Praise for Cindi Myers

“Myers’s ability to portray true-to-life sympathetic characters will resonate most with readers of this captivating romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on Learning Curves

“Delightful and delicious…Cindi Myers always satisfies!”

—USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Ortolon

“Charming. The protagonists’ chemistry and Lucy’s spunk keep this fluffy novel grounded.”

—Publishers Weekly on Life According to Lucy

“The story is rife with insight and irony, and the characters are just plain fun.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Detour Ahead

“Ms. Myers will definitely keep readers sighing with delight.”

—Writers Unlimited

Cindi Myers

Cindi Myers wrote her first short story at age eight and spent many a math class thereafter writing fiction instead of fractions. Her favorite childhood retreat was a tree house, where she would spend hours reading, and watching birds. As an adult, she continued this love of both birds and books. She became a journalist, and then a novelist. An avid skier, hiker, gardener and quilter, she lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband, two spoiled dogs and a demanding parrot. She’s the keeper of numerous bird feeders and avoids math whenever possible. The Birdman’s Daughter is her twenty-second published novel.

The Birdman’s Daughter
Cindi Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Daddy

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

PROLOGUE

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends

ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds

seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so

they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon

the roof, and then fly away.

—Henry Ward Beecher

For a man who’d spent his childhood on the arid plains of west Texas, the jungle was a place of magic. Martin Engel had hardly slept the night before, anxious to be on the trail again, completing his quest. He’d roused his companion on this trip, Allen Welch, from bed at 3:00 a.m. “We’ve got to be there before dawn,” he’d reminded Welch. “We’re going to have good luck today. I can feel it.”

Martin’s intuition was seldom wrong. Some people complained that he’d had more than his share of good luck in his pursuits, but Martin preferred to depend on hard work and experience. Over the years he’d taught himself everything there was to know about his quarry.

Still, there was something mystical about the hunt, a point in every search where he found himself locked in, putting himself on a different plane, trying to think like the ones he sought.

Martin was a birder. Not a backyard hobbyist or vacation afficionado. He was an acknowledged champion, a “big lister” who had seen more different kinds of birds than only a handful of people in the world.

Seven thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight. Today he was trying for seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty. On this trip he planned to clean up Brazil. When he got on the plane to head home to Texas, he would have seen every bird that existed in this country’s jungles and plains. The promise of such an accomplishment made him tremble with excitement.

He and Welch were at the trailhead by 3:30. Welch slugged coffee from a thermos and stumbled over roots in the path, while Martin charged forward, eyes scanning the canopy overhead, binoculars ready. Even at this early hour, the air was thick and fetid around him, the ground beneath his feet spongy with decay. His ears filled with the whirring of insects. Insects meant birds.

He reviewed his quarry in his mind. The Pale-faced Antbird, Skutchia borbae, with its dark rufous head and black eye-patch; the Hoffman’s Woodcreeper, Dendrocolaptes hoffmannsi, with its straight blackish bill and the brown to rufous-chestnut upperparts; and the Brown-chested Barbet, Capito brunneipectus, with its distinctive chunky silhouette. They had haunted him for months now, taunting him with the blank lines beside their names on his list, lines where he would record the date, time and location of his sighting of them.

He’d seen the Pale-faced Antbird his first day out this trip. He and Welch had scarcely stepped onto the jungle path when it flashed by them, lured by the sounds of a Pale-faced Antbird call Martin had played on the tape deck strapped to his pack. The other two had been more wary. He’d hunted three days for them, scarcely noticing the sweat drenching his clothes or the hunger pangs in his belly or the cotton in his mouth.

Only two more names and he would have cleaned up Brazil. Only fifty more birds and he would have his eight thousand, within reach of the record as the most accomplished birder in the world. And he’d done it all on his own, while working and raising a family. No fancy paid guides to point out the birds for him. He’d taught himself to recognize them and tramped out to hunt on his own.

People talked about the ecstasy of drugs or spiritual quests. For him that feeling came when he spotted a new bird to add to his list. The flash of wing, a hint of color, the silhouette of a distinct form against the sky was like a glimpse of the divine. He, Martin Engel, unremarkable middle son in a large family of accomplished athletes and academics, had been singled out for this privilege. With each new sighting, his heart raced, his palms grew clammy, and his breath came in gasps. When he was certain of his quarry, he’d been known to shout and pump his fists. A new bird added to his list was the equivalent of a grand slam in the World Series. He’d done what few in the world had ever accomplished.

Sometimes guilt pricked at him—guilt over spending so much time away from his family. But more often than not, he didn’t think about them. When he was out there, hunting, it was all about the birds and the numbers.

He’d awakened this morning with the sense that this would be the day he’d see the other two birds he needed. But as the morning dragged on, his certainty faded. The trees were filled with Variegated Antpittas, Fuscous and Boat-billed Flycatchers and White-throated Hummingbirds—all birds he’d seen before. As if to taunt him, a second Pale-faced Antbird darted across the path in front of them. But no sign of the Woodcreeper or the Barbet.

“We should stop and rest,” Welch said, coming up behind Martin when he stopped to train his binoculars on a bird overheard. A Glittering-bellied Emerald, its iridescent blue and green feathers shimmering in a beam of sunlight.

“Just a little farther,” Martin said, letting the binoculars hang loose around his neck again. “We’re close.”

“It’s like a steam room out here.” Welch wiped at his neck with a crumpled bandanna.

“Is it?” Martin hadn’t noticed.

He’d known this feeling before, this sense that the bird he sought was nearby. He only had to look at the right location at the right moment and it would be his.

And that was how it was again. He turned his head slightly, prepared to argue with Welch, and he saw the flash of color in the trees. He froze and brought his binoculars up to his eye, his spirits soaring as he zeroed in on the distinctive straight black bill. “That’s it!” he shouted, adrenaline surging through him. “I told you it was here.”

But the last words came out muddled, and the next thing he knew, he was sinking to his knees in the thick forest muck, the world whirling around him, until he was staring up at a wavery patch of sky framed by leafy branches. Welch was saying something to him, something he couldn’t hear. All he could think as he slipped into blackness was Only one more bird to go….

CHAPTER 1

Life is good only when it is magical and

musical… You must hear the bird’s song without

attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Works and Days”

When Karen MacBride first saw her father in the hospital, she was struck by how much this man who had spent his life pursuing birds had come to resemble one. His head, round and covered with wispy gray hair, reminded her of the head of a baby bird. His thin arms beneath the hospital sheet folded up against his body like wings. Years spent outdoors had weathered his face until his nose jutted out like a beak, his eyes sunken in hollows, watching her with the cautious interest of a crow as she approached his bed.

“Hi, Dad.” She offered a smile and lightly touched his arm. “I’ve come home to take care of you for a while.” After sixteen years away from Texas, she’d flown from her home in Denver this morning to help with her father for a few weeks.

That she’d agreed to do so surprised her. Martin Engel was not a man who either offered or inspired devotion from his family. He had been the remote authority figure of Karen’s childhood, the distracted voice on the other end of the line during infrequent phone calls during her adult years, the polite, preoccupied host during scattered visits home. For as long as she could remember, conversations with her father had had a disjointed quality, as if all the time he was talking to her, he was thinking of the call of the Egyptian Goose, or a reputed sighting of a rare Hutton’s Shearwater.

Which of course, he was. So what kind of communication could she expect from him now that he couldn’t talk at all? Maybe she’d agreed to return to Texas in order to find out.

He nodded to show he understood her now, and made a guttural noise in his throat, like the complaining of a jay.

“The doctors say there’s a chance he will talk again.” Karen’s mother, Sara, spoke from her post at the end of the bed. “A speech therapist will come once a week to work with him, and the occupational therapist twice a week. Plus there’s an aide every weekday to help with bathing and things like that.”

Karen swallowed hard, resisting the urge to turn and run, all the way back to Colorado. A voice in her head whispered, It’s not too late to get out of this, you know.

