“Your ex must’ve been an even uglier son of a bitch than he looks in pictures, if the kid is anything to go by.”
Noah should have kept going, not waited to hear what his mother replied.
She clicked her tongue in that way she had. “You shouldn’t say that, Dennis!”
He remembered relaxing slightly, forming the intention of walking on.
Too late. Because she continued. “It does bother me that he looks so much like his dad, though. I wish he took more after my side of the family. There isn’t a single good thing he could have inherited from his father. Nothing,” she finished with vehemence, and even hate, which slid between his ribs like a switchblade.
Sometime that night, lying in bed unable to sleep, filled with an adolescent’s oversize hurt and anger, was when he formed the intention of finding his father someday.
Over the years, he didn’t quite forget how often his father had disappointed him, but he dwelled more on the few times Dad had taken him to see the Trail Blazers play at the Rose Garden, the summer afternoons getting stuffed on hot dogs while they watched a minor-league baseball team play their hearts out. His father had taken him camping, too. He sent a very occasional child support check for the next few years, the last from Angel Butte. By the time Noah set out on his futile quest to track the man down to an obscure town in central Oregon, he had grown up enough to know better than to expect much. Maybe all he’d wanted was to say, I needed you. Where were you?
He still regretted not getting the chance.
Noah knew what he was good for and what he wasn’t. He was a ruthless workaholic who didn’t have time for a serious relationship, never mind a family even if he’d wanted one. He had enough of a conscience to go out of his way to avoid hurting the women he used for sex.
One who bore her hurt so visibly was off-limits, all other issues aside.
This driving need to protect her—well, she was his, in a sense, just like the town was. That’s all it could be.
So he kept his distance when he could.
What he didn’t like was knowing she had nobody to follow her when she left work each day. He was aware that she attended a couple of evening meetings that week, too, which meant she’d be driving home alone at night and having to cross her dark yard to the safety of the town house. If it was safe, given that it had no security system and could easily be breached by a man determined to terrorize her—or to claim her, once and for all.
A few times, he found himself driving by her place, just casually glancing to see if her lights were on, not sure what that told him or what he’d do if they weren’t.
One night at the library, they sat two chairs away from each other in a brief meeting about the pipeline replacement project. Walking out, he asked if the moving truck had showed up yet.
She shook her head and said in a low voice, “I’m getting by.”
He had clenched his teeth on the impulse to ask if she’d had dinner. She’d murmured a vague goodbye, her eyes not quite meeting his, and veered off to talk to someone else.
Good, Noah told himself, but he felt irritated instead of relieved.
The murder of a respectable and longtime local citizen was causing a lot of talk and worry, but the investigation had apparently stalled. Jerry Hegland had often stayed late in his office at the airport. Nobody had seen him leave the night before his body was found. Investigators were confident he’d made it home, though, and eaten a typical bachelor’s meal of a couple of microwave-heated burritos and a beer. All that went in the dishwasher was a dirty fork, which meant he’d eaten out of the tray the food came in. One beer can, crushed by hand, reposed in the otherwise empty recycling container. His Jeep was in the garage. It seemed likely his killer had come to his house, but the absence of blood said he wasn’t murdered there. Unfortunately, the neighbors either hadn’t been home or had pulled the blinds and been engrossed in television shows or their own doings. Nobody saw a thing.
The latest came from Cait’s brother, whose path crossed Noah’s in front of the courthouse that Friday. Both men hesitated, then met under a cherry tree in full bloom.
“I haven’t heard an announcement yet,” Noah commented.