Free Chance Encounter (Take a Chance: Prequel) by Nancy Warren Page B

for the abortion.
    A familiar anger at the injustice of the
system clenched at him. When he was older, when he had some money
and some authority, he was going to change things in some small
way. He wasn’t a politician or a crusader, but he believed in
trying to make a difference. “Did you report him to the university?
Call his wife? Go to the cops? Tell me you did something?”
    She rubbed her forehead. “I followed him home
one day so I knew where he lived. I started staking out the place
because I wanted to confront his wife when he wasn’t around. I
planned to tell her everything.” She played absently with her hair
and he watched the way the light spilled through the honey and gold
and silver threads.
    “ His wife finding out was
the thing he’d seemed most afraid of. So naturally, that’s how I
decided to hurt him back.” Daphne paused. He wished there was a
drinking fountain on the bus. She seemed like she could use some
water.
    “ One day, she came out of
the house. His wife looked like a nice woman. She had two little
boys with her.” She squinched up her eyes as though the memory
stabbed at her. “She was heavily pregnant.”
    “ That prick.”
    “ Oh, yeah. Maybe I’m a
coward, but I didn’t want to ruin that woman’s life.”
    “ So what did you
do?”
    He could almost see her spine stiffen. “I
finished the school year. Even though I was sick as a dog with
morning sickness, I went to classes and I finished my papers and
wrote every exam.”
    “ Even his?”
    “ You bet. I sat in his
classes and I made him sweat. I sat farther back and I stopped
asking questions, but I was there. He’d get nervous and stumble
over his lectures. Then he started getting grad students to teach
his classes for him, claimed he was busy with his book.”
    Jack began to realize that this girl wasn’t
the hothouse flower he’d taken her for. She had guts. And
integrity.
    She was also alone on a bus headed north.
    “ What about your
parents?”
    She grabbed the pen and started doodling
mindlessly on the open page of her notebook, right under the words,
The Beginning. “They didn’t take the news well. Not well at
all.”
    “ They kick you
out?”
    “ No. But it’s hard to live
with constant disapproval.” She was sketching rapidly and a tree,
like something out of an enchanted forest, took form under her pen.
“So I called my great aunt.”
    “ Your great
aunt?”
    “ Yes. She’s the black
sheep of the family and I love her to bits. She’s completely
unconventional. Never married but had countless lovers. She was a
journalist and probably a communist. Now she lives on this property
in Oregon and she invited me to come and live with her.”
    “ What kind of
property?”
    “ I don’t know. I’ve never
been there. It’s rural, that’s all I know. She says I’ll work
harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, but the air’s clean, she
grows most of her own food and she says she’ll help me when the
baby comes.”
    He picked up one of her smooth hands. Turned
it over and ran one of his leather-tough fingertips over the soft
skin. He doubted that palm had ever held a broom. “You up for hard
work?”
    She sent him a glare as steely as he imagined
she knew how. “Do I have a choice?”
    She took her hand back and he was surprised
how much he missed the feel of it. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.
Your story.”
    “ One hard luck story’s
enough for one day.”
    “ I disagree. Besides, the
same is true for you. I’m a stranger on a bus. You can tell me
anything.”
    He turned his head and met her gaze. “Short
version. Drugs ruined my folks. I got taken away. Bounced around
from foster home to foster home. A couple were good places, one
family even wanted to adopt me.” He tried to keep the sourness out
of his tone. “My mom wouldn’t let them have me. Maybe she thought
she’d clean up some day. She never did and well, there are good
foster homes and not so good ones.”
    Her face softened