Read Online Without a Trace by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nora Roberts
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to the door and opened it before turning back to her. There was a look in his eyes that both frightened and fascinated. “Cat. Just cat.”
* * *
He’d known some day he would go back to the States. There had been times in a jungle or a desert or a grimy hotel room in a town even God had forgotten when he’d imagined it: The prodigal son returns, brass band included. But that was the theatrical blood in him.
Other times he’d imagined slipping quietly into the country, the way he’d slipped out a million years before.
There were his sisters. At the oddest times he would think of them, want to be with them so badly he’d book a flight. Then he’d cancel it at the last minute. They were grown women now, with lives of their own, and yet he remembered them as they’d been the first time he’d seen them. Three scrawny infants, born in one surprising rush, nestled in incubators behind a glass nursery wall.
There had been a bond between them, as he supposed was natural between triplets, and yet he’d never felt excluded. They’d traveled together from the time they’d been born until he’d stuck out his thumb on a highwayoutside Terre Haute.
He’d seen them only once since then, but he’d kept track. Just as he’d kept track of his parents.
The O’Hurleys had never been the huge commercial success his father had dreamed of, but they’d gotten by. They were booked an average of thirty weeks of the year. Financially they were solvent. That was his mother’s doing. She’d always had a knack for making five dollars stretch into ten.
It was Molly, he was certain, who had tucked a hundred dollars in fives and tens into the pocket of his suitcase a dozen years before. She’d known he was going. She hadn’t wept or lectured or pleaded, but she had done what she could to make it easier for him. That was her way.
But Pop … Trace closed his eyes as the plane shuddered a bit with turbulence. Pop had never, would never, forgive him—not for leaving without a word, but for leaving.
He’d never understood Trace’s need to find something of his own, to look for something other than the next audience, the next arrangement. Perhaps in truth he’d never been able to understand his son at all, or in understanding, hadn’t been able to accept.
The only time Trace had gone back, hoping perhaps to mend a small portion of his fences, Frank had greeted him with tight-lipped disapproval.
“So you’ve come back.” Frank had stood icily rigid in the tiny dressing room he’d shared with Molly. Trace hadn’t known that his presence had made Frank see it for what it was. A dim little room in a second-rate club. “Three years since you walked out, and only a letter now and again. I told you when you left, there’d be no fatted calf for you.”
“I didn’t expect one.” But he’d hoped for some understanding. Trace had worn a beard then, part of an affectation he’d grown for an assignment. The assignment had taken him to Paris, where he’d successfully broken up an international art fraud. “Since it was Mom’s birthday, I thought … I wanted to see her.” And you—but he couldn’t say it.
“Then run off again so she can shed more tears?”
“She understood why I left,” Trace had said carefully.
“You broke her heart.” And mine. “You’re not going to hurt her again. You’re either a son to her, or you’re not.”
“Either the son you want me to be or nothing,” Trace had corrected, pacing the cramped little room. “It still doesn’t matter to you what I need or feel, or what I am.”
“You don’t know what matters to me. I think you never did.” Frank had to swallow the obstruction in his throat that was part bitterness and part shame. “The last time I saw you, you told me what I’d done for you hadn’t been good enough. That what I could give you never would be. A man doesn’t forget hearing that from his son.”
He was twenty-three. He’d slept with a whore in
* * *
He’d known some day he would go back to the States. There had been times in a jungle or a desert or a grimy hotel room in a town even God had forgotten when he’d imagined it: The prodigal son returns, brass band included. But that was the theatrical blood in him.
Other times he’d imagined slipping quietly into the country, the way he’d slipped out a million years before.
There were his sisters. At the oddest times he would think of them, want to be with them so badly he’d book a flight. Then he’d cancel it at the last minute. They were grown women now, with lives of their own, and yet he remembered them as they’d been the first time he’d seen them. Three scrawny infants, born in one surprising rush, nestled in incubators behind a glass nursery wall.
There had been a bond between them, as he supposed was natural between triplets, and yet he’d never felt excluded. They’d traveled together from the time they’d been born until he’d stuck out his thumb on a highwayoutside Terre Haute.
He’d seen them only once since then, but he’d kept track. Just as he’d kept track of his parents.
The O’Hurleys had never been the huge commercial success his father had dreamed of, but they’d gotten by. They were booked an average of thirty weeks of the year. Financially they were solvent. That was his mother’s doing. She’d always had a knack for making five dollars stretch into ten.
It was Molly, he was certain, who had tucked a hundred dollars in fives and tens into the pocket of his suitcase a dozen years before. She’d known he was going. She hadn’t wept or lectured or pleaded, but she had done what she could to make it easier for him. That was her way.
But Pop … Trace closed his eyes as the plane shuddered a bit with turbulence. Pop had never, would never, forgive him—not for leaving without a word, but for leaving.
He’d never understood Trace’s need to find something of his own, to look for something other than the next audience, the next arrangement. Perhaps in truth he’d never been able to understand his son at all, or in understanding, hadn’t been able to accept.
The only time Trace had gone back, hoping perhaps to mend a small portion of his fences, Frank had greeted him with tight-lipped disapproval.
“So you’ve come back.” Frank had stood icily rigid in the tiny dressing room he’d shared with Molly. Trace hadn’t known that his presence had made Frank see it for what it was. A dim little room in a second-rate club. “Three years since you walked out, and only a letter now and again. I told you when you left, there’d be no fatted calf for you.”
“I didn’t expect one.” But he’d hoped for some understanding. Trace had worn a beard then, part of an affectation he’d grown for an assignment. The assignment had taken him to Paris, where he’d successfully broken up an international art fraud. “Since it was Mom’s birthday, I thought … I wanted to see her.” And you—but he couldn’t say it.
“Then run off again so she can shed more tears?”
“She understood why I left,” Trace had said carefully.
“You broke her heart.” And mine. “You’re not going to hurt her again. You’re either a son to her, or you’re not.”
“Either the son you want me to be or nothing,” Trace had corrected, pacing the cramped little room. “It still doesn’t matter to you what I need or feel, or what I am.”
“You don’t know what matters to me. I think you never did.” Frank had to swallow the obstruction in his throat that was part bitterness and part shame. “The last time I saw you, you told me what I’d done for you hadn’t been good enough. That what I could give you never would be. A man doesn’t forget hearing that from his son.”
He was twenty-three. He’d slept with a whore in
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