Family at Stake

Might as well be on the far side of the moon, Rachel thought, and chucked a piece of lettuce at the birds.

“Let’s not spoil your first hour back among the living with talk of my mother, okay?” she asked nicely. She was a pro at dodging the mom questions. And since her dad had died five years after she left New Springs, and no one even knew she had a brother, she didn’t have to answer those questions at all. She liked it that way.

“Fine,” Olivia huffed, and then muttered “obstinado idiota” under her breath.

Rachel smiled and watched the birds squabbling over the limp lettuce. She threw them a piece of cucumber, her appetite suddenly vanished. She wasn’t an idiot. Idiots were people who kept throwing themselves against the rocky shores of their dysfunctional family. Trying to make things right. Trying to fix the past. Well, if there was one thing Rachel knew, it was that there was no fixing the past. The future, sure. The past was better forgotten.

“We’re having Nick’s family and mine for a barbecue all day,” Olivia said.

“Wow, that should be quite a party.”

“Why don’t you and Will come over to my house?” Olivia asked, and Rachel winced. There was no more Will in her life and Olivia’s fuse was going to blow when Rachel told her.

“Your godchildren are dying to see you—”

“No fair using your girls as bait,” Rachel laughed, though she would like to see Ruby and Louisa. It had been a few weeks since their last trip to the beach.

“And you can protect me from my mother-in-law,” Olivia suggested. “You guys can talk about whatever it is you Anglo folks—”

“Tupperware and English muffins.”

“That’s what you talk about?”

Rachel nodded. “Most of the time.”

Olivia laughed and Rachel decided to stop the conversation before it even got started. “Will and I broke up.”

“What?” Olivia’s eyes were wide. “When?”

“Last weekend.”

“No del oh—”

“Oh, stop. It’s hardly the end of the world.” Will had wanted a family, children, a home and a dog of some kind, and Rachel wanted none of that. Had, in fact, made it clear since the second date, which was why, when he asked her to move in, she had been so stunned. Angry and stunned.

Why do they do that? Think that two months of dinners, sex and Sunday brunch will change my mind.

“What happened?” Olivia stroked Rachel’s arm, and she twitched. Rachel didn’t really want Olivia’s pity and she really didn’t want any of the pats on the back and hugs and offers of ice cream gluttony that usually came with breakups.

“We wanted different things, Liv.”

I want the works, Will had said, his eyes wet as he’d watched Rachel pack her overnight bag. Family. Kids. I want to be needed. I want you to need me. And that’s never going to happen, is it?

Rachel with dry eyes and a cold heart had said no. Don’t pretend to be betrayed, Will. You knew how I felt about marriage and kids from the beginning. And then she’d picked up the stash of things she’d kept in his apartment and never looked back.

“You know…” Olivia looked at Rachel with so much compassion that Rachel had to pretend sudden interest in the cuff of her green cardigan. “We are not destined to become our mothers. That’s a lie. You will not become your mother, or your father. You can create your own family and it can work.”

Rachel sighed and looked up at the big blue California sky as if the answers to all of Olivia’s comments might be there and Rachel could just point and say, “Look.” But they weren’t, so Rachel was left to her usual spiel.

“Why is it when a woman decides she doesn’t want a family it somehow all relates to her mother? I just don’t want a family. That’s all, nothing nefarious. Just no thanks. Is that so hard to understand?”

“No, but I understand you’re chickenshit, that’s for sure!”

Rachel turned on Olivia, only to find her friend laughing. “You’re hilarious,” she said.

“Yes, I am.” Olivia set her bag on the files between them and stretched out her legs. Rachel’s attention was caught by that red flag that sat on top like a loaded weapon. “You know, I never really liked Will.”

“What?”

“Yeah—” Olivia scrunched up her face “—he was just a little too…shiny. He used hair gel. Men shouldn’t use hair gel. Even if they are investment bankers.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Rachel muttered. She turned her head so she could see the name on the file label. It started with an A.

“Yeah, he was too together, like he’s played it safe his whole life. You need a man who knows what it’s like to be a little out of control.”

