First Time, Forever, page 14
They searched the farm together, and then the house.
Mac’s note was in his room, laying on his pillow.
Poorly spelled and stained with tears, Kathleen picked it up and read it out loud.
Dear Aunt Kathy:
I have been very bad and I’m sorry. I see you are very happy, except for me, and I know you don’t want me anymore. Old bowwow already left because of me, and pretty soon Evan will, too. I don’t make anybody happy, just mad and sad. I don’t know why. I guess I feel mad and sad all the time. My mom died, and my dad never wanted me, and I wonder if it’s my fault those things happened, and no wonder nobody wants me around.
Evan said he would help me find my dad. That means he wants to get rid of me, too.
“God,” Evan said.
“What’s this about his dad?”
“Aw, Kathleen, I thought if I offered to help him with that he wouldn’t be so angry with me, wouldn’t feel we were on opposite teams. It was a dumb mistake.”
“It was a nice thing to do,” she said sternly, and then continued to read the letter out loud:
Jesse really likes me, and I like him, too, even if he is a real Stinky Pants. But he has a real dad, and now he calls you Mom, and his real grandma and grandpa are coming to see him. I don’t have a grandma and grandpa and nobody will ever come see me. Someday I bet he’ll have a real brother or sister. And I won’t have that, ever.
Don’t worry about me. I am going back to Vancouver. It is warm there and people can live on the streets even in the winter. I can be a squeegee kid just like those ones you always give money to. Don’t come looking because I have a secret route planned and you will never find me.
Bye forever. I love you. Mac
P.S. Jesse is in the barn playing with the kittens. I told him not to come with me. You know he listens to me.
“Oh, my God,” Kathleen said. She sank into a chair and held the letter, read it again, the tears spilling down her face. “Where could he have gone? And where is Jesse?”
Evan’s face looked taut and pained. “I think he decided not to listen to Mac this time.”
She looked at Evan, stricken. “Where do you think he would go? He’s got to be our first concern. He’s smaller.”
“I think he’s following Mac, wherever Mac is. The question is, does Mac know yet? How long has he been gone?”
She looked at the clock in distress. “At least an hour, closer to two. Why didn’t I check on them?”
“You are not to blame. Why would you check on them? They’ve played in the barn before for hours. I’m going to go saddle a horse. This note is making me wonder if he decided to try to cross-country to the highway. He was asking me about that a few days ago, when I was showing him a map.”
“You are not to blame, either.”
“Maybe I am, Kathleen. I could see how unhappy that boy was, and how unhappy he was making you.”
“It’s you he was making unhappy,” she said.
“Me? I could handle ten kids just like him with one arm tied behind my back just to be with you. Look, I want you to call the police. And then Ma Watson. Tell her what happened and tell her to get the word out that we need as many people as possible to come out here. They can bring horses or be prepared to search on foot, but no all-terrain vehicles. It’s going to get dark, and I don’t want anybody running over those kids. After you’ve called, hop in the truck and drive toward town. Look in the ditches, and go slow by anything they might be hiding behind.”
She registered every word he said, but somehow her mind stopped on just to be with you, and those words in all their quiet simplicity kept the panic at bay and made her feel stronger than she had ever felt.
“What if all those people come and Mac and Jesse are asleep under a pile of hay?”
“I can’t take that chance. The people in this country would rather be called on to help too soon than be on the receiving end of bad news too late.”
They heard a car pull up outside the house. Evan looked baffled and then he scowled.
“The Mortimers,” he said. “Perfect bloody timing.”
“It is perfect timing,” she said. “Because I’m going to put them in charge of the command center, and I’m going with you. Saddle two horses.”
“Have you ever ridden before?”
“Yes.” She didn’t tell him it had been a Shetland pony that went around in a circle at the fair. “Go get the horses ready.”
And while he went out the back door, she went to the front.
Briefly she introduced herself, told them what had happened and what she needed done, and was impressed with Ron Mortimer’s immediate take-charge attitude.
In no time he was set up at the kitchen table with Evan’s address book and photographs of both the boys. After he had hung up from Ma Watson, he asked her the names of the local radio stations.
Fiona Mortimer asked her where her coffeepot was, and supplies to make sandwiches. “We’ll need to feed those searchers if the boys aren’t found right away.”
“Thank you,” Kathleen said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine the shock this is for you. I have to go—”
“You wait five minutes. Go find warm clothes for you and Evan. And when you come back I’ll have sandwiches ready for you. Where’s your thermos?”
With that Fiona hustled Kathleen out of the room. In a few minutes, Kathleen was running toward the barn, full thermoses, warm clothes and sandwiches with her.
Evan had two horses ready. They looked huge to her, but she would not allow herself to be timid. Not now. Not with that knowledge tucked inside her that he would do anything to be with her.
He helped her mount, watched critically as she got on. Grimly he said, “I suppose they’re in there talking about custody now for sure.”
“Evan,” she said, “I think you might be surprised.”
He swung on his horse, the Mortimers already dismissed from his mind.
