Good Morning Heartache (22 page)

Alexis reached out a hand,
and he met hers with his. She pulled him inside and shut the door behind them.
Barefoot, she led him upstairs to her bedroom. She let go of his hand and sat
down on a black chaise lounge next to a wall of windows, tucking her knees
under her chin. Her hand motioned for him to join her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“A boy.” She was terse and
angry. “Riley ran off with the guy she ‘loves’. She’s pissed at me because I
wouldn’t release her trust fund to her.”

“Why didn’t you?” He had
thought it was an innocent question, but the glare in her eyes told him
otherwise.

“I don’t have any control
over when she gets her trust. I pay her school bills and give her an allowance
out of it, but that money comes from an allowance that I receive on her behalf
since she is a minor. She can’t have unlimited access to the money. It’s not
how it works, not yet anyway.”

He didn’t know what to say.
This was a situation he never had to deal with until now. He was happy not to
have any brothers or sisters to have to take care of, since he would’ve been
the only one to do it.

“I really screwed this up,”
she said. “I should have done better. I should have done something, but I just
threw her into boarding school and figured she’d be okay—better, even—without
me. I should have warned her about boys and love. I should have dispelled that
myth when I killed Santa and the Easter Bunny.”

“You still have a chance.
She’s got to show up at some point, right?” She leaned against him, the warmth
of her body radiating through his layers.

“I don’t know.”

Ryan ran his fingers through
her hair. It was silky against the roughness of his fingertips. Her chest
swelled in and out against his body. A pinch in his heart was telling him
something that he didn’t want to admit, but with her lying against him, taking
comfort in his arms, Ryan couldn’t help but notice.

He wasn’t sure how it
happened, but that strange something that he felt whenever Alexis was around
had turned into love. It wasn’t just that he could love her, it was that he
did. It was a love that made him want to hold her, listen to her, help her, and
make her feel better. He softly kissed her forehead.

It was the one thing he
never wanted. To love a woman who couldn’t love him back. It had ruined his
father’s life, and it didn’t seem worth it to Ryan. Now, he didn’t have a
choice. Maybe when he got back to Manhattan, and after a few weeks’ time, he’d
forget about her. The thought of leaving made his chest tight, and he was
suddenly wishing that he hadn’t torn up that letter.

He leaned against the back
of the chaise lounge, and she settled herself snugly into the space between his
arm and side.

Just a little longer, he
thought. I’ll love her just a little while longer.

Chapter 15

The engine
of the Porsche hummed a little louder as Riley punched the gas pedal into the
floorboard. All the windows were open and her hair whipped around behind her.
She couldn’t get the smile off of her face. This was too good.

She had been with Jimmy a
whole day already, and it was the best day of her life. They hadn’t done
anything exciting. In fact, most of the time was spent packing or cleaning, but
she wasn’t at boarding school or with her sister, so the day didn’t have any
choice but to be better.

She was leaving Franklin for
the last time. Jimmy was driving his friend’s truck loaded with his stuff, and
they were going to meet in Boston. Riley decided to leave later. They were just
going to a hotel tonight, and it was better for her to avoid the major
interstates and travel when it was dark. Her sister certainly would have
reported the car stolen by now, and she needed it until she could get into the
city.

Jimmy knew a guy that would
give them good money for it, even if the police were already looking for it,
and that’s what they were going to live on until her trust was released on her
birthday. It should be more than enough to support them both.

She sped down the 140, but
not too fast. Every once and a while she would gun it to 65 miles per hour and
then take her foot off the gas and let the car slow back to the lame speed
limit of 45 where she would stay as long as she could stand it.

Riley still had most of the
drive ahead, but she was struggling to stay awake because the night was dark,
the street was unlit, and she was exhausted from all the work she did that day.
She stretched her eyes open, and the cool air hitting her face helped keep her
focused.

