Page 44 of Jasmine Street Blues

Sonny dug into the back of the drawer, and returned to the table with the post card. Without hesitation, he handed it to Mac.

Loran leaned over to read, as Mac did.

Dear Sonny,

Thought about you yesterday, so I decided to drop you a note. All is well. I found someone kind of like you, a nice person willing to help without asking too many questions. She’s older, owns a little cafe on the main road through town, and she lets me rent a room at her house. I’m okay. Be well.

C

Mac flipped the postcard over.

Belle, Florida.

“Could she still be there?” he whispered. “After all this time. This was mailed almost two years ago. Maybe it’s too much to…”

“We can check it out,” Loran said. She rested an easy hand on his back. Did it comfort him at all? The simple touch seemed important, to her if not to him.

“We?” Mac looked at her, and she saw the heartbreak in his eyes. “Sounds like she’s doing okay, and it’s clear she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Before she died Kylie told me, during one of our rare, contentious phone calls, that Carrie didn’t want to have anything to do with me. I didn’t really believe it. I tried to stay in touch with her, I wanted to know she was okay, but my ex was like a blockade between us.”

And now the dead, blockade ex was trying to bring them back together.

Mac’s back stiffened, his jaw tensed. “I don’t understand why, but Carrie is running from me. I never hurt her, and I never would.”

Loran thought about dropping her hand, but she didn’t. “If Kylie lied to you, she probably lied to her daughter as well.”

“Maybe,” Mac whispered.

So much information, all at once, so much to consider. She couldn’t imagine anyone being afraid of Mac. He was big, gruff, and expected a lot of the people around him. But he wasn’t cruel, and he loved well. It didn’t make sense…

“I don’t know, but maybe you do, or can find out. Did Carrie have more than one stepfather?”

14

This wasn’t the Mac she knew, the man she’d fallen in love with against her best judgment. She could own it now, that inconvenient love. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t leave, but she might as well admit it to herself. She loved him. It had happened fast and had hit her hard. She’d fought it, she’d denied it, but she could admit the truth to herself. No one else could know. Knowing would just make the leaving harder than it had to be.

“I don’t think it was you she was afraid of,” Loran said as she slipped into the passenger seat of his patrol car.

“It’s not that much of a stretch,” Mac growled. “I was her stepfather, and I was looking for her. Maybe she found out and… Shit, who knows what Kylie told her about me? It never occurred to me that I might frighten Carrie.” He put the car into gear and pulled away from Sonny’s house.

“No one would run from you,” she whispered.

He turned his head, glared at her with narrowed eyes. “You’re about to. Even if you hadn’t already told me, I’d know. I see it in you. In your eyes, in the set of your jaw, in the way you keep looking over your shoulder.”

How could he already know her so well? Too well. “I’m leaving, but I’m not running from you,” she said.

“I’m not enough of a reason to stay, either.”

She hadn’t had a reason to stay anywhere, not for a very long time.

“Carrie was just a kid the last time I saw her,” Mac said. “There’s no telling what Kylie told her about me after I was gone. Maybe she does have a reason to run from me, it’s just not real. Not true. Sounds like she’s safe, maybe I should just… let it go. Colt has been telling me to do that for weeks.”

“Kylie might’ve been married five times since your divorce,” Loran argued. “There could be other stepfathers, and Carrie might be truly afraid of one of them. Kylie said the girl needs you. We can’t ignore that.”

“What if Kylie’s lying to me, still, always, and Carrie is truly afraid of me?” Mac snapped.

“Then we need to make sure she knows she has no reason to fear, no reason to run anymore.” We, she’d said, not you. Was she in it with him, in it until the end? “It’s no way to live, running, hiding, always looking back to see if anyone’s there who shouldn’t be. A good night’s sleep is rare. You can’t trust anyone, no matter how much you want to. You… you lie, all the time, about who you are and how long you’ll stay. No matter how good things might be you’re always on edge, afraid to build a life because you know it will be gone in a flash.”

“We’re not talking about Carrie anymore, are we?” Mac pulled his car to the curb, parking behind her van.