Confessions Bundle

Mom always told her to look at the water. And to know that there was no end to what she could do with her life. And no end to hope. Or to love, either.

Mom was a stupid liar.

She almost stepped on a pretty, perfect shell. It was pink and all shiny with different colors in the sun. Mom’s favorite kind. They always picked up and saved those ones. Mary Jane thought about stomping on it, but she didn’t want some kid in bare feet to come later and step on it and get cut. She hated that.

Instead, she picked it up and threw it as hard as she could, far out into the water where Mom could never ever find it, even if she wanted it badly enough.

And then she trudged on, way farther than she was allowed to go—and after a while, farther than she’d ever been, even with Mom and Aunt Marcie.

So what? They said it wasn’t safe for her here alone, but who cared? They were both liars.

She turned some corners and walked really fast. She sweated a lot, too.

If she got too hot, she’d go in the water. Mom didn’t want her to do that, either. She was just going to do everything Mom didn’t want her to do. Mom deserved it.

Sometime after she’d passed some people on a blanket—a man, a woman and some boy—Mary Jane thought about how tired her legs were. She’d forgotten how tired the sand could make her feet when she walked in it a long time.

So she moved closer to the water, letting the waves come up over her new white tennis shoes.

She loved them most when they were brand-new white. Mom did, too. And she’d be really sorry when she saw them all dirty.

Not that she was going to see them. Mary Jane wasn’t ever going home again. Who could live with people who lied to you?

She heard a dog bark and jumped back, kind of scared. Mom said stray dogs were dangerous sometimes and they could bite and give you rabies, which could make you have some pretty bad shots or die. She’d never been alone around a stray dog.

But when she looked around, there wasn’t one too close. She was kind of thirsty, though. And the ocean water was bad for drinking because of salt making you even thirstier. She shoulda brought her thermos from school. And a sandwich, too. Because it was going to be dinnertime and she hadn’t figured out where she was going to live yet.

Still, she was away from the liars. And that was all that mattered.

A man was by himself, up ahead by the water. Mary Jane slowed down. She wasn’t scared or anything, but everyone knew men were sometimes bad and she didn’t want to have to run away fast. She just wanted to be left alone. And quit being lied to.

Just then she heard the dog bark again. It ran to the man. And then a lady was there, too, and Mary Jane said hi as she walked past. They said hi and smiled. She probably could ask them for water if she had to. And if they fed a dog, they might feed her. A lot of adults thought dogs and kids were a lot alike. And besides, she wasn’t a picky eater and didn’t eat much either.

So she’d be okay.

But she was tired. And she needed to find out where she was going to live before it got dark and she had to go to bed.

Mary Jane ran into a wave, laughing as the water came up to get her shorts wet. And then she did it again.

Pretty soon she was all wet. It wasn’t really funny when you were all alone and no one could see.

She wasn’t going to be scared of the dark. She just wanted to get her bed made before she couldn’t see what she was doing. Lumps in beds made her kind of grumpy.

Mom had teased her about that one time when they’d camped out in a sleeping bag on the beach. Mary Jane kept punching at the lumps in the sand and finally Mom got a sand shovel from the house and dug Mary Jane a perfect oval to sleep in.

She could dig her own oval, though. She knew how. She’d use her new white tennis shoe and get it even dirtier.

When she stubbed her toe and fell down, Mary Jane didn’t really care. Her knee was scraped, but only babies cried over stuff like that. And she wasn’t a baby. She was big and strong and didn’t need any father.

Slopping along at the water’s edge, she thought about Blake Ramsden’s dog. He’d licked her. And his tongue was rough and kind of tickled. And was gross wet.

She’d always wanted a dog but Mom said they couldn’t have one because they weren’t home enough and who would feed it and train it to go potty outside and clean up on the beach when it made a mess.

Mary Jane said she would, but Mom still said no.

But so what? Mom was a liar.

And then she thought of Blake Ramsden. He’d smiled at her before she knew who he was. She’d liked him then. She’d felt all warm inside when he’d smiled, like she could have run to him if the house was on fire and he’d climb a ladder and save her mom and her dog.