She wished she could stop
somewhere for a cup of coffee, but Jimmy was strict in his instructions to her.
She couldn’t have food or drink in the car because they wanted to get as much
money as they could for it, and she couldn’t stop because she’d be more likely
to get caught. Riley was lucky to be driving the Porsche at all. Jimmy sounded
a lot like Alexis when he was lecturing her about the car, but it didn’t matter
because he was trying to protect her, whereas Alexis would only be worried about
her car.

Originally she had planned
to take the Volvo. She couldn’t believe her luck when Alexis had left the
Porsche’s keys on the counter. It was more risky, but the payoff would be much
better.

Riley drove into a wooded
stretch, where she knew cops couldn’t hide, and she sped up to 55 miles per
hour. It was even darker on this part of the road, and she was eerily alone. It
wouldn’t be long until she was in the suburbs of Boston, and the roads wouldn’t
be black and abandoned.

She put all of her focus on
the illuminated area in front of her car. The road curved slightly, and
suddenly a small, dark figure appeared in the middle of her path. She swerved
to miss the creature and lost control of the car. It spun and slid off the side
of the road and came to a sudden and violent stop. Riley was smacked in the
face by the air bag and her head hit the seat hard. Then there was a sudden
stillness.

Riley’s head spun, and she
threw up on what was left of the passenger seat. The last thing she was aware
of before she passed out was the putrid smell of skunk spray.

§

Jarrod Saltalamacchia,
catcher for the Boston Red Sox, stepped up to home plate, bat in hand, at
Yankee Stadium. He stared at CC Sabathia, an intense glare against the late
afternoon. Sabathia wound up and sent a slider gliding toward Saltalamacchia,
who began to swing, but checked up when the pitch didn’t break.

“Strike one!” bellowed the
ump behind him.

“C’mon, Salty! Hit the ball!”
Alexis yelled at her big screen TV as she threw a decorative pillow at the wall
just beneath it. “That ump’s gotta be out of his mind to call that a strike. It
was outside by a foot and a half at least.”

“You want another beer?”
Ryan asked from behind her.

“No,” she snarled back. “If
Riley calls, I need to be sober.”

“Okay, okay,” he retreated
with his hands up defensively. “Are you sure you want to be watching baseball
right now? I think it’s winding you up.”

“This is the only thing
keeping me from going out of my mind.”

It had been almost two full
days, and Riley still wasn’t home. She hadn’t even called. Alexis was beginning
to think it wasn’t going to happen, but she didn’t want to risk that Riley
would need help, and she wouldn’t be around to take her call or greet her at
the door.

Ryan had stayed at her house
since the morning she called. He was a beacon of good sense and rationality
when Alexis had none. After he’d first arrived on Thursday morning, Alexis was
ready to go out scouring the state, but he’d stopped her. At the time, it had
made sense to her, but he convinced her that it was pointless and the chances
of Alexis finding Riley that way were almost nonexistent.

He did convince her to file
a police report that morning, but the sheriff’s department didn’t seem to be
too concerned with the situation, which really shouldn’t have surprised her.
They traced Riley’s credit cards and determined she was in Boston, and then
turned it over to Boston PD. They hadn’t heard anything on that end. Again, Alexis
was ready to drive down each road of the whole city and do the detective work
that the police department apparently didn’t have time for, but Ryan told her
to let them do their jobs and wait for news.

Waiting drove Alexis crazy.
She wasn’t one to wait around for other people to do things, but realistically,
this wasn’t something that she could do. Not with the little information that
she had. At least not effectively. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would
get lucky and see her car parked out on the street somewhere.

Alexis stood up as Salty
made contact with the ball. It lined hard and low, hitting the dirt just to the
left of second base and past Derek Jeter’s gloved hand.

“Ha, ha!” Alexis clapped her
hands quickly. “Did you see that? That’s why I need to watch the game. Nothing
could put me in a better mood than that.”

Ryan smiled at her, and she
turned back to the TV. “How about something to eat? I could make something.”

