In A Heartbeat

She was right, of course. Maybe he did suck at being a parent. He loved his daughter, though, and he’d have sworn she loved him, too. He worked long hours, but he’d spent a great deal of his off time with Molly. The one who had been shorted was Sonja, but he’d expected her to understand. But, hey, probably his marriage had been over a lot longer than he’d known.

Standing, he reached out for Molly. “Let me carry her.”

“No!” Shielding their little girl with her body, Sonja struggled to her feet. “She needs her mother. Just take us home. Then you can go back to work.”

Aware that people were staring, he clenched his teeth and said nothing. He might go back to work. Clearly, Sonja wouldn’t be inviting him in so he could talk to Molly about her terrifying experience. His beautiful house wasn’t much anymore but a place where he slept. He’d have happily let Sonja have it, but she’d wanted only money.

“If I stayed in this house, I’d keep thinking you might walk in the door anytime.” Her ringing endorsement of their marriage.

He walked beside his ex-wife and daughter down the corridor to the elevator. Molly clung to her mother and didn’t once look at him.

They had the elevator to themselves until it stopped at the lobby level, where the doors opened. A lone woman waited, blond hair falling out of an elastic, strands straggling around her too-pale, fine-boned face. She looked drained, as if she couldn’t summon the will to so much as step into the elevator even if she had pushed the button to call it.

Instinct drove Nate to take a step toward her. As he did, her vacant stare shifted from him to Sonja and Molly. Horror took over her face. Her eyes fastened on him, and she lurched back. The next thing he knew, she was hurrying away, walking faster and faster.

The elevator doors tried to close but bounced back open with him in the way. He didn’t move. It tried again, and finally he stepped back.

Not looking at Sonja, he said, “That was her, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

An impassive expression was his default. Inside, he’d been shredded. His heart raced. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the way the new widow had looked at him.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN gazed at Anna with unmistakable pity. “You weren’t aware your husband cashed out his retirement fund?”

Given the past weeks, she’d grown increasingly numb, unable to feel much other than a crawling sense of fear. Pity couldn’t touch her.

She didn’t respond directly to the question. “When did he do that?”

“The week before...” She hesitated.

He died.

The matching fund wouldn’t have been much, given the short time Kyle had worked here, but anything would have been better than nothing.

Somehow she managed to nod and even smile as she rose to her feet. Pride was a wonderful thing. “Thank you. I so wish he’d kept better records.” Anna held on to her smile until she’d left the building and was making her way across the parking lot.

Better records? What she so wished was that her husband hadn’t been a fool. She’d begun to realize that much over the past few years, but her attempts to talk sense into him hadn’t made a dent. Learning how deceitful he’d been, that came as a surprise. He’d erased every bit of security she’d thought she had. And for what? She’d been so enraged to see the pittance he’d gotten when he cashed out his life insurance. It hadn’t developed much value, since they’d only purchased it when she was pregnant with Josh, but it would have been paid out in full now that he’d died—$100,000.

“I want to be sure you and any kids we have are taken care of,” Kyle had murmured in her ear after they’d left the insurance office. His smile had been so tender. “Even if something happens to me, you’ll have this.”

That shock had been the worst, if not the last. No insurance payout. No savings. No retirement funds. Over time, he had cashed out everything, often paying substantial penalties to do it. With what he’d gotten, he had made risky investments that all bombed, apparently certain each time that he’d make big money.

No, what she should wish was that she hadn’t been such a fool. She’d asked about money and investments, but allowed him to get away with explanations that didn’t quite make sense and reassurances that he had everything handled. Since he had been working and she hadn’t, she’d felt a little funny about demanding an equal financial partnership.

And yet Anna had grown increasingly uneasy and frustrated with Kyle’s inability to stick with a job. Early in their marriage, she had believed in him wholeheartedly, but by the time they started a family, she saw the pattern.

With each new job, he would start with great enthusiasm. Like clockwork, she’d watch that enthusiasm dim. He was bored. They weren’t making use of his talents. He’d start looking around for something better. “Today was the last straw,” he would finally declare, with great indignation. “I had to quit. But don’t worry, I won’t have any trouble finding a new job. A better one.”

