by Helen Conrad
“But…”
Once again, his mouth landed on hers.
“Hush,” he said this time, and she nodded reluctantly.
“Okay, I just want to say this. I’ve been watching you today, and thinking about you and how you’ve been reacting to things. It would be easy to just say you’re a little nuts and let it go.”
She started to speak and he put his index finger over her lips, stopping her.
“But I’ve got a theory. Let me tell you what it is. Then it will be your turn to talk. Okay?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“Here it is.”
He took her hand in his and kissed her palm, then looked up into her eyes. “You have a little dream in there, don’t you? A little dream. You want to find Susan and you want to take us all back in time and be the kids we used to be. Isn’t that your goal?”
“I…” She’d started to protest, but she stopped and thought about it for a minute. There was some truth in what he’d said. She hadn’t even realized it herself. That was the reason she’d come back here. She wanted to recreate the past.
And that was clearly crazy. You couldn’t recreate the past. It wouldn’t even be good for you if you did do it. You had to move on with the times.
But maybe you could recreate some of the emotions of the past. Somehow. She took a deep breath. It looked like he was going to give her a little space to say something and she wasn’t going to miss it.
“You get it. That’s exactly what I want. Wow.” She shook her head. She’d started out meaning to kid him, but somehow those emotions she was talking about caught in her throat and before she could say more, she was crying again. She looked at him, her lower lip trembling. “Blake, even with Aunt Gladys and everything else, those were the happiest days of my life. I had a family. And now, I..I…I’ve got nobody.”
Affection for this supposedly tough little cookie filled his heart. That couldn’t be right. She must have had others in her life over the years. He reached out to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“But, you’ve been in San Francisco for ages. Haven’t you developed any relationships?”
She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I try. But somehow, something in me just doesn’t connect.” She tried to smile. “I don’t know. Maybe everyone takes my jokes too seriously. I don’t know.”
He pulled her close and held her.
“I do want what we had growing up,” she went on, her face against his chest. “I want to feel a part of a place, to be where people know who I am and remember who I used to be. I want to live in a place where, if I end up falling and breaking my neck in my own kitchen, someone will notice that I didn’t show up for my morning latte. That just doesn’t happen in the city.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “That’s why you have to build your own community.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He was right. But there was more to it. She looked up at him. “Where’s your community, Blake?”
He looked into her beautiful eyes. She had a point. He’d come back in body, but how about the soul? He’d returned to heal and hide, and in all this time, he hadn’t found a group of people to share his life with. What was he waiting for?
“No close friends, right?” she said, eyebrows rising.
“What do you think, Kate?” His mouth twisted cynically. “You want to be my friend?”
She stared at him for a long moment, then leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. “I am your friend, numbskull. That’s what I’m doing here.”
***********
They went to Hank Peter’s store and bought eggs and a pint of ice cream. Mr. Peters was friendly enough this time, acting as though he was happy to see them. They went back to Blake’s apartment and sat back on the couch and shared some of the ice cream. And they talked. On and on. As though they had ten years of things saved up to say to each other.
And then they went back to analyzing each other and finished off the rest of the ice cream.
“Blake,” she said slowly as he filled the bowls. “I need to tell you something.”
He looked up, his gaze suddenly wary.
“What?” he said gruffly.
She took a deep breath. “I was kind of mean last night. Saying you were gorging on self-pity.”
“Oh. Is that what you said?” His smile mocked her. “I thought you said I was gorgeous. That’s why I had to kiss you. To thank you for that.”
She kicked him with her foot.
“Be serious. I worry about you. You are a good cop. If every cop that made a mistake and ended up getting someone killed quit, there would be no one left to protect the Cynthia Coopers of the world. I just want to say that I know you learned from it. You shouldn’t hide that expertise away and never use it again.” She shrugged. “We all need you, Blake.”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Thanks,” he told her, his voice a little rough. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She couldn’t hide a secret grin. “On the other hand,” she began, mischief in her eyes.
He groaned. “There goes the lawyer again.”
“Yeah, well…”
They talked a little longer, and he asked her about some famous cases that had been dealt with during her time in S.F.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Blake said, jabbing a finger at her when she told him more tales about her work as a defense attorney. “There you go. You’re a conflicted person.”
“Brilliant. No one else has gone directly to the heart of the matter like you have.” She glared at him. “What the hell am I conflicted about?”
“You went to law school and you became a defense attorney and you did a good job.” He shrugged. “Of course. I know you and I know you did a good job.” He shook his spoon at her. “But you were in the wrong role. You are genetically and emotionally predisposed to be a prosecutor. You can play at being a defense attorney, but your heart is firmly in the prosecutorial camp. So you were getting people off you thought should really be in jail. Weren’t you?”
She frowned and her lower lip came out rebelliously. “Sometimes,” she admitted.
“Most of the time. Right?”
