[Kate's Boys 03] - Mistletoe and Miracles Read online

  Yes, it mattered that Cody was Laurel’s son. But for a trick of fate, he could have been his son, as well. But ultimately, it didn’t change the way he felt about the matter. Committed. He hadn’t signed on for just the easy cases, he’d signed on to help no matter how difficult the problem.

  “I’d still try to find a way,” he told her.

  Kate believed him. At times, she forgot how noble he could be. “All right, then, find a way,” she said. “Keep chipping away at the problem until you find an opening.”

  He was trying hard, but he was running out of angles and was open to any suggestions. Twenty-some-odd years ago, Kate had willingly walked into the quagmire, taking on not just one, but all of them, four themes and variations of Cody.

  “You had four of us to deal with when you first came to live with us. Four kids in various stages of being shut down because of the hurt they felt. How did you cope with that?”

  “I prayed a lot,” she quipped. “And I loved you—all of you.” Finished eating, she cleared her sandwich wrapping off his desk. “And I had puppets,” she added with a wink.

  The puppets were fun, but that wasn’t what he remembered about the beginning.

  “And a great deal of patience.”

  “That, too.” Tossing the wrapper into his wastepaper basket, she rose, dusting off her hands before she patted his shoulder. Kate was concerned, but she knew better than to interfere and overstep her bounds. Everyone needed to find their own way. The lessons learned made a deeper impression that way. She paused, looking into his eyes. “You know where to find me if you need to talk. Or to bounce off ideas.”

  Trent stared at the door long after she’d closed it behind her.

  Yes, he knew where to find her if he needed her. Moreover, just knowing that Kate was available to him, night or day, was a great comfort. While he was close to his brothers and father, and even Kelsey, Kate was the unifying factor in his life.

  In all their lives.

  Unconsciously, he supposed that was what he’d been trying to give to Cody. By coming over and having the sessions at the boy’s home, by taking out not just the boy but his mother to places like the amusement park, or to his parents’ home as he had last week, he’d been trying to give Cody someone he could count on. Someone he could turn to.

  For some reason, that someone wasn’t Laurel right now. If it had been, Cody would have come out of his shell. Casting about for some solution, Trent had decided that Cody needed a male role model in his life. Not to replace his father but to give him another authority figure to turn to.

  But that had only gone so far. Another standstill.

  Maybe he needed more information about what had happened that day in order to get to the root of the problem.

  “The exact date that Matt was killed?” Laurel echoed Trent’s question later that evening when he’d come over for the usual session. She watched him, confused.

  “And the exact location as well,” he added.

  They hadn’t touched on this since the first week. Revisiting all that made her uncomfortable. She wanted that day to remain in her past. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m trying to pull together as much information as possible about what happened,” he told her. “There has to be something I’m missing.”

  “Beyond the trauma of a little boy finding himself trapped in a car with the lifeless body of the father he loved?” He had all the information, she thought. Why pick at a scab? Why not just leave it alone and let it heal?

  “Beyond that,” he said matter-of-factly. “What happened to Cody isn’t as unusual as you might think. Car accidents are all too common, and in a lot of cases someone inside the vehicle dies while someone else lives. Those survivors don’t all go mute.”

  That was a generality. This was a specific case. She didn’t see how any of what he was asking would help, but she knew better than to leave a stone unturned. She’d drive herself crazy wondering if perhaps that would have provided a solution.

  In addition, she felt guilty. Guilty that she looked forward to interludes with Trent despite the fact that her son was still suffering, still trapped.

  “March sixteenth of last year,” she told Trent. She could still remember that awful phone call, asking her to come to the hospital. Asking her to come to the morgue to identify the body of her husband. “One day before St. Patrick’s Day. The accident happened at ten-thirty in the morning on Pacific Coast Highway just past Laguna Beach.” She banked down a queasy feeling over the idea that Cody could have been killed, too. “Anything else?”

  He had one more question. “Who was the first responder to come on the scene?”

  She paused for a moment, trying to remember what she’d been told—or even if she’d been told. “Paramedics, I think. Maybe the police.” And then she shrugged. She’d been too shaken up to remember the events clearly. “I wasn’t there.” Her voice broke.

  He immediately felt guilty. “I’m sorry, Laurel, I don’t mean to make you go through this again.”

  She waved away his apology. This was for Cody. If he had an idea of how to reach him, he needed to follow it through.

  “Do what you have to do. Just help him.”

  “I will,” he promised, knowing he had no right to make a guarantee. Knowing he couldn’t come out and qualify his words to Laurel. If ever anyone needed to hang on to the promise of a miracle, it was Laurel.

  And he intended to move heaven and earth to get it for her.

  It took him a while before he managed to track down the report that gave the exact license number of the paramedics’ ambulance. The company was called Immediate Response, but the vehicle in question was now being driven by two other paramedics. The pair who’d responded on March sixteenth last year, he discovered, no longer worked for the company. One of the paramedics had transferred to Albuquerque to be closer to his wife’s family, and the other had retired at the beginning of the year.

  Trent went to see the latter in person.

