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“Like hell it was,” Sam snapped.
It was such a shock to hear the mild-mannered Sam Canfield bark that Mary was shocked out of her memories. “Sam?” she said questioningly. She didn’t know him that well; he liked to keep to himself. But she’d come to think of him as a gentle, kind man, albeit withdrawn and sorrowful.
But Sam didn’t seem to hear her. He jabbed his finger at Jim Wysocki. “You’ve had two speeding tickets just this year. You’re hell-bent on getting yourself or somebody else killed.”
Mary’s instinct was to protect Jim, her student, barely more than a child. “Sam, please. I did stop suddenly.”
Sam shook his head, his gray eyes as frigid as the tundra. “If he hadn’t been following too close, he wouldn’t have rammed you. Careless driving, that’s what it was. At a higher speed, he could have killed you.”
His gaze swung back to Jim, who had stopped protesting. The young man’s head drooped. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry ain’t good enough,” Sam snapped again. “Sorry isn’t going to fix Ms. McKinney’s car. Sorry wouldn’t resurrect her if you killed her.”
Jim shrank even more, and Mary felt compelled to intervene again. “Sam…”
He shook his head at her, silencing her. “This young fool needs to understand that a car is a deadly weapon that has to be handled with care. Maybe he doesn’t care about his own life, but he should care about other people’s.” He turned on Jim again. “How would you feel if you had to attend Ms. McKinney’s funeral in a couple of days because you were being reckless?”
Mary knew how he would feel. Knew it like the beating of her own heart. The pit yawned beneath her feet again, and she could feel herself teetering, ready to fall over the brink.
Struggling to hang on to the here and now, she reached out and gripped Jim’s forearm. “Listen to him, Jim,” she said hoarsely. “Before it’s too late.”
She felt Sam’s curious gaze settle on her, as if he wondered why the change of heart, but she never took her gaze from Jim’s. It was crucial that he hear her, that he listen to her.
Slowly the young man nodded. “I’m sorry, Ms. McKinney. Really. I was following too close. Deputy Canfield’s right. And I’ll pay to have your car fixed. Every dime, I promise.”
Mary searched his face. Satisfied with what she read there, she let go of his arm. “Don’t give him a ticket, Sam. Please. He won’t do anything silly again.”
“I wish I believed that,” Sam said gruffly.
Mary looked at him, knowing she could never in a million years explain why she felt it was so important to protect Jim from the consequences of his own actions. Knowing that she must, believing the boy understood.
“Oh, what the hell,” Sam said after a few moments. “No ticket. But I’ll tell you, boy, I’m gonna have my eye on you. If I see you doing anything the least bit reckless or stupid, I’m pulling you over. I’m gonna be on you like white on rice, you hear?”
Jim nodded. “I hear.”
“All right. Ms. McKinney’s going to get an estimate on her car and give it to you. See that you take care of it.”
“I will, I swear.”
“Get out of here.”
Jim didn’t argue. He hurried to climb into his truck and drove away considerably more slowly than was his wont.
“Thank you,” Mary said to Sam. Her voice sounded distant, even to her own ears.
“You don’t look good,” Sam said. “I’m taking you home. I’ll get Taylor’s to tow your car.”
“I need to go grocery shopping,” she protested, but the words were automatic, almost inaudible over the buzz in her ears.
“Not in that car. Not when you’re shaking like a leaf. Let me take you home. I get off at three. I’ll take you shopping then.”
She nodded, past arguing. The cat. The child. There was no child. But in her heart there would always be a child. Always and forever.
“Come on,” Sam said, his voice suddenly softening. He took her arm and guided her to his cruiser.
That was closer to her nightmare than he would ever know.
2
Sam was concerned about Mary McKinney. When he dropped her off at her home, she was still shaking and pale. Extreme reaction to the shock of the accident? Or something more?
He didn’t know how to ask. There were secrets in those deep green Irish eyes of hers. As a man with secrets of his own, he figured it was better not to pry.
Besides, he didn’t like the way he was noticing her. Damn it, he’d known the woman for years. Why was he suddenly noticing the way the sun struck fire in her red hair, or the way her green eyes seemed to be layered with both darkness and light? Worse, why was he noticing her tidy breasts and lush hips? Or the delicate shape of her ankle?
He wasn’t ready to notice those things about a woman. He didn’t know if he would ever be ready. Or if he would ever want to be.
But he noticed anyway. Noticed the faint scent of her perfume, a gentle hint of lilac. Noticed her delicate, pale hands with their slender fingers and short nails. Wondered if her skin was as soft as it looked.
