“You finished with those cookies, sport? Because I think it’s time to head home.”
“Can I have one more?”
Kane wanted to say yes. He wanted to give Eli everything in some vain attempt to make up for all the years he’d been unable to give him anything. That wasn’t the way to build their relationship, though. God willing, he had a lifetime to live with his son, and the rules for their relationship needed to be set now rather than later. That meant being a father rather than a benevolent friend.
“You already had three. I think that’s plenty.”
“But they’re my favorite.”
“Then we’ll pick some up at the store tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and your parents are coming. We can’t get cookies when they’re here, can we?”
Your parents. Not Granddad and Grandma.
There was no connection between Eli and his grandparents, no shared holidays or birthdays that the boy could remember, nothing to make them more than strangers. But it still hurt to hear Eli refer to his grandparents in such an unemotional way.
“Sure we can. We’ll just go in the morning before they arrive. Even if we can’t, I’m sure Grandma won’t mind doing a store run with us.”
“Okay.” Eli gave in easily enough, but that was the way he’d dealt with everything during the past twenty-four hours. Whether it was his nature, a learned behavior, or simply a response to a stressful and upsetting situation Kane didn’t know. Would probably never know.
“Ready?” Kane held out his hand, his heart aching as Eli skirted by it and walked out of the kitchen.
“It must be incredibly wonderful to have your son back—and incredibly difficult to know he’s not quite yours yet,” Maggie said, neatly describing exactly what Kane felt. Elation. Sorrow. Joy. Pain. All of it mixed together in a confusing mass of emotions that Kane could only sometimes control.
“It is, but we’ll make it through this. We’ll get back to some kind of normal, and eventually we’ll feel like a family again.”
“I know you will. Eli is a wonderful little boy. He’s going to be just fine.” She walked out of the kitchen, and Kane followed, wishing he was as confident as Maggie seemed to be.
Time and patience. They were the key.
Kane just needed to keep that in mind as he navigated the new life he and Eli were forging together.
“You two be careful out there,” Maggie said as she opened the door, stepping behind it so that she wouldn’t be visible to anyone outside.
Was she hiding from someone?
If so, Kane wanted to know who.
He was tempted to go back to the hotel, log onto the Internet and do a search on Maggie Tennyson. Try to figure out what her secrets were and just how worried he should be for her.
Doing that would be a lot easier than trying to figure out the path that had taken Eli from chubby, happy toddler to quiet, solemn child. Figuring out where Eli had been, who he’d known, how it was possible that a kid whose picture had been on milk cartons and billboards, whose story had been in newspapers and on television, had escaped detection for so long, was something that Kane had to do. For his sake. For Eli’s.
Kane had learned a lot in the past decade. He’d learned that grief wasn’t fatal. He’d learned that life continued no matter how much a person might not want it to. Losing his wife had taught him that. Losing Eli had reinforced it. Now he’d been given a second chance, and he wouldn’t waste it burying his head in the sand and ignoring what his son had been through.
He opened the car door for Eli, waited as he climbed in and then shut it again. As he rounded the SUV, his gaze was drawn to Maggie’s farmhouse. She’d closed the front door, but light spilled out from a downstairs window. As Kane watched, a figure passed in front of it. Quickly. Furtively. Maggie.
The woman who’d listened to Eli, who’d cared enough to go to the police when no one else had, had secrets that she didn’t want to share. He was sure of that.
Maybe he should leave her to them, but Maggie had stepped in when others had stepped back. She’d listened to Eli’s story about having another name and another home, and she’d acted on what she’d heard. She’d been the catalyst that had brought Kane’s family back together. That was something Kane would never forget and could never repay. If what she’d done had caused her trouble, he’d do whatever it took to help her.
If she let him.
And based on the way she’d acted when they’d met, Kane doubted she would.
He got in the car and backed out of the driveway, Eli’s silence filling the darkness. Was this what they were destined for? Long silences and stilted conversation.
Kane refused to believe it. God hadn’t brought them this far to leave them floundering. There would be healing. There would be a future filled with all the things they’d missed out on during the past five years. As Kane drove toward the hotel, he tried to take comfort in that.
THREE
Maggie paced the bedroom at the top of the stairs, her stomach churning with dread. She needed to lie down on the inflatable mattress, close her eyes and try to sleep, but sleep didn’t come easily on the best of nights.
And this definitely wasn’t the best of nights.
As a matter of fact, Maggie figured it rated right up there with one of the worst.
No good deed ever goes unpunished.
She could almost hear her grandmother’s raspy, smoker’s voice, could almost see her wrinkled face and time-ravaged body sitting in the dark corner of the room, watching through still-sharp eyes.
“That’s a wonderful image to have in the middle of a storm, in the middle of one of the worst nights of your life,” she muttered, shivering a little as a gust of wind rattled the window and shot through its old frame. It was one of the windows she planned to replace. Maybe she shouldn’t bother.
Maybe she should have a Realtor come and re-hang the “for sale” sign that had caught Maggie’s eye nearly four months ago. Then Maggie could get in her car and drive back through the mountains, back down into the open land that she’d passed through when she’d run from Miami three years ago.
When she’d run from Derrick, the man she’d once believed herself madly in love with.
She was older now, hopefully wiser, and she knew the truth about love. It was fickle, blind and dumb. Pursuing it was a waste of time and energy, and when Maggie left Miami, she’d decided to put her efforts into something more concrete. Education, financial security, creating the kind of life she could be proud of.
And she had.
She was.
With God’s help she’d pulled out of the downward spiral that had nearly killed her. She’d given up the party-hard
