Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “Okay. Thank you,” she said.

  She looked up at him with those big eyes and he felt obligated, not for the first time, to tell her that there were good men. He just wasn’t sure how to do that, because she wasn’t asking. Instead, he stepped out of her way so that she could come inside.

  Once she was inside, she didn’t seem to know where to be. She looked like she was going over to the loveseat, but then seemed to change her mind a few steps in. She stood in the middle of the room, looked around, and then watched her aunt fuss over the two cats that were meowing and gliding in circles at her feet.

  “I’ll go get y’all’s things,” Dwight said, and hurried out the door.

  He got the two overnight bags and Zoe’s backpack—which weighed more than the other two combined—out of the trunk, then hurried back inside. The two women were right where he’d left them.

  “Where do you want me to put these?”

  Paulette shook her head and waved at the floor. “Just set ’em down. Everything got to be washed.”

  He put the bags on the carpet. “Uh, I guess I’ll be getting along,” he said after a moment. “Unless y’all need me to do anything.”

  Zoe glanced over at him, but then looked away, toward the kitchen.

  “I don’t guess so,” Paulette answered. “We’ll just wait to hear from Ms. Redmond.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be in touch as soon as she’s done over there,” Dwight said. “She wanted to check in on y’all anyway.”

  “All right then,” Paulette said.

  “Miss Zoe, you take care. You can call me or the lieutenant any time if you need something.”

  She looked over at him. “Thank you.”

  Dwight nodded, then made his escape, closing the door quietly behind him. He heard someone lock it before he’d gotten off the front steps.

  Zoe looked around the room after she’d locked the door. She couldn’t help but look over at the loveseat, and the sense that everything about the world had changed right there gave her a twinge of vertigo. She looked away quickly, and almost started for the dining room table, but the back door was right beyond it and she wasn’t ready to look at that, either.

  Her aunt looked at her, the cats at her feet. “Don’t have any other place to go to,” Paulette said.

  Zoe swallowed and nodded. “I know.”

  Paulette watched her for a moment. Neither one of them knew what to say for a moment. “I’ll get these clothes in the wash,” Paulette eventually said. “Then I guess I’ll fix us some lunch.”

  Zoe nodded. “Okay,” she said, though food made her sick.

  Paulette walked into the kitchen, the cats trailing noisily behind her. Zoe grabbed her backpack and headed down the hall. As soon as she entered the hall, the air seemed to have more oxygen in it. He hadn’t been there; it was still clean.

  She walked into her room at the end of the hall and set her backpack on the floor at the foot of her twin bed. She looked around, and everything was exactly where she left it, but all of it looked different. The poster from her favorite movie, Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo & Juliet. Her teddy bear, Benjamin, lying face down on top of the covers. Her papier mache mobile of the planets hanging in front of her window. All of it the same, but she was different.

  She sat down on the end of the bed, stared down the hall at the living room, and waited for Aunt Paulette to call her for lunch.

  Maggie’s parents lived on Hwy 98, on a stretch just outside of town and right against the bay. It wasn’t the most scenic of roads, or the fanciest of neighborhoods, but it had been affordable bayfront property back in the seventies, and it had been a great place for a water-loving child to grow up.

  Maggie pulled off the highway and started down the long gravel drive. She’d picked Kyle up from school after she’d gone home and fed Coco and the chickens and packed overnight bags for Kyle and herself. She glanced over at Kyle in the passenger seat. “Do you have any homework to do?”

  “Just some math,” Kyle said.

  “Make sure you do it, okay?”

  “I will,” he said. “Can’t I go with you and Granddad and Sky?”

  “Sorry, buddy. Granddad needs help, but I don’t want to overwhelm Zoe,” Maggie said. “She knows Sky, if she remembers her.”

  She parked next to her dad’s old truck in front of the house.

  “I feel bad for her,” Kyle said.

  Maggie sighed. “Me, too.”

  “I’m glad you’re the one helping her.”

  Maggie nodded. “I hope I can.”

