Lifelines: Kate's Story by Vanessa Grant Read Free Book Online

bedding? He would have
to sleep in his clothes tonight. Better that, than going home to face Rachel
again. These days, he never knew what would happen when he found himself in her
presence. He wanted to feel cold indifference, but sometimes a terrifying rage
clawed at his control.
    He
unzipped his suitcase and glared at his clothes.
    Take
them out. Hang them up.
    When
he married Rachel, he’d assumed he would never sleep in this room again. Now,
he found himself remembering—not Rachel, but his father. 
    Six
years ago, Mac had arrived in Madrona Bay on a six-week leave from the Peruvian
construction job he’d been thinking of quitting. He’d been working in Peru five
years, past time to move on. He planned to talk to his father, Jake, about
whether to take the Superintendent’s job on offer in Indonesia, or sign up for
Chile, which he hadn’t seen since he was sixteen.
    Ever
since he headed off to Indonesia at the age of eighteen, he and his father had
met once a year for a fourteen-day flight to somewhere exotic. But this time,
Mac found Jake on the second step of death’s ladder. Against his father’s
protests, Mac cashed in the Tahiti tickets and cancelled his flight back to
Peru. Jake claimed he didn’t need help. He’d been working for the government
when the cancer hit – good medical insurance, bad prognosis.
    Jake
had worked in construction all his life, making good money in a variety of
third world countries, then his last few years on a series of Washington state
jobs from Blaine to Seattle. He’d been a Scotsman who found lucrative work in
places where his young wife wouldn’t follow. When Mac was five years old – they’d
called him Richard back then – his muscular father was a stranger, home in
Edinburgh for Christmas on leave from a mysterious place called Iran.
    Richard
heard the fight without understanding. Mother screamed but the stranger didn’t
shout back. When Mother stood in the doorway with a suitcase in her hand,
Richard wondered if this meant a holiday. His friend George had just left for
Christmas in London with his parents.
    But
wherever she was going, Mother didn’t take Richard with her.
    The
stranger packed Richard’s clothes and said, “Just you and me now, son.”
    In
time, Mac understood the words to mean he would now live with his father.
    “We’ll
make out,” said Jake.
    They
did, living in a compound in Iran for three years before Jake took a job in the
Canadian oil fields. After Canada they flew to Venezuela. Then Brazil, followed
by Chile, where Richard’s adolescent muscles gave him entrance to the
construction crew.
    In
bunkhouses at the edges of the world, he heard talk of women abandoned and
lost, children rarely seen. Few of these men would have assumed responsibility
for a small child beyond writing a monthly check. Perhaps none would do what
Jake had, making Richard part of his life instead of handing him off to an
orphanage. After all, as he’d heard one man say, how the hell could a man be a
regular husband and father in a construction camp without running water?
    As
Richard’s adolescent muscles hardened, the men began to call him Mac. He
called his own father Jake because dad didn’t fit men who worked
together.
    They
got by.
    When
Jake got cancer, Mac couldn’t walk away. He’d made big money since his
eighteenth birthday. He could have bought a house in Madrona Bay, maybe found
work on someone else’s project, but he’d been the boss on the job in Peru. And
his father might have cancer, weakened muscles and tired eyes, but Jake lived
for his work.
    Mac
purchased a business license, equipment, and the scrap of industrial property
where he built the construction shack – a place to store tools and equipment,
an office, and the tiny bedroom where he’d live until he found something
better. He bought a truck and got a sign painter to paint Madrona Bay
Construction on the doors.
    Jake
scouted out the first contracts and did the estimates, while Mac