Part 2 (1/2)
By the end of the evening, it turned out that their first exchange when Hayden threatened to leave was the easiest part of the night. Hayden had inherited the Casey temper as well as looks, and if Emma was hoping for an open-arm welcome, it wasn't going to happen over her plate of perfectly cooked fish. A few tables over, the talk wasn't as stilted, and Cain was having a pleasant time while she kept an eye on her son.
”Thank you for coming tonight, Hayden, and I hope we'll get to a place where you can let me in a little bit. Could you get Cain to join us again so we can talk before you go?”
Hayden walked to the table Cain shared with the woman she'd met at the bar. Not too worried about keeping Emma waiting, he joined them for bread pudding with whiskey cream sauce before finally dragging Cain back to Emma's table. He reasoned his birth mother had kept him waiting for four years so it was only fair.
”Thanks for bringing him tonight. I don't need an answer now, but I'd like to know if you'd let him come meet my parents in Wisconsin. That's all I ask. After that I'll go away forever if you want me to.” Cain couldn't see it, but Emma had twisted the linen napkin on her lap into a knot while she was asking.
”Hayden, would you join Constance for a moment, please?”
The boy got up without question, knowing Cain didn't want him to hear whatever she was about to tell Emma.
”You want coffee?” he asked Cain before he walked away.
”No, son, we'll be leaving in a minute, but thank you.” Cain watched as he sat with the pretty brunette she had dined with, not glancing in her direction again. ”You came to see me alone this afternoon, and you just bring this topic up now? Did all that fresh air and open s.p.a.ces you left us for make you forget who you're dealing with?”
”Are you kidding? It took me a year to build up enough courage to come here, Cain. Forget who and what you are? Not even if I tried hypnosis. I just want my mother and father to meet their grandson.”
”I've met your parents, Emma. h.e.l.l, I listened to you complain about them for years. What would make them want to meet the child you had with me?”
”Because he's half mine, which means he's a part of them as well. A week, Cain. Surely you could see to giving me that. I can look at him and see he's more than a certified card-carrying Casey, but don't forget he has other family as well, and it's time he met them.”
Cain leaned into the table a little and lowered her voice. ”What makes you think that you deserve anything from me?”
”Because I gave him to you. He's your mirror image. He acts like you, thinks like you, and probably feels like you, but I'm foolish enough to think there might be something of me still trapped in there somewhere. I might not have called in all this time, but don't fool yourself that I haven't thought about him. I've thought about him every day, until some days it's hard to get out of bed, I get so sick over it.”
”Like I said today, it's his decision. But whatever he decides, don't be stupid enough to think Mook's not going with him.” Cain pointed to the man in question and watched Emma's head fall forward in defeat. She nodded to signal she understood.
Almost as if he knew their talk had come to an end, Hayden turned around and excused himself when Cain waved him over. ”I won't go alone, and I'm not going if you don't come with me,” Hayden informed Cain when Emma asked him to visit.
”A couple of days with just us, Hayden. Then you can bring the whole Casey clan if you want.” Emma tried to salvage something of what she wanted, mainly a relations.h.i.+p with Hayden, before it all slipped away and Cain's watchful eyes exposed all her secrets. But in the end, if everything turned out like she hoped, even Cain's presence had its purpose.
”I'll come for two days. Then Mom comes for the rest of the time, and Mook stays with me. Neither one of us is going to talk her out of that,” said Hayden. He liked the big blond bodyguard, and it would be a blessing to have him along. ”He's a reality, so that's the deal.”
”Is there something you're afraid of, son?” asked Emma.
”My name is Hayden, and I'd prefer you call me that. And no, I like being with my family and that's Mom, only Mom. We always spend Thanksgiving together, no matter what her schedule's like, so it's not fair for her to sit at home alone because you decided to get in touch again. Maybe you feel great about yourself for suddenly remembering you have a family, but she never forgot. Remember, I'm a Casey. Very little scares us.”
The declaration made Cain lean forward and ruffle his hair, getting the boy to laugh.
”I can respect that,” Emma said.
”Where are you staying?” asked Cain.
”Why?”
”His break begins next week, so if he's going, I need to know where I'm sending him.”
Emma knew Cain wouldn't just let her leave town with Hayden without every ounce of information on where he was going and how he was going to get there. She was so close now to having everything she wanted. If things worked out, Hayden would eventually forgive her, and they could make up for the years they had been separated.
