Lone Star Rising. Darlene Graham
like you’re hittin’ a homer in the house!”
“Do not call your brother a twerp.” Robbie shot Zack an embarrassed glance. He shrugged. “Or stupid for that matter.” She shoved the child’s dark bangs up and zeroed in on a tiny nick above his brow. “This could have been your eye, young man. Is everything else okay?” she demanded.
The kids nodded solemnly.
“Mom, I’m sorry about the window.” The older one moved to stand beside his brother. “But honest, I was just doing the dishes, and next thing I know a golf ball comes flying right past my head.”
Robbie shoved at the boys’ shoulders. “You two could have hurt your brother. Now get over by the door. Go on.” Robbie’s voice echoed sharply in the bare-walled kitchen. When the boys moved, she snapped open a paper bag she had snatched from under the sink and started flicking glass off the edge of the counter into it. Not carefully enough, Zack thought.
There was a right way and a wrong way to do most things. The right way being, take all necessary safety precautions.
“I’ll take care of that,” he said, reaching for the sack. “I have some leather work gloves out in my truck. You tend to your boys.” The kids had clotted up over by the door, holding themselves in the defensive poses of boys in trouble.
She whirled on him. “Tend to them? Tend to them?” Her voice rose. “I ought to tend to their backsides. These little incidents,” she said as she plucked up some larger pieces of glass and sent them crashing into the sack with too much force, “are happening with alarming regularity around this house. A broken window, a burning dish towel.” She stopped tossing glass and gave her sons a withering look. “A flooded bathroom. This nonsense has got to stop!” Her voice rose, threatening hysteria and tears. “Because in case nobody’s noticed I’ve got a baby on the way in exactly five weeks!”
The younger boys cringed in guilt. The older one was blushing clear to the roots of his red hair.
“Yes, ma’am,” Zack agreed quietly. Which sounded totally lame, but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d given up on getting the sack out of her hands. He turned his attention to the boys. “Guys. Why don’t you, uh, go in the living room while I help your mother clean this up?” He was thinking maybe it’d be better if they didn’t see their mother cry.
The two younger kids seized the opportunity and shot off faster than the dogs. But the oldest one hung back. “Who are you anyway?” He was eyeing Zack’s new Gall’s jacket—black leather with the department shield stitched over the breast pocket.
Zack figured the kid had maybe put two and two together by now.
“I’m a, uh, a friend of your mother’s. I came to talk to her about…business.” Not business. Bad news.
“Were you one of the firemen that put out the fire that killed my dad?” Hearing a twelve-year-old talk about the tragedy so matter of factly nearly broke Zack’s heart. No kid should be saying words like the fire that killed my dad.
Robbie Tellchick’s eyes widened, moist with tears. Zack had already decided that maybe this was not the night to share his news. He did not want to do anything to bring this family one more iota of pain. In fact, he had vowed to do anything in his power to help them. But in this case he didn’t know how to spare them the hurt. The truth was going to come out, eventually. The fire had been determined to be arson, and the arsonist, it turned out, was the boys’ father.
“Yes, I was there,” he said calmly, “but that’s nothing for you to worry about.” He took two steps across the gritty wood floorboards, his boots clumping too loudly in the cramped space. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and was glad that the kid didn’t immediately shrug him off. “I’ll help your mother clean up this mess. Why don’t you go on in there with your brothers.”
But the boy stood his ground, squinting at Zack with alert brown eyes. Zack dropped his hand and tried not to look guilty, though the discomfort he felt was acute.
“I’m going to learn CPR,” the boy stated with conviction.
“That’s good. Everybody should.” Zack said it neutrally, not sure where the kid was going with this, still not sure if the kid recognized him. It occurred to Zack that he must get his grit from his mother, because he certainly hadn’t gotten it from that worthless drip of a father. Zack knew he shouldn’t think about a dead man with such contempt, but as far as he was concerned, Danny Tellchick had always been a goombah of the first stripe, a guy who never appreciated or deserved a woman like Robbie McBride.
All three of the McBride sisters had been smart as whips, and beautiful to boot. Robbie’s intelligence was only one of many things Zack had admired about her back when he was four grades behind her in high school.
“I expect you know CPR and all that stuff.” The kid was still looking Zack up and down, his head tilting now, his gaze growing more wary.
“Yeah. I’m a firefighter.” Zack stood violently still, hardly breathing, because out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Robbie’s lips were pressing together, tighter and tighter.
“You’re the one. Aren’t you?” The kid sounded almost angry. “The one who went in and pulled my dad out of the fire and did CPR on him?”
“Yes.” Zack Trueblood was indeed the one. The one who had performed pointless CPR on their father’s scorched lifeless body right before these children’s eyes. The one who had intensified their horror a hundred fold.
The one who had loved their mother from afar for nearly eighteen years.
CHAPTER TWO
ZACH LOOKED AT the wiry kid standing before him and felt unsure of himself for the first time in a very long time. Unsure of what the boy must be thinking. Unsure of what to say. He looked at Robbie Tellchick. Her arms were folded above her bulging tummy in a stance as closed and tight as a straight jacket. Her compressed lips indicated that she had no intention of breaking the uneasy silence.
“What’s your name, son?” Zack asked the boy.
“Mark.”
“Mark, would it be okay if we talked about this later? For now, why don’t you go on in there with your brothers?”
The boy left quietly and Robbie proceeded to attack her task with angry purpose.
“Ma’am.” Zack had to grab her arms to make her let up with the glass. “Let me do that. Really. Let me get those heavy-duty gloves from my truck. And a hammer. It would be best to break these larger pieces out.” With a nod of his head he indicated the ridges of glass sticking out of the windowpane like a silhouette of the Swiss Alps. He felt her muscles tense with resistance for one second, then her arms went limp in his grip.
“I still can’t talk about that night,” she whispered.
“I understand. I really do,” Zack assured her quietly. He still had trouble with it himself. And now he’d come with news that would only complicate the healing even further. But right now they couldn’t afford to wallow in the past. There was glass to clean up and three hurting and confused children in the next room.
“Why don’t you go see about your boys,” he urged her again as he released her wrists.
Robbie blew out a frustrated breath and brushed back her frizzy hair. For a second, it looked like she might cry again. “Okay,” she finally said. “But be careful with that glass.”
“I always am,” Zack said flatly. He always was. But sometimes being careful wasn’t enough. Sometimes, like the night Danny Tellchick died, it was simply too late.
She turned and slowly went through a swinging door at the side of the room where he caught a glimpse of a small, dim dining room beyond.
He went back out the main doorway of the kitchen to the narrow corridor that led to the front door, which still stood open, swaying on