His Best Friend's Baby

She darted around him and Jesse stopped, attracted

and repelled by his sister’s magnetic force. “Why didn’t she leave you the damn house?” he demanded.

“Jesse,” she whispered. He kept his eyes locked on the y in the Billy’s Final Score sign over the door of the bar rather than succumb to Rachel’s plan. Her voice was thick with emotion and he was not going to stand here and watch her fight tears. “Before Mom died I wrote you letters, Jesse. Didn’t you get the letters I sent?”

“I got them.”

She had written almost every week since the day she’d left after her high school graduation. Once he turned eighteen and joined the army, he’d finally written her back and told her to stop. And for a year, she respected his request. Then the letters had started arriving again—with a vengeance. He now knew that was about the time she and Mac Edwards had finally gotten together.

There had been cards from Mac, boxes of cookies from Rachel and funny pictures from Amanda—Jesse’s new niece thanks to Rachel’s marriage to Mac.

He’d opened all letters that weren’t addressed in Rachel’s handwriting. The rest he sent back or burned. Except the cookies—a man could only be so mad.

But he’d never responded to Mac’s letters, and only once to Amanda’s. There was never a reason for them to continue sending him stuff. But they had.

The whole family was just so stubborn.

“We’re hoping you might come up to the farm. Amanda is dying to see you again and Mac can’t wait.” She smiled again, all the hope in the world rolling off her.

“I didn’t read your letters, Rachel.”

“Jesse.” She reached out to him as though to touch his arm, and he stepped out of the way. His eyes met hers and he saw what his rejection did to her, the light that it killed in her eyes.

Let it go, Rachel, he urged silently. You keepcoming at me like this and you’re only goingto get hurt.

Her hand curled into a fist and fell to her side. “I know you’re mad. But I tried—”

“Stop it.” Jesse struggled to find that cold dark center of himself, that place where simplicity reigned. “I was a kid when you left. You don’t know me and I don’t want to know you. Just leave it alone.” He watched all that hope crumple in her, like wadded-up paper.

Good. Now, stay away.

He moved past her to his beat-up Jeep and she didn’t try to stop him.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“San Diego,” he told her. He winced as he swung his aching leg into the vehicle. Damn bum knee. “After I take care of Mom’s house.”

“So you’re just gonna run again?”

Everything in him went still.

“Running’s your deal, not mine. I stayed until the old man died. What did you do?”

They both knew the answer all too well—she’d left, when he’d needed her most.

She was a little late if she expected forgiveness now.

Wainwright, the ancient black Lab he’d somehow inherited in the last two weeks, lifted his head from the duffel bag he’d been using as a bed.

Take the dog, Artie McKinley’s folks had said. He’s old and we’re moving to an apartmentinNogales. We can’t have pets. Artie had been their only son, so there had been no one else to take care of Wainwright and they refused to put him down.

What could Jesse do?

So he’d taken the aging dog and now, every time he looked at the animal, he remembered why Artie hadn’t come back to claim his dog.

Wainwright spied Rachel and barked. She flinched.

“I hear you, boy,” Jesse muttered. He turned over the engine and peeled out of the parking lot without once looking back.

DAMN IT.

Jesse braked at the deserted intersection of Goleta Road and Foothill after having driven around aimlessly for an hour. He leaned forward in the driver’s seat and looked right down the long stretch of road that would lead him down to the coast and Highway 101.

He could drive to San Diego, be there by tonight.

He turned and looked left down the length of asphalt that would lead him back to New Springs.

“What do you think, Wain?” The dog struggled to his feet and climbed over the console to sit in the passenger seat. He barked once at a passing bird. “That’s not much help, buddy.”

Jesse’s knee throbbed from all the walking and driving he had been doing the past week and even though he was steering clear of the pain meds in his bag, the relief they offered seemed pretty good right now.

Jesse eyed the waves of heat rising off the blacktop and Wain nudged his thigh with his snout. Jesse patted the dog’s head and wished again, as he had a million times in the past, that his genetic makeup was different.

It would be so damn easy if he was the kind to run away like his sister.

But no, Jesse took after his mother. He had Eva’s black eyes, dark hair and the same stubborn chin. Despite heavy drinking and hard living, his father had looked like a young man when he died, but Eva had looked every one of her fifty-six years, as if all her disappointments and heartaches had been pressed into the lines on her face.

Jesse wondered briefly what was written across his face. What details of his past were visible?

He and Eva were the same beasts of burden, carrying everyone’s troubles and responsibilities like stones around their necks. When everyone else had deserted they had both stayed—in that house, in this town—long after the time they should have left.

Just do what you are supposed to do, he told himself. You’re in this little shithole for areason.

He pulled his cell phone out of the faded green duffel and dialed Chris’s number.

“Inglewood Construction,” Chris answered after two rings and Jesse’s dark mood lifted at the sound of his friend’s voice.

“Hey, Chris. It’s Jesse.”

“Jesse, when the hell are you going to get down here? I am up to my pits in work.” A saw buzzed to life on Chris’s side of the line. “Watch the damn floors!” Chris yelled and Jesse could practically smell the sawdust; he could almost taste it. “Seriously, man,” Chris said. “I need you here, like, yesterday.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Chris, but it looks like I’m stuck in New Springs for a few days.”

“Well, the sooner you get here the faster we can drink some cold beers and start making some money.”

“Sounds good,” Jesse said. It sounded like heaven, like the furthest possible thing from the life he’d lived for the past three years. “Sounds real good.”

“Keep me posted,” Chris said. “I gotta run. The guys are pouring the basement floor and I swear if someone doesn’t watch them, they’ll make a swimming pool out of it.”