She ignored the voice and nodded, smile still firmly fixed in place. “The caseworker gave me the schedule. And Del said he got the house in order.”

“He built a ramp for the wheelchair and put hand-rails in the shower and things.” Sara folded her arms over her stomach, still looking grim. “Thank God you agreed to come down and stay with him. Three days with him here has been enough to wear me out.”

“Mom!” Karen nodded to her dad.

“I know he can hear me.” Sara swatted at her former husband’s leg. “I’m sure it hasn’t been any more pleasant for him than it has been for me.” Sara and Martin Engel had divorced some twenty years before, but they still lived in the same town and maintained a polite, if distant, relationship.

A large male nurse’s aide filled the doorway of the room. “Mr. Engel, I’m here to help you get dressed so you can go home.”

“Karen and I will go get a cup of coffee.” Sara took her daughter by the arm and pulled her down the hallway.

“You looked white as a ghost back there,” Sara said as they headed toward the cafeteria. “You aren’t going to get all weak and weepy on me, are you?”

Karen took a deep breath and shook her head. “No.” It had been a shock, seeing Dad like that. But she was okay now. She could do this.

“Good. Because he’s not worth shedding any tears over.”

Karen said nothing. She knew for a fact her mother had cried buckets of tears over Martin at one time. “What happened, exactly?” she said. “I understand he’s had a stroke, but how?”

“He was in Brazil, hunting the Pale-faced Antbird, the Hoffman’s Woodcreeper and the Brown-chested Barbet.” Sara rattled off the names of the exotic birds without hesitation. Living with a man devoted to birding required learning to speak the language in order to have much communication from him at all. She glanced over the top of her bifocals at her daughter. “If he found those three, he’d have ‘cleaned up’ Brazil, so of course he was adamant it be done as soon as possible.”

“He only needed three birds to have seen every bird in Brazil?” Karen marveled at this. “How many is that?”

“Seven thousand, nine hundred and something?” Sara shook her head. “I’m not sure. It changes all the time anyway. But I do know he’s getting close to eight thousand. When he passed seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty, he became positively fanatical about topping eight thousand before he got too old to travel.”

Ever since Karen could remember, her father’s life—and thus the life of his family—had revolved around adding birds to the list. By the time she was six, Karen could name over a hundred different types of birds. She rattled off genus species names the way other children talked about favorite cartoon characters. Instead of commercial jingles, birdcalls stuck in her head, and played over and over again. To this day, when she heard an Olive-sided Flycatcher, she could remember the spring morning when she’d first identified it on her own, and been lavished with praise by her too-often-distracted father.

“He’d just spotted the Woodcreeper when he keeled over right there in the jungle.” Sara continued her story. “Allen Welch was with him, and he’s the one who called me. He apologized, but said he had no idea who else to contact.”

Karen shook her head, amazed. “How did you ever get him home?”

“The insurance paid for an air ambulance. All those years with Mobil Oil were worth something after all.” Martin had spent his entire career as a petroleum engineer with Mobil Oil Company. He always told people he kept the job for the benefits. They assumed he meant health insurance and a pension, but his family knew the chief benefit for him was the opportunity to travel all over the world, adding birds to his list.

They reached the cafeteria. “I’ll get the coffee, you sit,” Sara said, and headed for the coffee machine.

Karen sank into a molded plastic chair and checked her watch. Eleven in the morning here in Texas. Only ten in Colorado. Tom and Matt would be at a job site by now and Casey was in math class—she hoped.

“Here you go.” Her mother set a cardboard cup in front of her and settled into the chair across the table. “How are Tom and the boys?”

“They’re fine. This is always a busy time of year for us, of course, but Matt’s been a terrific help, and we’ve hired some new workers.” Tom and Karen owned Blue Spruce Landscaping. This past year, their oldest son, Matt, had begun working for them full-time. “Did I tell you Matt’s signed up for classes at Red Rocks Community College this fall? He wants to study landscaping.”

“And he’ll be great at it, I’m sure.” She sipped her coffee. “What about Casey? What’s he up to these days?”

Karen’s stomach tightened as she thought of her youngest son. “Oh, you know Casey. Charming and sweet and completely unmotivated.” She made a face. “He’s failing two classes this semester. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get him out of high school.”

“He takes after his uncle Del.” Sara’s smile was fond, but her words made Karen shudder.

“The world doesn’t need two Dels,” she said. Her younger brother was a handsome, glib, womanizing con man. When he wasn’t sponging off her parents, he was making a play for some woman—usually one young enough to be his daughter. “Are he and Sheila still together?” Sheila was Del’s third wife, the one who’d put up with him the longest.

“No, they’ve split up.” Sara shrugged. “No surprise there. She never let the boy have any peace. Talk about a shrew.”

“I’d be a shrew, too, if my husband couldn’t keep his pants zipped or his bank account from being overdrawn.”

“Now, your brother has a good heart. People—especially women—always take advantage of him.”

No, Del had a black heart, and he was an expert at taking advantage of others. But Karen knew it was no use arguing with her mother. “If Del’s so good, maybe he should be the one looking after Dad,” she said.

Her mother frowned at her. “You know your father and Del don’t get along. Besides, for all his good qualities, Del isn’t the most responsible man in the world.”

Any other time, Karen might have laughed. Saying her brother wasn’t responsible was like saying the Rocky Mountains were steep.

She checked her watch again. Eleven-twenty. At home she’d be making the last calls on her morning’s to-do list.

Here, there was no to-do list, just this sense of too much to handle. Too many hours where she didn’t know what lay ahead. Too many things she had no control over. “Do you think he’s ready yet?” she asked.

Her mother stood. “He probably is. I’ll help you get him in the car. Del said he’d meet you at the house to help get him inside, but after that, you’re on your own.”

“Right.” After all, she was Karen, the oldest daughter. The dependable one.

The one with sucker written right across her forehead.

Of course Del was nowhere in sight when Karen pulled her father’s Jeep Cherokee up to the new wheelchair ramp in front of his house. She got out of the car and took a few steps toward the mobile home parked just across the fence, but Del’s truck wasn’t under the carport and there was no sign that anyone was home.

Anger gnawing a hole in her gut, she went around to the back of the Jeep and took out the wheelchair her mother had rented from the hospital pharmacy. After five minutes of struggling in the already oppressive May heat, she figured out how to set it up, and wheeled it around to the passenger side of the vehicle.

“Okay, Dad, you’re going to have to help me with this,” she said, watching his eyes to make sure he understood.

He nodded and grunted again, and made a move toward the chair.

“Wait, let me unbuckle your seat belt. Okay, put your hand on my shoulder. Wait, I’m not ready…well, all right. Here. Wait—”

Martin half fell and was half dragged into the chair. Sweat trickled down Karen’s back and pooled at the base of her spine. She studied the wheelchair ramp her brother had built out of plywood. As usual, he’d done a half-ass job. The thing was built like a skateboard ramp, much too steep.

In the end, she had to drag the chair up the ramp backwards, grappling for purchase on the slick plywood surface, cursing her brother under her breath the whole way. At the top, she sagged against the front door and dug in her purse for the key. A bird sang from the top of the pine tree beside the house.

She felt a tug on her shirt and looked over to find her father staring intently at the tree. “Northern Cardinal,” she identified the bird.

He nodded, satisfied, apparently, that she hadn’t forgotten everything he’d taught her.

Inside, the air-conditioning hit them with a welcome blast of cold. Karen pushed the wheelchair through the living room, past the nubby plaid sofa that had sat in the same spot against the wall for the past thirty years, and the big-screen TV that was a much newer addition. She started to turn toward her father’s bedroom, but he tugged at her again, and indicated he wanted to go in the opposite direction.

“Do you want to go to your study?” she asked, dismayed.

He nodded.

“Maybe you should rest first. Or the two of us could visit some. I could make lunch….”

He shook his head, and made a stabbing motion with his right hand toward the study.

