by Gayle Roper
“Mom and Dad are moving to a motel downtown.”
“God answers before we even ask,” he said, his voice quiet in her ear.
Dad stood in the door of the car, looking at Abby. “We’d like to have dinner with you once or twice while we’re here, if it’s okay with you. We can meet at some restaurant so we’re not a burden to you.”
How very difficult this letting go is for them. “That would be fine, Dad. I’d like that very much.”
“Not just you, ba—Abby. We’d like to have both of you come.” He smiled at Marsh.
“Oh, Daddy!” Abby ran to her father and hugged him. Marsh followed her, holding out his hand. “Thanks, Mr. MacDonald. I’d love to join you.”
“Len,” Dad said as the men shook. “Call me Len.”
Abby went to the passenger side of the car and bent to kiss her mother through the open window. “I’ll be all right, Mom. Honestly I will.”
Mom didn’t look convinced, but she tried to smile. “We’ll call you—”
“—in a couple of days,” finished Dad. “Maybe Monday.”
Mom closed her eyes. It was obvious that four days seemed an eternity to her.
Abby’s heart broke. She didn’t want to be Alvild the pirate, losing her family forever. “Why don’t we go somewhere after church on Sunday?” she suggested. “We’re all going to be there anyway, and we all have to eat.” She looked at Marsh for his opinion.
He nodded. “Is that an all-right time with you, Len? Mrs. MacDonald?”
Mom looked brighter. “We’ll save you seats. You know your father, early for everything.”
“We’ll meet them after the service, Han.”
“But—”
Dad looked at Marsh. “We’ll meet you out on the front walk after the service.”
Abby stood beside Marsh, his hand once again on her shoulder, and watched her parents drive away. Her chest was tight and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Marsh leaned forward, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Free at last.”
She spun, grabbing him around the waist, burying her face in his chest. He held her, saying nothing, just gently rocking her.
“I feel like such an idiot,” she told his T-shirt. “I wanted them to go, and now they have and I feel … lonely? Uncaring? Thoughtless? Mean? Ugly? All of the above? It’s ridiculous!”
“You love them, and you’re afraid you hurt them.”
She straightened. “I love them, and I know I hurt them, or at least Mom.”
“When two people who love each other disagree, one if not both of them are bound to get hurt, at least for a time.”
She sighed. “Family relationships are so complex!”
He gave a half laugh. “Tell me about it. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that since parents and kids are connected by DNA, heritage, and life experiences, that the members would be similar to each other when just the opposite is often true.”
“I hate seeing us as dysfunctional. Somehow it sounds like we’re not spiritual enough to overcome or something.”
“All families are dysfunctional to some degree. How could it be otherwise when families are made up of sinners? I don’t think, though, that disagreeing means you’re failing in relationships. It just means you disagree. How you handle the disagreement determines how warped the fabric of your family becomes.”
She was sure he was right. Still … “Did you see how red Mom’s eyes were? I did that to her. When she cried over me when I was ill, I didn’t feel guilty. I hadn’t done anything on purpose to make her cry. It was just life happening. But this is different. I chose to make her sad.”
“No, you chose to be your own woman.”
“It comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.” He wrapped his large hand around her smaller one. “Motivation makes the difference. The outcome of your choice may be the same, but the reason for making your decision wasn’t to injure your mother.”
“So why do I feel so selfish?”
“ ‘For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ Do you want to be free of your parents’ domination to do what you want regardless of their feelings or because you know God has special things for you to do?”
“I want to do whatever it is that God wants me to do. I want to be whoever it is that He wants me to be.”
Marsh nodded. “That’s why I’m not in politics, but was I wrong to choose as I have? It cost me my father.”
“Your choice sounds so noble and godly. You chose seminary and teaching future pastors. It’s so spiritual. But being a kids’ librarian? Moving to the seashore?”
“Have you changed your mind then? Do you want Len and your mom to come back? I think they’d come at the drop of a hat.”
She was silent for a few seconds, thinking back over the past three years with the constant protecting, cosseting, choosing on her behalf. “No.” She squared her shoulders. “I don’t want them to come back. I need to find my own path, wherever it takes me. I do want to remain close to them, so I’m glad we’ll see them Sunday. But I’m also glad I won’t see them for three days.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Good for you.”
“Think so?”
“Sure do.” He walked her to the steps. “Now you get a good night’s sleep.”
Abby was almost to her porch when she heard Marsh call, “Come on, Fargo.” He slapped his side. Apparently the dog wasn’t close at hand because the volume of Marsh’s call increased. “Fargo! Come here, boy!”
Abby stepped onto the porch and stopped, frozen at the sight before her. Puppy stood on the end of the chaise, her body rigid, the hair on her back at full attention. She was nose to nose with Fargo, whose entire hind end vibrated due to the enthusiastic wagging of his stubby tail.
Abby called, “Marsh, he’s up here. Come. You’ve got to see this.”
Marsh took the steps two at a time. “He’s not eating Puppy, is he?”
She shook her head. “I think Puppy’s about to shred him.”
