of us went out to run some plays, some passes, and I got nailed. It was an accident.”
“You were practicing without a helmet?” she asked.
“Sarah, it’s nothing. It’s a small bruise. I could’ve gotten it running into an open locker. Lighten up so you don’t make me look like a girl. Are you coming to the game?”
“Of course I’m coming. Why couldn’t you be into chess or something? Choir? Band? Something that didn’t involve bodies crashing into each other?”
He grinned at her, the handsome smile that had once belonged to their deceased father. “You get enough sleep without me boring you to death,” he said. “Why couldn’t you just be a flight attendant or something?”
He had her there. Sarah flew search and rescue with the Coast Guard. There were those occasions that were risky. Edgy. And admittedly, that was part of what she loved best about it. “I trust you’ll be wearing your helmet tonight?”
“Funny. It should be a good game. Raiders are a good match. They’re a good team.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked, touching her own cheek.
“Nah, it’s really nothing, Sarah. See you later.”
She suppressed the urge to beg him to be careful. It was just the two of them; she was his guardian and family. She sometimes wanted to simply enfold him in her arms and keep him safe. Yet watching him play was thrilling. He was a great athlete, already six feet tall and muscled at sixteen. She’d heard he was the best quarterback they’d seen in a long time here in Thunder Point.
For the millionth time she hoped bringing him here had been a good decision. He’d been happy in the North Bend high school last year. He’d barely found his footing, his friends, when she’d moved them here. But she couldn’t bear to stay in the same town as her ex, in the home they had shared. It was bad enough that they still worked together.
She’d moved them so often....
She reached out as if to hug him, then retracted her arms. He didn’t want mush, not now that he was a man. So she held back.
“All right,” he said patiently. “Get it over with.”
She wrapped her arms around him and he gave her a one-armed hug back. Then he grinned at her again. He had absolutely no idea how handsome he was, which made him even more attractive.
“Play your little heart out, bud,” she said. “And do not get hurt.”
“Don’t worry. I’m fast.”
“You going out after the game?” she asked.
“I dunno. Depends on how tired I am.”
Sarah looked at him. “When I was your age, I was never too tired to go out. If you go out, getting home by midnight would be nice. No later than one, for sure. Are we on the same page here?”
He laughed at her. “Same page, boss.”
But as she knew, he seldom went out after a game.
Two
Roger McCain headed home for the day. He lived in a large house he couldn’t quite afford with three kids and his aunt Lou. He was thirty-six and his oldest, Eve, was sixteen. Ryan was twelve, and Dee Dee was ten. When he got home, his first stop was the gun safe in the garage. He locked up his guns before going into the house. Though his kids had been both lectured and trained, guns did not enter his house.
It was about five-thirty when he walked into the kitchen from the garage. Lou stood at the sink, rinsing dishes. Lou was not Aunt Bee to his Andy of Mayberry. She was sixty, but didn’t look a day of it. She wore fitted jeans, a white silky blouse, leather vest and boots on her young, trim body. Her curly, shoulder-length hair was auburn with some gold highlights and her nails were manicured in bright colors. She complained of crow’s feet and what she called a wattle under her chin, but he didn’t know what she was talking about. Lou called herself his old-maid aunt—she’d never married or had children of her own—but in truth she was young, energetic and feisty, exactly what he needed, even if it did drive him crazy at times.
Without even turning around she said, “There are tacos. The kids have eaten. Eve is going to take the van to the game tonight. She’s meeting a couple of her friends. That leaves you and me and the kids to go together. In less than an hour.”
Friday night. High school football. Eve was a cheerleader. A gorgeous, young cheerleader who resembled her mother and caused him to quake in fear every time he looked at her.
“Did it occur to you to ask me if I was all right with that—Eve taking the van?”
She turned from the sink. “It did,” she said, giving him a sharp nod. “It always occurs to me. But you say no and argue and then give in so you can pace and grumble. She’s sixteen and a good girl. She’s earned it.”
He nodded, but he hated it. His ex-wife Cee Jay—short for Cecilia Jayne—had been a cheerleader; he’d been a football player back in Coquille. Cee Jay had gotten pregnant at sixteen. By nineteen, he’d been a brand-new husband with a baby on the way.
Cee Jay left when Dee Dee was nine months old; that’s when they had moved in with Lou. Cee Jay had been so young when she left—only twenty-three. Mac wasn’t sure why he’d felt so old, as he’d been only twenty-six. But he’d been pretty busy, trying to support his family on two jobs. He was a rookie deputy, working nights, and by day he worked security on an armored car.
His dirty little secret was that sometimes he didn’t mind the two jobs. But Cee Jay, left alone too much, scrimping to get by and buried in small children, complained a lot. There wasn’t enough money, the house was small, old and falling apart, the kids were out of control, there was no fun in her life and very little attention from her husband, whom she accused of showing up only long enough to throw food down his throat and take off for the next job. She needed more money but hated that he was always working.
And then one day Cee Jay snapped. She packed a big suitcase, put the kids at the neighbor’s house and waited for him to get home from his day job. “I can’t take it anymore,” she told him. “I’m sick of getting puked on, sick of the diapers and noise, sick of this dump we live in, tired of not being able to get out of the grocery store with ten cents left in my purse. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”
For the past nine years, he had asked himself why he’d been stunned. Her complaints hadn’t changed, they’d just been accompanied by a suitcase. “L-leaving?” he had stuttered.
“The kids are next door,” she said. “I’m taking my clothes and two hundred dollars.”
His entire body had vibrated with fear. Dread. Pain. “Cee Jay, you can’t do this to me.”
“Yeah, well, you did it to me first. I was sixteen, Mac. Sixteen and pregnant!”
“But you were happy! And you wanted Ryan—you argued for Ryan! Dee Dee was an accident, but you—”
“And you thought that I had a clue, at sixteen or twenty-two?”
“Listen, I was only nineteen! So—we were
