Filed to story: Love on the Sidelines (Natalie & Karl)
And Daniel made it so easy.
He was waiting on me when I pulled the Chevy to a stop in front of the barn, leaning against the wall, watching the kittens play. His eyes lit up at the sight of the old car, and he was talking by the time I got the door open.
“Wow! I can’t believe you’ve still got the Chevy. Dad told me all about it. I didn’t think it would be running anymore.”
I smiled, then looked ruefully at the car. “It has its moments. I need to take it in and have a tune-up done. Sometimes it dies on me.”
I’d kept the Chevy all these years over Hugh’s protests. He hated it when I drove the old car, claiming people would think we couldn’t afford better. Eventually I’d given in and let him buy me a BMW, one he traded in every year for a newer model. But I had refused to sell the Chevy, keeping it stored in the garage and starting it once a month to make sure it stayed in running order. When I left him, I left the fancy cars, too, and felt no urge to replace the Chevy with something better.
“Maybe I could do it for you.” Daniel looked as though he was dying to get his hands on the car.
“You know all about engines, huh?”
“Well, not everything, but Dad taught me a lot. These old engines are simpler to work on than the new ones with all their electronic stuff.”
“Tell you what.” I smiled. “You give it a tune-up and I’ll let you drive it sometimes.”
“Awesome! You’ve got a deal.”
“Only when I’m with you, though.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t ask him if he had a learner’s permit, or even if he knew how to drive. In the south, kids started driving before they were potty trained. I could still remember sitting on the Judge’s lap, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands while he yelled encouragements and pretended I was scaring him half to death. I must have been all of three years old at the time.
“How do you like Morganville so far?” I asked, heading through the barn.
“It’s okay, I guess. A lot different from Saudi Arabia.” A mild shock ran through me as I opened the door to my room. “That’s where you’ve been living?”
“Yeah. For the last eleven years, anyway. I don’t remember much about Kentucky.
We left there as soon as Dad got out of the army.”
“Why Saudi Arabia?”
He shrugged as I put my purse away. “A guy Dad met while he was in the army gave him a job with a big oil company. Dad ran the company’s garages.”
“It must have been interesting to live in place with a culture so different from ours.”
“Not really.” His attention was captured by the bookshelf against one wall and he moved closer, his gaze running over the books. “We lived in a compound the company provided for employees and their families. They even had a school. It was sort of like living in a small town. Are these the books my dad used when he stayed here?”
“Most of them. I’ve added a few in the last two months. Your Dad said you like to read.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder, dimples popping out when he grinned. “It wasn’t like I had much choice. Dad started reading to me about five minutes after I was born. Not kids’ books, either. He read me novels.”
“What about your Mom? Did she read to you, too?” For a second he looked absolutely blank. “You mean Lindsey? No, she doesn’t like to read. Besides, she wasn’t around that much when I was little.” I wanted to ask why he called her by her first name, why she wasn’t around, but from the way his gaze avoided mine when he mentioned her, I couldn’t. There was something very wrong with this picture, something Daniel didn’t want to talk about.
“Feel free to borrow any of the books you want. They should probably belong to you, anyway.”
“Thanks. I’ll check them out later.” He turned and surveyed the room. “It looks just like Dad said.”
I smiled. “There’s not much you can do to fancy up a room in a barn.” He sat on the edge of the bed facing me. “Why do you live here? Everybody says you’re rich, that you could live anywhere you want.”
Taking a boxed pizza mix from the cabinet, I turned my back. “Hungry?”
“Sure.”
I got a bowl down and dumped the flour mixture into it. “For the record, I’m not rich, just moderately well-off. And I guess I live here because it doesn’t matter to me what it looks like. It’s home.”
He nodded, a curious wisdom filling his eyes. “It is for Dad, too. Whenever he talked about home, it was always about you and the Judge, or this room, or the Chevy. I think he stayed homesick a lot.”
Moving like an old lady, I covered the bowl of dough with a towel and set it on the stove to rise, then took two sodas from the fridge and handed one to Daniel. I didn’t want to talk about Karl, or even think about what his life had been like all this time, but I didn’t know how to avoid it. He was Daniel’s father and the one link we had in common. Of course the boy would want to talk about him.
I sat in the easy chair, my legs curled under me and sipped my soda. “If he was homesick, why didn’t he come back?”
Daniel looked down at the can he was turning slowly in his hands. “He was trying to protect me. He didn’t want me to know about what happened with his father.” I closed my eyes briefly. Christ, that sounded like Karl. Always the protector, always the guy responsible for everyone else. And now it was clear that Daniel felt guilty for keeping his father from coming home.
“I’m sure he only did it because he loves you, Daniel. And no matter what you hear from anyone else, your father is not the type of person who would do something like that deliberately. It happened because Frank gave him no choice.”