The Reckoning (5 page)

Linda glanced at her open notebook one last time and then shut its tagboard cover. With a deep breath, she exited her bedroom and hurried for the guest cottage's front door. She heard the rhythmic
phizz-wizz, phizz-wizz
of the rowing machine mechanism coming from the workout room and was glad she could pinpoint Emmett's exact location. She couldn't take an
other surprise from him and still keep her composure in front of Nancy. Nan, she corrected herself, using the abbreviation that Ricky had coined. The shortened name had stuck.

Linda wanted Nan to see her at her best and getting better.

The Armstrongs' cook let her in the back door and then guided her through the kitchen to where Nancy was waiting for her in the small parlor. Before a wide window looking out into the garden, a tea cart was set with two places. Nan herself was waiting for Linda on a floral couch angled in a corner of the sunny room.

“There you are!” The older woman beamed at Linda and rose to her feet to embrace her.

“Am I late?” Linda kissed her cheek and then sat against the cushions.

“No, no. I'm just anxious to hear how you're settling in.”

“Wonderful. Great. Perfect. The guest house is so comfortable and charming. So convenient and cozy.” Linda silenced herself before she babbled another wave of adjectives. Too many sounded insincere, she reminded herself. Worse, too many sounded as if she belonged back in rehab.

After all the Armstrongs had done for her and for Ricky, she couldn't fail in her bid to make herself a new life.

“And Emmett?” Nan asked. “How are the two of you getting along?”

“Emmett?” At the sound of his name, a vision of him popped into Linda's head. He'd looked dark and sleek when she'd stumbled, sleep stupored, into the kitchen two mornings ago. His still damp hair had been brushed back from his forehead and he'd been wearing that dark, forbidding expression that appeared to be his habit. But she'd made him smile, and later…later…

“Linda?”

She started, her gaze jumping back to Nan's face. “What?”

“I asked about Emmett and you seemed to lose your train of thought.”

Linda felt the heat of embarrassment climb her cheeks. The train had been about to travel into dangerous, distracting territory. Another lingering symptom of brain injury was that her concentration could easily wander. “Emmett's fine,” she said, focusing on Nan's gentle blue eyes. “He took me grocery shopping on Friday and then to meet Ricky after school.”

“I heard about that,” Nan said, reaching out to pat Linda's forearm. “I told your son he should have let you give him a ride home.”

Your son.
Her son. Ricky. She had to get better for him. She had to learn how to be a strong, whole person because her son was her responsibility.

If not her love.

That traitorous thought whispered through her brain, and she couldn't squelch it. Loving Ricky would come in time, just as relearning to make coffee, relearning to drive and all the other things she had to do would come back, now that she was awake and out of rehab.

They would all come back…wouldn't they? Tears stung the corners of her eyes and she looked away to hide them from the older woman.

“Linda dear—”

Whatever Nancy was about to say was interrupted by the cook, who entered the room carrying a tray with two steaming soup bowls. It gave Linda time to gather her composure. Eating the delicious chicken tortilla soup gave her a boost of optimism that only homemade soup could provide.

Several spoonfuls later, she smiled across the table at Nancy. “And how have you been? Isn't tomorrow your bridge day?”

“No, that's Wednesday. Tomorrow's Tuesday, when I volunteer in Ricky's classroom.” Nan looked down at her bowl, hesitated. “Would you…”

No.
She was going to ask Linda to accompany her. She was going to ask Linda to play mother at Ricky's school. Hadn't she already failed at that on Friday?
Change the subject, avoid the request,
she thought in desperation. “What do you know about Emmett?”

“Emmett?”

Once again, his name sent Linda's mind on another detour. Emmett had kissed her in the kitchen. It was another kindness, a comfort, some human-to-human contact. That was all. But it felt like so much more to her. His hard mouth against hers had sent prickles at a run over her chin and down her neck. Prickles that tightened her nipples, that then turned to tingles that slid down and between her thighs.

Her knees had gone as soft as her head.

