by J. J. Cagney
“Who is this?” he asked sharply.
“I, uh . . . Danielle. Danielle Patterson. Um, I mean. Foster. Jonathan’s sister.”
There was a slight pause. She held her breath. Why had she agreed to this? Meeting Trevor was a bad idea.
“Danielle.” The way he said her name—almost on a sigh—caused a tremor through the arm that held the receiver as if he’d reached through the phone to cup her cheek.
No, there wasn’t anything beneath his tone—he didn’t care about her. Trevor only called her because her father asked—forced—him to.
“I’m sorry t-to bother you,” Danielle stuttered. “I shouldn’t . . . that is . . .”
He rescued her. “No, no. Of course. I’m so glad you finally called.”
“Finally?”
“I ask your father about you often,” he admitted, his voice strained. Was it with chagrin or impatience? “But he said you weren’t interested in ties to Mansfield.”
“I’m not sure that my father would know what I’m thinking or feeling. We aren’t close.”
Such an understatement. Hank planned to destroy her mother’s journals. Danielle was sure of that. Just as she was sure Hank was using Trevor as part of his strategy—as Chief Hardesty suggested. But Danielle was not her mother.
A fire built in her belly, one of anger and daring and something more, deeper. Uglier. The beast clawing up and out drove her to say, “I’m ready now. Could we talk?”
That night, Danielle told Garrett she would be meeting Jonathan’s friend. He looked away from Kevin’s ball game, his eyes wide and startled.
“Um . . . I don’t get it, Dani. Why do you want to talk to this guy?”
“He talked to my mother off and on over the years. I know she told him about . . . about Jonathan’s murder.” She couldn’t bring herself to utter the words about her father, not here where other ears were so close.
Danielle scratched her bare arm. Garrett laid his hand over hers, stilling her raking motion.
“I get that you want closure and I even think it’s really noble to help out, but are you sure?”
Danielle hesitated. He stared at her in that unsettlingly calm way of his.
“What do you mean?”
“Chief Hardesty is using you,” he said with a sigh. “Your dad is trying to manipulate you. And now this new guy . . .”
Danielle jerked her hand back as she lowered her eyes. Garrett was right, much as she hated to admit it.
“I’m not sure,” Danielle murmured, unable to hold Garrett’s gaze. “I want to talk with Trevor tomorrow, see what he knew. He was there that day. He remembers.”
Garrett wrapped Danielle in his arms and kissed her forehead. “I’m worried about you. You’re not a detective—don’t have the training. That’s not a slight,” he said when Danielle opened her mouth to argue. “That’s me pointing out you have a degree in early childhood education. That you know how to deal with children and you’re one hell of a household organizer. But this is murder. Lives are at stake. And I don’t ever want to risk yours.”
Danielle touched his cheek. “Thank you. But I’m going.”
“I know.”
She turned back to Kevin’s ball game as she snuggled deeper into her husband’s arms.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Danielle asked the next evening as she stood in the empty room at the end of the hall of the Mansfield police headquarters. The building was made of white stone with a peaked entrance that reminded Danielle of a strip mall store except for the matching white stone plaque out front that read “City of Mansfield Law Enforcement Center.” The need to scratch her neck rose but she withstood the urge. The small recording device settled between her breasts, just above her bra line.
The tech strapping the recording device to her body didn’t even glance up. Thanks to an internet search, Danielle discovered Mansfield was much larger than she’d expected and the police department now boasted a SWAT and K-9 unit in addition to its traffic and patrol divisions. The man attaching the device to her chest was with the investigative unit. He stepped back, patted her shoulder and said, “All set.”
She didn’t feel set—or settled.
Her nerves rose, making breathing difficult.
“We’ll be there at the restaurant,” the man said. He’d told Danielle his name and she felt badly she’d forgotten.
As Danielle drove to the café, jitters built in her belly. She brushed her hands down the fitted black pants she’d decided best suited the seriousness of the situation. Her loose sweater hid the wire and transmitter taped to her torso. The adhesive itched, but Danielle forced herself to ignore it.
