Читать книгу: «A Son's Tale»
When the past comes calling and the future won’t wait…
Twenty-five years ago…a mysterious crime was committed in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. Frank Whittier was accused—but never charged. And it ruined his life.
Now...Cal Whittier, Frank’s son, is determined to protect him, to safeguard his father’s identity. After years on the run, they finally have their lives on an even keel, with Cal teaching at a college in Tennessee. Two things could change all that.
First, a cop in Comfort Cove starts looking into the case again. And second, Cal gets involved with single mother Morgan Lowen. He has plenty of reasons to avoid her—not the least of which is she’s an adult student in one of his classes. And in Cal’s situation, any relationship is risky. Still…it could be the best risk he’s ever taken!
There was a message waiting for him
Cal pushed the button on his office answering machine.
It wasn’t as if there’d be any news about Morgan Lowen’s son already. Just because her urgency was coursing through him like a river with a broken dam didn’t mean he was in any way privy to her personal information.
But he couldn’t just sit still. Morgan’s child was missing. Something had to be done.
He told himself he was overreacting. Kids went missing every day, and almost every single time they turned up. Morgan was probably with Sammie at this very moment. Maybe scolding him for having given her a scare. Or taking him out for fast-food hamburgers.
The message began. “This is for Dr. Caleb Whittier. Dr. Whittier, my name is Detective Ramsey Miller. I’m with the police department in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. It’s important that you return my call—”
Cal cut off the message before the man recited his phone number. Cal hadn’t been anywhere near Comfort Cove in years, not since he was a kid. Not since the accusations that had forced him and his father out of town...
“Tara Taylor Quinn writes with wonderful assurance and an effective, unpretentious style perfectly suited to her chosen genre.”
—Jennifer Blake, New York Times bestselling author
Dear Reader,
I was lucky growing up. I had great parents. My mother was there—always. She cooked and cleaned for us, bandaged bruises and kissed away tears. She also taught us. She stood for right and good and kindness. She didn’t tolerate lying or meanness. She was strict with us…and she spoiled us. She woke us up in the morning; each of us kids had our own personal welcome to the day. She was at the door telling us goodbye when we left for school. And there waiting for us when we got home. She was our sounding board and our listening post. She is still a voice in my head that I take with me every place I go.
And my father—he was the one who told us (and showed us) that we could be anything we wanted to be. We could do anything we wanted to do. We just had to put our minds to it. Stay focused. He was not a lazy man and he did not tolerate laziness in others. He was goal oriented and demanded the same from each of us. My father gave me the stick-to-it-iveness to reach my goal of becoming a writer for Harlequin Books.
And that brings us to Comfort Cove, a small coastal fishing town in Massachusetts. Something happened in Comfort Cove that changed the lives of two sets of parents and children. In A Son’s Tale we meet Cal and his father, Frank. How far will a father go to give his son a good life? And how far will a son go to protect the father who sacrificed so much for him? Do we ever quit owing those who gave us life? Or serving those to whom we gave life?
I don’t have all the answers, but I am very happy to be bringing you this story of one father and one son. I care very much about these men—and about the woman who enters the son’s life. I hope you do, too.
Watch for A Daughter’s Story, coming in October 2012 from Harlequin Superromance. I think mothers and daughters are even more complicated than fathers and sons!
As always, I love hearing from you! You can reach me at staff@tarataylorquinn.com. Or at P.O. Box 13584, Mesa, AZ 85216.
Tara Taylor Quinn
A Son’s Tale
Tara Taylor Quinn
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With over fifty-five original novels, published in more than twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn is a USA TODAY bestselling author. She is a winner of the 2008 National Readers’ Choice Award, four-time finalist for an RWA RITA® Award, a finalist for a Reviewers’ Choice Award, Booksellers’ Best Award and Holt Medallion and she appears regularly on Amazon bestseller lists. Tara Taylor Quinn is a past president of the Romance Writers of America and served for eight years on its board of directors. She is in demand as a public speaker and has appeared on television and radio shows across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. Tara is a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and she and her husband, Tim, sponsor an annual inline skating race in Phoenix to benefit the fight against domestic violence.