Fargo whuffed, the loud noise replacing the whines of delight he’d been making deep in his throat. The noise startled Puppy so much that she jerked back, flattening her ears. Quick as a flare of heat lightning on a hot summer’s night her paw flashed, catching the unwary Fargo in the nose. This time his whuff was one of surprise as his hind end collapsed and he sat, stunned by the attack.
“No claws,” Abby assured Marsh as she hurried forward to save Fargo from further insult. She gathered Puppy in her arms where the cat promptly became boneless. Abby studied Fargo’s black nose. “No blood.” She held out her hand to him. “I apologize for Puppy’s terrible manners.” He licked her palm.
Marsh scratched Puppy behind the ears, and the cat began to purr. The noise fascinated Fargo, who risked putting his nose in harm’s way to investigate. Puppy, eyes closed, was too mesmerized by the pleasant sensation to notice.
“So you’re looking for a friend, not a meal?” Marsh took hold of Fargo’s collar. “You can try again another day. Right now, heel.”
With a sad look at the lounging Puppy, Fargo followed Marsh. At the top of the stairs, Marsh looked back. “Pleasant dreams, Abby. Things will look better in the morning.”
Marsh turned out to be right. The next morning the apartment echoed a bit without anyone in it except her and Puppy, but it was wonderful to know that no one would be telling her how, what, and when she should eat, or check up on her when she came home. She left for work with a light heart.
The first thing she did was go to Nan.
“Do you have the envelopes that came with the letters about me?”
Nan nodded.
“May I see them? Marsh, my—” My what? What should she call him? Was he her boyfriend? Or was he just a good friend? Now that she thought about it, they’d never even been out on a date. She’d gone more places with Sean than Marsh. “Marsh, my frien
d, had an idea that might exonerate me.”
Nan got the letters from her desk.
“See the date on the second letter, the false accusation one?” Abby put her finger on the postmark. “It was mailed on Tuesday, my second day here, in the morning. I spent most of my first day with you, right? So there was no time to get into trouble.”
“No time to get into trouble!” Nan cried. She threw her arms around Abby, hugging her. “What a relief. I knew there was something wrong with this whole mess, besides the anonymity. I just hadn’t been able to put my finger on what it was.” She grabbed the phone. “I need to go call Mr. Martindale at once.”
Abby smiled and drifted to her own desk where she was hard at work when Nan appeared again. “Abby, what was done to you is so wrong. Do you have any idea who would do such a thing or why?”
That was the one dark stain on Abby’s brilliant horizon, that and her amnesia. As she and Nan discussed the accusations, the venom behind them seeped into her heart, poisoning even the joy of exoneration. Strange as it seemed, neither she nor Nan could think of anything except the hit-and-run that would account for the enmity of the letters.
“I guess they were to discredit me so I’d be a suspect witness.”
“Despicable.”
Abby agreed. She also agreed to call Greg Barnes of the Seaside police and report the letters. Perhaps there were clues there that neither she nor Nan could decipher due to their lack of forensic training.
“I don’t think my serial reading loads of mysteries qualifies me,” Nan said with a smile.
Greg had just left the library, taking the original letters and envelopes with him, when Sean Schofield stopped by unannounced to take Abby to lunch again, this time in his new car.
“Got it yesterday,” he said. “Isn’t she a honey?”
“Why are cars feminine?” Abby asked. “Why aren’t they its?”
“That’s easy,” Sean said. “They are the loves of men’s lives.” He ran a caressing hand over the BMW’s green fender.
The seats were wonderful, the ride was smooth, and she knew she should feel more flattered by Sean’s attention than she did. Any number of women would give their eyeteeth for a chance to streak through Seaside beside him and to eat lunch with him, this time at a hole in the wall at the southern end of the boardwalk. Try as she would, she couldn’t whomp up any feelings for him beyond a generic appreciation for him as a handsome, intelligent man. Still, he was a source of medical information she could plumb while she had the chance.
“In your experiences, have you ever met anyone with amnesia like mine?”
Sean shook his head as he automatically gave their waitress a huge smile when she delivered their food. The young woman colored a brilliant red and couldn’t take her eyes from him. Abby had to grab her BLT on whole wheat toast, extra mayo, when the girl set it so close to the edge of the table that it started to tilt. She had to wave her empty Coke glass in the girl’s face to get her to notice that she needed a refill.
“Don’t feel guilty about the amnesia, Abby,” Sean said, oblivious to the bemused waitress. “Many times a victim never remembers.”
“But I wasn’t a victim,” Abby protested. “Karlee was. And she remembers more than I do!”
“In your own way you were as much a victim as that little girl.” He drenched his hamburger with so much ketchup that Abby questioned his ability to pick it up without dripping all down his front, making him look like he’d spent hours in emergency surgery and was wearing more of his patient’s blood on his person than the patient had left in his veins. He took a huge bite, and somehow the ketchup remained where it belonged. “Do you remember the accident that killed your husband and daughter?”