Even when he’d asked her name, she’d liked him. He probably made good sand villages, and maybe would’ve let her play Frisbee with his dog on the beach. If she had a Frisbee. She’d lost hers.

Then he’d said his name. Mary Jane hated his name. And she hated him, too. Because Mom didn’t want him to be her dad—or he didn’t really want to be her dad. How did she know which it was?

She stumbled again. And fell on the very same knee. And got wet sand in with the skin.

It stung a lot. But that wasn’t why there were tears in her eyes. She just felt like crying. That was all.

Pretty soon, she felt like crying a lot. And it was going to get dark. She wasn’t afraid of the dark but bad men came out more at night. The ocean meant dreams come true, though, so she’d stay close to that.

Wondering what she was going to do next, Mary Jane wandered farther up the beach.

BLAKE DIDN’T KNOWhow to have an eight-year-old daughter. He’d never been a father.

Striding up the beach, eyes straining to see every movement, focused on any movement, he revised his last thought. He’d been a father. He just hadn’t known about it.

He couldn’t walk fast enough, look carefully enough. He couldn’t do enough. Ever. He wasn’t going to recapture eight lost years. And he might not have eight more weeks to get to know the child who was flesh of his flesh. His family.

The only family still alive.

As he passed a man and woman on a blanket with their little boy, asking if they’d seen a little girl, and moving on as they shook their heads, he wondered if he even wanted his own child to get to know him. Did he want his daughter to meet a man on trial for more crimes than she had years on earth? Did he want her to learn that her father might be spending the rest of his life in jail?

He wanted her to know he wasn’t guilty of those crimes. He wanted her to know that if she had nothing else but her integrity, it would be enough.

He wanted her to understand that he loved her without even knowing her. That he’d give his life for her.

About her mother, he thought not at all. He couldn’t afford to.

The beach was relatively deserted. Blake wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. With fewer people out, the percentages were less that a twisted jerk would find a little girl strolling alone on the beach. And yet, with fewer people around, a twisted jerk would find that girl easy prey.

Sick to his stomach, he walked on, moving rapidly, missing nothing. There were indentations in the sand, but too many to be distinguishable as a little girl’s footprints.

Or there were no footprints, which was why he was only seeing footprint-like indentations. She might not have come this way. She might be somewhere in the village of Mission Beach, wandering streets where all kinds of weirdos could be watching her—a beautiful little curly-headed angel all alone.

No. He couldn’t think that way. She was out here on the beach, pouting, drawing shapes in the sand somewhere with a twig, maybe even on the verge of running back home.

Was she smart enough to walk on the edge of the waves so her prints would be washed away? Or smart enough to stay away from the water so that she wasn’t unexpectedly sucked under?

The familiar dull stabbing in his chest struck again as he considered that he knew nothing at all about his own child. Was she good in school or did she struggle? Did she laugh at cartoons?

Could she keep herself safe?

Blake had thought, when he’d been face-to-face with the reality of possibly losing his freedom for the rest of his life, that the emotions consuming him were the absolute worst he could ever experience.

He’d been wrong.

He walked. He searched. Under every bit of brush, in every cranny of every cliff bank, in yards. He talked to the few people he passed on the beach. He knocked on cottage doors, asking if anyone had seen an eight-year-old girl with dark curly hair and sweet chubby cheeks. He could hold up a hand to show them how tall she was. But he didn’t have the actual statistic.

He didn’t even know the color of her eyes.

And when people shook their heads, again and again, he resolved not to lose hope. He’d find her.

He had to find her. To know she was safe. To get to know her.

And when he did find her, he was going to spend every waking moment with the child, listening to everything she had to say, telling her about her grandparents. Showing her his home. He was taking no chances. If he went to prison, his daughter was at least going to have these weeks. She was going to know that she came from good, hardworking, honest people.

He had a lot to do in very little time.