“I hope this works,” she muttered, mainly for the police department’s benefit. “Because if I get busted for wearing a wire, I’m going to make a big scene.”
She didn’t receive a reply—that wasn’t how this worked and she didn’t have the desire to have an ear piece that Trevor might well notice.
With a deep breath, Danielle settled her engagement and wedding bands on her finger, wrapped her other hand around it, needing Garrett closer than the forty-five-minute drive across town. His concerns from last night rang in her ears.
Danielle was a housewife, like her mother. She didn’t have any formal training, any idea of how to solve her brother’s murder. She turned back toward her minivan, planning to drive home.
Another minivan drove past, two parents and three car seats blocking the kids’ faces. Maybe they had boys in that car . . . maybe their child would be next if she chickened out.
Maybe . . . God, her worst nightmare . . . maybe one of her sons would be kidnapped, killed.
Maybe the killer would continue his vicious assaults on innocent lives whether she moved forward with helping Chief Hardesty or not. But Danielle could no longer take that risk. Learning more about Jonathan and his death made the whole situation more real. Seeing her father as her mother had—as Chief Hardesty did—made her unable to go back to just being Kevin and Reid’s mom, Garrett’s wife.
Straightening her back, Danielle closed her car door and crossed the parking lot. Trevor sat at a table tucked into a booth about halfway to the back of the room. Danielle recognized him from the picture on the AMEAC website. His thick strawberry-blond hair had begun to gray around the edges—a blurring that came with age. But his was the same hair from the baseball team photo Danielle had pulled from one of Jonathan’s boxes, the picture she’d found on his SMU Law alumni website.
She might be a housewife, but Danielle knew how to research.
The boisterous conversations and laughs drowned out her footsteps across the tiled floor. The wood laminate table held their silverware, a basket of chips, salsa and two large glasses of waters. She slid into the vinyl booth across from Trevor, who raised his head from the laminated menu, meeting her eyes with his light brown ones.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she said, her voice as businesslike as she could manage.
She tried not to stare at the man across from her, wondering just what his relationship to her brother—to her father—had been before . . . and was today.
He smiled a little, the creases at the corners of his lips reminding her that he was only months from his thirty-eighth birthday. Age sat well on him, cloaking him in an aura of success and a kind of muted self-confidence that further enhanced his strong jaw and broad mouth. His nose was long with a thickening at the bridge, but somehow that added to the attractiveness.
“I’m so glad we could meet, Danielle.”
His voice was smooth and easy filled with a twang on the vowels that reminded Danielle of his rural upbringing. Of her father. How was it that she didn’t know Trevor well yet somehow she was already an intimate part of his life? Details of their pasts entwined, and she guessed he wouldn’t share those details with a casual acquaintance.
“I was delighted when you called me back. I knew you were in Dallas, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me. Your parents were pretty clear you wouldn’t.”
Danielle jerked, nearly oversetting her water.
“When was the last time you spoke with my mother?”
He tilted that red-and-silver head at her, eyes focused on hers. His gaze traveled back up over her cheekbones, warming them before settling back to meet her eyes.
“December.”
Danielle’s stomach rolled and she exhaled in a quiet rush. “Those were some of her final good days.”
“Yes, your father told me about the memorial service. Nancy never told me she had cancer.”
Danielle took a small sip of her water, hoping to steady herself. Trevor was more urbane, kinder, than she’d anticipated. “No, she wouldn’t have told you. She didn’t offer much of herself.”
“Hard for you. I can see that.”
Danielle tapped the side of her water, trying to decide how much to tell him. Get the information you want. You owe him nothing.
“What were they—my parents—like before? When Jonathan was alive?”
The question tumbled out of her mouth. Not one she should care about, but she did.
He leaned his six-foot-one frame back against the chair. His eyes drifted over her shoulder, and he squinted a little.