  “You will,” Kyle said.

  Maggie blinked a few times and then gave Kyle a smile. “You’re such a good guy, Kyle.

  She looked up Gray Redmond came out through the front screen door, and she and Kyle got out as he made his way to them.

  Gray Redmond was a tall, lanky man with sand-colored hair that tended to fall into his eyes when he let it go too long between cuts. He was a quiet and gentle man, a bookworm who used his words sparingly and considered them well before he spoke. Maggie watched him as he rolled up the sleeves of his old denim work shirt, revealing arms that were deceptively sinewy. There was an old saying that only an oysterman picked a fight with an oysterman, and it was true of anyone who had any sense. Decades of working those tongs had made Gray far stronger than he looked.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Maggie said.

  “Hey there, Sunshine,” he said. “Hey, buddy.”

  “Hey, Granddad.”

  Kyle reached into the back to get his backpack and overnight bag, as Gray gently grabbed Maggie’s face and kissed her forehead.

  “How are you, Daddy?’ Maggie asked.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Hey, Kyle, why don’t you go on in the house and let me talk to your mother a minute? Your Grandma’s got some lemon bars waiting on you.”

  “Okay,” Kyle said. “I’ll see you later, Mom.”

  “Hey!” she called, as Kyle started to head for the house. He stopped, walked around the front of the Jeep, and gave her a hug. “I love you,” Maggie said.

  “Love you, too, Mom. See you tomorrow.”

  Maggie and her father watched him until he reached the front door, then Gray turned to his daughter. “Where’s Sky?”

  “She’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Do they know why they’re spending the night?”

  Maggie looked away. “I just said I was working all night,” she admitted. “I’d rather lie to them than ask them to lie to Mom.”

  Gray tucked his hands in his front pockets and looked over Maggie’s head at nothing in particular. “Your mama worries about you,” he said.

  “I know. But I can’t really handle her panic over me staying at Boudreaux’s,” Maggie said. “And I can’t really see her being reassured about it, either.”

  Gray looked down at Maggie. “Did you tell Wyatt?”

  “Yes.” Maggie said. She tried to crawl out from under her father’s steady gaze by focusing on the keys in her hand. “He’s angry with me.”

  “I expect so,” Gray answered.

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked once she got up the nerve to look at him.

  Gray regarded her a moment. “No, baby. But I am worried.”

  “He’s not going to corrupt me, Daddy.”

  “I’m not worried about you being corrupted, Maggie,” Gray said. “I’m worried about you being confused. And I’m worried that this’ll get in between you and Wyatt.”

  Maggie swallowed hard. “I love Wyatt, Daddy.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Maybe more than I loved David. Or differently,” she said. “It’s not that he’s insecure about Boudreaux—”

  “Aw, Maggie, don’t kid yourself,” Gray interrupted. “No man who’s in love is secure.” He looked toward the highway. “And Bennett Boudreaux is one magnetic son of a gun. But dangerous.”

  “He’s not dangerous to me.”

  “There’s more than one kind of danger, Maggie.”
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br />   “He saved my life.”

  Gray nodded and looked at the ground. “That he did.”

  “And you’re the one that sent him,” Maggie said, trying not to sound as nervous as the statement made her.

  “I did,” Gray said. “We went over that then. I knew he hadn’t evacuated.”

  He looked up and met her eyes, Maggie’s heart rate picking up just a bit as they stared at each other a moment.

  “Something you want to say, Margaret Anne?” he asked her quietly.

  It took Maggie a moment to answer. “Did you and Boudreaux used to be friends, Daddy? Back before I was born?”

  “No, Maggie,” he said after a moment. “We were never friends.”

  He seemed to wait for her to ask him something else.

  Were you his alibi in ’77, Daddy? To her relief, she chickened out.

  Gray looked up at the sound of a vehicle coming up the drive, and Maggie was grateful to see Sky approaching in her father’s old Toyota truck.

  “Well, Sunshine,” Daddy said. “Let’s get this boat in the water.”

