Looking out the window he could barely see over, Ethan crossed his arms and harrumphed. “He doesn’t act like he’s hurt.”
“Well, he is.”
“How do you know?” She could feel those blue eyes turned on her.
“I’m a doctor’s assistant. I’m trained to know.” She almost mentioned having seen Tad’s scars, but thought better of it. Remembering Danny’s reaction, she couldn’t take a chance that Ethan would share the seven-year-old’s seeming fascination and ask to see for himself.
“But we can be friends,” he said.
“Yep.” Somewhere over the past six weeks, maybe even during the past twenty-four hours, she’d made that choice.
More like, it had been made for her.
“But we just can’t need him, like, to fix my bike, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Cool.”
* * *
Tad had been burning with anger after he watched Miranda and Ethan drive away from their house. Livid with a man who’d father a child and then beat that boy’s mother to the point that she’d feared for
her life and run away from everyone she’d ever known or loved just to keep the two of them safe.
Anyone she’d have called to help when she couldn’t get the training wheels off her son’s bike had been left behind in North Carolina.
He hoped to God that Miranda’s husband really was dead, as the chief had testified. For Miranda and Ethan’s safety, first and foremost. And, he had to admit, so he wasn’t tempted to go for the man’s throat himself.
Out of his car, he was halfway between it and the bike leaning up against Miranda’s little house, intending to get those training wheels off and be out of sight before she got back, when he stopped.
He was still a newcomer to the world of domestic violence, but after six weeks as an honorary member of the High Risk Team, in addition to all the reading he’d been doing since agreeing to work for Brian O’Connor, he knew he shouldn’t fix that bike. A woman in Miranda’s position, a woman who’d lived with daily fear, would be more likely to panic at the idea that someone had been on her property, messing with her stuff. The fact that this person knew she’d been struggling to get training wheels off her son’s bike would tell her he’d been spying on her. Chances were she wouldn’t see her benefactor as a Good Samaritan, but rather, someone who’d found her and intended to control her again. Someone who was letting her know he was stronger than she was. That she needed him.
If the panic was too intense, that act, something as simple as fixing a bike, could even prompt her to run again.
He was being paid to keep Miranda and Ethan in sight. To keep them safe. Not to fix bikes.
Back in his older-model SUV, he drove away before he had any other stupid ideas.
* * *
Miranda saw Danny again on Monday. She’d removed his stitches on Friday and Marie was worried about a puffy redness on one end of the incision that had been made during the surgery, which was done to repair the muscle tear he’d sustained during his fall.
“I’m fine,” Danny said, when Miranda asked him how he was doing.
As soon as she had a look at the incision site she knew what the problem was.
Fear. Marie’s fear.
Not infection. Or further physical damage. The scar area was pink, not red. A healthy pink.
Asking a nurse to come and stay with Danny in the exam room, and giving the boy a handheld learning-game device with the permission of his mother, Miranda led Marie down the hall to her office, closing the door behind them.
“What’s wrong? Is it infected or is the injury worse than we thought? Does he need more surgery? Should Dr. Bennet take a look at him?”
Max Bennet, the pediatrician who’d hired Miranda as his PA even before she’d completed her training, would be a good person for Marie to talk to. But not about her son’s leg.
“Danny’s incision is fine, Marie.”