“He—your dad—was fun, laughed at our antics and with us when we told silly boy jokes. He worked as legal counsel for the town, did some other work for the school district.”
Danielle nodded, her throat constricted. More. Tell me more.
“He was always home for ball practice. He was the assistant coach, my dad the coach. They enjoyed each other’s company, drank beer together on the weekend after our games.”
He paused to take a sip of water. He continued to stare at the glass after setting it down, drawing his finger down through the drops of condensation forming.
“Your mom was a mom. I mean that in the best sense of the word. She was home, she made cookies for after school, made sure we got home or to wherever on time. I knew there’d always be a hug for me if I showed up; she’d ask about my day as she handed me a cold Coke. She let us run wild in the backyard, war whooping through her flowerbeds and throwing rocks at the squirrels in the trees.”
A pang hit Danielle. Her mother had once been the woman Danielle strived to be now.
“The only time she ever got angry was when we did something idiotic that could have hurt us or you.” He turned his face back to Danielle’s and smiled the kind of smile typically saved for a funeral.
“She loved you guys. It was so obvious even to me at four, seven, whatever. I wished my mom wanted to be home with me like your mom was. But my mother worked, liked being a career woman. As much as any small-town nurse can be, I guess. She loved getting up and dressed and leaving me for someone else to deal with.”
Danielle kept her fists closed in her lap. “Even after Jonathan was taken?”
He inclined his head. “Even after Jonathan died.”
“Dad was so busy . . . he was an attentive father?” Danielle waited, watching his eyes warm as he nodded.
“He’s a good man. My father said it all the time. That, and it was a damn shame what happened to Jonny and your folks.” Trevor leaned back, his arm across the back of his booth seat.
“The eighties were a different time. Up until Jonny’s disappearance. None of the parents worried much about us roaming the town, playing ball in the park. No one thought to worry.”
“Tell me, please. What you remember.”
Trevor sighed. “Old Man Framb was back in the feed store, talking to the owner when Jonny’s killer grabbed him.” Trevor paused. “I remember seeing him the week before. He tossed fifty-pound bags of feed into one of the big, dusty ranch pickups. I remember because I was surprised such an old guy could heft that much weight. That’s why he was a suspect originally. Physically, he was capable.”
Another pause, a long sip of water. “That day, as Jonny and I walked passed, Jonny wondered where his son, Leonard, was, and why Leonard didn’t help Old Man Framb with the feed bags. Leonard was a Vietnam vet, POW. Came back state-side but went to the VA for months.”
A smile slithered across his face, replaced by a frown.
“Jonny and I wondered what a V-8 was, but we didn’t ask because we’d been eavesdropping on my parents’ conversation. Everyone thought he was a little off. Your dad was one of the few who remained on friendly terms with Leonard. Said his weirdness, the standoffishness and even the strange staring wasn’t Leonard’s fault. The war messed him up.”
“Anyway, you and your mom were in the grocery store. I know ’cause I came back with Phil Hansen—another one of our friends—to show Jonny my new bike while he gathered up his gear. I circled him, showing off. I finally had something Jonny didn’t.”
Trevor swallowed, waved the hovering waiter away.
“Jonny wanted to go to the batting cages that weekend. He was upset he’d popped up and lost our game. He figured your dad would take us because he needed to check on his folks’ house in Dallas. Your dad was starting to make some noise about moving there, tired of the small-town bullshit. Tired of being a small-town lawyer, I think.”
“He got his wish,” Danielle murmured.
Trevor’s eyes sliced into her, filled with questions, no doubt. Danielle sealed her lips, motioned Trevor to continue. Now wasn’t the time to go there . . . Trevor trusted her father, looked up to him.
Danielle would have to tread carefully through that relationship. She wasn’t sure she could navigate the deep trenches—how did one disabuse another of their hero?
Was it fair of Danielle to do so?
Great. Now she was worried over Trevor’s feelings, his needs.
She tried to close that part of her heart off, but it ached for the boy he’d been just as it ached for Jonny.
