It Happened One Night by Lisa Dale

necessary words to him when he’d picked her up. Then she’d looked out the window, turned away from him, and grown silent.
     In the glass he could see the translucent reflection of her face, ghostly white like the moon at midday.
    He wished she would let him touch her. Not because he wanted something from her—though part of him did—but more because he
     wanted to give. He could put his arms around her, lay her head on his shoulder, and stay that way until their breathing was
     in sync. And yet, the distance between where he sat and where she sat seemed as expansive as years measured in light.
    “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
    “No,” she said.
    “We can go back. You can change your mind.”
    She turned toward him now, her eyes glassy and distant. “We’re already here. We might as well.”
    “But why?”
    She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. “Because. When someone needs help, we have to help them. There’s nothing
     more to it than that.”
    Eli narrowed his eyes at her, not quite trusting her words. There was something different about her, something he couldn’t
     put his finger on. But as usual, he had no choice but to take her at her word.
    “Is that him?” he asked, though the question was pointless. He would have been able to pick out Lana’s father from a police
     lineup, even though he’d never seen the man before in his life. He was leaning against a wide-leafed oak, a black bag at his
     feet. He was as tall and leggy as Lana, but more gangly than svelte. Even from a distance Eli could see that he shared her
     fair coloring.
    “Yes,” Lana said. “I think that’s him.”
    He looked at her for one last moment; if he saw the slightest bit of hesitation in her eyes, he would have put the car in
     drive and ensured that Calvert would be nothing but the memory of a man leaning against a tree in his mind for all time. But
     Lana didn’t waver. Instead her face was blank, as if all emotion had been drawn out of it, and whatever animated her was less
     human than machine.
    “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
    He got out of his little car, slammed the door, then headed straight for Calvert. Lana might be afraid of this man, but Eli
     wasn’t. And before Eli let him in the same car as her, there had to be some ground rules.
    As he approached, Calvert met his gaze, a cautious question in his almost freakishly blue eyes. Eli stopped walking a few
     feet away and crossed his arms.
    “You her husband?” Calvert asked.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Lost my house.” He stuck out his chin in a way that suggested the admission had cost him something. “The State took the property
     for redevelopment. Paid me as little as they could and still have it be legal. I got nowhere to go.”
    “Well, you can’t stay here. She doesn’t want to see you.”
    “I don’t expect she does.”
    Eli was quiet for a moment. What little he knew about this man had come from Karin. She’d explained that Calvert had married
     their mother, Ellen, because of an unplanned pregnancy when they were both quite young. He took off shortly after Lana was
     born. Then, when Karin was ten and Lana just six years old, Ellen had died in a car accident one day on her way to the lawyer’s.
     Apparently some kind of child support–related letter from Calvert had set her off, and to this day Karin held Calvert to blame.
    For a day or so, Karin and Lana had been wards of the State. Then, for the next twelve years, they lived in their father’s
     boardinghouse inside the endless revolving door of his tenants, buddies, and girlfriends. Eli couldn’t help but wonder about
     the connection between the come-and-go population of Lana’s young life and her penchant for come-and-go boyfriends now. But
     aside from that vague connection, he knew little about Calvert and her past. All he knew was that the only way Calvert was
     going to bother her again was over his dead body.
    “Here’s how this