When she’s not at home in Arizona with Tim and their canine owners, Jerry Lee and Taylor Marie, or fulfilling speaking engagements, Tara spends her time traveling and inline skating.
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1446—THE BABY GAMBLE
1465—THE VALENTINE GIFT
“Valentine’s Daughters”
1500—TRUSTING RYAN
1527—THE HOLIDAY VISITOR
1550—SOPHIE’S SECRET*
1584—A DAUGHTER’S TRUST
1656—THE FIRST WIFE‡
1726—FULL CONTACT*
HARLEQUIN SINGLE TITLE
SHELTERED IN HIS ARMS*
MIRA BOOKS
WHERE THE ROAD ENDS
STREET SMART
HIDDEN
IN PLAIN SIGHT
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
AT CLOSE RANGE
THE SECOND LIE‡
THE THIRD SECRET‡
THE FOURTH VICTIM‡
*Shelter Valley Stories
‡Chapman Files
Other titles by this author are available in ebook format.
For my father, Walter Wright Gumser, and big brother, Walter Wright Gumser, Junior. Together as angels just as you were together on earth. I miss you both so much!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
WHENHEFIRSTOPENED his eyes, Cal Whittier had no idea what time it was. Squinting against the light from his bedroom window, he focused on the ceiling above him.
Memory came back in bits and pieces. Piling on top of him, weighting him down to the bed.
He’d had dinner with Joy the night before. Their standing Thursday night date. He and the petite banker had been dating for four months—longer than usual for Cal. He liked Joy.
But then he’d liked all of the women he’d dated. One thing he’d never had a shortage of was women.
He and Joy had each had a glass of wine at the restaurant—a steak place, he thought. He could remember ordering his medium-rare. They’d had patio seating. Joy had commented about the misters—an outdoor staple during Tennessee summers—making her hair frizzy.
She’d ordered a salad. And they’d decided to try the house wine.
He’d overindulged.
Cal was careful about his drinking. He had a nightly ritual. A glass of whiskey before bed to help him sleep. And if that didn’t work—if he was still up writing—he allowed himself another. But he never got drunk. And he almost always drank alone.
Last night he’d broken both self-imposed rules. After dinner, he’d consumed most of a new bottle of wine back at Joy’s place—and done it in front of her.
Like a bad movie, the reasons for his rudeness replayed with what seemed like sarcastic clarity in his mind’s eye.
Thursday had not been a good day from the start.
A promising student had appeared in his office the morning before, just weeks before her end-of-the-summer graduation, to tell him she was dropping out of school to join her boyfriend’s band. He’d been Courtney’s undergraduate adviser all four years of her college career. He’d had her in several of his classes, as well. She was carrying a perfect grade average. Dr. Caleb Whittier, Wallace University’s youngest English professor and department chair, was all for love and togetherness—as long as it didn’t involve him—but to throw away a lifetime of work, a more secure future, because of a new relationship?
And then his father had called to tell him that he’d canceled his fishing trip that weekend. It had taken Cal months to get the old man to agree to go—a thousand nonrefundable bucks to hold his spot for the seniors’ adventure holiday and to reserve a private room at his father’s behest—and the old man didn’t go.
He’d rushed home to load the car with the things he’d helped his dad pack the day before, determined to get the old man from the home they shared to the center where Frank would be loaded into a van and whisked away for the time of his life—only to discover that he’d have had to restrain his dad and then haul his ass out of bed, dress him and physically carry him to the Durango to get him out of their neighborhood.
The man might need Cal to prepare his food to get him to eat, but he was not in any way weak or disabled. He could still take Cal if he had a mind to.
He’d had a mind to when it came to him going on that fishing trip.
Then, because of Frank’s bullheadedness, Cal had been late for the lunch meeting with some bankers—possible supporters of the young artists’ league—Joy had arranged for him. It was hard to beg when you’d just kept your targets waiting for half an hour. He’d left the meeting without any kind of commitment for the scholarship money he’d been hoping to win for some very talented kids.
