The Good Father. Diane Chamberlain

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      I did, although I wanted Bella back right then. Yeah, I was glad she was so happy on Erin’s lap and all that, but I wanted to hold her right now. I’d scare her, though—holding her too tight the way I’d squashed her hand when we walked across the parking lot. It was better this way. Now, how to make my graceful exit. I hadn’t quite thought through that part. Maybe I’d say I needed to use the restroom again, but they’d be able to see me if I left the restroom and went out the door.

      “So, just a couple more days till you go back to work?” I asked Erin. I needed to make sure she didn’t need to go back to the pharmacy any sooner than that. I hoped I’d figured this out right.

      “Don’t remind me.” She rubbed Bella’s back. Bella had blueberry stuck in her teeth and I was glad I’d remembered to put her toothbrush in her little pink purse.

      “Do you ever feel, you know, tempted being around all those drugs all the time?” I asked. Why the hell did I ask her that? I had no idea. Nerves. I was a frickin’ mass of nerves.

      She gave me a look like I was a total lowlife. “Not even a little bit,” she said. “And please don’t tell me you would be tempted.”

      I tried to smile. “No way,” I said, “It’s not my thing.” Why’d I even go there? I worried she could see how I was shaking today and think I was using something. Suddenly, I knew how to handle the next few minutes. “I’ve got another interview today,” I said.

      “Great! You found something on Craigslist?”

      “No, my friend came through.” I tapped my sweaty fingers on my thighs. “I hope this one works out.”

      “Oh, me too, Travis. I guess it’s in construction? Is it for a business? Or residential? Or—”

      “I’ve got the info in my van,” I said, getting to my feet. “Can you watch Bella a sec and I’ll go get it? I can tell you the address and maybe you can tell me how to get there.”

      “Sure,” she said. I couldn’t move all of a sudden. I wanted to take Bella back into the restroom and hug her so hard, but I had to get this over with. Just do it. I bent over and kissed Bella’s head, then walked away fast. Out the door, across the parking lot, into my van. Fast, fast, fast, before I could change my mind. I turned the key in the ignition. I couldn’t leave the van here where Erin and Bella would be able to see it when they came out of JumpStart. I drove all the way to the other end of the lot, nearly crashing into parked cars, my foot jerking all over the gas pedal, the whole wide world a blur in front of me and one word on my mind.

      Bella Bella Bella.

       2 Travis

       Six Weeks Earlier

       Carolina Beach, North Carolina

      YOU KNOW HOW EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE happiness kind of comes over you like a bolt of lightning, surprising you so much it makes you laugh out loud? That’s how I felt as I worked on the molding for the kitchen cabinets of the oceanfront house. I’d been doing construction four years and always thought of it as a job I hated, just something I had to do to put food on the table for me and Bella and my mom. But construction jobs were hard to find at the beach these days, especially in Carolina Beach, which wasn’t exactly overflowing with high-end properties even though the ocean was just as blue and the sand just as white as the rest of the coast. Plus, it would always be my home. The foreman on my last job watched me work on a deck addition for a few days and he must have seen something in me because he asked me to do some custom work inside the house. He was teaching me stuff, like the detailing on this molding. He was grooming me. I didn’t know I was learning skills that, on this late August day, would make me laugh out loud when I realized I was actually enjoying the work. I was glad I was alone in the kitchen so I didn’t have to explain my reaction to any of the guys.

      I was on the ladder working on the molding when I heard sirens in the distance. A lot of them, but far away and echoey, hardly loud enough to cut through the sound of the ocean, and I didn’t pay all that much attention. After a while, they became part of the white noise of the sea as I kept working. I was climbing down from the ladder when I heard someone rushing up the stairs to the living room.

      “Travis!” Jeb, one of my coworkers, shouted as he ran into the kitchen. He was red-faced and winded, bending over in the middle of the room to catch his breath. “It’s your house, man!” he said. “It’s on fire!”

      I dropped my hammer and ran for the stairs. “Are they safe?” I called over my shoulder.

      “Don’t know, man. I just heard and ran here to tell—”

      I didn’t hear the rest of what he said as I nearly slid down the stairs, stopping a fall with my hand on the banister. My brain was going crazy. Was it the screwed-up electrical in the living room? Or one of those scented candles my mother liked to burn to get the musty smell out of the air of the old cottage? Or maybe it was her damn cigarettes, though she was careful. She wasn’t the type to fall asleep smoking, especially not with Bella in the house.

      Bella. Oh, shit. Let them be okay.

      I ran out to my van and as I turned it around to head toward my house, I saw smoke in the sky. It was the pale gray of a fire that had burned itself out, not the black you’d see if the fire was still raging, and that gave me hope. The gray billowed into the sky and then hung in an air current drifting toward the mainland. I made the four miles to my house in three minutes flat.

      There were two fire trucks, a couple of cop cars and one ambulance in front of the charred shell of the small cottage that had been my home for the past eight years and would never be my home again. Right then, I didn’t care. I jumped out of my van and headed straight for the ambulance. Ridley Strub, a cop I’d known since we were in middle school together, showed up out of nowhere and grabbed my arm.

      “They took your mother to the hospital,” he said. “Bella’s in the ambulance. She’s going to be fine.”

      “Let me go!” I pulled away from him and ran to the open rear of the ambulance, jumping inside without waiting for an invitation.

      “Daddy!” Bella’s cry was muffled by an oxygen mask, but it was strong enough that I knew she was okay. I sat on the edge of the stretcher and pulled her into my arms.

      “You’re all right, baby.” My throat was so tight that baby came out like a whisper. I looked up at the EMT, a girl of about twenty. “She’s okay, right?”

      “She’s fine,” the girl said. “Just needed a little O2 as a precaution, but—”

      “Can we take the mask off?” I asked. I wanted to see her face. To check her all over for damage. I wanted to make sure the only thing she’d suffered was a scare. I noticed she had her stuffed lamb clutched tight in one arm, and on the floor of the ambulance I spotted her little pink purse. The two things she was never without.

      “I want it off, Daddy!” Bella picked at the edge of the plastic mask where it pressed against her cheek. She hiccupped like she always did when she cried.

      The paramedic leaned over and slipped the mask from Bella’s face. “We’ll leave the O2 monitor on her finger and see how she does,” she said.

      I smoothed my hands over my daughter’s brown hair. СКАЧАТЬ