  Evan Hodges was a pleasant man of average height and weight who didn’t look as if he were actually old enough to retire. He looked pleased when Trent made the observation.

  “Put in twenty-two years,” Hodges volunteered proudly.

  They were sitting outside, beneath the man’s patio, overlooking a small expanse of freshly mowed grass. Not a single thing was out of place in the yard. Time apparently hung heavily on the man’s hands, Trent thought.

  Hodges leaned in closer so that his voice wouldn’t carry beyond his guest.

  “Might have put in another twenty-two, but my wife, she wants to travel around before we have to do it in wheel-chairs.” The dismissive shrug told Trent that travel really held no appeal for the man. “So I said okay. But I miss working,” he confided. For a moment as he spoke, his eyes shone. “It was hectic but good. Got the old blood pumping. And saving a life, hell, there’s just nothing like it, you know?”

  Trent nodded. “Not firsthand,” he admitted, “but I can imagine.” When he’d introduced himself he’d already explained to Hodges why he’d sought him out. Hungry for interaction with someone other than his wife, the man had pulled him inside and presented him with a frosty glass of lemonade before agreeing to answer his questions. “Do you remember anything at all about that incident?”

  Hodges shook his head. “Can’t say that I do. Except for feeling sorry for the little kid.” Genuine pity infiltrated his features. “Poor kid, he didn’t know his father was dead until he overheard Randy—that was my partner—good man but he never knew when to stop talking. Anyway, the kid didn’t know his father was dead until he overheard Randy tell the cop on the scene.”

  “How did you know he didn’t know?”

  Hodges took a long sip of his lemonade before answering. “’Cause he got all quiet—”

  “Wait,” Trent interrupted. “Cody was talking until then?”

  “Yeah.” Hodges looked at him as if to say he should have realized that. “The kid was the one who
called nine-one-one. Smart little kid. Probably saved his own life by doing it.” Hodges shivered, remembering. “The car caught fire just as we got his father’s body out of it.”

  Trent still had his doubts. “You sure he was the one who called nine-one-one?”

  In response, Hodges raised his sloping shoulders and let them drop again in a careless shrug. “That’s what they told me.”

  Trent was on his feet instantly. “Thanks,” he told the former paramedic, shaking his hand with feeling. “Thanks very much. I know my way out,” Trent assured him, going through the gate that led out to the front of the house.

  “Did I help?” the man asked, calling after him.

  “You helped a lot,” Trent assured him before closing the gate behind him.

  It took some doing. In the end, he had to resort to having Travis, who knew people on the police force, pull some strings for him. But he did manage to listen to the tape of the 911 call from the accident that claimed the life of Cody’s father.

  The dispatcher, a dark-skinned woman closer to twenty than thirty, was only too happy to take a break in her day and play the tape for him.

  “Got it for you right here,” she told him. “You must know some pretty important people to get this kind of treatment,” she marveled, preparing to play the tape for him.

  “Not me, my brother.” Somewhere along the line, there had even been a police detective or two involved. But all he cared about was hearing the tape. Obligingly, the dispatcher played it for him. “There’s not much,” she warned.

  A childish, frightened voice crackled on the tape the minute the dispatcher came on the line.

  “My daddy’s sleeping and he won’t wake up. The car crashed. Please come and help him.”

  The dispatcher asked Cody a series of questions and he answered as best he could, growing progressively more agitated and begging for her to come help his father. And then the line went dead.

  “That’s all there is,” the woman said.

  A cold shiver ran down Trent’s spine. Cody had talked. He had still been able to talk at that point. What had changed between then and when he had been extracted from the mangled vehicle?

  “Can I get a copy of that?” he asked, nodding at the tape.

  The young woman frowned slightly. “We don’t generally give out copies,” she began.

  “The little boy on the tape doesn’t talk anymore,” Trent told her, showing her a picture of Cody. “There’s nothing physically wrong with him. It’s all traumatic and I’m trying to get him to come around.”

  She handed back the picture, clearly moved. “And listening to the nine-one-one call he made on the worst day of his life is going to make him talk?”

  Trent slipped the photograph back into his pocket. “You never know what’s going to work. Everything else I’ve tried hasn’t.”

  The dispatcher debated for a moment, then gave in. “All right,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.” Rather than go through the chain of command, she quickly made a copy on a CD and handed it to him. “It didn’t come from me,” she told him.

  “What didn’t?” he asked, pocketing the mini-CD.

  The woman flashed him a blinding smile just before he turned and walked away.

  Trent weighed all the possible pros and cons of the situation, trying to secondguess any repercussions that might occur if Cody listened to the tape. Mainly, he focused on all the things that could go wrong.

  First and foremost, it could blow up in his face and he could lose all the progress he’d made so far. But since that progress was incomplete, it could be viewed as minor in the scheme of things. And if playing the CD won back the boy, then maybe it would be worth the risk. A nagging little voice warned that it wasn’t his risk to take, but he ignored it. For Cody’s sake. Trent said nothing to Laurel about what he planned to do when he came over the next evening. She didn’t press him beyond asking if he’d had any luck tracking down the paramedics. He told her the truth, that one had left the state and the other had retired.

