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She was going back and forth on whether to ask him about it. It’s not like she was willing to share her story. Why ask for his and open up that argument again?
“Do you have sisters and brothers?” he asked out of the blue.
Her gut reaction was to clam up. Not only that, but to make an excuse to get up and leave. It would be easy enough to say she should go help get the group moving toward the van to load up or something.
The silence stretched.
“Don’t you want to know if I have any?” he asked after a beat.
She looked up. She did. But she shouldn’t.
There was something in his mood today. She didn’t know what but it was like he had decided something. And apparently it was something that meant he was going to press her.
“I’m an only child, too,” he said.
“Oh,” was all she said. How lame was that? She felt cornered.
“How about your mom and dad?” he asked. “Mine died. They were much older than my friends’ parents when they had me. I was their miracle baby so they were in their sixties when I was in my last year of high school. My dad died from cancer soon after I graduated and my mom went a while later from a stroke.”
He was reciting the history like it was nothing more than a set of facts and she thought maybe he was doing it in challenge, as if to dare her to tell him her story.
She gave him a short answer, nothing more than the bare essentials he was giving her. “My dad is gone, too. But my mom is alive.”
“Do you see her often?”
She shook her head. “I don’t get to see her much.”
“Don’t or can’t?” There was that challenge, this time flat out in his words, but also in his face.
She didn’t answer. She was frozen to her seat, neither fleeing, nor answering.
He leaned across the seat and this time, he took her hand, rubbing across the skin with his thumb. “Would it hurt to tell me?”
She wanted to. God, how she wanted to tell him everything. If only just to not have to carry this burden herself anymore. But what good would it do?
And the harm it could do if things went wrong was too great. Her mother’s life was at stake. Of that she had no doubt. Turner wouldn’t stop at anything short of death this time. Not after her mother had left him. He would kill her mom if he ever found her and it was Joy’s job to keep him away from her. To lead him around the country.
She shook her head, ignoring the censuring look in Kaeden’s eyes. He could judge her all he wanted. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t get close to him. Couldn’t trust that he might be able to do something to help her and her mom. They had tried that route before and it had left her mother in a hospital bed. She wouldn’t be that foolish again.
Chapter 22
It was Samantha who approached Kaeden next. He was leaning against a tree, somewhat outside the circle of people around the fire that night. He had just seen Joy walk up to the main house and was thinking of following to see if she needed any help.
She’d been avoiding him since their talk that morning.
“How are we going to help Jane?” Samantha asked, breaking into his concentration and making him jump at the use of Joy’s real name.
He looked around and then turned to Samantha. “Didn’t take you long to figure that out.”
She shrugged. “I heard that conversation about Commfarm and I already knew she was hiding something. It really didn’t take much skill to find out there was an employee who’d been reported missing.”
Kaeden grunted. He had searched for Jane Walker after getting the message from his friend and had read the articles about her disappearance also. The thing was, it wasn’t only Jane who was missing. Her mother was too. They had both disappeared over two years ago, leaving her stepfather distraught and searching for any sign of them.
What confused him was that she’d told him she couldn’t see her mother. So that meant the two women must have split up and that had him wondering what all of that meant.
“The police report and the officer’s notes didn’t have anything really useful, except to detail the mother’s injuries from a car accident. It was horrible.”
Now Kaeden turned fully to her now. “You’ve read the police report?”
