously she’d met with so little challenge these past few years that the new concept of herself had never been tested. Until now. Today a flash flood of emotions had washed toward her and her dam of self-protection had given way.
Closing her eyes, she dragged deep calming breaths into her lungs and tried to imagine how it had looked through the cop’s eyes. Her anger had been out of concern for his child. Maybe that was all he’d see. Maybe he’d even appreciate Margo. for her concern when he had a chance to think about it. Maybe everything was okay.
She’d done nothing she couldn’t defend, said nothing she regretted. She had to believe she hadn’t put her new life at risk.
She had a new start in a new town where no one knew her or her past. She had a new identity that would give her the freedom to be a regular citizen and have normal relationships. She had a career, writing to her heart’s content, creating worlds, characters, crises, and above all, happy endings.
Riley’s concern for Ariel’s safety didn’t evaporate just because he had her safe in his arms. The three weeks since he’d lost his housekeeper hadn’t gone smoothly, but he’d managed. Evenings and weekends he had a list of teenagers to choose from. During the day, when he couldn’t get to the school himself, someone had filled in for him.
Today he’d been a little late, but it wasn’t the first time. And until today Ariel had always persuaded a friend or two to stay and play with her while she waited. Finding her gone, he’d put out an alert and within minutes all his deputies and most of his staff were looking for her. His whole available force. And the entire time, she was practically in their own backyard. He’d hear about this one for a while.
With Ariel still in his arms, he picked up the phone to have Liz send out the word she was okay.
“Daddy, we need to feed Jelly. Can we give him tuna fish?”
“You want to reward him for running away?”
“Oh, Daddy.”
Ariel squirmed, so Riley let her slide to the floor while he placed the call. The dispatcher’s relief told him Ariel would be the queen of the station after causing such a stir. Speak of reinforcing unacceptable behavior. Resigned, he hung up and turned to Ariel.
At five, she went her own way so engagingly he found it difficult to be strict with her. And he was her father. Everyone else catered to her as if she were royalty.
“So do I spank you, or send you to bed without dinner, or ground you for the rest of your life?”
She giggled and his stomach clenched. “It’s not funny, Ariel. I’ve been looking for you for almost an hour, and so have a lot of other people. We worry about you.”
“But, Daddy, I came straight home from school. Clara and James don’t have to wait for someone to pick them up. Why do I have to?”
“Because Clara and James walk together, and they go to Clara’s house, and Clara’s mommy is there waiting for them.”
“It’s not my fault I don’t have a mommy. And when you don’t come, it’s boring at the school.”
Riley swallowed a sigh. He couldn’t refute her logic, and he didn’t know how to instill a sense of caution in her without scaring her to death. “I know, Scooter, but—”
She opened the pantry and got out a can of cat food. “Don’t be mad, Daddy.”
“I’m not mad, Ariel, I’m—”
“Then don’t frown.” She scrunched her face into a glare, held it for about two seconds, then burst into a little giggle.
“Okay, I’m mad. I don’t want you to ever leave the school alone again.”
Ariel only laughed, reminding him far too vividly of Kendra. Once, his wife’s confidence that life held no dangers had captivated him; she’d believed in her own invulnerability and insisted on pushing the edge of the envelope. Two years ago she’d challenged a blizzard, relying on a lifetime of experience with Wyoming roads. But she’d lost control of her car, and he and Ariel had lost her. In his daughter, that same conviction of immunity kept him constantly on edge.
Ariel pushed a chair over to the counter and climbed up to fit the cat-food can into the electric can opener. Her cool competence in the kitchen reminded him how quickly she was growing up, and reinforced his fear.
“Did you hear what I said? I don’t want you wandering around by yourself.”
“okay.”
But the promise came so easily that Riley doubted he’d gotten through to her. It terrified him to think what it would take to instill caution in her. He hated that there were enough mean, angry, scary people out there to make prevention necessary.
Once she had the cat food open, Ariel looked over her shoulder at him. “That lady was nice.”
“Was she?” With effort, Riley pulled himself out of his deep thoughts to reconnect with the present. That lady. Their new neighbor across the alley. He’d thought her both feisty and remote. It would take a meeting when his own emotions weren’t topping the chart to form a real opinion of her temperament.