  Maggie pulled into the driveway first, and Gray and Sky pulled up next to her in Gray’s truck. Paulette came out of the front door and looked at Maggie curiously as Gray pulled his red toolbox out of the bed of his truck.

  “Hey, Paulette,” Maggie said as she walked toward the front steps.

  “Hey,” Paulette answered.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought my father and my daughter over to help install some motion sensor lights for you outside.”

  “I don’t have the money to pay for that,” the woman said.

  Maggie stopped at the bottom of the steps. “It’s okay, these were leftovers,” Maggie said, though they weren’t, and she had no idea what she was saying they were left over from.

  Zoe appeared behind Paulette, and Paulette got out of the way, stepped down onto the small front stoop.

  “Hey, Zoe,” Maggie said.

  “Hey, Coach.”

  Maggie heard Gray and Sky’s footsteps on the walkway, and glanced over her shoulder before looking back at Zoe. “Do you remember my dad?”

  A faint smile appeared on the girl’s face as she looked at Gray. The little girls had always loved Gray, who had helped Maggie coach the softball team for several years.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zoe said. “Hey, Coach Redmond.”

  “Zoe. Look at you, so grown,” he said with a smile.

  “Hey, Zoe,” Sky said from beside him.

  Zoe seemed to think for a moment before remembering the older girl’s name. “Hey, Sky.”

  “Man, you’re taller than I am,” Sky said, though that wasn’t saying much. She and Maggie were both 5’3.

  Zoe gave Sky a polite smile.

  “Is it okay, Paulette?” Maggie asked.

  “I guess,” Paulette said, her flat tone more from embarrassment at charity than it was from apathy. “I appreciate it.”

  Maggie shrugged. “No problem.”

  Paulette stepped onto the grass and lit a cigarette.

  “Do you mind if I use your restroom?” Maggie asked.

  “No, go ’head,” the woman answered. “Zoe, show her where it is.”

  “I’ll be right out, Daddy,” Maggie said, then she followed Zoe through the living room and down the hall. Through an open door, she could see what was obviously Zoe’s room at the end of the hall. Zoe stopped just before it, next to an open door on the right.

  “Here you go, Coach.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said.

  She used the restroom, and when she stepped back out into the hall, something on her right caught her eye. Zoe was sitting at the foot of her bed. Maggie walked into the room, stood in front of the girl.

  “Do they know?” Zoe asked her.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “I hope that’s all right.”

  “Do they know about you?”

  “Yes.”

  Zoe nodded, then went quiet for a minute. “I don’t feel like I belong in here anymore,” she said quietly, without looking up.

  Maggie sat down beside her on the bed. “Why?” she asked gently.

  Zoe swallowed hard and looked around the room. “This is a kid’s room,” she said. “None of this stuff in here is the real world.”

  Maggie let out a slow breath. “That’s not true, Zoe,” she said. “Just because the bad stuff is real, that doesn’t mean the good stuff isn’t real, too.”

  She looked around the room, her eyes grazing the paper flowers and the stuffed animals and the stack of poetry books. “This is all still you, Zoe,” she said. “This is who you are.”

  Zoe looked at Maggie. Her beautiful eyes looked old and tired. “I can’t feel anything,” she said.

  Maggie took time with her answer. She knew too well that the lack of feeling was a temporary blessing. “I think that’s God’s way of giving your body a little time to heal before you have to heal everything else.”

  Zoe looked at her a moment, then looked away.

  “Zoe, do you remember Gina Merritt’s son, Stuart?”

  Zoe looked at her quickly. “Stuart? Yes,” she answered, a question in her voice.

  “Do you think there’s a chance that he might be the one who hurt you?” Maggie asked. She watched Zoe think about that.

  “I don’t think so,” the girl said.

  “Did he ever say or do anything that made you uncomfortable while you were there?”

  Zoe shrugged a little. “He wasn’t really around much. And Miss Gina was always with us,” she said. She thought a moment more. “He looked at me sometimes, but he never said much.”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  “Is that the lead you were working on?”

