Low Country Dreams

by Lee Tobin McClain

  The place was about half-full, par for the course on a weeknight. He smelled burgers cooking, something fried...maybe he’d order himself a late dinner as soon as he’d figured out what Rita wanted. The Pig’s food wasn’t exactly organic, but it did hit the spot.

  There she was, at a table in the corner, away from the music and pool table. With her was Jimmy Cooper, the diner’s manager.

  Cash had already let them know he was out of town on a business deal and couldn’t come. As Liam headed toward their table, a text pinged in from Sean. Running late, nothing serious. Be there soon.

  So it was just him for now, and Liam hoped it wasn’t a social call. Despite his good afternoon with his brothers, he was still in a mood over Yasmin and her late-night visitor. He didn’t feel like making nice.

  “Liam.” Rita got up and looked like she wanted to hug him, which was weird. But then she sat down again, and Jimmy nudged out a chair for Liam with his foot, and he sat down.

  “Thanks for coming,” Rita said, her voice sort of nervous. That made Liam look at her more closely and notice she was crumpling and uncrumpling a napkin in her hands, and that a fine sheen of sweat coated her forehead despite the icy air-conditioning. “Do you know...are your brothers on their way?”

  “Cash is out of town,” he said, “and Sean just let me know he’s going to try to come, but later.”

  She nodded, glanced over at Jimmy, who gave her a reassuring smile.

  Okay, so not a social call. “What’s up?” he asked.

  She drew in a breath. “I always did think you were the one I’d like to tell first,” she said.

  “Tell me what?” She sounded all emotional, like there was something heavy on her mind.

  “Liam, I think you’re...” She broke off. “Oh, I can’t even say it.”

  A strange, prickling feeling started in Liam’s fingers. “Whatever it is, just tell me,” he said. He’d gotten confessions in all kinds of places, but he’d be surprised if Rita had committed some kind of crime. She was a nice lady.

  “I think you’re...” She swallowed convulsively. “I think you’re my son.”

  Liam stared at her, his mind a complete blank, although the prickling sensation continued. Had he heard her right? “Did you just say I’m your son?”

  She drew in her breath, bit her lip. “See, I have amnesia,” she said. “But I recently found out that I was here in Safe Haven, just about the time that you and your brothers lost your mom.”

  This. Did. Not. Compute. It had all the makings of a bad TV movie. And Liam felt like he was watching it on TV, rather than really living in it. “You mean...wait. Do you remember me, or something?”

  Slowly, she shook her head back and forth. “No. I’m sorry to say, I don’t.”

  “Then how...” He broke off. “What...” He couldn’t think what to ask. “Maybe you’d better just tell me the whole story.”

  She went into some long explanation of how she’d been found by some trucker, a blow to the head, beaten up, remembering nothing. How she’d only recently learned, with the trucker’s death, where he’d really found her.

  Liam watched her mouth making words and her eyes getting teary, and he couldn’t process it. He’d wanted to find his mother for years, put a lot of time and effort into trying to locate her through the resources he had available as a cop.

  He’d imagined what it would be like to find her: the tears of joy on her part, her pride in what he’d become, her apologies for not being able to come back and rescue them when they’d been kids. Her stories about their childhood. Her explanation for everything that had happened.

  Other times, he’d imagined finding her gravestone.

  What he hadn’t ever expected was to meet his so-called mother in the Palmetto Pig, and to feel nothing.

  And to have her remember nothing about him.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Sean pulled out a chair and sat down next to Liam, across from Rita. “I got here as soon as I could. It sounded important.”

  Liam found that he was taking slow, calming breaths, something he’d learned to do as a kid and honed in his police work. Calming yourself down was a crucial skill. He normally didn’t use it in a bar, with friends and family...with his supposed mother...but he needed it as he watched Rita swallowing and looking at Jimmy and then at Sean, wiping sweat from her forehead with a napkin.

