Czytaj książkę: «The Daughter Merger»

CHAPTER ONE

NOTHING LIKE FINDING OUT your teenage daughter had cut school to foul up your day. David Whitcomb’s mounting tension was laced with anger. He didn’t have time for this.

But fear was his strongest emotion. Had Claire hit the road again? How far would she get this time?

His gaze found the dashboard clock. Eleven forty-three. School had started at 7:10. That gave her a four-hour head start. If the Attendance Office had notified him sooner…

The garage door was already rising in response to his signal before he turned into his driveway. David killed the engine, set the emergency brake and leaped out, his long stride carrying him into the house.

“Claire?” he bellowed. “Are you home? Claire?”

The kitchen was quiet and dark; a cereal bowl sat in the sink. Loading it into the dishwasher was beyond her. At least she’d had breakfast.

“Claire?” He took the stairs two at a time. No pounding beat of music welcomed him. He slammed open her bedroom door, already knowing what he would find: an empty room.

Covers were tidy, but he knew better than to think Claire had made the bed. She was a quiet, still sleeper, had been since she was a baby. He remembered, with a pang he ignored, how she had sometimes scared him when he checked on her and at first glance thought she’d quit breathing.

Closet doors stood open, and clothes spilled out of drawers. Damn. Her binder and a social studies text lay on the desk. So she never had set out for school. The day pack was gone, as was the framed photo of her mother that usually sat beside her bed.

Fear finally swamped his anger. A thirteen-year-old girl, out on her own, trying to—what? hitch-hike?—to California. Last time she’d made it to Portland before an alert cop had picked her up. What if some psycho found her first?

He’d have to call the police. But for an instant David stood looking around his daughter’s bedroom, bafflement and helplessness holding him captive. What was he doing so terribly wrong that she wouldn’t even give him a chance?

The police came and went, as they had the previous two times Claire had run away. They promised to put out a bulletin, but this time they kept asking questions and David felt the rising tide of suspicion and judgment.

Did he know why his daughter was so determined to leave his home? Here they scrutinized him carefully. Had he considered counseling? Did she have friends in whom she confided? Had he contacted her mother in California? Did he discipline Claire physically?

Hell, no, he didn’t know why she hated his guts. David did understand, sort of, that Claire felt her mother needed her, that he was the bad guy who was keeping mother and daughter apart. Yes, he’d tried counseling, but Claire wasn’t cooperative. Friends? Reluctantly, he decided he would have to call the mother of the one close friend Claire had made in the four months she’d lived with him here in Lakemont. No, he hadn’t yet contacted his ex-wife. No, he never laid hands on his daughter. Literally, as she wouldn’t accept even a hug from him.

Assuming he’d felt comfortable offering one.

The pair of police officers left, and David picked up the phone. He had only a home phone number for Claire’s friend Linnet, but the answering machine suggested that if he urgently needed Grace Blanchet, he should try her work phone number. He did, and she answered.

He had met the woman a couple of times when he was at her town house picking up Claire. What little he knew about Grace Blanchet had been extracted from his sullen daughter. She was a legal secretary for some high-powered firm in neighboring Bellevue. She was a widow, Linnet was her only child.

His lightning impression had been of a tall, slender woman with shiny, thick, light brown hair cut at shoulder length and worn tucked behind her ears. The hair danced when she moved, distracting the eye from a face a man might call plain. Pretty eyes, though, he recalled: a deep blue. And her smile was warm enough to make him feel like a jerk for his cool, answering nod.

“Grace Blanchet,” she said now in a rich, distinctively husky voice. One that, upon first hearing it, had instantly made him imagine darkness and a throaty laugh, tangled sheets and satin skin.

It had the same effect this time, despite everything.

Disbelieving and annoyed at himself, he said, “Ms. Blanchet, this is David Whitcomb. Claire’s father.”

“Yes?” She waited, not making it easy. Apparently she had noticed how cool his previous greeting had been.

“Claire didn’t go to school today,” he said bluntly. “I think she’s run away. I’m wondering if you can find out whether she told your daughter anything.”

“Oh, dear.” That voice resonated with compassion. “Linnet told me that Claire has done this before. She’s so young!”

“Yes.” Images flashed before him. His small, dark-haired daughter beside a busy highway, her thumb out. A truck slowing, stopping. Fear and resolution on her face before she gave a nod and climbed in with two men.

He squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be terribly worried. I’ll call the school and have them get Linnet. Are you at home?”

He didn’t want to be. He ached to do something. Anything. Check out the Greyhound bus station. Cruise the freeway entrances. But he knew Claire was probably half a state away by now. The cops were looking. They’d found her before.

“I’m home,” he said. “In case she tries to…” Get in touch with own father? Never.

Grace Blanchet promised to call the moment she’d spoken with her daughter.

David dialed again, this time his ex-wife’s number. The very sound of her on the answering machine message was enough to make his teeth grit. In contrast to Grace Blanchet, Miranda managed to imbue even her voice with a feminine plea that pushed every man’s buttons. What can you do for me? her voice seemed to ask. Her big, velvet-brown eyes had asked the same question. Men fell in line to answer. David had trouble believing he’d been dumb enough to fall for it himself.

Sometimes he wanted to shake Claire and say, Can’t you see how she uses people? She has no damn right to use you!

He clamped down on the words every time. Miranda was Claire’s mother. A child should grow up with some shred of respect for her own mother. He wouldn’t be the one to take that from her.

A call to the police gave him what he’d expected. Yes, sir, they had checked the bus station. No, sir, no sign of a girl answering the description of his daughter.

David called his office to find out what chaos was brewing there, but though he got so far as sitting down in front of his computer, he couldn’t work. Pictures of Claire trudging down the shoulder of the freeway kept intruding.

Damn it! She was so small, so childish, even for thirteen. Too childish to interest a rapist, he tried to convince himself but knew better. David tried to focus on the future, when—when—she was home again. A different counselor? She hadn’t given the first or second one a chance, and the latest wasn’t showing any more promise. A nanny who escorted her to school and picked her up afterward? He knew how that would go over.

“I’m not some stupid little kid!” she liked to yell at him, just before she stormed off to her bedroom. “Quit treating me like I’m in kindergarten!”

David was restlessly pacing when the phone rang. He pounced. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Whitcomb?”

Grace Blanchet. No mistaking that voice.

“Yes,” he said tersely. “Were you able to talk to your daughter?”

“I was, but she doesn’t know anything about Claire’s plans.” She sounded apologetic. “Linnet assumed she was home sick.”

“And you believed her?”

A momentary pause told him he’d offended even before she said crisply, “My daughter does not lie to me.”

David bowed his head and rubbed his neck. “I’m sorry. She was my best hope.”

Her voice softened. “I understand.”

Strangely, he suspected that she did. Damn right he preferred to think her kid was lying. He didn’t want her to be everything his daughter wasn’t. He didn’t want to give up hope that she knew how he could find Claire.

“If there’s anything I can do…” Her sympathy and kindness were as tangible as a touch. Most people didn’t mean it when they said that. She seemed to be an exception.

“There’s nothing.” David hated his own brusqueness but couldn’t seem to help himself. “The police will find her.”

“Yes. Of course they will. Please do let me know. We’ll…worry.”

We. Her good little girl and her.

David swore as he hung up the phone.

The deep wheeze of a truck climbing the hill outside turned his head. He didn’t give a damn whether some neighbor was moving or had just bought a living room full of new furniture. Still, big trucks with air brakes didn’t make it into this exclusive Lakemont neighborhood often. These streets were paved for Mercedes and BMWs and Lexuses.

Outside, a semi pulling a huge trailer that said Hendrix Hauling had stopped outside. A beefy guy was getting out and looking up at David’s house. As David watched, he circled to the passenger side of the truck.

By the time David had reached the front door and opened it, the man had escorted Claire to the porch.

“Found something that might belong to you,” he said.

Despite his daughter’s sulky mouth and hateful stare, David felt relief so intense, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

“Claire.” He stepped aside, controlling his voice with an effort. “You go up to your room. I’ll talk to you in a minute.”

She shook off the trucker’s grip and stalked past her father, racing up the stairs. Her bedroom door slammed, vibrating the lone etching that hung on the vestibule wall.

David said roughly, “I don’t know who you are or where you found her, but…thank you.”

“She was hitching just south of Renton.” He shook his head. “She tried to tell me she was sixteen, but I didn’t buy it.”

“Claire is thirteen.”