Chapter Five.
The flight up north and the drive into Hayward pa.s.sed in silence. Emma realized Hayden probably didn't resent being there; he was just comfortable with silence. When they had first met, Cain wouldn't talk for long stretches, which had taken some getting used to.
The more hours that ticked off in Hayden's company, the more he reminded Emma of Cain. Because of that similarity, her plan, which had seemed so foolproof months ago, now seemed like a pipe dream.
”Your grandfather owns a dairy farm here. His major buyer is Kraft, but he actually still makes all the cheese we eat at the house, like his father taught him.” She was fis.h.i.+ng for things to say and laughing at herself that an eleven-year-old could be so intimidating.
Hayden was thinking of the dozens of trips he'd taken with Cain and how different they were from this forced visit. He remembered when Emma was in his life, the stories she'd read him at night and the way she would run her fingers through his hair when he was sick, but the good of that relations.h.i.+p was gone. The sound of her voice held no comfort for him now, and a small part of him mourned that fact.
The scenery out the window of the rented Tahoe held his eye, so he answered without looking at her. ”I don't know what you're expecting from me, but these people are as much strangers to me as I am to them. I came because I thought Mom would be disappointed in me if I didn't at least try. Aside from that, nothing else could've dragged me out here with you.”
”What she thinks is so important to you?”
”What is it about her that you find so offensive? You just didn't leave her, you left me too. So whatever it is, it must've been pretty bad. I read a lot, and the moms in books usually don't just drop their kids. Unless it's something terrible or they're just not cut out to be parents. If you're telling me how much you care about me now, I have to a.s.sume you're laying the blame at Mom's feet.”
Emma snorted in amus.e.m.e.nt and peered out her own window in an effort to find something to focus on to calm her emotions. She'd been right in thinking Hayden was intimidating. He had her in the corner without lifting a fist, which was something else he had in common with Cain when it came to her enemies. ”Do you honestly think she'd have let me take you with me when I left?” She turned back when she felt him move in his seat.
Hayden did look at her then, and like Cain, his cold eyes told her she had no chance. ”Do you honestly think I'd have left with you even if she had allowed it?”
”Touche, Hayden. Can we try and spend this time getting to know each other better? You might find I'm not the monster Cain made me out to be.” Emma put her hand on his leg and prayed he wouldn't knock it off.
”You want me to tell you a story?” He glanced at her hand and turned his attention back to the scenery they were driving by.
”If you want to, sure.” She gave his knee a little squeeze, glad he had left it alone. Emma was willing to take her small victories where she could find them.
”Every night before I go to bed, Mom points to a picture of the three of us and tells me somewhere you're taking the time to think just about me and saying a prayer that I'll be safe and happy. When I was seven and I cried for you, it's the one thing that got me to stop crying and made the pain go away. Her telling me that you were thinking about me made me believe it. Does that sound like she's been bad-mouthing you all this time?” His voice sounded as cold as the weather they had flown into.
”You love Cain a lot, don't you?”
”Do you make a habit of asking unnecessary questions? You have to know the answer without me saying anything, right? Maybe it's all this open s.p.a.ce out here. It makes you fish for something to talk about so you can forget you're in the middle of nowhere.”
”You don't act like a child, and you sure don't sound like one.” You let too much time pa.s.s, Emma. He's lost to you forever. And to think Cain did it by talking you up. Emma was sure when Hayden had figured out she was the only topic his beloved Cain ever lied to him about, she looked that much worse. She could just imagine how much discomfort and anger Cain had buried to say anything nice about her.
”Mom says the uneducated grow up to be prey. If you want to learn to be a hunter, then you have to be smarter, quicker, and stronger than everybody else.”
”Is that what Cain is to you, a hunter?”
”Cain is a G.o.d to me.”
”And what are Hayden's thoughts? All I've heard from you is what Cain thinks.”
”Why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. There's plenty we don't agree on, and we know what those things are. What I talk to my mother about is no one else's business. I'm not a puppet, if that's what you're worried about.”
Emma squeezed his knee again and smiled. ”I do worry about you, Hayden. I don't want Cain to drag you into something you might think you have no choice in.”
”Ah, it was the family business that drove you out here to this boring town. Save your worry and your pity for the times you need to pacify yourself for abandoning us. You were so worried it took you four years to check on me? I'm overwhelmed, and I shudder to think if you hadn't cared for me. I'd have never seen you again.”