“Your insights into my love life are spectacular, really, but—”

“You are not getting any younger.” Olivia crossed her legs, and the hem of her skirt lifted and settled around her knees. Her toenails, though chipped and faded, were painted pink to match almost the entirety of her wardrobe, but in the center of each was a red rose. Olivia called her homemade pedicures the ultimate accessory.

“I’m thirty, Liv. Hardly ready to pack it in.”

“I’m just saying…”

Rachel wiggled her pale naked toes and figured out the key to getting the red-arrow case and Olivia off her back without having to suffer through any more talk of mothers and men in one fell swoop.

“How about I come over on Saturday and let you do my toes.”

“Really?” Olivia lit up like a Christmas tree. “You haven’t let me at your toes in months, and frankly, sweetheart, they look like you’ve been taking care of them with your teeth.”

Rachel curled her feet under the bench. “I’ll come over on one condition.”

“I know, no dragons.” Olivia nodded, reiterating Rachel’s rule for whenever Olivia did her toes. Dragons looked good on some people, but Rachel believed she wasn’t one of them.

“I’ll take the red-arrow case,” Rachel said, and watched the pride ignite in Olivia’s eyes.

“You don’t have to do that,” Olivia said firmly. “I can handle the workload.”

“You shouldn’t even have it. You’re administration now.”

“Frank always kept his hand in. I can do it, too.”

“Sure, maybe after you’ve had some experience. This is a red arrow, Liv. Not a truancy or welfare fraud. Take the damn help.” Rachel urged. “Second Golden Rule—take help when you need it.”

Olivia was silent for a moment. “You think I need it?”

“I think you’re one week away from drooling in a straitjacket.”

Olivia’s laugh flooded Rachel with relief. “Okay.” She nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Rachel flashed Olivia a smile, picked up the file and flipped through the paperwork. The nice steady hum of adrenaline entered her veins.

She scanned the information at the top of the page. “She’s from my old stomping grounds.”

Olivia’s face mirrored Rachel’s surprise. New Springs was a sleepy agricultural town on the edge of the desert. It was a medium-size town, quiet.

It was an eerie coincidence and the hair on her neck went stiff. She turned to the second page and the picture of the young girl with a sneer, tangled blond hair and eyes so angry and hurt at the same time that Rachel felt like she was looking at herself at that age.

“How old?”

Rachel went back to the first page. “Twelve.”

Olivia’s soft sigh was distressed. “They just keep getting younger.”

Rachel stopped listening. She actually, for a moment, couldn’t breathe. The girl’s name was Amanda Edwards. And she was from New Springs. It could just be a coincidence. Edwards, after all, was a common last name.

She flipped to the photo again. The blond hair, the eyes so blue, unlike most other blues. Like the color of the sky closest to the horizon on a clear day. Rachel knew that color like she knew the same muddy-green of her own eyes. It was a blue just like Mac Edwards’s eyes.

“Rachel?”

Please don’t let it be, she prayed, and turned to the third page with the names of the parents typed in black and white across the top of the page.

Mother—deceased.

Father—MacArthur Edwards.

All the blood in Rachel’s body fell to her feet and she saw stars, her skin crawled. Rachel fingered the red-arrow sticker on the front of the file that meant Frank thought Amanda should be removed from the home.

From Mac’s home.

Oh, Mac, what went wrong? She shook with a sudden chill that filled her bones.

“Rachel? You okay?” Olivia asked, her hand brushing Rachel’s shoulder.

Rachel took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I need to get back into work.” She stood, ignoring Olivia’s protests. She scooped up the files and her half-eaten salad and ran back to her office like a possessed woman.

Mac Edwards had a daughter.

And she was in trouble.

Rachel shut her office door and sat at her desk, rolling her chair up tight so the edge of the desk bit into her stomach. She cleared a small space on her ink blotter and opened Amanda Edwards’s file. There was a shaking in her stomach, an awful quiver. A million thoughts buzzed and careened through her brain like bees.

Mac has a daughter and Frank thought she should be removed from the home.

There had to be some kind of mistake. The man she knew would have become a great father. He had been a caring, gentle boy with patience and kindness to spare.