  Because he said nothing further, she left it at that, assuming he hadn’t spoken to either man. She gestured toward the rear of the house. “Cody’s in the family room, as usual.” She smiled, her hands clasped before her hopefully. “I think he’s actually waiting for you.”

  Trent murmured, “That’s good,” before heading for the family room.

  The door was ajar. He knocked, then entered. When he greeted the boy, Cody looked up in his direction before resuming his game. Next to him on the rug was the second control pad, an unspoken invitation to join him in the video game. It was the same unspoken invitation he’d issued for a month now. Trent slid into place beside the boy on the floor. “You remember I told you that my mom died when I was about the same age as you?” Cody inclined his head slightly, indicating that he remembered. “And that I felt guilty because I thought that maybe, if I’d been a better boy, if I hadn’t fought with my brothers, or answered her back, she wouldn’t have wanted to go on a trip without me, without us, and she wouldn’t have died. I thought it was my fault she died. I thought that for a long time.

  “But it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just something that happened,” he told Cody without bothering to censor his emotions. “Your dad wouldn’t have wanted you to be like this. He would have wanted you to move on, to be good to your mom and be happy.”

  He noted that Cody pressed the control pad harder. The movements on the screen were faster, jerkier. Hesitating for a second, Trent took the small CD player out of his pocket and pressed Play.

  Cody stiffened the moment he heard his own voice. The boy’s eyes grew large as he eyed him accusingly. And then he swung his hand out, sending the CD player flying out of Trent’s hand and onto the tile floor. The sound stopped the second the CD player made contact with the ceramic tiles, breaking. Trent ignored the broken player, concentrating instead on the broken boy.

  “It’s not your fault, Cody. I know you probably think it is, but it’s not. You did everything you could to help. You even called nine-one-one. Most kids your age wouldn’t have done that. And a lot of adults wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to call, either. The paramedics tried to save your dad, but he was already dead when they got there. Nobody could have helped,” he emphasized, then repeated again, “It wasn’t your fault, Cody.”

  Tears streamed down the small, oval face. And then, in a lost, hoarse voice, the words, “Yes, it is,” echoed through the room. “I killed him. I killed my dad,” Cody cried. For a moment, Trent focused not on the words, but the fact that there were any words at all.

  He’d done it. He’d broken through to the boy.

  Trying not to act as if this were anything out of the ordinary, as if this were nothing more than a conversation between him and any other child he’d been treating, Trent asked in an even tone, “Why would you say that?”

  “Because he was mad at me,” Cody sobbed. “Because I said something and he was looking at me when the truck came.”

  Trent was aware of exactly the way the events had transpired, thanks to the police report. Pacific Coast Highway, narrow and winding in places with more than its share of blind spots, was a difficult road to navigate at times. A truck had come around from behind a blind spot and, since he wasn’t paying strict attention to the road, Cody’s father had clipped the truck and sent his own car spinning out of control. The sedan had landed upside down and trapped its two occupants.

  “It’s all my fault,” Cody cried again, sobbing bitterly.

  Abandoning protocol, going with his gut instincts, Trent took the little boy into his arms and held him as he cried his heart out. He held on to Cody for a long time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  An antsy feeling danced through Laurel as she made her way from the kitchen to the family room. She carried a tray piled high with chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven. The scent wrapped around and drifted behind her like the tail of a kite soaring through the air, but she
was only marginally aware of it. She struggled to harness her thoughts and get them under control. The last thing she wanted was for her agitation to show. It might disrupt Cody and she knew that Trent would ask her about it.

  Laurel didn’t want to talk.

  At the same time, she wanted to tap into the positive energy that Trent could generate just by being here. He’d told her more than once that he was trying to keep his sessions with Cody informal and relaxed. She didn’t think that either one of them would mind having a cookie break and it would provide her an excuse to be with them, at least for a few minutes.

  Maybe a few minutes with them was all she needed to calm this restlessness within her, this feeling of not knowing where to turn, what to do. She’d come so far, worked so hard to rise above everything, and yet, here it was, back again. That awful feeling that had all but smothered her as a child. And all because her mother had given her a letter.

  She was told it had arrived a week ago. Although it had been sent care of her mother’s house, it was addressed to her. It was a letter from her father. The man she’d convinced herself was dead.

  Grace Valentine had spent an entire week trying to decide whether or not to give her daughter the letter, silently arguing with herself.

  “I was going to just throw it away,” she’d finally told her when she’d come over this morning. “You’ve suffered enough because of him. But then I thought that I had no right to do that. That you could decide for yourself if you wanted to read it or destroy it. I even debated opening it and reading it myself so I could decide whether or not it would hurt you to see it,” her mother had confessed.

  Her mouth had curved in that sad smile that was so typical of her. “A mother’s protective instincts are very strong, my love. But you’re a grown woman,” she’d gone on to say, “and capable of making your own decisions.” Opening her purse, she’d taken out the long, slender envelope and placed it on the table between them.

  “So here, here’s his letter.” She snapped her purse closed again. The sound seemed to echo along the vaulted ceilings. “You decide what you want to do with it.”