The Street Where She Lives

walked him out. “Thanks for checking on my mom,” she said.

“You don’t have to thank me, Emily. I like to see her.”

Well, duh. That was the problem. “My dad is here now though, so he can check on her.”

Adam searched her features, then slowly nodded. “I see.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” A small smile touched his lips. “You’d like me to vanish.”

She flushed. “Well, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings or anything.”

With a grim smile, he pushed up his glasses. “You want them back together. Of course you want them back together.”

Okay, that took her back. She’d been very sly about this, so… “How did you know?”

“My parents were divorced. Let’s just say I recognize the desperation.”

“Oh.” She winced, thinking he was awfully nice for her to be wishing him so dead. Maybe he could just go far, far away.

“Emily, you know your parents have been apart a very long time now, and-”

“It could happen! They could get back together.”

He closed his mouth. Looked at her with that same gentle smile that speared her with guilt and nodded. “It could.”

“So, you’ll stop kissing her?”

Adam let out a laugh. “I’ll tell you what…if your mom wants me to stop kissing her, I will. Okay?”

She looked into his kind eyes and felt a little bit of what her mom must like about him. Which made him a bigger threat than she’d imagined. And what could she say? It would have to be good enough.

Besides, surely after another day or so, her mother would want her dad to be kissing her and no one else. After all, her dad was irresistible.

As she was walking back inside, the house phone rang. She grabbed it up, for a minute hoping it was Alicia, her new e-mail pal. They’d “met” a few weeks ago in her school’s homework chat room, even though Alicia didn’t go to her school. Sometimes kids from other schools hacked in, which she was glad for because she didn’t like the kids in her school. Anyway, they’d decided to be best friends and Alicia, who lived in Los Angeles, had been promising to call so they could talk for real.

“Hey, baby, how’s your mom?”

Aunt Mel. Jeez, Emily must not have been that convincing earlier this morning when she’d called Mel to keep her away. Looked like she’d have to try harder. “Hi! Like I said, Mom’s great. In fact, she was just saying again how she didn’t want you to take any more time off work because she’s doing so great.”

“Really?”

Emily could hear the skepticism in Mel’s voice. “Really,” she gushed. “She got out of bed all by herself.” Her father came into the room with the puppy under his arm and gave her a long look as he took Patches outside. Emily winced, but kept up the flow of Mom’s-doing-great chatter.

“So, how’s school?” Mel asked when Emily had finally wound down.

She winced again. School was a deep, dark pit of hell. She had no friends there, no one who cared. “Sucky.”

Mel laughed. “If your mother hears you use that word, it’ll be suckier.”

“Yeah.” Her dad came back in, gave her a thumb’s-up sign over Patches’s head, which meant the puppy had done her duty. But then Patches saw Emily and barked with excitement before her dad could stop her. “Aunt Mel, I gotta go or I’ll be late for school,” she said quickly. “But honest, things are-”

“Great?” Mel said with a smile in her voice.

“Yeah! So stay there and…” What was it Mom would say? She needed to sound grown-up. “You know. Live your life.”

Aunt Melanie laughed. “Sounds good.”

The puppy barked for the second time, looking quite pleased with herself.

“What was that?” Mel asked.

“Nothing. The school bus. Gotta go!”

Oh man, she’d just lied to her aunt. Again. It was accumulating on her. This morning alone, she’d lied to her father, Adam and her mother, too. That must be a record of some kind.

Ben covered the puppy’s mouth and with another long look at Emily, took her back upstairs.

Hanging up the phone, Emily put her forehead to the wall. Being twelve was harder than she thought.

CHAPTER EIGHT

RACHEL NEVER DID manage to get herself dressed that day. When the party finally left her bedroom, she crawled back into bed, both defeated and depressed at her exhaustion level. She fell asleep and was haunted by dreams of strong, loving arms, by whiskey-colored eyes that saw her, really saw her, and by some miracle loved her anyway, and her own feeble, weak fear of letting herself return that love.

Awake now, she lay there staring at the ceiling. Her stomach growled and she could have sworn she’d just heard a dog bark, but that had to just be a lingering dream. She told herself it hadn’t been weakness or fear that destroyed her and Ben so long ago, but cold, hard facts.

He’d had to go.

She’d had to stay.

Simple. Besides, that had been long ago. They’d moved on. Maybe they had to deal with each other again now, but the feelings they’d once shared were long gone.

Her door opened. Ben came in, carrying a tray with hot oatmeal and buttered toast. He set it on her lap, grabbed the chair in the corner of the room, spun it around and straddled it. Steepling his fingers, he peered at her over the top of them. “Eat up. We have a physical therapist appointment later, you’ll need your strength.”

As if she could eat with him watching her like that. “I’m not really that hungry-”

Her stomach growled loudly into the room.

“Yeah, not hungry,” he said dryly. “Eat, Rachel. I’m not budging until you do.”

With that incentive, she ate the entire bowl.

“You feeling any better?”

“If I say yes, will you get on a plane?”

He smiled. “Probably not.”

She had to smile back. “It was worth a shot.”

“Yeah. Eat.”

And good as his word, when she’d finished, he left her alone.

AT DUSK Emily came in with another tray that held some heavenly scented soup and more toast. Behind her stood Ben, his face solemn, and if she didn’t know better, tentative.

Was that from earlier, when she’d fallen asleep on the way back from her particularly brutal physical therapy appointment? He’d carried her inside, set her on her bed, then kissed her softly.

She’d let their lips cling for one moment, and then shocked at herself, had turned away, cowardly feigning sleep.

They hadn’t talked since.

“Mom, guess what. Dad taught me how to cook soup.” She positively glowed as she sniffed proudly at the steaming bowl. “Yum, right? It smells better than all that canned stuff you always make us use. Hey, maybe when you’re better, he can teach you to cook, too.”

Rachel eyed Ben, who was either wise enough not to smile or didn’t find the humor in the fact Rachel had never taken the time to learn to cook much past the very basics.

“Want some company?” Without waiting for an answer, Emily set the tray on Rachel’s lap and sat on the bed. It was the first time that Rachel could remember seeing her without the laptop attached like an appendage to her