The sun was starting to sink and Blake had covered more than a couple of miles of beach, with still no horn sounding from the road above. Worry was starting to override every positive effort he made. If they didn’t find her by nightfall, the entire situation changed. His daughter would no longer be an upset little girl pretending to run away. She’d be an endangered female child.

A young couple with a dog had seen a little girl pass by, although they couldn’t really describe her. A couple of teenage boys with new surfboards and no idea what they were doing were sure they’d seen her. But they didn’t even know the color of her hair.

He should turn back. The police would be there, and a search party would have gathered by now. Maybe Marcie or Juliet had found her and sounded a horn and he just hadn’t heard it.

She’d probably run back home as quickly as she’d left.

But still he plunged on. That little girl had been furious with her mother. She thought she’d been lied to.

He stopped himself just short of determining that her running was justified.

Did he seriously want his little girl sacrificing her life because of a lie?

God, no.

Truth wasn’t worth that.

He almost missed the sound as he walked. A quiet, animal-like moan coming from between a boulder and a cliff in a spot where the beach narrowed to almost nothing.

Heart pounding, Blake focused on calm as he slowly rounded the boulder, not sure what he’d find. An injured squirrel? A dog?

A child.

Sitting hunched over, knees pulled up to her chest, her head buried in her thighs. He’d only seen her once, but one glance at the curly brown head and Blake knew he’d found his daughter.

There was dried blood all over her.

The sound came again. A tiny moan followed by a dry sob, as though she was still hurting but was all cried out.

Keeping his emotions in check, when he wanted to grab up that tiny body and run for the nearest phone, Blake kneeled down a few feet away. He didn’t want to scare her, but he had to know how badly she was hurt.

“Mary Jane?”

She jumped, her eyes wide and glazed with fright. And then, seeing him, she hid her swollen, tear-and-sand-stained face.

“Honey, are you hurt?”

Dumb, Ramsden. Really dumb. Of course she was hurt. It hurt to bleed. And it hurt to think that the one person in the world you could trust had been lying to you.

When she continued to ignore him, Blake tried again. “Mary Jane, I understand that you need to be alone, but you’re bleeding. At least let me make sure you don’t need a doctor.”

“I don’t.” The voice was surprisingly strong.

“Can I please see where you’re hurt, just to be sure?”

A skinny little leg popped out, showing him a severely scraped shin and knee. While the cuts weren’t deep, there wasn’t much skin intact.

“Is that all?”

While she kept her head lowered, the other leg came forth. And then two palms and an elbow. From what he could tell, she was right. She probably didn’t need a doctor. But she would if those scrapes weren’t cleaned up.

“What happened?”

“I fell.” She was talking to her chest, but the words were full of energy. And anger.

“Where?”

She glanced up at him then, her little face puckered with irritation. “On the beach and here.” She pointed to the cliff.

Blake glanced up. And swallowed. “You tried to climb up there?”

“I saw a cave.”

She saw a cave. The kid had walked for miles. Been gone for hours. Missed at least one meal. And she hadn’t been planning on coming home.

And suddenly his years of not being a father were extremely evident. He had no idea what to do next.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE ROAR OF THE WAVES was so loud he could hardly hear himself think—not that he was having any thoughts worth hearing.

“I’m a klutz,” the child announced suddenly.

“What?” He watched her, his heart filling, breaking, and filling some more.

“I’m a klutz,” she repeated in a matter-of-fact tone that lost some of its effect with the residual sob that accompanied it. “You might as well know, I knock things over and fall a lot.”

The condition didn’t seem to upset her much.

“Okay.”

“I don’t need a father.”

The words might have hurt, if he’d had any room for any more emotion. But he’d figured out, somewhere during his trek as he’d replayed that scene on the beach between her and her mother, that Mary Jane would not have chosen to see him.

“You know who I am.”

Green. Her eyes were green with little brown flecks, just like her mother’s.

“You met my mother one night a long time ago.”

Well, that just about summed it up.

