Page 36 of Chasing Dreams
“Maybe you’re trying to recapture the years you didn’t get to be a kid.”
“Maybe you’re making a pretty lame attempt at psychoanalysis.”
“Hey, I’m free. They are all love songs, you know.”
Toni Braxton belted out Unbreak My Heart just then and Austin turned the volume back up. “Maybe you should just let yourself enjoy the music, and not wonder why I like it,” he said over the song.
She applied herself to just that.
Gunnison streets weren’t busy that morning as he drove to the post office. He came out with two boxes and loaded them into the back of the Cherokee. Shaine surveyed the packages and followed him with her gaze as he strode to his door.
Austin slid into the seat and recognized the apprehension on her face. She’d been trying her best to cover her uneasiness over what they were going to do, but he knew the fear she hid.
“How about some lunch before we get groceries?” he asked, hoping to give her a change of scenery and lighten her mood.
She agreed with a nod.
“You’ve been cooking and eating meals I like,” he said, thinking out loud. “What do you like?”
“I haven’t had a pizza for ages,” she suggested.
“Pizza it is.” He parked in front of place called Bob & Tony’s and led her inside. “Smells good.”
They slid into a booth, sat across from one another and agreed on toppings. Austin placed the order and they helped themselves to salad.
“Have you eaten here before?” she asked.
“A couple of times. Not in the last five or six years. It’s a college hangout on the weekends.”
“I had a dream last night,” she said.
So had he. A dream about her. The remembrance made his heart kick in an extra beat, and he deliberately brought his thoughts under control. “Really? Which kind?”
“Knowing,” she replied, and pushed her salad plate away.
“Jack?”
She nodded, and then he understood the shadows beneath her eyes. “Tell me.”
“He was at a chrome table with a yellow top. I could see the whole kitchen as plain as I can see the restaurant here. There was some kind of macaroni on his plate. Some peas. He didn’t like the taste, but he was hungry, so he ate some. The woman was there and she sat across from him, smoking. Staring at him.
“‘Where’s Dave?’ Jack asked. The woman got this hateful look on her face, and her voice was full of venom. ‘Dave left. He left us because you were a bad boy.’”
Shaine’s voice quavered on the words. Tears filled her luminous eyes. “How can she treat him like that?”
Austin reached over and covered her hand with his. “I never understood the rotten people I envisioned. Even being in their heads, I didn’t understand.”
“He’s just a little boy, practically a baby still,” she said, straining for composure. She locked her fingers as though to keep them under control, and leaned forward. “How did she get him?”
Austin shook his head. He’d had to change his whole way of thinking for her benefit. He had to go under the assumption that this child was alive. And if he believed that as strongly as she did, he’d wonder, too, how the child had gotten from the scene of the accident to this place where he was now. He gave the question his full consideration.
“If someone discovered him, along the riverbank somewhere, they’d have called an ambulance, called the police, notified someone.”
“You would think,” she replied.
“Even if no one found him and he wandered off by himself, a lost child is turned over to authorities.”
“Unless someone unscrupulous found him,” she said.
