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.