Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
C HARLOTTE TRIED TO tamp down her alarm over Harper being missing, and she hoped this wouldn't be a long search. After all, Harper was in a wheelchair and had no access to a car, so she couldn't leave the grounds. The house was huge, as was the barn, which meant there were many places to hide out, but Charlotte figured that with the search party she'd organized, they would soon find her.
Sonora, Cal and Noah were looking through the house. With the help of some of the workers, Alden had taken the barn along with doing checks inside the parked vehicles to make sure Harper hadn't ducked into one of those. Charlotte had opted for the grounds. It was also a huge space, but the trails weren't finished yet, which limited where Harper could go.
So they'd find her, Charlotte assured herself. Then she could find out why Harper had done this. Maybe it was something as simple as her needing space, but since it had only been a couple of months since she'd driven off that bridge, Charlotte and everyone else was concerned that Harper's need for space could turn out to be something a whole lot worse.
Unlike what was going on in the house and barn, Charlotte didn't call out Harper's name as she walked. In fact, she tried to listen for the faint humming sound of the motorized wheelchair. She didn't hear it so she kept walking, sticking to the main trail that was finished. It led from the ramp on the house, through the yard and pastures and to a cluster of trees where there was a bench. Charlotte made it there in only a couple of minutes, but there was no sign of Harper.
The landscapers had purposely left many of the shrubs around this particular trail, and there were plans to add flowering plants that would brighten up the space. For now, though, without the floral additions, Charlotte rounded a corner and got a decent view of the rest of the trail. And where it ended.
Her heart skipped many beats.
Because Harper was right at the edge of the pond. There was a bench there, too, but Harper wasn't anywhere near it. She was right at the water's edge.
Charlotte tried not to panic or shout out because the alarm might cause Harper to drive her wheelchair right in. The water wasn't that deep, but the chair was heavy and would sink fast.
She sent off a quick text to Cal to let him know that she'd found Harper, and she told him the location. She also asked that he and the others hang back since it might make Harper do something reckless if all of them came rushing at her at once.
"Want some company?" Charlotte asked when she got closer. Her voice was a little shaky, but she'd managed to keep the fear out of it.
"No," Harper said using her computer. She typed it without even glancing back at her.
Charlotte didn't let that snarly reply put her off. She kept approaching, and when she got close to Harper, she didn't grab for the wheelchair—which was what she wanted to do. Instead, she sank down on the bench and stared out at the water as Harper was doing.
From the corner of her eye, Charlotte saw Noah and Cal arrive on the trail, but as instructed, they thankfully stayed back. A few seconds later, Alden joined them, and all three men were wearing their concern in their expressions. Charlotte hoped she was keeping her own worried expression in check, but she clearly failed at that when Harper looked at her and huffed.
"I wasn't going into the pond," Harper assured her through the voice generator, and then she shot Charlotte a glare to go along with her huff.
That sounded like the truth, and Charlotte hoped beyond hope that it was. "Good. So what were you doing out here?" she asked. And then the image of the picture Harper had drawn flashed in her mind. "Were you reminiscing about the time Cal fell in the creek and nearly drowned?"
Charlotte wasn't sure what reaction she might get from Harper, but she hadn't expected tears. But they were there, pooling in Harper's eyes. And judging from the redness, these weren't her first tears of the morning.
"Yes," Harper whispered. And she didn't use the computer this time. It was her actual voice. Of course, it was filtered through those damaged vocal cords, but it was loud and clear enough to hear.
"Wow," Charlotte said. Apparently, Dr. Kentrell had been right about Harper being able to speak. "So how long have you been able to talk?"
Harper glared at her. "Since I was one or two." Her gaze cut away. "I never fully lost it. I just put it away for a while. Might put it away again."
It was obvious Harper did have to strain to get out each and every word, and Charlotte didn't want her to overdo it, so she didn't fire off another question. She waited to see if Harper would continue. When she did, she went back to the computer to let it do her talking.
"That day at the creek, I knew the tree limb was cracked," the digital voice relayed. "I'd just been up there, and I knew it wasn't stable. We were taking turns, and I also knew Cal would be the next one to use it."
