The You I Never Knew Part 42

"True. But how can I get Sam's side of the story if he simply takes off at the first sign of trouble? He should have called me."

"Don't jump to any conclusions."

"I'm trying not to. But I just feel so... stood up. Maybe I'm not cut out to be with a guy like Sam. People don't really change, Daddy. He took off seventeen years ago, and he's done it again." She felt the chilly ghost of the old feelings of abandonment. In different ways and for different reasons, she had lost her mother, her father, Sam... and now she felt Cody slipping away from her. "Maybe," she admitted, "I don't have it in me to love them both in the way they need."

Gavin turned to her on the sofa. "You know better than that. You have the most generous heart of anyone I've ever known, Mich.e.l.le. You came to me in spite of my failings. You came even though you knew it would be hard for you. Things turned out to be even harder than you imagined, and you stayed, honey."

A long silence stretched out, and the sun broke over the mountains. Mich.e.l.le turned to her father. "The first time Sam took off, I never even tried to find him." She took a deep breath and finally admitted something about herself, something she wasn't proud of. "There was probably a part of me that saw him as a delinquent, no good, a guy who would never amount to anything. I was wrong back then. The failing was mine, not his. That's what I don't know, Daddy. I don't know if I'm better than that now."

"About the first time." Gavin put his hand on her arm.

His touch made her pause. She looked up into his face, a little puffy now from the meds, but still so expressive, so anguished.

"He and his mother left town because I arranged it," Gavin said quietly.

Mich.e.l.le stared at him. Her fist tightened around the Kleenex. "I don't understand."

"There was money missing from the foreman's office. Maybe Sam took it, maybe he didn't. I wasn't really thinking about that. I was thinking about you, Mich.e.l.le. I'd just found out you were seeing Sam, and I wasn't thrilled with the idea. I thought the boy and his mother were trouble, and I didn't want you hurt. So Deputy O'Shea and I confronted him with the missing cash. He denied taking it, of course. For good measure, O'Shea also reminded Tammi Lee of her rubber-check habit and several outstanding warrants. She was given a choice. Disappear, or do time. Sam really didn't have a choice."

"My G.o.d." She drew away from her father.

"He never told you about that, did he?" Gavin asked in a pained voice.

"He never said a word."

"I'm sorry as h.e.l.l, honey. I didn't know what to do. I was afraid you'd go running off with him."

"And I did run off. Only not with him." She pulled her knees up to her chest.

"I wish I could undo what I did. But I acted out of desperation because I loved you, and I was so d.a.m.ned scared."

Her throat stung. "Why-" she said, and had to pause. "Why didn't you just say so? Why didn't you tell me you loved me? You never said it."

"I thought you knew." He was silent for a long time, staring down at his hands. "You're a parent yourself now. The love happens whether you talk about it or not. You've made choices for Cody-some good, and some bad. But you always acted out of love for him."

The stark truth struck hard. He was right. She didn't approve of Cody hanging out with Claudia Teller. Every once in a while, Mich.e.l.le would "forget" to pa.s.s on a message that Claudia had called. Or manage to schedule Cody for a dental appointment when she knew he and Claudia had plans. Mich.e.l.le was uncomfortably certain she would resort to devious means if she thought she could keep them apart.

"Sometimes a parent does the wrong thing for the right reasons," Gavin pointed out. "I'm so d.a.m.ned sorry, Mich.e.l.le. I should have trusted your judgment."

"Are you saying I should trust Cody's?"

"Maybe. Yeah, I am. Look, I failed with you. But you have a chance to succeed with Cody."

"Right now it's Cody's judgment that he doesn't want Sam in his life."

"I suspect he'll come around. He's a kid, thinking about himself first and foremost. He doesn't want to move in the middle of high school-what kid would? But he's also your son. He wants you to be happy, Mich.e.l.le. Do what's right for you. He'll come around."

"I can't do it, Daddy. I can't force the two of them together and pretend it will be fine."

"You don't know how it will be. Maybe it won't be fine, maybe not all the time. But what is? What the h.e.l.l is in this life?"