He hadn’t, until the last time, two years ago. His inconstancy had begun to look bad on a résumé. It took two months before he was offered a position he grudgingly accepted. She’d cut every corner she could to get them through until a paycheck.

Kyle teased her for being a worrier. “Lucky you have me to provide balance.” How many times had she heard him say that?

In her car now, Anna put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine. She sat without moving, staring ahead blindly as her mind raced.

She’d have to take Josh out of day camp. One less bill. Except...then when she had to go out, she’d have to pay Mrs. Schaub more to watch both kids. He was happy with his friends at the camp. If she could find a job right away...

Waitressing? Being a receptionist? Day care? She could offer day care at home and not have to pay other people to watch her kids, but only if she could afford to keep the house, which she couldn’t. Substitute teaching for the local school district, even if the work proved to be reasonably steady, wasn’t an option. Given the area’s cost of living, the pay was inadequate, and as a part-time employee, she wouldn’t have benefits. Anyway—school didn’t start for another six weeks.

Fear cramped in her again at the reminder that in less than two weeks, she and the kids would lose their health insurance.

What it came down to was that no job she was qualified to do would pay the basic bills, never mind justify the additional day care. Staying home with the kids, not working for so many years, had been a mistake of monstrous proportion. She’d trusted the man she loved, who had been untrustworthy.

A man who’d willingly sacrificed his own life to save a young girl he didn’t even know.

How could she harbor feelings so bitter, so angry, for the funny, kind man who would do something like that?

How could she not?

She almost had to leave Josh at day camp until she could finish painting the entire interior of their house and pack enough of their possessions to make it ready for prospective buyers to view, she concluded. At least Jenna took naps and was usually able to play quietly while Mommy scrubbed and painted and sorted. With his energy level, Josh couldn’t be as patient.

Maybe there’d be a quick sale. But her panic didn’t subside, and for good reason. Even if the house sold at full price, she wouldn’t end up with all that much money. The market had sagged since they’d bought the modest rambler in Bellevue. They hadn’t spent the money they should have to update it. Increasingly, people expected granite countertops, skylights, hardwood floors, not aluminum windows, ancient Formica, worn beige carpets.

The real estate agent had strongly advised new carpet, at least. Anna could put that on a credit card and pay it off once the house sold. Other improvements were out of reach.

She had no choice but to move away. The Seattle area was chasing San Francisco and New York City for the most expensive places in the country to live. Of course, salaries would be lower in Montana or eastern Oregon or wherever else she went, too. At the very least, she’d have to find a college town where she could take classes to refresh her teaching certificate or make herself employable doing something besides hoisting a heavily laden tray or answering phones.

When finally the tension eased enough to leave her limp, she started the car and saw the dashboard clock. She’d been chasing herself on the hamster wheel for twenty minutes. Twenty wasted minutes. Usually, she put off her frightened scrabbling in search of solutions until bedtime. Who needed sleep when you could lie rigid in the dark and try to figure out how to survive with two young children when you had next to no money?

Anna had never imagined being so close to having no home at all.

* * *

THE ONLY LIGHTS in the family room were one standing lamp and the ever-shifting colors of the TV. Through the window, Nate saw the glitter of lights across the lake in Seattle and a few sparkling on the mast of a boat gliding through the dark water.

Staying unnoticed in the doorway, he glanced at the TV to see what Molly was watching. The Lego Movie. Amusing, as he recalled.

He switched his attention to his daughter, who had curled into the smallest possible ball in the corner of the sofa. She clutched a throw pillow in her arms as if it was a flotation device—all that would keep her from drowning. He’d swear she hadn’t blinked in at least a minute. She was either mesmerized by the movie or not seeing it at all.

At least she wasn’t watching Moana again. That one, with the tense father/daughter thing going, made him uncomfortable.

