The Street Where She Lives

sight of her, in English class at school; tall, willowy, hauntingly beautiful. She’d been so far out of his league, him being nothing more than a foster kid from The Tracks, a sleazy area of South Village no one wanted to lay claim to. But she’d looked at him that day, from eyes that held a mirroring loneliness, a mirroring pain, and he’d fallen a little bit in love on the spot.

He hadn’t expected her to feel the same way, and had figured he’d hit the lottery when she’d smiled back. As he’d gotten to know her, and her demons, he hadn’t had a chance in hell at keeping his distance. Their time together, every single minute of those six months, the intensity of it, the passion, had been heaven on earth. Until she’d taken it all away, nearly destroying him in the process.

“She got hit by a car and almost died.”

My God. That lovely, giving, warm, unforgettable body broken and bleeding and hurt? Vaguely, he caught a horrifying list of injuries.

“…and a cracked pelvis, too. Broken arm, ribs, leg and ankle, all down her left side where, um, the car slammed into her.”

Ben couldn’t process it, couldn’t begin to imagine.

“And there was some brain injury, but the surgery went really, really good.”

The hope in Emily’s voice sliced through him like a razor blade. “Brain injury?”

“Yeah, it made her talk funny at first, but she’s better now. Sometimes it takes her a minute to, like, coordinate herself, but the doctor says that’s temporary.”

“Okay.” Ben realized he’d been holding his breath and he let it slowly out. Guilt sliced through him for every not so charitable thought he’d ever spared about Rachel over the years, and there’d been many.

“The doctors say she’s going to be fine,” Emily said in his ear, her voice still wavering even as she became the comforter. “But, Daddy, she needs help.”

She couldn’t need money, Ben thought. Rachel had inherited gobs of it from her workaholic father who’d probably entered hell pissed off that he couldn’t bring his fortune with him. Not to mention, Rachel was hugely successful in her own right as a popular cartoonist. Her famous comic strip, Gracie, earned her so much dough it made him dizzy to think about. But maybe she’d lost it all in the stocks or something. “I don’t have much at the moment,” he admitted having just last week made his regular substantial charitable donation.

What was the point in saving, when he didn’t have a place to keep it or someone who needed it? He had no family besides Emily, at least none that wanted to claim him. Being the eighth of nine wards in a foster home that gathered kids in the name of “Christian” duty-and for the monthly stipend-he’d gone all his life without material things. When he’d finally had the money to buy stuff, aside from his cameras, he got no satisfaction from it. If anything, material goods just tied him down. And after his first seventeen years of being held to one spot, being untethered was his greatest joy.

In fact, he’d been untethered for just about his entire adult life, cohabiting with some of the most rural and isolated people on earth. If it weren’t for Emily, he might never have reemerged into “society” at all.

“It’s not money she needs.” Emily hesitated, and Ben waited anxiously. His daughter was not only sharp as hell, but capable of reasoning far beyond her years. And she was reasoning now, silently, which always scared him.

What could Rachel, a woman who needed no one, possibly need from him?

“She wants to go home to recuperate. But she can’t really manage by herself. So she’s going to have to go somewhere else to get better, like a convalescent home. And then I’d have to go to Aunt Melanie’s and change schools. She’s really freaking out worrying about me.”

Damn it. Damn it. He didn’t want his daughter separated from her mother, and with Rachel’s sister one hundred and twenty miles north of them in Santa Barbara, that’s exactly what would happen. “We can hire a nurse,” he said.

“She’s trying, but it’s hard to find someone.”

Once upon a time, he’d known Rachel better than anyone. She’d had it tough, in a way even tougher than he had. As a result, she trusted no one. She’d rather lie down and die than accept help from a stranger.

Actually, unless she’d changed in thirteen years, she’d rather lie down and die than accept help from him. That feeling was mutual and had been since the day she’d decided he was no longer welcome in her life. It still bugged the hell out of him how easily she’d moved on, while he’d mourned and grieved her loss for years.

But he was over her now, very over her.

“Daddy, she’s determined to do it all, for me, but she’s going to hurt herself. Please? Please won’t you come?”

His daughter had rarely asked him for anything. And yet all he could do was panic at the thought of being caged, tied down to one place-that place-for God knows how long.

“Please,” she whispered again, her voice barely audible. “Please come home.”

The hustling, bustling, urban South Village, just outside Los Angeles, had never been his “home”-he’d had no real home. But since he hadn’t told his daughter about his past-about being found nearly dead in a trash bin when he was only two days old-he couldn’t very well explain it to her now.

And just because the word home was foreign to him didn’t mean it was that way for Emily. He’d give anything, everything, to ensure she never knew what it was like not to have a home.

“We need you, Daddy.”

A new coat of perspiration beaded his forehead. “She’ll refuse.”

“She knows she has no choice. It’s you, or hiring a stranger.”

“You know how she feels about me.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat and spoke in a perfect imitation of Rachel. “You’re ‘wild, rough and unmolded.’”

Oh, yeah, that was a direct quote. He could hear the faint smile in his daughter’s voice, the daughter far too understanding and old for her years.

His fault.

“And danger is your middle name,” she intoned, still quoting.

Hmm.

“Oh! And you’re a selfish…” She lowered her voice. “Well. You-know-what.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re also-”

“Okay, okay.” Nothing like being humbled by your own child. Maria shoved an envelope in his hand. It was grimy, but then, everything here was. Addressed to him, it looked as if it’d been to hell and back before arriving here. The postmark date was five weeks ago, which didn’t surprise him. It was amazing it had gotten to him at all.

Inside was a perfectly spotless, perfectly folded piece of white paper. The chilling words read “I’m not done with you yet.”

Ben lifted his head and covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “Did you just get this?” he asked Maria in Spanish.

She nodded her head and looked at him from guarded black eyes.

Fear clawed Ben’s belly. “Asada.”

Maria paled at the name.

“Radio the authorities,” he said, still speaking Spanish. “Make sure he was extradited to the States as planned.”

She nodded and turned away.

As helplessness coursed through him, Emily continued to chatter in his ear. “You won’t be sorry, Dad! We can all be together. You know, like a family.”

Oh, boy. He’d have to deal with that later. For now, he had bigger issues. Asada had once sworn revenge, and now somehow appeared to be free to carry out his threats.

Five weeks free, if the postmark meant anything.

For the first time he could remember, he only half listened to his daughter’s monologue about all the things