you lost in record time and graduated from college the same year I did. You were taking classes in high school and college at the same time. Remember that history class we were both in?”
“Yeah. I was in a hurry to get started.”
“With what?” she asked softly, a sardonic note in her voice.
“My career. My life,” he added for no good reason that he could think of.
“Life,” she echoed and her eyes went dark, as if she’d thought of something that made her unhappy.
The horde of darts pricked at him. He shrugged them off. Whatever her life was, it was of her own making. He had a full plate with his new position and the problems that went with it.
After the tender beef and baked potato dinner, he ordered coffee while she asked for tea with milk and brown sugar. He recalled that she preferred the tea over dessert, that she rarely ate dinner rolls and never indulged in something so decadent as butter. However, she loved brownies with pecans and had always praised Krista to the skies when she made them for her.
He wondered why he remembered something like that about her when there were other, more shattering things to muse on. He’d never asked, not then and not once in the intervening years, why she’d called him for help that night long ago. The night she’d lost the child she carried.
Chapter Two
It had been eerily dark that night, with only a sliver of moon showing beyond the trees lining the creek. Jeremy had answered Zia’s summons as quickly as possible, not sure what to expect. She’d said she needed a ride when she’d called him.
He parked his secondhand pickup in front of the cabin. The old fishing camp, part of a state park now, wasn’t going to be opened until extensive renovations were done to the cottages. Since the repairs hadn’t been started yet, he figured it would be a while before they were used again.
No other vehicles were around. Through a crack in the ancient cabin’s curtains, he could detect a light.
Zia.
His insides tightened as he got out and gently closed the door. He wondered why she’d called him. It wasn’t as if they were close or anything, even if his uncle and her mother did have something going between them.
So what could Zia’s call for help mean?
Forcing a calm he was far from feeling, he went to the cabin door and softly knocked. “Zia? It’s me, Jeremy.”
“Wait,” he heard her say in a strange voice, a hoarse whisper as if she were being strangled.
His nerves tightened as the seconds clicked by, then he heard the slide bolt being drawn back. He turned the knob and went inside. Zia, looking like hell and much older than her nineteen years, stared at him, her eyes the only color in her face.
“What is it?” he asked as she sat on the rumpled sleeping bag spread over the steel frame of a cot.
She pressed her lips together, then leaned forward, her hands gripping her knees, obviously in pain. Beneath the T-shirt and leggings she wore, he saw her abdominal muscles contract as if in a spasm. His insides tightened, too. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good.
He settled beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. Pulling her hair into a bundle, he held it at the back of her neck so he could observe her face. “What’s happening?”
“Miscarriage,” she said. “I think.”
A shiver ran down his back. While he’d taken a first aid course, he wasn’t equipped for this type of emergency. He held her until the contraction subsided, until she sighed and pulled slightly away and gazed at him.
“Thanks for coming.” Her smile was weak, apologetic. “You were the only person I could think of…the only one I trusted.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the hospital or something?” he asked, wondering where all her elite, sophisticated friends were. She was part of the “in” crowd at the university.
“In a minute,” she said and gasped, bending forward from her waist and grasping her knees again. “Help me to the bathroom.”
He cupped an arm around her waist and half carried her into the adjoining room. Sweat trickled down his scalp, his chest, his back.
She gave him a weary, rueful glance from eyes that looked like bruised petals. He stepped back into the other room, leaving the door ajar in case she needed him.
Peering into the dingy mirror, she combed her hair and pulled it back with a stretchy band, then splashed water on her face. Little curling tendrils formed around her face, making her look as vulnerable as eleven-year-old Krista. Her audible sigh dipped right down inside him.
When she came out, he slipped an arm around her waist and helped her to the cot. Following her instructions, he gathered her belongings and erased all signs of her having been in the cabin. He stored the stuff in the truck and came back for her.
“Let me rest a minute, then we’ll go,” she said, then with a brief smile, she added, “Poor Jeremy. After donating blood and saving my life, are you worried that you’ll have to take care of me for the rest of your life?”
“The thought never entered my mind.”
That was the truth. She’d been a spectator at an illegal drag race a couple of months ago. The cars had side-swiped each other and a piece of chrome had flown off and hit her in the neck. It was one of those freakish moments life liked to throw at a person. He and his uncle, being O-negative in blood type, had been called by the hospital to help replace the large amount of blood she’d lost.
At the time, he hadn’t known their lives would become entangled due to family ties, he mused as he took a sip of coffee and returned to the present and the restaurant, aware of glances their way from other patrons. Zia drew attention wherever she went although, as usual, she seemed unaware of it.
He stared at the scar on the side of her neck, still visible above the collar of the shirt all these years later.
“I wore turtlenecks for the rest of that year so no one could see the scar,” she said, her eyes following his line of sight as she added milk and sugar to the cup of steaming tea.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.” He looked at the sky, now a dark blue with a crystal drop of teal clinging to the horizon.
“You were remembering the past,” she said. “I was, too. It was terrible of me to put you in such a position. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I wondered why you didn’t call Sammy.”
Her lovely face became solemn with a disillusionment she’d never before allowed to surface in his presence. “He’d already walked out on me once. I would hardly give him a chance to do so again. My best friend had driven me to the cabin and promised not to tell anyone where I was. I didn’t want to call her out in the middle of the night. Her parents would have questioned her if they’d heard her leaving at that hour.”
“So that left me.”
“Yes.”