Restless, she got up and opened the doors to the front porch, feeling the harsh chill of the morning air on her face and hearing the sounds of the ranch coming to life-diesel vehicles firing up, the foreman's whistle, the hydraulic hiss of a dump truck. Horses blowing and stamping, the tinny sound of the farm and ranch report on someone's radio. She needed to clear her head, had to think about what it would really be like to marry Sam-a man who had just taken off without a word of explanation.

It scared her when she considered how hurt she was by that. How vulnerable she was when it came to Sam. "I'd better go wake Cody for school," she said.

Returning to the guesthouse, she knocked lightly on Cody's door. No response. "Cody?" she said, and pushed the door open.

Reality registered slowly. The bed that hadn't been slept in. Closet door carelessly open to empty s.p.a.ce. The big duffel bag gone.

Terror broke over her in a dizzying wave. Gone.

Her son was gone.

It was every mother's nightmare. She tore out of the room, screaming for her father, her mind filled with visions of Cody broken, bruised, abused by someone who had picked him up hitchhiking.

Gavin met her halfway across the yard, holding out the cordless phone. "It's okay," he said.

His words barely penetrated her icy, heart-freezing terror.

Her father closed her hand firmly around the phone. "It's okay. He's in Seattle. Here, let Natalie tell you."

Standing in the blanketed yard, her hand shaking, she put the phone to her ear. Natalie was calm, uncharacteristically subdued, as she explained that Cody had taken the all-night bus from Missoula. Dear G.o.d. Her son had run away from home last night. No, he'd run away to home. He had run away from her.

"Let me talk to him," Mich.e.l.le said. Tears threatened to melt the ice of terror, but she held them in, afraid that if she started to cry, she'd never stop.

"He's on his way to school. He wanted to get there early to re-enroll."

"You let him go to school without calling me?" She wanted to jump through the phone line and throttle Natalie.

"I told him he should call you. He said he would. Later." Natalie hesitated. "Mich.e.l.le, he didn't explain why he showed up here alone, but I can guess. He's safe. Let him cool off, okay? If you don't give him time to realize on his own how much he loves you and misses you, he might never figure it out."

She was still trembling when she hung up. Her first impulse was to phone Garfield High School, demand that they find him, bring him to the phone. Then she looked across the white mystery of the fields of Blue Rock, and a small, surprising voice inside said No and then louder: No. She handed the phone to her father.

"You want me to fly you to Seattle?" he asked.

"No." The word formed of its own accord. "Natalie just said something to me that makes perfect sense. He's got to fix this on his own, Daddy. It's time he made his own decisions and figured out how to deal with the consequences."

Gavin looked at her for a long time. "When you were young, you went away, too. And like a fool I just let you go. I was too stubborn. Are you being stubborn or is this the right thing to do?"

She spread her arms. "Who knows what the right thing is? I just know that what I've been doing lately isn't working. Maybe I was too much of a perfectionist, too demanding. That's probably what made him turn into a rebel in the first place."

Now, with a lurch of her heart, she suddenly understood. It was only natural to distance himself from her expectations. And it was her job to let him find his own way.

"I was smothering him with love, getting him out of sc.r.a.pes when I should have let him fall and pick himself up again." The decision hurt, but it felt right. She realized that what she really had to do was make the painful choice of letting Cody go. He might discover the answers on his own, or he might not. It was no longer up to her.

At six-thirty at night, Cody stood on the rain-slick sidewalk in front of the town-house complex in Seattle. It was weird, but he missed the dark of Montana, the inky purity of the night in the mountains. Here in Seattle it was never all the way dark, not with the yellow sh.o.r.e lights, the busy ferry docks, and the ribbons of reflected neon snaking along the wet streets. The high bluff framed a view of Elliott Bay, a glittering necklace of lights along the sh.o.r.e.

Today had definitely been one of the strangest days of his life. He had gone to school, handing a re-enrollment slip to the clerk in the office. After the initial paperwork it had been like a regular day. Same cla.s.ses, same kids.

Same Claudia.

He'd found her at the usual place, a wooded area everyone called the smoke spot. Un.o.bserved, he had stood at the fringe of the woods and looked at her, expecting a theme song to start up or something. He'd watched her throw back her head and blow out a cloud of cigarette smoke, and he'd felt... nothing. Not the rush of excitement that used to keep him awake at night, not the heady pride that made him walk tall through the school halls. No theme song, just the boring hiss and spatter of the incessant Seattle rain through the alder and cedar trees.