Look at what your brother made me…

Rachel shook her head, pushing the memory to the black hole it came from.

But something had happened to Mac and his daughter. And when something happened to a twelve-year-old girl it was usually because of the parents.

Rachel touched the picture of Mac’s angry little girl, tracing the eyes that looked as if they had seen too much.

What went wrong?

Rachel dove into the file, tearing through pages, trying as best she could to gather the available information from the clues Frank had left behind.

Amanda Edwards, runaway age twelve. Amanda and a fourteen-year-old girl, Christie Alverez, were investigated six months ago in connection to a fire that burned down a barn and an acre of pasture on a horse farm ten miles away from New Springs.

The farm belonged to Gatan Meorte.

Wow. Gatan Meorte. Rachel wiped her hand down her face as memories assaulted her. She would have thought that old recluse was long dead.

Amanda and Christie had been missing for two days and were caught hitchhiking along Highway 13 the day after the fire.

Horrifying images of what could happen to two girls on the highway flooded Rachel’s imagination and cramped her stomach.

Frank’s notes, printed precisely in damning black and white, filled the last page.

Amanda is an angry young girl, with violent and suicidal tendencies. Her grades have dropped significantly in the past year since her mother’s death. It is my opinion that the mother was Amanda’s primary caregiver and when she died, the father did not pick up the slack. I recommend this child be removed from the home because Mac Edwards is in denial of his daughter’s behavior to the point of delusion.

He says he has never seen her act out and that his daughter’s running away was a complete shock to him. Amanda needs to live in a reality-based situation where her actions have consequences, as opposed to having her behavior excused or swept under the rug as is the case with her father. Even more disturbing, when told that Amanda could be removed from the home if he did not face the reality of his family, Mr. Edwards had a violent outburst. He broke a chair and a window and had to be physically restrained. It is my opinion that there is probably some underlying abuse between Mr. Edwards and his daughter. In light of this and Amanda’s growing criminal record, she needs to be removed from the home.

Rachel had to read the words five times before they sank in.

She leaned back and counted the ceiling-tile squares, a calming exercise that rarely worked, but that she tried with unwavering faith.

She couldn’t begin to picture the gentle, funny Mac she knew breaking a window or a chair in rage.

We could get married, that way you could stay.

She squeezed her eyes shut until the memory faded.

What happened to the mother? Rachel wondered. She went back through the file, but other than the note that the mother was deceased there was no mention of her.

How ironic that Rachel could have been the one with the twelve-year-old daughter—Mac’s daughter. That night at the quarry had been thirteen years ago almost to the day. A twist of fate and her life would have been completely different.

Rachel checked the date of the file. It was one of Frank’s last cases. The last time he’d interviewed Amanda was three weeks ago—the same time he’d told Mac that DCFS might take his daughter.

Mac might have run. Packed up and taken Amanda…where? The Mac she knew had no family outside of his mother and her series of husbands. Maybe he went to his wife’s family?

In any case, Amanda Edwards’s file needed to be updated.

Rachel should not take this case. She knew that. It was a conflict of interest if ever there was one. What she should do is march right back to Olivia and say, “I know this guy. Loved him, actually. I think. I definitely broke his heart. So, I can’t take the case.”

She should do that.

But she didn’t.

CHAPTER TWO

RACHEL PARKED HER CAR and turned off the ignition. It was Friday, two days after finding out about Mac and Amanda, and she had finally been able to clear her late-afternoon schedule and drive to their home.

She shook out her numb hands. She’d been gripping the steering wheel a tad too hard. She had not counted on what it would cost her to drive to New Springs. Every time she looked in the rearview mirror, the scared, unsure girl who had left thirteen years ago stared back at her.

Obviously she wasn’t as detached from the past as she thought.

She grabbed her briefcase and got out of the car. The slam of the door sent a bird flying from the brush bordering the small gravel parking area, beside a low brown house built into a mountain and surrounded by avocado and lemon groves. The trees flourished on the hillsides surrounding New Springs, and all of the houses along the mountain road she had just traveled were farmhouses. The file said Mac was a farmer, and Rachel could see Mac working this land. It made perfect sense.