She wanted to whimper but she held it back.
“In your heart, in your very soul, you’re not a defender. Kate, you’re a prosecutor. You want to catch bad guys and put them away. Don’t you?”
She sighed. “Maybe.”
“Sure. It’s your personality. It’s who you are. And every day you acted as a defense attorney instead, you died a little inside. Am I right?”
She turned dark, haunted eyes toward him. “Maybe.”
He shrugged. “You are what you are. Face it. And deal with it.”
She blinked and tried to smile. “Okay.”
And then she turned away because—although that wasn’t all of it, that wasn’t everything. But there was a kernel of truth to what he was saying.
He was right. She’d been living a life full of conflicts and it was no wonder she’d been stressed out. Hesitantly, she told him about one of her biggest conflicts—the one that tortured her and seemed impossible to deal with--what to do about her own sister.
“I’ve tried to help Susan over the years. I tried to bring her back to stay with me, tried to be a sister to her, tried to get her to help me make us into a family. But it was no use. She’d come to stay with me and in two or three days, I’d wake up and find her gone again. I wouldn’t know where she’d gone, why she left. She never told me.”
“You tried.”
She shook her head. “Not hard enough.”
“But there were drugs involved. Right?”
She nodded.
“That makes it almost impossible.”
“I know. But I should have got her into rehab, somehow.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. “Kate, we’ll find her. And when we do, I’ll help you get her into a treatment program.”
She kissed him and snuggled close. This was different. This was what
it felt like to have someone else to rely on-even just for moral support. This could be good, if it lasted.
***
And then it was late.
“I should be going,” she said. “Tomorrow is the day when we right all the wrongs. Right?”
“Right,” he agreed. He looked at her and his eyes darkened. “But I don’t think you should go back to that house. Not tonight.”
She stretched and yawned. “I’ve got to sleep somewhere.”
He shrugged. “My bed seems like a good place.”
She turned to look at him, surprised. “But where will you sleep?”
He grinned at her. “With you, silly girl.”
“Oh.” She stared at him, heart beating fast. “Okay then,” she said.
His arms came around her and he was kissing her again. It wasn’t home. She knew it might only last a nighttime. But it felt like home. And she needed that so badly.
Chapter Ten
Kate woke up with a start. The darkness of night was just beginning to show a hint of sunrise to come. She couldn’t see the clock but she knew, somehow, that it was about 4:30. Blake was sleeping soundly. She listened to him breath for a few minutes and smiled. Blakey. What had she done without him all this time?
But her smile faded as she thought of Susan. Susan, out there, all alone.
She remembered the duck and she half sat up. That duck. It was almost as though it was trying to tell them something. Taking the locket. Always being there, as though it wanted them to follow it.
She thought hard, remembering the last place they had seen it, remembering the direction it had been going in.
Joe Bob’s.
And suddenly she knew. Joe Bob had Susan.
She looked at Blake but she didn’t wake him. She was going to do this alone. Just a reconnaissance mission. Just a peek in a few windows to see what she could see. She slipped out of the bed and pulled on her clothes, still damp from the evening before, and topped it off with her blue jacket to keep off the morning chill. Grabbing her taser gun, she put it in one of those ubiquitous pockets Blake had complained about.
This would only take a few minutes. Joe Bob’s place was just on the other side of the hill, just in the edge of the forest. She would be back before he woke up. In minutes, she was jogging down the road, feeling the cool morning air on her skin. She turned into the trees. Best to make an off-road approach. Best to be sneaky.
She’d never been to his house before, but Blake had pointed it out to her as they drove past. She bent low as she came closer, darting from behind one bush to another and trying not to make a sound, but she wasn’t too worried. After all, the man was up until all hours of the night hunting down his poor little animals. Surely he was sleeping now.
Funny that he didn’t have dogs. You would think a man like that would have dogs. And if he did, they would announce a visitor in no time. But nothing barked. And nothing howled. So she was good.
Unless he’d set out traps. She froze as she thought that. Oh yeah. Traps would be right down his alley. Daylight was beginning to creep in among the shadows and she began to watch where she put every step. Slowly she advanced, until she was finally at the house. No light shone from any window, and then she realized why. Every one of them had been blotted out with black paint.
She looked around for something sharp she could use, but there was nothing but old tires and piles of rotting wood in the yard. Then she remembered the Taser gun in her pocket. The metal edge worked just fine, but she had to be careful to scratch away at the paint as softly and slowly as she could bear to. She crouched down to look in through the tiny opening she’d made. She saw a kitchen. No one was there. Sighing, she moved on to another window and repeated the process. It was a bedroom and there was Joe Bob, fast asleep.
That was a relief. She moved on, but the third window was in a closet and she couldn’t see a thing. Looking around, she tried to think what else she could try, and that was when she noticed the low window, just barely out of the soil at the back of the house. Looked like a basement to her. She crept over and began to scrape.