  It was going to take her forever to blurt it out again. “She’s our mom,” Liam said to Sean. “Or at least, she thinks she is.”

  Sean’s head jerked around to face him, and then he looked at Rita. “What?”

  Rita blew out a breath, smiled at him. “Thanks, Liam,” she said, and took his hand.

  He pulled it away. He didn’t know this woman.

  She swallowed and transferred her attention to Sean. “I’ve had amnesia for twenty years, still do,” she said, “but what little I know points to me being the woman who left you boys here in Safe Haven.” She launched into the same story she’d been telling Liam.

  Sean was tilting his head to one side, staring at her, recognition dawning in his eyes, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and then breaking wide. “I always thought there was something a little familiar about...” He looked heavenward, shaking his head, pressing his lips together. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  Rita watched him, her own eyes filling, tears running down her face.

  Liam felt as cold as ice.

  Sean looked at her again, and then he was out of his chair and over beside her, pulling her up and hugging her hard. “I never thought I’d see you again!”

  She shook with sobs, and people throughout the Pig gave them curious stares. Pretty embarrassing, having his incredible hulk of a brother crying over some middle-aged woman in a bar.

  Jimmy looked over at him. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said.

  Liam nodded and looked away. His own throat felt tight, but not with the kind of joy his brother obviously felt.

  Instead, he felt like a dream he’d been carrying for years was disintegrating inside him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rita sobbed into Sean’s chest. “I don’t know what happened. I can’t... I can’t remember any of it.” She looked up at him.

  Sean helped her back into her chair and knelt beside her. “Our dad pushed you into his truck,” he said. “It happened right after we’d all moved into the women’s center, which was a full-on shelter back then. We went out to do some shopping and he found us. He took you.” Sean was speaking gently, holding Rita’s hand.

  Liam felt faintly nauseous.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” she choked out. “I didn’t take care of you boys the way a mother should. I... It’s going to be a process, but I hope you’ll let me get to know you.”

  “Of course!” Sean glanced at Liam and then at Rita. “We want to get to know you, too.”

  Dark turmoil churned inside Liam, because he didn’t want to get to know this woman. He didn’t believe for one minute that she was their mom. More like an imposter.

  As soon as he’d tripped on that idea, it felt right. Yes, that had to be it: she was faking them for some personal gain. He’d heard of these scams plenty of times.

  He stood and cleared the thickness out of his throat. “Do you have any identification?” he asked her.

  She looked up at him and the smile faded from her face. “I do,” she said slowly. “But it’s nothing that’s going to stand up to investigation. My husband—” She broke off. “There’s so much to explain.”

  “Yes, there is,” he said. Now that he’d figured out that she was an imposter, he felt better. More in control. “We’ll need to run prints and do some investigating. In the meantime...” He looked at Sean. “You need to make sure you don’t give her any personal information, nor lend her money. I’ll let Cash know the same, since he’s got more to lose.”
<
br />   Sean put a hand on his arm, but Liam shook it away, impatient with his brother for being so easily scammed.

  Rita was looking at him with a deep sorrow in her eyes, and for a minute, he felt like he could see his mother there. Trick of the imagination, obviously.

  “Come to the station tomorrow,” he said, trying to look at her like any other petty criminal, impersonally. “I’ll start an investigation.”

  He’d bet his life savings, such as they were, that she wouldn’t show.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Liam came out of his house dressed for work, but early enough to take Rio for a good walk.

  He wished he could just walk forever and postpone the possibility of his fake mother coming to the station to make stuff up and try to convince him of it.

  Yasmin opened the door in a bathrobe, handing Rocky a biscuit and glass of orange juice as he burst outside. She looked over at Liam’s apartment, and when she saw him and Rio, she gave a hesitant little wave.

  Of course she was hesitant. She’d cheated on him. Deliberately, he turned away without returning her greeting, covering up his own immaturity by kneeling to adjust Rio’s harness.

