One Summer (21 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Didn’t she know how that felt? Not that infidelity was why she’d broken off her engagement. She also noticed that Gabriel had left out the reason he’d gotten married. He shrugged. “It worked out in the end. She’s happy, living in San Diego, married to some guy who sells cars. BMWs. They have two kids—neither of which are mine in case you’re wondering—and another one on the way.”

Amazingly, he didn’t seem to hold any grudges. Then again, perhaps he hadn’t really cared. Maybe, a little voice in the back of her mind warned, he wasn’t the type of man to care about any woman. Maybe he didn’t have any family because he truly meant exactly what he’d said about not wanting one. Which, again, made him totally the wrong man for her.

“Did you love her?” She pressed a hand against her jittery stomach and realized she was holding her breath waiting for an answer.

“No.”

Okay, that was a surprise. She’d honestly expected him to at least claim to have
thought
he’d loved the former Mrs. St. James. Or tried. The way she’d tried to love Ethan. It appeared he wasn’t exaggerating about that Marine honor-code thing, which apparently also included a tenet about not lying.

“I guess, looking back, I just wanted to
be
married. To have someone waiting for me when I came back from deployment. Someone who cared whether I lived or died.”

“You wanted a home.”

This time the glance he slanted her way held more question than annoyance. She watched as he processed her comment.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess that might’ve been it.” The bridge lowered.

“But you changed your mind.”

Another pause. “I suppose I did.” He glanced over at her again as they crossed over the harbor into town. Believe me, I’m not carrying any baggage from the breakup. Things happen. There’s an old saying that if the Marines wanted a guy to have a wife, they’d issue him one. It’s probably close to the mark, since I sure as hell wasn’t the only person in our unit to get a Dear John e-mail.

“I’ve moved on. The only reason I even brought the subject up is what you said about that quid pro quo deal. I’ll admit I was kind of heavy-handed, the way I pushed you about your fiancé, so I figured I ought to be up-front with you.”

“I appreciate that.” Charity also wondered how much of the surprising revelation about his failed marriage had been his way of warning her, yet again, that he wasn’t a guy looking for any forever-afters.

He nodded brusquely and turned his attention back to driving as the Jeep bumped over the railroad tracks, past the Douchetts’ bait shop, then turned onto Harborview Drive.

Neither of them spoke the rest of the way back to the house.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Amanda said as Charity stood in the window watching Gabe and the still-unnamed Shih Tzu drive away.

The dog, whose ecstatic bark had risked shattering every piece of glass in the house, had literally leaped into its rescuer’s arms the minute they’d walked in the door. Although he’d held on to keep it from bouncing off him, Charity would know Gabriel was really hooked when she heard him call the poor thing something other than
mutt
or
foo-foo dust mop
.

“About what?”

“About that Marine.”

“Former Marine.”

“I’m told there’s no such thing.” She came over and stood next to Charity, watching as the Jeep drove away. “He’s a rolling stone, you know.”

“I sort of figured that out from the fact that his house has wheels.” The red taillights, blurred by the rain, disappeared around the corner and back out of town. He’d told her the campground where he was staying was located on the ocean side of Shelter Bay. “But he’s going to stay in town for the couple weeks to help out with the camp.”

“Really?” Amanda glanced over at Charity, her eyes gleaming with feminine speculation. “He doesn’t exactly seem like the camp-counselor type. I suspect his reason to stay in this admittedly charming little burg has a lot more to do with you than a bunch of foster kids.”

The pitiful thing was, Charity hoped her mother was right for once about a man’s intentions.

“He alluded to some not-all-that-pleasant family stuff growing up. I think he may identify with the kids.”

“He’s also attracted to you.”

Amanda might be clueless when it came to marriage. But surely she must have picked up a lot of knowledge about male behavior over the course of all her marriages?

“He seems to be.”

“And it’s mutual.”

“Yes.” She wasn’t about to try to deny it. “And you don’t exactly sound thrilled at that idea.”