His body might be slow to move this morning but his mind wasn’t giving him any breaks. The day before continued to play itself out—as if living through it once hadn’t been enough.
After lunch he’d come back to his fourth-floor office at Wallace University in Tyler, Tennessee, to find an unwanted message on his answering machine.
Some dude named Ramsey Miller. A detective from Comfort Cove. The man gave up no other details about himself or the reason for his call, but he’d said that it was imperative that Caleb Whittier contact him immediately. Cal would bet his life the call he didn’t return regarded a cold case. A twenty-five-year-old ice-cold case.
Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. The place where two-year-old Claire Sanderson had lived when she’d been abducted from her home.
It was about that time in his mental wanderings that Cal realized he was lying on top of his still-made bed. And wearing the shirt he’d pulled from his closet the morning before.
His pants were undone; they’d slipped a bit, but he hadn’t taken them off, either.
And then he remembered.
Joy’s expressive green eyes.
The cups of coffee.
And the short drive home.
Alone.
* * *
MORGANHADN’TSLEPT well. They were having their annual summer sock-hop and picnic on Saturday at the day care where she worked, and Morgan, as the nondegreed employee with the most seniority, and as executive assistant to the director, was in charge of most of the physical details, like organizing the game and food committees, the table setup and decorating.
She’d spent most of Thursday night cutting and pasting many mediums of primary colors because the woman who’d volunteered to do so several weeks before had forgotten. In spite of the many calls Morgan had made to ensure that the party’s decor was on track. She really should have asked to see some finished product when the woman had offered to provide samples.
But with her university courses, the day care and schoolwork she did in the evenings, she hadn’t had time to babysit a parent.
And rather than letting anyone else know that she’d done it again—she’d placed her faith in someone who hadn’t proven trustworthy—she’d taken care of the fallout on her own.
Someday she might learn not to always think the best of people, not to be so quick to believe they were going to do what they said they would—but she doubted it.
“Let’s consider Twain’s ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,’” Dr. Whittier said, looking straight at Morgan at that Friday morning’s lecture. She was sure he was looking at her because she’d been working on day-care decor yesterday evening rather than rereading the short story as she’d intended. You’d think, with only one last class to complete before graduation, she’d be able to keep up with the homework. He’d assigned the reading material at the end of Wednesday morning’s class, and although she’d read everything by her favorite American writer, she hadn’t read “Hadleyburg” since before Sammie was born.
Her son was ten.
“Twain was sixty-three years old and in Vienna when he wrote this story,” Whittier was saying. Didn’t matter how blistering the Tennessee sunshine made their city, the man always wore a tie. He’d left his jacket and long sleeves at home, but still…
Of course, the man did things—sexy things—to that ordinary tie. Things she was convinced no man had ever done before.
“Someone provide us with a quick overview of the plot,” Whittier said. He glanced her way.
Morgan’s stomach gave an irritating leap. She remembered the basics, but…
His gaze moved on. Her stomach didn’t settle.
Yes, she was attracted to her English professor. She and every other female student at Wallace University.
“It’s about, um, the corruption of an honest town.” One such female creature quickly grabbed the opportunity to snare Whittier’s attention. Bella Something-or-Other was thin, blonde, about twenty, and didn’t have one responsibility on those perfect shoulders or one line on her equally perfect face. “Hadleyburg is known for its honesty. Then some guy sends money to someone in town for a good deed and everyone in town tries to claim the good deed to get the money.”
The Richardses, Morgan remembered. They were the old couple in Hadleyburg that the stranger sent the money to for safekeeping.
“Right,” Whittier said, and Bella preened. Sick. The girl was just sick.
Morgan tried to let her sleepless night catch up with her. To be bored in English class just for once. More to the point, she tried to be bored with the man who taught her favorite class.
“Hudson Long, a Twain biographer, claims that Twain uses this story to depict the pessimistic attitude that he had toward himself and the human race in general. Would you agree with that?”
He was asking the class.