“Oh, yes,” Ariel continued. “And pretty.”
“Yeah?” More like beautiful, in an exotic sort of way. Her olive skin, dark eyes and black hair indicated a Hispanic or Mediterranean heritage—probably Hispanic, given the Southern inflection of her words. Her fine bones and delicate features gave an impression of fragility that would bring out the protective instinct in any man. Definitely beautiful.
“Yes. And she helped me remember Mommy.”
“Oh, Scooter.” Riley closed the distance between them and cupped her chin tenderly with his palm. The last two years had been tough on them both.
“I sang, ‘Merry Airy, merry, merry, merry, Ariel.”’
He hadn’t heard the familiar tune since Kendra died, but over his daughter’s high little voice, he heard Kendra’s rich alto singing the love ditty she’d made up the day they’d named their baby. Along with Kendra’s voice he could hear her laugh, almost feel her touch.
Unwilling to confront ghosts of the past, he shut the images away. After two years he thought of his wife only when, with a word or a gesture, Ariel brought her suddenly to mind. He didn’t need to start hearing the Airy tune on Ariel’s lips.
Pulling his daughter into his arms, he sat on the chair. She straddled his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Scooter, I know you miss—”
“Now I’m not scared I’ll forget what she looked like.”
“Were you?” Before he could guard against them, a flood of memories poured over him. Almost curiously, he sifted through them, but he couldn’t find a clear image of Kendra’s face. Snatches of conversations, impressions of good times, a whiff of her scent, the feel of her hair, a flash of her smile. But no firm, indelible picture.
Stunned, he stared at Ariel and tried to find Kendra’s face. It wasn’t there.
After two years of trying not to remember, it shocked him to realize he couldn’t.
Ariel sighed and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Only sometimes. Like when I’m unhappy and I want her, and she just isn’t there.”
It took Riley a second to retrack their conversation. It hadn’t occurred to him his daughter could be longing for the very thing he’d been trying to bury. “I miss her, too.”
“That lady knew I was scared I’d forget, so she told me just to sing. Then she made Jelly stop hiding. I like her.”
“I can see that, but—”
“Please let me go back, Daddy.”
Ariel’s plea took Riley back another couple of steps. She wanted to visit their new neighbor. In this, he had no muddled feelings. “What have I always taught you about talking to strangers?”
Ariel widened her eyes artlessly, indicating she thought she had him licked. “People who live in the same neighborhood can’t be strangers.”
“We don’t know anything about her.”
“We can ask.”
Ariel was right. Sort of. In Laramie, so far, neighbors were not strangers to each other. But the horrors endemic to other, bigger cities were moving in. And sometimes danger hid in unlikely places. He cupped Ariel’s face in his palm. “Promise me you won’t go over there alone.”
“Then come with me. Please. Because she might die, like Mommy did, and I don’t have a way to remember her.”
Riley cuddled Ariel against his chest. A child should not have to deal with the unpredictability of life. She shouldn’t have to play little games to remember the face of someone she loved. And she shouldn’t be deprived of kindness just because one icy night her mother died in an automobile accident and left her father leery of the unknown.
“Let me think about it. In the meantime, don’t go over there alone.”
“Thanks, Daddy.” Ariel gave him a noisy, giggly kiss. Then she grew solemn again and pulled back to look at him earnestly. “Daddy, will I ever have a mommy again?”
“I don’t know.” He thought about it occasionally, especially when he didn’t know how he could give his daughter everything she needed. Or when she seemed too much child for one person to handle. He’d thought about it today, when she’d disappeared from the school before he could pick her up.
But marrying again didn’t mean Ariel would automatically have a full-time mother—or that he would find a woman who could curb Ariel’s recklessness. And more than that, he wasn’t sure he could add the anxiety he’d feel for a wife to his worry for his daughter. Before Kendra’s death, he’d taken life’s risks as a matter of course, as part of his job. Now he measured every aspect of his life against them.
“When Whiskers got lost and I missed her so much, we got another kitten.”