Then she'd experienced what they called in rehab a “flood,” when she found herself awash in her emotions. And just thinking about that kiss made her experience it all over again—her thoughts, her actions, her language skills overwhelmed by the temptation and tenderness in that one, simple, lip-to-lip lock.

“Linda?”

She jerked her gaze to Nan's once again.
Cover, cover, cover,
she reminded herself.
Don't let her see how far from whole you still are.

Marshaling her wits and her composure, she pasted on a smile. “Sorry. As I was saying, what do you know about—”
Not Emmett again!
“—Emmett's brother. Emmett's brother, Jason.”

“Jason.” Nan frowned. “Why are you asking about him?”

Because he seems like a safe enough topic.
Certainly safer
than Ricky or Emmett himself. “He came up in conversation with Emmett. I recall he was the one who kidnapped Lily a few months ago, but I'm not clear on any other details about him.”

Nan shook her head. “It's one of those sad stories that defy explanation. How can one son turn out so bad, how can one man create such havoc?”

“He did more than kidnap Lily? That I remember, of course, but Emmett said he's also murdered some others. And that Ryan is a distant relative. Is that why Lily was targeted?”

“The connection between the Jamisons and the Fortunes is one of those sagas that more than one family could probably find hiding along with the skeletons in their closets. Ryan told Dean and me about it before his death, and apparently it's a story that Jason Jamison knew as well—and then twisted in his mind to become the motivation for his crimes.”

“What exactly
is
the connection between the Jamisons and the Fortunes?”

“It's a
who,
” Nan replied. “Kingston Fortune, Ryan's father.”

And Ricky's grandfather, Linda thought. Cameron, Ricky's father, had been Ryan's older brother and so would have been another of Kingston Fortune's sons. “Go on,” she said.

“In Iowa in the early 1900s, a handsome son of a wealthy family, Travis Jamison, got a young farm girl pregnant. He was shipped out of state before he knew about the child, and its unwed, disgraced mother left the baby boy with a family in the next county—the Fortunes, who named him Kingston. It was he who built the Fortune empire here in San Antonio and in the Red Rock area.”

“So who put the Jamisons and the Fortunes in touch with each other again?”

“Travis Jamison's sister discovered the connection. Travis married, had two sons, and then died in the 1930s. But Aunt Bonnie doted on Travis's sons, Joseph and Farley. Farley went to law school and then into politics. He married and had three children, none who truly inherited his same itch for power. He lost an important election, and it was then that Aunt Bonnie told him about a long-lost relative she'd found—Kingston Fortune. He was Farley's half brother, wealthy and influential enough to buy Farley a powerful political office in Texas.”

Linda's soup bowl was empty. She reached for the basket of crusty rolls. A story like this one was good for her appetite. “Did Kingston help Farley?”

Nan shook her head. “He wouldn't even meet with him. The more uncooperative Kingston was, the more Farley became obsessed with him. He ultimately ended up in a rundown cabin outside of Houston, where he would rant and rave about the Texas Fortunes to anyone who would listen, particularly one of his grandsons.”

“Jason.”

“That's right. Farley's son Blake had three boys, Christopher, Jason and Emmett. Christopher was a teacher—”

“And Emmett an FBI agent.”

“And Jason…” Nan shrugged. “In my youth, we called a boy like that one a bad seed.”

“What did he want from the Fortunes?”

Nan shrugged again. “The papers speculate that he started out wanting to ruin Ryan Fortune's businesses as retribution for the help never given to Farley. Who knows? The fact is, his older brother Christopher tracked Jason here to Texas last year hoping to steer him away from his dangerous interest in the Fortunes. But Jason killed Christopher.”

Linda gasped. “One of the people he murdered was his own brother?”

“That's right. He dumped the body in Lake Mondo, but when it was recovered it was found to have a birthmark on the back right hip—a birthmark distinctive to the Fortunes of Texas.”

“Does Ricky?”