  Rio jumped at him, knocking his head into Liam’s cheekbone, hard. Automatically, Liam’s hand went to his face, and he dropped Rio’s leash. The dog bounded away to Rocky.

  Even his dog wanted nothing to do with him.

  Stop acting like you’re Rocky’s age. He straightened and headed toward the porch steps where Rocky sat rubbing Rio’s sides and feeding him pieces of biscuit. Liam looked up to see if Yasmin would scold him, but she’d already gone inside.

  “Look, Liam! Look what he can do!” Using the biscuit pieces as food rewards, Rocky got the dog to sit, lay down and then roll over.

  “Smart dog!” Rocky hugged Rio and buried his face in the dog’s neck, laughing.

  Liam felt some of his tension lift, felt his shoulders loosen. Kids and dogs, the innocent souls of the universe. You couldn’t be unhappy around them. And he felt good that he’d encouraged Rocky to train the dog. It made the boy proud and gave Rio some needed training. Win-win.

  All of a sudden, Rio took off through the yard just as Liam registered a car, going by slowly. He stood to look while Rocky yelled, “Come, Rio, come!”

  The dog jumped and leaped at the fence as the car, a nondescript white sedan that looked like a rental, passed slowly by. Liam couldn’t see the driver, only the woman in the passenger seat, someone he didn’t know.

  Rocky was running toward Rio. “I’ll get him,” Liam called to the boy. He gave a piercing whistle—that was the one thing he had taught Rio—and the dog spun out of his leap and ran back to Liam.

  Rocky, though, didn’t stop; he hurtled out through the gate and ran toward the car. “Mom! Mom!”

  But the car sped up and disappeared down the street.

  Rocky chased it for a moment and then turned and ran back, panting. “That was my mom! We have to catch her!”

  “Your mom?”

  “It was her! Can we go after them?”

  “Come on,” Liam said grimly, and Rocky and Rio jumped in the back seat. By the time they got out of the residential section and onto Safe Haven’s main street, though, the white car was nowhere to be seen.

  “I know it was her, I know it!” Rocky was half yelling, half crying. “She saw me. Why didn’t she stop, if she saw me?”

  Liam didn’t know how to answer. Losing your mom was heartbreaking, obviously, but this mom seemed to have made that choice on purpose. The face Liam had seen wasn’t anguished, and there had been no physical struggle to get to her child.

  Not like his own mom, who’d been forced into his father’s truck, at least according to what Sean had seen.

  Rita? No, Rita wasn’t his mom.

  Liam rubbed a hand over his face as he turned the car back toward Yasmin’s. He had to take Rocky home, get him settled and then go to work. Had to talk to a woman about proof of whether she was his mother.

  And he had to step up his investigation of what was going on with Rocky’s mother. Before she broke her child’s heart into even more pieces.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  YASMIN HAD JUST finished mopping her kitchen floor—her way of working off the stress of seeing Liam and having him act as cold as an iceberg—when there was a pounding on her back door.

  “Be careful!” she cried just as Rocky burst in, skidded on the damp floor with muddy feet, and then ran into the living room, crying. Rio galloped after, mulch and mud from his big paws making splattery footprints.

  “Hey!” she half yelled, then “Hey...” trailing off, as the sound of more crying came from the front room.

  She turned back to close the door, and there stood Liam.

  Her heart flipped over and she sucked in a breath as her whole body melted. So tall, so impossibly handsome in his uniform...and so grim-faced. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We saw his mom.” Liam parked his hands on his hips and looked back toward the street, frowning.

  “What? Where?”

  Liam waved a hand in the general direction of downtown. “Driving by. She was in the passenger seat. Slowed down like she was trying to see her son, but when she did see him—and me, in uniform—the car sped up, drove off. We tried to follow, but...” He spread his hands. “They were gone.”

  Yasmin bit her lip, looked toward the living room where Rocky’s sobs were subsiding, and then turned back toward Liam. “What in the world is going on? Did it seem like she was being coerced to stay in the car?”