She reluctantly turned the chair toward the back bedroom that none of them had been allowed to enter without permission when she was a child.

The room was paneled in dark wood, most of the floor space taken up by a scarred wooden desk topped by a sleek black computer tower and flat-screen monitor. Karen shoved the leather desk chair aside and wheeled her father’s chair into the kneehole. Before he’d come to a halt, he’d reached out with his right hand and hit the button to turn the computer on.

She backed away, taking the opportunity to study the room. Except for the newer computer, things hadn’t changed much since her last visit, almost a year ago. A yellowing map filled one wall, colored pins marking the countries where her father had traveled and listed birds. Behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with her father’s collection of birding reference books, checklists and the notebooks in which he recorded the sightings made on each expedition.

The wall to the left of the desk was almost completely filled with a large picture window that afforded a view of the pond at the back of his property. From his seat at the desk, Martin could look up and see the Cattle Egrets, Black-necked Stilts, Least Terns and other birds that came to drink.

On the wall opposite the desk he had framed his awards. Pride of place was given to a citation from the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1998, when they recognized him as the first person to see at least one species of each of the world’s one hundred and fifty-nine bird families in a single year. Around it were ranged lesser honors from the various birding societies to which he belonged.

She looked at her father again. He was bent over the computer, his right hand gripping the mouse like an eagle’s talon wrapped around a stone. “I’ll fix us some lunch, okay?”

He said nothing, gaze riveted to the screen.

While Karen was making a sandwich in the kitchen, the back door opened to admit her brother. “Hey, sis,” he said, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

She gave in to the hug for two seconds, welcoming her brother’s strength, and the idea that she could lean on him if she needed to. But of course, that was merely an illusion. She shrugged out of his grasp and continued slathering mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “You were supposed to be here to help get Dad in the house.”

“I didn’t know you were going to show up so soon. I ran out to get a few groceries.” He pulled a six-pack of beer from the bag and broke off a can.

“You thought beer was appropriate for a man who just got out of the hospital?”

“I know I sure as hell would want one.” He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Make me one of them sandwiches, will you?”

“Make your own.” She dropped the knife in the mayonnaise jar, picked up the glass of nutritional supplement that was her father’s meal, and went to the study.

When she returned to the kitchen, Del was still there. He was eating a sandwich, drinking a second beer. The jar of mayonnaise and loaf of bread still sat, open, on the counter. “I’m not your maid,” she snapped. “Clean up after yourself.”

“I see Colorado hasn’t improved your disposition any.” He nodded toward the study. “How’s the old man?”

“Okay, considering. He can’t talk yet, and he can’t use his left side much at all, but his right side is okay.”

“So how long are you staying?”

“A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months.” She wiped crumbs from the counter and twisted the bread wrapper shut, her hands moving of their own accord. Efficient. Busy. “Just until he can look after himself again.”

“You think he’ll be able to do that?”

His skepticism rankled. “Of course he will. There will be therapists working with him almost every day.”

“Better you than me.” He crushed the beer can in his palm. “Spending that much time with him would drive me batty inside of a week.”

She turned, her back pressed to the counter, and fixed her brother with a stern look. “You’re going to have to do your part, Del. I can’t do this all by myself.”

“What about all those therapists?” He stood. “I’ll send Mary Elisabeth over. She likes everybody.”

“Who’s Mary Elisabeth?”

“This girl I’m seeing.”

That figured. The divorce papers for wife number three weren’t even signed and he had a new female following after him. “How old is Mary Elisabeth?”

“Old enough.” He grinned. “Younger than you. Prettier, too.”

He left, and she sank into a chair. She’d hoped that at forty-one years old, she’d know better than to let her brother needle her that way. And that at thirty-nine, he’d be mature enough not to go out of his way to push her buttons.

But of course, anyone who thought that would be wrong. Less than an hour in the house she’d grown up in and she’d slipped into the old roles so easily—dutiful daughter, aggravated older sister.

She heard a hammering sound and realized it was her father, summoning her. She jumped up and went to him. He’d managed to type a message on the screen

I’m ready for bed.

She wheeled him to his bedroom. Some time ago he’d replaced the king-size bed he’d shared with her mother with a double, using the extra space to install a spotting scope on a stand, aimed at the trees outside the window. Nearby sat a tape recorder and a stack of birdcall tapes, along with half a dozen field guides.

She reached to unbutton his shirt and he pushed her away, his right arm surprisingly strong. She frowned at him. “Let me help you, Dad. It’s the reason I came all this way. I want to help you.”

Their eyes meet, his watery and pale, with only a hint of their former keenness. Her breath caught as the realization hit her that he was an old man. Aged. Infirm. Words she had never, ever associated with her strong, proud father. The idea unnerved her.

He looked away from her, shoulders slumped, and let her wrestle him out of his clothes and into pajamas. He got into bed and let her arrange his legs under the covers and tuck him in. Then he turned his back on her. She was dismissed.

She went into the living room and lay down on the sofa. The clock on the shelf across the room showed 1:35. She felt like a prisoner on the first day of a long sentence.

A sentence she’d volunteered for, she reminded herself. Though God knew why. Maybe she’d indulged a fantasy of father-daughter bonding, of a dad so grateful for his daughter’s assistance that he’d finally open up to her. Or that he’d forget about birds for a while and nurture a relationship with her.

She might as well have wished for wings and the ability to fly.

CHAPTER 2

You must have the bird in your heart before you

can find it in the bush.

—John Burroughs, Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes

and Other Papers

When Karen woke the next morning, she stared up at the familiar-yet-not-quite-right ceiling, then rolled over, reaching for Tom. But of course, he wasn’t here. She sat up and looked around the bedroom she’d occupied as a girl. A line of neon-haired Troll dolls leered back at her from the bookshelves beside the window.

The clock showed 7:25. She lay on her back, sleep still pulling at her. She told herself she should get up and check on her father. The occupational therapist was coming this morning and the nurse’s aide was due after lunch. Today would set the tone for the rest of her days here, so she needed to get off on the right foot. Still she lingered under the comfort of the covers.

When she did finally force herself into a sitting position, she reached for the phone. Tom would be up by now, getting breakfast for himself and the boys.

“Hello?” He answered on the third ring.

“Hi, honey. Good morning.”

“Good morning. How’s it going?”

“Okay, so far. Dad’s not as helpless as I thought. He can’t talk, but he can type with his right hand on the computer, and he tries to help me move him in and out of his chair, though sometimes that’s more trouble than if he sat still. The therapist is coming today to start working with him, so I’m hoping for good progress.”

“That’s good. Don’t try to do too much by yourself, though. Get some help.”

“I saw Del yesterday. I told him he’d have to help me and he volunteered his girlfriend-du-jour.”

Tom laughed and she heard the scrape of a spatula against a pan. He was probably making eggs. “How’s it going there?” she asked.

“Hectic, as usual. We’re starting that big job out at Adventist Hospital today, and we’ve still got ten houses left to do in that new development out near the airport.”

Guilt squeezed her at the thought of all the paperwork those jobs would entail in the coming weeks. She was the one who kept the office running smoothly, not to mention their household. “Maybe you should hire some temporary help in the office,” she said. “Just until I get back.”

“Maybe. But I don’t trust a stranger the way I trust you. Besides, you’ll be back soon.”

Not soon enough to suit her. In nearly twenty-three years of marriage, they’d never been apart more than a night or two. The thought of weeks without him, away from her familiar routine, made her want to crawl back in bed and pull up the covers until this was all over. “How are the boys?”

“Matt’s doing great. He’s running a crew for me on those subdivision jobs.”

“And Casey?” She held her breath, waiting for news of her problem youngest child.

“I got a call from the school counselor last night. He’s going to fail his freshman year of high school unless he can pull off a miracle on his final exams. And he’s decided he doesn’t want to work for me this summer.”

There was no mistaking the edge in Tom’s voice. He took this kind of thing personally, though she doubted Casey meant it that way. “What does he want to do?”

