Serenity Harbor

by RaeAnne Thayne

  How would he ever thank her?

  And how would he possibly carry on without her?

  He had no freaking idea.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SOME TERRIBLY PETTY part of her wanted to hate Debra Peters.

  In her imagination, the woman looked like something out of Katrina’s childhood nightmares, complete with hooked nose, wart on her chin and beady black eyes like the witch from Hansel and Gretel.

  Instead, the woman was round and soft, with kind eyes, fashionably cut gray hair and a warm smile. She greeted Milo before she even bothered to greet Bowie and Katrina, which forever endeared her to Katrina. She seemed to have a deep understanding about the boy’s unique needs and stepped in immediately, leaving Katrina feeling superfluous from the beginning.

  Debra explained that until a few years ago she was a special education teacher whose emphasis was children with autism. After her husband died, she decided she wanted to see a little of the country and have the opportunity to focus on one child at a time.

  The child she had cared for in her previous position was being mainstreamed into regular classes and no longer needed the kind of intensive help Debra could offer—and didn’t it work out perfectly, she said with a twinkling smile, that Bowie contacted her just at the moment she was thinking about looking for a new position, a new part of the country to experience?

  She was perfect for the situation, exactly what Bowie and Milo needed, and immediately seemed to click with both of them.

  Katrina was happy, she told herself. It would have been so much harder to leave the boy she cared about with someone unsuitable. It appeared that Debra would be more than adequate to take over.

  She and Debra and Bowie spent a long time at the kitchen table going over Milo’s routine and the therapies she had begun to follow with him. She was trying to figure out anything she might have forgotten to mention when her phone rang.

  She glanced at it and her heart jolted. The caller ID had a Colombian prefix, but she didn’t recognize it. Maybe Angel Herrera had a new number.

  Finally!

  The phone rang again, and she caught Bowie watching with a steady interest that somehow calmed her.

  “I need to take this. Will you both excuse me?”

  “Sure. Of course,” Debra Peters said. Bowie nodded at the same time, and Katrina hurried out to the terrace, where she would have the best service, managing to connect the call an instant before it would have rung for the fourth time. “Hello. This is Katrina Bailey.”

  “Miss Bailey?” A heavily accented female voice said. “This is Consuela Moreno from the Colombian Family Welfare Institute. I’m sorry to tell you, we have a problem.”

  * * *

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Katrina disconnected the call and sat unmoving, staring at the water whispering against the dock while the heavy, smothering air pressed in on her.

  Serenity Harbor.

  She made a rude noise in the back of her throat. What a stupid misnomer. She had found nothing like serenity here, only turmoil and pain.

  Bile rose up, burning her stomach, her throat. She couldn’t seem to suck in a deep breath, and it was taking all of her strength not to curl up on the chaise lounge and sob.

  How was it possible to be numb, ice-cold and broiling hot, all at the same time? Somehow she managed it.

  She couldn’t give in. Not yet. She had to survive the next few moments while she said her final goodbyes. Somehow she had to find the strength to go back inside Bowie’s house and pretend everything was fine, that her world hadn’t suddenly been devastated.

  After that, she could climb into her car and completely fall apart.

  She forced herself to breathe, deep and slow, for ten full counts. Though the nausea remained, the breathing helped push the worst of the turmoil back—enough that she felt strong enough to walk inside the house.

  When she rejoined Bowie, Debra and Milo in the kitchen, Bowie’s posture instantly went tense, and he aimed a swift look of concern in her direction. She had to ignore it. Not now. One word of compassion or solace and she would completely lose it.

  “I’m sorry for the distraction,” she said. She almost choked on the last word, which seemed wholly inadequate to describe what had just happened. “Is there anything else you need to know about Milo?”

  The other woman shook her head. “I’ve been reading through your notes, and they’re wonderful, filled with details and specific examples. I can’t tell you how enormously helpful that will be. If I have questions that aren’t covered, I’ll reach out to you. You’ll be available after you leave, won’t you?”

  Not easily. “Email will be the best way to reach me for now,” she said.

  “I saw your email address on the paperwork, so that will be great to have. Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll have so much fun together. Everything here will be fine after you go.”

  She could hang on to that, at least. “Good to hear. I guess this is it, then.”

  She might have thought her heart had been totally shattered by now, but she still managed to feel a few new cracks as she forced herself to smile at Milo.

  It was too much. The human heart wasn’t designed to endure this kind of damage. A few more deep breaths gave her enough strength to walk over to where Milo played, to sit beside him on the floor.

  He didn’t lift his head for a long moment, until she was forced to plead. “Milo, buddy, can you look at me?”

  He seemed reluctant to leave his cars but finally picked up his favorite purple sports car and turned to face her, though his gaze connected somewhere to the left of her.

  That was the best she was going to get today, she decided.

  “Thank you for letting me hang out with you these last few weeks. I’ve had so much fun. I wish I could stay longer, but...I have to go.”

