Family at Stake

It didn’t matter how many times he walked in those doors, he never got tired of that smell. Ladd’s was right up there with the best smells in the world—sage on his mountain, his lemon grove after a rain, his daughter’s hair when she had been outside all day.

The sound of a girl laughing turned Mac’s head. Christie Alvarez stood with a group of high school boys. She was two years older than Amanda, but tried so hard to be a grown-up. Her black hair was pulled back in a sharp ponytail and heavy black eyeliner rimmed her eyes. Her shorts were far too tight and too short, and her belly, the last remnant of her baby fat, pushed out over the top.

He hardly recognized her. The last time he’d seen her at the courthouse she had been a scared little girl, dressed similarly to his daughter in a long skirt, tights and Mary Jane shoes. Both of them had worn their hair in braids. He remembered the sight of Amanda’s blond braid and Christie’s black one hanging down their backs as they’d stood in front of the judge, their hands locked together.

God, it seemed like yesterday that Christie had played with Barbie dolls with Amanda on the front deck. He had made that girl countless lunches of macaroni and cheese and now he watched as she took a drag of a cigarette.

He was doing the right thing trying to keep Amanda away from Christie. He didn’t know what had happened to the girl, but the very idea of his daughter dressed that way, looking at a boy with such shocking and resigned knowledge, made Mac sick.

Christie must have felt him watching her because she looked up at him with eyes like flat black stones. Empty. Cold. For a moment she appeared ashamed, a flush on her cheeks. But then she turned back to the boy she flirted with, as if Mac wasn’t there.

Mac’s instinct was to go over there, grab her and take her home to her mother. But who was he to judge? He was watching his own daughter fade away moment by moment.

Resigned, he pulled open the door to Ladd’s. Twenty minutes later, he walked back out, his hands filled with brown bags, their bottoms turning damp with grease. He passed in front of the window of the Main Street Café on his way to the truck.

Rachel’s mother, Eve, stood next to one of the window booths, taking an order. He shouldn’t have made that crack to Rachel about her mother. It wasn’t fair.

Eve, her long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun, leaned away from the young couple in the booth to cough violently. He could practically hear her through the glass.

That’s the price of working for twenty years in the only place left where people could smoke unfiltered cigarettes and eat a blue-plate special.

Of course, in every memory he had of Eve she had a smoke of her own hanging from the corner of her mouth.

Eve didn’t look much like Rachel. Maybe she once had before her husband had gotten hold of her. For as long as Mac had known her, Eve had been rough and broad, her eyes a muddy, graceless brown, while Rachel’s had always been an intriguing blend of green and brown.

Mac started walking again. He couldn’t do this. It was one thing to have Rachel in his home and in his family, but he would be damned if he’d let her back into his head.

He didn’t think he could survive being abandoned by Rachel Filmore twice in one lifetime.

AMANDA STARED OUT HER window and counted her father’s steps up the hallway.

He didn’t even try to sneak past her room. He walked right down the middle of the hallway so every floorboard squeaked.

Three. Four. Five. The steps stopped, and after a minute, she heard her door creak open and could feel her father watching her. That’s what he did these days. He stared at her as if he expected her to go bonkers right in front of him. Maybe she should do it, just start screaming and pulling out her hair and lighting things on fire. That’d give him something to watch.

He took a step into the room and she almost stiffened. It felt as if there were two hands at her back. Pushing. Always pushing.

Leave me alone! The scream clawed at her throat, but she just sighed, like a sound sleeper. Her back was to him so she didn’t bother closing her eyes. She knew how to fake sleep. She’d done it enough.

“I love you, Amanda,” he whispered.

Then why did you have to screw everything up?

She bit her lip until she tasted blood and waited him out. Finally, he walked away toward his room, where he would take a ten-minute shower and then try to read for about five minutes before he passed out with the light on and the book on his chest.

And once Dad was out it would take an earthquake to wake him. That’s what Mom used to say, anyway, but she always said it like she wished the earthquake would wake him and swallow him whole.

Amanda waited for half an hour, just to be on the safe side. Once she’d only waited twenty minutes and her dad had caught her. She’d made up a lie about getting a drink and he’d tried to turn it into some conversation about secrets, which was hilarious since he didn’t know the first thing about that. Anyway. She waited half an hour just to be sure.

Midnight on the nose, Amanda slipped out of her bed, grabbed her tennis shoes and slid past her open door without making a sound.

She held her breath in the hallway. His bedside light was still on, but she could hear him snoring like crazy.

Mom always said he was predictable.

She crept toward the front door, sticking to the sides of the hallway where the boards never creaked. She stepped over the middle stair and opened the front door with a fast jerk. If she opened the door slow the hinges whined, not real loud but loud enough.

She turned on her flashlight and picked her way through the forest, over rocks and fallen trees. Animals scattered in the underbrush and something dark and small flew by her head. She ducked but didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around.

She crested the top of the hill. Halfway down the other side she took the old fire road to the rock quarry.

She checked her watch again and hoped she wasn’t too late. Last time Christie had already left by the time Amanda got there.

Every night she thought about running away again. Just taking off from Christie and Dad and social workers and all the memories of Mom and the happy family they used to be. And every night the idea sounded better and better. One of these days she was going to walk out that front door and never come back.

CHAPTER FOUR

“AMANDA’LL BE DOWN IN A second.” Mac stepped into the kitchen where Rachel sat, waiting for her one-on-one interview with Amanda. At the sound of his voice, all of her senses immediately tuned to him like a radio dial searching through static to finally settle in on a clear station.

She could hear him breathe.

Good God, she could smell him—sunshine and soap.

She felt the breeze he made as he walked to the fridge and grabbed a can of pop.

“She just hopped in the shower. She helped me in the orchard today after school.”

“Does she do that often?” Rachel asked, happy to have something to concentrate on rather than the trickle of sweat sliding down his temple. Dirt smeared his cheek and blood beaded from a small cut on his neck.

She noticed all of it in a millisecond, in the time it took her to blink. She remembered how attuned she used to be to him, how she could guess his mood by the way he wore his hat, or the way he said hello on the phone. They’d just look at each other across their second-hour British Lit classroom and she’d know they’d be skipping school the rest of the day.

“Yeah, Amanda does help, actually.” He popped open the top of the can and guzzled the drink. He was in sock feet, and the uncomfortable intimacy of seeing the small hole near his big toe created a snakey warmth in her chest that she tried to ignore. “A few times a week.”

“When she isn’t helping you, does she come home right after school?”

“She has tutoring after school two or three times a week. Isn’t that in your notes?”

“I am making new notes.”

“Must be why your agency is so effective.” His sarcasm was lethal. But she continued writing, pretending to be oblivious to Mac’s stares and the tension that radiated off him.

“I can’t believe you’re a social worker,” Mac said as he hitched himself up onto his counter.

“No?”

“Do you have kids?”

“Nope.”