“Apparently nothing.”

“Let me talk to him.”

She heard him call for Casey, and then her youngest son was on the phone, as cheerful as if he’d been awake for hours, instead of only a few minutes. “Hey, Mom, how are you? I thought about you last night. Justin and I went to see this really cool band. They write all their own songs and stuff. You would have really liked them.”

It would have been easier to come down hard on Casey if he were surly and uncommunicative, but he had always been a sunny child. She reminded herself it was her job as a mother to try to balance out some of that sunniness with reality. “Dad tells me the school counselor called him last night.”

“It’s all such a crock,” he said. “All they do is teach these tests. The teachers don’t care if we learn anything useful or not. Why should I even bother?”

“You should bother because a high school diploma is a requirement for even the most entry-level jobs these days, and Mom and Dad aren’t going to be around to support you forever.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Mom. I’ll be okay.”

Okay doing what? she wanted to ask, but didn’t dare. The last time she’d hazarded this question, he’d shared his elaborate plan to become a championship surfer in Hawaii—despite the fact that he’d never been on a surfboard before.

“What are you going to do this summer?” she asked instead. He had only one more week of school before vacation.

“I thought maybe I’d just, you know, hang out.”

He was fast becoming an expert at hanging out. “Your dad could really use your help. Without me there he’s having to do more of the office work.”

“Matt’s helping him. A friend of mine has a job life-guarding at the city pool. He thinks he can get me on there. That would be a cool job.”

Any job was better than no job, she supposed. “All right, if you get the job, I’ll talk to your dad.”

“When are you coming home?”

The plaintive tone in his voice cut deep. “I don’t know. In a few weeks. By the end of the summer, for sure.” Her original plan for a short visit seemed unrealistic now that she’d seen her father and realized the extent of his disability.

“How’s Grandpa?”

“He’s okay. The stroke paralyzed his left side, though with therapy, he should be able to get back to almost normal.” She hoped.

“That’s good. Tell him I said hi. Dad wants to talk to you again.”

Tom got back on the line. “He says he’s going to get a job lifeguarding at the city pool,” she said. “Maybe it would be a good thing for him to work for someone else for a summer.”

“Yeah, then he’d find out how good he’s got it now.” He shifted the phone and called goodbye to the boys as they left for school and work, then returned to their conversation. “What did you tell Casey when he asked how long you’d be gone?”

“I told him I’ll be home by the end of the summer, at the latest.” She didn’t know if she’d last that long, but she’d made a commitment and couldn’t back out now.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do without you here for that long. I was thinking it would only be a few weeks.”

She took a deep breath, fighting against the tension that tightened around her chest like a steel band. “I know I said that, but now that I’m here, I can see that was unrealistic. He’s going to need more time to get back on his feet.”

“Then your mother and brother should pitch in to help. They live right there and neither one of them has a family.”

“They won’t help. Del hardly spent five minutes here yesterday.”

“What about a nursing home? Or a rehab facility? His insurance would probably even pay for part of it.” Tom was in problem solving mode now. For him, everything had a simple answer. But there was nothing simple about her relationship with her father.

“It would kill him to be in a place like that. To have strangers taking care of him. You know how he is about his privacy. His dignity.”

“I know he’s never gone out of his way to do anything for you. And we need you here.” The no-nonsense tone she admired when Tom dealt with vendors and difficult customers wasn’t as welcome when it was aimed at her.

“I know you do,” she said, struggling to keep her temper. She’d been away from home scarcely twenty-four hours and he was already complaining. She’d wanted sympathy from him. Support. Not a lecture. “Right now, Dad needs me more.”

“What are you going to do if your father doesn’t recover enough to look after himself again?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know.” Having him come live with them in Denver was out of the question. The doctor had already told her his lungs couldn’t handle the altitude. She sighed. “If Dad doesn’t improve by the end of the summer, we’ll probably have to put him in a nursing home. But give me this summer to try to help him, please.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice softened. “I don’t mean to pressure you. I just…it’s hard to think about dealing with the business and the boys without you. Casey’s not the only one in this house who didn’t realize how good he’s got it.”

She laughed, as much from relief as mirth. “You keep thinking like that. And see when you can get away to come see me.”

“I’ll do that.”

They said their goodbyes, then she dressed and made her bed, and went to get her father ready for his first therapy appointment.

What she hadn’t been able to say to Tom was that she needed to stay here right now as much for herself as for her father. She needed to see if being forced together like this, they could somehow find the closeness that had always eluded them before.

That afternoon, Casey lay on his bed and tossed a minibasketball at the hoop on the back of the bedroom door. If he aimed it just right, the ball would soar through the hoop, bounce off the door and sail back to him, so that he could retrieve it and start over without changing positions.

Matt was in the shower in the bathroom next to the bedroom they shared. Casey could hear the water pounding against the tile wall, and smell the herbal shampoo Matt liked. He was getting ready to go on a date with his girlfriend, Audra. Were they going to have sex? Casey knew they’d done it because he’d caught Matt hiding a box of condoms in the back of his desk drawer, where he thought Mom wouldn’t find them. Casey had given him a hard time about it. “You’re nineteen, for Christ’s sake,” he’d said, while his older brother’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato. “You shouldn’t have to hide something like that.”

Matt had shoved the box back in the drawer. “Right. Mom would have a cow if she knew.”

“Mom’s always having cows. She’ll get over it.”

He smiled and tossed the ball again, remembering the exchange. The trick to handling Mom was to smile and nod and let her go on for a while, then give her a hug or a kiss and continue as you always had. She was really pretty easy to handle once you knew the secret.

She’d sounded all worried and sad on the phone this morning. Maybe she was upset about Grandpa. That would be pretty rough, seeing your dad in the hospital, all helpless and old. That had probably freaked her out. Mom pretended to be all tough sometimes, but she was still a girl.

He caught the basketball on the rebound and launched it again. What would it be like to have a stroke? Mom had said Grandpa couldn’t use his left side. Casey lay back and stiffened his left arm and leg, pretending they were useless. He imagined trying to walk, dragging his paralyzed leg behind him. If you tried to eat, would you get food all over yourself?

He relaxed and let his mind drift to other topics. Mom had said she’d talk to Dad about the lifeguard job. That was cool. He knew he was a disappointment to his dad, who wanted him to be more like Matt. Matt was the perfect son. He was going to college and would take over the business someday. Cool, if that’s what he wanted, but couldn’t they see Casey didn’t want anything like that?

Trouble was, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Still, he was only sixteen. He had plenty of time to figure it out. Whatever he ended up doing, it wasn’t going to require going to school for years and years. Maybe he’d be a musician or an artist. Or he’d invent something fantastic that would make him tons of money.

Maybe he’d be a writer. He’d like that. For as long as he could remember he’d kept notebooks full of his writing—stories, poems, even songs.

Matt came out of the bathroom and threw a wet towel at him. “I need to borrow your hair gel,” he said.

“For a dollar.”

“What?” Matt glared at him.

“You can borrow my hair gel for a dollar.”

“You’re crazy.” Matt turned away.

Casey didn’t argue. The problem with Matt was that he carried the honest, upstanding young man thing too far. If it had been Casey, he would have used his brother’s gel without asking and chances were, Matt never even would have noticed.

“Here, loser.” Matt turned back and tossed a dollar bill toward the bed.

Casey reached out and caught it, smiling to himself. He knew big bro would pay up. He probably hadn’t even thought long about not doing it.

Mentally, he added the dollar to the stash in his backpack. He had almost two hundred dollars now. Not bad for a guy without a job. He made money other ways, like writing love notes to girls for their boyfriends, or blackmailing the jocks who smoked out behind the gym. Dangerous work, but so far he’d managed to charm his way out of harm.

It was a gift, this ability to smile and talk his way out of tricky situations. A man with a gift like that could go far, no doubt.

“So are you going to work with us this summer?” Matt studied Casey in the dresser mirror as he rubbed gel through his hair.