“No.” Morgan blurted the word against her better judgment. She was as bad as the kids, preening for the man’s attention. Her better judgment had deserted her sometime between leaving her mother’s womb and landing in her cradle.
“Why not?” Whittier’s gaze was all hers.
In four years of being in the man’s classes, she should be over getting warm every time she had his attention.
But, recently, they’d been talking more.
“Because I think it’s unfair to label the man as pessimistic just because he had the ability to see deeply inside the human condition and then was giving and talented enough to bring out his vision in such a way that we can all take honest looks at ourselves.”
“So you think you know more about Mark Twain than an official Twain biographer?” His brown eyes were not unkind as he met her head-on. Instead, they had that peculiar light of enjoyment that kept her up nights.
“I’m not saying I know more than a Twain scholar,” Morgan replied, aware of the other, mostly younger students watching her. She felt ancient at twenty-nine. “But I agree with another Twain biographer, Jerry Allen, who says that Twain wrote ‘Hadleyburg’ because of all the maliciousness that he saw in mankind and the hopelessness that was our plight if we didn’t change. I think Twain was giving us a view of ourselves, exaggerated, as an analogy.”
Whittier’s responding smile did it to her again. “Good answer,” he said, walking back over to the other side of the room.
His legs were long and firm and he moved with the grace of an athlete.
“I happen to agree with Ms. Lowen…” he was saying when Morgan’s phone vibrated against her hip.
She never went to class without that phone. Being the single parent of a strong-minded boy wasn’t easy work. Sammie always came first.
Morgan tried not to be too obvious as she glanced down at the screen, although Whittier knew about Sammie. Knew why she kept her phone on during class, and encouraged her to do so.
The vibration signaled a text from Julie Warren, the office administrator at Rouse Elementary where Sammie was in summer school taking art and swimming. Julie was also Morgan’s friend.
The message was one word: Call.
They had a lunch date. Maybe Julie had to cancel. Wouldn’t be the first time.
She typed her response.
In class. Emergency?
She sent the text off with one hand, leaving the phone in its clip.
The reply was almost instantaneous. Like Julie hadn’t waited for her reply before sending it.
S missing!
The phone vibrated again, but Morgan didn’t take the time to look down. Closing the lid on her notebook computer without shutting the thing down, she threw it on top of its case in her backpack. She had the bag slung on her shoulder before she was completely standing and was already digging in the side pocket for her car keys.
“My son…” She wasn’t even sure what she ended up blurting out as she ran from the room.
CHAPTER TWO
SILENCEHUNGOVERthe classroom for thirty seconds or more after Morgan Lowen’s dash from the room. Her frantic words—“My son is missing from school!”—occupied the space, squeezing out all the excess air.
And then the rumbling started—low voices emanating from seats all across the room. His students’ wide-eyed glances darted between one another, the door, him. One kid—“Jackass,” Cal had privately dubbed him—sat there staring at his electronic tablet, looking bored. That’s when Cal noticed the wireless device mostly concealed by the kid’s long, unkempt hair. He had an earphone in. And was listening to God knew what on Cal’s time.
“Class dismissed,” Cal said, filing away a mental reminder to pursue wireless Jackass at some future date.
Yeah, this was college. Yeah, students were responsible for their own education at this point. But he had more to teach than knowledge of American literature. He had the minds of tomorrow in his sphere and he took his job seriously.
He answered a couple of questions about a two-thousand-word paper due at midterm and confirmed that they’d be covering The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn all of the following week as the syllabus stated.
“You think her kid’s going to be okay?” Bella was standing by the long table that served as his desk at the front of the window-lined classroom.
“I do,” Cal said, ignoring the thread of alarm trying to take up residence within him. “She said he was missing from school. He’s probably just playing hooky. Or hiding out with a friend in the bathroom. It’s summer school so things are a little less strict and kids have more of a tendency to roam.”
“Some jerks once locked my little brother in his locker,” Bella said, sliding her electronic notebook into her backpack. “He was there for an hour before anyone knew he was missing.”
“His teachers didn’t miss him?”
“They had a sub and it was during lunch break.”
