The Reture of Luke McGuire Read online

  The Return of Luke McGuire

  by Justine Davis

  Chapter 1

  It wasn't nearly as tough being a bastard as it used to be.

  Luke McGuire knew that, knew that if he'd been born a hundred, or even fifty years ago his life would have been a much bigger nightmare. But the unexpected letter he held made long-buried memories raise again, memories of the nightmare his life had indeed been.

  He stared down at the scrawled lines that filled the page of three-hole notebook paper. He glanced again at the en­velope, addressed only to his name and the small town of River Park; if Charlie Hanson didn't know everybody in town, he might never have gotten it.

  He wasn't sure he didn't wish Charlie had never heard of him.

  He shoved a hand through his wind-tangled hair, pushing it back from his forehead. He was going to have to cut it or start tying it back soon; the thick, dark strands were getting in his way. Not that seeing any better changed the plea the letter contained.

  He could just toss it, he thought. After all, if River Park had been a little bigger, or Charlie a little less efficient, it could have wound up in some dead letter file, since there was no return address on the envelope. So he could throw it away and go on pretending blissful ignorance.

  Except he'd read it. He'd read it, and he didn't know if he had it in him to ignore the plea it contained.

  His little brother was in trouble.

  Little Davie. The child who had been the only good thing in his life so long ago, the only person who ever looked at him with pure, honest love shining in his eyes.

  Little Davie?

  Luke caught himself with a wry chuckle as the math hit home. Eight years. David would be fifteen now. Hardly the wide-eyed, innocent child he remembered.

  Especially the innocent part, he thought with a grimace as he read the letter once more.

  Guilt rose up, sharp toothed and ugly. He'd known what he was leaving David behind to face. He'd hoped the fact that his brother was the wanted son would make things dif­ferent for him, that having a father there to defend him would make it all right.

  Maybe it had only gone sour in the six months since Da­vid's father had died. That made sense; their mother would never be openly cruel to him while Ed Hiller was alive. Not when he was her meal ticket. But she had a thousand ways to be quietly, subtly cruel, covering it with feigned concern, even wearing the mask of affection to hide the emotional whip.

  He felt a nicker of sympathy for the man who had been as much of a father as Luke had ever known. It had been Ed who had lectured Luke—gently—on not living up to his potential, Ed who had told him he was smarter than his grades were showing, Ed who, seeming to sense Luke was on the verge of bolting, pressed him hard to finish school. Ed hadn't loved him the way he loved his blood son, but he'd been kind, and fair, which meant more to Luke than Ed Hiller could ever have known. He felt a brief flicker of regret that he had never told the man he was grateful.

  And now that man's son was crying out for Luke's help. Wanting, of all things, to come and live with him. And Luke had done enough running of his own to realize that David was in full stride.

  He got up and walked to the window of his cabin. It was the smallest of the five on the property, but Luke had taken it eagerly. It also had the best view of the river. At night he could hear the rush of the water and pretend he could hear the rough and tumble of the rapids just downstream. It was all he needed. It was all he wanted.

  He heard the crumple of paper and realized he was clench­ing his fist around David's letter. It wasn't his problem, he thought. He didn't have to deal with it. Which was a good thing, since he'd sworn to never set foot in Santiago Beach again, and nothing had happened since he'd left to change his mind.

  He would just throw the letter away. Pretend it had never reached him.

  He finished crumpling it up, feeling the oddly sharp dig of one of the comers of the envelope against his palm.

  Not for anything or anyone would he go back to Santiago Beach. Not even for the boy who had made those last years survivable.

  "Hey, McGuire! You comin' or what?"

  The voice of his friend and partner Gary Milhouse was a welcome interruption.

  "Yeah," he called out. "On my way."

  Good idea. Half a pizza and a beer or two, and he would forget all about it. There wasn't a damn thing he could do anyway.

  He stuffed the letter in his pocket and walked right past his wastebasket. He would bum it later, he thought. That way it wouldn't be lying around to taunt him.

  Maybe three beers.

