Everybody's Hero

Chapter 3

Taylor was officially in a cruddy mood. And it had nothing to do with the heat, or her hormones, or even that Oakley, her four-legged roommate, had devoured the salad she’d made for lunch today, leaving her with nothing but tuna fish. She only kept tuna fish in the house because it was easy to fix and lasted forever in the can, but truthfully, she wasn’t all that fond of it. No, her cruddy mood had something to do with Joe Salazar. She just wasn’t sure what, exactly.

From her perch on the edge of the Sunday school room’s low stage, Taylor took a bite of her tuna sandwich, but it tasted like dust. Fishy dust, at that. For heaven’s sake, she’d barely even seen the man this past week. He dropped Seth off every morning and picked him up every evening—although Taylor did notice he got later and later every day—but mostly he talked to Blair, since she was Seth’s counselor. Which was just how Taylor wanted it.

But even totally non-Joe-related events or situations would set her off. Like last night, when she got home and her house was empty. Well, duh, she lived alone; of course her house was empty. But usually she walked in and felt “Ahhh.” Last night, she walked in and felt…actually, she wasn’t sure what she felt, but it wasn’t pleasant. And why she should connect this unpleasant, undefined feeling to a man she didn’t even know made no sense whatsoever. But there it was. And there she was, in a cruddy mood.

“How’s he doing?”

A cruddy mood clearly destined to get worse.

Taylor didn’t have to ask to know who the pastor’s wife was talking about. She glanced across the room at Seth, listlessly picking at his sandwich and still doing his best to ignore the other children. Since Didi could obviously see for herself how he was doing, Taylor guessed the older woman wanted her take on things. Which unfortunately smelled to high heaven of ulterior motives.

“Maintaining. Barely.” Compunction about not letting herself get too close to the boy had been increasingly gnawing at her for several days. “Mostly he’s just hung back and watched.”

She most definitely did not like the silence that greeted her comment. “I don’t mean to butt in,” Didi said at last, almost provoking a laugh, “but don’t you think you should, um, get a little more involved?”

“Blair’s doing fine.”

“Yes, she is. But Seth isn’t. Honey, this is a special case—”

“I know that.”

“Then why in tarnation are you sitting back and doing nothing?”

“I’m not sitting back and doing nothing. I’m here if Blair needs me. And it’s not as if I’m ignoring the child.”

“Taylor.” Didi hauled her petite, but ample, form up onto the stage beside her, setting short, fading blond curls all aquiver. “The poor kid follows every move you make. If anyone could help him over this, it would be you.”

“And there’s also a real danger of his becoming too attached—” she bit off another corner of her sandwich “—and then what happens when the summer is over and he has to leave?”

“You’ll heal.”

“I’m not talking about me—”

“Aren’t you?”

Oh, yeah, her mood was definitely worsening. Especially when Didi added, “And I don’t think it’s just the boy you’re afraid to get close to, either.”

With friends like this…

“No comment?” Didi said.

“Not in a million years.”

That got a chuckle. Then Didi crossed her arms and said, “Still, sometimes you gotta worry about the present and trust the future to take care of itself.” A pause. “And hiding out from life isn’t exactly trusting, now, is it?”

This was hardly the first time the pastor’s wife had hinted that she had problems with some of Taylor’s choices, most notably her moving to an itty-bitty town where there weren’t a whole lot of choices. In jobs, in housing, in prospective relationships of the man-woman variety. But it wasn’t as if Taylor hadn’t known from the start what she’d be getting into when she accepted the teaching job here. Still, after her marriage’s collapse, there was a lot to be said for being able to go to sleep every night grateful for her relatively complication-free life.

A cop-out? Maybe. But ask her if she cared. She loved her job, and her little house nestled in the woods, and she was perfectly content with her safe, calm, orderly life, one where she could face the world each morning with a smile that she didn’t have to pull out of a drawer and paste on. So how come Didi’s words weren’t rolling off her back the way they usually did?

As Taylor watched Seth’s large eyes alternate between cautiously surveying his surroundings and withdrawing into his grief, old wounds began to seep open. Wounds she’d thought had long since healed. Memory yanked her back to just past her eleventh birthday, right after her father died, when she’d been convinced she’d never be happy again.

Seth was only a little kid. All he knew was now. And somehow, she had the feeling his big brother, although he meant well, was as clueless as the kid. Conflicting instincts clashed inside her—compassion versus self-preservation, the need to help duking it out with the realization that wanting to help didn’t necessarily mean she could.

But could she live with herself if she didn’t at least try?

