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“You’d be surprised how little I know about her,” he said.
“No, I wouldn’t.” She dropped the statement, then let it hang there while he tried to figure out what it meant. Bryan’s footsteps came tromping down the stairs, across the floor and into the kitchen. Joshua sighed, his eyes clouding with real worry, and Beth took pity. “I do some private tutoring, you know.”
“Do you?” He looked her in the eyes, and she got the feeling he had already known that. Probably Maude had filled him in. “If that’s an offer, Beth, I accept. Assuming I can convince Bryan to go along with it.”
“He seemed willing enough yesterday, when I spoke to him about it.”
His brows bent together. “He talked to you about tutoring him?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Agreed to start at noon today.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t he just say so, instead of arguing with me?”
Beth tipped her head to one side. “Maybe because you didn’t ask.”
His face darkened. “So this is all my fault?”
“Not all, Joshua. But of the two of you, he’s the one who just lost his mother. And you’re the adult. The only one in the world who can swoop in and pick up the pieces of his broken life for him.”
“Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been trying to do?”
He stopped himself there, literally seemed to bite off the rest of his tirade before it could spill out, held up a hand, closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s stress, and I’ve got no business taking it out on you. Are you all right?”
He was searching her face now, his expression remorseful and almost…tender. As if he thought she were so fragile an angry word or two from him could reduce her to tears. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know.” He dragged his gaze away from hers. “Listen, if you have suggestions, advice, I’d be more than happy to hear it.”
“I don’t know a damn thing about being a parent.” She looked away, thinking of Dawny, the hole in her heart yawning wider. “But I know a little about teenagers. I taught in a public school for seven years.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
She frowned at him. “Funny, I had the feeling you did.”
“No. I don’t think Maude mentioned it. What did you teach?”
“English Eleven and Twelve, mostly. I offered to tutor Bryan in English Twelve, so he would only have History and Spanish to catch up on. He’ll be fine, if he does the work.”
Josh settled back into his chair, seeming to relax a little. “So you think I should let him take the semester off, so long as he sticks with the tutoring?”
“I think you should consider agreeing to that, yes.” She sipped her tea. “But don’t count on it lasting. Once he meets some of the local kids, makes a few friends and has time to get bored out of his mind, he’s going to decide to go back to school. If you let me tutor him until then, he won’t be behind when he does.”
He nodded slowly. “For someone who doesn’t know much about parenting, you’re pretty good.” She shrugged, and he went on. “Seriously, you’re light-years ahead of me. Okay. Let’s do it—the tutoring thing, I mean.”
“Okay.”
The screen door creaked open, and Bryan stepped out onto the porch with a toaster pastry in one hand and a glass of chocolate milk in the other. Both had to have been in the pickup, because neither would have been within a mile of Maude’s kitchen.
“Good morning, Bryan,” Maude called, sounding as cheerful as if she hadn’t noticed a thing out of the ordinary this morning, much less overheard his fight with his father. “Did you sleep well?”
He offered her a halfhearted smile, his dark hair falling over his forehead before he pushed it back. It was so much like the way Josh had pushed his hand through his hair earlier that Beth almost smiled.
Bryan avoided his father’s eyes. “Slept better than I do in the city, that’s for sure.”
“Well, now that you’re up, I’ll get your breakfast out of the oven.”
“Oh, that’s okay, I made my own.”
Maude looked at his pastry and rolled her eyes. “That is not a breakfast. It’s a future health crisis. Now, I’ve had a real meal staying warm in the oven for you for the past hour.” She glanced at Beth. “Join us, dear?”
“No way, Maude. I eat one of your meals, I’ll be crawling home instead of running.”
“Oh…you’re going home?” Bryan asked. He sounded a little…off.
“That’s the plan, Bry.”
He shot his father a look, and Beth got the feeling their earlier argument was suddenly the furthest thing from the young man’s mind. “Well, why don’t you stay? You can, uh, talk to my dad about that tutoring thing.”
Something had certainly snapped Bryan out of his petulant state. “I already did that,” she said. “Was kind of surprised you hadn’t done it yourself by now.”
