The Man From Her Past Page 3

  “You look gutted,” Trey said. “People think everyone knows what goes on in small towns. But the doors shut here, just like anywhere else, and some things you can’t know.”

  Trey was a smart guy. “The door didn’t shut on this.” Van pulled Leo’s keys out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll see how things look inside.”

  “Yeah. Good luck. Let me know if I can help.”

  “Thanks.” Van trod the rickety boards with care. He dreaded opening the door. “Cassie’s due back tomorrow.”

  “You don’t want her to see what’s been going on with her dad.”

  “I can’t protect her from what’s happened to her father, but I’d like to clean this place a little.”

  “She shouldn’t have left.” Even after five years, Van turned to defend Cassie, but Trey tested the next step, looking regretful. He’d been Cassie’s friend, too. He yanked and the plank gave way with a scream. “None of us asked her to go. None of us wanted her to.”

  “It was my fault,” Van said, surprising himself. “Not hers.” A floorboard groaned as he eased across it. A strong wind could send the porch across the lake to Beth’s yard. “It’s too late to talk about the past,” he said.

  “You gotta talk to someone.” Trey held a nail against the board and hammered. “Sometime.” He added another nail. “Or it’ll drive you crazy.”

  “Yeah?” Van turned the key in the lock, but it took determination, as if Leo hadn’t locked it in five years. He looked over his shoulder at the lake. Leo rented a boathouse down there, hidden by the pines. Three years ago, Van had discovered it open, and he’d locked it to keep it safe from vandals. He’d left a note, telling Leo to get in touch with him for the lock’s combination, but Leo had never called about it.

  Trey was watching. “I’ll finish out here. I know a guy who can repaint fast. Cassie’ll feel at home.”

  Van nodded. “Thanks for the help and the therapy.”

  The EMT grinned. “Free of charge, buddy.”

  He went back to work, and Van turned the doorknob and shoved it open. The hinges screamed for oil. A stench of decay and dirt almost knocked him back down the steps.

  “God.” He stared at newspapers and canned goods stacked in ranks like soldiers waiting to march down the hall. On each tread of the staircase along the right wall, three packages of paper towels stood side by side.

  He pushed the door wide and went searching for the source of the smell. It was easy to trace it to the dining room.

  Food. Old, old food, and food as new as last night’s dinner.

  He slammed his hand over his mouth like any heroine in one of the old movies his sister loved to watch. Apparently, Leo had thought getting the food to the dining room was enough. There were china plates on the table, but at some point he’d switched to paper and plastic utensils.

  And then he’d stopped washing dishes. He’d neatly aligned the plates and the cups and glassware and, eventually, he’d done the same with the throwaway stuff, unless he hadn’t finished his meal. Those plates perched on any surface—and the floor.

  Compulsive neatness and haphazard filth. How had it made sense?

  The kitchen was even crazier. Completely spotless, except there wasn’t a dish to be found, beyond the paper and plastic in the cabinets where the real stuff used to be stored.

  “Dear God, Leo.”

  In the back of his mind, Van had blamed Leo for Cassie’s leaving. If her beloved father hadn’t been ashamed, maybe Cassie would have given Van another chance, but Leo’s humiliation had blinded her. She’d taken Van’s revulsion at his inability to help her, for shame like her father’s.

  He choked in a breath and grabbed a garbage bag from beneath the sink. He set to work, realizing he’d misread Leo. They’d tried to live with their guilt in different ways.

  He’d been unable to touch his wife, and Leo had stopped living in a world that made sense.

  “HOW MUCH LONGER, Mommy?” From her car seat in the back of their rental, Hope flipped her cloth doll, Penny, in circles until the arms coiled like springs. “Where is my grampa, anyway?”

  “In a hospital, honey.” Squinting into the fading evening sun, Cassie passed another highway sign that assured her she was on her way to Honesty, Virginia. She didn’t need the sign. She knew each bump and dip of the road like the corners of her childhood bedroom.