Wondered what it would feel like to touch her.
Forgive me, Beth.
But Beth wasn’t there anymore to ease his heart with a touch or a smile, and somehow that only made him feel more guilty.
He set his jaw and walked Mary McKinney to her door. “I’ll be back a little after three to pick you up,” he said.
Before she could say anything and he could discover the pain that lay behind her mossy-green eyes, he turned and went back to duty. The boring hours spent cruising the streets and nearby environs of Whisper Creek were a blessed escape from temptation.
He didn’t want to be tempted. He didn’t want to be unfaithful to Beth, gone though she was, and he didn’t want to risk that kind of pain again. Two good reasons to avoid Mary McKinney.
But the world was apparently in no mood to leave him in his icy prison. Summer heat dogged him, making him aware of the smell of the grass and the pines, of the sound of buzzing insects, though at this altitude there weren’t all that many. Memories teased him, memories of lying in the grass beneath the summer sun while clouds drifted overhead painting fantastic pictures in white and gray. The bark of a dog in someone’s backyard reminded him of Buddy, his golden retriever, already old when Sam married Beth, who departed in his sleep one dark night.
He missed Buddy, too, missed the friendship and companionship of his warm, furry body and soft brown eyes. Maybe it was time to get another dog. Maybe that would settle his heart down again.
A dog he could risk. A woman, never.
But God was not done with him, either. She reached out her hand and turned his day upside down.
There was a battered old car pulled over on the county road about a mile out of town, sitting forlornly on the grassy shoulder, just inches from a drainage ditch. Behind it was a large orange rental trailer, one tire flattened.
The sun was playing tricks, and Sam could barely make out that there was a figure behind the wheel. Hurt? Man or woman? He couldn’t see anything except the silhouette of a head.
The driver probably had everything he owned in that trailer and didn’t want to abandon it beside the road, not even long enough to drive to town for help. Sam keyed his radio and notified dispatch of the problem. They promised to call for a tow.
Leaving his roof lights flashing, Sam climbed out of his car and went to tell the motorist help was coming. It was not until he stood right beside the open driver’s window of the car that he realized who he was looking at.
A fist seemed to slam him in the solar plexus as he looked at a man he hadn’t seen in nearly fifteen years.
“You!” he said.
Icy-blue eyes met his, set in an austere, deeply lined face that was surrounded by the snow-white mane of long hair and a beard. The man looked like a prophet of old, and his gaze held the same fanatical zeal. He pushed open the door of his car and climbed out, standing tall and straight.
But Elijah Canfield didn’t say a word. He hadn’t spoken to his son but once in all these years, and that once had been to strike the deepest wound he had ever given Sam.
Sam couldn’t speak, either.
The two men stood staring at each other, strangers with an old, anguished history between them. Sam felt hatred simmering on the hot pavement between them, buzzing in his head like angry bees. But it wasn’t his hate; despite everything, he had never hated his father. But his father had hated him. Still hated him.
In response, Sam felt despair rising in him, a choking, agonizing hopelessness. For a few seconds he thought he was going to lose the battle. Then, in an instant, all the painfully constructed defense mechanisms slammed into place. Distancing him. Turning this old man into just another stranded motorist.
“There’s a tow truck on the way,” Sam said.
Elijah nodded once, briefly, a bare acknowledgment. But still he didn’t speak.
Of course not, Sam thought, looking past his father to the mountains beyond. Elijah hadn’t spoken to him in so many years other than to condemn him that he probably couldn’t even manage a civil word anymore. Simple human courtesies such as “how are you?” and “thank you” could no longer fill the silence between them. It was too late.
It had been too late for a long, long time. Sam bowed his head for a moment, battering down a surge of feeling, then looked at Elijah again with the chilly gaze of a stranger. “I’ll wait until it gets here.”
Then he turned and went back to his car, slipping inside behind the wheel, grateful that his suddenly unsteady legs didn’t need to support him any longer.
Sometimes, he said silently to God, you have a nasty sense of humor.
And for a few moments, he almost thought the hills laughed back at him.
“Mary?”
Mary McKinney held the phone closer to her ear. “Yes?”
“Fred Taylor, Taylor’s Auto Body.”
“Oh, hi, Fred. What’s the bad news?” But she didn’t care. At least this bad news would distract her from her other unhappy thoughts. Funny how the past could sometimes be more vivid than the present. She’d spent all day since the accident trying to put it back where it belonged.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call your insurance?” Fred said hesitantly.
“That bad?”