All she’d wanted since he’d picked her up this morning was to watch a succession of DVDs. Having a waterfront home on Lake Washington used to be a plus. Today, she’d been careful to keep her back to the view of the lake. Okay, that was understandable, but she hadn’t wanted to ride her bike, which he kept in his garage, either, or play a board game. He’d bought two skateboards a while back, one child-sized, one adult, along with pads for knees and elbows and helmets. Sonja didn’t approve, of course, but skateboarding on the driveway was one of the few activities done with her father that had delighted Molly. Today? “No, thank you, Daddy.”

After thanking him politely and refusing to go out to a pizza place they both liked, she nibbled at what he put in front of her for lunch and dinner. She hadn’t talked any more than she absolutely had to.

Abruptly, he’d had enough.

He flicked on the overhead light and strode to the sofa, where he grabbed the remote and turned off both DVD player and television.

Molly sat up. “Daddy!”

“That’s enough, honey. You haven’t taken your eyes off that TV all day. You and I need to talk.” He sat on the middle cushion, within reach of his kid.

Her lower lip pooched out. “I was watching the movie!”

“How many times have you seen it?” Unsurprised that she didn’t answer, he said, “Often enough to know how it ends.”

She bent her head and stared at her lap.

He reached over and gently tipped up her chin. Her big eyes, a vivid green, finally met his.

“I know falling in the river scared you. But keeping everything you feel inside isn’t healthy. You haven’t told me yet what really did happen.”

She mumbled something about her mother.

“I need you to talk to me, too.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes. “Mr. Grainger is dead,” she whispered. “Like Tuffet.”

Tuffet had been her cat, named because he’d let her lie on him whenever she wanted. When Sonja had moved out, she’d taken the cat along with Molly. According to Molly, Tuffet got sick and died. Sonja had admitted to him that the cat had somehow slipped out and been hit by a car.

“I know,” Nate said now, tugging Molly over to lean on him.

“Mommy says it’s your fault, because it was hard to watch so many kids at the same time.” Even her intonations parroted her mother’s. “If you were there, you coulda watched me.”

“That’s true,” he had to say, “but most of the kids only had one parent along, didn’t they? And were assigned three other kids.”

After a hesitation, her head bobbed against him.

His eyes stung from unfamiliar grief mixed with the rare joy at holding her in his arms. He’d loved his little carrottop with unexpected ferocity from the minute the doctor had handed over the beet-red, squalling newborn. If she’d drowned... Even as he shied away from an inner vision of her limp, lifeless, pallid body, his heart cramped painfully.

“Mommy said it’s my fault, too, ’cuz I did something I wasn’t s’posed to.”

Sharp anger supplanted the pain. Molly was old enough to take responsibility for her actions, but not to confront that kind of guilt. What the hell was Sonja thinking?

“Okay.” He shifted to allow him to see her face, wet with tears. “Here’s the thing. Kids break rules all the time. They hide from their parents, or they run from them because it’s fun to be chased. They sneak an extra cookie, or feed an icky food to the cat instead of eating it the way Mommy said they had to.”

She’d quit blinking again, but she was listening.

“I broke my arm when I wasn’t much older than you because I climbed a tree after my dad said I couldn’t. My brother and I used to climb out a skylight to sit on the roof at night, too.”

Her eyes widened. “Did you fall off?”

“No, and your grandma and grandad never caught us.” Of course, there was the time Adam had jumped off, but that was another story.

Her forehead crinkled, and she gave a small nod.

Give your kid ideas, why don’t you?

“The point is, kids don’t always do what their parents or other adults say. Once in a while, they even hurt themselves, like I did when I broke my arm. But it would never have occurred to me that someone else might get hurt because of what I did. That’s because it almost never happens. You didn’t mean it to happen.”

Nate was disconcerted to realize he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He forged on, anyway.

“Why did you sneak away?”

She didn’t want to answer, but finally said, “I was bored. I was s’posed to stay with the other girls Mommy had to watch, but they didn’t want to play with me. And anyway—” she began to sound indignant “—Melissa said we were going to the river, but instead there was this big, boring field, and I didn’t want to play soccer or run dumb three-legged races or just sit there. Mommy wasn’t any fun, ’cuz she was—” She shrank from him in alarm at what she’d almost said.

