Shooting Starr

with it. I dropped out.”

“Out of school?” He understood her horrified tone; she was a teacher’s child, like he was. In families like theirs, such a thing was almost unthinkable. “Why?”

He laughed softly at the look on her face, intent and fascinated but frustrated, too, as if he were a puzzle she couldn’t solve. Welcome to the club, he wanted to say. I’ve had some trouble figuring me out, too.

Then he thought about it and he realized that wasn’t true; there were quite a few things about himself he’d got figured out, but he just hadn’t ever wanted to share them with anybody before. Why he wanted to now- that was something he couldn’t figure out.

“Why?” He scrubbed a hand over his face. His grin flickered briefly before he remembered she couldn’t see it. “Oh, hell, what can I say? I was a kid. Spoiled. The baby of the family. Things had always come easy for me, and I guess I expected they always would. When I got hurt, from where I was standing it looked like my life was over. My dreams of football fame and glory, my easy-ride college career right down the tubes. I was mad, disappointed…it was easier to say the hell with it than to come up with a whole new set of dreams.”

Chapter 9

“‘A new set of dreams…’” She whispered it, staring into nothingness. The bleakness in her face hit him like a body blow.

Turning so he couldn’t see her face, she leaned her back against the same tree trunk that was propping him up and said in a not-quite-steady voice, “That’s ridiculous. You could still have had your dream of going to the University of Georgia if you’d wanted to. If you’d worked at it. Even playing football-you might have gotten there by a different path-”

He shrugged, then sucked in air as their shoulders touched. It shocked him to realize how much he wanted to hold her. More than he wanted his next breath. His voice wasn’t steady, either, as he retorted, “Yeah, well, maybe that was a dream that wasn’t meant to happen. Maybe I wouldn’t have been good enough to play college ball. How do I know? Like I said, things had always been easy for me. I’d never been tested, I guess you could say. And except for football, I didn’t have the first idea what I wanted to do with my life. Without that, who knows, I might have squandered a whole college education and graduated still not knowing. Maybe dropping out of school at that point was the best thing I could have done.”

He heard a soft laugh and leaned over so he could see her face. A smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Providence,” she murmured, angling her head toward him slightly.

“‘Providence’?” The word tugged at his memory and he frowned, trying to place it. But the top of Caitlyn’s head was right there, just below his nose…those waving tufts of golden hair would tickle his lips if he leaned over just a little bit.

She tilted her face upward, and he caught and held his breath. Couldn’t let it go-she’d know how close he was. Her lips quivered with her smile. “Something my dad used to say.”

The memory snapped into focus, and he flattened himself back against the tree trunk and let out a shaken breath. “Ah-your aunt, right?”

Surprised eyes reached upward toward his face as she turned fully toward him, her smile a hairsbreadth from where his lips had been. “My dad’s great-aunt, actually-she lived to be over a hundred. How did you know?”

His heart pounded; he fought to keep his voice even. “Your dad told me-back there in the hospital. Said something about getting hurt and as a result of that, being where he needed to be to save your mother’s life. And that your-his-aunt said it was Providence.”

“My dad told you that?” The watermark frown had appeared in the center of her forehead, and her eyes flickered as if they were trying to search his face in the darkness.

“Yeah, he did. Is it true?”

“Oh, yes.” She relaxed, sagging back against the tree. “The way it happened… Dad was a marine. He was stationed in Bosnia, and he’d stayed on there even after he left the corps, helping out with one of those humanitarian groups, driving a truck-” a startled look flashed across her face for an instant “-um, bringing in food and medical supplies. He was injured when his convoy was shelled. Broke both his legs. So they sent him home for rehab. Mom was his physical therapist, and it just so happened that at the time she was being stalked by her ex- husband. He’d have killed her if Dad hadn’t been there-or maybe she’d have killed him, I don’t know. Either way, Dad saved her life, and he was in a wheelchair at the time.”

“Amazing story,” C.J. murmured, and there was a swelling warmth inside his chest he recognized as envy. “Your dad’s a real hero.”

“Yes, he is.” She pushed restlessly away from the tree, then halted…trapped, it occurred to him, on her own private island. “Mom was one of the lucky ones.” There was anger now in her voice, and he didn’t know whether it was because of what they were talking about or her frustration at her own limitations. “That’s how I-”

He’d moved up beside her, to give her a point of reference, maybe, or walk with her if that was what she wanted. And she turned and reached out to him impulsively, the way she’d done that night in the abandoned gas station. That night her hands had landed on his folded-up arms with a touch light as leaves falling. Now since his arms weren’t folded, it was his chest she touched. He looked down into her eyes, and for the first time in a long time saw that breathtaking flash of silver.

“C.J.,” she said, earnest and intent, “do you know what I do? I mean…have you guessed, or figured it out?”

“I think I’ve ’bout got it figured out, yeah. But why don’t you explain it to me.” His voice was harsher than he’d intended. Whether it was that or she’d felt the way his heart was knocking against her fingers, but she took her hands away from his chest. Regret swept through him, intense as a shiver.

“Well, that’s what started it for me-my parents’ story.” She was looking away from him now…far, far away. “Mom and Dad were always open with me about what had happened to her. She’d been abused by her father when she was just a child, and finally the only way she could find to escape him was to get married, when she was barely sixteen. That was just as bad. Her husband was a violent, controlling man, and when she left him he tracked her down and, as I said, would have killed her if it hadn’t been for Dad. I used to think about that. What about the ones who aren’t lucky enough to have someone like my dad? Things are a lot better now than they used to be. At least there’s more awareness of the problem of domestic violence…laws are tougher. But there are still so many cases where-” She paused, shaking her head, and the look she threw at him was one of cold, bitter fury. Then, though he had nothing to say to her, she held up a hand as if to stop him-or was it herself?-and went quietly on.

“I went into social work, first, thinking that was the way to help. It didn’t take me long to realize that Social Services can only do so much. Social service agencies have to operate within the confines of law. And the law-okay, the law means well, but sometimes it seems like it protects the wrong people. Then there are some people who don’t know about the law and others who don’t care. And some-” her voice and her eyes hardened “-who believe they are a law unto themselves.”

“Like Vasily…” He said it on an exhaled breath and it sounded like a hiss. Even the name seems evil, he thought.

She gazed at him for a long moment without speaking, and the healing bruises around her eyes seemed to shimmer. Then she said softly, “I’m not going to tell you how I found the group I work-” her mouth twisted “- worked for. It’s too important that the work they do be allowed to go on.” Her lips relaxed and quivered into a half smile. “Dad says it’s like the Underground Railroad-you know, like during slavery?-but actually it’s probably more like a witness protection program, only not sanctioned by any government agency. We get people who are in imminent danger to safety, then help them…disappear.”

“Is that what happened to Emma Vasily? She just…disappeared?” His voice was gruff. He didn’t mean to be judgmental, but he was thinking about the little girl with the big black refugee eyes, the way she’d leaned against him, wanting so badly to trust somebody. He wondered if she was happier now, living among strangers.

“C.J…” It sounded like a sigh of regret.

“I guess I can’t blame you for not trusting me,” he said. And he couldn’t, but that didn’t keep him from feeling hurt in some strange, illogical way.