The Perfect Couple (Last Stand #4)(30)
Author: Brenda Novak

Propping her elbow on the window ledge, she anchored her fingers in her hair to keep it from blowing into her face. "My father has a couple of brothers with kids, but we didn’t socialize with them. I don’t think they wanted to feel any responsibility for me. They were tired of cleaning up his messes well before I came along."

"You don’t know them?"

She squinted into the distance. "I met them once or twice, but they both left California not long after Grandma died. One settled in Idaho and the other in Kentucky."

"Your dad’s from L.A., then?"

"Bakersfield, which isn’t too far away."

"Do these uncles and cousins know Sam?"

"No. I mean, they might know she exists. But they don’t know her."

"What happened to your father’s parents?"

She reached for her purse, found a pair of sunglasses and slid them on.

He got the impression she felt better after that, as if they gave her a shield of some sort, a way to hide the emotions coursing through her. "His dad died in a hunting accident when he was small. His mother worked at the library and did her best to raise him and his brothers alone. She died fairly young, too, from a blood clot after gallbladder surgery. I was eight."

"Were you close to her?"

The tenseness around Zoe’s mouth softened. "Very. She didn’t have a lot to offer us financially. But she loved me, and took me in whenever my dad got in trouble. It broke her heart to see what had become of her oldest son."

They were less than a mile from the mobile home park. Zoe clasped her hands over her purse and Jonathan stopped questioning her about her background.

"It hasn’t changed much," she said as they spotted the Mount Vernon sign, which was broken on one side and had fallen against the pole.

He pulled off the busy road, onto the rutted driveway. "How long’s the sign been like that?"

"Since I was here last."

He eyed the dilapidated, rust-stained metal-sided homes and shook his head.

"What?" she prompted.

"I can’t imagine any child being raised here."

"I wasn’t a child for long," she murmured.

Chapter 13

"He obviously hasn’t been around for quite a while." Zoe stood on the rickety landing of the mobile home where she’d grown up and gazed out at the untended land between the trailers–ground no one really claimed but folks in other places might call a yard. She’d already knocked but there’d been no answer, and the door was locked.

Jonathan had also donned a pair of sunglasses, which he’d retrieved from his luggage when they’d stepped into the bright sunshine. He looked exceptionally good in those glasses; his face, so lean and rugged, would’ve been right at home on a recruitment poster for the marines. How old was he, anyway? Her age? Younger?

Probably younger. She felt ancient.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"The weeds." She waved at the spot where her father always parked his truck. "If my father had been here recently, they would’ve been smashed by his tires."

"That’s one way to deal with weeding." Jonathan removed his glasses and lifted a hand to block the glare as he peered through a window.

"Around here, it’s the only way."

"I wonder if that would work for my yard."

She checked under the mat for the key her father used to leave for her, but it was gone. "We’ll have to break in," she said.

He lowered his voice. "You arrived at that conclusion pretty fast."

"I didn’t come all the way down here for nothing."

He grinned. "I like the way you think. Give me a second."

He went around back and, a moment later, she heard a popping sound.

There was some noise from inside the trailer, then the front door swung open. "Your wish is my command."

The chain rattled above them as he waved her in. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone had noticed their actions. "Quick work."

"I’ve seen bathroom stalls with stronger doors."

The place was filled with the same secondhand furniture and threadbare carpet she remembered all too well, but it was tidier and actually cleaner. That came as a surprise. When she’d lived here, she’d been cook, housekeeper and maid. "He couldn’t have picked up after himself before?"

she grumbled. Even when she’d come to stay for their Disneyland trip it’d been a mess.

Jonathan walked up behind her. "What’d you say?"

"Nothing." Nothing important. Sarcasm was just her way of dealing with the nostalgia rushing over her like a giant tidal wave, carrying her into the past. And now that she was home, she was faced with a new fear, one she hadn’t allowed herself to feel so far. What if the father she pretended to hate wasn’t even alive anymore? What if he’d overdosed or run his truck off a cliff?

The last words they’d said to each other would be the last words she’d ever get to say to him….

She should’ve called him back and done what she could to mend the rift. But she’d been trying so hard to gain Anton’s approval, to be like him.

Normal. Successful. A regular suburban parent. She could keep up that facade only by remaining as disdainful of her father’s weaknesses as Anton was.

But now she felt as if she didn’t know the person she’d become. Did she really want to be a carbon copy of Anton, or any of his family or friends? Most of them had no sympathy for the struggles people like the ones in this trailer park dealt with on a daily basis. Wasn’t she one of them?

"Hey."

Blinking, Zoe shifted her attention to Jonathan. "Hmm?"

"If your father was hurt, or worse, you would’ve been notified."

She smiled at his understanding. He was so vital, and supportive in a nonjudgmental way. Nothing like her fiance. Somehow, Jonathan didn’t have to resort to absolutes and a regimented routine to compensate for–

Stop it! Why was she thinking such unkind thoughts about Anton?

Because she blamed him for Sam’s being gone?

That wasn’t fair.

Somehow she’d always been able to cope. But she couldn’t cope with this….

Suddenly the obvious occurred to her. Although Ely had long since paid off the trailer, he didn’t own the piece of ground beneath it. He had to pay a monthly fee for the space; everyone in the park did. "Someone’s keeping up with the rent or there would’ve been notices on the door," she said.

Jonathan flipped a switch and the light came on. "The utilities haven’t been turned off, either. Where does he get his mail? If we can find out the last time he picked it up, that might give us some answers."

"It used to come through the slot next to the front door. But a few years ago, the post office put a bank of boxes out by the street. I saw them when I visited nearly two years ago." With Sam. When they’d gone to Disneyland and had such a great time–until Ely went out afterward and came home stinking drunk, hollering about how he never got to see them anymore. She’d dragged Samantha out of bed and they’d left before dawn.