  “Go?”

  That word seemed to finally register, after all these days she had tried to tell him she would be leaving soon. His eyebrows lowered to a point above his nose, and his color rose. She really hoped he wasn’t on the brink of a meltdown. That would make this difficult task so much worse.

  “That’s right. G-go.” Her voice broke a little on the word, but she drew another deep breath. She felt Bowie approach them and couldn’t let herself look at him. She would completely lose it if she did.

  “You’re going to have so much fun with Debra. She knows just how to take care of you and do everything she can to help you get ready to go to a special class at school in the fall.”

  “School.”

  “That’s right. School. Just like Ty and Will Montgomery and all the other children. Won’t that be great?”

  “Kat. School.”

  She had a fierce wish that she was returning to her beautiful classroom with the windows that overlooked the mountains, to the bulletin board she had prepared so carefully and the neat cubbies and the smell of chalk and erasers.

  She had loved being a teacher but had walked away for the most ridiculous of reasons. Now she didn’t know if she would ever be able to return.

  “That’s right. You’ll go to Haven Point Elementary School. That’s where I was a teacher. You will love it. I promise. You’ll have special teachers there who can help you learn and grow. You can even learn to read all the stories you love.”

  He looked back down at the car in his hand, and she could tell she was losing hold of his interest. “I have to go now, Milo. You be good for your brother and for Mrs. Peters, okay?”

  She didn’t know how much he understood, but he didn’t protest when she hugged him for only an instant and kissed the top of his head. “Bye, bud.”

  He looked up, and this time she was almost sure he looked straight into her eyes. “Kat. Bye.”

  With that long statement, he turned around and returned to hi
s cars on the floor. Well, she thought, at least one of them wouldn’t be heartbroken when she left.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Bowie said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” she said.

  “Too bad,” he answered, his expression grim.

  She didn’t have the strength to argue, so she turned back to Debra Peters. “It was a pleasure meeting you. Best of luck to you. He’s a...a good boy.”

  She smiled, then turned for the door quickly. Before she reached it, though, Milo intercepted her. He had his purple car in his hand, and he held it out to her.

  “Kat.”

  Oh, she couldn’t do this.

  “I can’t play right now, Milo. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  She tried to hand it back, but he shook his head and pointed to her. “Kat.”

  She didn’t know what he meant, and then suddenly those stupid tears welled up. “You want me to take your car?” she asked, hardly believing he would ever part with his beloved purple race car.

  He nodded and waved, then returned to his toys under the watchful eye of Debra Peters.

  It was all too much, more than her fragile heart could bear. A sob burst out, and she gripped the toy in her fist and pushed her way past Bowie and outside to his front porch, where heavy rain was falling, drumming on the roof.

  How fitting. They had enjoyed near-perfect weather the four weeks she had been back in Haven Point with only a few little cloudbursts here and there, but now the clouds appeared to have unleashed.

  “Katrina. Stop.”

  She tried to rush down the steps to her waiting car, but Bowie grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong? Something happened in your phone call. What is it?”

  She couldn’t talk about this now. She couldn’t. Not when Milo had just broken what was left of her heart. “It doesn’t matter. I have to go. Goodbye, Bowie.”

  “Just like that? After everything we’ve shared, you’re just going to walk away? What happened?”

  “I...can’t.”

  Another sob broke through her control, and it was like the time the Hell’s Fury flooded a few summers earlier. A second sob burst through, then another until she could no longer hold them back. He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms, and she wept and wept, loud, horrible, noisy sounds she hated but couldn’t stop.

  “Don’t cry, babe. Don’t cry.”

  Just as she couldn’t stop her tears, she also couldn’t prevent herself from drawing comfort from his heat and his strength, as if those floodwaters were carrying her along and he was the only solid thing in the world she could hold on to right then.

  * * *

  THAT FEELING OF helplessness came back stronger than ever. This was pain, raw and savage, and he didn’t know how to fix it for her, any more than he knew how to convince her to stay.

  “What’s wrong? This isn’t only about Milo. Something else happened in that phone call. What is it? Please don’t shut me out, Kat.”

  She shuddered, her breathing coming in ragged gasps as she tried to calm down. The sobs slowed and then stopped completely.

  “There. Now tell me what happened.”

  “I’m an idiot. That’s what,” she mumbled. “StupidKat. I’m no different from the girl who had to repeat the second grade and went to remedial math class until middle school.”

  “Knock it off,” he said sternly. “Why do you say that? You’re a gifted teacher who has made an incredible difference in my brother’s life and in the lives of dozens of other children.”

  “Not my daughter’s life. Not Gabi’s.” She said the last word on a sob. Ah. He had suspected this had to do with Gabriela. What else would have set her off?

  “The phone call was about Gabi, wasn’t it? Who was it?”

  She took a moment to answer as she stepped away and pulled a corner of her sleeve up to wipe away the crooked trail of tears on her cheeks.