“About what I guessed. I’ve got kids myself. I thought about finding a police station, but I figured it wasn’t so far I couldn’t come back. When I said it was the cops or home, she chose home.”

“I’m surprised,” David said with a hint of bitterness. “We’re having our problems.”

“She told me. Said her mom wants her, but the courts gave custody to you.” The trucker wasn’t asking a question, but he was wondering all the same.

David didn’t usually talk about personal business with strangers, but this one had earned an answer.

“Her mother is an alcoholic. She wants Claire only to lean on. Claire was paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping and cooking, calling work to cover when her mom was too sick to go.”

“Being the adult,” the other man said slowly.

“She thinks her mother needs her. The truth is—” he grimaced “—her mother has found a new man and isn’t very interested. But I can’t tell her that.”

The trucker nodded. After an awkward moment, he stuck out his hand. “Make sure you tell her you were worried about her.”

David shook the man’s hand. “Thank you,” he said again, inadequately.

He watched his savior retrace his steps, climb back in the cab and laboriously back the truck into the culde-sac to turn it around. Claire had gotten lucky.

This time, David thought grimly.

Upstairs, music pounded from beneath Claire’s bedroom door, a deep throb that pulsed through the house. David braced himself and opened her door without knocking.

When she saw him, Claire flipped onto her stomach on the bed, as if the sight of her father was unbearable.

David headed straight for the CD player and turned the music off. Usually she would have protested. Today she knew better.

To her back, he said, “You scared me. Do you have any idea what can happen to a girl who gets into cars with strangers?”

She hugged her pillow and remained silent.

His hand itched to whack her bottom, although he’d never believed in spanking.

“We’ve talked about this, Claire. You live here now. If you’d made it to San Francisco, your mother would have shipped you right back to me.”

“No, she wouldn’t!” In a flash, the thirteen-year-old launched herself to her knees and faced him furiously. Her face was wet and swollen with tears. “Mom wants me!” she sobbed. “And you don’t! I can tell you don’t! Why won’t you let me go?”

“I do want you.” Hell, no, he didn’t, not anymore. But he loved her. Or at least the memory of the sweet sprite who had adored her daddy. It was that child he was determined to save from the alcoholic mother who used her as a crutch.

“You don’t!” Claire’s face crumpled and she flung herself back onto her belly. Her shoulders shook with sobs.

David made himself sit on the edge of the bed. He’d forgotten how to say I love you. She wouldn’t have believed him anyway. His hand made an abortive move toward her, but he knew damn well she would have knocked it away.

“I’m sorry you miss your mother.” His every word sounded wooden, and he swore inwardly. “She’s an alcoholic. She can’t take care of you. She can’t even take care of herself.”

“We were doing fine!”

“You weren’t doing fine.” He knew he was wasting his breath. Logic never penetrated with her. But he had no other weapon, so he tried, anyway. “You were missing school, getting Ds on your report card. You were terrified of being alone at night.” And her mother didn’t want to stay home with her.

“So what if I’m not good at school!” she flared. “Mom says she wasn’t, either!”

“You have the ability to do fine,” he said grimly. “If you’d turn in all your assignments.”

She threw one miserable, furious look at him over her shoulder. “That’s all you care about! That I be some perfect daughter. Well, I’m not!”

He’d thought enviously of Grace Blanchet’s daughter today. The memory stung. Did he resent Claire, because she wasn’t a model daughter he could brag about?

Wearily he said, “All I ask is that we be able to hold conversations without them blowing up in my face. That I not be dragged away from work because you’ve taken off again. Is that too much to hope for?”

“I hate you!” she screamed, though the words were muffled in her pillow.

David jerked. Pain engulfed his chest. He stood and started to leave the room, forcing himself to stop in the doorway. “Fine. But you will live with me, like it or not.” He didn’t—quite—slam the door when he left the room.

“I HATE HIM,” Claire repeated gloomily.

She and her best friend, Linnet Blanchet, ignored their school lunches. The salad bar wasn’t that good, anyway. Linnet had wanted to know everything about yesterday. About Claire running away, and whether it had been scary, and what had happened. Claire told her the truth except for the scary part. She’d shrugged and said it was no big deal when really she hated hitchhiking. The cars and trucks would rush by, the wind sucking her toward the tires, and sometimes gravel would pepper her painfully. She’d be there praying someone would stop, but afraid at the same time of who it might be. She was always hoping some nice old couple would pull up, and then they’d offer to drive her all the way to her mother’s front door even if it was two states away, because they felt sorry for her.

