Unexpected Father. Kelly Jamison

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      “For me to keep.”

      He was tired from the excitement of helping Esther all day in the restaurant, and she smiled as she watched his breathing soften almost as soon as his eyes closed.

      Dream a dream for me to keep, she repeated in her head as she stepped into the dark hallway. Kevin was her dream now, though he had been thrust upon her before she had time to realize what was happening.

      Marybeth, she whispered under her breath, you don’t know how much I love him.

      Hannah had helped her sister financially and emotionally all through her pregnancy, but Marybeth had never been interested in motherhood. She’d been enamored of rock musicians and lived the uncertain, hazardous life of a groupie. The boy who fathered Kevin—though determining exactly which boy was impossible—had no interest in parenthood, either,

      Hannah had taken in the baby each time Marybeth went off on one of her road trips with her latest heavy metal band of the hour. Hannah knew that Marybeth was no saint on those trips, and she had strongly resisted hearing any of the details. But, nevertheless, it was a shock the day a young policeman came to her door to tell her that her only living relative had died of a drug overdose in a motel room three hundred miles away.

      Hannah had gone to court to gain formal custody of Kevin, and it was granted. She had inherited her parents’ house when they died, and she had let Marybeth live there rent free. After her sister was gone, Hannah had sold the house and invested the proceeds in a mutual fund, using the dividends to help defray the costs of raising a child.

      She was frugal, and when she returned to St. Louis she got a job at a branch library that paid enough to provide a reasonable life-style for a young mother and child.

      Day care was trickier, but she had managed through careful budgeting to put Kevin in a cheerful, responsible center when he was younger. And once he started school she arranged her work schedule so that she could get home most days before he did. When she had to work weekends or the evening shift, she paid a mature, neighborhood teen to baby-sit.

      She had planned carefully, and she had worked to give Kevin a good life. The only thing she hadn’t been prepared for was the fierce love she felt for the boy she considered her son. She had never known an emotion like it, and she found it humbling.

      She reached up now to touch the locket with the picture of her and Marybeth and Kevin when he was a baby. Her fingers fumbled when they didn’t find it. Hannah went into the bathroom, turned on the light and searched the mirror, even shook out her T-shirt. But it was gone.

      “Oh, damn,” she whispered under her breath. She must have lost it while she was working outside. It could be anywhere in the grass.

      She knew she should just go to bed and worry about it in the morning, but the locket was important to her. It was virtually all she had left of her sister, all Kevin had left. It was the only photograph she had found when she’d sold the house.

      A single lamp burned in the living room, and Hannah surmised from the flickering bluish light under the door of the main bedroom that Esther had retired to watch the old movies that were her addiction.

      Hannah had insisted she could sleep on the convertible couch, and Esther had reluctantly given in.

      Hannah went about quietly rummaging for a flashlight, finally coming across one under the sink. Slipping out the door, she closed it softly behind her and switched on the flashlight. It flickered errantly but steadied when she shook it. Good, she thought. It was especially bright, just what she needed.

      She could smell the herbs that Esther had planted near the door as she stepped off the concrete block onto the ground. She stood quietly a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. She walked a few more steps into the yard, pausing to look up at the sky. The stars seemed unnaturally bright to her after years of living in the city where streetlights muted the sky.

      But she wasn’t here to stargaze. The most likely place for her locket was around the foundation where she’d been hammering most of the day. In the starlight she could see the section of house frame in place over the subflooring, like a skeleton against the sky. It gave her a strong sense of satisfaction to know she had helped put it there.

      She was on her knees a moment later, crawling along the foundation, feeling in the grass with her hands while she shone the light on the ground.

      “It’s a bit dark to hunt mushrooms, you know.”

      She was so startled that she jumped, banging her head against one of the cross braces.

      “Ow!” she cried out, losing her balance and ending up sitting on the grass, her back against the foundation. She rubbed her head where it hurt and glared up at Jordan, who looked like a giant silhouetted against the starry sky

      “Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling in front of her. He put his hand on her shoulder as if to check

      “I’m. .fine,” she managed to snap. “What are you doing out here?”

      “That’s what I was asking you,” he said.

      “You didn’t ask,” she corrected him indignantly. “You just made some nitwit remark about mushrooms.”

      “Nitwit,” Jordan muttered under his breath, and even in the dark she could see his frown. “Speaking of nitwits, I’m not the one skulking around in the middle of the night.”

      “And just what would you call what you’re doing?” she demanded.

      “I was sleeping—at least until you started shining that damn beacon all over the place.”

      “Sleeping?” she repeated in disbelief. “Where?”

      “In my camper,” he said irritably, and she squinted at the driveway, barely able to make out the shape of his truck.

      Hannah realized she was still clutching the flashlight in her right hand, and she pointed it at Jordan’s face, still confused as to why he was here.

      “Will you cut that out?” he complained. “You’re going to blind me in a minute.” The hand on her shoulder had tightened, infuriating her all the more.

      “You’re the one who scared me half to death,” she said, pointedly aiming the light at his face again. “What were you doing creeping up on me if you were sleeping?”

      “I told you,” he said, his voice rising. “The light woke me up. You were shining it around the yard like some halogen come-on at a car lot.”

      “‘Come-on!’” She was truly furious now, and she moved to get to her feet, succeeding in nearly blinding him with the light once more. “You certainly have a big ego if you think I’m coming on to you, buster!” she informed him, waving the light about in her agitation.

      Jordan took hold of the flashlight, but Hannah held on obstinately.

      “I didn’t say you were coming on to me,” he argued.

      “Well, I certainly was not,” she insisted.

      “Hannah!” he said between clenched teeth. “Will you kindly let go of the flashlight!”

      But she wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