Winter's Daughter (18 page)

Her smile brought a giggle of response from the child at her knees. "There you go, sweetheart," she murmured, handing over the peeled orange. The child took it with a whispered, "Gracias," and scurried off to join her brothers and sisters, who were already devouring theirs.

Tannis wiped her sticky hands on her thighs and thought as she did so that one of the nicest things about friends was that you didn’t have to worry about impressing them. She felt completely comfortable with Dillon now, wearing her favorite knocking–around clothes—her oldest, softest jeans, Reeboks, and a sweatshirt from London’s Hard Rock Cafe—no makeup at all, not even lipstick, and her hair in its usual multi–layered disarray. What a contrast, she thought in amusement, between the woman who’d answered Dillon’s knock this morning and the one he’d dined and danced with last night. And the nice thing was, she knew from his smile and the warmth in his eyes that he hadn’t been disappointed with the way she looked, that he’d simply been glad to see her.

She was a little less certain about her own reaction upon opening her sister’s front door to find Dillon standing there looking lean and masculine, but with that just–showered, freshly shaved look that was so appealing. He was wearing jeans as worn and faded as hers, a cream–colored cable knit sweater, and a brown bomber jacket that looked lived–in enough to have been a favorite since long before they’d become fashionable. He’d smelled of soap and clean clothes and old leather, and she’d felt a most unfriendlike urge to throw her arms around him and breathe in the scent of him, and lay her cheek against his smooth, moist skin and press her lips against his neck.

Thinking about it now as she watched him come toward her, putting his sunglasses on, she felt that lurch in her chest and stomach, that sensation of falling.

"Come on, let’s go." He looked grim. Though his eyes were hidden behind the glasses, his jaw was rigid, his mouth a thin, angry line.

As she slid down off the fender, Tannis looked past him to where the woman stood holding her youngest child in her arms. She clung to the baby as if she feared he was about to be snatched from her. Her stoic demeanor had given way to a haunted, hopeless look.

Tannis questioned the wisdom of coming here without her bag–lady clothes. Although the children had excitedly clustered around the younger, well–groomed "Win," their mother hadn’t been so accepting. The glimmer of suspicion burned in her eyes like a warning light.

"Is anything wrong?" Tannis asked, uncertainly brushing at the seat of her pants.

Dillon just shook his head and took her elbow in a grip hard enough to make her wince. He muttered a distracted, "Sorry," as he released her, and used the hand, instead, to rake at his hair.

Tannis touched him reassuringly as she called goodbye to the children. As she walked with him to his car, she kept stealing sideways glances at him, seeking her own reassurance. But though she could see a muscle working rhythmically in his jaw, and knew he must be aware of her concern, he didn’t look at her once.

He opened the door for her, then got into his own side and started the engine. He pulled away from the curb slowly and drove in silence with one hand covering the lower half of his face. All his movements were restrained, almost frighteningly controlled. The silence thickened and became a wall around him while Tannis sat helplessly wondering how in the world she was ever going to find a way to penetrate it.

They were driving through a shabby but quiet residential neighborhood, when Dillon suddenly whipped the car over to the curb and jerked to a stop. For a few moments they both sat still, Tannis blinking dazedly, Dillon gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. Then he leaned forward and dropped his forehead onto his hands.

Tannis slowly loosened the fingers that had wrapped themselves reflexively around the door handle. It frightened her to see Dillon like this. Their friendship was too new. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what was wrong. She wanted so badly to reach out to him, touch him, hold him—and for the first time in her life, she didn’t know how. She’d always been a compassionate person, a loyal and caring friend; she was a born communicator and a professional psychologist—and she didn’t have a clue what to say to Dillon now. It was a terrible feeling. A lonely feeling.

Now she understood how Dillon must have felt last night when she’d left him standing in the middle of a dance floor. She remembered the way his voice had sounded when he’d first spoken to her in the garage, as if he’d had to force it past shards of broken glass. She remembered his words.

In the same desperate way she cried, "Dillon, what is it? What’s wrong?"

After an eternity he drew an uneven breath and sat back, leaving Tannis so awash with relief she felt queasy.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I didn’t think it could still affect me like that."

"What? You didn’t think what could affect you?"

Dillon took off his sunglasses and turned to face her. "They aren’t illegals. Tannis, she’s afraid of her husband. She—the whole family, all of them—are in that damned junkyard because they’re scared to death of him."

"Afraid—of her husband? You mean he’s—"

Dillon nodded, a violent motion that was at once both confirming and rejecting. "Abusive. Yes." He took another of those great breaths and slowly let it out. "Apparently he’s a citizen; she and the kids aren’t. He managed to get permission for them to come here about a year ago, but I think he must have kept them pretty well isolated, because none of them speaks English, and the kids haven’t been going to school. I guess he’s always had a tendency to knock them around when he’s been drinking—" He stopped, coughed, and went on. "But she says that it got a lot worse after the baby was born. He accused her of being unfaithful to him. Even says the little one isn’t his. He’s beaten her—the mother—pretty badly on several occasions, and she’s afraid he might try to harm the baby. I think what she’s really afraid of is what would happen to the baby if she weren’t around anymore to protect him."

"If he kills her, you mean. Or puts her in the hospital. Oh, God." Tannis sat still with her hand over her mouth. "But why didn’t she go to the police? What about her own family?"