Rachel still wasn’t convinced she would take this case. She was just here for preliminary fieldwork, a rudimentary home visit that should tell her if Frank had been right. And then she would be better able to determine what to do. She wasn’t convinced that this case was worth all that she had at stake. She could get into big trouble if Olivia became aware of what had happened between Mac and Rachel—it could cost her the job she loved. As she had convinced herself during the trip here, she was just sussing things out.

Rachel had gone into social work to help families. It was her job. And she was good at it. She knew better than to become emotionally involved. And without emotion, this was just another case. Mac was just another father—one who was possibly failing his daughter.

Rachel had to help. Or at least see if help was needed.

There were no ghostly remains of some kind of romantic relationship. They had been friends. Clumsy lovers and then they’d lost touch. End of story.

She checked her watch. Five-thirty, usually a good time to catch people at home. She’d learned early in her career that calling people to tell them she was coming just gave them the information they needed to not be home at the right time.

The gravel crunched under her feet. Somewhere a wind chime made careless music in the soft breeze that blew across the mountain, bringing with it the smell of white sage.

She stepped onto a flagstone path that led to the door, which appeared hidden underneath the eaves. A tomato plant grew like mad in a bucket next to a basil plant growing in a coffee can.

That’s the Mac I remember.

Rachel took a deep breath, cursed that extra-large coffee she’d drunk earlier that made her heart thunder in her chest. She ran a hand down the front of her white blouse, made sure she was all tucked in and presentable and knocked on the dark wood door, which, to her surprise, swung open under the light pressure from her fist.

Rachel found herself in front of a small staircase leading down into a huge room with a wall of windows opposite her that faced the valley and the mountains behind it.

She was taken aback by the beauty the small house hid.

Pale yellow wood floors and walls gleamed in the clear bright afternoon light that filled the long multipurpose room. On one end there was a fireplace made of fieldstone and two big red couches facing an entertainment unit.

A dining room table cluttered with a book bag, homework and a plate with crumbs on it stood in the middle of the room. A small kitchen occupied the far end with an island separating the kitchen from the dining room.

It was warm and cozy, with pictures on the walls and a plate of cookies on the counter. It seemed like the very last place that abuse would happen. But that was the first lesson she’d ever learned, from her own family—things are never what they seem. And homes could be the most dangerous places on Earth.

“Hello?” she called out, leaning into the foyer. She waited a moment but there was no response, no sound, even. She took one step in and looked around the door at a staircase leading up to a second floor. Since the ground floor wasn’t visible from the outside because of the way it was built into the mountain, the seemingly modest-size home was actually quite large.

Mac was obviously a successful farmer. That hadn’t been mentioned in the files.

“Anybody home?”

“Hey!” a man shouted from another part of the house, and Rachel’s breath stalled in her lungs. It was Mac. His deep, rough voice sent shock waves down her spine. “Be right there.”

Irritation flared at her sudden case of nerves and she forced herself to relax, to remember her job. Her skill and detachment.

“Sorry.” His voice was closer, somewhere to the right of her and low on the first floor. Her stomach leaped. She could hear his footsteps, approaching swiftly. “Have you been—”

Suddenly he was there, right in front of her, appearing from an unseen doorway in the corner of the kitchen. Her heartbeat stopped.

Mac. Oh, my God, look at you.

He was beautiful. His body had grown into the promise it had at seventeen. He looked lean but powerful. His shoulders filled the seams of his denim workshirt and the sleeves were rolled up to reveal wiry, nut-brown forearms. His khaki pants hung on lean hips. His hair, overlong and bleached from his days outside, fell over his forehead. She watched spellbound as he brushed it out of his eyes.

His eyes were the same. Blue as the palest part of the sky and growing confused.

“I’m sorry.” He flashed his lopsided grin with the dimple, and Rachel felt her heart start again with a painful double lurch. “Are you Amanda’s tutor?”

“No.” She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, and stood revealed and naked in front of him.

Recognition and painful disbelief twisted his face.

“Rach?” he breathed.

She was going to cry. Her eyes burned and her nose became watery. She looked at her shoes, a habit she had spent the better part of her life trying to break.