Charlotte turned her head to stare at Harper. "You..."
She'd been about to blurt out something along the lines of You wanted Cal to get hurt . No way could she say something like that without sounding angry or combative. Charlotte didn't want to feel either of those things, but Harper's confession had tapped into the fear she'd felt as a child when she thought he might die and what she felt for Cal now.
"Yes," Harper typed, even though Charlotte had bitten off the question. "I knew the branch would likely give way, and I didn't stop him."
"Why?" Charlotte had to know.
Harper took her time before she started typing. "He'd won the spelling bee, the math competition and even the blasted egg race at Easter. Even then he was better than me. Even then I knew he was the one I had to beat and couldn't."
Though the explanation hadn't been in her own voice, Charlotte could infer the hurt. Could see it on Harper's face. This had been a deep emotional cut, and it was still affecting her. That softened Charlotte's initial reaction.
"Now you know how horrible a person I am," Harper spoke, not going with the computer this time, and the tears rose in her eyes.
Charlotte could practically feel Harper's pain. "You were a child," she reminded her.
"A selfish, mean one," Harper argued verbally again.
"A child with a really crappy home life," Charlotte countered.
Harper rolled her teary eyes and went back to the computer for her response. "Pot calling the kettle black. You had a crappy home life, too. Don't deny it. Izzie can be demanding and unreasonable. And Cal, he also had a partially crap home life with his mom dying."
All of that was true, and Charlotte wasn't going to deny it.
"I used to wonder what was worse. Having my mom leave or having her die," Harper added a moment later.
Charlotte made a sound of agreement. "I had similar thoughts about my dad."
"Home life from hell," Harper concluded, "and yet it didn't turn you into a spiteful, sore-loser brat."
"No, but I had my uncle Rob. I could turn to him when Izzie was at her worst. And Cal had his dad. Audrey, too. She never became a mom to him, but she's been there for him over the years."
It occurred to Charlotte that Audrey could be pushy and demanding, but she was nowhere in the realm of Izzie. Or, worse, Paul. Audrey had helped Cal. Was still trying to help him.
And that brought her full circle back to the job.
A job that could fulfill Cal in so many ways. One for a real hero. And one that would take him away from her. Charlotte didn't want that to hurt, but it did. Mercy, it did. But she couldn't let Cal see that because it would give him the mother lode of guilt trips. She cared about him too much to put that on him.
"You're sighing and look like you're about to puke," Harper pointed out via the computer. "Are you finally wrapping your head around what I did that day at the creek?" She paused, studied Charlotte's face. "Or was the sigh about Cal?"
"Cal," she admitted. Since Harper was spilling stuff with her, then Charlotte wanted to do the same. "Things are complicated with him."
Harper made a snarky hmmph sound. "Of course it is," she typed. "You two always had a thing for each other, but you ignored it because of Noah. With Noah out of the picture, the thing took over. Now Cal will leave, and you'll be crushed into little bitty pieces."
Charlotte frowned. "I'll be sad. Hurt, even." Really hurt. "But not crushed. And I'll be happy for him since I know he'll be doing what he's always wanted to do."
Harper continued with the snark. "Goody-goodies to the core, both of you. The exact opposite of me. I'm rotten inside."
"No," Charlotte insisted, but Harper interrupted her before she could say more.
"I don't have amnesia, so I know what I was thinking and feeling when I left Cal that note and drove off the bridge," Harper said herself. "Even that was selfish and bratty. Rotten. A way for me to give him a poke in the eye and say, See? You caused this ." She paused, her voice breaking on a sob. "But he didn't. Cal didn't do anything more, or less, than be himself."
Charlotte reached for her to pull her into a hug, but Harper pushed her hands away.
"No," Harper muttered. "No, no, no."
Charlotte eased back down onto the bench and tried to level out her own emotions so she could try and figure out what to say. But Harper didn't give her a chance to do that.
"I think it's time I talked to a counselor now," Harper said, and this time she didn't push Charlotte away when she pulled her into a hug.