Taylor slurped up the rest of her bottled juice as she watched Blair sink into a small chair beside Seth, trying to engage him in conversation, as she’d been doing without much success the whole week. If anyone could get through, it was Blair. Not only did the teen adore little kids—she’d already talked to Taylor about majoring in early childhood education in college—but she, too, knew what it was to lose someone she loved. In her case, it was the uncle who, with Jenna, had adopted and raised her before anybody knew Hank was her father and who had died of cancer a few years back. But after a minute or two, the little boy shook his head and Blair got up, shooting Taylor a helpless glance before sitting down at another table where a group of little girls were having giggle fits over heaven knew what.

Never in her life had Taylor been able to see a hurting child and not try to comfort him or her. And she had about as much chance of success at trying to resist comforting this one as she did of staying away from chocolate.

“Maddie Logan’s coming in this afternoon to help. She could take over your group,” Didi said, as if reading her mind. And with that, Taylor sighed, heaved her duff off the edge of the stage and gave in to the inevitable.

Even if the distrust in Seth’s eyes as he watched her approach wasn’t exactly inspiring her with confidence. She shooed the rest of the kids outside and then sat at the table beside him. He’d brought his lunch today, a banana and cookies along with the sandwich, Taylor saw. She imagined Joe packing it for him, unable to squelch the warm feeling attendant thereto.

“Hey, honey.” She angled her head to peer into the glowering face. “That looks like a good lunch you’ve got there.”

He poked at his peanut butter sandwich and then shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

“Well, that’s okay. It happens sometimes. So…you and your brother are staying in one of the cabins up at the Double Arrow, huh?”

A nod.

“I hear they’re very nice—”

“She made you come over here and talk to me, didn’t she?”

“Who?”

He nodded toward Didi. “Her.”

“Oh. No. She didn’t. Totally my idea.”

After a long pause, Seth said, “You wanna see a picture of my mom?”

“Sure.”

The boy reached around and yanked out a slim cloth wallet from his back pocket, opening it to a photo of a smiling young woman with dark hair and eyes.

“Oh, Seth…she was very pretty.”

“I know.” He contemplated the photo for a couple of seconds, then said, “Do you think I’ll see her again? In heaven?”

Oh, boy. “Maybe,” Taylor said. At his distressed look, she smiled. “I don’t actually know how all that works. But I’ve always thought I’d like to see my father again.”

His eyes met hers, interested. “He’s dead, too?”

“Yeah. For a long time, now.”

“You still miss him?”

“Sometimes. But I can think about him now without it hurting so much.”

Seth broke the eye contact, slapping shut the wallet and shoving it back in his pocket. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Okay.”

“What time is it?”

“About twelve-thirty.”

“How long till Joe comes to get me?”

“He said he’d be here at four.”

“He didn’t get here until five yesterday.”

“Guess he got tied up—”

“Can I go outside now?”

Taylor said, “Sure.” But she caught the boy’s sticky, warm hand as he rose. He didn’t try to get free, but he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the tabletop. “It’s all really awful, isn’t it?” she said.

For a long moment, he just stood there, his breath spurting from his nose in ragged little pants. Then, finally, his eyes shot to hers, all his sorrow and confusion upending on her like a bucket of cold, grimy water before he yanked his hand from her grasp and strode wordlessly away.

So help her, if Joe didn’t show up on time today, she was going to string him up by his…toes.

At four-fifteen, Didi informed Taylor she had a call, she could take it on the phone in the church office. Taylor locked eyes with the older woman for a moment, just long enough to get that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that always accompanied bad news. Her imagination was all set to take flight when Didi rudely yanked it back to earth with, “It’s Seth’s brother.”

Taylor frowned, not processing either the information itself or all the wherewithals behind it. “Why’s he calling me?”

“That, I couldn’t tell you. But he didn’t sound so good.”

Taylor tromped off to the office and picked up the phone, plucking at her T-shirt’s neckline. There was actually an air conditioner in here, but the secretary—who only worked three mornings a week—always turned it off when she went home, leaving the small room feeling like a recently vacated shower stall.

“This is Taylor—”

“Taylor, Joe Salazar. I’m really sorry, but I’m running behind and it looks like I’m going to be late picking up Seth tonight.”

“Again?”

A pause. “Again.”

She shut her eyes. “How late?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve got people here, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover… If I leave here by five-thirty, I’ll be back in Haven by half past six or thereabouts. I know you all don’t stay open that late—”

“Whoa, hold on—it doesn’t take an hour to get here from the Double Arrow. Where are you?”

Another pause. “Tulsa.”

“Tulsa? Why the heck are you in Tulsa?”

“For work. It’s a long story. Which I doubt you want to hear.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Then I’ll tell you sometime. Right now, though, I’ve got a whole bunch of people giving me dirty looks because I’m over here talking to you and not over there talking to them, so the upshot is…” Big sigh. “Look, I know this stinks, but is there any way somebody could watch Seth until I get back?”

