The Man From Her Past Read online

  She cuddled Hope, keeping her as safe as she could from scary things. “We’re all okay, baby.” To herself, she sounded calm while her heartbeat shook her whole body. In a few minutes, Hope’s crying faded to a whimper.

  “Wanna go home, Mommy. Bad, bad man.” As she pointed at him with a four-year-old’s contempt, sirens sounded.

  “Put this on.” Liza, one of Cassie’s partners, dropped a faded Tecumseh PD T-shirt over Cassie’s shoulder. Another woman must have worn it into the shelter. Cassie pulled it over her head, and Hope helped her yank it down.

  “You hurt that bad man, Mommy.”

  “I know.” She seriously wanted to bury her head. “It was scary.”

  “I’m glad you hurt him.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Normally, it’s not nice to hit people would do, but the man had come bent on hurting someone in the shelter. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Cassie cradled Hope’s chin. Violence had changed Cassie’s life forever, and she’d tried to make sure the past wasn’t part of her present with Hope. “I don’t like hurting anyone, baby, but that man wanted to be mean to someone here.” Of their own volition, her thoughts returned to that other bad man, and she hated the fear that whispered through her in a warning.

  Unconditional love looked out of Hope’s blue eyes.

  “I won’t ever scare you if I can help it,” Cassie said. Her daughter meant everything to her.

  “You didn’t look like my mommy.”

  Cassie hugged her tight. Someday she’d teach Hope the self-defense she’d made every shelter employee learn, but she didn’t want her daughter to think of her as a woman who beat people up.

  She went blank when she tried to think what else she should have done.

  Two policemen, guns drawn, barged through the splintered doorway and stopped in front of the unconscious man.

  Only then did Cassie realize one woman had picked up his battering ram and another stood over him with a raised chair.

  More concerned about the guns, she turned Hope’s face into her chest.

  “Danger’s over.” Liza pointed at his revolver. “You can put that away. We don’t like the children to see them.”

  The police both holstered their weapons. “What happened?” asked the one she’d spoken to.

  “He busted in with this.” She eased the battering ram out of the woman’s hand. “And my friend stopped him from getting any further.”

  “Which friend?” the second cop asked.

  Cassie stood, lifting Hope onto her hip. “He said someone’s name, but I didn’t catch it.” She searched the suspicious glances of the women and children around them. “Anyone know him?”

  “I do,” the second cop said. “He’s a fireman. I can’t remember his name, but we worked together last year when the county put on that disaster training.”

  No one else claimed him.

  The downed man began to stir and the first policeman cuffed him. He nodded at Cassie. “He wasn’t looking for you?”

  Shaking her head, she hugged Hope closer. “I work here.”

  “She’s a partner,” Liza said. “I’m Liza Crane. This is Cassie Warne. We have another partner, Kim Fontaine, but she works day hours.”

  So did Cassie, but Hope had been out of school for a teacher in-service day. For the first time in Hope’s short preschool career, Cassie had forgotten to arrange for backup day care.

  Between them, the police officers dragged the man to his feet. Catching sight of Cassie, he lunged.

  “Bitch.”

  She backed up, turning Hope away from him.

  “Bad man.” Her daughter burrowed her face into Cassie’s shirt.

  WITH A TRACE of leftover nerves-on-alert, Cassie hurried Hope into their town house four hours later. She locked the door and shut out the world. Her haven of overstuffed chairs and verdant plants and overflowing bookshelves let her breathe again.

  She sought the familiar. Prints from museums she’d visited when she could only stare at walls and pray not to scream. Framed pieces of Hope’s artwork, going all the way from scrawls and handprints to the big faces with stringy hands and feet she favored lately.

  “No bad men here.” Hope slid from Cassie’s arms and ran to her room, all order restored in her world.

  Cassie breathed easier. The event had only scared Hope for a little while. It hadn’t changed her life.

  Setting the dead bolt on the front door, Cassie activated the alarm system. “Are you hungry?”