Nan nodded. “Ricky has it, too. When the body from the lake was ultimately identified as Christopher Jamison, it was his father, Blake Jamison, who told Ryan of the circumstances of Kingston Fortune's birth. Not surprisingly, the information leaked out to the newspapers several months ago.”

“How did the authorities know it was Jason who killed Christopher?”

“Six months ago, he was arrested for killing his girlfriend. The murder was witnessed by a local reporter. That was when his real identity became known and the link to Christopher's murder was made. Unfortunately, Jason escaped custody while awaiting trial for his girlfriend's murder and later managed to kidnap Lily. Though the FBI team rescued Lily, Jason escaped with the ransom money, killing an agent in the process.”

The piece of roll in Linda's fingers crumbled. “Was Emmett part of that FBI team?”

“Yes. He wants to stop his brother as much—more, I'm sure—than anyone.”

“But—but—” One agent on the team had already been killed. Jason Jamison had already murdered one of his brothers. What if Emmett was hurt? What if Emmett…?

That dangerous flood of emotions filled her again. Concern, fear, a sharp pang of grief that had no place for a man who was still alive. For a man she barely knew.

But what if something happened to Emmett?

Linda tried pushing back the welling feelings, but they weren't under her control. Her body trembled and she felt that sting of tears once again in her eyes.

“Nan, I…” Linda swallowed, trying to strengthen her voice so that she could get out some excuse. Any excuse that would take her out of the house and away from the other woman before she guessed that Linda's recovery was shaky at best. She had to get well, be well, because she owed so much to everyone and she had so much to take charge of, including—

“Ricky!” Nan exclaimed, a smile in her voice. “Ricky's home. Look, there he is, out in the garden.”

“Ricky?” Had so much time passed? Linda blinked away the incipient tears to check her watch. “It's only one o'clock.”

“Minimum day,” Nan replied. Her fond gaze was directed out the window. “He's growing like a weed, don't you think?”

Linda stared through the glass at the boy. Her son. He was looking taller than before, she supposed. His arms and fingers long, too. “I saw him on traffic patrol duty Friday,” she said.

He was fooling around with that ubiquitous Hacky Sack he always seemed to carry. His blond hair rippled as he bounced the little ball up and down on the inner surface of his foot. Two butterflies flew into the picture he made, their yellow wings as bright as the little boy's hair. Their fluttering movements were almost as uneven as the new beat of her pounding heart.

He was beautiful, that little boy.

Her son.

The thought was almost too much. The flood that she'd been holding out against threatened to break down the gates she'd erected. She squeezed shut her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them.

And now with the boy was the man. The golden boy was smiling up at the dark-haired man, at Emmett, who reached through those circling butterflies to ruffle the yellow silk of Ricky's hair. The gesture was friendly and tender and…perfect.

Perfectly suited to crash those gates and let in the flood that filled her with emotions that were hard to identify and harder even to breathe through. Concern, sympathy, uncertainty, fear.

Her son with half a parent.

Emmett with a damaged family.

“Linda, dear.” Nan pressed a fresh napkin into Linda's hand. “You're crying.”

She lifted her hand to her wet face, then looked away from the tableau outside the window to face Nan. She couldn't cover this up. “I'm sorry. It's the head injury again. They call it flooding. I wish I didn't feel so much but I…I can't help it.”

Nan gave her a gentle smile. “Nobody's rushing you, Linda. No one expects you to be anything or anyone but who you are.”

“But—”

“But you need to remember we care about you and always will. Though I'm afraid I don't buy this diagnosis of your tears.”

Linda wiped at the last of them with the soft napkin. “It's the head injury.”

“Like a Hallmark commercial is a head injury.” Nan laughed. “Being touched emotionally by a tragic story or the sight of your son in the sunshine isn't about being injured, Linda. It's about being a woman.”

It's about being a woman.

Linda glanced back out the window, just as Emmett looked inside. His green gaze caught hers, held it. She remembered again the feel of his lips on hers, his strong, wide hand on her shoulder.