Tears spilled down Harper's cheeks, and she buried her face against Charlotte's shoulder when she whispered, "I need help."
E VEN THOUGH C AL hadn't been close enough to hear Charlotte and Harper's conversation by the pond, he'd gotten the gist of it. Harper was miserable.
Broken.
And dealing with the intense emotions of what she'd done.
Definitely not a light and airy chat, but he had seen something hopeful, too, when Charlotte had pulled a crying Harper into her arms. It seemed to him that Harper had turned a very big corner in her life and that she might finally be able to heal. Cal wanted to help with that, and it was the reason he was now pulling to a stop in front of Harper's childhood home.
According to the sliver of info he'd gotten from Charlotte, Harper wanted to see the therapist. A huge step, and while he doubted therapy would be an instant cure, it was a start. A start he didn't want mucked up by Harper's father.
Although he'd left that note for Paul a couple of weeks earlier, it'd been nearly twenty years since Cal had actually gone inside the house. That visit had happened shortly after Harper's mother had left. There'd been plenty of gossip not only after her running off with Charlotte's dad but also talk that Paul had snapped and was maybe holding Harper captive or something. The gossip had been convincing enough to make Noah and Cal sneak here one night and tap on Harper's window and convince her to let them in.
What he and Noah had found had been both a relief and a worry.
There'd been no captive situation. Harper had insisted she was free to leave and go with her mother but she'd chosen to stay. She'd been plenty angry enough. All anger aimed at her mother, though.
And Harper had been convincing enough that she wasn't being held against her will, but later when Cal and Noah had compared notes about the conversation, they'd both thought Harper had been scared. Of course, they'd been sixteen and hadn't had a clue how to handle something like that, so instead of looking for a way to help her, they'd gone on with their lives, naively believing that Harper would do the same.
She had.
But that life had taken a dark turn.
And while he bore some of the responsibility for that, so did the man who came out onto the porch just as Cal stepped from his truck. Paul didn't greet him with a wave or smile. Nor had Cal expected that. Bitterness was Paul's default emotion now, and it was possible it extended to Cal even though Paul certainly hadn't directly blamed him for what had happened to Harper.
"Did Harper screw up again?" Paul was quick to ask.
Cal made sure his reply was equally fast. "No." In fact, just the opposite, but it wasn't his place to spill about Harper seeing a therapist. That info should come from Harper herself if she wanted her father to know.
"No?" Paul said. "So this is a social visit?" Though he sounded plenty skeptical about that actually being the reason Cal was there.
"I just thought we could talk," Cal settled on saying.
Paul continued to stare at him, and after muttering something Cal couldn't catch, he motioned for Cal to come in. Definitely not a warm welcome, but at least this would get his foot in the door.
Cal went in and immediately felt as if he'd stepped into a time capsule. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed in the past twenty years. The same furniture in the living room. Same rug on the floor. Cal didn't know what Paul's financial situation was, but the ranch itself hadn't grown, either.
"Wasn't expecting company," Paul grumbled, and he motioned for Cal to follow him, "so I can't offer you anything."
"That's okay. Like I said, I just came to talk."
"About Harper." That was a grumble, too, peppered with more of that skepticism. "You're sure she hasn't screwed up something?"
"I'm sure," Cal stated, making sure his tone was even; he used his lieutenant colonel's voice. Not intimidating but also a signal that he wasn't in the mood for any bullshit.
Paul led him into the living room, and Cal got a closer look at the mantel. Now here there'd been some changes. The family photos were still there, lined up in their pristine silver frames. Pictures of various stages of Harper's life from infancy all the way to high school.
Pictures that included her mother.
But someone, Paul probably, had just blacked out the woman's face and body. And not carefully. They were basically black blobs with permanent marker that he was betting had been done in fits of anger. The lesson was obvious. Screw up and you get erased.
Had Harper felt that way? Cal wondered.
Heck, had Charlotte?
After all, it was her father who'd left her to be with Harper's mom, and while Izzie hadn't scratched out photos—none that she'd put on display anyway—she'd become bitter about her ex, and she'd also done nothing to get him to reconnect with his daughter.