  “Can we have eggs and cheese? All stirred up together?”

  “Perfect.” Comfort food.

  Cassie went to the kitchen. Hope skipped in while she was pulling the mixing bowl out of a cabinet.

  “Wait for me, Mommy. You know I’m ’posed to help.”

  “It wouldn’t taste the same without you.”

  Cassie broke eggs into a bowl. Hope whisked them all over the kitchen counter and the sink, and Cassie mixed up chocolate milk. They toasted each other while a golden pat of butter sizzled in the iron skillet Cassie had taken from her childhood home.

  “That man doesn’t know where we live?”

  Cassie shook her head. “And the police won’t let him out, anyway.”

  Hope set her glass on the counter and then wrapped her arms around Cassie’s thighs. Cassie leaned down and hugged her tight. And that seemed to be the end of it all.

  “I’ll get that peach stuff Mrs. Kleiber made me.” Hope hurried to the fridge for a jar of preserves their neighbor made for her every year.

  Cassie dropped bread into the toaster slots, grateful for Hope’s resilience. “How hungry are we after such a long day?”

  The phone cut into Hope’s answer. As Cassie lifted the receiver, she saw that their machine had recorded eleven messages. Without bothering to look at the caller ID, she said hello.

  “Cassie?”

  That voice. Low, more uncertain than she’d ever heard it, but rich and familiar as his touch had once been. She shivered as memories of his hands on her body made her ache, arms and legs, heart and soul.

  In a night of shocks, this one made her grab the edge of the counter.

  “Van?” She’d read in romances that a man could make a woman light-headed enough to faint. But those women had been bound in Jane Austen finery. She was still sporting splinter-laden jeans and a Tecumseh PD T-shirt. “Van.”

  She’d loved him. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t, but she’d had to leave him because he couldn’t love her after she’d been raped.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “MOMMY?”

  She shook her head at Hope, urging the girl she loved more than her own life to keep quiet.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassie couldn’t control the huskiness in her voice. Hope stared. Cassie cleared her throat. Van shouldn’t matter this much after five years. “How did you get my number?”

  “From your father.”

  Her heart tap-danced. Something must be horribly wrong. “Why are you calling?”

  “It’s your dad,” he said. “The cops and paramedics found him on the Mecklin Road Bridge. He didn’t recognize them. He called for your mother.” He waited, as if to let it sink in.

  It did with a thud. “He didn’t know she was dead?”

  “Eventually he remembered.” Maybe Van kept stopping because he didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to say. Of all the scenarios she’d imagined drawing her home, this was the one she really hadn’t wanted to face. “I’m sorry,” Van said.

  “How bad is he?” Her grandmother had died after battling Alzheimer’s disease. Her father had deeply feared a similar fate. “Is this a one-night problem, or could it be my grandmother’s illness?”

  “I don’t know.” Van’s weariness scared her more than his words.

  “Mommy?”

  “Everything’s all right.” Straightening, she yanked the frying pan off the burner and spoke firmly, to comfort her child and to keep Van from guessing she was talking to
a little one.

  Hope, who’d been through too much, misunderstood and ran to her room. Cassie followed her into the hall. She couldn’t explain Van to Hope or her to him.

  “I have to come home.” She’d been raised by a loving mother and a responsible father who’d taught her to think of others. Rarely had she been selfish in her life—not because she was noble, but because her parents had never accepted such behavior. But—home?

  She’d dreaded this day for five years, had felt it threatening like a bag of bricks hanging over her head.

  She pulled herself together. “I’m coming.”

  “I can take care of him.” Van stopped again.

  “How?” she asked. “You’re not his next of kin. You’re not even family anymore.”

  His breathing deepened. How could she possibly hurt him after all this time?

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, you’re right. It was crazy to offer. Not long after you left, he also told me to stay away. But I thought maybe that was an excuse I was happy to take.”