“I…”

“You can go now. We’re just fine without you,” she said, and then, as he digested that, as he told himself he couldn’t possibly feel more pain, her face screwed up as if she might cry again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was mean.”

“A little.”

“But it’s true, and this is one of those times when someone asks if you like her dress and you have to say no, you hate it.”

In spite of all the heartache and frustration consuming him, Blake smiled. He couldn’t help it. The little girl intrigued him, and not just because she was his daughter.

But she was. He’d only just met her and suddenly felt as though he’d known this child all her life.

“You are your mother’s daughter,” he said.

“Yeah.” The derision was back. “But I don’t want her, either.”

“You don’t mean that.”

She studied him for a minute, her red-rimmed eyes serious beyond her years. “Pro’bly not, but I’m really, really mad right now.”

Taking a chance that she wouldn’t close up on him, Blake settled in the sand in front of her, his legs stretched out so his white tennis shoes were almost touching hers. Huge and so small. The contrast made his throat tight.

“Why is that?” he asked when he could.

Those wide green eyes hardened. “She lied to me. She promised me she wouldn’t tell you about me. I knew when she took your case this would happen, but she promised and promised and I believed her and she lied to me.”

Mary Jane knew he was Juliet’s client. And that he’d been with her mother once, a long time ago. What else did this precocious child know? The extent of his crimes? Why her mother never told him that she existed?

“She didn’t lie to you.”

Mary Jane didn’t believe him, not that he blamed her. He knew what it felt like to be lied to.

“I didn’t have any idea you existed until I saw you with your mother on the beach,” he said. “I knew she had a cottage somewhere on Mission Beach, that’s all. She’d never told me where. Freedom needs practice being around people. Mission Beach is a little busier than mine, but not too busy, so it seemed like a good choice.” It struck him that he was a grown man, sitting on the beach, confiding in an eight-year-old child.

He’d thought earlier that this child’s mother had brought him something he’d been searching for his entire life—a sense of peace that could be found with the right person.

Not with her—never again with her. But perhaps with the daughter she bore him.

IT WAS GETTING DARK. Pacing between the front door and the back, the beach and the street, with Freedom alongside her, Juliet watched frantically for anyone who might show up with her baby girl in tow. Duane and Donna were out, Marcie was out, some of the neighbors were out.

Blake was out.

The police had full descriptions and pictures, and had put out an alert.

Juliet was home in case the little girl returned on her own, and to answer the phone.

She was doing that, and slowly losing her mind. This morning she’d been relatively happy. She’d managed to patch things up with Mary Jane and Marcie. And she had Blake Ramsden on the periphery of her life, wanting to be her friend.

This morning she’d held her daughter in her arms.

Tonight, Mary Jane was gone. And two of the three people who owned her heart hated her.

Freedom whined, shoving his nose into her palm. She rubbed his black head almost unconsciously.

God, please let her be okay.

The eight-year-old had been gone for almost four hours. At best, she had to be getting hungry. At worst…

Juliet couldn’t even think about it. Not and stay standing.

That look in Blake’s eyes when he’d realized Mary Jane was his child tortured her. Over and over again. She’d lost the respect of the one man whose regard meant more to her than her independence.

And the worst part was, she’d deserved that look. She’d robbed a father of eight years of his daughter’s life.

Just as she’d robbed her sister of the confidante she’d needed at one of the most critical times of her life.

And at least partly because she had this contrary habit of believing that she knew what was best for everyone. How in the hell had she developed such an ego? And without knowing it? No, it had taken seeing everyone she cared about in pain before she’d recognized that little fact about herself. It had taken these hours of being utterly alone.

She’d meant well. And that fact didn’t do anyone one bit of good.

Her gaze stretching so far her eyes ached, Juliet took in the beach for at least the hundredth time. Where was he? Had he found her?

She looked and saw nothing. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes again. She’d fallen apart a couple of times since Marcie had announced that Mary Jane was gone.

For once in her life she felt completely powerless. There was no way she could fix this one. She just didn’t know what to do.

Except check out front again to see if anyone was coming.

