As had been happening to her more and more lately, Rachel found it very difficult to concentrate on work Friday afternoon. She kept looking out her office window, noting the rich blue of the autumn sky, catching a glimpse of blazing colors from the hardwood trees at the back of her business property, imagining how sharp and fresh the pleasantly cool air must feel outside. Say, on a picnic.
For at least the tenth time, she turned her attention sternly back to the bid forms on her desk. This bid was for a big job, a nearby town of twenty thousand people that was putting its residential trash collection up for private bids after providing city-owned service for several years. Like many small towns, Pineland had discovered that the rising costs of providing such service were becoming too much to handle, and had realized that private companies could handle the business with less trouble and expense for city officials and lower charges to the residents.
Evans Industries had always exclusively handled commercial accounts until now. Taking on this residential route would mean the purchase of a new rear-loader truck, more investment in recycling equipment, higher insurance, at least two more full-time employees. Rachel knew it would also involve more telephone time; residential customers tended to complain more than business customers, she’d heard. And yet there was a nice profit to be made, once the investment money had been recouped. If she was going to expand her business, this was a sensible way to begin.
A letter at the corner of her desk caught her eye. She’d opened it only that morning and had set it aside, telling herself she wasn’t interested. The logo at the top of the professional letterhead held her gaze now. The letter had come from one of the largest internationally operated waste-hauling companies. It was a polite, tentative attempt to find out if Rachel was interested in selling Evans Industries. She knew the competition she gave this huge company was strictly small potatoes, yet steady enough to have caught the competition’s attention. This wasn’t the first time she’d been approached with an offer like this. She’d always turned them down before, never even taking the time to consider the possibility of selling her company. So why did she find herself staring for so long at this particular letter, unable to put it completely out of her mind?
She forced herself to look away from that recognizable logo. Her gaze fell, instead, on the twelve-year-old photograph of Ray and Herman Evans, standing proudly in front of their first truck. They had worked so hard to establish this business, to make it successful. Ray had dreamed of eventually competing with “the big guys,” becoming as well-known and profitable as BFI or Waste Management, Inc., two of the nationally operated companies. After his death, Rachel had just struggled to hold on to the business he’d already built up, adding a few accounts along the way to compensate for the ones she lost through routine business changeovers. The Pineland route, should she take it on, would be her first attempt at expansion.
And now she wasn’t entirely sure that was what she wanted to do.
She touched the face of her late husband in the photograph.
“I know you would have gone after this, Ray,” she said softly. “But this was your dream, not mine.”
The problem was, she’d long since lost sight of whatever dreams she might once have harbored.
She’d majored in business at the local junior college, with the intention of becoming an office manager or an executive secretary. Rachel had never dreamed of living in a large city, becoming a high-powered career woman, or taking a job that required extensive travel or relocations. She loved Percy, enjoyed small-town life, thrived on the security and the fulfillment that came from having a shared history with her friends and neighbors. She liked knowing that her children were playmates with the offspring of her own childhood playmates, that she was doing business with people who’d known her from infancy. She wouldn’t mind traveling a bit someday, just to experience other places, other sights, but she hoped she would always have a home here to return to. Friends to welcome her home.
Her dreams had been very traditional, she realized. A comfortable income, a happy marriage, children, a nice home. She needed a bit more challenge in her life than the sitcom moms of the fifties...but not much, she admitted with a wry smile. As far as Rachel was concerned, these days there was a great deal of challenge to be found in raising safe, happy children to be productive, confident adults.
It took both money and personal attention to achieve that goal. Like most working mothers, especially single mothers, Rachel sometimes had a great deal of difficulty providing both. But deep inside herself, she honestly believed she was managing very well. And that made her feel good. Gave her a sense of fulfillment.
And yet, somehow, it still wasn’t enough. She adored her children, was proud of the nice home they shared, cherished the closeness she had with her family, and yet there was still something missing. A hole that had been ripped through her life with the untimely death of her husband.
She’d known what it was like to be happily married. To feel part of a couple, to know that she was never really alone. To wake in the night and know that someone slept beside her, someone she loved and who loved her in return. Someone to share her joy and her pain, her accomplishments and her failures, her dreams and her fears. Someone who would be there with her even when the children went off to seek their own lives, their own mates. Someone to belong to her, and to whom she belonged.
