My Favorite Husband. Sally Carleen

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СКАЧАТЬ street toward Highway 75. This was her chance. Even if he regained his memory in the next five minutes, he was now trapped with her inside a moving car.

      “We’re going to a custody hearing,” she began. “For my orphaned nephew, Nathan Anderson. It’s critical that I win and not my parents.”

      “Whew. We just got married and already we’re going to have a son.” He laughed nervously. “I suppose we talked about this before we got married.”

      She cast a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Obviously, the role of father wasn’t comfortable for him. Thank goodness he wasn’t going to be Nathan’s father for real! “Oh, yes. You knew all about Nathan.”

      “How old is our potential child?”

      “He’s eight, and he’s a sweetie. Let me tell you the story from the beginning, so you’ll understand why this is so important.”

      “Fire away. Maybe when I hear familiar stuff, my memory will start coming back.”

      That might be, but she’d be willing to bet Travis Rider wasn’t familiar with anything she was about to tell him.

      Katie wheeled around a corner, and Rider grunted. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll try to be more careful.” Though he couldn’t have been slung around too much the way he was wedged in. “Okay,” she began. “Twenty—eight years ago, I was born to Ralph and Nadine Logan in Hillsdale, Oklahoma. My impending birth was the reason they got married. I’m not quite sure how I happened. I know they don’t believe in birth control, but I’d have sworn they didn’t believe in sex, either. Anyway, they must have lost control a couple of times because I had a sister three years later. Katherine and Rebecca, they named us, though we go by Katie and Becky. At least, she went by Becky until she died three months ago.”

      Katie bit her lip. It was still hard to talk about Becky without crying. Too bad she hadn’t inherited her parents’ stoic control.

      No, she corrected herself, it wasn’t too bad. She’d rather cry her eyes out than be like them.

      “How’d Becky die?” Rider asked softly.

      “Defective space heater. She and her husband, Darryl, died in their sleep. Nathan was spending the night with one of his friends. But I’m getting ahead of my story.”

      She checked the traffic, then accelerated up the entrance ramp onto Highway 75.

      “Central Expressway’s always busy,” she grumbled. “If you’ve forgotten the traffic jams on this highway, you’re really in bad shape!”

      He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Without his mem ory, Travis Rider seemed to be a decent fellow. “I guess I’m in bad shape, then. I don’t remember. So tell me the rest of your story.”

      She took a deep breath. “I’m sure my parents loved us in their own way.” Actually, she wasn’t at all sure of that fact, but it might be true. “However, neither of them ever forgave the other or me for what happened. The humiliation of having to get married and then the arrival of a seven-month-old baby.”

      “Your parents must be pretty old—fashioned. Even as little as I remember, that doesn’t matter to most people anymore.”

      “My parents are old—fashioned, stern, rigid people, especially my father. And Mother goes along with anything he says. They were both determined that neither of their children would make the same mistake they made. We worked hard, studied hard, came straight home from school, had no friends, ate everything on our plates, didn’t talk at meals, or between meals for that matter, didn’t make any decisions, not even what to wear to school or how to wear our hair. We had no affection, only rules.”

      She paused, wondering if she was saying the right words to make him understand the cold, lonely world she’d grown up in.

      Rider laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she flashed him a quick smile.

      “How did you ever get the courage to escape?” he asked.

      “I wasn’t very old when I figured out that the way we lived wasn’t normal. I saw how other kids lived, and I wanted to be like that. At night, Becky and I would huddle under the covers and talk. I became pretty rebellious. As soon as I graduated from high school, I ran away from home. I promised Becky I’d make enough money to send for her.”

      “And did you?”

      “Yeah, kind of. I made my way to Dallas and worked as a waitress, two jobs at a time, and by the end of a year I had a tiny apartment, a car with four bald tires and no heater and a little money in the bank. But by then Becky was pregnant. How she ever managed to accomplish that while living in the same house with Mother and Father is beyond me! But she did, and she and Darryl ran away and got married and moved in with Darryl’s parents until he graduated from high school.”

      “Nathan,” Rider guessed.

      Katie smiled, her eyes on the yellow line of the highway, but her thoughts going back to the first time she’d seen the wrinkled red baby. “Yep. Nathan came into the world. They let Darryl and me both be there for his birth. Becky said she wouldn’t go through with it if they didn’t.” She blinked back the sudden mist that threatened her vision. “You never saw three prouder parents! All the time she was pregnant, Becky swore she’d see to it that her baby always felt loved. After he got there, it wasn’t even a matter of choice. Nobody can help but love a baby. Well, nobody but my parents.”

      “Who love in their own way,” Rider reminded her.

      “Yeah, well, sort of, I guess. Anyway, Becky was happy, and I decided I would be, too. I made up my mind to do everything I’d always thought about doing, to live life with no restraints and no one telling me I couldn’t do something. I got a job as a flight attendant and flew around the world for a couple of years.

      That was fun. Then I spent a year in the Amazon rain forest with a study group. After that, I backpacked across Europe, went on a fossil dig in Africa, helped with a housing project for the poor in Mexico, learned to ski in Colorado and to surf in California, and anything else I took a notion to do. It was great. Whenever I got bored or started feeling hemmed in, I’d just go on to something else. And in between, I worked at odd jobs in Dallas and always managed to make time to spend with Nathan.”

      “Sounds like you and Nathan are pretty tight.”

      “Yeah. He kinda likes his Aunt Katie.”

      “So what’s the custody deal about? Wouldn’t your sister have wanted you to have custody?”

      “She and Darryl always said if anything happened to them, I should take Nathan.” Her hands gripped the steering wheel convulsively, hanging on. “But they were so young, they thought they were invulnerable. They never got around to putting it in writing. Darryl’s parents know, and they’re going to testify for me.”

      “That should work, shouldn’t it?”

      “Not necessarily. My parents are determined to get custody so they can correct the frivolous, permissive way Becky was raising their grandchild. They’re pillars of the community. My father’s a vice president at the bank and a deacon in the church. I wasn’t there when Becky and Darryl died, and my parents snatched Nathan up and filed a motion for temporary then permanent custody. Darryl’s parents heard about it in СКАЧАТЬ