RECLAIM MY HEART(23)

Her smile faded the instant her son left the kitchen, but she didn’t speak until she’d heard his bedroom door close.
“I was telling him the truth when I said I hadn’t been planning to visit Oak Mills.” She noticed her hand wasn’t as steady as she’d have liked as she lifted the glass of orange juice to her lips. “There’s no one there I want to see.”
Questions shadowed Lucas’s dark, searching gaze, and Tyne prayed that those questions would go unasked. But evidently no one up there in heaven was listening.
“Your parents,” he probed hesitantly, “are they…”
“Alive and kicking.” She set down the glass of juice. “And still living in the same house. At least, they were this past Christmas. That’s when I last heard from them.” She slid her hand onto her hip. “And it was an official ‘Mayoral’ Christmas card. It simply would not do for the Whitlocks to give up their prominence in the community, you know.”
Keeping the bitterness from coating her voice was impossible. The deep breath she took didn’t alleviate any of her hard feelings.
Lucas scooted his chair an inch away from the table. “But if Zach doesn’t know you’re from Oak Mills, then—”
“He’s never met them. That’s right. And that’s how I hope to keep it.” She reached up and flipped her hair back behind her shoulder. “They have the address of a PO box I rent out on the Main Line. They don’t know my home address or my phone number. They don’t know where I work. I’m sure they could find us if they tried really hard, but I’ve done what I could to protect our privacy. Mine and Zach’s. For his safety.”
Zach’s bedroom door opened, his sneakers clomping down the hallway.
Lucas’s brows drew together. “His safety?”
“And his mental health,” she murmured.
Her son appeared in the kitchen, his hair combed and a fleck of white toothpaste speckling the neckband of his gray t-shirt. “Ready,” he pronounced.
Tyne pushed away from the kitchen counter and held her hand out to Lucas. “May I borrow your keys?”
?     ?     ?

Nestled on the shores of the Susquehanna River, Oak Mills was a quaint town, picturesque, a perfect place for a child to grow up. Or rather, it would have been, had Tyne been born into a different family.
The school parking lot was empty when she pulled into a space. The adjacent football field and the track surrounding it were vacant, as well. Zach barely waited for the car to come to a halt before he barreled out and started jogging toward the open gate.
When Tyne caught up to him, he was out in the middle of the grassy field.
“He actually played ball here?” Zach turned in a circle, staring all around him.
“He did.” She grinned. “No one could run like Lucas. Of course, the place didn’t look like this back then.” She shaded her eyes with one hand and pointed with the other. “Those bleachers are new, and the lights. Back then the team could only play during daylight hours and our bleachers were at least half that size. Made of painted wood and rusty metal. You were lucky if all you got was a splinter.” She laughed.
“Maybe I’ll go out for football next year.” There was a clear challenge in the tilt of her son’s head.
“I didn’t know you were interested in playing football.” Avoiding an argument was enough motivation to keep her tone breezy. “If that’s what you want, it’s okay with me. But, Zach, you do realize that you’ll have to keep your grades up?”
He ignored that. “I can run. I can block. I could make the Koulgn="center varsity team.” He tucked an imaginary football into the crook of his arm and feigned left, then right, then raced toward the goal posts. He ran thirty yards or so and then trotted back to where she’d settled on the home players’ bench near the fifty yard line.
“So…?he was good, huh?”
“Lucas? Yes. He was good.”
“Was he the star player?”
Tyne hoped her smile didn’t reflect the sourness she felt. “No. Not the star.”
Only because his skin was the wrong color, she wanted to add, but didn’t. Instead, she said, “I notice you never refer to Lucas by name. You always say ‘he’ or ‘him.’”
Zach shrugged. “Don’t know what to call him. Can’t call a stranger Dad. Sounds freaky. And calling him by his first name would be—” again he shrugged “—weird.” Abruptly, he asked, “Were you a cheerleader?”
His question made her laugh. “For about five minutes. Didn’t last long. I realized really fast that I wasn’t one to stand on the sidelines. I ran track and played field hockey.”
“All the cheerleaders in my school are snobby beeyotches. Won’t give you the time of day.” Zach scratched a spot on his shoulder. “If they do happen to look at you, they make a face that has you wantin’ to, like, sniff your pits when nobody’s lookin’ to make sure you don’t smell bad or something.”
Tyne chuckled, slipping the strap of her purse off her shoulder. With her parents such important figures in the town, it had been impossible for her not to have been part of the popular crowd. And, yes, she’d have fit into the beeyotch category, she was sure. The superficiality of it all, the exclusive behavior, had bothered her. She’d often yearned for something deeper, more meaningful, although, as an adolescent, she hadn’t been mature enough to use those words to describe the hollowness she’d felt. But she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t enjoyed the status and the unending choice of sidekicks that the name Whitlock brought her growing up in Oak Mills. However, she’d learned that admiration and popularity—not to mention loyal friends—could be as fleeting as a puff of smoke…?thick one minute, vanished the next.