A partner. A lover. A husband.
She set down her pencil. Her hands were trembling and she stared at them nervously. No, it wasn’t an attack of nerves. It was terror.
Seth was going to ask her to marry him. She was absolutely sure that he was. He’d already told her he loved her. He’d made it quite clear that he was interested in much more than an affair. He’d even called it a courtship, and, to Rachel, a successful courtship led to marriage.
Seth seemed so confident, so certain of his feelings. Yet how could he be? They’d known each other such a short time. Rachel and Ray had dated for three years before they’d married, for over two years before the subject had even been mentioned. Yet she and Seth had known each other only a matter of weeks. It was so crazy! So impulsive. So very Seth.
He’d promised he wouldn’t rush her, but she knew better than to trust that promise. Oh, he meant it, she believed that. But Seth was an impatient man. He wouldn’t be content for long with platonic dates, with the occasional stolen night together. He would want more. And, she suspected, she would, too.
But what if it didn’t work? What if he discovered that she wasn’t really what he’d wanted, after all? What if he eventually found her as structured and organized and compulsive as the family he’d run away from? What if he discovered, to his regret, that he missed the freedom he’d found when he’d separated himself from his family? What if the love he claimed to feel for her now was really no more than a passing infatuation?
It would destroy her, she realized bleakly. In some ways, she would find that more utterly devastating than the loss of her husband. To allow herself to love someone who didn’t truly love her in return would surely break her heart.
And what about the children? Wouldn’t they be shattered if they grew to love Seth, to depend on him, to need him, only to lose him as they’d lost the father they could barely remember now? They had already taken to him more quickly than they’d ever taken to anyone outside of the immediate family. They longed for a father, and they’d already decided that Seth would do nicely in that role. But Rachel just couldn’t be sure.
He was sweet and fun and thoughtful and kind and amusing and...well, Seth had many wonderful qualities that Rachel could list for hours. But did he really understand what it meant to be a father? All the work, the trouble, the heartache, the expense, the worry, the sacrifice, the inconvenience, the frustration? There was great joy, as well, in raising children, but any parent could attest that it sometimes took an effort to keep that in mind. And, if there were other children—and there was a deep, secret part of Rachel that longed for another child—would Seth show favoritism? Could he possibly love another man’s children as deeply, as purely as his own child? Rachel could never settle for less for Paige and Aaron.
The telephone at her elbow buzzed and Rachel nearly leapt out of her chair. She stared in appalled disbelief at her watch. Three o’clock? Where had the afternoon gone? She’d accomplished absolutely nothing! She might as well have gone on that picnic, after all, she thought with a wistful regret. She picked up the phone, forcing all her convoluted emotions out of her voice when she said crisply, “Evans Industries. May I help you?”
* * *
Seth couldn’t have picked a better afternoon for a picnic. The weather was ideal. Pleasantly cool, yet warm enough that lightweight sweaters and jeans were quite adequate clothing. Cloudless blue sky. A light, fragrant breeze.
Had Rachel been with them, it would have been a perfect afternoon.
He’d followed Cody’s directions to “the ultimate picnic spot,” a grassy glade beside a small creek that meandered through miles of primitive woodlands. He’d parked his car at the side of a gravel road, and he and the kids had carried the picnic supplies to this spot, roughly a fifteen-minute walk from the road.
The kids were having a great time. They’d eaten a bucket of chicken, with coleslaw and potato salad on the side, followed by those little chocolate pudding cups the chicken place sold for dessert. They’d downed chilled canned sodas, and were now charged with sugar-and-caffeine fueled energy, running and squealing and laughing as they pursued the Frisbee Seth had brought with them.
Seth had long since collapsed onto the spread blanket in exhaustion. He stared in amazement at the still-hyper children, wondering why no one had figured out a way to harness that source of energy for commercial use. These two were enough to make a reasonably well-conditioned man of only twenty-eight start feeling a bit old.