  * * *

  Amelia Blair watched the gangly boy heading toward her bookstore. His hair moved loosely on top of his head, where it was long and bleached a white blond. A darker, medium brown showed beneath, where it was shaved short. A baggy shirt and baggier pants flapped as he crossed the street. He was walking—almost strutting—in that self-conscious way teenage boys had when they were trying to be adult but were still in the imitation stage, before it came from the inside.

  She knew she tended toward worry anyway, but she was certain her concern about her young friend was warranted. He'd changed so much from the open, natural boy she'd met when he'd first come into her bookstore four years ago. And the change had not been for the better.

  The buzzer on the door announced David's arrival in the cultured tones of Captain Jean-Luc Picard; she'd adapted the sound effects from Star Trek and rotated them daily. They were a big hit with her younger customers—some of whom stopped in daily to see who would be talking—and even made the older ones smile.

  "Hey, Amelia."

  He sounded normal enough this morning, she thought. "Hello, David. How are you?"

  He shrugged. "Hangin' in."

  Amelia nodded, knowing he usually wanted to leave it at that. She couldn't blame him; the subject of his father's re­cent unexpected and sudden death in an accident was still new, and he was still raw and aching.

  He made a show of looking at the books in her front display rack, but since his taste ran more to science fiction, she doubted he was really interested in the bestsellers and her own personal choices. She knew it took him a while to work up to really talking to her, and she'd found the best approach was to just welcome him and wait.

  After a moment he stopped fiddling with the latest polit­ical expose and stepped over to the counter. He leaned his elbows on it and finally looked at her. "How was kickboxing today?"

  She smiled. "Tiring. We're working on punch-kick com­binations, and it's tough."

  "Bet it'll take out a bad guy."

  "That's the idea, anyway," Amelia said. She'd signed up for the classes three years ago in the hope they would help her feel less... timid. She was at home in her world here, amid her books, but outside, she was never quite sure of herself. She had resigned herself at twenty-five to being for­ever a mouse, with mousy brown hair to match, but now, at thirty, she was determined to at least be the bravest mouse she could be.

  As a side benefit, it had impressed David, who had de­cided she had to be fairly cool to be taking kickboxing. After that, the relationship had grown rapidly.

  "I wish my mother would change her mind and let me take lessons," David said.

  Amelia hesitated. She doubted that was likely. Jackie Hiller seemed to run her son's life with a heavy hand, al­lowing him only the extracurricular activities she approved of.

  Of course, she also doubted Mrs. Hiller knew about the new friends David had acquired. Loud, obnoxious, fre­quently nasty and purposely intimidating, the group of about five boys had already gained an unpleasant notoriety in San­tiago Beach. From what Amelia had seen they were all hot­headed, which unfortunately made them very att
ractive to a boy still angry about his father's death.

  "Maybe if you got a part-time job and offered to help pay for the lessons?" she suggested, thinking that something physical, like kickboxing, might be just the thing David needed to release some of that anger. And the part of the program that dealt with mental and emotional control couldn't hurt.

  But David snorted aloud. "It's not the bucks. Hell, she spends it like crazy. She just wants me to do wussy stuff like piano lessons. And during the summer, too!"

  "Well, even Elton John had to start somewhere."

  David looked at her blankly. "Who? Oh... he's that old guy from England, right?"

  She smothered a sigh and nodded, wondering how a boy only fifteen years younger could make her feel ancient. "He's lasted in the music biz for decades now because he can play the piano." Well, that was stretching it a bit, but it made her point. And she liked Elton, even if he was more of her parents' generation.

  "Yeah. Well. I still hate it."

  She grinned at him then. "So did I."

  He blinked. "You did?"

  "Yep. My mother made me practice for two hours a day, then I had to play for my father when he came home."

  "Bummer," David said with an eloquent shiver. "But I won't have to do it much longer."

  "Talk your mother out of it, did you?"

  "Not exactly."

  Something about the way the boy said it set alarms off in Amelia's mind. "What, exactly?"

  David looked at her, then looked away, then looked side­ways back at her again. Her worry increased, but she reined it in, telling herself to remember that he had to take his time, but he eventually opened up.