And she worried that being a woman wasn't something she could ever recover from.

A
few days later, Linda awoke to strange, cooking-type sounds from the kitchen. Emmett wasn't a big-breakfast person, so she lay there, trying to think if there was something going on that day she had yet to remember. Nothing came to mind.

Lifting herself onto one elbow, she glanced at the open notebook on her bedside table.

There was nothing beyond that simple phrase, which meant she had no specific plans for the day. Which meant she should make plans to spend time with Ricky. Just the thought made her feel anxious and inadequate, so she rolled back onto her pillow and considered going back to sleep. But the noises from the kitchen continued, so curiosity prompted her to
climb out of bed and slip into her robe. She was reaching for the doorknob when there was a light rap on the door itself.

Pulling it open, she faced no one, until she dropped her gaze from adult level to child level. There stood Ricky, a tray in his hands, an uncertain expression on his face. “Happy Mother's Day?” he said, more as a question than a greeting.

“I— Oh.” Linda swallowed her surprise and shuffled back.
Mother's Day.
“Thank you.”

Ricky's mouth moved into a small scowl. “It's supposed to be breakfast in bed,” he said, jerking his chin toward the tray.

“Oh! Well, I…” This was a test, Linda realized in dismay. This was a test and she'd already failed the first question. “I'm sorry. I didn't know….”

“No harm done.” It was Emmett, coming up behind the boy. “Scoot back under the covers and then Ricky can serve you as he'd planned.”

Linda couldn't move fast enough. She followed the directions, sliding between the sheets, robe and all. Then she looked over at Ricky, trying to appear expectant instead of nervous. “This is such a pleasant surprise.”

Ricky gave a little roll of his eyes, and her stomach dipped. She sounded stilted and formal, even to her own ears. Another red mark. She kept silent as he settled the tray onto her thighs.

“You have juice and coffee, and Emmett helped me make pancakes and bacon. He said you'd like them.” The little boy's gaze challenged her for the truth.

“I
do
like them. Thank you, thank you very much.” She lifted the napkin off the tray to reveal something made of construction paper and crayons. “What's this?”

Ricky backed away from the bed and stared down at his shoes. “A dumb card they made us do in school. My teacher likes us to do dumb projects.”

Linda picked it up. “It doesn't look dumb to me.”

“It's dumb,” Ricky said. “Really, really dumb.”

She looked over the card. Apparently Ricky had inherited his artistic talent from her, which meant, unfortunately, no talent whatsoever. But what the stick figures and boxy structures on the face of the card lacked in verisimilitude, he'd made up for with a riotous use of color. The sky was very, very blue, the sun a blaze of orangeish yellow, and one of the persons depicted had a wealth of long, wheat-colored hair.

“Is this me?” she asked, hazarding a guess as she pointed.

“You
are
pretty skinny,” Ricky said, glancing over at the collection of twiglike arms and legs that made up his rendition.

“But this breakfast is going to help with that,” Linda said. Glancing up, she caught the glint of laughter in Emmett's eyes and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her own giggle back. The sad news was, the stick figure did bear a striking resemblance to her thin body.

She set the card on the bedside table beside her journal and sipped the juice and coffee, then took appreciative bites of the bacon and pancakes. Ricky watched her from the corner of his eyes, even as the toe of his left shoe was trying to dig a hole to China.

“This is all very good,” she assured him. “I don't think I've ever had breakfast in bed before.”

“Yeah?” He looked up, his expression pleased, then glanced away. “It was just some dumb idea that Nan had.”

“I'll have to thank her,” Linda said. Just another in the long list of things she was grateful to the other woman for. “You had to get up early, too.”

“It's better than the other years,” he blurted out, then bent down to take up an extensive investigation of the broken shoelace on his sneaker.

Linda swallowed the bite of bacon. “Other years?”

“The other years I visited you on Mother's Day,” he mumbled, head still bent over his shoe.

Linda's heart tightened, squeezing out tears that she struggled to hold inside. “You came to see me on other Mother's Days?”