Taylor shut her eyes again, praying for patience. Her prayer was not answered. “Oh, I suppose…”

“Could you do it? I mean, I know that’s asking a lot. And you probably have plans…”

“No, I don’t have plans” flew right out of her mouth before she could catch it, only then she lost her breath. “But I’m not real sure that’s such a good idea—”

“I agree. But you’re the only one he talks about. I think he likes you.”

Setting aside his “I agree” comment to examine at a later date, she said, “He sure has a funny way of showing it.”

“Taylor, please. I’m desperate. And I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

His words set off a series of echoes in her head, reaching way back, words that had taught her the meaning of disappointment and distrust.

“Seems to me I’m not the one you need to be making anything up to.”

Silence. Then a soft, “I agree. And God knows I’ll probably get an earful from my brother when I get back. If he even talks to me at all. I know this makes me dirt in everybody’s book, but I’m really stuck.”

More echoes, this time of genuine regret.

Taylor sighed, inwardly muttered something that was anything but a prayer, and said, “You know the first road you get to after you turn off from the highway, going up to the Double Arrow?”

“Yeah?”

“Make a left, then go all the way to the end. That’s my house. I’ll take Seth there after camp closes.”

“Thank you so much—”

“And don’t mind the dog. He’s loud but harmless.”

“Got it.” Joe paused. “Can I bring dinner to pay you back?”

“No,” she said, and hung up.

“Well, this is it,” Taylor said to the stone-faced child buckled up next to her in the Chevy pickup she’d bought off Darryl Andrews last year, after the dirt road leading to her place finally did-in her old Saturn. She was about to add something about the dog, except she noticed Oakley hadn’t budged from his spot on the porch, guarding the front door. Blocking it, anyway. Oakley’s method of watch-dogging ran more along the lines of “Look who’s here, let’s party!” than “Get your good-for-nothin’ butt off my property before I rip you to shreds.” Also, nobody’d clued Oakley in to the fact that the image of the lazy bloodhound was an inaccurate stereotype. Taylor often wondered what, if anything, the dog did during the day while she was gone, since he never seemed to change position between when she left and when she returned. If it weren’t for the piles of poop that magically appeared in her absence, she’d have no proof that he actually moved.

“You got a dog?”

Taylor couldn’t quite tell if that was interest or trepidation in Seth’s voice, but at least it was a response. “After a fashion,” she said, unlatching her seat belt and opening the truck door. A breeze would be nice right about now to wick the moisture off her back and bottom from sitting on the truck’s vinyl seat. But no such luck. Even the wind chime on the end of her porch was dead silent.

“Does he bite?” Seth asked, making no move to open his own door.

Trepidation, definitely. “Honey, half the time I’m not even sure he breathes. Come on, it’s okay.”

Seth had taken the news about Joe’s lateness more calmly than Taylor might have expected, but she knew he was ticked. When she’d said they were ready to go, the boy had collected his things and walked out to the truck like a prisoner resigned to his fate. Just warmed the cockles of her heart, is what.

“Seth?” she now said. When he finally looked at her, she smiled like a goon and said, “Really, this is going to be fun.”

Somehow, she got the feeling he didn’t believe her.

Tempted to mutter things she shouldn’t, Taylor got out of the truck. Seth, however, didn’t. Not until she went around to the passenger side and opened the door for him, anyway. Then, with excruciating slowness, the child slithered down from the seat, his eyes glued to the comatose dog the entire time. When she started toward the porch, however, the kid grabbed her hand.

“Seth, honey? I promise you, I’ve yet to hear of a bloodhound eating a child. He might slobber you to death—” she twisted her mouth at the prone mass on her porch “—if he ever wakes up, but Oakley’s as gentle as a lamb, I swear.”

Perhaps her voice finally pervaded the beast’s consciousness, because at that moment the big red dog hauled himself to his feet, his skin taking a few extra seconds to catch up, and let out a bay of joy before bounding over to them. Seth let out a scream and hid behind Taylor, shaking so hard she thought he’d break.

“Oakley! Doghouse!” she said, and the dog gave her a wounded “What did I do?” look before morosely lumbering off to his garage-sized doghouse at the side of the house. But he’d no sooner gone in than he turned right back around, sitting hunched inside the opening with a baleful expression. Taylor glanced down to see Seth staring at the dog as hard as the dog was staring at him.

“He looks like his feelings got hurt,” he said.

“Oakley loves kids,” Taylor said, continuing toward the house. “And they love him. He’s never run into one who was afraid of him before, so I guess he’s kind of confused.”

“But he’s so big.”

So’s your brother, but I’m not afraid of him, Taylor wanted to say, except then it occurred to her maybe she was a little more afraid of Joe than she wanted to admit. Or at least, afraid of her reaction to him. The man was like chocolate—even though it always gave her a headache, she couldn’t completely shake her affinity for it.