  "I'm going away," he finally blurted out.

  "Away?"

  "To live somewhere else."

  This startled her, but she knew if she peppered him with questions he would clam up. So she settled on one thing she knew was true. "I'll miss you," she said simply.

  He looked startled, then pleased, then he blushed. She knew when he felt his cheeks heat, because he lowered his head again.

  "Where are you going?" she asked, careful to keep her tone casual.

  He didn't raise his head. He tapped his fingers in a restless rhythm. Took a deep breath, let it out.

  "I'm going to live with my brother," he said in the same kind of rush.

  "Your brother?" She was genuinely startled now.

  "Yeah. Luke. Luke McGuire. My half brother, really. You don't know him, he was gone before you came here."

  No, she didn't know him. But she knew of him. It was hard to live in Santiago Beach and not know of the town bad boy who had departed the morning after the high school graduation he'd barely achieved and never been back. Luke McGuire might have been gone for better than eight years, but his reputation had lingered.

  "I didn't realize you were in touch with him," she said carefully. "You never mentioned him before."

  "He'll be coming to get me soon," David said.

  Amelia noticed he hadn't answered her directly, but didn't belabor the point. "When? Do I have time to get you a going-away present?"

  Again the boy blushed. "I... don't really know. Not yet, anyway. But he's coming. I know he is."

  For a moment David sounded like a child waiting for Santa Claus, and she wondered if the arrival of the brother was as much a fantasy. She also wondered, as she had be­fore, if the phantom brother wasn't part of David's problem, if because some people expected him to be just like his troublemaking brother, it had become a self-fulfilling proph­ecy.

  David met her gaze then, his jaw set and his chin up. "You'll see. So will my mom. She can't keep him away, even though she hates him."

  Amelia considered that. Ordinarily her response would have been something soothing, assuring the boy his mother surely didn't really hate his brother. But she had met David's mother, knew that Jackie was very conscious of appearances and hated to be embarrassed. Given Luke's reputation and what the woman had no doubt gone through raising him, she could easily believe there was no love lost between the two.

  "It must be difficult, if he and your mother don't get along, but you want to go live with him."

  "She doesn't know about it. Yet," he added, his expres­sion turning mutinous.

  "Does she even know you've been in touch?"

  "No. Yes."

  Well, Amelia thought, there's a teenage response for you. She waited, knowing David would explain if she just waited.

  "I mean she knows I wrote to him, but she stole my first letter before the mail lady picked it up. I found it in the trash."

  Amelia smothered a sigh; she couldn't think of anything more likely to make an already resistant teenager downright stubborn. But it wasn't her place to pass judgment on his mother's parenting skills.

  "So you wrote again?"

  He nodded, a little fiercely, the blond hair flopping in time with the movement. "Couple of weeks ago. And I took it to the post office myself. I even bought the stamp myself, 'cause I know she started counting the ones in her desk. She puts a mark on the next one on the roll. She thinks I'm too dumb to figure that out."

  Amelia couldn't imagine living that way. Her parents might have been older and a bit fussy in their ways, but she had never had to live with this kind of subterfuge and mis­trust.

  "And what did your brother say?"

  "He hasn't answered. Yet." This time the "yet" was in an entirely different tone, one of stubbornly determined hope. "I think he's just gonna come and get me. He doesn't have time for writing letters."

  "He doesn't?"

  "Nah, he's too busy."

  "Doing what?"

  "I'm not sure, but cool stuff. He'd never have some bor­ing job or wear a tie or nothing like that."

  "But you don't know what he does do?"

  "No. But he's not in jail, like my mom says!"

  Amelia's breath caught. "Jail?"

  "She just says that. She's always said it, that he was prob­ably in jail somewhere. She's always sayin' bad things about him."

  Amelia felt an unexpected tug of sympathy for the absent Luke McGuire. "You were young when he left, weren't you?" she asked gently.