It was obvious he expected a no, but Abby said, “Very clearly. I never lost consciousness, and I remember every horrible moment.” Snapshots flickered through her mind. “I saw the car approaching because I was looking at Sam. I knew we were going to be hit at full speed. I remember the impact, the horrendous grinding noise of metal on metal, the ghastly silence after everything stopped moving, and the crying of the driver of the car that hit us. I remember knowing that Sam and Maddie were both dead and I wasn’t. I remember thinking they’d never get us out of such a mangled corpse of a car, that I’d bleed to death before they got to me, and wondering if that would be so bad.”
Sean looked shocked, his hamburger poised halfway to his mouth. “Oh, Abby.” A huge blob of ketchup dripped onto his plate.
“With the accident last week, I remember Karlee skipping down the sidewalk. She wore pink overalls and had her ponytail caught up in a pink scrunchie. She must have just learned to skip because she could only do it with one leg, you know?”
He nodded.
“Of course you know. You work with kids all the time.”
He smiled at her. “Go on.”
“I even remember a car speeding down Thirty-fourth Street. It scared me. I remember telling myself that I would be fine. I wasn’t in the intersection. No one could hurt me where I was. I remember Karlee checking the light, even looking both ways on Central. Then I remember waking up at the hospital.”
“You remember the car?” Sean looked amazed. “Have you talked to the police?”
“I remember that there was a car, but I have no mental image of what it was like. It was just a black blur.”
“A black blur?”
Abby nodded. “But even Karlee knows it was black. So do the cops from paint they found on the parked cars it struck.”
“I wonder if the police can tell the make of a car from the paint they recover.” Sean chomped on a potato chip, then looked at it in disgust. “It is so hard to get a crisp chip around here. They wilt as soon as they hit the sea air. It drives me crazy.”
Abby grinned. She had been thinking the same thing. She’d also been thinking how grateful she was that he didn’t dip his potato chips in the ketchup that had dripped onto his plate. It would have been more than she could stomach.
“Can you trust TV shows?” she asked. “I remember a TV show in which they caught the bad guy through tracing the paint, but I don’t know how accurate that was.”
“Well, I sure hope they get whoever it was. The police here are quite competent.” Somehow it didn’t sound like a compliment. “Now let’s talk about something more pleasant. How do you like your new job? How do they like you?”
“Oh, Sean, it’s great. I love what I’m doing. I like it better than teaching, and I liked teaching. I think they like me, too.”
“No glitches after four whole days? Sometimes the first few days can be terrible until you’re acclimated.”
She thought about the letters but decided not to talk about them. They had become a nonissue. “Smooth as a new baby’s bottom. You should have seen how responsive the little ones were to StoryTime yesterday All those bright little faces watching, laughing in the right places, getting worried in the right places.”
“It must be nice to have them smiling at you. I get them in tears much of the time. Either they’re sick or hurt, or I have to give them a shot. Makes one very unpopular.”
Abby laughed, and they talked about her job all the way back to the library. She was reaching for the handle to climb out of the spiffy new convertible when Sean asked, “How’d you like to go out for dinner tomorrow night?”
Abby’s breath caught. She had been hoping these lunches were just friendship visits with no further plans on Sean’s part. She hated male-female complications. She’d never known how to handle them, and she’d been out of the dating loop so long, she’d lost what little skill she had.
“Thanks so much, Sean, but I can’t.” She tried to sound regretful.
“Saturday?”
Abby shook her head.
He studied her a minute. “Any time?”
“Not for a date, Sean. I like you, but—”
He put up a hand. “It’s okay. I get the hint.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. You’re a great gu
y.”
He looked grim. “Which one is it?”
“What?”
“Marsh or Rick? Which one?”
She thought about denying it but knew the truth was best. “Marsh.”
Sean shrugged. “Your loss.”
Taken aback by the towering ego that comment suggested, Abby nodded. “Okay.” She climbed out of the car. “Thanks for lunch. I enjoyed it.” In spite of the ketchup.
He didn’t bother to acknowledge her comment, just drove off without a glance, leaving her standing in the street.
Someone doesn’t deal well with rejection, does he?
Thirty-five
WHILE SEAN HAD no use for a specific woman and never had, he reveled in his popularity with all women. They fawned over him. From the nurses to the harried mothers of his patients to the girls in the checkout counters at the grocery store, they loved him. One smile was all it took.
Except for her.
He wasn’t used to being turned down, and he knew he had let his pique show. It was not very polished of him, an educated, urbane man who oozed refinement and who had cornered the market on charm. It angered him that he’d allowed her to bother him, to remind him that a residue of life in that blue-and-white trailer still lingered just below the surface no matter how much he struggled to bury it, that he was a Piney no matter how hard he worked to acquire the polish that made him king of the hill, the soon-to-be-appointed chief of staff.
As he scribbled notations on patient charts in his crisp white lab jacket, he pondered her treachery. That she had no idea of the struggles she was putting him through was beside the point. She was the bane of his existence.
He heard McCoy’s insidious voice in his ear. “Kill her, Sean. Take her out before she takes you out.”
Sean’s heart began to pound. Should he do that? Could he do that?
“Coward, Sean? A man takes charge and does what’s gotta be done. A man protects his back.”
Sean batted at his ear and rubbed over his right eye. He rarely got headaches, and he had little tolerance for them when they came. Too bad all his medications were at home.