“Aaron,” he said, watching as the boy approached the swiftly running, shallow creek just as it disappeared into the woods beyond the glade. “Don’t get in the water. Your mom would strangle both of us if you got your clothes and shoes all wet and muddy.”
“Okay, Seth,” Aaron said absently, his attention focused on something in the clear water. Probably minnows, Seth thought in amusement. Bugs, maybe. He clearly remembered his own boyhood fascination with such things.
Paige plopped onto the blanket at Seth’s side and wiped the back of her hand across her flushed face. “Whew!” she said. “I’m pooped!”
Seth laughed. So the energy wasn’t inexhaustible. He was rather relieved to hear it. “You are, huh?”
Paige nodded, then looked a bit guilty. “Oops. Granny Fran doesn’t like me to use that word. She says it sounds distasteful.”
“What? Pooped?”
Paige nodded again.
Seth grinned. He could just hear Granny Fran saying that. “Then maybe you’d better not say it anymore,” he suggested. “Granny Fran’s a pretty classy lady.”
Paige smiled. “You like my Granny Fran, Seth?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“Good.” Paige scooted an inch closer to him and rested her little head trustingly against his forearm.
Seth looked down at her dark, pigtailed head nestled so contentedly against him and felt a hard lump form in his throat. Oh, yeah, he thought. He was going to like this fatherhood thing. A lot.
“Are you going to marry my mother, Seth?”
The unexpected question made him choke. He coughed a couple of times, cleared his throat, then said carefully, “Your mother and I haven’t really talked about that yet, Paige.”
“Oh. Why not?”
“Well, we haven’t really known each other very long.”
She looked up at him in apparent surprise. “You’ve known her since September!”
“This is only October,” he declared. “It’s only been about seven weeks since your mom brought you to my office that first time.”
“That’s a long time, isn’t it?”
He supposed seven weeks was a long time, to an eight-year-old. “Not really very long,” he said.
“How long do you have to know her before you can get married?”
Seth was beginning to get a bit flustered. “Um, well, there isn’t a set time limit or anything. I mean, it doesn’t really matter how long you know someone if you love them and want to get married. But—”
“Do you love my mother?” Paige asked the questions so simply that she couldn’t possibly be aware of how difficult they were to answer.
But, then again, this one wasn’t all that difficult, Seth realized abruptly. This was an answer he could give her without the slightest hesitation. “Yes, Paige. I love your mother.”
“So you are going to marry her?”
“I would like to,” he said, still choosing his words with care. “But it has to be something your mother wants, too.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll talk to her for you,” Paige offered airily. “She probably wants to. Why wouldn’t she?”
If only it could be that simple, Seth thought with a wistful smile. “Um, Paige? How do you feel about it? I mean, do you want me to marry your mother?”
Paige gave him a shy, sweet smile that made him decide right then that he was going to have to keep a very sharp eye on her when she got a few years older. He shuddered at the very thought of her turning a smile like that on a helpless, hormone-happy teenage boy. Maybe this fatherhood thing wasn’t going to be quite such a snap, after all.
“Yes,” she said warmly. “I hope you do marry her. That would make you my daddy, wouldn’t it?”
“Technically, it would make me your stepfather,” Seth said, feeling compelled to point out that fact. “Your father was a very special man, Paige. I want you always to remember that, and that he loved you very much. But, if your mother and I get married, I would be very proud to have you for my daughter. To have you call me Dad, if you want to. I would love you and your brother just like you were my very own children. Can you understand that?”
Paige nodded. “I won’t forget my real daddy, Seth. Mama gave me his picture and told me to try to always remember him, though it’s hard sometimes to remember what he was like. But I wish you could be our new daddy. We’ve talked about it, Aaron and me,” she added. “We want a father, like our friends have. And we want it to be you.”
It was almost enough to make a grown man bawl, Seth thought shakily. Rachel Carson Evans, you’re going to marry me if I have to...to... His mouth twisted. If I have to beg.
He slipped an arm around Paige’s narrow shoulders, gave her a hug and planted a kiss on the top of her dark head. “Thank you, Paige. I hope everything works out just the way you want it to. But don’t push your mom, okay? We have to give her all the time she needs to make up her own mind. Marriage is a very important decision. She has to be very sure it’s what she wants.”