This paint came off much more quickly, as though it had never cured correctly, being so close to the cold, damp earth. She bent down once she had an opening.
The light was dim, but not so dark that it looked unused. In fact, it was surprisingly clean for a dingy basement. No sagging boxes filled with forgotten articles. No mess of spare or broken tools in piles on the ground. The only mess was a pile of clothes bundled on a cot on the far wall, and even that…
That moved. Shifted weight. It wasn’t clothes, it was a person, lying there, moving in their sleep.
Her heart was beating so hard, she was sure the whole world could hear it. It could be Susan. She grabbed her cell phone and poked in Blake’s number. It rang three times and went to voice mail. Swearing softly, she did it again, and got the same result.
“Wake up, Blake,” she whispered desperately. “Wake up you idiot!”
*********
Blake rolled over and reached for Kate. It was vaguely possible that she would be up for a little more lovemaking this morning, and he wanted to persuade her in that direction if he could. But his flailing hand encountered nothing but cold, empty sheets. He raised his head.
“Kate?” he said aloud.
No answer. He sniffed the air, hoping for coffee, bacon. Signs that he was appreciated.
But there was just cold and silence.
“Damn it, Kate!”
He began to pull himself up. Where had she gone? Back to her house? Seemed logical. Letting out a string of obscenities, he rolled out of bed and began to look for his clothes. He was going to be late for work if he tried to find her first. So much for the promises of the night.
He took a quick shower and then pulled on his uniform and was out the door in twenty minutes. His cell phone was still on the dresser where he’d left it.
*********
Kate stayed at the low window, staring into the interior gloom and trying to see who—or what—was on that cot. The light inside wasn’t going to change. Finally she realized what she had to do. She had to go inside.
She looked quickly at the sky. Long streaks of morning purple were beginning to chase away the darkness. She tried Blake’s number one more time and got nothing. She was on her own. Now, how was she going to get in? With her taser gun in her hand, she began trying all the doors and windows, one at a time.
She finally found a window that was promising. It was stuck shut, but as she jiggled it, she felt some give. It was at the back of the house, not far from the basement window. She jiggled and pried and pushed and pressed, and suddenly, the window gave, sliding up with a sickening schreech.
She held her breath, trying to hear over the pounding of her heart. Had that woken Joe Bob? It had seemed enough to wake the dead, but she couldn’t hear any sense of movement in the house.
She gave it a few minutes, then looked it over. It was awfully small. Was she going to fit through that? Reluctantly, she took off her light jacket and put it on the ground, then began to edge her way up to where she could slide inside, feet first.
Her legs were inside, and then her bottom, but she couldn’t get any purchase with her feet. She was still clinging to the sill. Where could she go from here? She couldn’t just let herself drop when she didn’t know what she was dropping into.
She reached and stretched with her feet and legs, and suddenly she felt something sturdy. She put her weight on it. It held. She made the transition from outside to in. She’d made it.
The light was dim. She seemed to be in some sort of hallway. She felt her way along the wall, heading in the direction of where the basement would have to be, her heart hammering in her chest. One thought that kept blaring in her mind like a blinking neon sign—could you die of a heart attack from being scared to death? Did it really happen? And was it about to happen to her?
A door. Closed. Could this be the way to the basement? She tr
ied the knob. It turned with a squeak, that made her gasp. She listened. Nothing, she opened the door all the way and found stairs. Must be the basement. Slowly, she started down them.
Something moved. Something was coming up the stairs toward her. Rats! She swallowed a scream, biting down hard on her lip, as they scurried by her. Ugh!
She looked down at the cot against the far wall. The figure in it stirred and raised it’s head. She squinted, trying to see in the gloom.
“Susan?” she whispered, suddenly sure it was her sister.
“No!” yelled a voice so close behind her, she thought her ear drum had burst, and then pain as something hit her in the head, and the world turned black.
*********
Despite all his resolutions, Blake stopped by the house to see if Kate was there. Her car sat outside the half-built porch, but they’d left it there the day before when they’d started their hike into the woods, so that didn’t mean anything. He parked next to it and got out and went around back to try the door. It opened.
“Kate?” he called.
No answer. He listened and something about the silence told him the house was empty. He shrugged and headed back to his car. Funny. He couldn’t quite figure where she’d gone.
Getting back in the car, he started off toward the station again, not looking forward to the day ahead. Something about Kate’s disappearance was making him uneasy. He would rather be out looking for her than in the office, shuffling through paperwork.
He turned toward town, and suddenly a huge mass of white feathers landed on his windshield.
“What the…?”
He jammed on the brakes and watched as the duck slide down off his car, then quacked loudly and started toward the woods. He stared after it. When it came to the edge of the trees, it quacked again and ruffled its feathers, dancing about, obviously trying to get his attention. He shook his head.