“Rachel?” His voice was strong but sharp at the end, and she couldn’t bear to look at him. You have a job to do, Rachel. Get it together. She sniffed and glanced up, meeting Mac’s gaze.

“Hi, Mac.”

He put one foot on the stairs and his hand gripped the banister, as if he wanted it dead. His knuckles turned white as he squeezed the wood. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice strangled.

She was hoping for a different beginning to this conversation. I suppose a hug is too much to ask for.

Sarcasm was her convenient crutch. She knew that about herself, but didn’t have the power to do this without a few crutches.

She opened her mouth to explain herself, but a blond girl appeared at the top of the second-floor stairs and electricity charged the air in the house.

The hair on Rachel’s arms stood on end.

“Sorry, Dad, just went to the bathroom.” The girl’s voice was quiet and thin. Amanda was so skinny, Rachel’s heart heaved.

Something is seriously wrong.

Amanda floated soundlessly down the stairs, carefully stepping on the edges of the steps.

She’s a ghost, Rachel thought, painfully mesmerized by the girl wearing a pair of cutoff shorts and a long-sleeved red T-shirt with the name of a local swim team on it.

Amanda caught sight of Rachel standing in the doorway and her passive face transformed into a hostile mask of suspicion. Her eyes turned hard and old. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Rachel.

Ah, there she is. That’s the girl from the picture.

“Who are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

“Amanda.” Mac put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder, a gesture of unity and warmth, but at the same time Rachel knew he was telling his daughter to relax. “This is—” Mac swallowed “—an old friend of mine, Rachel…” He trailed off, obviously waiting for her to supply her married name.

“Rachel Filmore,” Rachel said. She held out her hand, but Amanda hesitated until Mac elbowed her in the back, a little poke that said “Mind your manners.” Nothing serious.

“Hi.” Amanda barely touched Rachel’s hand. “Can I go up to my room until the tutor comes?” she asked Mac, but she didn’t take her narrowed eyes off Rachel.

“Sure,” he agreed, and Amanda took off like a shot back up the stairs, her long hair a banner behind her. Rachel watched her go, then turned to face Mac, whose tension she could feel like pinpricks along her skin.

He wasn’t happy to see her and it was only going to get worse.

“What are you doing here, Rachel?” he asked slowly in his low voice. He crossed his arms over his lean chest and tilted his head—familiar gestures that tugged at the lock on her memories.

“Mac, I am a counselor with Santa Barbara DCFS.” The words weren’t even out of her mouth before he turned around and paced away from her. His boots clunked heavily on the hardwood floor.

“Mac?”

“I’m listening,” he said, his voice cold and angry. He grabbed the plate with the crumbs on it and walked over to the kitchen sink. “I’m all ears, Rachel.”

Apparently she wasn’t the only one with a sarcastic crutch. She was surprised by how much it hurt to be on the receiving end of that scathing bitterness.

“Frank Monroe, who initially—”

“Oh, I remember Frank.” The plate clattered into the sink.

“He’s retired now and I am taking over the file for Amand—” Mac picked up the plate and threw it back into the sink where it shattered. Rachel flinched and Mac braced his hands against the counter. He swore under his breath.

“Mac, you must know the gravity of what you and Amanda are facing.” Rachel took another step onto the small landing. Just do the right thing here, Mac, she silently urged him. “I am not against you.”

Mac turned and leaned against the counter. A muscle flexed in his jaw and his eyes were hot with frustrated rage. “That’s really funny, Rachel, because that is exactly what Frank told me right before he said he was going to take my daughter away.”

“Look…” Rachel stepped down onto the first step and knew that her decision was made. She didn’t know when exactly it had happened—the moment she opened the file, the second she saw Mac, she wasn’t sure—but she couldn’t turn this case over to someone else. She knew she would be breaking the rules, but Amanda and Mac Edwards were going to be her responsibility. “I can help you—”

“He said that, too.” Mac scrubbed his hands over his face and seemed to be in the process of reining himself in. “I’m not going to lose my daughter.”

“Then you have to work with me.”