When she'd seen him, she had squealed and flung herself at him, but her questions had all been about Gavin, and what it was like to have a celebrity grandfather, and why hadn't he ever told her that his grandfather had played Lucas McQuaid, and had he saved any of his prescription painkillers...

He had tried hanging out with his old crowd after school, but nothing felt right. There was nothing different about them, but it was different. The energy had gone flat, like a c.o.ke left out too long. Their jokes sounded stale, their laughter rang hollow. He couldn't share their reminiscences of the Phish concert last weekend. It was as if he had been away for years rather than weeks.

He planned to call Claudia tonight and break up with her. Then, if he could get up the nerve, he'd call Molly Lightning. It was s.h.i.+tty, the way he'd left without explaining anything to her. She probably thought he'd been s.h.i.+pped off to reform school. It wouldn't be the toughest call he had to make, though. He had to figure out what to do about his mom and, tougher still, Tammi Lee. It was his stupid fault she'd lost her job. His stupid fault for chickening out and not telling the truth about what had happened. His stupid fault she'd gone out drinking.

Through the window of the gated entrance, he spotted a movement. A shadow. His heart thumped. Behind him, a wino shuffled along the sidewalk, muttering to himself. Noticing Cody, he said, "Hey, gotta smoke?"

"Nope," Cody said. "I gave it up."

Slowly, his backpack feeling like a load of bricks, he trudged up the walk toward his house. For a few more minutes, he stood listening to the low hum of the hot-tub pump and feeling the moist chill of the Seattle evening on his hair. Then he took a deep breath, punched the security code into the keypad, and let himself in.

The place smelled vaguely of patchouli oil and Natalie's experimental Middle Eastern cooking. She had a performance tonight, and so she'd left dinner in the fridge and a note in fat pink magic marker-Call your mother.

"I know, I know," Cody murmured under his breath. He set down his backpack with a thunk and went to put on some music. It was too quiet in the house. He found himself wandering around, feeling more alone than he'd ever felt before. Without really planning to, he found himself in the study, a neat-as-a-pin room with a gla.s.s-topped desk, a big angled drafting table, and two computers, their black faces gathering dust. He went to the closet and folded the louvered door aside, and then he realized what he was looking for.

His mom's paintings.

They were stored in the very back of the closet in a large, flat portfolio with three clasps. Working carefully, he took out the canvases and sketches and leaned them against the walls. There weren't very many of them, and he'd only seen them a few times.

He supposed he'd always known the pictures were good-great, even-filled with color and life and movement. They seemed to say something important. Like the painting that hung in Sam's house. But up until today he had always regarded these pictures as something created by a stranger, someone he never knew.

For the first time, he managed to connect the paintings to his mom. He pictured her in the studio at Blue Rock, lost in her work, not harried and tense like she was at the agency. Pacing in agitation, he thought about how she had looked yesterday when he'd told her he and Sam would never get along. In his heart, Cody didn't believe he was wrong. Sam didn't want him.

But maybe Cody had twisted the truth... a bit. It was pretty obvious Sam was p.i.s.sed at him, but he'd never actually said he didn't want a son. It was a fine distinction. But if Sam was p.i.s.sed about Molly, he'd go ballistic when he learned who the real culprit was in the quilt-shop incident.

Cody felt a rank lump of guilt in his throat. He didn't blame Sam for not wanting him.

The reason Sam had left Crystal City didn't have a thing to do with Cody or his mom. That phone call Sam had received... In his mind's eye, Cody could still see rage and fear on his face. And something worse-the hurt. Sam had to take off in order to save his mother, and Cody had done the only thing he could think of. He'd fled.

Now he knew how the filly had felt, driven up to the woods in terror of the snowmobiles. He'd run away, but maybe he'd wound up in a place of greater danger. h.e.l.l, he didn't know. He should just stay away from Montana, where he didn't fit in. He'd never fit in.

Feeling restless and unsettled, he grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and scarfed it down, then drank half a quart of orange juice. Then he picked up the phone and jabbed in Claudia's number. Might as well get the easy call out of the way before he decided what to do about the rest.

In the middle of the third and fourth ring, the sound of the buzzer from the security office nearly made him jump out of his skin. Frowning, he hung up the phone. He wasn't expecting anyone.