“I want to go this way,” he said, pointing. “I found a partial print on the ground, and Mac asked all kinds of questions when we looked at that map together. You could eventually join the highway, cross-country, if you went this way. But it’s thirty miles of rugged going. A map doesn’t show the river coulees between here and there.”
Kathleen looked at the prairie and felt overwhelmed by how huge it was. If they went a few steps different than the boys, how were they going to find them? Were the boys even together? She drew in a long, shuddering breath, told herself to be strong.
She suddenly came face-to-face with a fact she had not acknowledged in her entire life. Worrying would solve nothing. Only action would.
And Evan was a man of action.
Chapter Ten
“They’ve been this way.”
Kathleen sat in her saddle, aching with weariness. She looked at Evan, crouched down in front of his horse peering at the ground. Never before had she so appreciated the toughness at his very core. She knew he would not quit until he found their boys.
“What have you found?” she asked. At first she had gotten on and off her horse every time he did, but she had soon found out it was much harder than it looked, and that she needed to conserve her energy.
When she thought she could just weep because she was so frightened for Mac and Jesse, and her muscles ached from the unfamiliar motion of riding, she would think of Jesse’s sturdy little legs and wonder how on earth he had walked this far.
Evan had found tracks that suggested both the boys had come this way.
For the first time she’d been very pleased about those expensive runners she had bought for Mac. They left a distinctive name brand anyplace the soil was bare and damp.
“I think this is Jesse. I think he sat down here, from the size of the patch of grass that is flattened.” He squinted closer. “It looks like he scuffed around in the dirt with his truck a little bit.”
She closed her eyes, seeing Jesse sitting in the grass, singing to himself, tired, playing with his truck. Did he still have Mac in his sights? Was he scared or was he too innocent to know that he had anything to be scared about?
Tracking the boys took an enormous amount of time and patience. Evan rode in a slow serpentine, so as not to miss anything, got off his horse often to look at the ground, at the way grass was flattened, at scuffs in mud—most of which had nothing to do with the boys.
He would also stop his horse frequently, silently scanning the horizon. Seeing him this way, sitting his horse, it was as if Kathleen was seeing what and who Evan really was. Straight-backed, proud, strong, capable, able to take on a rugged, rugged world, and be a victor over its challenges. She was so glad it was Evan looking for these boys. She could not think of one other person on the face of the earth she would have wanted, or trusted, with this task.
She, too, scanned the endless rolling landscape, looking so hard it felt like her eyes were watering all the time, like she was seeing things that were not there.
“Get off your horse for a minute, Kathleen. Stretch your legs. We’ll have some of that coffee.”
“I can keep going,” she said stubbornly. She didn’t want him making concessions to her weaknesses that might cost them valuable minutes in their search.
“If we don’t look after ourselves, if we start getting too hungry or too tired or too sore, we won’t be as alert as we need to be. We might miss something.”
She got off the horse, thinking maybe that was true of everything in life. That a person had to learn to care for themselves first, before they were any good to anyone else.
“Maybe,” she said out loud, getting off the horse, hearing her knees crack as her feet touched the ground, “that’s the mistake I made with Mac. I always put him first. When I stopped—” Her voice choked.
Evan poured a cup of coffee from the thermos, and held it to her lips. She took a deep, shuddering sip of it.
“I don’t want you talking like that. As if it’s your fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me, trying to play hero, offering to help him find his dad. I thought he would see it for what it was—me trying to tell him how much I cared about him. Instead he thought I was trying to get rid of him. I guess that’s what happens when a guy like me tries to be a hero.”
“What do you mean, a guy like you?”
“Kathleen, I’ve lived pretty close to the edge most of my life. I’ve been wild and irresponsible and about as devil-may-care as they come. I’ve looked after myself, and I never got good at seeing another person’s point of view. Even with Dee, I could never see what she wanted, only what I wanted. And then when you came along, I thought you deserved something better.” He laughed, a harsh, self-depreciating sound. “I thought I could make myself into a knight for you. Maybe Mac could see through all that.”
“You listen to me, Evan,” she said, her voice low and full of fury. “I won’t listen to you talk about yourself like that. I won’t. I’ve watched you with your son and my nephew, I’ve seen—” she blushed thinking of their wedding night “—the great and uncommon tenderness you are capable of. And yet, when you are called on to be strong and sure, to remain calm in a crisis, you can do that, too. If you are not a knight, then there is no such thing. And if there is no such thing, my heart will be broken.
“I have searched all my life for what I see in you—integrity, strength and tenderness. I looked in those men who are so suave and so sophisticated, who knew what to wear and what fork to use and what wine to order. Not one of those men would be worthy to hold your horse for you, Evan. Not one of them. There is not one man on this earth who I would want here with me more than you.”
“You wouldn’t be in this predicament right now if it weren’t for me.”
“Really? It seems to me Mac has been a predicament looking for a place to happen for sometime. This was my meaning—that no matter what kind of distress I ever found myself in, it would always be your name I would call. Maybe you don’t have a suit of shining armor, but you’re real, Evan. You aren’t trying to be something you are not, you are trying to uncover what you really are. I knew what you really were from the first moment I looked into your eyes. And I knew you would help me become what I really am, too. That’s why I love you. That’s why I have loved you from almost the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
He was smiling, a slow, sweet smile that nearly melted her heart.