“No, I’m going to get a job as a lifeguard at the city pool.”

“You can’t make a career out of being a lifeguard.”

“Why not, if I want to?”

“For one thing, what’ll you do in the winter, when the pool closes?”

“Maybe I’ll move to Florida, or California, where the pools never close.”

“You are such a loser.” Matt pulled a shirt over his head, sneered at his brother one last time, then left.

Casey sighed and lay back on the bed again. Why did people think if you weren’t just like them, you had to be wrong?

He thought about Mom again. Had she sounded so sad on the phone because she was worried about him? He’d tried to tell her she had nothing to worry about, but she probably couldn’t help it. Worrying was a mom thing, like the way she told them, every time they left the house, “Be careful.”

“No, tonight I think I’ll be reckless,” he always answered. She pretended not to think that was funny, but her eyes told him she was laughing on the inside.

He missed her. She’d sounded like she missed them, too. He sat up, put the dollar in his pocket, and decided he’d take a walk downtown, to see what was going on.

While Martin worked with the occupational therapist, an energetic young woman named Lola, Karen took inventory of the refrigerator and pantry and made a shopping list. When the nurse’s aide came this afternoon, Karen could slip out to buy groceries and refill Dad’s medications.

She was disposing of half a dozen petrified packages of frozen food in the outside trash can when a red minivan pulled into the driveway. As she waited with her hand on the garbage can lid, a plump blonde in pink capris and a pink-and-white striped sleeveless shirt slid from the driver’s seat. The blonde propped her sunglasses on top of her head and waved.

Karen broke into a run, laughing as she embraced Tammy Collins Wainwright. “Look at you, girl!” Tammy drew back and looked Karen up and down. “I guess living up there in the mountains and working at that landscape business is keeping you young and trim.”

“Denver isn’t really in the mountains, but I guess it does agree with me. And what about you? You look great.” Except for a few lines on her forehead and around her eyes, Tammy hadn’t changed much since their days behind the wheel in driver’s ed class at Tipton Senior High School. The two girls had been pretty much inseparable after meeting in that class. They’d worked behind the counter together at the Dinky Dairy, and had double-dated whenever possible.

Tammy had been the matron of honor in Karen’s wedding, having already married her high school sweetheart, Brady Wainwright. While Karen had moved to Austin and later Colorado, Tammy had stayed in town to raise four children; her youngest, April, was ten.

Tammy’s smile faded. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said. “It must be just awful for you.”

Karen nodded, not quite sure how to respond. It was much more terrible for her father, after all. And it wasn’t as if he’d died.

Or was Tammy referring to the fact that Karen had left everything she knew and loved to come take care of a man she wasn’t even sure liked her?

“I brought a cake.” Tammy reached into the van and pulled out a yellow-and-white Tupperware Cake Taker. “I remember how Mr. Martin had a real sweet tooth.”

“And his daughter inherited it.” Karen took the cake carrier from Tammy and walked beside her toward the house. “Did you make this yourself?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made a cake.

“Me and Betty Crocker.” Tammy threw her head back and let out peals of laughter.

Lola met them at the door, her “bag of tricks,” as she called her therapy equipment, in hand. “He did very well for his first day,” she said. “He’s worn out, though. I imagine he’ll sleep for a couple of hours or so. Just let him be and feed him when he wakes up. And I’ll see you Thursday.”

Karen thanked her, then led the way through the house to the screened back porch. This side of the house was shady, and two ceiling fans overhead stirred the slightly cool air. “Do you mind if we sit out here and visit?” she asked. “That way we won’t disturb Dad.”

“That would be great.” Tammy settled in one of the cushioned patio chairs. “I wouldn’t say no to a glass of iced tea.”

“Coming right up. And I thought maybe we’d try this cake with it.”

“I shouldn’t, but I will.”

Karen returned a few minutes later with two glasses of iced tea and two plates with generous slices of the lemon cake. “I already stole a bite,” she said as she sat in the chair across from her friend. “It’s delicious.”

“Thank you.” Tammy took a bite and moaned. “Ooooh, that is good, isn’t it?”

“So tell me what you’ve been up to,” Karen said. “How are Brady and the kids?”

“They’re doing great. April is going into fifth grade in the fall. Brady’s still racing. Our twenty-third wedding anniversary is next month and we’re going to San Antonio for the weekend.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“I’m pretty excited. I can’t remember the last time we went anywhere without the kids. Which is why I shouldn’t be eating this cake.” She pushed her empty plate away. “I want to still be able to fit into the new clothes I bought for the trip.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Your twenty-third is coming up soon, isn’t it?”

Karen nodded. “This fall. I can’t believe it’s been that long.” It seemed like only yesterday she’d been working as a receptionist at the new hospital and Tom had been hired to do the landscaping work. He caused quite a stir among all the young women when he took off his shirt to plant a row of shrubs along the front drive. They’d all wasted countless hours admiring his bronzed muscles and tight blue jeans. When he’d asked Karen to go out with him, she’d been the envy of her coworkers.

“We’re thinking about renewing our vows for our twenty-fifth. You and Tom should think about that. You never had a big wedding. This would be your chance.”

Karen and Tom had eloped. They’d gone to Vegas for the weekend and been married at a chapel there. It had been very sweet and romantic, though at times she regretted not having the big church wedding with the long white dress, et cetera. She pressed the back of her fork into the last of the cake crumbs. “Did I ever tell you the real reason we eloped?” she asked.

Tammy’s eyes widened. “Were you pregnant?”

She laughed. “No. It was because I was afraid my father wouldn’t show up for the wedding and I wanted to save myself that humiliation.”

“Oh, honey!” Tammy leaned over and squeezed Karen’s hand. “Of course he would have shown up for your wedding.”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t there for my high school graduation. He was in the Galapagos, bird-watching. When Matt was born, he was in Alaska, and when I had Casey, he was in Guatemala.”

“But surely your wedding…”

“I didn’t want to risk it.”

Tammy sat back and assumed an upbeat tone once more. “Well, it doesn’t matter how you got married. The point is, it took. Not many couples can say that these days.”

She nodded. The fact that she and Tom had stayed together all these years was pretty amazing, considering they’d known each other all of three months when they decided to tie the knot. She had been only eighteen, trying to decide what to do with her future. She’d liked Tom well enough, but when he’d told her he planned to move to Austin at the end of the summer—over two hundred miles away from Tipton—she’d decided to throw in her lot with him.

She’d latched on to him as her ticket out of town, but stuck with him because he’d showed her a kind of love she’d never known before. Now he was the rock who supported her.

“So how is the birdman?” Tammy asked, using the name the townspeople had given Karen’s father long ago.

“Cantankerous as ever.” Karen sipped her iced tea, then cradled the glass between her palms, letting the cold seep into her skin. “That’s good, I guess. He’s a fighter. He’ll fight his way back from this, too.”

“They did an article on him in the paper last year. Said he was one of the top ten bird-watchers in the whole world.”

Her mother had sent her a copy of the article. “He’s getting close to eight thousand birds on his list now.”

“Goodness. I can’t imagine seeing that many different birds.”

“It’s taken a long time.” More to the point, listing birds had taken all his time, to the exclusion of almost everything else.

The doorbell sounded and both women jumped up. “That’s probably the nurse’s aide,” Karen said. “The county is sending one every day to help with bathing and things like that.”

“That’s good. That’ll help you.” Tammy sighed and stood. “I’d better go. Jamie has a Little League game tonight, and April has piano practice. Somewhere in there I’ve got to figure out what to fix for supper.”

“Thanks for the cake. And thanks for stopping by. It was good to see you.”

They hugged, then walked arm-in-arm to the door. “If you need anything, you just holler,” Tammy said. “And when you can get someone else to sit with Mr. Martin for a while, you come out and have dinner with us. Brady and the kids would love to see you.”