He was amazed when the guard announced the name of his visitor. Gavin Slade. Switching on the lights over the entranceway, he opened the door.

"Hey," he said tentatively.

"Hey yourself." With a jangle of flying-ace buckles and straps, an unsmiling Gavin Slade strode into the house.

Cody followed him inside. "Um, how did you get here?"

"Flew the Mustang to Boeing Airfield. I wasn't planning on taking her out for a long haul so soon, but here I am." The bluewater eyes inspected Cody. "I expect you know why I came in such a hurry."

Cody eyed him warily. The angry energy of defiance coursed through him. "If you came out to lecture me because I blew it with my mom, you wasted a trip. My mind's made up. I don't fit in there."

Gavin scanned the room and Cody realized he was seeing where his daughter lived for the first time. "Actually," he said, "it's more than that. I guess I came because, a long time ago, I blew it with your mom. She needed me, and I wasn't there for her, and she took off." His eyes looked deep and sad. "For seventeen years," he added. "I'm here because this is what I should have done for my daughter all those years ago. I should have come after her."

"This is different. Sam can't stand me, and the feeling's mutual."

Peeling off his leather jacket to reveal several more layers of clothing, Gavin studied a big studio photograph of Cody and his mom, done about five years before. He walked right up to the framed picture and pressed his palm to it. "How old were you in this picture?"

"Maybe ten or eleven." Cody remembered the red Izod s.h.i.+rt, and the feel of his mom's open hand on his shoulder, and the way the photographer had tried to flirt with her.

"I wish I'd known you then," Gavin said. "I feel lucky to have met you at all, Cody. Look at all the time we lost, with us being so stubborn." He turned to face Cody. "I don't know what went on between you and Sam, but the one who's getting hurt is your mom."

Cody's throat felt dry as sandpaper. Gavin was right. She had been happy and flushed and calm up until last night. Up until Cody's big lie.

"It took a kidney failure to get us back together," Gavin said. "What's it going to take this time? A heart attack?"

"You don't understand," Cody said. "You don't understand how bad I am." He felt too miserable to be embarra.s.sed when his voice broke.

"Then make me understand, Cody."

The genuine caring in Gavin's quiet voice reached out to Cody. "You're not going to like it," he said. And then his voice steadied, and he told the truth. He told his grandfather what he had done.

Gavin gave a low whistle. "That's pretty d.a.m.ned bad."

"See? Sam'll never forgive me, and who can blame him?"

Gavin was quiet for a long time. Cody's stomach knotted. He hated what he'd done. Hated what a jerk he'd been. Finally, Gavin spoke. "I think I get the picture. You know, Mich.e.l.le doesn't have the sort of troubles your grandmother does, but that doesn't mean she doesn't need you."

"What does she need with a screwup like me?" Cody demanded.

"You're only a screwup if you don't know how to straighten out the mess you've made," Gavin pointed out. "Nothing'll ever feel right again until you do. You know that, don't you, son?"

"You're right," said Cody, filling up with elation and terror.

Sam stood in the shower, letting the too-hot water pound down on his head. There was nothing, he thought, nothing worse than dropping your mother off at rehab. He felt as if a bomb had gone off in the middle of his life, and pieces lay scattered about, unrecognizable.

He'd had to pry her away from the dim, smoky coc.o.o.n of the honky-tonk; he'd listened to the familiar protests and promises; he'd hardened his will to her desperate pledges. Then he'd spent most of the day getting her checked in at the facility in Missoula.

"We did it again, di'n' we?" she had said, staring woozily out the truck window. "Stepped over the line. Tried to fit in with respectable folks, where we don't belong. We're still on the wrong side of the tracks, Sammy. We always will be."

During the drive home, the rage had struck Sam hard, as it always did. What the f.u.c.k had LaNelle Jacobs been thinking, blaming the robbery on Tammi Lee? All the slights and slurs of years past had suddenly come back on a wave of resentment. Five years of peace and quiet in Crystal City had lulled him into thinking the past didn't matter.

Sam turned off the shower. Slinging a towel around his waist, he picked up the phone and stabbed his fingers impatiently at the numbers.

"Blue Rock," said a familiar and unwelcome voice. Jake Dollarhide.