  He shook his head. “I saw her, too. I just didn’t realize who she was. She looked like she was searching for someone. She looked maybe a little upset, but not scared.”

  “So she’s alive and she’s in the area. That’s something.” It was a lot, actually, but what did it mean? Had she seen something on the night of the murder that could be incriminating? To her son, to Josiah, to someone else?

  Where was she staying, and what was her plan?

  Liam cleared his throat. “Look, Yas, I have to go to work. I’m sorry to dump him on you. Sorry about your floor, too, but can you...” He gestured toward Rocky.

  “I’ll handle it. See what I can find out.”

  “Thanks.” He was looking at her for longer than their discussion warranted, and a storm seemed to brew behind his sea-blue eyes. Then he turned, sharply, and walked out the door.

  Which...of course he did. Because that was how it was with her and Liam. They didn’t work things out, they didn’t argue, they just walked away.

  And that was good and right, she reminded herself. If he didn’t walk away from her, she’d have to walk away from him. She’d done it once, but she didn’t know if she’d have the strength to do it again.

  Like a lovesick girl, she rushed over to the window to watch him get into his car and drive away, her heart squeezing painfully, her stomach dropping as she watched his taillights disappear.

  If I could be with any man, it would be Liam.

  That was what she’d told Rita and Norma, much to her own surprise. And it was still true. But she wasn’t going there. No matter how much her inner teenager longed to throw caution away and jump into Liam’s arms.

  Then, because she wasn’t a girl, but an adult woman with responsibilities, she walked back across her now-muddy kitchen into the living room and sat down on the floor beside Rocky and Rio. “Liam said you saw your mom.”

  Rocky didn’t answer, but instead jumped up. “I think he needs to go out,” he said, gesturing toward Rio. He tugged at the dog, who obligingly followed him back through the kitchen once again, and out into the backyard.

  But he wasn’t getting rid of Yasmin with that old trick. She followed him, sat down on the porch step and beckoned. “So you saw your mom. That must have been pretty intense.”

 
He looked over at her, his forehead wrinkled. Then, seeming to realize that she wasn’t going to let up on him, he nodded.

  “Are you sure it was her?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and then hesitated. “At least...well, I’m... I’m not sure, not now. I thought it was her, but...” He looked away.

  She studied him. “Are you telling the truth?”

  “Yes!” He scooted away from her and grabbed Rio’s rope toy, waving it in front of the dog until he grabbed it. “It might have been her, but it might not have been, I don’t know.”

  There was something Rocky wasn’t telling her. Had he made up the sighting, or wished it into being? Was he trying to make her and Liam think his mom would be back soon, so they wouldn’t make him start school next week?

  “It probably wasn’t her,” he said, tugging at the rope toy.

  Yasmin ignored that comment. “Could she be staying somewhere around here, and wanted to check on you?” She frowned. “Although if that was the case, why wouldn’t she stop?”

  “Because she’s scared!” The words seemed to burst out of Rocky, and then he added, “or something.” He got very busy playing tug-of-war with Rio.

  Rocky definitely knew more than he was saying about his mom’s disappearance. But what exactly did he know?

  The dog growled fiercely. Rocky let the rope toy go and Rio shook it hard, and then Rocky said, “Rio, drop it.”

  The dog dropped the toy and sat.

  Rocky produced a treat out of his pocket. “Good boy!”

  Even in the midst of her confusion about Rocky’s mom, Yasmin was impressed. “You taught him that?”

  Rocky nodded. “He’s real smart. He just didn’t ever get trained before.”

  Yeah, and maybe Rocky could identify.

  Suddenly, there was a lot of yapping outside the fence, and Rio raced over. The yapping intensified, and then at the same time, both Yasmin and Rocky saw the open gate. “Rio, no!” Rocky called as the dog raced through it.

  More high-pitched yapping and Rio’s deep bark. “Call off your mutt!” came a familiar and very unwelcome voice.