He nodded, all but admitting he probably should have clued his old man in.
“I gotta go. See you at noon, Bryan?” She reached for her tea to finish the cup.
“Uh, yeah, about that…” Bryan began. He sent his father another quick look, as if uncertain whether to speak.
“What is it, Bry?” Josh asked.
“It’s probably nothing. I mean, one summer in the city and all of the sudden, I’m paranoid, you know?” He offered a half smile and shrugged. “Can’t help it, though.”
Beth frowned at him. “Paranoid about what?”
“It’s just…there’s been a car parked up the road a little ways for a while now. I can just see it from my bedroom window.”
Beth’s hand jerked, and the still-hot tea sloshed onto her bare legs. She sucked air through her teeth and wiped it away with her hand.
Maude handed her a napkin. “Oh, it’s probably someone bird-watching or checking on the progress of the foliage,” she said. “We have a lot of nature lovers living in these parts, and this time of year every leaf-peeper in the country seems to show up. Was it a red Blazer, Bryan? That would be my nearest neighbor Frankie Parker. Loves to watch the birds, that one.”
“No, it’s a brown sedan. Chrysler, I think.”
“Brown Chrysler,” Maude repeated to herself. “Maybe I should give Frankie a call.”
When they all looked at her oddly, Beth clarified for them. “Frankie’s the police chief.”
“Oh.” Bryan nodded. “Right next door, that’s handy.”
“Well, right next door is a half mile, but still…” Maude said.
Beth dabbed the tea from her thighs and tried not to notice Josh’s scrutiny, until he forced it. “Call me a paranoid city slicker, if you want, but, um…why don’t you let me take you home, Beth? Just to be on the safe side.”
She looked up at him, crushed the damp napkin in her hand and shook her head. “I may not look like much, Joshua, but trust me, I can handle myself.” She glanced at Bryan. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” She dug into her shorts pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “You’ll need these books for our session today. You can pick them up at Books Ink, in town.”
“Cool. I can pick them up right now and drop you off on my way,” Bryan said.
What was with these two? You’d think she was made of glass, the way they were acting. “And miss out on the great breakfast your grandmother made you?” Beth asked. “No, I don’t think so. Besides, I live in the opposite direction. And I run for a reason. I’m not messing up my daily routine by taking the lazy way home.”
Bryan looked at his father. Joshua sighed and glanced at Maude.
Maude frowned. Then she lifted her chin. “Joshua, go change your clothes. She won’t let you drive her, so you can run with her. And, Beth, don’t even begin to argue with me. I’ll worry myself sick if you go off alone.”
“Since when is there anything in Blackberry scary enough to worry you, Maude Bickham?”
“Since you got so scared you spilled tea on yourself at the mention of a strange car, young lady. Now, my word is law, and I have spoken. Finish your tea while Josh changes his clothes.”
“Fine. Fine, he can run with me.” She looked at Josh as he rushed into the house and added, “If he can keep up!”
Beth was running faster than her normal pace in honor of his presence; Josh was sure of it. He broke a sweat ten minutes in, but he wasn’t complaining. It felt good to run. It had been too long. He watched the lengthening and flexing of her calf muscles and her thighs with every stride, and he thought it was too damn cold to wear shorts, and yet he was irrationally glad she had. She was probably as strong as she claimed she was. She certainly ran like she meant it. Not that it would matter much if some maniac came after her.
She wasn’t happy about Maude’s insistence that he come along. Her jaw was tight, her eyes serious. She hadn’t spoken a word or cracked a smile since they left. God, it was difficult for him to believe this was the same pale, weak, comatose girl he’d visited in the hospital so long ago. She wasn’t pale. Her skin was sun-kissed, and her cheeks pink right now with exertion. Steady, powerful breaths rushed in and out of her lungs, not the steady mechanical rasp of a respirator. Heat rose from her body in spite of the autumn chill.
When she slowed to a walk for the final quarter mile and he caught his breath again, he wanted to talk to her, ask her what her life had been like since coming out of that coma eighteen years ago. He wanted to hear every detail, in her own words, rather than the dry accounts in the typed pages Arthur had sent him. He’d been up most of the night reading those. They’d given him nightmares.
