Lost and Found Groom, McLinn, Patricia [ebook reader for pc and android .txt] 📗

“He must have been quite a man.”

Apparently unaware of the thread of bitterness in her voice when she’d spoken of her father being perfect, she shrugged in a show of indifference. “I don’t know. My memories of him are all from photographs. As for my mother, she thought he walked on water. Though from the examples of her men-picking skills I saw later, she wasn’t much of a judge.”

“But your father . . .” he prompted.

“Everyone says he was a fine man. You know I was named after him? Ken’s baby daughter Kendra. If they’d had a second child, that one probably would have been named after him, too, like the boxer George Foreman naming all his kids George.” She stowed the garbage back into the plastic sack.

“There are worse things than having a mother who loved your father. Even if . . .”

“She loved not wisely but too well? Trouble was, she made a habit of loving too well and not at all wisely.” She stared at the creek, and he suspected she was seeing it as it was two decades ago. “That’s what made coming here each summer a blessing.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“That’s what I want to know. You said it was a blessing, like maybe it wasn’t all a blessing.”

She shrugged again, as if that would be all her answer. He waited, and eventually his patience was rewarded.

“I suppose, like most blessings, it was mixed. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade those summers for anything. And later, having a place like this to come to when–” Her eyes flickered as she broke off what she’d started to say, her gaze not quite reaching him. “–when I needed it. I’m grateful for that, too. But as a kid the reality of going back to wherever Mother had landed most recently seemed all the more difficult. Another interchangeable one-bedroom apartment with a sofa bed for me in the living room in another interchangeable town with another interchangeable ‘uncle’ hanging around.”

She stood abruptly.

“We better start back.”

For an instant there, she’d sounded almost as open with her words–and with herself–as she’d been during the hurricane. Now that was gone.

“Okay.” But, once they’d mounted, he tried the lure of memories to see if it would return her to that openness. “What was it like spending summers here? What did you do?”

“We did chores and rode and explored and went swimming and helped move irrigation pipe and had cookouts. We had traditions. We slept out under the stars the last night here–no matter what the weather was. We went to the rodeo. And Marti always told us stories around the campfire, especially . . .”

“Especially what?”

“Oh, an old legend about the Susland ancestors. You probably have a slew of them about the Delligattis.”

“Can’t say I do.”

Kendra turned in the saddle to get a better look at him.

Did he think she didn’t realize what he’d been trying to do? Trying to get her to spill her guts the way she had on Santa Estella.

And she had . . . some. Despite her best intentions. Despite knowing her confidences had been given the first time only because he’d deceived her and nature had threatened them both.

But now, did he truly think he could clam up on her this way? Shut the door, turn out the light and pretend nobody was home?

Oh, no you don’t, Daniel Benton Delligatti. It’s not going to work that way. Fair is fair. And, more important, I’m going to know enough about you to answer at least some of my son’s questions when he’s old enough to ask them.

She waited until Ghost came abreast of Rusty, the horses taking the familiar ground at an easy walk.

“You said I should go ahead and ask my questions.”

“There you go, Kendra.” Once again he’d used Paulo’s pronunciation. It struck her that he used it to throw her off stride by reminding her of that other time, those other people, who’d been all too vulnerable–to nature and to each other. Or maybe to protect himself. Because he was vulnerable now?

“You said you’d answer–”

“You’re right. I did. And I will. Just telling you, you’re not going to like the answers.” His voice had a new tension. He grinned, but she didn’t buy it.

She’d intended to push him into talking about the past. She’d laid the groundwork, even bringing up some of her own past. More than she’d meant to. Now she had a right–a responsibility–to know these things for Matthew’s sake. Besides, he owed her the truth.

But she had the oddest impulse to tell him never mind. To change the subject. Steer away from the past–his past. To talk about something else, anything–

“I can’t tell you whether Matthew’s taking after me or not. I have no idea when I walked or when I talked. I have no idea who my parents were. Evidence points to them being South American. Maybe Argentines, maybe not.”

She’d learned in reporting how silence could draw out more information than even the best question. Her silence now, though, was not the result of such calculation, but of not knowing what to ask. Or perhaps of how to ask all the questions jumbling through her mind.

“First thing I remember,” his expressionless face was as unreadable as his voice, “was a woman who called herself Tia – aunt–slapping me across the face for messing up a con she was running. I learned real quick to play them her way. You could say the landmarks of my childhood were learning to beg, pick pockets and steal.”

“Daniel . . .”

Something flickered across his face, quickly subdued. His tone remained matter-of-fact. “Don’t waste any sympathy on me. I was lucky. I saw thousands like me, all trying to stay alive. A lot of them didn’t make it. We hit so many towns and cities in South America, I can’t remember which ones, or where we started.”

He paused, clearly waiting for her to respond, while she tried to absorb not only what he said but all that he hadn’t said.

“I suppose that explains how you blended in so well in Santa Estella as Taumaturgio . . . and