  “Yes.”

  Zoe looked down at her hands, picked at a hangnail on her thumb. “I feel like I would have known if it was him.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said again, though she didn’t think that ruled him out.

  They were silent for a moment, then Zoe looked up at her. “I’m so tired,” she said quietly.

  Maggie swallowed back tears that Zoe didn’t need, and nodded her understanding. After a moment, Zoe leaned over, cautiously, slowly, and rested her head in the crook of Maggie’s neck.

  Maggie hesitated a moment, then raised a hand to the back of the girl’s head and held her. She held her for a long while. Zoe didn’t shudder, didn’t cry, but hot, slow tears crept down the side of Maggie’s face and slid into Zoe’s hair.

  Maggie left Zoe curled up asleep at the foot of her bed, and helped Gray and Sky install motion lights near the windows and doors of the duplex, until her phone alarm went off, alerting her that it was time to go to Boudreaux’s.

  She finished drilling the last bolt on a light over the kitchen window, then climbed down off of one of Daddy’s ladders. She found her father in the front, folding up his own ladder while Sky put his tools away. Maggie handed the drill to Sky.

  “I gotta go, you guys,” Maggie said. “Sky, you’ll make sure your brother gets to school on time?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Sky said.

  Gray laid the ladder in the truck bed. “Hey, Sky. Run around back and unplug the extension cord for me.

  “Okay,” she said, then gave her mother a quick hug. “See you tomorrow, Mom.”

  “Bye, baby.” She watched Sky walk around the corner of the house, then looked at her father. “I’ll see you later, Daddy.”

  “Wyatt still upset?”

  Maggie looked down at the gravel. “I guess. He’s not returning my calls.”

  Gray ran a hand through his hair. “It’ll be all right, Maggie.”

  Maggie nodded, then blew out a breath and hugged her father goodbye. “I’ll see you.”

  Gray nodded, then watched her walk to her Jeep, pull out, and drive away.

  Maggie parked in Boudreaux’s driveway next to his black Mercedes. The trunk of the car was open. She cut the engine, then checked her phone one more time to see if she�
��d missed a call from Wyatt. She hadn’t. It was almost seven, and she hadn’t heard from him since they’d left each other that morning. This alone was an unusual event. The weight of his silence pressed down on her chest.

  She looked up as Boudreaux came out the front door, followed by Amelia. Boudreaux carried two overnight bags and a briefcase in his hands. Maggie got out of the Jeep and met them at the Mercedes.

  “Hello, Maggie,” he said.

  “Mr. Boudreaux.”

  Amelia nodded at her. “Mama already in the bed, watchin’ the television,” she said. “She’ll be asleep by nine, ten o’ clock.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said.

  Amelia nodded again, then went and climbed in the passenger side of the car. Boudreaux closed the trunk, then looked at Maggie and ran a hand through his hair as the evening wind tossed a lock into his eyes.

  “The neighbors to the left and across the street know we’re going out of town overnight, and that you’re watching Miss Evangeline for me,” he said. “The neighbors to the right are in the Bahamas.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said.

  “I thought it best that they know I’m out of town, if they happened to see you or your car.”

  Maggie gave a slight shrug. “Thank you,” she said. “It won’t help much.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t really care,” she said.

  “Neither do I, except on your behalf,” he answered.

  Maggie nodded again.

  “Please help yourself to anything you’d like to eat or drink,” he said. “Amelia says there’s some shrimp étouffée left from dinner.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said.

  Those incredible blue eyes drilled into her own, and he seemed to start to say something, then glanced around at the street and held out a hand instead. “Thank you for doing this,” he said.

  Maggie took his hand. “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” he said as he opened his door. “There’s a set of spare keys to the house in a blue bowl in the hall.”

  Maggie nodded, then watched them back out of the driveway. Boudreaux had turned the corner by the time Maggie had retrieved her overnight bag and purse from the Jeep, and she turned and headed up to the front porch.