But he couldn’t very well ask about her past, and even if he did, she wouldn’t tell him. So he made conversation about the one topic he thought would interest her in talking to him: Bryan.
“I think Bryan must like you already,” he said.
“He doesn’t even know me. But yeah, the way he reacted to seeing a strange car—I suppose after losing his mom, it makes sense he might feel a little protective of me. I’m probably around her age. Maybe I remind him of her in some way.”
It made perfect sense, except that she was nothing like his ex-wife, Josh thought. Kathy had been confident, demanding, had known exactly what she wanted and would settle for nothing less. Beth was…nervous. Skittish. Strong, but he got the feeling she was never quite sure which path she would choose at the crossroads of Fight and Flight. “He likes you better than he seems to like me, at the moment,” he said. “That’s worth something.”
“He thinks you don’t care about his mother’s death.”
“He acts as if I caused it.”
“Did you?”
He looked at her sharply.
“I mean, in his mind? Is there any way he might blame you?”
“I don’t see how. It was a weekend getaway with her second husband. The plane went down in the mountains.” He shook his head. “Bryan would have been with them, but he got sick at the last minute. Some stomach bug.”
“Oh. Well, no wonder.”
He lifted his brows.
“He feels guilty,” she explained. “Wishes he had been with them, wonders why they had to die when he was spared. Survivor’s guilt. Surely you’ve heard of it.”
“You don’t know the half.” She looked at him, a question in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard of it.”
“So that’s part of it, then. I mean, it might be.” She shrugged. “Maybe I can get him talking.”
He looked up as a car passed. A brown sedan. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see inside. Only one person, though, he thought. The driver. The license plates were too coated in dirt to read.
“I suppose you’ve tried that already, though.”
He glanced her way again. “Tried what?”
“To get him to talk to you. About his feelings.”
“I’ve asked him to talk to me. It hasn’t worked.”
She licked her lips, then pressed them tight.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, you were going to say something just now.”
“I’m butting in, and that’s not my way. It’s none of my business.”
“If I’m asking, you aren’t butting in.” He waited. Then, “Please, Beth. I need all the help I can get here.”
She sighed. “I don’t know Bryan very well, so this could be way off base. But what I’ve found in other kids his age is that the best way to get them to open up to you is to open up to them first. Maybe he needs to see your feelings before he’ll feel safe showing you his own. It’s hard to admit to weakness and confusion to a man you see as always strong, in control, perfect.”
“You were right in the first place. You don’t know Bryan very well. He doesn’t think I’m anything close to perfect.”
“You’re his dad. You might be surprised. Even my…”
He studied her face. “Even your what?”
She shrugged and stopped walking. “This is my place.”
Her place was a little square cottage with siding designed to make it look like a log cabin, though it wasn’t. “Thanks for seeing me home, even though it was far from necessary.”
He looked beyond her, seeing no sign of the car that had driven past them. Not at the moment, anyway. But her house was in the middle of a stretch of empty road. A thorny hedgerow marked the boundaries of the open field behind it. A stream meandered through. The water caught the morning sun and changed it into diamonds. Across the street there was a woodlot bordered by scrub brush. Cover. Not another house in sight in either direction.
“I don’t suppose I could hit you up for a glass of water before I head back? I’m not as used to running as you are. Out of shape.”
“Liar.” She led the way to her front door.
He followed her inside, even though she hadn’t really invited him, and took everything in. The front door led into a small living room, where a settee and overstuffed chair sat on a brown area rug in front of a television set. A large punching bag dangled from a hook in the ceiling, near one corner.
“I’ll get your water.” She walked through, into what he presumed was the kitchen. He heard ice rattling into a glass, took a few steps farther inside and peeked into the only other room he saw—her bedroom. There were a twin bed with rumpled covers and a weight bench with a bar balanced in its holder. He thought it had fifty pounds on each end.
“Snoop much?”
He spun around fast, almost bumping into her. “Sorry.”