“I’ll do that.” Karen let Tammy out and the aide in, then returned to her grocery list. Maybe staying here wasn’t going to be such a hard thing, after all. She did have friends here, and this was a chance for her to get to know her father better, while he was forced to sit still.

It was a second chance for them, and how many people got second chances these days?

CHAPTER 3

Even the little sparrow, which flits about by the

roadside, can laugh at us with his impudent little

chirp, as he flies up out of reach to the topmost

branch of a tree.

—Arabella B. Buckley, The Fairy-Land of Science

Casey had never ridden a Greyhound bus before, but it was pretty much the way he’d imagined: tall-backed, plastic-covered seats filled with people who all looked a little down on their luck. They wore old clothes and carried shopping bags stuffed with packages and groceries and more old clothes. They were brown and black and white, mostly young, but some old. The woman in front of him had three little brown-haired, brown-eyed boys who kept turning around in their seats to look at him. Their mother would scold them in Spanish and they would face forward again, only to look back in a few minutes, unable to keep from staring at the white kid all alone on the bus.

At first he’d only intended to see how much it would cost to get from Denver to Tipton, Texas. But when he saw it was only a hundred and thirty dollars and there was a bus leaving in thirty minutes, he’d decided to buy the ticket and go. Mom had sounded so sad and worried on the phone. She was down there all alone with her sick father and nobody to help her, really. He could cheer her up and help, too.

The main thing about traveling on a bus was that it was boring. He spent a lot of time listening to CDs on his portable player and staring out the window. Not that there was much to see—the bus stayed on the interstate, mainly, cruising past fields and billboards and the occasional junkyard or strip of cheap houses. He made faces at the little boys in front of him, until their mother turned around and said something to him in Spanish. He didn’t understand it, but from her tone it sounded as if she was cussing him out or something.

After that, he slept for a while. When he woke up, it was dark, and the bus was stopped at a station. “Where are we?” he asked the man in the seat behind him.

“Salina, Kansas,” he said. “Dinner break.”

At the mention of dinner, Casey’s stomach rumbled. The driver wasn’t anywhere in sight, so he figured that meant they were stopped for a while. He pulled himself up out of his seat and ambled down the aisle, in search of a diner or McDonald’s or someplace to get something to eat.

The bus station was next to a Taco Bell. Casey bought three burritos and a large Coke and ate at a little table outside. He thought he recognized a couple of other people from his bus, but they didn’t say anything. They all looked tired or worried. He decided people who traveled by bus weren’t doing it because they wanted adventure or a vacation, but because it was the cheapest way to get to where they needed to be.

When he got back on the bus, the seat he’d been sitting in was occupied by a thin guy with a shaved head. He had red-rimmed brown eyes that moved constantly. He looked at Casey, then away, then back again. Casey tried to ignore him, and searched for another seat, but the bus was full.

So he gingerly lowered himself into the seat next to the young man. “Hey,” he said by way of greeting.

The guy didn’t say anything. He just stared. He was skinny—so skinny his bones stuck out at his wrists and elbows and knees, like knobs on a tree limb. His plaid shirt and khaki pants still had creases in them from where they’d been folded in the package, and he wore tennis shoes without laces, the kind skateboarders used to wear five or six years ago.

The bus jerked forward and Casey folded his arms across his chest and slumped in his seat. It was going to be harder to sleep without the window to lean against, but he guessed he could manage it. Sleeping made the time pass faster, and he had the whole rest of the night and another day before they reached Tipton.

“What’s your name?”

His seatmate’s question startled him from a sound sleep. He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. The only light was the faint green glow from the dashboard far ahead, and the headlights of passing cars. He looked at the man next to him. “My name’s Casey. What’s yours?”

“My name’s Denton. Denton Carver.”

“Casey MacBride.” Casey offered his hand and the man took it. His grip was hard, his palm heavily calloused. For someone so skinny, he was really strong.

“Where you goin’?” Denton asked.

“To Tipton, Texas. My mom’s there, looking after my Grandpa, who’s sick.”

“That’s too bad.” Denton didn’t look all that sorry, though.

“Where are you going?” Casey asked.

“Not sure, yet. Thought I’d get off in Houston and look around. I used to know some people there.”

“So you’re just, like, taking a vacation?” Maybe he’d been wrong about the people on the bus.

“You might say that.” Denton grinned, showing yellow teeth. “I just got out of prison.”

Casey went still. He told himself not to freak out or anything. He kept his expression casual. “I guess you’re glad to be out, huh?”

Denton laughed, a loud bark that caused people around them to stir and look back. “I’m glad to be shed of that place, all right,” he said.

Casey wondered what he’d been in prison for, but knew enough not to ask. He settled back in the seat and crossed his arms again. “Good luck in Houston,” he said.

He closed his eyes, figuring Denton would get the message, but apparently once the skinny man had decided to talk, he wasn’t interested in stopping. “I used to have a girlfriend in Houston. Her name was Thomasina. Kind of a weird name for a girl, but she was named after her daddy, Thomas. She was a big, tall girl, and she could hit like a man. She worked at this little store her daddy owned and once these two dudes tried to rob the place. She punched one guy in the nose and hit the other one upside the head with a can of green beans. He tried to run and she just wound up and threw that can at him. Knocked him out cold.”

Casey stopped pretending to sleep, and laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.”

“Thomasina was something.” Denton shook his head. “Maybe I’ll look her up while I’m in Houston.”

“You should do that. I bet she’d be glad to see you.”

Denton was still shaking his head, back and forth, like a swimmer who had water in both ears. “I guess you got somebody coming to meet you at the station when you get to wherever it was in Texas you said you was going,” he said.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. My mom will come get me.” He hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead. He hadn’t told anyone he was going to do this—not his mom, or his dad, either. Maybe at the next stop, he’d look for a phone and call home, just so his dad wouldn’t worry. Then when he got to Tipton, he’d call Grandpa’s house and let Mom know he’d arrived.

“Ain’t nobody coming to meet me.” Denton pressed his forehead against the window and stared out into the darkness. “I done my time and the state turned me loose. They gave me one new suit of clothes and a bus ticket to wherever I wanted to go, and that’s it.”

“That’s tough.” Casey didn’t know what to say. He wondered if he could pretend to go to sleep again.

Denton raised his head and looked at him again. “You got any money, kid?”

The hair rose up on the back of Casey’s neck and his heart pounded. Denton didn’t have a gun in his hand or anything, but the way he said those words, you just knew he’d said them before when he did have a weapon.

“I got a little,” he mumbled. He had a little over thirty dollars in his billfold in his backpack. Enough to buy meals the rest of the trip, he guessed.

“I saw you eating dinner when we stopped back there, so I figured you had money. You ought to give me some money so I can buy some dinner. You ought to help out a fellow traveler.”

Casey wondered if Denton was telling the truth. Would the state turn somebody loose with no money in his pocket? That seemed like a sure way for someone to end up back in jail really quick. Maybe Denton was just trying to scam him.

“When we stop again, I’ll get some food and we can share it,” he said. He fought back a grin, proud of the way he’d handled the issue. But then, he’d always been good at thinking on his feet. It was another talent he knew would come in handy throughout his life.

Denton grunted, apparently satisfied with this answer. He rested his head against the window and closed his eyes and was soon snoring.

Casey slept, too. The rocking motion of the bus and the darkness, punctuated by the whine of passing cars and the low rumble of the bus’s diesel engine, lulled him into a deep slumber. He dreamed he was wandering through the streets of Tipton, searching for his grandfather’s house, unable to find it.

When Karen returned from the grocery store, the aide, an older black woman named Millie Dominic, met her at the door. “Mr. Martin is carrying on something fierce, but I can’t figure out what he wants,” she said.

Karen dropped the bags of groceries on the kitchen table and ran to her father’s bedroom. He was sitting up on the side of the bed, one foot thrust into a scuffed leather slipper, the other bare. When he saw her, he let out a loud cry and jabbed his finger toward the chair. “I asked him if he felt up to going outside for a walk and he roared at me,” Mrs. Dominic said.

