tears. “Nobody knows when she’s coming back.”
Blast it all! Boone thought furiously. This was exactly what he’d feared all along. “When did she leave?”
“This morning, I guess.” He gave Boone a betrayed look. “I should have been here, but you made me stay with you. Maybe if I’d been here, she wouldn’t have gone.”
“You knew all along she’d be going back to her job, back to where she lives,” Boone said, though he was as thrown by the suddenness of her departure as B.J. was.
“But not yet,” B.J. protested. “It’s too soon. I thought she was my friend, and she just left without even saying goodbye.”
Exactly as Boone could have predicted, he thought heatedly.
“I’m sorry, pal. You said she’ll be back, though, right?”
B.J.’s shoulders heaved in what could have been a shrug or a heartfelt sigh. “I guess. That’s what Ms. Cora Jane said.”
“Then I’m sure she will be,” Boone said, though he was certain of no such thing. Needing to do something to put a smile back on his son’s face, he said, “Why don’t you get your game out of the truck and show it to Jerry? I’ll bet he’d like to play it with you.”
There was a brief spark in B.J.’s eyes. “It’d be okay?”
“I think just this once, yes.”
B.J. took off across the parking lot.
“Slow down!” Boone called after him.
B.J. obediently slowed. Once he’d retrieved the game, he walked back, exaggerating each careful footstep in a way that had Boone hiding a smile.
“Just so you don’t start running the second my back’s turned,” he commented as his son passed him. B.J. gave him an impish grin but kept his pace slow.
As soon as B.J. was back inside, Boone pulled out his cell phone, found Emily’s number still on the list of incoming calls from the other night when she’d phoned from Ethan’s clinic, and called her.
“Boone?” she said when she answered.
“I warned you,” he said, his voice low and furious. “I told you not to hurt my son.”
“What are you talking about?” she said softly. “I didn’t do anything to B.J.”
“You left without even saying goodbye. He’s devastated, Em. He doesn’t understand. He thought the two of you were friends.”
The harsh words she uttered under her breath were filled with self-derision. Aloud, she protested, “But I’m coming back, Boone. Didn’t anyone tell him that?”
“He’s eight. His mother left and never came back, even though I’d reassured him she’d be okay. He’s not exactly trusting when it comes to that sort of thing. He’s feeling abandoned. I told you it would be like this. I begged you to keep him at arm’s length.” Unable to help himself, he lashed out. “If you do come back, I don’t want you to have anything to do with him. Is that understood?”
“Boone, you can’t mean that,” she protested, sounding stricken. “What will that accomplish? He’ll think he never mattered to me at all.”
“And what do you think he’s thinking right now?” he said angrily.
“I’ll make it right. I’ll call him right this minute. Are you two at Castle’s?”
Boone wanted to tell her not to bother, to leave it alone, but that was his anger talking. It wasn’t what was best for B.J.
“I’ll go inside. Call my cell back in five minutes. I’ll give him the phone. You can say goodbye, apologize, whatever. Just don’t make any promises you don’t intend to keep.”
“I won’t,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Boone. I wasn’t thinking. I would never have hurt him intentionally, you know I wouldn’t.”
“You never mean to hurt anyone, Em. It just seems to happen.” He sighed. “Five minutes, okay?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Boone disconnected the call and went inside to find his son, praying that he’d done the right thing. Maybe it would have been better to let B.J. go through this disillusionment now, rather than later, when it might be even more difficult.
* * *
Emily paced the airport, checking her watch as the five minutes Boone had requested ticked by way too slowly. What had she been thinking? After all Boone’s warnings, she’d done exactly as he’d feared. She’d hurt his son. Just as he’d said, it didn’t really matter that it hadn’t been intentional. It had been careless.
And wasn’t that exactly why she’d left, because she’d been afraid that she was going to eventually hurt both father and son? It seemed she simply hadn’t taken off soon enough. Better yet, she probably should have made her excuses and stayed away, but how could she have let Cora Jane down like