"Do you ever hear from her?" Cal asked before he could think the question through.
"Who? Oh," he snarled after he'd followed Cal's gaze to the photos. "Her. Doreen." Of course, he said her name like the vilest of profanity. "No, I haven't heard from her, and she'd better not try to contact me. Ever. I told her when she was packing to leave that once she walked out, she wouldn't be coming back, and that the only thing I ever wanted to see of her was her ass heading out the door."
Paul had built up both volume and intensity with each word, but when he stopped, he stayed quiet for a few moments. Cal found it refreshing that the man wasn't spewing venom and that he might be deep in some meaningful thoughts. But it didn't last.
"Some wife she turned out to be," he griped. "A crap mother, too. Harper was all crying and begging her to stay, and probably to shut her up, Doreen claimed that once she got settled that she'd send for Harper. Send for her ," he repeated with a dry laugh. "As if I'd let that tramp get her claws in my daughter."
This was the first Cal was hearing of any of this. In fact, he hadn't heard Charlotte's account of when her dad had left, but there'd likely been a similar emotional upheaval. That, and the note Charlotte had told him about. The one where her father had blamed her for his leaving. That made him a piece of shit in Cal's eyes. Maybe that label applied to Harper's mom, too.
"Did Doreen ever try to send for Harper?" Cal wanted to know.
Paul spewed some more profanity. "She wrote letters, saying this, that and the other about meeting up with Harper so they could talk and figure things out. By then, Harper was within a year and a half of finishing high school. She didn't want to change schools and start all over again."
No, and by then, Paul had been the one to have his claws in her. Then again, the claws had probably already been there.
Paul's eyes narrowed when he shifted his attention from the photos back to Cal. "You didn't come here to bring up all this shit from the past. I hope you're here to tell me my daughter is doing everything possible to fix herself."
Again, Cal didn't want to mention the therapy, but he thought that was indeed the start of Harper getting better. "Harper's settling in, and I'm hopeful there'll be some healing."
"Hopeful?" Paul challenged. He barked out another dry laugh. "Hell, Cal, hope won't get her ass in gear. She needs to be pushed and pushed hard." He aimed his index finger at him. "And you can do that. Draw her back into competition. Give her a reason to start fighting again."
Cal had to fight the flashes of images he got. Of the note Harper had left for him. Of her scars. Of that lost, haunted look in her eyes. A look that she tried to mask with defiance.
"That's not going to work," Cal managed to say. "And even if it did, I wouldn't be the one to do it. I pushed her hard enough, and look what happened."
Paul flinched as if stunned. "Hell, that didn't happen because you pushed her. That happened because she lost her nerve."
Cal was stunned in turn. "She nearly lost her life."
"That was all bullshit, a cry for attention. Well, she got plenty of attention, and it's time to move on. She needs a challenge, and you're the one to give it to her."
It sickened Cal to hear the man spout this nonsense. "No," he stated as firmly and clearly as he could. "I'm not pushing her."
Paul's chin came up, and he looked at Cal as if he'd just dropped down a whole bunch of notches in his eyes. "All right. Don't push. But trust me, I will," he insisted. "One way or another, Harper is going to recover. No way in hell am I gonna put up with a loser for a kid."
"You need to back off from Harper," Cal said before he even knew the words were going to come out of his mouth.
"Excuse me?" Paul countered, both his tone and expression a challenge.
Cal met the man's fierce stare with one of his own. "You need to back off and give her some time to heal."
"Or what?" He didn't wait for a response. "You think you have some kind of pull with me? Well, you don't. Yeah, you're a hotshot hero, but that doesn't give you the right to tell me how to handle my daughter."
The anger sizzled through him like a pot that had just boiled over, and Cal was certain it came through loud and clear, because Paul actually moved back a step.
"Don't mistake me for a hotshot or a hero," Cal warned him. "Do anything else to harm Harper and I'll make you pay. Trust me on that. I will make you pay."
He stared the man down, and when he was certain he'd gotten his point across, Cal turned and walked out.