  “I don’t want to know—” It was too late to catch up on what had happened after she’d left. The time they’d shared had belonged to someone else. It didn’t feel like hers any longer. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I can get a flight.”

  “Wait, Cassie. Let me pick you up at the airport.”

  So she could explain Hope at baggage claim? Not a chance. “I’ll be fine.”

  His silence ran thick, full of words unsaid. Their relationship had ended unnaturally when she’d walked away, but she hadn’t been willing to wait for the usual recriminations and anger. The rape had humiliated Van and her father. She’d hated them both until she realized she’d never love Hope while she nourished bitterness.

  “Thank you for calling,” she said, “and for helping my father. I’ll take over as soon as I get there, and you can go back to your own life.”

  “I’m trying to warn you he isn’t the same.” He didn’t seem to hear anything she said, as if he had an agenda and was checking off the items. “I don’t think he’s been eating, and I don’t know when he last took a shower.”

  “That’s not my dad.” An image of him burned in her mind. “They’ll keep him in the hospital until I get there?”

  “I doubt they’d let him out. When should I expect you?”

  “As soon as I can make a reservation. Your number must be on my phone. I’ll call you back.”

  “Let me give it to you to make sure.”

  She wrote it down. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Cassie?”

  She bit her lip. Hard. Her arms and legs felt heavy, strange. As if she were channeling someone else’s feelings. If only Van would stop saying her name. “What?”

  “Are you all right?”

  He’d always cared. That had never been the problem, but his concern left her empty now. “Fine.”

  A few seconds went by. She should hang up, cut off the thick voice that had haunted her dreams a lot longer than the monster’s who’d broken into their bathroom. The monster’s voice only terrified her.

  Van’s made her lonely, reminded her how it felt to be intimate. Not sex, but trust and talk and safety.

  “Should I get you a room at the hotel?” he asked.

  She wasn’t about to put Hope on display for the kind, but too-quick-to-pity citizens of Honesty. “I’ll stay at Dad’s house.”

  “Maybe you’d like to try Beth’s fishing lodge? She had some trouble last year, but the place is up and running again. She got married last summer and she and her husband renovated—”

  Running on wasn’t like him. “I’ll stay at home.” She’d had to give up Beth’s unstinting friendship, and it was too late to start over or explain.

  “Okay.” His tone tightened. “Don’t forget to let me know when you’ll be here.”

  For the first time since high school, he didn’t say I love you as he hung up. Even the last time—months after she’d left, while Hope had kicked lazily in her belly and Van had begged for another chance, and she’d asked him to stop calling, he’d said it.

  She clicked the off button, sliding her palms over her face as if to wipe away memories of Van that flew at her. Always laughing—as she ran her hands through his silky dark blond hair. As he took her mouth with his. Laughter dying as he moved his body above hers.

  She flinched and grabbed the wall. “Hope?” After a deep breath, she hurried to her daughter’s room. “I have to tell you some things.”

  “No, Mommy. I’m mad. You talked mean to me.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” She was so careful. She tried never to raise her voice, never to let Hope see a hint of brutality anywhere. Her stomach lurched as she remembered the softness of the intruder’s body this afternoon. The human body was so fragile.

  And the psyche more so.

  “Who was on the phone?” Hope asked, with eyes only for her doll.

  “A man I used to know—a friend of my father’s.”

  “Huh?” Hope’s eyes rounded and she dropped the doll on her pink-flowered comforter. “You have a daddy?”

  Cassie tilted her head back. She’d never even mentioned him? “I have a father,” she said. “He’s sick and he needs me to look after him.”

  “Like when I’m sick?” Hope grabbed her hand. “Ooh, will we make him glasses of ice water and toast?”

  “We can make anything that will help him feel better. Let’s talk about it over our eggs. Help me warm them up?”

  “VAN, TAKE THESE KEYS.” Frail in his hospital gown, Leo Warne covered them with his hand, like a spy passing off a top secret microfiche. “They’re not safe here. Someone will steal them and break into the house and clean me out.” Leo’s eyes darted toward the door and back.

