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“Yes, thank you.”
“It’s no trouble.” She smiled. “If you want the truth, it’s kind of nice to have you lean on me for a change instead of always the other way around. You just rest now. Come on, Chester. Let’s go.”
Claire hadn’t realized the dog was there, as well. She opened one eye and spotted his pudgy grumpiness circling around the rug beside the bed, preparing to settle in.
“No, leave him.”
Holly frowned. “Are you sure? He can be such a bother.”
“I’m sure.”
Holly looked skeptical but she shrugged. “Do you need anything else? Water? A book or something?”
“Only my cell phone over on the dresser, please.”
She needed to try again to call Maura after the funeral. Every day since the accident, she had tried numerous times, but Maura wouldn’t answer the phone. Claire couldn’t blame her. She was sure her friend was overwhelmed right now and the last thing she wanted to do was talk on the phone and endure more platitudes. Until Claire could make it in person to see her friend, the phone would have to do and she vowed to keep calling until Maura would talk to her.
“Thank you for taking care of the children so I don’t have to worry about them.”
“You’re welcome. Really.” Holly smiled and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Claire scooted as far as she could to the right side of the bed and reached down with her good arm. Chester licked at her fingers for a moment, then nudged at her to be petted.
She scratched his warm fur and thought about how much she hated being on the receiving end of help until she fell asleep.
“WHAT WAS THAT MAN THINKING? You can’t stay there by yourself. I’m coming over.”
Claire shifted her weight on the couch, holding the phone with one hand while she reached to rub the pain above her left eyebrow and bumped her head with plaster.
After nearly two weeks with the stupid thing, one would think she would remember it was there but she still found she forgot at odd moments.
“That’s not necessary, Mom. You don’t need to come over. I’m fine. Jeff must think so, right? Otherwise he and Holly wouldn’t have taken the kids to Denver for the weekend.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t have a bit of sense when it comes to Holly. If she said she wanted to take the kids to Denver, he would take them even if you were lying unconscious on the floor when they left.”
Claire blinked. Wow. That was unusual—for her mother to actually criticize her ex-husband. “Even Dr. Murray was happy with the way I’m healing,” she said. “Between the walker and the rolling office chair Alex rigged up for me, I can get anywhere on the main floor on my own and I’m keeping my fully charged cell phone on my person at all times.”
“I don’t care. I still don’t like the idea of you alone in that big house, especially on a night like tonight.”
Claire gazed outside at the rain sharply pelting the windows, hurled by the gusting canyon winds. For more than a week, Hope’s Crossing had seen lovely weather, which she’d been forced to enjoy from inside while she recuperated. Today had been overcast and cheerless, though, and an hour ago the wind and rain had started in earnest.
She had been looking forward to popping a bag of popcorn in the microwave and enjoying the rainstorm by herself, the first time she had truly been alone since the accident.
She had been home from the hospital for a week and had spent that time constantly surrounded by well-meaning friends. When Ruth wasn’t able to be there, she made sure someone else could stay. Evie or Alex or Angie or one of a half-dozen other friends.
Claire was grateful for all they’d done for her. Alex had coordinated so many meals that Claire now had a refrigerator and freezer full of food. Other friends had taken her shopping list to the store for her and brought back an armload of supplies and still another coordinated the car pool for the children so Claire didn’t need to worry about getting them to soccer or piano lessons. She knew from her one brief stilted phone call with Maura two days earlier that her friend was receiving much the same.
Claire was deeply grateful for all the help, but she was desperate for a moment to herself just to think.
Ruth didn’t seem to agree. “I don’t like this. Not a bit. What if you fall down? You could lie there all night and no one would even know. I’ll just come and sleep upstairs in your room again and you won’t even know I’m there.”
“I’m not going to fall. And remember, I’ve got my phone with me constantly. If I need help, I can call, email or text someone for help in a second.”
“Not if you’re unconscious.”
She held the phone away from her ear and screwed up her eyes, fighting the urge to bang the phone a few times against her head.
After the past six days, she should be an expert on dealing with overprotective people. Her mother, Holly, even the children had joined in the coddling action.
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” she repeated. If I trip in the bathroom and break my neck, you’ll be the first one I call. “I’m just going to sit here on the sofa and watch a DVD for an hour and then go straight to sleep, I swear. There’s absolutely no need for you to come over. I know how much you hate driving in this weather.”
Her mother hesitated a little at that and Claire knew she had pushed exactly the right button.
Ruth didn’t like driving at night or in snow or rain—a definite inconvenience when one chose to make a home in the high country of the Rockies. If she had to go somewhere during stormy weather, she inevitably would call Claire for a ride.
“Are you sure?” Claire heard the note of hesitation in her mother’s voice and mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Positive. I’ll be perfectly fine. I’ve got Chester to keep me company and enough leftovers in the house to last me until July.”
Ruth waffled for a few more moments before she finally caved. “All right. Because I guess you don’t want my company, I’ll stay put.”