Would someone please explain to her why she was so attracted to driven, focused men, when she knew damn well that driven, focused men made lousy mates?

“Come on, let’s go inside,” she said, leading Seth into her house, a little two-bedroom bungalow with a sunroom off the living room and an eat-in kitchen. But it had been a steal, and it was all hers—or would be in twenty-nine years—and the lot was plenty big enough to justify having a bloodhound, even if she’d spent a small fortune on an invisible fence to keep the beast from following the scent of every rabbit or possum that wandered across the property.

“I’m hungry,” Seth announced from the middle of the living room, even as she noticed those big eyes taking it all in—the one whole wall filled with books, the mismatched, garage-sale furniture, the old Turkish rug from her father’s office that she’d discovered wasn’t colorfast when Oakley peed on it as a puppy.

“Yeah, me, too.” He trailed her into the kitchen—she’d replaced the ugly black-flecked floor tiles with a pretty white-and-gold linoleum, but she’d have to live with the harvest gold appliances and burnt-orange cabinets for a while yet, she imagined—where she opened the freezer. “You like Healthy Choice?”

“What’s that?”

“Frozen dinners. There’s…let’s see…lemon pepper fish, Salisbury steak and some Mexican chicken thing.”

“C’n I have the Mexican chicken?”

“Sure can.”

Outside, Oakley started baying at something. Seth wandered over to the kitchen window, which looked out over the front yard. “I think he’s lonely,” he said as Taylor put his dinner in the microwave.

“Could be. He’s used to coming inside with me when I get home.”

“Oh.” The boy turned to her. “Guess it’s not fair, huh? That he has to stay outside?”

“He’ll live. Right now, your feelings are more important than his. Okay, I’m out of milk, but I can make iced tea.”

Seth gave her a long, considering look before saying, “With lots of sugar?”

Taylor smiled. “How else?”

Oakley bayed again—Owrooowroooowrooooooo.

“Will he come if I call?” Seth asked.

“In a New York minute,” Taylor said, and the boy went to the front door and did just that, then hid behind the door when a hundred pounds of dog galumphed into the house, looking pleased as all get-out.

It was closing in on seven o’clock by the time Joe got to Taylor’s. Translation: His butt was in a major sling. As he pulled the Blazer up in front of the little white house with the gold shutters, he wondered who would be more ticked off with him—Seth or Taylor. His money was on the redhead. Shoot, the chill in her voice when he’d called had damn near given him frostbite. Then again, maybe it was nothing more than paranoia and a squirrelly connection. A guy could hope, right?

Candy and flowers in tow, he got out of the SUV, strangely disappointed at the lack of a welcoming committee. No glowering redhead with evisceration on her mind, no little boy tearing down the steps and up into his arms, not even the promised dog he shouldn’t pay any mind to. For a moment, he wondered if maybe he had the wrong house, until he heard it, just faintly— Taylor’s laughter drifting out the open window next to the front door, as soft and rich as the notes sporadically floating out from the wind chime hanging from the porch eaves.

Joe simply stood there, absorbing it, much the same way he was absorbing the almost-cool breeze sucking at his damp back. It was still hot, too hot, but the whispering of thousands of still-tender leaves, the calm whoooo…whoooo…whoooo…of a mourning dove soothed his frayed nerves, just a little. It would be another hour or more before the sun set, but the late daylight gilded the roof of the tiny house and set the masses of flowers ablaze in more containers than he could count scattered across the front of the porch and alongside the steps. There wasn’t much grass in the yard to speak of, but a great big old mulberry tree kept it shaded. Off to the side, the heady, peachy fragrance from a mimosa in full bloom mingled with the sweetness given off by the honeysuckle vine smothering the post-and-rail fence along one side of the house, arousing him in some way he couldn’t even define.

Just then, the largest dog he’d ever encountered nosed open the screen door, got Joe in his sights, and bounded down the steps, barking his head off. Before Joe could brace himself, ham-sized paws collided with Joe’s shoulders, sending him sprawling in the dirt with a loud “Oof!” And if having the wind knocked out of him wasn’t enough of an indignity, a gallon or so of dog spit now washed over his face. Then he heard Taylor yell, “Oakley! Drop it!” and he could breathe again. Move, no, but definitely breathe.

“Ohmigod, I’m so sorry…” Taylor grabbed his hand and, grunting, hauled him to a sitting position. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Joe said, cautiously testing assorted limbs to make sure he was. On her knees in the dirt beside him, Taylor was close enough for him to catch a whiff of her scent. Yes, even over the mimosa and the over achieving honeysuckle. He’d almost forgotten how good women smelled. And to make matters worse, her hair had come loose, swirling around her face and shoulders in a mass of glittery, untidy waves that looked hot to the touch.