  “A representative from the ICBF. In English, that’s the Colombian Family Welfare Institute, which is the authority that handles all international adoptions in Colombia under the Hague Adoption Convention.”

  After the heartfelt sobs of the last few moments, he found the completely toneless words disconcerting.

  “When I couldn’t reach Angel Herrera, the attorney from the adoption agency I was using, I finally called ICBF to find out the status of my petition. That was a representative calling back to tell me that because I’ve missed the last three deadlines for filing information, my petition is being denied.”

  He frowned. She was hyperorganized when it came to paperwork. If he needed evidence, he only had to remember the detailed notebook she had left for Debra Peters about Milo. “That doesn’t make any sense. You wouldn’t have let those deadlines pass by on purpose. Did you explain that?”

  “I tried. It doesn’t matter. It’s too late,” she said, her voice lifeless.

  “What happened?”

  The raw devastation in her eyes, so at odds with her colorless tone, broke his heart all over again.

  “Angel Herrera never filed the necessary forms. None of them. Something felt off there, from the very beginning. I should have trusted my instincts and gone elsewhere, but he was recommended by someone in the Barranquilla office of the ICBF and I didn’t know where else to go.”

  He had done enough business around the world to know corruption could be rife in some places, especially in bureaucratic offices. Bribes and payoffs could be a way of life. Perhaps the original contact had been a cousin or an uncle of this Angel Herrera. They had seen a chance to rip off a gullible and rather desperate foreigner—a single woman—and they had taken it.

  “I should have listened to my own gut, but...but I didn’t. And now I’m going to lose her. I won’t be able to bring her here and she won’t be able to get the medical care she needs and she’ll die.”

  “So we find a more reputable agency and reapply.”

  “How? It’s all gone. All the money I spent, all the time and energy invested. Everything you’ve given me for helping you with Milo. I sent it all to Angel.”

  Fortunately, money wasn’t a problem for him. He had never been more grateful for his success at Caine Tech. “We’ll find a reputable agency and start over. It might take longer, but we’ll figure it out.”

  She stared at him for a long moment while the rain pounded on the roof of his porch, and he saw a little glimmer of hope flash in her eyes, there and then gone in an instant. “There is no ‘we,’ Bowie. I can’t drag you into this.”

  “I’m in it, like it or not. You helped me with Milo. Now it’s my turn to help you with Gabriela.”

  “You already helped me. You paid me an outrageous amount and I basically threw it down the toilet. I trusted the wrong man—which, by the way, should be the title of my autobiography.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “And an innocent child will pay for it!”

  “Then let me help you fix it.”

  “You can’t. She’s my child. It’s my mess, and I have to figure out how to clean it up.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. We can fix it together. That’s what I do, Kat. I find problems and I fix them.”

  “You have your own problems. This isn’t one of them.”

  She was shutting him out, and he didn’t know what to do about it. She had been doing the same since they met—drawing closer, then pulling away. He didn’t know what to do, how to make her see what was in his heart.

  He had to tell her.

  Bowie gazed out at the whitecaps on the lake and the Redemption Mountains, solid and strong despite the rain. He had never felt so exposed, like a boat out on that water right now, being thrown in all directions by the storm with no protection.

  Finally, he grabbed her hands. “It concerns you. That makes it mine. Would it make any diffe
rence in your willingness to accept my help if I tell you I’m in love with you?”

  She stared at him, her eyes huge. He wished like hell he could tell what she was thinking. For a moment there, he thought he saw joy flash in those eyes. Now they just looked haunted, like the rest of her features.

  “Don’t say that,” she finally whispered. “Please don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know it’s not true. It can’t be true.”

  Those whitecaps around him seemed to rock harder, and he had to dig deep to steady himself. He had never told a woman he loved her before. He never would have guessed that when he finally did, she wouldn’t believe him.

  “I love you, Kat,” he said, more firmly this time. “I want to help you. Please let me. We can fly down there and have this whole thing sorted out in a week. Two tops. We might even be back before the school year starts.”

  She slid her trembling hands away from his and scrubbed at her face. “I know what you’re doing. It won’t work.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “I have a problem and you feel some...some sense of obligation to fix it because I helped you with Milo. You don’t. You have enough on your plate. Milo, a new town, a new job. I can’t ask you to take on this, too.

  “You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

  “Because you say you love me.”

  “Because I do love you. I’ve never said that to a woman before and maybe I didn’t say it in some romantic perfect moment, but it’s the truth.”

  “You’re attracted to me. It’s not the same thing.”

  “You think I don’t know the difference?”

  “I think you’re confusing attraction and maybe gratitude with something...something more.”

  Why was she so determined not to believe him? Did she have so little faith in him? Or in herself?

  “Trust me. I know the difference,” he said softly.

  Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “I...I’m flattered,” she finally said, her voice small and her features expressionless. “But I’m sorry, Bowie. I just... I don’t feel the same way.”