Dillon shook his head. His face looked drawn and tired. "She thought the police wouldn’t believe her. Tthat they’d either send her back to her husband, or that he’d find out somehow where she was. As for her family back in Mexico, they are of the belief that a wife’s place is with her husband—to honor and obey until death do them part."

Tannis shivered. "But there are shelters. There’s help for people like her."

"I told her that. Right now she’s trying to decide whether or not she believes me. I told her we’d come back tomorrow."

"Oh, Dillon, I hate to think of them out there another night. It’s getting colder. I think it’s going to rain."

"Yeah, I know. Unfortunately she’d rather face the cold than her husband.
Damn
. If they’d just known where to go— who to call." He rubbed his eyes, then he put his dark glasses back on and reached for the ignition key.

"Dillon—" Tannis put her hand on his, stopping him. "You had an idea about this, didn’t you? Even before you talked to her."

"Yeah." His voice sounded curiously hollow. "I had an idea. And as soon as I saw her, I knew. I knew the look. I’d seen it before."

"As a cop, you mean?"

"No. Not as a cop." He turned to look at her, and it was the derelict’s face she saw—cold, bleak, dark. The dark side. Only now, instead of being afraid of that side of him, she wanted to put her arms around him and hold him tightly until the darkness went away.

He went on looking at her with anguish in his eyes, unable to say anything more. He didn’t have to. Aching with compassion and understanding, Tannis looked back at him, and this time when he reached for the ignition key, she didn’t stop him.

"Well," Dillon said, "here we are."

Tannis just nodded and went on staring absently at an overturned tricycle in the driveway.

Dillon didn’t see the tricycle’s owner anywhere; in fact, for a Sunday noon, the street seemed unnaturally deserted. Everyone was indoors having brunch, Dillon supposed, curled up by the fire, reading the funny papers. It was the right sort of day for it, with the clouds thickening and the wind turning blustery. Looked like a storm blowing in. About time, he thought, after the long warm, dry spell. He sighed inwardly. In some ways a good rain was more than welcome, but it sure was going to make things worse for the street people.

He shifted his focus to Tannis, guessing by the look on her face that she was thinking the same thing. Probably thinking about those kids in that vacant lot. Her profile had a particularly bleak look, which mirrored the way Dillon felt. But he knew he’d done all he could do for now. He could only wait for that poor woman to make up her mind to trust him.

Meanwhile, he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He wanted—damn! He knew exactly what he wanted, but he couldn’t let himself think about that either. He didn’t dare allow himself to think about Tannis having brunch with him in front of his fireplace, laughing with him at the comics, making love in the warm glow of firelight.

No. He definitely couldn’t think about that.

He wondered why she kept sitting there, staring out the window. He wished she’d say good–bye and go—quickly. The longer she sat there, the more he hated the thought of her going. If she stayed much longer, he was going to lose control and reach for her, and that, he knew, would be disastrous. As afraid as she was of intimacy, if he made a move before she was ready, she’d panic again, and this time he might even lose her friendship. He couldn’t risk it. He wanted her in his life, and if, for now, it had to be on her terms, so be it. He could be patient when he had to be.

But he wondered why she didn’t get out of the car. The suspense was killing him.

He decided he really should see her to the door. Maybe, he thought resentfully, that was what she was waiting for—although it didn’t seem to him like it ought to be required of a
friend.

Feeling put upon and out of sorts, Dillon reached for the door handle and gave it a yank. "Well—" he began at precisely the same moment Tannis turned toward him and said, "Dillon—"

"What?" He waited, counting heartbeats.

"I don’t—" She stopped herself. When she continued, her voice was barely audible. "I don’t feel like going home."

Dillon’s heartbeats grew louder. "What do you feel like doing?"

She shrugged. "I don’t know. It’s Sunday, and it’s cold and dismal, and after—It just seems—I thought, if you didn’t have anything better to do, maybe we could have lunch?"

Dillon carefully cleared his throat and said, "All right with me. Did you have anyplace special in mind?"

"No," she said, "not really."

Through the thunder in his ears Dillon heard himself say, "Would you like to come out to my place?"

Why do people always think of deserts as flat? Why do California towns have city limits signs in the middle of nowhere?

Those were a couple of the things Tannis thought about on the way to Dillon’s house on the farthest eastern outskirts of the city. She thought about them to keep from thinking about Dillon.

It was hard to tell what Dillon was thinking about. He drove as he so often did, with one hand covering the lower part of his face, and his brooding and strangely electric silence left a lot of room for speculation.

What must it have been like, the cataclysm that tore apart the earth and thrust these sections of its crust toward the sky?

But the tortured and beautiful landscape and it’s mute evidence of ancient upheavals made Tannis think about another kind of cataclysm, the kind that strikes the human heart—suddenly, devastatingly, and utterly without warning.

"This is it," Dillon announced unnecessarily as he pulled the car into a driveway that led to a garage on an upper level of the house. "I’ll show you around later, if that’s okay. Right now, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to eat something."

"Fine," Tannis said tightly.

Dillon’s home was a surprise to her. Though they were only a few miles from downtown Los Padres, the desert here seemed remarkably unencroached upon, the houses custom–built and widely scattered. Some of them, including this one, blended with the landscape, became a part of a delicate tapestry of striated pink and purple hills, yellow sagebrush, and gray–green yuccas and joshua trees. Partly set into the side of a hill, the house reminded Tannis of an ancient pueblo, with its sand–colored walls, softened lines, and subtle angles. But there were unmistakably modern touches, too, like the walls of glass strategically placed so as to get the maximum benefit from the desert sun.