“I think he wants to go back to his office.” She looked at her father as she spoke. At her words, he relaxed and nodded.

“What’s he gonna do in there?” Mrs. Dominic asked as she helped Karen transfer Martin to the wheelchair.

“He can work on his computer. He types with his right hand, so he can communicate.” She lifted his left foot onto the footrest and strapped it in place. “I guess that’s less frustrating for him.”

Once at his desk, he waved away Karen’s offer of a drink, but she brought him a Coke anyway, with a straw to make it easier to sip. He was alarmingly thin, and the doctor said she should try to get as many calories into him as possible.

She thanked Mrs. Dominic and sent her on her way, then began putting away groceries. At home right now she’d be answering phones for their business while trying to decide what to cook for supper. If Casey was around, he’d suggest they have pizza. He would have gladly eaten pizza seven days a week.

How were Tom and the boys managing without her? Was paperwork stacking up on her desk at the office, while laundry multiplied at home? We need you here. Tom’s words sounded over and over in her head, like an annoying commercial jingle that refused to leave, no matter how hard she tried to banish it. He’d sounded so…accusing. As if she’d deliberately deserted them in favor of a man who had earlier all but abandoned her.

No matter what Tom might think, she’d never desert her family. They were everything to her. But she couldn’t turn her back on her dad, either. He was still her father, and he needed her. Maybe the only time in his life he’d needed anyone. She might never have a chance like this again.

She decided to make corn chowder, in the hopes that her father could eat some. Though he’d never been a man who paid much attention to what he ate, content to dine on ham sandwiches for four nights in a row without complaint, she thought the diet of protein drinks must be getting awfully monotonous.

After living so long with three boisterous, talkative men, the silence in the house was getting to her. She started to switch on the television, then at the last minute turned and headed for the study. Her father couldn’t form words, but as long as he could type, they could have a conversation. It was past time the two of them talked.

“Hey, Dad,” she said as she entered the room.

When he didn’t look up, she walked over and stood beside him. “What are you doing?”

He glanced up at her, then leaned back slightly so she could get a better view of the monitor screen. He’d been studying a spreadsheet, listing birds by common and scientific names, locations where he had seen them, columns indicating if he had tape-recorded songs for them. Birds he had never seen were indicated in boldface. There weren’t many boldfaced names on the list.

“Mom said you had just seen a Hoffman’s Woodcreeper when you had your stroke,” Karen said.

He moved the mouse back and forth, in jerky motions, until the cursor came to rest on the entry for the Woodcreeper. It was no longer boldfaced, and he had dutifully recorded the time and date of the sighting.

“That’s great, Dad. You’ve done a phenomenal job.”

He shook his head, apparently not happy with her praise. She wasn’t surprised. As long as she could remember, he hadn’t been satisfied. When he was home, he was always planning the next expedition, making list after list of birds he had not yet seen, counting and recounting the birds he had seen, and frowning at whatever number he had reached so far.

In addition to the life list of all the birds he’d ever seen, he also kept a yard list of birds seen at his home, a county list, state list, as well as various regional and country lists. This accumulation of numbers and ordering of names seemed to be almost as important to him as the birds themselves. Maybe more so.

He closed the spreadsheet and opened a new file. Using the index finger of his right hand, he slowly typed in a number: 8000.

Karen nodded. “The number of birds you’ve been trying for.”

He typed again: 7,949.

She studied the number, wondering at its meaning. “The number you’ve reached on your list?”

He nodded, and punched the keyboard again. Another number appeared on the screen: 1.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s the one for?”

He grunted, and typed again: Brazil.

“One more bird you haven’t seen in Brazil.” Her eyes met his, and the anger and pain she saw there made her stomach hurt. Her father was so upset over a single species of bird that had escaped him in Brazil. Had he ever cared so much about another person? About her?

She patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to clean up Brazil while you were there. But the doctor says you should be able to regain a lot of function on your left side, and you can learn to talk again. Going back to Brazil and finding that bird can be your motivation.” Never mind staying around to see his grandchildren grow up, or to enjoy his own children in his old age. Some people were inspired by goals like that; for her father, the only thing that mattered were birds.

The next morning, very early, the phone rang, jolting Karen from sleep. She groped blindly for the receiver, her hand closing around it as her other hand reached for the light. “Hello?”

“Have you heard from Casey?” Tom asked, without bothering to say hello.

The urgency in his voice jerked her wide awake. She sat on the side of the bed and clutched the receiver with both hands, heart pounding. “No. Why? What’s going on?”

“He went out walking before supper last night and hasn’t come home.”

Fear, like a freezing wind, stole her breath. She stared at the phone, as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun. “What do you mean, he hasn’t come home?”

“Just what I said. At first I thought he was at a friend’s house, or was staying late at the mall, but I’ve called everyone he knows and driven all over town looking for him and no one knows anything.”

News stories of missing children flashed through her mind, the headlines stark and chilling: Abducted. Missing. Gone.

“Karen, are you still there? Have you heard from Casey?”

Tom’s words jolted her to life again. She forced herself to breathe deeply. Now was no time to fall apart. “No, I haven’t heard anything.” She looked at the clock. 6:00 a.m. Five in Denver. Tom must have been up all night. “Was he upset when he left? Did you have a fight about something?”

“No. We hadn’t talked at all since morning, when I’d agreed to let him apply for the lifeguarding job. He seemed happy about that.”

“What does Matt say?”

“He says Casey seemed fine. I don’t know what to think.”

Tom’s voice was ragged with exhaustion. She imagined him, unshaven, running his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was upset. Of course he had handled this for hours by himself. “Maybe you’d better call the police.”

“I already did. They promised to keep an eye open, though they’re treating it like a runaway situation.”

“Why would Casey run away?” Granted, he didn’t like school, but he’d always been happy at home. Things that would get other kids down didn’t seem to touch him. More than once, she had envied her youngest son his easygoing demeanor. “Maybe he has a friend we don’t know about, and he’s staying with them.”

“Maybe. His backpack is gone, and Matt thinks he took some money with him, but his clothes are still here.”

“He’s probably with a friend.” He had to be. Surely he wouldn’t be one of those kids you read about in the news—children abducted by strangers. She resolutely shoved the thought away.

“If he was going to stay with a friend, he should have called us.”

“He should have. But you know Casey. He doesn’t think about things like that.” When he was little, she could always find him in the house by following a trail of his belongings to the room he occupied. She used to berate him for being so inconsiderate, but he’d look at her with genuine confusion. “I wasn’t doing it to be inconsiderate,” he’d say. “I was just thinking about other things.”

That was Casey, head in the clouds all the time, dreaming big dreams no one else could comprehend. Lost in thought, had he stepped off a curb and been hit by a car? “Did you…did you check hospitals?” she asked, her breath catching on the words. “Maybe he’s been hurt and can’t call.”

“I’ll do that as soon as I get off the phone with you. I’m sorry to worry you, but I was hoping you’d heard from him. He talks to you about things more than he does me.”

And if I was home, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. The unvoiced accusation hung between them.

“Please, let me know if you hear anything.”

“I will.” He sighed. “I’d better go.”

After he hung up, she cradled the receiver to her chest, fighting tears. Casey might be sixteen years old, but he would always be her baby; the sweet, contrary boy, the child she worried about the most.

Tom was right—Casey did confide in her more. If she’d been home, he might have talked to her about whatever was bothering him. And if she’d been there, she could have run interference between him and his father. Though Tom denied it, she was still convinced he’d said something to upset their youngest son. Casey was sensitive, and Tom had a way of saying hurtful things without even meaning to.

Every part of her wanted to get on a plane and fly straight to Denver. Surely she, his mother, would be able to find him when others had failed.

But the sensible part of her knew that wasn’t true. And if she went back to Denver, who would look after her father? She couldn’t count on Del for anything, and her mother was too self-centered and argumentative to last for long. Within half an hour, Mom and Dad would be fighting, and only sheer luck would keep her dad from having another stroke.