“She’ll marry you,” Paige said with a confidence that Seth envied. “She always gets a funny look on her face when you’re around. Me and Aaron—I mean, Aaron and I think it’s because she’s in love with you. People always look funny when they’re in love, don’t they, Seth? At least, they do on TV.”
Seth laughed. “Maybe it’s just indigestion,” he teased.
Paige rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh, Seth. You’re so silly.”
“I am, huh?” Seth promptly tickled her tummy, causing her to dissolve into delighted giggles.
Relieved that the delicate discussion had been resolved, at least temporarily, Seth pushed his hair back from his forehead and glanced at his watch. It was almost four. Probably time for him to get the kids back home. He reached for an empty chicken container. “Want to help me pick everything up, Paige? We don’t want to leave any trash behind.”
“We don’t want to be litterbugs,” Paige agreed solemnly, stuffing used paper plates and napkins into the empty chicken bucket. “We have to keep our earth clean.”
Figuring that she was quoting a slogan she’d learned at school, Seth responded with approval. He glanced over his shoulder as he started to fold the blanket. “Aaron, bring the Frisbee, and let’s get going, okay?”
The spot where the boy had stood staring into the creek was empty. Seth frowned and sat back on his heels. “Aaron?” he called, raising his voice a little.
Still no answer. He pushed himself to his feet, planted his hands on his hips and took a quick survey of the glade, catching no glimpse of Aaron’s green-and-navy striped sweater. “Aaron!”
Paige sighed gustily and shook her head. “Sometimes you can yell right in his ear and he doesn’t hear you if he’s thinking about something else,” she said. “That boy can be more trouble!” she chided with the superiority of two extra years of maturity.
“You finish gathering these things up, and I’ll go get him, okay? And don’t you wander off,” he added hastily. “Stay right here.”
He began where he’d last seen Aaron, standing by the creek at the very edge of the woods. “Aaron?”
There was a path, of sorts, along the bank of the creek. Seth followed it several yards into the woods, calling the boy’s name in a louder and more anxious voice. He finally stopped, realizing that he was completely out of sight of the glade now. He couldn’t leave Paige alone.
“Aaron!”
The silence that followed his shout was a vaguely ominous one.
* * *
Rachel leapt out of the passenger side of Celia’s little car almost before Celia had brought it to a complete stop beside the other cars and pickup trucks parked along the side of the gravel road several miles outside the Percy city limits. An ambulance was also parked nearby. Rachel couldn’t even look at it without shuddering.
Three men stood at the end of the well-trodden path that led into the woods toward the glade Rachel remembered from past picnics with her family. It had been years since she’d been here, but she clearly remembered that the woods went on for miles beyond the little creek that ran through the area. And that those woods were full of old caves and crumbly ravines that had caused painful falls for many an unwary hiker. Cody had fallen once as a teenager, and had to be carried out by his friends. He’d spent weeks on crutches afterward. And then had headed back for the woods the day after the cast had been removed from his ankle.
“Cody knows these woods better than anyone,” Celia reminded Rachel as though she’d read her thoughts. “He’ll find Aaron.”
“Mama!” Paige broke away from the cluster of men at the edge of the path. Rachel hadn’t even seen her standing with them.
“Paige.” Rachel caught her daughter in her arms. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Paige replied, looking rather surprised by the question. “Aaron’s the one who’s missing.”
Missing. The very word made Rachel’s throat clench even more tightly than it had been since Celia had shown up unexpectedly at her office to tell her that Cody had called and reported that Aaron had disappeared into these woods during his picnic with Seth. She had added that Cody and Seth and a dozen volunteers and police officers were looking for the boy. Rachel had immediately insisted on coming to personally monitor the progress of the search.
“I shouldn’t have let him come,” Rachel muttered, more to herself than to anyone else. “I should have told Seth no.”
Paige stiffened. “Aaron’s the one who ran off, Mama,” she insisted. “Seth was watching us just like he was s’posed to. He told Aaron not to go to the creek, but Aaron did it, anyway.”
“The creek!” Rachel repeated with a gasp.
