Seagrass Pier

by Colleen Coble

  Elin forced a smile. “Go inside, honey. We’ll go to the park in a little while. I need to talk to Mr. Everton for a few minutes.”

  Her daughter gave a final pout, then turned and went back inside. The door banged behind her as a final punctuation of her displeasure.

  The silence stretched between Elin and Marc as their gazes locked. How on earth did she begin?

  He paced to the door and back, then dug into his pocket and popped a mint from its package. He popped it into his mouth. “She’s my daughter and you never told me.” He spat out the tight words, and a muscle in his jaw jumped.

  Marc struggled to control his anger. He’d instantly recognized Josie’s resemblance to him instead of her red-haired mother. And Tim had been blond. Josie’s hazel eyes were flecked with green and gold, just like his. The dimple in her right cheek matched his. So did the shape of her face and her dark curls. And her widow’s peak.

  He paced the porch and looked at Elin. Her figure was enough to stop traffic, but their personalities had never really meshed. Except for that one night after her father died. Ravaged by grief, she’d shown up at his house looking for Sara, and he gave her a drink to calm her down. One drink led to another and another until they crossed a line of no return. A night they both regretted.

  He saw hope and fear warring in her beautiful face. “Why?” His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She bit her lip. “As far as I was concerned, Tim was her father. That was one of the conditions he made before we were married, that he wanted her to be his daughter.”

  “He’s been gone for two years. You could have come to me as soon as he died.” His gaze swung back to the door. Elin had deprived him of two years he could have had with his daughter. His fists clenched again, and his throat ached from clenching his jaw.

  Her eyes shimmered with moisture. “The last thing he asked me before he died was to never tell you. H-He was jealous. I’m sure you realized that when you came here with Sara that day and he went into a rage.”

  He gave a curt nod. “So you never planned to tell me?”

  Her chin came up. “No. I’d betrayed Tim once. I didn’t want to do it again.”

  The fact he had a child still floored him. What did he do with this? “I’ll talk to my attorney and draw up some support papers.”

  A flush ran up her pale skin. “I don’t want your money, Marc! Josie is my daughter. Tim is her daddy, and we don’t need another one. The only thing I need from you is for you to find that man and put him behind bars before he hurts me.”

  “I intend to.” Surely she wouldn’t keep his daughter away from him? He wasn’t going to be one of those deadbeat dads, no way. “But I’m not so sure about that cell-memory stuff.”

  She wrung her hands. “I see your skepticism. Don’t you think I know it’s crazy? Everyone just says, ‘There, there, Elin. You’ve been through so much. This will pass.’ But it’s getting worse! The dreams come nearly every night. You have to help me.”

  Against his will, he saw the conviction in her face. So what if it was some kind of hallucination from the heart transplant? Josie was still his daughter. He owed it to her to see if there was any truth to this. And his lack of control that night still haunted him. Her grief for her father had been a poor excuse for what they’d done.

  He went back to his perch on the porch railing and picked up his pen. “Start over from the beginning.”

  TWO

  Elin rolled over and looked at the clock. It was nearly two in the morning, and she hadn’t fallen asleep yet. She massaged the pain between her breasts. The discomfort had lessened substantially this week, but the twinges reminded her every day of how fragile her life was.

  What if Marc tried to take her daughter? Even trying to be part of Josie’s life would be a complication Elin didn’t have the emotional energy to handle. She flipped on her light since she wasn’t sleeping anyway and reached for her MacBook.

  She called up the real-estate listing again and stared at the house on Hope Island she’d purchased. Her father had been stationed on the quaint little island for three years during her teens, and she treasured the memories of time spent with her parents and sister. Maybe she could recapture that peace and learn something about Laura in the process. She felt well enough to handle the move now.

  She heard a sound and raised her head. Was Mom up again? Or maybe Josie? She closed her computer and got up. After opening her door, she listened a moment but the sound didn’t come again. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check. She moved on to her daughter’s room, then relaxed when she saw Josie curled up with her stuffed bear. Elin went to the tiny room her mother occupied, barely bigger than a closet. She slept as well.

  Though the sound must have been her imagination, she couldn’t shake off the sense of unease. She stood in the hallway outside Josie’s room and listened to the hall clock ticking. Nothing. Turning toward her bedroom door, she mentally shrugged at her nerves.

  Something thudded as if someone had bumped into a wall. In an instant, she was in Josie’s room and had her daughter in her arms. Josie barely stirred and only turned her face into Elin’s chest. Elin clutched her and listened again. There was no phone in here.

  A gleeful whistle echoed down the hall. Someone was in the house, between her and the outside door. There was only one room in the house with a lock, and it also had a phone. To get there, she would have to go closer to the intruder, but she had no choice. She practically flew down the hall and into her office. As she slammed the door shut and locked it, she glimpsed a shadow rounding the corner.

  A man laughed, a low chuckle from the other side of the door. Terror climbed in her throat. She backed up until her thighs struck her desk, then whirled and grabbed the phone. No dial tone, but her cell phone was charging on the other side of the desk. She shifted Josie to the other shoulder and snatched for her mobile and dialed 911. Thank goodness her little girl hadn’t awakened.