“All of 'em, I guess,” the boy said, straightening. “I made you lots of other cards, too. But you didn't know me…or you didn't care.”

“Ricky.” Emmett put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “You know—”

“It's all right,” Linda said quickly. “I'm sure it felt that way to you, Ricky, that I didn't care about waking up and getting to know you. I wish I remembered all those other Mother's Day visits, too.”

His face flushed, the color a bright pink against the golden gleam of his hair. “It was a dumb thing to say. I know you couldn't wake up.”

“I couldn't. I don't know why not, or why I finally did wake up, but I'm certainly happy about it, even though it means getting to know you when you're practically all grown up.”

He smiled at that, just a quick flash of white. “I'm not
all
grown up.”

“Practically.” Though it hurt to say it. It might be a slight exaggeration, but sometimes she thought he was at least too grown up for them to establish a true parent-child relationship. She was afraid that he was too grown up for her to ever feel as if he were truly her child. And that she was truly his mother.

“Practically all grown up,” he repeated, as if he was trying out the sound of it. “Practically all grown up.”

“And I have souvenirs of those other Mother's Days, even though I don't remember your actual visits.”

Ricky frowned. “What kind of souvenirs?”

She opened the drawer of the bedside table and rummaged through the items placed inside. Nan was continually handing over things she thought Linda would like: photos, class-work of Ricky's, art projects. Linda's first instinct had been to refuse them, because they reminded her of how much she'd lost and how much she might never gain, but she was glad now that she'd been too polite to ever say no.

“Here they are,” she said, pulling out a stack of construction paper. “I have every Mother's Day card you ever made. I just didn't realize you'd delivered them to me in person.”

The surprise got Ricky to take a step closer and then to take a seat on the edge of the bed. Linda looked over his head toward Emmett, who had retreated to lounge against the doorjamb, his hands thrust in his jeans pocket, his green eyes on her face. He gave her a little nod, and she felt some of her tension ease. This part of the test was going easier.

She and Ricky went through the cards together, chuckling at the kindergarten spelling in one and the liberal use of glitter on another. Ricky grumbled about the illustrations not improving much over the years. Apparently, his best friend Anthony could draw a Spider-Man and a Gambit well enough for comic books.

She leaned close to Ricky. “It's a Faraday failing,” she murmured. “We're great with numbers, but we suck at art.”

His eyes lit up. “You said
suck,
” he crowed. “Nan and Dean don't allow me to say
suck.
”

Linda let out a little bleat of distress. “
Suck
is bad? Oh my gosh, of course
suck
is bad.” Why was
suck
bad? It didn't matter; it only meant another ten points off her test score. “I must have seen it on TV. Don't tell Nan I said it, okay?”

Ricky was still giving her an unholy grin. “I won't rat on you. But can I say
suck
when I'm over here?”

“Of course not.” She sent a pleading look toward Emmett, who was wearing a grin as unholy as Ricky's. “It was a slip of the tongue on my part, and neither one of us will say it ever again.”

“Ah, you're no fun.”

Linda frowned. “Well, I'm…” Sorry? Glad? Mothers of little boys weren't supposed to be fun, right? Fun mothers allowed
suck
and then they allowed no curfews and then they had to make monthly visits to their sons at the state penitentiary. But she
wanted
to be fun. For ten years, she'd been like a vegetable in Ricky's life. Now that she was awake, she didn't want to be the one who always insisted he eat them.

“Maybe we could do something fun today,” she ventured.

“Like what?”

“Soccer?” That was easy. The kid was crazy about soccer. “You could teach me how to play. I was a pretty mean kick-ball player in my time.”

Ricky was shaking his head. “It's not the same thing at all. You gotta use the side of your foot to kick the ball in soccer. And you can't touch it, ever. Unless you're the goalie, of course. The goalie gets to touch the ball with his hands.”

“See, there's a lot you could help me with.”