Not quite sure what she needed, Riley folded his daughter in his arms. “We were really lucky to find another kitten that was just right.”
“Can we look for another mommy?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Scooter.”
She wriggled free of his embrace and giggled. “But, Daddy, it is. I wished for Jelly and I got him. So I’ll just wish for a new mommy.”
She slid off his lap, picked up the can of cat food and skipped across the room to empty it into Jelly’s dish. Great. Now Ariel was wishing for a new mommy, as if people gave them away through the Want Ads, like a kitten. Free to good home. Box trained.
Ariel was a terrific kid, and he’d give her the moon if he could. She’d adjusted to losing Kendra better than anyone expected. In spite of being one of the youngest in her class, she did well in school. She might be too adventuresome for his comfort, but her spunk made her popular with the other kids. So why couldn’t they go on as they were?
She’d just thrown him a curveball he couldn’t possibly hit, and now she knelt on the floor, petting Jelly as if—
The bottom of her left sock was dirty and grass-stained. “Ariel, where’s your shoe?”
She sat back, stretched out her legs and wiggled her shoeless foot. Hunching her shoulders, she looked up at him solemnly. “I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
She pondered for a while, but he didn’t hold much hope she would remember, since she hadn’t even realized it was missing.
“I had it when I came home from school.”
“Did you have it when you came home here?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you have it on when you were visiting the lady?”
She lifted her shoulders again. “I don’t remember.”
“Sheesh, Ariel. How could you forget losing your shoe?”
Sticking out her bottom lip, she examined her foot again. “It has to be somewhere.”
Yeah. Anywhere between the kitchen and the school. Which covered about two square miles, since he doubted she’d taken a direct route or could retrace whatever way she’d come. It wasn’t worth a full-scale search, but he could check with their new neighbor.
In fact, the missing shoe would be a very good excuse to pursue Ariel’s request. He could pay their new neighbor a visit. Learn her name. See if he could depend on her concern for Ariel. Because at the very least, it never hurt to have as many people as possible keeping an eye out for his headstrong little girl.
Margo couldn’t get Ariel—or Ariel’s father—out of her head. Between the two of them, they’d left her mind in a whirl, and nothing she’d tried had restored her equilibrium.
Not a shower, not fixing supper, not unpacking a couple more boxes. Even her heroine’s next exploit couldn’t hold her concentration. Finally she gave up the effort.
She brewed a pot of decaf, put some melancholy music on the stereo and wrapped herself in an afghan by the fire.
She wasn’t sure who had affected her most, the girl or her father. The father was a sheriff. And so what if he was? Past was past, right? With her new identity, she had a spotless record, a clear conscience, and a limitless future.
Unfortunately, she also knew both people and the system too well to be neutral. With people, a hint of suspicion would lead to judgment, an impression too quickly became a fact, and past sins were never forgotten. With the system, a single misstep could tumble a person into a legal landslide, and from then on you could kiss a normal life goodbye.
She sipped her coffee, leaned back and closed her eyes. No, society wasn’t perfect, and most people did the best they could. She had no one to blame but herself.
Looking back, her fault had lain in how recklessly she’d followed where her emotions led. She’d let grief after her grandmother’s death lead her into a relationship with Nick. She’d let herself need him so much that she did anything he wanted and made excuses for his abuse. Her love for their baby had made her blind to the downward spiral of her relationship with Holly’s father.
Since coming to that conclusion, she’d worked at self-discipline. She’d practiced deliberating alternatives and thinking before she acted. She’d learned to look ahead and imagine where different alternatives would lead. She thought she’d mastered control.
Ha!
Just today, so many emotions had erupted in such a short space of time, she couldn’t catalog them all. Starting with feelings she hadn’t experienced since losing Holly.
She hadn’t been a part of her daughter’s life since Holly was eight months old. She hadn’t watched Holly learn to walk or count or tell time. She didn’t know if Holly took music lessons or played soccer or could ride a horse. She had never heard Holly sing a song. In giving her daughter a chance for security, she’d forfeited any right to ever be a part of Holly’s life.
Could anyone blame her for enjoying Ariel’s company for a little while?
The girl’s father could. He obviously did.