“I worry about you. That you’ll have your heart broken.”

The weird thing was that, despite her unconventional upbringing, despite her mother being a major diva, Charity knew that her mother truly did worry about her. She’d always been more like a girlfriend than a parent. There’d even been more than one occasion when Charity felt more like a big sister than a daughter. But the one thing she’d always known was that her mother loved her.

“I know what I’m doing.” Besides, although she might treat animals, she’d taken enough anatomy to know that human hearts couldn’t actually break from a failed love affair.

“Where have I heard that before?” Her mother tapped a scarlet nail against her cover-model perfect teeth. “Oh, I know. It’s what I always tell you whenever I get engaged.”

Charity laughed. “You know,” she said, putting her arm around her mother’s waist, “growing up, there were so many times I wished I had a normal family.”

“There were many times growing up I wished I could give you a normal family.” Amanda sighed. “And I’m not dodging responsibility here, but I think it’s also partly why I kept getting married. Instead of merely hooking up like people seem to do these days. You weren’t the only one who wanted a normal family. Whatever
normal
is,” she tacked on. “Do you believe that’s even possible?”

Charity thought about the people she knew. From the stories Sofia told, while her marriage had been more adventurous than some, as she and her botanist husband had traveled the world searching for herbs and plants, their marriage had remained rock solid to the end.

Fred and Ethel were still obviously in love, as were Adèle and Bernard Douchett. And the sizzle between Sax Douchett’s parents had been all too obvious at Cole’s wedding.

“I think it is,” she decided. At least she hoped so. “It’s probably not easy. And I imagine you have to work at it.” Surely the loss of a daughter, along with her husband’s cancer, must have challenged Sofia’s marriage. And she suspected Adèle’s injury-caused dementia, which she’d learned about while getting her hair trimmed at Cut Loose, wasn’t easy on either her or Bernard. “But yes, I believe it’s possible.”

“Which is why you’re still yearning for an idyllic all-American family of your own.”

Yearn
may be putting it a bit too strongly, since I’m honestly happy where I am in my life right now. But yes.” Charity couldn’t deny it. “I know it sounds hopelessly outdated. And not the least bit feminist.” She sighed. “But I do. Eventually. When the time’s right.”

“Well, then.” Her mother leaned her head against Charity’s shoulder. “I want it for you, too.”

They stood there in companionable silence, looking out through the rain-streaked window as the Shelter Bay lighthouse atop the cliff on the other side of the bridge flashed its bright yellow warning.

It was raining as the buses began rolling into the Rainbow Lake Lodge parking lot. Having learned early on to keep his emotions to himself, Johnny put on his most sullen face and wrapped himself in the cloak of isolation that had protected him like a force field during all his years in the system. No one looking at him would guess how hard he was telling himself not to cry when Angel got off one of those buses.

She was coming in from Bend, which, being on the other side of the Cascade Mountains, made it as about as remote as if she’d been sent to the moon. He’d been promised they’d have a chance to meet so they could say their good-byes before she left Salem, where they’d both been living at the time, though in different homes. But the caseworker had lied—surprise, surprise—or just been incompetent, which was just as likely, and his sister had been driven out of the city in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, he knew a girl who worked an hour every afternoon in Angel’s elementary school office, filing papers for business-class credit. She also, for some reason he’d never figured out, actually liked him, because it hadn’t taken much—just a few desperate kisses beneath the bleachers and a promise of more to come—to get the girl to look up Angel’s school transfer sheet, which had revealed her new address.

That had been the first and only time Johnny had run away. He’d wanted to lots of times, but no way was he going to desert his baby sister. Bad enough that, like him, she’d never known a father. But she’d also been a lot younger when their mother had been taken away, so she didn’t have the survival skills he’d taught himself. Johnny was the only family Angel knew, which was why he’d promised himself that the minute he turned eighteen and got out of the system, he was going to get her back so they could be together all the time. Instead of the few-times-a-year picnics held so prospective parents could check the kids out to see whether there were any they might want to adopt.

