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The frog swelled up in his throat. It made him mad to be crying like some jerky baby, so he glanced toward the front seat. When he was satisfied that Dallie's attention was on his driving, his fingers crept to his seat-belt buckle. Soundlessly, he slipped it open. No butt-hole was going to tell Lasher the Great what to do.
Francesca dreamed about Teddy's science project. She was caught in a glass cage with insects crawling all over her, and someone was using a giant pin, trying to spear the bugs to mount them. She was next. And then she saw Teddy's face on the other side of the glass, calling out to her. She tried to get to him, to reach him....
“Mom! Mom!”
She jerked awake. With her mind still foggy from sleep, she felt something small and solid fly across the bed at her, tangling itself in the covers and the sash from her robe. “Mom!”
For a few seconds, she was caught between her dream and reality, and then she felt only a piercing sense of joy. “Teddy? Oh, Teddy!” She caught his small body and pulled him to her, laughing and crying. “Oh, baby...” His hair felt chilly against her cheek, as if he'd just come in from outside. She pulled him up in the bed and caught his face between her hands, kissing him again and again. She rejoiced in the familiar feeling of his small arms around her neck, his body pressed against hers, that fine hair, his little-boy smell. She wanted to lick his cheeks, just like a mother cat.
She was vaguely aware of Dallie leaning just inside the door of the bedroom watching them, but she was too caught up in the exquisite joy of having her son back to care. One of Teddy's hands was in her hair. He'd buried his face in her neck, and she could feel him trembling. “It's all right, baby,” she whispered, tears sliding down her own cheeks. “It's all right.”
When she lifted her head, her eyes inadvertently met Dallie's. He looked so sad and so alone that, for a second, she had a crazy urge to hold out her hand and beckon him to join the two of them on the bed. He spun around to walk away, and she was disgusted with herself. But then she forgot about Dallie as Teddy claimed all of her attention. It was some time before either of them could calm down enough to talk. She noticed that Teddy was covered with dull red blotches, and he kept scratching himself with stubby fingernails. “You ate ketchup,” she scolded gently, reaching under his T-shirt to stroke his back. “Why did you eat ketchup, baby?”
“Mom,” he murmured, “I want to go home.”
She dropped her legs over the side of the bed, still holding on to his hand. How was she going to tell Teddy about Dallie? Last night while she'd been lining drawers and baking cakes, she had decided it would be best to wait until they were back in New York and events had returned to normal. But now, looking at his small, wary face, she knew postponement wasn't possible.
As she'd raised Teddy, she had never permitted herself to utter those convenient little lies most mothers told their children to buy themselves peace. She hadn't even been able to manage the Santa Claus story with any degree of conviction. But now she had been caught out in the one lie she had told him, and it was a whopper.
“Teddy,” she said, clasping both his hands between hers, “we've talked a lot about how important it is to tell the truth. Sometimes, though, it's hard for a mother to always do that, especially when her child is too young to understand.”
Without warning, Teddy snatched his hands away and jumped up from the bed. “I have to go see Skeet,” he said. “I told him I'd be right back down. I have to go now.”
“Teddy!” Francesca jumped up and caught his arm before he could reach the door. “Teddy, I need to talk to you.”
“I don't want to,” he mumbled.
He knows, Francesca thought. On some subliminal level, he knows I'm going to tell him something he doesn't want to hear. She wrapped her ar
ms around his shoulders. “Teddy, it's about Dallie.”
“I don't want to hear.”
She held him tighter, whispering into his hair. “A long time ago, Dallie and I knew each other, sweetheart. We—we loved each other.” She grimaced at this additional face-saving lie, but decided it was better than confusing her son with details he wouldn't understand. “Things didn't work out between us, honey, and we had to separate.” She knelt down in front of him so she could look into his face, her hands sliding down his arms to catch his small wrists as he still tried to pull away from her. “Teddy, what I told you about your father—about how I'd known him in England, and he died—”
Teddy shook his head, his small, blotched face contorted with misery. “I have to go! I mean it, Mom! I have to go! Dallie's a jerk! I hate him!”
“Teddy—”
“No!” Using all his strength, he twisted out of her hands and before she could catch him, he'd raced from the room. She heard his feet making fast, angry thumps down the stairs.
She sagged back on her heels. Her son, who liked every adult male he'd ever met in his life, didn't like Dallie Beaudine. For a moment she felt a petty rush of satisfaction, but then, in a sickening flash of insight, she realized that no matter how much she might hate it, Dallie was bound to become a factor in Teddy's life. What effect would it have on her son to dislike the man who, sooner or later, he must realize was his father?
Shoving her hands through her hair, she got up and pushed the door shut so she could get dressed. As she pulled on slacks and a sweater, she saw a vision of Dallie's face as he had looked when he was watching them. There had been something familiar about his expression, something that reminded her of the lost teenage girls who waited for her outside the studio at night.
She scowled at herself in the mirror. She was too fanciful. Dallie Beaudine wasn't a teenage runaway, and she refused to waste a moment's sympathy on a man who was little better than a common criminal.
After peeking into the sewing room to reassure herself that Doralee was still asleep, she took a few minutes to collect herself by making a phone call to set up an appointment with one of the county social workers. Afterward, she went in search of Teddy. She found him slumped on a stool next to a workbench in the basement where Skeet was sanding the bare wooden head of a golf club. Neither of them was talking, but the silence seemed to be companionable rather than hostile. She saw some suspicious streaks on her son's cheeks and slid her arm around his shoulders, her heart aching for him. She hadn't seen Skeet in ten years, but he nodded at her as casually as if it had been ten minutes. She nodded back. The heating duct above her head clattered.
“Teddy here's gonna be my assistant while I regrip those irons over there,” Skeet announced. “Most times I wouldn't even think about letting a little kid help me regrip clubs, but Teddy's about the most responsible boy I ever met. He knows when to talk, and he knows when to keep his mouth shut. I like that in a man.”
Francesca could have kissed Skeet, but since she couldn't do that, she pressed her lips to the top of Teddy's head instead. “I want to go home,” Teddy said abruptly. “When can we go?” And then Francesca felt him stiffen.
She sensed that Dallie had come into the workroom behind them even before she heard his voice. “Skeet, how 'bout you take Teddy upstairs for some of that chocolate cake in the kitchen?”
Teddy jumped up from the stool with a rapidity that she suspected spoke more of his desire to get away from Dallie than of his craving for her chocolate cake. What had gone on between the two of them to make Teddy this miserable? He had always loved Holly Grace's stories. What had Dallie done to alienate him so completely? “Come on, Mom,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Let's go get some cake. Come on, Skeet. Let's go.”
Dallie touched Teddy's arm. “You and Skeet go on up. I want to talk to your mother for a minute.”