And someone should have noticed he was gone. Like they’d obviously noticed Morgan Lowen’s son was missing.
“They should check the lockers for him,” Bella added, standing in front of him with her backpack slung over one shoulder.
“I’m sure they’ll find him.” Cal slid a couple of folders, notes, into his soft-sided leather briefcase.
“I didn’t even know she had a son.”
Cal had. He knew, too, that she’d given birth to and raised the boy completely on her own, but he wasn’t going to gossip about another student. What he wanted to do was get back to his office in case she contacted him. He and Morgan had never crossed the line between teacher and student; he’d kept his interest in her completely professional, but he’d be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t attracted to her.
And Cal did not kid himself. He couldn’t afford the luxury.
Morgan had been having some troubles with her son. He knew because she’d missed class in the spring due to some antics the boy had pulled at school.
He hoped she’d also let him know that Sammie was fine.
“She doesn’t wear a wedding ring.” Bella was still standing there.
Again, Cal said nothing and Bella, after staring at him for another several seconds, shrugged.
“Well, I just hope everything’s fine. Have a great weekend, Dr. Whittier. See you Monday.”
She walked out, allowing Cal to hurry to his office.
* * *
MORGANCOULDN’TREMEMBER the four-block drive from Wallace University to Rouse Elementary. She’d run out of class and ended up in the parking lot of her son’s school. She’d called her mom. But only to ask her if she’d heard from Sammie. Grace Lowen was going to be taking Sammie to Little League practice Saturday while Morgan officiated sack races at the day care. Morgan had told Sammie that morning to call his grandmother and remind her of the next day’s practice.
Grace hadn’t heard from him.
The call with her mother lasted about thirty seconds. Morgan didn’t let on that anything was amiss. She didn’t know for sure that it was.
And she couldn’t deal with her father at the moment.
Julie was pacing the sidewalk at the entrance of the parking lot when Morgan pulled up in her eight-year-old Ford Taurus, purchased used the year before. Julie jumped in and Morgan pulled into the closest parking spot.
“Oh, God, Morg, I have no idea how this happened,” Julie said, glancing toward the door of the school. “Mr. Peterson has already called the police.”
The school principal. A man Morgan had always thought was calm and rational, ready to call the police?
“He’s got to be hiding someplace,” Morgan said, swallowing panic. “Did they check the bathrooms? The girls’, too?”
Julie nodded.
“What about the shop? Did you check the shop? You know he wanted to finish that little wood car he’d started last session.”
Julie was already shaking her head. “He asked to use the restroom,” she said. “The hall security camera shows him going into the boys’ restroom at the end of the hall, and in twenty minutes of tape, he never came back out. But he’s definitely not in there.”
“What about the grounds camera?”
“It’s broken at the hinge, but we can’t tell if the break is new or not.”
“How long ago did he leave class?”
“He asked to go to the bathroom half an hour ago. As soon as his teacher reported that he hadn’t come back and wasn’t in the bathroom we went to the security camera. I texted you as soon as I saw the film.”
“Have they checked his locker?”
“Yeah. His suit and towel for swimming are in there.”
“What about his lunch?”
They were out of the car, hurrying toward the walk.
“Today is picnic-on-the-lawn day, remember? We provide brown-bag lunches.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Picnic-on-the-lawn day had seemed so far away.
“They’ve locked down the school, Morg. Come on. We have to get in there. They’re waiting for you… .”
The fear in Julie’s eyes held Morgan frozen for a split second. And then she ran.
* * *
CALPUSHEDTHE BUTTON on his office answering machine before he’d taken his seat behind his desk.
As if there’d be some news about Morgan Lowen’s son there already. Just because her urgency was coursing through him like a river with a broken dam didn’t mean that he was in any kind of loop that would be privy to her private information on an immediate basis.
Still, he couldn’t just sit there. A child was missing. Something had to be done.
He was overreacting, of course. Kids went missing every day, and almost every single time they turned up. Morgan was probably with Sammie at this very moment. Maybe scolding him for having given her a scare. Or taking him for fast food hamburgers, which she’d told Cal she’d done last April after Sammie’s problems at school. She’d wanted her son to talk to her. Rather than punish him, she’d wanted to know why he’d acted out.
