A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,71
of her mom’s friends. Mrs. Lopez, an older woman who volunteered at the hospital, was on the fringes of the group on the near side, focused on her sandwich, looking as though she needed someone to hang out with as badly as Rachel did.
Avoiding another glance at Cale for fear of catching his attention, Rachel made a beeline for the friendly but shy older woman and set her chair up next to her, placing it sideways to him so she could keep tabs on him out of the corner of her eye without making direct eye contact.
* * *
CALE HAD SPOTTED Rachel as she’d walked across the sand toward the group. Not surprisingly, she was ignoring him. He blew off the disappointment when she kept to the opposite side of the group from him, reminding himself he’d fully expected her to keep her distance.
She was dealing with a crap-load of stuff, he knew. He himself was still kind of reeling from what they’d let happen. Rachel needed time and space as she’d said, and, though he missed her and had no intention of ignoring her altogether, he’d give her both until she gave him some kind of sign.
Without being obvious, he went for another roast beef sandwich at the makeshift buffet table, then sat on the other side of his sister for a better vantage point. He assessed Rachel’s appearance from afar as she acted as if she and Mrs. Lopez went way back.
She hadn’t been sleeping—he could tell it from here. Though she’d done her best putting herself together, dressing in denim shorts and a simple sleeveless shirt, her eyes looked hollowed out even from this distance. His mind flashed to waking up beside her last week, as a protective urge rippled through him. Uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts, he turned to Trina Jankovich and Heather Alamillo, who’d both been close friends of Noelle, and struck up a conversation about nothing important.
The three were joking around when Cale’s senses went on alert and he registered some kind of commotion up the beach a ways. A woman was screaming, but he couldn’t immediately make out whether it was in fun or distress.
“Excuse me,” he said to the two as he stood and walked in the direction of the ruckus as nonchalantly as possible, still unsure if there was cause for concern, but the back of his neck was prickling.
He’d closed half the distance between him and the distraught woman when he ascertained she was yelling for help. She’d gone into the waves up to her waist, then turned back and hollered some more. He realized she was speaking Spanish with an English word thrown in here and there, making it tough to understand her. “Mis bebés! Ayúdame!”
Without waiting to hear more, Cale kicked his beach shoes aside and took off in a run toward her. By the time he reached her, she was pointing, wading out farther and turning terrified eyes on him. She was crying hysterically as she tried to communicate with him.
“Mis nietas! Ayúdame por favor!”
He’d picked up enough Spanish living in southern Texas that he recognized the words for granddaughters and help. Before she could say more, he spied two dark heads way out where the waves seemed to form. He ran several steps as the water deepened then dived under toward them.
* * *
RACHEL HAD KEPT ONE eye on Cale since she’d sat down, and when he walked away from the group and eventually broke into a run, she dropped any pretense of not paying attention to him.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Mrs. Lopez over her shoulder as she took off in his direction, first walking and then, when he dived into the deeper water, she started running. A couple of other people were rushing to the distressed woman, as well, but Rachel kept her eyes on Cale. When she reached the water, another guy was heading out toward him, and a young woman, college age or so, stood next to the overwrought one, holding her arm and speaking to her in rapid Spanish.
“I’m a doctor,” Rachel said. “What’s going on?”
“Her thirteen-year-old granddaughter swam out too far and had some kind of problem. The girl was trying to get back to shore when the grandmother here spotted her,” the bilingual girl explained, referring to the Spanish-speaking woman. “She sent her other granddaughter out to help because she herself can’t swim.”
Rachel saw the two dark heads near Cale then. “And the second one got