As soon as he’d gotten off the Greyhound bus in Bend, he’d found himself facing a sheriff’s deputy and a really unhappy caseworker. But showing she had some heart, she did let him visit his sister before she took him back to Salem. Not at the place where his sister was staying, but at a pancake house, where Angel had a strawberry waffle piled high with berries and whipped cream, while he ordered his usual favorite—blueberry pancakes—which tasted like cardboard. Then again, he figured nothing would’ve tasted good, the way he was feeling.

Thirty minutes later, after ignoring the sharp warning look from the caseworker, Johnny promised Angel he’d visit her again. Then he was sitting in the passenger seat of the official state car, headed back over the Cascades.

That had been nine long months ago. As he stood beneath the drizzling sky, Johnny zeroed in on every kid getting off each bus, watching for Angel’s blond hair, which was as soft and pale as dandelion fluff.

Years spent in the system had taught him how to sense adults’ moods, and he knew the various caseworkers who’d traveled with the kids to camp just wanted them all to line up and get inside so they could be sorted into proper groups. But the old couple who ran the place seemed to understand what their campers were feeling, because they stubbornly allowed all the early arrivals to wait and watch for their sisters and brothers.

Impatience was making his skin itch. Johnny felt as if he’d been stung by a swarm of mosquitoes.

“She’ll be here soon,” Ethel, the camp owner, assured him. Round as an apple, with pink cheeks to match, she was the most optimistic person Johnny had ever met. But not that fake kind of cheeriness adults put on when they didn’t know how to talk to kids. He’d figured out right away last year that she was the real deal.

“Maybe she missed the bus. Or got moved again. To a different home.” Maybe she wasn’t even in Oregon anymore. He and Angel had been moved to different towns over the years, but did the system allow them to be moved out of state? Or maybe she’d gotten adopted and no one had bothered to tell him because they thought he might run away again.

“No.” Ethel shook her head. “Angel’s on the list. Fred called a few minutes ago and checked to make sure.”

He wasn’t used to people actually going out of their way for him, so even something as simple as making a phone call caused a lump in Johnny’s throat. Since he had no idea what to say to such an act of generosity, he just jammed his hands in his back pockets and kept looking down the treelined gravel road.

There were about twenty kids left. All standing with him, all waiting for the bus that probably wasn’t coming. Although Johnny figured they had a lot in common, he didn’t talk to any of them. Nor did they talk to him. Oh, yeah. He wasn’t the only kid who’d developed a force field.

“There, see?” Ethel put her arm around Johnny’s shoulder and hugged him against her fluffy side as the yellow bus, smaller than the earlier ones, turned the last corner and came into view. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“She might not be on the bus.”

She clucked her tongue. Not in a disapproving way, but he knew he’d disappointed her with his negativity. She might not be such a Mary Poppins if their situations were reversed. But he couldn’t be mad at her. Not when she wore the aroma of oatmeal cookies, the way he’d always fantasized a grandmother should smell. Whenever he’d allow himself to think about such things, which wasn’t very often, because remembering how his own grandmother had tossed Angel and him into the grinding wheels of the system only made him madder.

Then the red braking lights lit up, the accordion door opened with a squeal and a hiss, and five kids burst free of the bus, Angel among them.

She shrieked when she saw him standing there and, ignoring the caseworker who tried to grab her arm, ran straight toward Johnny, threw herself into his arms, and clung.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t be here,” she said against his neck. “Some mean girls on the bus said you might not come.”

“Never happen,” he assured her.

“But what if you got adopted, like they said maybe happened?”

Like that was going to happen in this lifetime. “Then I’d make sure the family adopted you, too,” he assured her, even though the first thing he’d learned about the system was that kids weren’t in any position to control anything about their lives. “They may keep us apart. But they’ll never separate us. We’re a team.”

“Like SpongeBob and Patrick Star,” she said.