“The bumper has to be replaced, and the tailgate is really bent. I don’t think we can straighten it, so we’ll probably have to get a whole new door assembly. Taillight assemblies, paint…well, you’re not gonna like it. But the car’s almost new. You ought to have it fixed the way it was or it’s worthless. The bank wouldn’t like that.”
“How much?” she asked.
He quoted a price that caused her to straighten abruptly.
“That much?” she said, appalled. No way was Jim going to be able to pay for that, not after working at the mine for little more than a month. But neither could she afford it herself. A schoolteacher’s salary didn’t stretch that far.
“Let me call your insurance,” Fred said. “They’ll work it out with the other insurer and it won’t cost you a dime.”
She was tempted, sorely tempted. But it might cost Jim Wysocki his insurance, and without insurance, he wouldn’t be able to drive, even to get to work. Biting her lip, she fought down a sense of panic. What was she going to do without a car? “Is it drivable?”
“Not now.”
“How long would it take to get it drivable?”
“At a minimum, five days. I have to order parts, and there’s a lot of work to do just to get that far, never mind the paint.”
Well, of course, she thought miserably. It was only what she deserved. “Let me get back to you, Fred, okay?”
After she hung up the phone, she sat staring out the window. Across the street, someone was moving into the small house, a man with incredible white hair. A couple of people were helping him. It crossed her mind that she ought to wander over and offer to help, too, but she felt too stunned. Too…depressed.
Jim wouldn’t be able to pay for the repairs. She wouldn’t have a car to drive, which meant she wouldn’t be able to go visit her aunt this weekend. That troubled her, because Nessa was seriously ill, undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. But it was no more than she deserved, she reminded herself. No reason her life should be easy when she had destroyed someone else’s.
With a heavy sigh and a heavier heart, she picked up the phone and called Jim Wysocki. He was just getting ready to go on his shift at the mine.
“Oh, jeez, Ms. McKinney,” he said when she told him the bad news. “Oh, jeez. I can’t pay for the whole thing at once. Half. I could do half. And maybe pay the rest in installments over the next couple of months?”
Paying half would wipe out her savings. But apparently it would wipe out Jim’s, too. Her shoulders sagged. She could have insisted on going to the insurance company, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She would manage somehow. She had to.
“All right,” she said. “Take the money over to Taylor’s. You can pay me the rest when you’re able. And tell Fred Taylor to give me a call after you stop in, will you?”
“Sure, Ms. McKinney. Thank you! I mean…”
But she didn’t want to hear his gratitude. As quickly and gently as she could, she ended the conversation. He was a good kid. But like most eighteen-year-olds, he still had some growing up to do.
And she had to stop spending so much of her own money on classroom materials. Like all too many teachers, she was always finding things that she thought would stimulate interest in her students, things the school system didn’t provide. And of course there were always the students from poorer families who needed the most basic supplies, from pens to notebooks. She never regretted those purchases, but she did need to be more careful about them, if her savings could be wiped out by a single car accident.
Forcing herself to shake off the mood that had been plaguing her since the accident, she went to freshen up a little. Sam would arrive to get her soon. And there was the neighbor across the street. She needed to at least welcome him.
The past needed to return to the dungeon where it belonged.
Which of course it didn’t want to. But after all these years, Mary had some experience of twisting her mind away from it by playing tricks with herself. She rewrote her shopping list, telling herself she needed to forgo a few extravagances she had planned. Crossing these things off the list simply wouldn’t do.
And finally she went across the street to welcome her new neighbor, sure that a few minutes of conversation until Sam arrived would be just the distraction she needed.
He was a beautiful man, she thought as she approached him. Tall, lean, with the thickest, whitest hair she had ever seen, and piercing eyes as blue as ice. His very presence seemed to command, and something about him struck her as familiar.
“Hi,” she said brightly. “I’m Mary McKinney, your neighbor across the street.”
He smiled. “Reverend Elijah Canfield,” he said in a deep voice that hinted at thunder. “I’m the new pastor at The Little Church in the Woods.”
“Oh, it’s a lovely little church,” Mary said warmly.
“You’ll join us sometime for worship?”
“I’ll think about it,” Mary replied, though she had no intention of that. She belonged to another church with which she was quite content, thank you very much. “Canfield? I know a deputy named Sam Canfield.” It was a casual remark, something to mention to a stranger when she didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t expect the answer she got.
“I know him,” said Reverend Canfield.
“Are you related?” The thought surprised her. While she didn’t know Sam all that well, she suddenly realized that she’d been under the impression he didn’t have any family at all.