Claire refused to feel even a twinge of guilt for the slightly hurt note in her mother’s voice.
“But call me if you change your mind and decide you want me there.”
“I will. Thanks, Mom. Good night.”
Her mother hung up and Claire closed her eyes and leaned her head against the couch, just relishing the silence, broken only by Chester’s snores on the floor beside the couch.
Dealing with her mother always exhausted her. Sometimes she was deeply jealous of the easy, comfortable relationship Alex and her sisters had with Mary Ella. Claire wanted that, too, but it seemed like every interaction with her mother ended in weary frustration that Ruth could be so needy and demanding.
Ruth hadn’t always been like that. Before her father’s scandalous death, Claire remembered her mother as a strong, funny, independent woman. Someone very much like Katherine Thorne.
When Claire was eight or nine, her mother had been the PTA president during a tumultuous time when some in Hope’s Crossing had been trying to gather support to build a new elementary school. Claire had vivid memories of her mother speaking out with vigor and eloquent prose about the importance of educating young minds in a safe, clean environment.
The memory always made her sad because of the stark contrast between that capable woman and what her mother had become later.
Claire sighed, reaching for the rolling office chair she had found much more convenient than the wheelchair she’d brought home from the hospital. She transferred to it and scooted with her healing sprained ankle into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and scanned the contents for something appealing to warm for her dinner. She finally settled on some of the sinfully divine cream of potato soup Dermot Caine had brought over from the diner a few days earlier—perfect for a cold, stormy night.
She dished some into a bowl, grateful the children hadn’t unloaded the dishwasher before they left or she would have had a struggle trying to reach the plates and bowls in the upper cupboard.
As she waited for the soup to warm in the microwave, her thoughts returned to her mother.
She could pinpoint exactly the moment Ruth had changed. April twentieth, twenty-four years ago, 11:42 p.m. She had been twelve years old, her brother eight, the same ages her kids were now. The night had been rainy, like this one. She remembered she had been sleeping when something awakened her. The doorbell, she realized later. Claire had blinked awake and lain there in bed, listening to the branches of the big elm click against the window in the swirling wind and wondering who could be ringing the doorbell so late and if her father would be angry with them because he always rose early for work.
And then she’d heard her mother cry out, a desperate, horrified kind of sound. With a sudden knot of apprehension in her stomach, Claire had opened her door fully and sidled out to the landing, looking down through the bars.
She had recognized the longtime police chief, Dean Coleman, but had been able to hear only bits of his hushed conversation.
Dead. Both shot. Jealous husband. I’m sorry, Ruth.
Everything changed in that moment. Gossip roared faster than a wind-stirred fire. Even though the adults in her life had tried to keep it from her and her brother, their children heard and absorbed snippets about the scandal and a few of them had delighted in whispering about it loud enough so they knew that Claire would overhear.
Her father—the man she had adored, president of the biggest bank in town, a leader of church and community—had been having a torrid affair with a cocktail waitress at the Dirty Dog, the sleazy bar outside of town.
Apparently the woman had a jealous husband, a biker thug by the name of Calvin Waters. When he came home early one night, he caught them in bed together. In a drunken rage, he shot them both with a sawed-off shotgun before turning the gun on himself.
The scandal had exploded in Hope’s Crossing. She could still remember those awful days as she had endured stares and whispers and hadn’t known what to do with all the anger and shame inside her—or with the grief for her lost innocence.
Claire and her brother had endured those first difficult months by keeping a few friends close and basically sticking their heads down and plowing through.
Ruth, on the other hand, had completely fallen apart. She had taken to her bed for several months after the scandal, addicted to alcohol and the Valium doctors had prescribed her for sleep.
Left with little choice, Claire had stepped up to take care of the three of them. She had been the one who did laundry, who fixed lunch for her younger brother, who walked him to school and helped with his homework and comforted him when he cried for a mother who had been too absorbed in her loss and humiliation to see her children needed her, too.
Claire knew now, taking charge of her flailing family had been her way of dealing with the chaos.
She sipped at her soup, wishing the rich, creamy taste could wipe away the bitter memories. Ruth had lived in that numb state for about six months, until Mary Ella and Katherine and other friends had forced her to break free of her addiction.
She had fought it with courage and strength and Claire would always admire that in her mother. But even after rehab, Ruth had continued to rely on Claire to make sure her life flowed smoothly.
Claire knew she bore plenty of responsibility for the patterns they had fallen into. Even when she had lived away from Hope’s Crossing while Jeff was in medical school, she had handled any crisis of Ruth’s long-distance, whether that was dealing with a parking ticket or a doctor bill or calling a plumber to repair a leaky faucet.
She could justify to herself that if she didn’t take care of things, her mother’s life would fall back into chaos, but she knew that was only an excuse. This was her way of feeling needed, important, to a mother who had basically forgotten her children amid her own pain.
With a sigh, she set down her soup. She wasn’t hungry after all. She would just watch the movie, she decided. She wheeled the chair to the sink and rinsed the bowl, reaching the switch on the disposal only with the help of a large soup ladle.
