“So what did you decide about the bus?” Jack asked after a while.
She sighed. “No choice, really. We’ll still need someplace to live once we get to Sedona. Lark doesn’t have enough room for us in her own adobe.” She ran the cool rim of her wineglass along her bottom lip. “I had it all perfectly figured out. The bus would save us the cost of a moving van across country, then rent when we got there. Once we’d built our own place, I could sell it—recoup our money. Seemed like it would work.” She shrugged her mood aside and sipped. “I’ll still make it work.” She had to.
“Sure you will,” Jack said comfortably. “And I suppose you’ll get a job. Do you have any particular, uh, something you do?”
“I’ve been a teacher—high school art—these past two years.” It had taken her forever to finish her degree and gain a teaching certificate. First she’d become pregnant with Sky, and she’d let her own education lapse while she found her feet as a mother. When Sky reached kindergarten age, she’d begun again. Still, with all their moves from base to base, she’d needed years to complete her degree.
“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” Jack said. He seemed relieved. “Teachers can always get jobs.”
She hunched her shoulders. “Except I don’t want to teach anymore.”
“Burned out already?” He’d used a light, humorous tone—but the wrong words. Steve had taunted her with those same words on more than one occasion.
She stiffened. “Not that, precisely, but I’m afraid teaching was a mistake from the start. I loved the kids but not the discipline—forcing them to work when they weren’t in the mood, and at that age, they’re never in the mood. I’m not much good at forcing anybody.” Plus the endless paperwork: the grading, the testing, taking attendance.
And—oh, Lord—the lectures! Steeling herself day after day to face a roomful of squirming bodies, tapping feet, twenty-five bored or sympathetic or even hostile teenage faces. Shy as she was, she’d always been better dealing with people one-on-one rather than in groups.
“It just wasn’t what—” Why she’d ever dreamed she could… Angrily, Abby brushed her hair back from her brow. She didn’t have the words to explain her dismay. All those years I wasted—what a dope I was! “It just wasn’t what…I’d imagined. Teaching art isn’t the same as making art.” She didn’t want to watch others create, she’d quickly realized; she needed to do it herself.
“Ah,” Jack said, sounding more disapproving than enlightened. “Okay, so what will you do instead?”
She felt a flicker of irritation. Since when was she required to give him a report? She edged away from him on the step, stared up at the moon and muttered, “I’m going to write a book and illustrate it. A children’s picture book.”
“Ah.” His voice was blank, carefully neutral.
“Then I’ll do another…and another.” And another. She had ideas to burn.
“And you plan to sell them?” he inquired.
“Well, of course I do!” She got restlessly to her feet. “I know it sounds crazy, but don’t you see? This is my chance—maybe my last chance to get my life right. To find what works for me and commit myself to it.” To meet nobody’s expectations, this time, but my own. Not Steve’s, not her mother’s, not her principal’s. “To become the artist I’ve always wanted to be.” Even when I was too scared to admit that’s what I wanted.
Last chance to shape a happy life. It’s now or never.
Steve might have kicked her off his magical airplane, but she was darned if she’d fall.
She meant to fly. No wings, no man, just…sheer determination. And terror.
“Hmm.” Jack rubbed a knuckle across his mouth. He might have been erasing a skeptical smile.
At least that was what she thought—and she bristled. Think I can’t do it? Well, who cares what you think?
“So the bus is part of that plan,” she continued. “I made enough selling our house to carry us for a year, while I create my first book and find a publisher to buy it. But there’s not a penny to spare. So I hope Whitey can fix our poor bus, and soon.”
Jack tilted back his glass to finish his wine in a gulp. “Assuming he can find the parts, Whitey’s your man.” And I wash my hands of you, said his tone and that gesture.
The moonlight wavered and she realized her eyes were watering. Odd how her courage never lasted for more than five minutes at a stretch. “Well. I guess I should be heading home.” She grimaced. To a cottage with a moulting elk head in the living room.
“I’ll walk along. Collect my hotshot.”
But the kids came running to meet them as they neared the gate.
“Mom, it’s DC!” Skyler yelped. “He’s missing!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING was Friday, thank God, Jack reflected as he tossed his briefcase into his Jeep. Saturday was trudging into view on leaden feet, but at least it was coming. Or maybe his were the feet of lead. He’d helped Abby search for her damned cat till midnight, driving slowly around and around Trueheart. Then he’d taken her and the kids home, but haunted by her stricken face, he hadn’t been able to sleep.
At 2:00 a.m. he’d given up the battle and gone out to walk the neighborhood, softly calling, “Here, kitty, kitty” till, over on Polaris Street, old Clay Abbott had almost shot him for a prowler. At which point he’d staggered home and caught at least a couple hours of shut-eye.
Not nearly enough. He slid behind his wheel, then blinked stupidly at the paper he could see through his windshield.
A note from Abby, which she’d tucked beneath his wiper. “Jack, could you please see me for a second before you go? A.”
When he came through the garden gate, she was huddled, looking very small, on the top step of her front porch. She set a mug of coffee aside and smiled at him wearily. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“My pleasure.” She had shadows under her eyes to match his own, and guilt stabbed him again. Abby had taken enough losses lately, something told him. She didn’t need to lose that tomcat, however worthless he was. Wouldn’t have, if Jack had followed his first instincts and climbed to the rescue. So much for being sensible. Practical. “I take it he didn’t return?”
Abby had left her kitchen door propped open, with a bowl of the beast’s favorite food just inside, but her face told him the ploy hadn’t worked.
“’Fraid not. So I was wondering, could I ask a favor? Is there a print shop anyplace near your office where you could drop this off? Ask if they’d make fifty copies?” She handed him a manila envelope, stiffened with cardboard.
“Sure. May I?” When she nodded, he slid the single sheet of paper out—and gave a grunt of surprise.
He held a portrait, a Wanted poster of DC-3. Seated upright, with his big tail curled primly around his toes, the white tomcat was depicted in a few lovely