Linnet’s brow crinkled. “Why can’t you live with your mom if you want?”

She gave her pat answer. She didn’t want to tell even Linnet the truth. “Because Mom couldn’t afford really good lawyers. Not like Dad’s.”

Linnet was stubborn. “But why does he want you so much?”

“I don’t know!” Seeing the way Linnet flinched at her quick, furious response, Claire touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just, he’s never home. When he is, all we do is fight. I think he got custody just so Mom couldn’t have me. You know?”

“That’s really mean,” her friend marveled.

She nodded. Her misery burst out of her. “I won’t stay with him. I won’t!”

“But even if you get to your mom, he’ll know where to find you and then you’ll have to come back anyway. Unless your mom is willing to go into hiding with you.” Her face brightened. “She could. If you moved to, like, Idaho or Missouri or something, and she was really careful and didn’t use credit cards or anything, he’d never find you.”

Linnet was used to thinking practically. “Mom is talking about getting married. It’s this guy who I think is really rich. He’d have to come with us, and then how could he get to his money? If you use a bank machine or something, they find you.”

Linnet had seen the same movies. She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe your mom could forget about him. If she knew how unhappy you are.” The gaze she gave Claire held a hint of a question.

The bell rang, making both girls jump. Claire hadn’t noticed how the cafeteria was emptying out. She stood with Linnet and they carried their untouched trays to the busing station, where they dumped the food and put the utensils in the right tubs.

On the way out, Claire said reluctantly, “My mom isn’t that good at taking care of herself. I do a lot of stuff for her. She gets alimony from my dad, and child support when I lived with her.” Claire knew, because she’d gotten her mother to sign the checks, her hand wavering when she’d had too much to drink, and then Claire had deposited them and bought groceries with the cash. “She’d lose all that money.”

“But she’d have you,” Linnet pointed out inescapably.

Claire didn’t want to say that she had asked her mother. Just a couple of weeks ago. She’d called on a Saturday, about noon, which was the best time. Her mom would be up, but she wouldn’t have had her first drink yet.

“Clairabelle!” Mom had cried, her voice lilting with pleasure. “Oh, I miss you so much.”

“I hate it here,” Claire said with quiet intensity. “I want to come home.”

“Just a minute, honey.” A few clicks and thumps later, her mother sighed. “Coffee. I desperately need that first cup.”

Just as she desperately needed that first drink a few hours later. She was always saying she’d quit, or cut back, but it was hard. At school, Claire had learned that alcoholism was a disease. Her mother couldn’t help herself.

“Now, what were you saying?” Mom asked.

Claire repeated herself.

“You know your father has custody now. The judge decided you have to live with him. I tried.”

“What if we ran away?” Claire had been thinking about it. “If we just moved, and didn’t tell him. You could get a job, and I could baby-sit, and we could start all over.”

“Honey…” Her mother paused. “What would I do for a living?”

“Well…” That took her aback. “What you do now.” Mom was a bookkeeper. Wouldn’t it be easy to do that anywhere?

“I’d need references. About the only kind of job you can get without any is to be waitress or work at a fast-food restaurant. Can you picture me behind the counter at The Burger Quickie?”

“I could help! Besides baby-sitting, I could maybe mow lawns or clean houses or something.” She’d trailed off, knowing already that her mother wouldn’t do it.

“I love you, too,” Mom said sadly. “But what you’re suggesting is impossible. Maybe, if your father was abusive, but he’s not a bad man. I know he’ll take good care of you.”

“But I hate it here!” she’d said again. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she was hunched around the telephone as if it were a magic talisman, her only hope.

“You know, I’m not the world’s best mother.”

“I like you just the way you are!” Claire said fiercely. She had to swipe away tears.

“I’m flattered,” her mother said lightly, “but I need to go now. Pete’s picking me up in…gracious, less than half an hour! You know me. Noon, and I still look a mess.”

Claire sniffed. “Have you…have you had breakfast?”

“Oh, just coffee.” She laughed. “Well, you heard me pouring it, didn’t you? I’ve always told you, I’m not a breakfast eater, but you never believed me, did you?”

