The Daughter Merger. Janice Kay Johnson

sixteen, but I didn’t buy it.”

      “Claire is thirteen.”

      “About what I guessed. I’ve got kids myself. I thought about finding a police station, but I figured it wasn’t so far I couldn’t come back. When I said it was the cops or home, she chose home.”

      “I’m surprised,” David said with a hint of bitterness. “We’re having our problems.”

      “She told me. Said her mom wants her, but the courts gave custody to you.” The trucker wasn’t asking a question, but he was wondering all the same.

      David didn’t usually talk about personal business with strangers, but this one had earned an answer.

      “Her mother is an alcoholic. She wants Claire only to lean on. Claire was paying the bills, doing the grocery shopping and cooking, calling work to cover when her mom was too sick to go.”

      “Being the adult,” the other man said slowly.

      “She thinks her mother needs her. The truth is—” he grimaced “—her mother has found a new man and isn’t very interested. But I can’t tell her that.”

      The trucker nodded. After an awkward moment, he stuck out his hand. “Make sure you tell her you were worried about her.”

      David shook the man’s hand. “Thank you,” he said again, inadequately.

      He watched his savior retrace his steps, climb back in the cab and laboriously back the truck into the culde-sac to turn it around. Claire had gotten lucky.

      This time, David thought grimly.

      Upstairs, music pounded from beneath Claire’s bedroom door, a deep throb that pulsed through the house. David braced himself and opened her door without knocking.

      When she saw him, Claire flipped onto her stomach on the bed, as if the sight of her father was unbearable.

      David headed straight for the CD player and turned the music off. Usually she would have protested. Today she knew better.

      To her back, he said, “You scared me. Do you have any idea what can happen to a girl who gets into cars with strangers?”

      She hugged her pillow and remained silent.

      His hand itched to whack her bottom, although he’d never believed in spanking.

      “We’ve talked about this, Claire. You live here now. If you’d made it to San Francisco, your mother would have shipped you right back to me.”

      “No, she wouldn’t!” In a flash, the thirteen-year-old launched herself to her knees and faced him furiously. Her face was wet and swollen with tears. “Mom wants me!” she sobbed. “And you don’t! I can tell you don’t! Why won’t you let me go?”

      “I do want you.” Hell, no, he didn’t, not anymore. But he loved her. Or at least the memory of the sweet sprite who had adored her daddy. It was that child he was determined to save from the alcoholic mother who used her as a crutch.

      “You don’t!” Claire’s face crumpled and she flung herself back onto her belly. Her shoulders shook with sobs.

      David made himself sit on the edge of the bed. He’d forgotten how to say I love you. She wouldn’t have believed him anyway. His hand made an abortive move toward her, but he knew damn well she would have knocked it away.

      “I’m sorry you miss your mother.” His every word sounded wooden, and he swore inwardly. “She’s an alcoholic. She can’t take care of you. She can’t even take care of herself.”

      “We were doing fine!”

      “You weren’t doing fine.” He knew he was wasting his breath. Logic never penetrated with her. But he had no other weapon, so he tried, anyway. “You were missing school, getting Ds on your report card. You were terrified of being alone at night.” And her mother didn’t want to stay home with her.

      “So what if I’m not good at school!” she flared. “Mom says she wasn’t, either!”

      “You have the ability to do fine,” he said grimly. “If you’d turn in all your assignments.”

      She threw one miserable, furious look at him over her shoulder. “That’s all you care about! That I be some perfect daughter. Well, I’m not!”

      He’d thought enviously of Grace Blanchet’s daughter today. The memory stung. Did he resent Claire, because she wasn’t a model daughter he could brag about?

      Wearily he said, “All I ask is that we be able to hold conversations without them blowing up in my face. That I not be dragged away from work because you’ve taken off again. Is that too much to hope for?”

      “I hate you!” she screamed, though the words were muffled in her pillow.

      David jerked. Pain engulfed his chest. He stood and started to leave the room, forcing himself to stop in the doorway. “Fine. But you will live with me, like it or not.” He didn’t—quite—slam the door when he left the room.

      “I HATE HIM,” Claire repeated gloomily.

      She and her best friend, Linnet Blanchet, ignored their school lunches. The salad bar wasn’t that good, anyway. Linnet had wanted to know everything about yesterday. About Claire running away, and whether it had been scary, and what had happened. Claire told her the truth except for the scary part. She’d shrugged and said it was no big deal when really she hated hitchhiking. The cars and trucks would rush by, the wind sucking her toward the tires, and sometimes gravel would pepper her painfully. She’d be there praying someone would stop, but afraid at the same time of who it might be. She was always hoping some nice old couple would pull up, and then they’d offer to drive her all the way to her mother’s front door even if it was two states away, because they felt sorry for her.

      Linnet’s brow crinkled. “Why can’t you live with your mom if you want?”

      She gave her pat answer. She didn’t want to tell even Linnet the truth. “Because Mom couldn’t afford really good lawyers. Not like Dad’s.”

      Linnet was stubborn. “But why does he want you so much?”

      “I don’t know!” Seeing the way Linnet flinched at her quick, furious response, Claire touched her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just, he’s never home. When he is, all we do is fight. I think he got custody just so Mom couldn’t have me. You know?”

      “That’s really mean,” her friend marveled.

      She nodded. Her misery burst out of her. “I won’t stay with him. I won’t!”

      “But even if you get to your mom, he’ll know where to find you and then you’ll have to come back anyway. Unless your mom is willing to go into hiding with you.” Her face brightened. “She could. If you moved to, like, Idaho or Missouri or something, and she was really careful and didn’t use credit cards or anything, he’d never find you.”

      Linnet was used to thinking practically. “Mom is talking about getting married. It’s this guy who I think is really rich. He’d have to come with us, and then how could he get to his money? If you use a bank machine or something, they find you.”

      Linnet had seen the same movies. She nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe your mom could forget about him. If she knew how unhappy you are.” The gaze she gave Claire held a hint of a question.

      The bell rang, making both girls jump. Claire hadn’t noticed how the cafeteria was emptying out. She stood with Linnet and they carried their untouched trays to the busing station, where they dumped the food and put the utensils in the right tubs.

      On the way out, Claire said reluctantly, “My mom isn’t that good at taking care of herself. I do a lot of stuff for her. She gets alimony from my dad, and child support when I lived with her.” Claire knew, because she’d gotten her mother to sign the checks, her hand wavering when she’d