Some hurts are too deep.
Her mother had said that when Danielle asked about the picture of them—why it wasn’t out. As a mother herself, Danielle wondered how her mother had managed to keep going for so long.
The cancer, she knew, was a relief. Nancy closed her eyes that last time, ready to die.
But she left so much unfinished.
“I heard it,” Trevor said. “I was riding home, maybe a quarter mile down the sidewalk. Same side of the street. The truck door—whack!”
Danielle fell back against her chair on a long breath. “So, what’s good here?” she asked, opening her menu, needing a break in conversation—a short distraction from the fear, the longing to change the past, building inside her chest.
“Dunno,” he replied. He looked around, tension tugging at his mouth. “I tend to avoid this part of the Metroplex.”
The waiter came back and took their order. Danielle’s gaze swept the room and her stomach quit rolling when she saw the two officers, in plain clothes, at a table kitty corner to hers. The stouter one caught her eye and adjusted his chin downward just enough for Danielle to know he was paying attention.
She picked up the menu and released a slow breath.
“Did you ever want anything different? In your life, I mean. Want it to go differently?” Trevor asked.
“Yes.”
“What? A bigger house? A better-looking husband?” A small, fleeting smile drifted across his lips, but his eyes remained focused on her face.
Danielle cursed her fair skin as she felt the heat creep up her neck. She folded her hands on the edge of the table.
“A chance at normalcy,” Danielle said, meeting his gaze, holding it so that he could see the sincerity there. “I wanted to be like my friend Tamara. Sure, her parents were divorced, but she lived with her mom who drove her to her dance performances and made sure she had lunch money. Those may seem like simple, even silly details. My grandmother did them when I was young. When Grandma died, what little normalcy in my life disappeared. I don’t want my sons to have to live without that.”
“That’s it? Normalcy?” Trevor leaned back against the booth. The vinyl squeaked as he shifted.
The past anger at this man�
�the reason her mother fell apart, the man she called bastard—bubbled back up, and the words seeped from her mouth. Words she’d never shared with anyone. Ever.
“You want to know how bad it got after we moved to Dallas? Each trigger was worse, and my mother spiraled down further than ever before. You’d think there’s a bottom. There isn’t. When my grandmother died, I didn’t notice Nancy’s problems for a few weeks because I coped poorly with Grandma’s death myself. Dad lived in his apartment at this point, so there was no one to monitor her pills.”
Trevor leaned forward, but Danielle was on a roll now. She steamrolled over his “Danielle.” He wasn’t there; he didn’t know.
“She OD’d twice—had to have her stomach pumped the second time—but pulled it together for a few months. Then my father had a heart attack, and we sat in the waiting room with Janice, his then-secretary-slash-screw-buddy.”
Trevor’s eyes widened just a small amount. Satisfaction surged through Danielle. She’d shocked him. Good. He deserved to know her father was selfish, and that Danielle knew how to handle herself in the world.
The thrill of tarnishing his image of Hank was cruel, but Danielle couldn’t let him think that was all of it. She continued, her fingers toying with the paper from her straw.
Danielle let the silence build; she was in the driver’s seat, giving him a close-up look at her childhood.
“He doesn’t plan to attend my mother’s memorial service.” She raised her eyes. “My father. And he’s too busy to deal with her house—his family’s house—so I get to handle those details, too.” Danielle swallowed. “I’m having her buried here, in Mansfield, next to Jonathan.”
As she said the words, they felt right. She straightened. Well, okay then. That’s what she’d do.
“Wait. He told you he won’t help you with any of that? He’s not planning to go to his own wife’s service?”
“You still don’t get it,” Danielle said, shaking her head. “He left me with her when I was two years old. The night Jonathan died. End of story.”
Trevor drained the margarita the waiter had just sat at his elbow. Danielle felt the first pangs of sympathy. Trevor held her father up on a pedestal, maybe an even higher one than her mother and she just smashed that beautiful, gilded ideal to the ground.