  “Someone’s in the house.” She whispered her address to the dispatcher. “Please hurry.”

  “There’s a squad car two blocks from your location.” The woman on the other end sounded calm. “Officers will be there in just a couple of minutes. Stay on the line until they arrive.”

  The doorknob rattled almost playfully, and the man’s whistle came again. It vaguely sounded like a tune from The Phantom of the Opera. “The police will be here in a minute!” Elin shouted.

  His fingernails raked against the door. “You shouldn’t have told the police, Elin.” His voice sounded distorted as if he’d deliberately masked it. “Everything I do is for you, you know. You should have kept quiet.” A police siren wailed in the distance. His footsteps faded as he ran out the back door still whistling that same chilling tune.

  He was the murderer, the man who choked her in her dreams. Cradling Josie, she sank onto the chair. No one believed her. She gazed down into her daughter’s sweet face. He would kill her, and then what would become of Josie and her mom?

  The salt-laden wind lifted Elin’s long red hair off her neck as she dangled her legs above the ocean. Seagrass Pier seemed to go on forever and ever into the misty morning, and she wished she could walk out into those clouds and leave her problems behind.

  She forced a smile as Marc’s cousin, Sara Kavanagh, dropped to the weathered boards beside her. “You can’t even see the horizon.” Elin had fled to Sara’s after the break-in a week ago, and the movers had brought her things two days ago.

  Sara tucked a strand of honey-colored hair behind her ears. “It’s like that a lot in the morning.”

  “I love it.” One of her coworkers had told her this was where Laura spent the last year of her life, and Elin had fallen in love with it in a heartbeat. “It was built by a sea captain in 1905.” She studied the grand old structure with its parapet walkway around the top. “His wife probably watched for him from the widow’s walk.”

  Sara smiled. “Enough small talk. How are you doing, real
ly? Was it hard telling Marc?”

  Elin shuddered. “You should have seen his expression when I told him about the flashbacks. He really thought I was a crazy woman.”

  Sara hugged her, a firm embrace that brooked no nonsense. “You’re not crazy.” She waggled a brow. “At least not in the traditional sense. You’ll be fine.”

  Sara was an EMT with the Coast Guard. She knew about medical things. Elin desperately wanted reassurance, but she feared there was none. Not for this. She still felt the dream’s chill and power. “You believe me, don’t you, Sara?”

  “You know I do. That’s why I was glad when you said you wanted to come here. To get to Hope Beach, the killer will have to come by ferry, and he’ll be recognized as a stranger. This house is remote too. Not many know about it, and it’s easiest to take a boat to get here. The dirt road takes forever.” She turned her head and studied the lines of the house. “How did Kerri hear about this place?”

  “We did some research on Laura after I started having the dreams. She worked here as a nursing aide all last year until the owner went to an assisted-living place. Then she went to work for the cruise line. When Kerri was searching for information, she ran across the listing. We’d just sold Mom’s house before I got sick, and I really needed a bigger one if she was going to live with me long term. I thought we could move here and maybe learn more about Laura. I hope it doesn’t take long for my cottage to sell.”

  “And you’re close to me. Coffee dates, surfing, sunbathing. I love it!”

  Elin studied Sara’s dear face. They’d been friends since high school. She knew everything about Elin except one important fact. She swallowed hard. “I had to admit something else to him, Sara. He guessed, and I couldn’t lie. You’re going to be upset with me for not telling you before now, but I’d made Tim a promise. I couldn’t break it.”

  Sara’s smile vanished. “I already know, Elin. Marc is Josie’s father.”

  Elin’s gut clenched. “How did you know?”

  “I grew up with Marc. He’s more like a brother than a cousin. I know what he looked like as a kid. Exactly like Josie. And you both acted totally weird at your father’s funeral. Wouldn’t look at one another. When Marc saw you coming, he went the other way.”

  That stung. Especially because it was true. “You never said anything.”

  “I knew you had a good reason for keeping the truth from me.” Sara leaned over and hugged her. “I could give you a little space for love’s sake.”

  Elin returned her hug. “You’re the best friend ever.” The truth should be told even if it was uncomfortable. “I went to his house looking for you the day Dad died. I was a wreck. He gave me a drink to calm me down.” She rubbed her head. “We both drank too much. He’d just gotten word he was shipping off to Afghanistan, and I was nearly hysterical. The next thing I remembered was waking up in his bed. I was so mortified. It was wrong. We both knew it too. I mean, I never so much as looked at him that way.”

  “Don’t I know it. He always called you the ice princess.”

  Elin shrugged. “Oil and water, that was always us. It was so out of character. He tried to talk to me that morning, but I grabbed my clothes and ran. To this day, it haunts me. I disappointed God and hurt Tim.”

  “Tim was injured shortly after that, right?”

  Elin nodded. “As soon as he came home, I confessed. I couldn’t marry him without telling him the truth.”

  “I bet he was mad.”

  Elin didn’t like remembering the pain in his eyes. “He forgave me and said he understood. But I don’t think he ever really got over it.”

  Sara leaned back on her palms. “What did Marc say when he realized he was Josie’s father?”