Sonja was what? He decided not to press; asking Molly to betray her mother, if that was the case, would only do more damage.

“I would give anything to have been able to come with you that day,” he said finally. “But I can’t go back and make a different decision.”

She nodded solemnly.

“I bet you feel the same.”

Her face crumpled and she swallowed, but nodded again.

“Same deal. You can’t go back. I’m more grateful than I can say to Mr. Grainger. I can’t imagine losing you.”

“But...Josh and his little sister lost their dad.” Tears fell anew. “Because of me. And...and I can swim.”

“Mr. Grainger knew that a girl your size couldn’t possibly be a strong enough swimmer to get out of the current. It pulled you away from the bank, didn’t it?”

Her head bobbed. “I was so scared, Daddy.”

“I doubt he expected to die. He probably thought he’d be able to put his feet down, because rivers aren’t deep like the lake, especially at this time of year. Or he hoped to reach a gravel bar or a snag he could grab. But because he wasn’t a good swimmer, he must also have known that he might be giving his life to save yours. And you know what?”

She waited.

“Wherever he is, I don’t think he regrets making that decision. Most adults would have made the same one.”

“But you’re a good swimmer,” she argued.

“Sure, I probably could have battled my way out of the river. But something could happen another time.” He groped for illustrations. “I might have to step out onto a ledge I know won’t support my weight so I can throw a little girl to safety before it gives way. Run out into traffic on the freeway to save a child, even when the chances are good that the cars won’t be able to stop and I’ll be hit.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Would Mommy do that, too?”

“Of course she would,” he said, hugging Molly harder, even though he really didn’t know. For Molly, yes—whatever Sonja’s flaws, she loved her daughter. Otherwise? He hated that he even had to wonder.

“I wish...”

“I know, punkin, I know.” He rested his cheek on the top of Molly’s head. She’d talked to him. Thank God, for the first time in a long while she’d opened up.

Now he was left with that unfinished sentence. What had Sonja been doing while her daughter slipped away?

And what about the kids who’d lost their father? The woman who lost her husband? Every time he remembered that moment, her grief becoming horror when she realized who he was, the claws of guilt sank deeper into his flesh.

* * *

A MONTH LATER, Anna trotted down the sidewalk toward the nearest park. Wanting to stay aware of traffic, she hadn’t yet turned on her iPod. There was a time she’d exercised when Kyle was home with the kids. Now, she had to pay Mrs. Schaub to watch Jenna for even this brief escape. Today she was killing two birds with one stone—awful saying that it was—because a real estate agent was showing her house. She knew he actually was, because she hadn’t gone a block when she’d heard an engine and glanced back to see a gleaming silver sedan turning into her driveway.

If there wasn’t an offer soon, she’d have to go to the bank that held the mortgage and explain why she couldn’t make her payments. She prayed they’d give her some time although, of course, the unmade payments, and presumably a penalty, too, would then come out of the already too-skimpy proceeds when the house did sell.

Running was supposed to be a time when she could zone out, but no more.

At least the park lay just ahead. The trail was packed dirt, easier on her knees. Reaching the last crosswalk, she scanned automatically for traffic, seeing only parked cars.

She’d stepped off the curb when alarm zinged through her. There’d been an odd glint of light, as if... Was that a camera pointing at her? Continuing across the street, she looked.

A man sat in a black SUV, the driver’s side window rolled down, and, yes, he was still pointing a camera with a huge lens at her.

The camera disappeared fast when he realized she’d seen him. When she broke into a run diagonally across the street toward the SUV, his window slid up. With the glass tinted, she couldn’t make out his face.

Maneuvering out of the parking spot was taking him too long, though. Maybe this was stupid, but Anna harbored so much anger atop her fear these days, she didn’t care if this was dangerous. She flung herself at the driver’s door and hammered on the window, yelling “Stop!”

He edged forward. She leaped in front of his bumper, forcing him to brake or hit her. He braked. When she pulled her phone from the cuff on her upper arm, the window slid down.