They could all use a little luck now. She closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer for Casey’s protection. Please let him be all right. Please let us find him soon.

She was still sitting on the side of the bed, eyes closed, when she heard the bell ringing. She’d given it to her father yesterday, so he could summon her without resorting to banging on the furniture. The ringing meant he was awake, and impatient for something. She sighed, stood and reached for her robe. Somehow, she’d get through this day. Whether she did it without snapping someone’s head off or raiding the liquor cabinet remained to be seen.

Casey woke with a start when the bus pulled into the station in Texarkana, Texas. The sign identifying the stop glowed dull red in the hazy gray dawn. Casey squinted at it, rubbing his eyes. He yawned and stretched his arms over his head, then realized the seat beside him was empty. Skinny Denton must have slipped past him and gone into the station to use the men’s room or something.

He retrieved his backpack from the overhead bin and went in search of breakfast. He’d buy enough to share with Denton, and maybe some snacks for later on down the road.

He hit the men’s room first, and washed his face and combed his hair. He stroked a finger over the faint moustache showing over his upper lip, and ran his palm along his jaw, hoping to feel some sign of whiskers there.

He hadn’t packed a toothbrush, so he swished his mouth out with water, then headed for the station cafeteria. He looked for Denton, but didn’t see him. Maybe he was already back on the bus.

In the cafeteria, he filled his tray with two breakfast sandwiches, two muffins and two cartons of milk. At the cash register, he added two cellophane sleeves of peanuts, for later.

“That’ll be $12.67,” the woman at the cash register said.

He reached in the outside pocket of the backpack for his wallet, shoving his hand all around inside when he didn’t feel it right away. “Must have put my wallet inside the pack last night,” he mumbled, and slung the pack off his shoulder to search the main compartment.

A good minute of searching proved fruitless. Feeling sick to his stomach, Casey looked at the woman. “I think somebody stole my wallet.”

She frowned at him, and looked pointedly at the food on his tray. “You gotta pay for this,” she said.

He looked down at the food, too sick and angry to eat it now, anyway. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” He shoved the tray away from him and fled the diner, running all the way back to the bus.

As he’d expected, Denton wasn’t there. He looked around at the other passengers, half hoping to see Denton in another seat. But there was no sign of the con. “Anybody seen the guy who was sitting here? Real skinny dude, plaid shirt?”

A few people looked at him. Even fewer shook their heads, then went back to reading or napping or whatever they’d been doing.

“Bastard stole my wallet!” Casey said, louder now. Denton had probably taken the wallet and slipped out while Casey slept. “Somebody must have seen him.”

No one looked at him now. Casey punched the back of the seat, hard. His hand stung almost as much as his eyes. He blinked back tears of frustration and sagged into his seat as the bus lurched forward. Chin on his chest, he stared out the window. He’d been such an idiot! He should have kept his wallet with him, and kept his mouth shut about having any money. He never should have talked to Denton in the first place.

Maybe Matt was right. Maybe he was a big loser.

A young woman had flown with Martin on the air ambulance that had transported him to Texas from Brazil. She was a nurse, he supposed, and her name was Karen, too. Her name was printed on a badge she wore on her crisp blue uniform, a uniform the color of a jay’s wing.

He’d been strapped into a stretcher before they brought him onto the little plane. He’d fought against the restraints, hated being confined. He wanted to sit up, but he couldn’t find the words to tell this Karen. When he’d tried to raise himself, he could only flounder weakly.

She’d rushed to calm him, her voice soothing, her eyes full of such tenderness he’d started to weep. She’d patted his hand and brushed the hair back from his face until he fell into a drugged sleep.

His Karen did not look at him that way. Her eyes held suspicion. Caution.

It seemed to him his daughter had been born holding back. She’d been almost two weeks late in arriving into the world. The doctors had been discussing inducing labor when Sara’s contractions finally began in earnest.

Later, after she’d been cleaned up and swathed in a diaper and gown and knit hat and booties, a nurse had thrust her into his arms. He’d looked at her, terrified. She seemed so impossibly small and fragile. She’d opened her eyes and stared up at him with a grave expression, as if even then she didn’t trust him to look after her.

Sara had taken over after that—feeding and fussing and diapering, shooing him out of the way.

He’d done what his own father had done, what most of the other fathers he knew did back then. He’d stayed out of the way. He’d gone to work and turned his paychecks over to Sara.

He’d come home from business trips and in his absence the two children (Delwood had been born by this time) and his wife had formed a cozy family unit in which he was the outsider.

He remembered once volunteering to dress Karen, then about three, while Sara fussed over Del. Within five minutes, his daughter was in tears and he looked on, dismayed, with no idea what to do.

“Not that dress. She hates that dress.” Sara rushed into the room, Del tucked under one arm, and snatched the offending garment from Martin’s hand. “And she can’t wear those shoes. They’re too small. Go on.” She shooed him from the room. “I’ll take care of this. Wait for us outside.”

The outdoors became his retreat. Those were early days, when he still thought of birding as a hobby. He knew he was good at it. Already his list numbered over a thousand birds. But as he spent more and more time searching for difficult-to-find species, and as he began to gain recognition from fellow birders, the idea of being one of the elite big listers became more and more alluring.

Here was his talent. His niche. The one place where he wasn’t dismissed as incompetent or unnecessary. He wasn’t blind to the knowledge that the records and rewards had come at a price. He was aware of how dearly he’d paid whenever his daughter looked at him and he saw the doubt in her eyes.

But it was easier to go out again and search for a rare species of bird than to overcome those doubts after all these years. Easier and, for him at least, the outcome was more certain.

Casey smoothed back his hair, straightened his shoulders, then pushed open the door of the lunchroom at the Houston bus station. A few customers waited in line at the cash register, but the lunch counter was empty save for the burly man who stood behind it.

“Excuse me, sir?” Casey remembered to speak up and look the man in the eye. Dad always said people trusted you more if you looked them in the eye.

“Yeah?” The man didn’t look very happy to see Casey but then, he was probably one of those people who weren’t happy in general.

“I was wondering if I could wash dishes or sweep up or something, in exchange for a meal.” Casey thought the approach was right—not too cocky, but not too downtrodden, either.

The man’s expression didn’t change. “If you want a meal, you’ll have to pay for it.”

“That’s how it usually works, isn’t it? Only thing is, my money was stolen.” He took a few steps closer, gaze still steady on the man behind the counter. “I had my wallet in my backpack and this ex-con who was sitting next to me on the bus lifted it while I was sleeping.”

The man shook his head. “You should have known better than to put your wallet somewheres where he could get his hands on it.”

“Yeah, I should have. Guess I learned my lesson about that one.” He shrugged. “So here I am, one dumb kid, not quite as dumb as when I started out on this trip.”

The man seemed to think that was funny. He chuckled. “Where you headed?”

“To Tipton.” He took a chance and slid onto a stool in front of the man. “I’m going down to help my mom look after my grandpa. He had a stroke.”

“That’s too bad. How old a man is he?”

He calculated in his head. “He’s seventy. But he’s never been sick before, so this took everybody by surprise.”

“Where you from?”

“Denver. It’s a long bus ride from here, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah.” The man looked at him for a long moment. Casey waited, hardly daring to breathe. Finally, the man nodded. “I reckon I could fix you a burger. While I’m cooking it, you can sweep the floor.”

Casey hopped up. “Thanks!”

“Yeah, yeah.” The man waved him away. “Broom’s over there.”

Casey found the broom and began sweeping around the front counter and the tables beyond. As he worked, he hummed to himself. He didn’t feel like a loser anymore. He felt like someone who’d found a way to look after himself. He wasn’t even that mad at Denton. Maybe the state really had cut him loose without a cent. The guy probably did need that money more than Casey did. After all, Casey had talents. A man with talent would always get by.

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