She headed back to the family room and turned on the movie, eager for any kind of distraction from her thoughts. The movie apparently worked too well. She barely remembered the first scene—when she awoke some time later, the credits were rolling and Chester was standing in the doorway, his hackles raised.
“What’s the matter, bud?” she asked.
He gave that low-throated hound howl of his and scrambled for the front door, his hackles raised and his claws clicking on the wood floor.
Claire frowned but curiosity compelled her to transfer to her rolling office chair and follow him. Chester wasn’t much of a watchdog but he would sometimes have these weird fits of protectiveness. Probably just the Stimsons’ cat or maybe a mule deer coming out of the mountains to forage among the spring greens. For all she knew, her silly dog could be barking at the wind that still howled.
“Come on, boy. It’s okay. Settle down.”
Still, the basset hound stood beside the door, that low growl sounding somehow ominous in the silent house.
Claire maneuvered down the hallway after him until she reached the window beside the front door, set just low enough that she could peek over the sill from her seated position.
She squinted into the darkness and caught a flash of movement that materialized into a dark shape there on the porch.
Her heart skittered.
Someone was out there.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_6ec26036-8835-5a2a-a3b8-d52a18370814)
CLAIRE COULD HEAR HER pulse pounding in her ears, but she quickly tried to talk herself down.
She was seeing things. A trick of the wind or a shadow or something.
And even if she wasn’t seeing some weird hallucination, if she really had seen someone standing on her porch, the explanation was probably perfectly benign. This was Hope’s Crossing after all. Not that the town was immune to crime—as the recent rash of burglaries would certainly attest—but a home invasion robbery was an entirely different situation.
Settle down, she told herself. She was only freaking out because she was battling a completely normal sense of vulnerability, alone and helpless in her big house on a stormy night. It was only natural to start imagining somebody out there with a chain saw and a hockey mask.
She was seeing things. She was down to one pain-killer at night, but maybe even that much of the stuff lingering in her system was messing with her head.
She gazed out into the sleeting rain again, straining her eyes to peer at the dark corners of her lawn. There. Again. This time, she couldn’t come up with another rational explanation. That was definitely a person out there dressed in dark clothing, lurking on the edge of the porch.
In a panic, not really thinking about what she was doing, Claire checked to make sure the door was latched and then flicked the porch light rapidly on and off a half-dozen times.
It was probably a stupid thing to do, only serving to let the guy know she had seen him. She would have been better off using that time to barricade herself in the bathroom and calling 9-1-1 or something.
Stupid or not, though, it worked. She had caught his attention anyway. The figure turned quickly toward the front door and she caught the pale blur of a face, but couldn’t make out features or any other identifying details—even whether it was a man or woman—before he (she?) turned quickly and rushed down the driveway.
What on earth was that? Her breath came in shallow gasps as Claire reached down to put a comforting hand on Chester’s warm fur.
“You’re such a good, brave doggie. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. The bad man is gone now. We’re okay.”
Her voice sounded squeaky, as if she’d been sucking helium and she forced herself to try some of Alex’s circle breathing: in through the nose for five counts, fill the diaphragm and hold it for five, then out through the mouth for five counts.
She was only on her second rotation when Chester suddenly gave his howling bark again, his grumpy face concerned, just a second before the doorbell rang. Claire let out a little shriek. Was her intruder back?
After a frantic search for some kind of weapon, she finally picked up a stout umbrella from the holder by the door, then peered through the window again.
This visitor was unquestionably male. Hard chest, broad shoulders, a slight dark shadow on his face. Relief surged through her, sweet and pure like spring runoff.
Riley!
She fumbled with the dead bolt and the lock and yanked open the door, then shoved herself back in the office chair a few feet to give him room to come inside.
Some of her fear must have been obvious on her face. Riley looked wary. If she hadn’t known him since they were both kids, she would have called him dangerous.
“What is it? What’s wrong? I saw you flashing your porch lights as I was heading home. Are you hurt?”
Claire wanted to sink into his arms, into that peace and comfort she had found there that day in her store.
“Probably nothing. I feel like an idiot now. Sorry to make you get out of your car in the rain.”
She was suddenly aware she was dressed in her nightgown, cotton and shapeless, and no bra. At least it was fairly pretty, a light, sunny yellow that one of her friends from the senior citizen center had embellished with embroidery flowers and brought over a few days earlier.
Claire didn’t even want to think what her hair must look like, tangled and flat from falling asleep on the couch earlier. Why could he never see her under better circumstances? She didn’t always look like a frowsy invalid, she would almost swear to it.
“What happened?” Riley asked.
“Chester started barking at something, which is unusual for him. I came to investigate and thought I saw someone on the porch. I flickered the lights, I don’t know, just as a distraction, I guess. I had no idea you were out there, but I’m so glad you saw them, too. Anyway, it must have worked because he bolted.”