She took a quick picture of the license plate before she confronted him. Taking courage from the presence of a couple across the street who’d started to get into their own car but were now gaping, instead, Anna glared. “Who are you, and why were you photographing me?”

Late thirties, early forties, the man was thin, pleasant-looking. Nondescript, really. “I’m a private investigator,” he admitted. “Ah, your insurance claim...”

“I made no insurance claim. I want to see your license.”

He produced it. His name was Darren Smith, and his employer was Moonrise Investigations.

“Smith? Really?” She handed it back.

Without a word, he tugged a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open to show his driver’s license.

“Fine,” she snapped. And, crap, the couple were now getting into their car, believing the drama to be over. The busy playground was too far away for any of the parents to notice her. “I’m calling the police. You’ll have to run me over to get away.”

She tapped in 911. Before she could push Send, he swore and said, “Don’t do that. I’ll tell you.”

Anna let her thumb hover over her phone. “Talk.”

“I was hired by a Mr. Nathan Kendrick.”

The name hit her like a sledgehammer.

“He wanted to know what’s going on with you, that’s all. Be sure you and the kids are okay.”

Fury burned through her. “You’ve been taking pictures of my children without my permission?”

“Ah...”

“You son of a bitch,” she said bitingly. “I bet your employer won’t be thrilled when I file a lawsuit. With a little luck, you can kiss that license goodbye!”

Unable to look at him for another second, she ran up the street until she could easily dodge into the park. If she’d had the house to herself, she’d have gone straight home. Jogging held zero appeal, but she grimly started in on her laps through the park, anyway.

Once free to go home and shower, she would pay a visit to Nate Kendrick, the man whose own ex-wife blamed for Kyle’s death.

CHAPTER THREE

DESPITE A FRACTURED ability to focus, Nate was doing his best to work through email when his desk intercom buzzed.

His assistant, Kim Pualani, said apologetically, “A woman is here to see you. She doesn’t have an appointment, but says you’ll know who she is.”

He braced himself. “Her name?”

“Ah...Ms. Grainger. Anna Grainger.”

Kim knew what had happened and must have guessed this visit had to do with the tragedy.

“Send her in,” he agreed, although talking to Kyle Grainger’s widow was the last thing he wanted to do after taking the call from the PI.

“She’s on the warpath,” Smith had warned.

But Nate didn’t see an alternative to letting her lay into him. He couldn’t guess whether she’d accept an apology or anything else from him, but he had to try.

The door swung open, allowing him a glimpse of the woman he’d seen so briefly that day in the hospital. He rose to his feet as she walked in and Kim closed the door behind her. At least now, past the shock, Mrs. Grainger was vitally alive, if also furious. The red spots on her cheeks would have told him that much, even without the PI’s warning.

Nate had the uncomfortable realization that he could be attracted to this woman, long and sleek, honey-blond hair captured smoothly in some arrangement he couldn’t see, her dark blue eyes snapping with the same anger that accented high, perfectly honed cheekbones.

He didn’t even want to imagine how she’d react if she guessed her effect on him.

“Mrs. Grainger,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’d intended to stop soon at your house to speak to you. Please, have a seat.”

She marched forward until his desk blocked her. Obviously, sitting down for a civil conversation wasn’t on her agenda. “Once you’d compiled your photographic record of every step I’ve taken? Every step my children have taken?”

“I didn’t ask—”

Anna Grainger talked right over him. “Do you have any idea how violated I feel? How enraged I am to discover someone has been spying on me? While he was at it, did your PI capture some suggestive pictures through a crack in my blinds? Or one of the kids undressing for bed? Which do you prefer, Mr. Kendrick, little girls or little boys?”

His own temper sparked, but with practiced calm he said, “You must guess why I hired a PI firm to monitor how you’re doing. I didn’t ask for photographs, and I haven’t seen any. All I’ve been given are verbal or written reports.”

Vibrating with fury, she snapped, “Then please explain why I caught that...that creep photographing me when I went for a run? Did you need to know I was getting my exercise? Should I reassure you I’m taking my vitamins?”