Ricky seemed to be considering the idea. “Okay. I'll help you learn soccer, if you help me with my book report.”

Linda's pulse beat hard. This was what mothers did. Kicked the soccer ball around. Helped with book reports. But she knew that appearing too eager—and to be honest, she wasn't exactly sure how eager she actually was—would dock more points from her final score.

So she pretended to think it over. “I don't know. Does it require drawing? Because, as I just told you, the Faradays—”

“Suck at art.” Ricky started laughing.

“Hey, wait a minute—”

“You said it. You said the Faradays suck at art.”

“And I
said
we wouldn't use that word again.” She looked over at Emmett who, instead of backing her up, was laughing, too.

“He has you there, Linda, you have to admit it.”

“Mothers admit nothing,” she said, trying to sound stern. “And if I hear that word again, there will be no soccer and no help on the book report.”

Ricky sobered. “You have to help on the book report. It's
Old Yeller,
and Nan and Dean don't like books where the dog dies.”

“Nobody likes books where the dog dies,” Emmett put in.

“But everybody likes a good book report,” Linda said. “So we'll restrain ourselves from using the wrong words and apply ourselves to writing a report on a book in which the dog dies.”

Ricky turned to look at Emmett. “She's starting to sound like a mother.” It wasn't clear if that was a good thing or not.

“So she is.”

“Then why don't I keep on my roll here and suggest you go back to the house, have your breakfast and give me time to shower and change. Then come back with paper, pencil and
Old Yeller.
”

The boy scampered off.

Sighing, Linda looked over at Emmett. “The dog really dies?”

He nodded.

“I'm not going to like this.”

“But you're going to do great at it. You
did
great.”

“I'd give myself a
C.
Maybe.”

“It's a start.”

“You think? I'm not sure he's seeing me as a mother or more as a…big sister or something like that.”

“It's a start, like I said. I think the relationship shows great potential.”

But did she have what it took to finish the job? she thought as Emmett came farther into the room. Could she walk into this little boy's life and ever feel like his mother?
Be
his mother?

The mattress sagged as Emmett sat in the place where Ricky had been. The room suddenly felt smaller, hotter, more confining. Across the remains on the breakfast tray and the scattered, homemade cards, she met Emmett's gaze.

And that feeling of being tested came over her again.

Awareness thickened the air in the room. She'd never before seen the heat in the color green, but she saw it now, knew it now in the depths of Emmett's eyes.

He hadn't touched her in days, not since that one kiss in the kitchen, but it was as if the intervening time evaporated. It seemed like only seconds ago, the blink of an eye ago, that his lips had been on hers.

“Linda,” he started, staring at her mouth. “Should we…?”

Should we…kiss again? Or avoid it altogether? A test, she reminded herself. This was another test. And though she'd done average work with Ricky that morning, she wasn't prepared to face another rigorous examination.

She broke their gazes and the bonds of the unwelcome, uncomfortable attraction by leaping out of bed. “I better get ready for Ricky,” she declared, rushing toward the bathroom.

“Coward,” she thought she heard him say.

But it could just as easily have been herself speaking.

 

Emmett left the house while Ricky and Linda worked on the
Old Yeller
book report. He'd already experienced too much death in his life and even without that, he hated stories in which a dog died as much as the next man. It was late afternoon when he reentered the guest house. The distant tap
ping told him that Linda was working on the computer set up on a desk in one corner of the living room. He walked in just as one of her palms slammed flat on the keyboard.

The image on the screen fractured into pieces that spun out into the lonely regions of a black galaxy. She bowed her neck until her forehead was resting on her forearm in a posture telegraphing exhaustion, frustration or despair. Maybe all of the above.

She let out a long sigh.

At the sound, compassion stabbed him. Emmett took an instinctive step back.

Back off. Get out. Get away.

He'd had enough of pain in the last few months. While he'd promised Ryan he'd help her, he didn't need to be drawn into her emotional world. Every time he let himself be vulnerable to that, he ended up being vulnerable to
her.