LITMIR.BIZ

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playing his stereo would have awakened the dead, let alone a sleeping parent.

      Though he wasn’t as forthcoming as the youngster he’d been just a year or two earlier, Brian still liked checking in with her. He just didn’t want it to be his idea.

      “Did you have fun?” she asked.

      He nodded. Grinned. “We met a couple of girls. One of them gave me her phone number. The pizza was pretty good. Yours is better, though.”

      She smiled, too, despite her welter of conflicting emotions. “Thanks for the compliment,” she answered. “Sleep well. Don’t forget to use those earphones we talked about.”

      On the night she’d eloped with Danny, Cate had been six months shy of her eighteenth birthday. Yet the short amount of time that had remained until they could marry legally had seemed like an eternity to her. She hadn’t wanted to be parted from the man she loved for a single moment. Yet, unable to consult him, she’d decided that their honeymoon would have to wait.

      She’d thrust out her chin, unconsciously mimicking her father’s pugnacious attitude. “If you press charges against Danny, and he goes to jail, I’ll run away again, just as soon as I get the chance,” she’d threatened. “I don’t need Danny to leave. I can do it on my own. You and Mom can’t keep an eye on me every second.”

      “You little ingrate!” The veins standing out against his temples, Jack McDonough had raised a hand as if to knock her off her feet.

      “No, Jack!” Susan McDonough had exclaimed, clutching at his sleeve. “The police will arrest you, too, if you start hitting her! Everyone in Beckwith will find out if you’re charged with battery. We won’t be able to hold our heads up.”

      She doesn’t care about me, Cate had thought. Just Dad, and what people will think of them. My feelings don’t count. “On the other hand,” she’d added, as if her father hadn’t spoken, “if you tell the deputy you don’t want Danny arrested, I’ll do whatever you want. Give him up. Stay home and finish high school. Go to college. Or work full-time in the hardware store. You won’t even have to pay me…”

      Glancing at each other, neither of her parents had said anything for a moment. Then, “I’ll be damned if we’ll stake you to college, miss, after the way you’ve behaved,” Cate’s father had snapped. “Henceforth, you’re on your own where higher education’s concerned.”

      “I’m not asking any favors for myself,” she’d answered. “Just that you let Danny off the hook.”

      His mouth closing in a thin, hard line, he hadn’t responded.

      “She’s shamed me beyond what I thought was my capacity to be shamed,” Susan McDonough had interceded. “But she’s our daughter, Jack. We’re responsible for her welfare. We’ll never be able to live it down if she runs away again and people say we pushed her into it.”

      Once again it had seemed to Cate that her mother was concerned only for herself and Cate’s father. All that had appeared to matter to her was their standing in the community.

      Meanwhile, Jack McDonough hadn’t moved a muscle. “All right,” he’d conceded tightly at last. “If that’s what you want, Susan. I’ll go and talk to the officer. You—” he’d pointed at Cate “—keep your damn mouth shut!”

      During his absence, she’d all but held her breath.

      He’d returned with an even deeper scowl on his face. “It’s done,” he’d told his wife with an air of disgust. “The deputy has agreed to drop the charges against the Finn boy. I asked him to throw a good scare into him before letting him go…order him to stay away from Cate. As for you, miss—” he’d transfixed Cate with a baleful stare “—you’re not to say a word to Danny Finn as we go out, do you hear? Or even glance in his direction. If you so much as look at him, the deal’s off. I’ll see to it that he’s prosecuted to the fullest.”

      He’d left her with little choice. Her heart aching, she’d assented, allowing her parents to lead her past the open door of the interview room where the young man she loved was being questioned by the deputy. She’d felt Danny staring at her, demanding that she meet his gaze. Keeping her part of the agreement, though it had almost killed her, she hadn’t turned her head. I’ve got to trust him, trust his belief in me, she’d thought. Surely he knows I wouldn’t leave without a glance at him if I had any choice.

      With her peripheral vision, she’d read his shock and disillusionment. His wordless plea that she say or do something to reassure him had cut her to the quick. She’d wept disconsolately in the back of her parents’ car as they’d burned up the highway back to Beckwith.

      Her eyes and nasal passages had been all but swollen shut by the time they’d reached the brick neo-Tudor bungalow on Sycamore Street where she’d lived since babyhood. It’ll be my prison now, she’d thought, until Danny comes back to rescue me.

      “What tipped you off…made you come after us?” she’d asked in a low voice, stumbling slightly over the doorsill as they’d entered the house.

      She hadn’t really expected her father to answer.

      To her surprise, he did. “That kiss you blew me when I drove away from the Hale place,” he’d responded with cold hostility. “You haven’t done anything like that since you were a baby.”

      Affectionate gestures have never been my family’s style, Cate thought now, switching off her bedside lamp and wriggling deeper beneath the covers. They still aren’t. Whenever I’m around Mom and Dad, I feel as if I have to maintain my emotional distance to keep from getting hurt. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll ever forgive me for what I did. With Danny back in town, they’ll be watching me, wondering if I’ll make a fool of myself over him.

      On the night of her attempted elopement with Danny, Cate had built an emotional fortress around her heart that her parents couldn’t penetrate. Somehow Danny will manage to get in touch with me, she’d reassured herself, remaining in her room except to eat, go to school and crane her neck in an attempt to view the afternoon mail. At the moment he’s just biding his time. He’d never go off and leave me without an explanation. She’d tried hard not to think too much about the fact that she’d appeared to injure him that way.

      Day after day she’d continued to wait for him. And day after day she’d been disappointed. Incredibly, he hadn’t contacted her. There’d been no letter, no hasty, surreptitious phone call so they could make new plans. Though she’d done her best to cling to them, gradually her hopes had faded. The fear that maybe he wouldn’t come back for her had crept into her imagination.

      At first she’d tried to tell herself he was playing it cool, attempting to throw her parents off the scent. Yet, as the days had stretched into weeks, marking a bleak Christmas and a bereft New Year’s, a feeling of dread had invaded her gut. Maybe he hadn’t understood. Or decided she wasn’t worth the indignities he’d had to suffer. Maybe he’d simply abandoned her.

      A short time later, she’d come down with what she’d initially regarded as a case of the flu, brought on by her disheartened emotional state. Against her wishes, her mother had insisted she see their family doctor. Shock waves had reverberated through Cate’s anguish when the kindly, gray-haired physician had informed her she was pregnant. Her need for Danny had escalated to critical mass in less than a single second.

      Predictably, her parents had gone crazy at the news. Her father had stormed and raged, threatening variously to murder Cate, Danny and anyone even remotely related to him, the first person who dared to look at them sideways once the story got out. Susan McDonough had wept copious tears and accused Cate of breaking her heart.

      For her part, painfully convinced at last that—for whatever reason—Danny wouldn’t come back for her, Cate had sunk into an anguish so deep daylight couldn’t penetrate it. Meanwhile her parents had circulated the story that she was suffering from mononucleosis and needed bed rest. Forbidden to attend classes or work in her father’s hardware store, she’d sunk into a helpless

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