  Van suppressed a shudder. He’d loved the man like a father. How could he have abandoned him? “Don’t worry. Cassie’s going to stay at the house. Your stuff will be safe.”

  “Stop looking at me like I’m a stranger. I’m not sick.” He nodded toward the ceiling as if someone were watching them from above. “I’m just a smart old man. Something no one in this town likes. I know how they treated Cassie. They made her leave, looking down on her after that man…” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple as big as an egg in his too-thin throat. “Like the rape was her fault. No one took care of her.” He skewered Van with blue eyes that were so much like Cassie’s. “Not even you.”

  Van gripped the edge of Leo’s rolling tray. “The rape repulsed me. Cassie never did. I should have protected her, but I couldn’t even make her see I still loved her.”

  “Because you didn’t. I know. I know it all. I walk around this town in the night. No one sees me. I’m invisible.”

  Van stared, his own good sense returning. “You’re tired and sick and you need to be cared for.” Van dared to stroke Leo’s thin hair as he would have touched his own father—or his child, if he and Cassie had been so lucky. “You’ll get better and you’ll start remembering.”

  “I remember everything. People laughed at her and they said she deserved it. They said she should have been more careful. She was asking for it.”

  “Those are your own fears talking. It never happened.”

  “It was worse. You don’t even know. She won’t come home now.”

  “She’ll be here tomorrow. She’s planning to stay at your house.”

  The house. With his heart breaking for his broken friend, he felt anxious. What would Cassie walk into in her childhood home? If Leo hadn’t washed himself in weeks, he certainly hadn’t cleaned the house.

  Cassie had enough to face. No one had understood why she’d run away from Honesty. Her former neighbors would flood her with casseroles. They’d sympathize with her about Leo’s illness and they’d fish for answers about why she’d stayed away so long.

  They’d tried often enough to extract the truth from Van, but no one seemed to realize she hadn’t been content to cut the town out of her life. She’d had no more room for her
father or her ex-husband, either.

  “Leo, I’m heading over to your house for a while. Just to make sure everything’s ready for Cassie.”

  “I’ll give you a buck and a half to mow the lawn.” Leo dug for a nonexistent pocket. “It’s not worth that much, but I know you. You’ll just spend it on a Coca-Cola with Cassie, and you shouldn’t be paying for her treats.”

  Van felt as if he’d run face first into a wall, but Leo didn’t seem to realize it was December. “Pay me later.” Van wondered which lawn guy had flirted with Cassie. Van hadn’t noticed her as more than a cute kid until after he’d been working in the bank for almost a year and she’d started college.

  He pushed his fist against his chest. They’d been a family once, the three of them. He kissed his former father-in-law’s head and hurried out.

  At the nurses’ station, he backed up and asked them to call if Leo’s condition changed. Despite all signs to the contrary, he hoped Leo might improve before Cassie arrived. Good food, warmth and attentive care had to give him a chance.

  The Warnes lived across the lake from Beth’s fishing lodge. Van pulled up to Leo’s place to find Trey Lockwood, one of last night’s EMTs, banging away at the front porch with a hammer. Trey stopped and brushed back his ball cap with a weary sigh. He pulled a couple of nails from between his lips.

  “I didn’t expect to find anyone else here,” Van said. “What’s wrong with the porch?”

  Trey stepped on a board and it squeaked. “Ann and I didn’t realize we should have checked on him.”

  “Has he been acting odd for long?”

  “He definitely changed after Cassie…” He didn’t say the words and Van was just as glad. “We thought you probably knew, but you weren’t welcome here, either.”

  “I’d have forced my way in.” He took in the paint peeling off the siding. Why hadn’t he driven past once in a while? The answer would keep him from facing himself in a mirror for a while. He’d been a coward. Pretending Leo and Cassie didn’t matter anymore had been easier than fighting them for a few pathetic minutes of their time.