If Claire didn’t make it, she wouldn’t bother. In fact, she hardly ate at all if Claire didn’t put a meal on the table.

“I’ll get a bite while I’m out,” she’d say airily. She went out a lot, most evenings, and came home after midnight even on weeknights. Claire would hear her fumbling at the door, the key missing the lock, until finally Mom got it open. Then a whispered goodbye to whoever had brought her, and then thumps as she knocked into furniture on her way to the bedroom. Sometimes she would pause in the hall outside Claire’s room, a dark silhouette that swayed unsteadily.

It was Claire’s job to get her up in the morning. Sometimes she’d miss her bus when Mom groaned and put the pillow over her head and wouldn’t get up at all, or had to run to the bathroom to throw up. Her mother had a delicate stomach. She was always better if she’d had a real dinner the evening before. Claire wondered if Mom was sick every morning now.

“Is everything okay at work?” she asked, not wanting to say Have you been fired again?

“Oh, they’re being the usual poops, but I’m fine. They need me,” Mom declared. She had noticed the clock again and said a hasty goodbye.

Today, the last thing Claire said to Linnet before they separated to go to class was, “Well, I won’t stay with Dad, no matter what! Even if I have to live on the street in Seattle.”

In her math class, the teacher handed out a quiz. They were doing graphing, and Claire didn’t get it. She hadn’t even opened her book in three days. She stared at the paper and decided not to bother scribbling any answers at all. Instead she stood up and said, “Mr. Wilson, I don’t feel good. I need to go to the nurse’s office.”

His eyes narrowed. “Fine, Ms. Whitcomb, I’ll write you a pass, but I’ll expect you after school to make up the quiz.”

She ignored the whispers. “I have to take the bus.”

“Then tomorrow during the lunch hour.”

“Um…sure.” She didn’t quite curl her lip. Yeah, right.

The nurse bought her story of an upset stomach, since she didn’t often use it. She spent the rest of the afternoon lying down in the nurse’s office, only leaving when it was time to catch the bus.

She was hurrying out, trying to ignore all the creeps who went to this school, when a girl she really hated named Alicia called out from a bus line, “I heard you ran away.” Her expression was avid. “Did you sell yourself?”

Claire looked her up and down and said coolly, “Is that what you would have done?” Amid laughter, she continued toward the bus.

“Claire!”

She turned at the sound of her friend’s voice. Linnet was tall and skinny, but she took dance classes, which made her graceful. Her light brown hair hung all the way to her waist. Right now, she looked pretty with her cheeks flushed as she rushed up to Claire.

“I’ve got to go, but I had this idea,” she said, the words tumbling out. “Maybe you could live with me.”

“You?”

“I’ll bet my mom would agree. I’ll ask her, if you think you’d want to.”

Dumbfounded, Claire stared at her. “You really think she’d say yes?”

“I know she likes you.” Linnet glanced toward her bus line. “I really, really have to go. Do you want me to ask?”

Little fizzes that might have been excitement or hope rose in Claire’s chest. What she wanted most was to live with her mom, but until she could figure out a way to do that…

Somebody bumped her from behind, and she was being pushed away from Linnet toward the yawning door of the bus. “Yes!” she called.

“I’ll phone, okay?” Grinning, Linnet ran.

In a daze, Claire found a seat and didn’t even care that it was next to some seventh grader who had opened her notebook and was actually doing homework—homework! Claire was just glad not to be bugged.

Claire didn’t know why Linnet’s mother would take in somebody else’s kid, but Linnet had sounded so sure. Was there any chance at all that Mrs. Blanchet really would agree?

If she did, what would Dad say? Claire frowned. He had all kinds of reasons why she couldn’t go home to Mom, but none of them applied to Mrs. Blanchet. She didn’t drink, and Linnet went to school every day—in fact, she was almost a straight A student, which was an argument Claire could use in her favor. But Mrs. Blanchet didn’t seem to make Linnet do stuff. When Claire was spending the night, she’d ask for help sometimes, but nicely.

“Any chance you girls could empty the dishwasher?” she’d say with a smile.

Linnet was never grounded, like Claire seemed to be half the time.

It had to be better than Dad’s.

She hugged her day pack to her chest and stared out the window past the seventh grader.

If Mrs. Blanchet said yes, and Claire’s father said no, she’d never forgive him.

Never.