  “Will he like me?”

  “You’re funny. How could anyone not love you?” It was what Cassie feared. It was the reason she’d told no one back home that she’d had Hope. The reason she’d never returned.

  “He didn’t come see me. We never visited him in his neighbor good.”

  They’d recently started looking for a new house in a “neighborhood with a great school.” Hope couldn’t get the hang of the word.

  “He’s an older man.”

  “Mrs. Bonney is a older lady.” She usually babysat when Cassie had to work late. She made cookies and crocheted afghans and loved Hope almost as much as Cassie did. “She wants to see me all the time.”

  “But she lives right next door.”

  “She goes away. She goes to see her little girls.”

  Mrs. Bonney called her granddaughters her little girls.

  Cassie searched for answers. She’d told her father to stay away. She couldn’t explain why. “Mrs. Bonney isn’t sick.”

  “Is my grampa a nice man?”

  A simple yes stuck in her throat. He’d blamed her for the rape. And he hadn’t loved her since.

  Van, too. Van, who’d been so much her other half that excising him had left gaps in her soul. Maybe he was worse than her father, because he’d vowed to be her husband. Better or worse had broken him.

  “I’m talking to you, Mommy.”

  “I told you all this last night, sweetie, but you might not get to see him, since he’s in the hospital.”

  “I thought we were gonna get him out of there.”

  “It’s not a bad place.” Another hint she should look at her current work situation. So many of the women at the shelter went to the hospital, and their husbands were kept from seeing them. From phone calls Hope had overheard, and frankness about work that Cassie and her partners should have forgone, she might have gotten the wrong idea.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “You don’t have to.” Cassie’s stomach dropped. Who’d look after Hope while she was with her father? How many people in Honesty would have to see Hope? “We’re not staying here long,” Cassie said.

  “But how long?”

  “A few days.”

  She could hear her old friends.

  When did she have that kid?

  Why didn’t she tell Van?

  Whose kid is that?

  Van would wonder why she’d hidden Hope’s existence.

  “You don’t have to explain.” Her counselor in Tecumseh had repeated that over and over in the months after Hope was born. “She’s your responsibility. You have to make a good life for her and you. And frankly, to hell with anyone else.”

  Cassie’s father, practically a Biblical patriarch in her mind when she was growing up, hadn’t wanted her after she was tainted. He certainly wouldn’t want Hope. When Cassie had needed him most, he’d blamed her for the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

  She’d find help for him. She closed her burning eyes tight for a second. She’d provide medical care if he needed it. She owed him nothing more.

  “Where’s my gramma, Mommy?”

  That question hadn’t come up last night. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have one,” Cassie said, fighting, as always, the soft memory of her mother’s hands on her face, her whispered reassurance that the dark was safe. “My mom died when I was a teenager.”

  Hope, who’d been traveling since early morning and missed her nap, looked as if she might cry. “You won’t ever die, will you, Mommy?”

  “Not for a long time, Hope.” According to the policeman who’d taken her statement at the shelter, she had ever
y chance of dying pretty soon if she wasn’t more careful about taking on thugs. She’d tried to explain about the advantage of surprise. He hadn’t been impressed, and he was right. He just hadn’t come up with an alternative response, other than everyone hiding—and who could do that all the time?

  “Good.” Hope smiled through a soft veil of tears in her eyes. Blessed with a sensitive heart, she’d always cried easily. “But you don’t have a mommy.”

  “I’m used to that.” Who ever got used to that?

  “It’s a good thing you have me.”

  Cassie laughed. “Having you is the best. I love you this much.” She took her hands off the wheel long enough to spread them as far as she could. “And then some.”

  “Good.” Hope tucked her baby onto her shoulder. “I’m not sleepy, Mommy.”

  “I see that.”

  “But I could use some mac and cheese.”

  “Just let me know when. We’ll be home before you know it.” Home. She’d said it without thinking, after five years of dreading the sight of Honesty.

  “We can make eggs for my grampa.”