“With what? There’s no food
in the house.”

“We could order something,”
he suggested.

Alexis ran a hand over her
stomach. She hadn’t had more than a few crackers since Riley left, but her
stomach ached, and she didn’t want to eat.

“Order something for
yourself. I’m alright.” He’d been pressing her all day to eat something, and
their conversations were becoming repetitive.

She’d been enjoying Ryan’s
company. After he was there for a while, Alexis could feel herself relaxing a
little bit. She even wrote a couple of new short stories and the first chapter
of her novel. Writing, like the baseball game, distracted her from the fact
that she had failed as a sister and guardian. When she wasn’t lucky enough to
have a Red Sox-Yankees game to watch or the motivation to write, Ryan kept her
distracted with Scrabble or a movie or something. The one tactic he didn’t use
was sex.

Everything had changed
between them. The guy who couldn’t keep his hands off of her at the beginning
of the week hadn’t touched her except to hug her when she asked him to. And
while sex would be the ultimate distraction, she was strangely comforted that
he wasn’t taking advantage of the situation.

He didn’t speak of love or
relationships any more, and she wondered if the encounter had happened at all
or if it was just a symptom of heat stroke.

The doorbell rang, and
Alexis jumped up off the couch. A nervous tickle swelled in her abdomen. Please
be her, she thought as she charged down the hallway.

She unlocked the deadbolt
and swung the door open while she drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Officer Danny Moreno was standing on her stoop.

“You never bring good news,”
she said, her whole body visibly shaking. “What happened?”

With an even tone and a
blank face, he said, “Ms. Conner, we have located your missing vehicle.”

“And Riley?” Alexis’s chest
ached and she was sure that her heart was beating so fast it was going to give
her a heart attack.

Officer Moreno’s face
dropped and he looked at the floor. “She wasn’t in there. There was an
accident, but we have no way of knowing who was inside the car when it
happened.”

Alexis swayed backward. She
was sure she was going to fall, but Ryan stepped behind her and held her up
with his body and an arm around her waist.

“What
did
happen?”
she choked out.

“It appears that the driver
lost control of the vehicle. When the driver attempted to regain control, the
vehicle spun off the road, hitting a tree. The passenger side of the car is
severely damaged and the air bags were deployed.”

Alexis didn’t have anything
more to say, so she walked away and sat on the bottom step of the staircase.

She heard Ryan and Danny
Moreno talking but couldn’t hear what they were saying. She couldn’t think,
much less concentrate on a conversation. Every time a thought passed through
her mind, it was too painful to think any further.

Ryan stood in front of her. “This
could be a lot worse,” he said quietly.

“I know.” Alexis bit her lip
hard and sniffled. She looked down at her watch. It was almost five. She
couldn’t delay any longer. She had been dreading this, but now it was the only
reasonable thing she could think of doing.

“Can you hand me my phone?”
she sighed. She could feel the tears welling in the bottoms of her eyes.

“Don’t call her again.
She’ll call. Maybe not tonight, but she will call.”

“I’m not going to call
Riley. I have to call someone else.”

He gave her a suspicious
stare but then went into the kitchen. When he came back, he slowly handed her
phone to her. With a few touches, Alexis could hear the line ringing. By the
third ring she hoped that she hadn’t missed her chance, so she was startled
when she heard a voice on the other end of the line.

“Make it fast. I was just
about to leave.”

“Dr. Lehrer? It’s Alexis.”
The phone line was silent for a moment, but the woman on the other end didn’t
acknowledge her. “I can’t make it on Monday. Something has come up.”

The line was silent again
for a few moments. “I have everything set up for Monday. If you can’t make it,
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again.”

Alexis bit the side of her
lip, holding back her tears. “I understand.”

“This could be it for you.
Regina doesn’t take well to being cancelled on. This is last minute. Are you
sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Alexis hung up the phone and
flung it on the stair before Dr. Lehrer started asking too many questions.