One of the men nearby overheard. “The creek’s only a couple of feet deep at its deepest point,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t worry about that. The boy’s probably just wandered off the path and got turned around. Happens all the time with inexperienced hunters. They’ll find him, don’t you worry.”
But Rachel was worried, of course. She was worried sick. She kept picturing those ravines, thick underbrush, wild animals—who knew what dangers lurked out there for a child who was barely six years old? And it was getting dark. Poor Aaron must be terrified.
“Seth called Uncle Cody from his car phone,” Paige said, hanging on to her mother’s hand. “Uncle Cody came with some other guys, and then the amb’lance came. Everybody’s out in the woods now, yelling for Aaron. Is Aaron going to get in trouble, Mama?”
“No, Paige, Aaron isn’t in trouble,” Rachel said. “I just hope he’s okay.” Please, God, let him be all right.
One of the men stepped forward, and Rachel greeted him with a tight smile. “Hello, Jim. You’ve been helping with the search?”
He nodded and patted her arm awkwardly. “Yeah. Jake called me,” he explained.
Rachel nodded at the mention of Cody’s partner. She suspected that Cody had headed for the woods as soon as Seth called, leaving instructions for Jake to call for more help. “Thank you for coming, Jim. Have you heard anything?”
Jim shook his head. “Not yet. Aaron’s been missing about an hour and a half, close as we can tell. But don’t you worry, Rachel. Pete Cunningham’s kid was lost for ten hours out there once, and he turned up just fine.”
Ten hours. Rachel felt her stomach turn. One of the other men nudged Jim and muttered something that made Jim swallow and say, “I’m sure they’ll find Aaron sooner than that. He’s just a little kid. How far could he get in an hour?”
The man who’d interrupted before rolled his eyes and pulled Jim away. “Let’s go help ‘em look,” he said gruffly. “Ms. Evans can stay with her little girl now.”
Celia slipped an arm around Rachel’s waist. “They’ll find him, Rach. He’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right,” Rachel whispered, holding her daughter close to her side. “Oh, I hope you’re right.”
It was a very long half hour later that a shout came from the path. Celia and Paige had been sitting on the trunk of Celia’s car, talking in low voices, while Rachel paced, unable to sit or stand still. It was almost completely dark now, the only light coming from the headlights of the vehicles parked around them and the flashlights the search parties carried. Rachel whirled in response to the rapidly approaching sounds of men’s voices and heavy footsteps. She gasped and darted forward when two uniformed paramedics stepped onto the road, carrying a stretcher between them. A tiny body lay on the stretcher, and Cody and Seth walked closely on either side of it.
“Aaron!” Rachel put out a shaking hand to touch her son’s tousled head, reassuring herself that he was breathing and all in one piece.
He wore a neck brace and his right arm was splinted, his face was scratched and filthy and tear streaked, and his clothes were torn and dirty. He looked up at Rachel with huge, apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, Mama. I was chasing a rabbit and it kept running and I got lost. And then I got scared and I ran some more and I fell into a big hole. I hurt my arm. And then I heard Seth shouting my name, and I yelled and he and Uncle Cody found me.”
“We think his arm is broken,” Cody explained, putting a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “But other than that, he seems fine.”
“You can ride in the ambulance with him if you want, ma’am,” one of the paramedics offered. “We’d like to get under way now.”
Rachel nodded, her hand still resting on Aaron’s head, her gaze still focused on his weary little face. “All right. Celia, you’ll bring Paige?”
“Of course,” Celia replied, her hands on her niece’s shoulders.
“Rachel.” Seth came around the side of the stretcher, reaching out to Rachel with one dirty, badly scratched hand. He was almost as disheveled as Aaron, she noted when she glanced his way. His face looked pale in the artificial light from several sets of car headlamps. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you must have been frantic.”
“I don’t blame you, Seth,” she said distractedly. “I knew you weren’t experienced with children. I shouldn’t have let them come without me.”
His hand fell to his side. If possible, his face went even whiter. Cody murmured something Rachel didn’t catch and didn’t take time to ask him to repeat.
The paramedics carefully loaded Aaron into the ambulance, and Rachel climbed in behind him, her attention fully claimed by her frightened, wounded child. A moment later, they were under way.