  The hospital concept proved tricky for her to grasp. Cassie glanced in the rearview, at Hope’s drooping eyelids.

  With any luck, she could keep this trip an adventure for her daughter and then escape. No one who’d known Cassie before would see Hope, or ask questions.

  HOPE WAS ASLEEP when Cassie parked in front of her father’s home. With her palms sweating on the steering wheel, she stared at the house, low, squat and dingy in moonlight instead of the rich blue of her memory. The ivy her father had tended so lovingly had taken over the porch and the roof, trying to pull the house down.

  A woman could almost wish it had.

  She glanced at Hope, hating to wake her until she saw what awaited them inside. Van had said her father would still be in the hospital, but when had Leo Wainwright Warne ever paid attention to anyone or anything other than his own sense of right and wrong?

  Wallowing in a hospital bed would strike him as the height of wrong.

  Cassie climbed out of the car, eased the door shut and started up the cracked driveway. Then she stopped, eyeing the house and a dark band of cloth blocking off the porch. Someone had pinned a Wet Paint sign to it. She leaned down to touch a step. Tacky. And that wasn’t all.

  The ivy, cracks in the dirty cement, black tire streaks and bird droppings dotting the graying pavement. Her father hadn’t been out here with his pressure washer in a long time.

  Five years couldn’t change anything this much—not unless time and neglect had lived hand in hand. Van had tried to warn her about her father. Like Hope, she just hadn’t got it.

  She went around to the kitchen door. Half expecting to find it unlocked, she nonetheless lifted her key.

  Only to have the door open in her face and Van come out.

  Without thinking, she turned toward the car. He took her arm as if to stop her from running. She looked down at his broad hand, his splayed, capable fingers.

  Her body seemed to grow heavier, but she wasn’t confused about her real feelings. She looked up at him and prayed Hope wouldn’t wake, the way children did when a car stopped too long.

  “I thought I’d be out of here before you arrived.” Stress tensed his face. His dark green eyes watched her as if she were a stranger.

  “You dreaded seeing me, too.” She pulled away from him. How could he bother her so much after five years? After the revulsion he hadn’t been able to hide before she’d left?

  She started over.

  “I came straight from the airport,” she said. “What are you doing here?” She forbade herself another glance toward Hope. Sometime he’d have to know but, please God, not now. Not yet.

  “The house was a—we have to talk, Cass.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Her old nickname tugged her toward him as if he were her true north. Everyone had used it, but from Van it meant familiarity and whispers in the cocoon of their bed. Secrets only they knew.

  He nodded, his eyes so intense she wanted to scream. He shut the door behind him. “Parts of the house were in bad shape. Are in bad shape.”

  “What are you talking about?” She reached past him. Just then, the back door of her rental car opened, and a small voice shouted, “Mommy?”

  She turned. “Hope.” Cassie ran across the grass and snatched her daughter into her arms, holding on so tight Hope tried to wriggle free.

  “You’re squishing me.”

  “Sorry.” Tears choked her, but she never cried. “Sorry, baby.” She turned, her daughter in her arms.

  Van had followed, shock draining his face of color. She wished the sunset would just finish up and fade and make them all invisible.

  Cassie shook her head, begging him not to say anything that might hurt Hope. Naturally, he wondered if she belonged to him. Despite five years and the certainty he hadn’t wanted her or their marriage, she feared his unspoken question.

  At last, he dragged his gaze away from Hope, moving his head as if his muscles were locked. Pain pulsed from his body.

  Cassie relented. She’d assumed a lot of bad things about Van’s inability to be human, but he obviously had feelings.

  “No,” she said. “Not yours.”

  He grimaced, looking confused. Then he put his hand over his mouth. She was close enough to see sweat bead on his upper lip.

  As it had the last time he’d tried to make love to her.

  She’d been right to leave Honesty. She was the only one who could love the whimsical, curious girl who danced through her life in joy.

  Only Cassie could love the daughter born of her rape.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “MOMMY, WHOZZAT MAN?”

