Oceans Apart Read Online Free PDF Page B

call any of them, not even the girls. But he could say nothing, really. He knew better than to involve Michele. Her thoughts on the issue were too simple. He’s your father, she’d told him a hundred times in the past eight years.
    Call him and tell him you love him.
    But he couldn’t; and after this long, he simply wouldn’t. Even if the image of the dead man in the burgundy sedan stayed with him all month.
    Michele wiped her hands on her smock and used her shoulder to dab away a tear. She narrowed her eyes and stared at him, straight to the most dank, dark places of his soul. “Life is short; one of these days it’ll be too late.”
    He worked the muscles in his jaw, then let it go. Holding out his hands, he took slow, tentative steps toward her. “Ah, baby, I’m sorry.” They came together in an embrace, and Connor breathed in the fragrance of her shampoo. “It’s not your fault.”
    “But you won’t call, right?”
    “We’ve been through this.” His voice fell flat. He shouldn’t have told her about the accident; no matter what the dead man looked like, there would be no phone call to the West Coast. “Let it go, okay?” Discouragement filled her eyes, but she held his gaze. “Okay.” He could hear that it wasn’t, but he wouldn’t push the issue. It was one thing to have no relationship with his father, but Michele . . . ?
    She was everything to him. He drew back and glanced at his watch.
    33

    – Oceans Apart –
    “Errands?” The question, though it rang with sadness, was her way of saying she wouldn’t dwell on the topic. They’d learned at least that much in the past eight years.
    “Yep.” He grabbed his truck keys from the kitchen table.
    She stepped back onto the stool and faced him. “Don’t be long.”
    “I won’t.” Connor grabbed a glass of water, downed it, and made his way across the kitchen. “I still need the mower.” For an instant she only looked at him, her eyes deep and thoughtful. As she turned away she said, “You need a father, too.” Her words were so soft, Connor almost didn’t hear them. A hundred replies flashed in his mind, but he chose the safest one. “I love you, Michele.”
    With that he was out the door.
    Not until he got in his truck did he realize he’d been shaking.
    He started the ignition. What a way to kill a Saturday. Even buying a riding mower wouldn’t make him happy in light of the skele-tons that had come to life that day.
    As he was pulling out of the driveway he turned on the radio.
    Country music. That’s what he needed. Garth Brooks or Kenny Chesney or Tim McGraw. Something to wash away the grimy residue of his past, to remind him his yesterdays counted for nothing. All that mattered was today. Today and tomorrow and every minute of the future he and Michele and the girls had ahead of them. It was still a brilliant spring day. Maybe an hour or two on a riding mower would right his world, after all. A song ended and the deejay came on.
    “Investigation continues into yesterday’s plane crash in the Pacific. Today the FAA released a—”
    Connor turned up the volume. What had the man said? A plane had crashed into the ocean?
    “—report that the fuselage was found broken apart in relatively shallow ocean waters. A team of divers is looking for the cockpit’s 34

    – Karen Kingsbury –
    black box to determine whether pilot error was to blame. Western Island Air Flight No. 45 from Honolulu to Tokyo crashed minutes after takeoff. Witnesses said the aircraft lost speed and then nosedived into the Pacific. One hundred eighty-eight passengers and crew were aboard the flight. Search and rescue officials fear there are no survivors.”
    He jerked the wheel and pulled off to the side of the road. What was with this day? First the guy in the burgundy sedan, and now this? A plane crash? Nearly two hundred people lost somewhere in the Pacific?
    He’d never worked Western Island Airlines, so he wouldn’t have known any of the crew. Even