No one was. Juliet’s head dropped against the front window as sobs shook her shoulders.

“Oh God, Mary Jane. Please come home. Please, baby. I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t tell him about you. I love you, baby. Please come home…”

At first the words just played over and over in her mind. But eventually, as she stood there, a dead weight against the window, she started to talk to her daughter out loud. The words were sometimes indistinguishable, broken up by almost animalistic moans of pain, but she continued to talk to Mary Jane. Maybe the little girl would feel the power of her need.

Or maybe she was losing her mind.

“I didn’t lie to you, imp. I’d never lie to you…”

“I know.”

Juliet froze, her forehead wet and sticky against the window.

“I know you didn’t lie. Blake told me.”

She spun around and then, with huge, gulping sobs, grabbed up the child who had miraculously appeared in the room behind her. If she was demented, so be it. She didn’t want them to ever bring her out of it. Freedom was barking like crazy.

“Mary Jane?” She couldn’t let go long enough to look at the child’s face. But she knew the heart beating against her own. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

She had no idea how many minutes passed before she noticed the man standing behind their daughter, watching her. No matter what happened from there on out, how much he hated her, how horrible he was to her, she would always be grateful to him. Blake had brought her baby back to her.

The irony in that didn’t escape her.

IT WAS ANOTHER TWO HOURS before Juliet had a chance to be alone with Blake. Once she’d assured herself that, while Mary Jane might look a mess, she was none the worse for her escapade, Juliet had the wherewithal to call the cell phones of the other searchers and tell them that Mary Jane had returned. She owed them all more than she’d ever be able to repay.

And she called off the cops.

Everyone, including the pair of officers she’d spoken with earlier, stopped at the house, just to see for themselves that the little girl was fine. They all wanted to hear the story of how Blake had heard her whimpering behind a rock several miles from home, and then carried her all the way back.

Sitting at the kitchen table eating a peanut butter sandwich after her bath, with Freedom sleeping under the table at her feet, Mary Jane held court with her visitors, telling them about her adventure. The little girl would have to be punished, Juliet knew that, but not yet. Not tonight. Tonight she was home and safe, and needed all the nurturing she was getting.

It wasn’t every day that, with no warning, a girl came face-to-face with a stranger who also happened to be the man who’d fathered her.

And when Mary Jane’s eyes started to droop, everyone except Blake said their goodbyes.

The neighbors had given the tall, good-looking man several curious looks. Duane Wilson was going to be grilling her like crazy when she got to work on Monday, asking why her client had been on her beach in the first place.

“It’s past your bedtime,” Juliet announced as soon as the front door closed. She needn’t have bothered. Mary Jane was already off her chair, hugging her aunt Marcie good-night. Juliet waited to walk with her down the hall and tuck her in. Tonight, of all nights, she wasn’t going to miss that.

She had to blink back more tears when Mary Jane stopped in front of Blake.

“Thank you for finding me,” the child said solemnly, staring up at him.

His eyes glistened as he gazed at his daughter, as though enraptured. “You’re welcome.”

“And I’ve thought over what you said and it’s okay for you to see me again. But I still don’t need a father.”

He bowed his head, whether simply to accept her offer, or because he was hiding emotion he didn’t want them to see, Juliet didn’t know. “Thank you.”

Mary Jane reached out one small hand and patted his. “Good night.”

Hands on the table in front of him, Blake said, “Good night, sweetheart.”

Juliet had a feeling he’d have given his life for a hug, and felt her heart break a little bit more when he didn’t push the little girl.

HE WAS WAITING alone in the kitchen when she returned from the bedroom.

“I’m so, so—”

“Don’t.” He held Freedom’s leash. “I don’t want to hear it. I just stayed to let you know I intend to see her as much as possible over the next couple of weeks.”

There was no softness in his voice, and no warmth in the eyes staring back at her. Cold and withdrawn now that Mary Jane was gone, Blake was more of a stranger than he’d been the moment she’d first met him nine years before.

“As long as it’s okay with her, it’s fine with me.”