“This message is for Dr. Caleb Whittier. Dr. Whittier, I left a message yesterday. My name is Detective Ramsey Miller. I’m with the Comfort Cove Police Department in Comfort Cove, Massachusetts. It’s important that you return my call… .”
Cal cut off the message before the man recited his numbers, including one for a private cell, a second time. He hadn’t been anywhere near Comfort Cove, a coastal town not far from Boston, since he was seven years old. Not since the accusations had forced him and his father out of town.
He’d be damned if he was going to waltz back there of his own accord. Other than this office line at school, his numbers—landline and cell—were unlisted. His father’s cell was a pay-as-you-go with an untraceable number. They rented instead of owning so that there was no tax record of the residence. They used a P.O. box for mail. He paid taxes, but Frank didn’t. His father worked at the local nursing home, doing handyman and janitorial work, and the rent on the home they lived in was free in trade. Cal hadn’t lived thirty-two years without learning a thing or two about protecting his father from the stalkers who’d all but ruined his life.
Bile rose in his throat as he thought about the tall, proud man who’d once stood at the helm of one of Massachusetts’ most prestigious private high schools, getting up every morning to fix bathroom plumbing and mop piss off floors.
His father had not only been one of Massachusetts’ most respected educators, he’d also been a damn good basketball coach. And in the past twenty years the only ball he’d touched professionally was the float ball in a toilet.
There were two other messages. One confirming that while the adventure vacations group had sympathy with Cal’s plight, the thousand bucks he’d put up for his father’s fishing trip was not going to be refunded, regardless of the circumstances. The second one was from the assistant of one of yesterday’s bankers informing him that she’d sent a list of questions that he would need to answer, in writing, before her boss could consider Cal’s scholarship request for the young artists’ league.
Voice mail over, he sat down. Opened his email.
And saw the message in his in-box that Joy had sent the day before, confirming their date the night before. She’d said she had something to speak with him about. He’d thought she wanted to deepen their relationship with spoken commitment. To talk about some kind of future.
It hadn’t gone that way… .
“Hi, hon. How was your day?” he’d said as he’d met her outside the restaurant. He’d bent down for a kiss, which she’d returned as though everything was fine. It hadn’t been until later, back at her place, that she’d let him know how she was really feeling.
He’d pulled her into his arms. She’d pushed him away.
“I don’t want to do this, Cal,” she’d said. “It’s like I’m on your list of things to do, not like I’m the person you need in your life. When you kiss me…I don’t know…I don’t feel like I do it for you anymore.”
“It’s not that,” he’d hastily assured her. “I want you.”
“I’m not talking about sex, Cal. All your working parts are in perfect order, as I’m sure you’re fully aware. You’re the best lover I’ve ever had and then some.”
“So what’s the problem?” His tone was purposefully light. But he knew. In the end, the story was always the same.
“You don’t give enough of yourself, Cal. You bring gifts. You take me to concerts and the theater. You’ve introduced me to some great restaurants that I’d never been to even though I’ve lived in Tennessee my entire life. You entertain me. You bring me physical pleasure I didn’t even know I could feel. But you never talk to me. I know more about what’s playing and who’s cooking than I do about you.”
Different words, but same story. As he’d predicted.
“What’s there to tell?” he’d asked, as much out of habit as anything. And he’d waited for her answer with more curiosity than hope. Would her answer be any different than any he’d ever heard before?
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you know what there is to know?”
“It did. But I don’t believe that. You have too much insight, too much consideration and too much understanding to ever pass for a shallow man.”
Her words made him uncomfortable. “You get more of me than anyone else in my life gets.”
She’d wanted more.
He wasn’t going to give it to her.
Her next words replayed themselves loud and clear—their echo joining the chorus of others in his mind. “I think we need to start seeing other people, Cal.”
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“Were we ever really going together?”
“I was seeing you exclusively. You know that.” He only had exclusive sex.
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