Dangerous Games. Marie Ferrarella

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      Reaching back, Andrew covered her hand with his own, remembering when that same hand had been so small, almost doll-like.

      “Yeah, thanks for asking.” Swallowing a groan, he rose from his knees, deliberately ignoring the hand she offered until he gained his feet. Only then did he glance at it. “You know, I can remember when you used to jerk that same hand away from mine. Wouldn’t let me hold it, wouldn’t let anyone steer you.”

      She pushed her hands into her pockets. The January wind was getting raw. She should have remembered her gloves. “Had to find my own way, Dad.”

      He nodded. There was no arguing with that, although he’d tried. “I’m glad you did, Rayne. And that when you finally found it, it was here, with us.”

      She knew what he wasn’t saying, that he’d lived in fear that she would wind up in this lovely little cemetery, buried beside her relatives, years before her time. There was a period when she’d thought she would herself.

      “Hey, why would I go anywhere else? Can’t beat the food,” she quipped.

      Meals weren’t what kept her home. She felt she owed it to him. Owed him for years that were lost, years that she’d turned his hair gray and brought his heart to the brink of an attack. Truce was a good thing. It brought understanding with it.

      And right now, she ached for what she knew he was feeling. It was hard to stand here and not feel the tears well up. Without realizing it, she laced her arm through his.

      “Hard to believe it’s been fifteen years already,” Andrew murmured, still looking at the tombstone he and Brian had bought. Mike had left debts as a legacy to his family. The pension helped provide for Diane, Patrick and Patience, but pride had necessitated that they provide the burial for their fallen brother. “It feels like yesterday…” Andrew looked at his daughter. “Mike was a good man, Rayne. In his own way.”

      She wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself. Of the three Cavanaugh brothers, Mike had been the one who’d made waves, who hadn’t been satisfied with his life. Ever. Outshone by both his older and younger brothers, he’d let it eat at his self-esteem. He’d sought absolving comfort in the arms of other women and in the bottom of a bottle. Though Rayne was the youngest, she knew that there were times her uncle had taken his feelings of inadequacy out on his children and his wife. Which was why Patrick and Patience looked upon her father with far more affection than their own. He, along with Uncle Brian, had had more of a hand in raising them than Uncle Mike had.

      She felt close to her father right now, vicariously sharing a grief with him she didn’t entirely feel on her own. “He was kind of like the black sheep, wasn’t he?”

      “Yeah.” The word came out with a heavy sigh.

      It was a term she’d silently applied to herself more than once. “You know,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “there are times when I’m still afraid that I’m going to wind up just like him.”

      Andrew looked at her sharply. “Oh, no, not you, Rayne. He was the black sheep, or maybe just a gray one,” he amended. “You were the rebel. Still are in your own way.”

      The look he gave her seemed to penetrate down to her very soul. It was all she could do to keep from flinching. She withdrew her arm, shoving her hands into her pockets again.

      “Don’t do that.”

      “Do what?”

      “Look at me as if you had X-ray vision and could see clear through to my bones.”

      To lighten the moment, she pretended to shiver. But the effect of her father’s steady gaze was no less real. The way he could look at any of them would easily elicit a confession to some slight wrongdoing when they were growing up. She used to imagine that her father could force confessions from hardened felons just by giving them that look.

      “It’s not your bones that tell me what you’re like, Rayne,” Andrew told her gently, “it’s more of a case of memory.”

      “Memory?” She felt a familiar story coming on. As much as she’d bristled over hearing stories when she was younger, she’d come to welcome them now. They were a comfort to her and a way of bonding with her father.

      “Your mother was just like you,” he recalled fondly. “Always bent on doing her own thing. Always had to find her own way to the right conclusion.”

      This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. As was the note of bittersweet sorrow in her father’s voice. For a second she was tempted to put her arms around him and hug tightly. But there was still a small portion of her that resisted.

      “You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

      He sighed and nodded. “More than words can say, Rayne. More than words can say. I miss them both a lot.” He looked down at the tombstone. “The difference being is that I know Mike’s gone.”

      She shut her eyes, knowing what was coming. It was a path she walked herself more times than she cared to think, but to hold on to irrational hope wasn’t healthy. He was the only parent she had left and as much as she declared herself to be full grown and independent, she didn’t want to lose him.

      “Dad—”

      He laughed softly to himself. “You’re going to tell me not to start again. But I’m not. I’m just maintaining the same steady course I always have over all these years.” He looked at her, debating. Then he made his decision. She needed something to make her a believer again. And maybe he needed someone else to believe besides himself. “I haven’t told the others, but I found your mother’s wallet.”

      She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What? When?”

      He fell into police mode, giving her the highlights. “A little more than a month ago. Just before Thanksgiving. Homeless man had it in his shopping cart. He was dead, so he couldn’t be questioned. I don’t know where he found it and the lab couldn’t get any readable prints off it, but it was your mother’s.” He saw the doubt returning to Rayne’s eyes. “It had her license and pictures of all of you in it. She had that in her purse on the day she left the house.

      “I went to see that homeless man in the morgue. He didn’t look like any deep-sea diver to me, which meant that he found the wallet on dry land.”

      “Which means what?” Rayne asked. “That she was mugged? That her purse washed up on shore?” She took hold of her father’s shoulders, desperately wanting to get through to him. This was killing both of them by inches. “Dad, just because you found her wallet doesn’t mean that you’re going to find her, or that she’s even—”

      He cut her off sharply. “It means exactly that, Rayne. She is alive and we’re going to find her. It’s as simple as that.”

      He made her want to scream. “Dad, you have to move on with your life.”

      “I have moved on.” He struggled not to raise his voice. He’d moved on from one day to the next, accumulating fifteen years. Getting things done. “I’m not sitting in any closet, or staring out the window for days on end. I’ve raised five kids, had a hand in raising a couple more and even now make sure that everyone’s fed, warm and thriving to the best of my ability.”

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