  “I think he could have murdered me.” Elin examined the ends of her hair. She needed a trim. “I’m afraid he’s going to want to tell Josie the truth. He didn’t ask yet, but he will.”

  “Marc has always loved kids. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Sara hugged her knees to her chest. “He deserves to have a relationship with Josie.”

  Elin shook her head. “I wish I could forget what I did. God took me to the woodshed over my betrayal, and I still suffer a thousand deaths from guilt. But all that doesn’t matter now. Laura deserves justice.”

  “I know. Marc will get him.”

  “I’m not sure he really believes me. I think he’s just humoring me.”

  “What did the police say after the break-in? Didn’t that make them pay more attention?”

  “By that time they’d already categorized me as a crackpot. I believe they think I broke the window myself to convince them. And by the time they got there after he actually broke in, he was gone. I had no proof.”

  The sun had burned away the morning clouds, and she squinted in the glare to see two figures out front. “Mom and Josie are up. I’d better get them breakfast.” She gulped the last of her cold coffee and got to her feet.

  Sara rose too. “Since when did you start drinking coffee?”

  Elin looked at the cup in her hand. “I guess about six weeks ago. It smelled so good one morning and I had some. I don’t know why I hated it before.”

  They started for the house, and she realized she was happy for the first time in weeks. Something about this place spoke to her soul. The wind grabbed her fears and buried them in the sand dunes. She could breathe here, could see a future again. Marc and Sara would help her. She wasn’t facing this alone any longer.

  They reached the wide porch, and she stopped at the screen door. “What about you and Josh?”

  Sara made a face. “There is no me and Josh. It’s hopeless. He’s determined not to let me past that guard he has up.”

  “Have you tried, I mean, really tried?”

  Sara stared at her, then shook her head. “I guess not. I want him to realize he can trust me. I’ve tried to show him my character for the past two years, but I don’t know if he will ever put down his resistance.”

  “What if you tell him how you feel? What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “You mean like how would I deal with the ridicule at the base when he runs the other way?” Sara grinned, but her eyes were sad. “I’m going to let God work on him. He’ll do a much better job than I will.”

  “He always does.” Elin opened the screen door and entered the house with Sara on her heels.

  Josie ran to grab her leg. “Mommy, Grammy burned the bacon.”

  She smelled it then, the acrid smoke swirling from the kitchen. She rushed to the kitchen and found her mother scrubbing at a saucepan. “Are you all right, Mom?”

  Her mother wore a white housedress over jeans. She teetered on red high heels, and three pink curlers peeked from underneath several spots in her blond hair, badly in need of a fresh dye treatment.

  Her expression was vague as she glanced up. “There you are, Elin. I have breakfast ready.”

  The familiar sense of helplessness erased Elin’s optimistic mood. Her mother’s dementia had worsened recently, in spite of the medicine that was supposed to prevent the ministrokes that took her mother further and further away from her. How was she going to handle this too?

  When Marc saw the name on his cell phone, he nearly didn’t answer it. But his boss would just call back. “Hey, Harry. Sorry, I’ve got to run in five minutes. What’s up?”

  The man’s gruff voice bellowed in his ear. “What the devil do you think you’re doing? Did I or did I not specifically tell you to keep your nose out of this case? The next thing I know, you’ve taken leave and are poking around.”

  He set his jaw. “What I do on my own time is my business.”

  “If you compromise the integrity of this investigation, you’ll be out. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly.” Marc couldn’t keep the bite out of his voice.

  Harry heaved a sigh. “Look, Marc, I know how you feel. But I don’t even believe Will’s death is related to this case. It was an organ
ized crime hit. This wasn’t the only case you two were investigating.”

  “I told you he called me and said he had a new lead he was sure would lead us to the killer. Will got cut off before he could tell me where to meet him. Two hours later he was dead. I find that a little too coincidental.”

  “It was a shot to the head. See, this is why I want you off the case. You have no objectivity right now. Take your time off, but use it to get your head back in the game. Work on restoring that car. Go play beach volleyball. Find a pretty girl and go surfing. You’ve been through the fire lately. You could use some distraction.”

  Marc gritted his teeth but said nothing. Harry would not dissuade him from doing what he knew was right.

  “If I find out you’re still poking around, I’m going to personally come down there and kick your butt. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Marc was just going to have to be careful with his poking around.

  THREE

  The scent of burned bacon still lingered in the air as Elin fitted several skeleton keys in the lock to the third floor. “One of these has to fit.”

  Her mother had fallen asleep on the sofa, and this seemed like a good time to explore. Sara held Josie, all arms and legs like a monkey, as they stood at the end of the second-floor hallway. They were both eager to see the rest of the house.

  The lock finally clicked. Elin twisted the old black knob, and the door creaked open. Stale air rushed past her face, and she sneezed at the dust. “I don’t think anyone has been up here in ages.”

  Sara wrinkled her nose. “I think we’ll need that broom you brought.”

  Wielding the broom like a samurai sword, Elin ascended the wooden stairs, creaking underfoot like a leaky ship. “I love poking around old houses. You never know what you’ll find. And the history of this place is fascinating. Dad always wanted a chance to explore here.”