Page 54 of Love and Other Lost Things

Of course he remembered. He’d been with other women since that night with Jane. But nothing had been like that first time. And nobody had been Jane. With her standing this close, leaning into him, his body reacted. It was more than a memory.

He put a hand on her cold cheek, tilting her head to look at him again. “What do you mean one of his deputies was here?”

“One of the deputies was patrolling the area and saw your car. Apparently, he approached, planning to knock on the window and tell the kids inside to go home. But then he realized that one of the kids was me. The chief’s daughter.”

Nik stared at Jane, her words slowly registering. The officer must have snuck up on them from the woods that night because, in his memory, the two of them were entirely alone on that overlook. But then again, they’d been so wrapped up in each other that they might not have even noticed if the patrol car had peeled in, lights flashing and sirens wailing. “He didn’t knock on the window,” Nik pointed out.

“No, he didn’t.”

“But I’m guessing he told your dad?” He imagined how Chief McCaffrey might have reacted to one of his officers reporting that he’d found the chief’s daughter making out in the back of a car at Pine Bluff. Except they hadn’t been making out. What had the officer seen? And worse, reported back to Jane’s dad?

“Yes, the officer told my dad,” Jane confirmed.

“I take it your dad was mad about it.”

Jane closed her eyes and shook her head, as if that would somehow erase the terrible memory.

“Jane?” His stomach churned. “What happened?”

“He was waiting when I got home.”

It was amazing how such simple words could fill his whole body with dread. Nik could barely breathe. “You were eighteen. Legally an adult. He had no right to?—”

Jane gave a humorless laugh. “You remember my dad. He didn’t care about what he had a right to do.”

“Did he expect you to never have a boyfriend? To never?—?”

“It wasn’t just about a boyfriend… I’d humiliated him, acting like a slut, having his officer catch me up on the overlook… and…”

When Jane looked away, Nik sensed there was something she didn’t want to say. Something she was ashamed to say. And then it came to him. “It was me, wasn’t it? He didn’t want you doing that with me.”

Nik had never been one of those clean-cut, popular kids, the ones on the football team sponsored by the police force. The ones who lived in the big houses they’d built on the old Baker farm on Route 8. His mother was a single mom who cleaned those big houses out on the old Baker farm. Nik had always known Chief McCaffrey didn’t like him. When he was a kid, his mom had cleaned for the McCaffreys and she and Jane’s mom had been friends. But then something had happened. He never knew exactly what, but one day his mom no longer went over to their house, and neither did Nik. When he saw Chief McCaffrey around town, the guy gave him the creeps.

Jane didn’t talk about her dad much, but she always made sure she left Nik’s house and got home in the evening before her dad did. Today wasn’t the first time since high school that he’d wondered if he should have asked Jane more questions about him. Nik would forever be haunted by that terrified look in Mrs. McCaffrey’s eyes that day she came into the emergency room.

“What happened when you found your dad waiting?” Another gust of wind blew up, and Nik wanted to shield Jane from so much more than the frigid weather. “Did he hurt you?”

Jane pressed her lips together and stared out at the lights in the valley. “He pushed me down the stairs.”

For a moment, Nik wished Chief McCaffrey were still alive so he could drive over to his house and kill him. Without stopping to think about it, he pulled Jane against him, wrapping his arms around her. She held on, sliding her hands around his back.

“If I’d known any of this, I would have been there in five minutes to pick you up. You had to know that, right?”

She nodded against his chest.

“You know my mom loves you. You could have stayed at our house for as long as you needed.” He remembered Jane and his mom giggling together in the kitchen. It had made him so happy that the two most important people in the world were so close. After losing his dad, Jane and his mom were everything to him. “You could have stayed forever.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Jane pulled back. She turned her eyes to Nik’s, and the pain he saw nearly did him in. “He said if I ever saw you again, he’d make sure you never got your scholarship. That he’d fabricate a drug arrest on your record, and that would be the end of college and med school.”

Nik stared at her. Chief McCaffrey had known exactly what he was doing. He’d known how important the scholarship was to Nik, and he’d probably known how important Nik was to Jane. “But why did you keep that a secret from me?”

“I knew if I told you I couldn’t see you anymore, you’d never agree to it.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “You’d tank your scholarship yourself. And I couldn’t let you do that. After everything that happened with your dad, I couldn’t let you give up your dream to be a doctor for me. I couldn’t let you get stuck in this town. And the only way I knew how to make sure that didn’t happen was to go as far away as possible.”

Nik’s head spun. “But why Los Angeles? Why not go to Cornell like you’d planned? Were you afraid you’d run into me there?”

Jane shook her head. “My dad refused to pay for Cornell. After what happened, he said he didn’t trust me, said I had to stay home and commute to Buffalo if I wanted to go to college.” Her words were coming faster now. “I couldn’t stay for four more years. I could barely make it another day in the same house with him.” Jane took a gasping breath. “And with her letting him treat us that way. He pushed me down the stairs and my mom made excuses, asked me to let it go. So, the next day, I left. I ran.” An icy tear slid down her cheek. “I thought I’d go away until you were finished with school, and they couldn’t take your scholarship. Until my dad couldn’t hurt either of us anymore.”

Nik’s body went hot and then cold. He’d told Jane that he never ended up going to Cornell. That he’d gone to community college instead. But he hadn’t told her why. Nik had never actually received that scholarship. A few days after Jane had left, a letter had arrived from the Linden Falls town council. Some new information has come to light that has caused the committee to reconsider the award.

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