“You just like the way I fill out a pair of blue jeans,” he said.
And she smiled back at him. “I’d take blue jeans over armor any day.”
And then, as if they had needed a break from the terrible tension they were under, they held each other, and laughed. She laughed until the laughter became tears, and she sobbed helplessly against him as she listened to him say, over and over, that he loved her. That he planned to love her forever. No matter what.
“What do you mean, no matter what?” she asked, stepping back from him, mopping the tears from her eyes with her shirtsleeve.
“I mean if you decide that you have to leave me to give Mac the life you want to give him, I will still love you. I’ll wait for you. I promise.”
She thought how very different that was than what Howard had said all those years ago.
“That’s funny,” she said. “I was waiting to say the exact same thing to you, only reversed. That if you couldn’t handle Mac anymore, and all the terrible things he does, then I would go.”
“Ma’am, I already told you I could handle ten more just like him. Just to be with you. But here’s another truth. I love that kid. He’s so much like I was at that age it’s spooky. That’s what I needed to tell him the other day. Not that I would help him find his dad, but that I wanted more than anything on earth to be his dad.”
She suddenly had a sense of something relaxing within her, the tension leaving, a river of peace taking its place. Everything was part of the plan. Everything.
Mac had brought her and Evan together, and now he had been the one who had allowed them to finally express their true feelings for each other.
She knew they would find him, and that this moment, searching the prairies, would become the pivotal one in the family history that was just beginning.
That moment when truth made itself known to them.
The simplest of truths, the strongest of truths, the only truth.
Love was everything.
Without it a man could wander forever in his own uncertainties. With it people became strong, discovered who they were and how they fit in the plan. Her place was on these prairies, beside this man, raising their children, those children their link to forever.
“Are you ready to go?”
He helped her back into the saddle. The weariness seemed to be gone from her, but she did notice, uneasily, the light was fading from the sky.
But Evan saw it differently. “Good,” he said. “Mac might have matches. I hope he’ll light a fire. If he does, it will show up for a long way.”
“If he lights a fire,” she said, “it will mean he wants us to find him.”
Twenty minutes later, the sky still holding sunset, but the earth blanketed in darkness, she heard Evan’s yip of triumph, and saw the flicker of the fire in the distance.
Evan pushed his horse into a gallop, and hers followed. Holding the horn, the first stars coming out, feeling as though her heart would burst with joy and completion, she followed Evan at breakneck speed, over uncertain ground toward the future. Her future and his.
They galloped to the fire, Evan pulling his horse to a swift halt, and getting off it in one smooth move, running now. And then out of the circle of the fire she saw Mac, coming toward them, Jesse’s hand firmly in his, both boys faces streaked with dirt from tears.
“Evan,” Mac said, his voice quavering, “I’m sorry.” He was sobbing now, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “I didn’t know Jesse would follow me. I didn’t know. You must have been so scared when he was gone.”
Evan got down on one knee in front of Mac, and Jesse barreled by and jumped into his lap. “Daddy,” he said over and over. “Daddy. Mac, I tell you my daddy would come.”
Mac drew in a long, shuddering breath and stood, his head hanging, his tears splashing down into the dirt at his feet.
Kathleen managed to get off her horse and came toward them, and Evan stood and put Jesse in her arms, and then turned back to Mac.
“I was scared when both my boys were gone,” Evan said. “Scared out of mind. More scared than I have ever been in my life.”
“You’re not scared of nothing,” Mac said. “I know.”
“Every man’s scared of something, Mac.”
“You can hit me,” Mac said, still looking at his boots.
“Hit you?” Evan said. He closed the distance between them and wrapped his powerful arms around the broken little boy, pulled him into him. “I’ll never hurt you, ever.”
Mac’s control broke. He wrapped his arms around Evan’s neck and sobbed.
Evan picked him up as if he were a baby, rocked him against his chest. “You know, all my life I wanted a family to love. And when God gave me your auntie, he saw how much I needed a boy just like you, too. I should have said that to you sooner. A whole lot sooner.”
“Do you love me?” Mac said. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
“After what I just did?”
“Yeah.”
“After your truck, and letting the cows out and wrecking the garden?”
“Don’t forget the bathroom window.”
Mac smiled a little crookedly through his tears. “And the bathroom window?”
“Yeah.”
“I love my auntie Kathy more than anybody in the world. That’s why I ran away. Even though I didn’t show it, all I really want is for her to be happy. I could tell you made her happy, and I didn’t. It made me mad and scared, too. I thought the more she loved you, the less she loved me.
“You know what made me think maybe I had it all wrong? When I turned around and saw Jesse behind me. I didn’t even know how much he meant to me until I turned around and saw him way behind me. I ran back to him, and he had his stupid truck, and he was so happy I came back for him like it wasn’t my stupid fault he was out here in the first place. I went to bring him home, and that’s when I got really, really scared.