  "I was almost eight." He sounded defensive. "I remem­ber him really good. He was really cool. He used to take me with him places, unless he was with some girl. And some­times at night, you know, when I was real little, when I couldn't go to sleep, he'd sneak in and read to me."

  And there it was, Amelia thought. The birth of a reader. Somehow she never would have expected the inspiration to be the disreputable Luke.

  Primed now, David kept on, extolling the virtues of his long gone half brother.

  "And he'd bring me stuff, not stuff you buy, he didn't have much money, but stuff like a neat rock, or a feather, that kind of thing. I'd put it away in my special box—" He stopped suddenly before adding sourly, "Before my mother found it and threw it all away."

  Amelia sighed again. She herself had had a collection of leaves she had pressed and dried, all the different ones she could find. Her mother hadn't liked having them around, she thought they were dirty, but Amelia loved to look at them, and that was all that had really mattered; the collection had stayed.

  Thanks, Mom, she whispered silently, as she often did to both the parents she still missed so much. And never had it mattered less than it did at this moment that they hadn't been her biological parents.

  "People say he was kind of a... troublemaker," she said carefully; she didn't want to join a chorus, but she did want to know if David was utterly blind to any faults his brother had.

  "Yeah, he got in some trouble." The boy said it with a kind of relish that made Amelia nervous; she wondered if this was the key to David's new friends, who seemed to find—or make—trouble wherever they went. "He was no nerd like my mom likes, he had fun, he went out at night, hung with his buddies, and they did whatever they felt like. Didn't pay any attention to stupid rules."

  Or laws? Amelia wondered. She tried to remember any spec
ifics she'd ever heard about the wayward Luke, but all she could call up was the general impression of a teenage boy gone wild. What she did know was that David appeared to be heading in the same direction; there was far too much of a gleam in his eyes when he spoke of the older brother he clearly admired. And while she could appreciate—indeed, she'd been pleasantly surprised and touched by—David's childhood recollections of another side of his brother, she was afraid it was the wild side he was trying to emulate.

  Perhaps his mother had the right idea, after all.

  * * *

  "—window broken out, and some of that disgusting graf­fiti sprayed all over!"

  "How awful," Amelia agreed as she rang up Mrs. Clancy's gardening magazines.

  "Those boys are getting out of hand," the older woman said ominously. "It was bad enough when they would harass people on the street, blocking the sidewalks, riding those awful skateboards so fast they could kill a person if they knocked them down, which they nearly did many times. But now this... somebody should do something!"

  Somebody being somebody other than herself, Amelia guessed. Mrs. Clancy was of the speak-loudly-and-let-someone-else-carry-the-stick school. She was a formidable, large woman in her late sixties, with silver hair she was proud of saying hadn't been cut since she was sixteen, and if she had ever known what it was like to be young and bored in a small town, she'd clearly forgotten.

  Diplomatically, Amelia changed the subject to one she knew the woman could never resist. "Going for that prize-winning rose again next year?"

  The woman's eyes lit up. "I'll beat that Louise Doyle yet, you just wait and see."

  Mrs. Clancy chattered on as Amelia slipped the magazines into a bag. "I wish you luck," she said as she handed them over with a smile. "I always love walking by your garden."

  That much, at least, was true. And Mrs. Clancy left the store happy, and would return next month as usual. Amelia had once wondered why she didn't subscribe and save her­self the trip, but soon figured out that this was the only time the poor woman had away from the recently retired Mr. Clancy, and she wasn't about to give it up.

  Amelia glanced at the clock; she was five minutes past closing. Not unusual for her, but tonight she was a bit tired; she'd had her kickboxing class early this morning, and this afternoon she'd gotten in several shipments of books to be shelved, and handling it all herself was getting wearing. But she wasn't sure she wanted to hire someone, she liked her quiet times in the shop when she could actually read her­self—it was hard to recommend sincerely a book you hadn't read—and she was getting by on only Sundays off, even with the long hours. By opening at ten and staying open until eight, she managed to serve everyone fairly well and had enough down time during the ten hours the store was open to get some other things done, although she still came in an hour or more before opening to deal with things that took uninterrupted concentration.