Alex took a step backward. He made no move to touch the baby.
“Mywhat?”
Cassie pulled Connor close to her chest. “Your son,” she said again, wondering what had gone wrong when everything was beginning to seem picture perfect. “I was pregnant when I left. That last time you—
that last time, I realized that I had to keep the baby safe. But I wound up with amnesia, right back where I had started. So I had to run away all over again.” She looked down at the top of Connor’s head. “I never would have left because of you, Alex. I only left because of the baby.”
Alex’s jaw tightened, and a muscle jumped along his throat. His senses were reeling, his knees could barely support him.A son? His?
He pictured, fleetingly, his own father, jeering at him when a low cypress branch knocked him from the pirogue into the deep brown mud of the swamp. He remembered that white smile, the bitter racket of his laugh as he held out his hand to pull Alex back into the boat. He remembered hating that he had to grasp his father’s hand, that there had been no other way out.
“Don’t think about it, Alex,” Cassie gently warned. “You aren’t like him. I can prove it.”
Alex looked up just as Cassie plunked the squirming infant into his arms. Reflexively he caught Connor under the bottom and around the shoulders, jiggling him up and down to keep him from making any noise. His fingers gradually closed around the baby’s skin, stroking. He could smell detergent from the diaper, and powder, and something unnamed that he could only think of as whatpinkwould be, if it had a scent. Connor opened his eyes, silver. Completely startled by the mirror image, Alex choked on the burst of a laugh. He wondered if his father, or his mother, or anyone, had ever held him like this. He wondered, if you did it right from day one, whether it could make all the difference in the world.
ALEX HAD WANTED TO LEAVE RIGHT AWAY FOR RAPID CITY TO catch the next plane to Los Angeles, but Cassie had simply told him that was impossible. “I have friends here,” she said, “responsibilities.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “If I can’t have two more weeks, give me till the morning.” She saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes when she told him she wouldn’t be accompanying him back to his motel, planning instead to spend her last night with the Flying Horses. But true to his new word, Alex simply nodded, kissed her goodbye, and promised to meet her the next morning in front of the grade school.
For a few minutes Cassie had stood with Connor on her shoulder, watching Alex’s Bronco disappear in a cloud of red Dakota dust. Then she fixed the happiest smile on her face that she could, and pushed open the door to the house.
Cyrus was knitting again, and Dorothea was chopping a ginger root to use in a stew for dinner. Will was nowhere in sight, which surprised her since the house had only one door and she and Alex had been in front of it the entire time. Dorothea looked up as the door whispered shut. “So,” she said, “you go back to the big city with him.”
Cassie tucked Connor into his cradleboard and sank down beside Cyrus on the couch. “I have to,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to him otherwise.”
Dorothea pointed her paring knife at Cassie. “Seems to me, he hasn’t always been fair to you.”
Cassie ignored Dorothea. Tomorrow she would be back in L.A. She would go to her office, first thing, and talk to Custer; then she’d visit Ophelia. She’d discreetly call a hotline or a shelter and ask for the names of reputable therapists in the area. She would have to find someone to babysit for Connor . . . Here she broke off her thoughts, laughing.
Surelysomeoneon Alex’s staff would be capable of watching a baby for an hour or two.
But the truth was, she didn’t know anyone on Alex’s staff as well after three years as she had come to know Dorothea and Cyrus in just six months. And Will, well, she would try to make him understand, but she knew how angry he was going to be. She pictured him leading her around a corral on a six-year-old cousin’s pony when she was pregnant, sitting beside her on the couch when her water broke and soaked his jeans, making her laugh with stories about giving Clint Eastwood a ticket for speeding down Hollywood Boulevard. Sometimes, when Connor became very crabby just before dinnertime, Will was the only one who could get him to quiet down. Cassie wondered how she was going to get by without Will, and out of nowhere, his words came into her head:You can’t have the best of both worlds.
“Where’s Will?” she asked.
“Went for a run,” Cyrus said. “Climbed right out the window because he didn’t want to bother you two.”
Cassie flinched. “If you don’t mind watching Connor,” she said to Cyrus, “I’m going to try to find him.” She had walked with him before and knew all his favorite haunts.
She found Will where the woods opened into a clearing at the edge of a stream. He sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, drawing great gulps of air into his lungs.
“Hi,” Cassie said. She sat down beside him, but he didn’t turn to face her, or acknowledge that he’d even heard her say hello. “Alex is gone,” she said hesitantly, and at that Will’s head swung toward her.
“He left for L.A.?”
Cassie shook her head, embarrassed for deliberately misleading him.
“He went back to Rapid City. He’s going to pick us up tomorrow morning in town to go to the airport.”
Will tried to smile, but the light didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So,”
he said. “What time do we meet him?”
Cassie laughed. “I meant Connor and me. As far as Alex knows, you don’t exist.”
Will turned his face toward the water and set his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell him? Maybe he’d get jealous and go after me. Maybe I could save you a couple of cracked ribs, another fight—”
“Stop,” Cassie said softly, touching Will’s arm. “He’s not like that anymore.”