  Van’s eyes darkened. His mouth froze in a sharp, thin line. He clenched his fists at his side.

  Cassie pressed her face to her daughter’s head and breathed in Hope’s warm, still-babyish scent. Cassie swore silently. He could still make her tremble, but she and Hope were a family.

  “Van, this is Hope, the love of my life.” Be careful, she warned him in her head. Don’t say anything to hurt my daughter. “Baby, this is Mr. Van. He’s a—” She stopped. If explaining Hope’s long-lost Grampa had been hard…“a friend of my father’s.”

  “Hello, Mr. Van.” Hope stuck out her tiny hand. As always, Cassie marveled at her long slender fingers. She’d know her daughter decades from now, if only by her hands. God had been kind. They were Victoria Warne’s hands, too. “Mr. Van?” her little girl said.

  He literally shook himself, staring at her.

  “Is he okay?” Hope stage-whispered.

  He forced a false smile, but Cassie was grateful. Finally, he dwarfed her hand in his and shook it.

  Giggling, Hope dropped her head against Cassie’s chest and didn’t see Van press his palm to his jeans.

  Watching him, Cassie felt more than the cold of the Virginia winter. Not even the coat she’d draped over the backseat would have warmed her. Why had she expected anything more compassionate from him?

  “Sorry.” He shook his head. His disgust this time was clearly for himself, but it came too late.

  Cassie swept past him. “I’m taking her inside for dinner and bed.”

  “There’s no food,” he said, “and a couple of the rooms…”

  She waited. He didn’t go on. She didn’t look back. “What about the rooms?”

  “Your dad.” He came after them. The kitchen steps dipped beneath his weight. “He had some collections.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Paper towels,” he said. “And those dishwashing sponges. Hundreds of them.”

  “What?” She stared at him underneath the porch light.

  “In the guest rooms. I’ve cleaned your room and his and your old playroom, and I cleaned off and remade the daybed in there. But the others—I called the women’s shelter in town to see if they could use anything.”

  He actually blushed, but for no valid reas
on. Obviously, his mind had gone to the women’s shelter because of what had happened to her. They’d be well sponged and paper-towel clean, because she’d forgotten she’d left her bathroom window open one night five years ago.

  “Get over it, Van. I have.”

  “Have you?”

  His simple question rattled all her doubts. “I had to.” She glanced down at Hope’s head.

  He wiped his mouth again. “I don’t know how to talk to you.”

  “Fortunately,” she said, trying to be kind because she didn’t want grudges between them, “we don’t need to talk. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done. We’ll both have beds to sleep in, and I can go by the grocery store.”

  “Let me.”

  “We’re not your problem. Good night.”

  “Come on, Cass.” She’d known Van nearly all her life, but never had she heard the kind of anger he was fighting to quell—all the more frightening because he was normally so controlled. “Give me a chance,” he said. “What did you expect me to do when I found out?”

  She looked down. Hope’s eyes had drifted shut. “I expected the reaction you had. That’s why I left town and never meant to come back.”

  “Not because you didn’t love me anymore?”

  She stopped, feeling naked, sensing the eyes of everyone who’d ever known her in this town. “You stopped loving me,” she said, praying Hope was really asleep and not just pretending.

  “I always told you I was the problem.” He edged closer to her shoulder as if emotion brought him there. His nearness and her unaccountable urge to remember what it was like to be in his arms made her want to scream.

  “I know. It’s not you. It’s me.” Hearing Cassie’s frustration, Hope tried to lift her head, but she was too tired. “Go home, Van. I’m busy.”

  “Let me help you carry your things in. The house will be a shock.”

  “I don’t need your help.” She opened the door. Something smelled awful, and the kitchen looked darker than she remembered.

  Van stepped inside.

  “Bad man,” Hope muttered.

  “Not overly bad.” No doubt Hope would have to see him again. Cassie walked around him and tried to shut the door, but he wouldn’t let her.