In the Waning Light

by Loreth Anne White

  He finished washing the dishes, drained the water from the sink, and reached for a towel to dry his hands. Her stomach warmed as she watched the roll of muscle under the tanned skin of his forearms, the gold hair. It made her think of how he’d looked that last summer, working down on the dock without his shirt, how the hair on his chest had tapered into a delicious whorl between hard abs and vanished into the low-slung waistband of his shorts. He caught her watching, and for a second time he stilled. Electricity crackled in the silence between them. She swallowed.

  “Kettle’s boiling,” he said.

  She spun around quickly. Grateful for the distraction, she poured hot water over the tea bag.

  “It was on the radio,” he said, hanging up the towel. “That you’re doing a book on Sherry.” He paused. “Are you really sure you want to pursue this? Because it’s already taking on a life of its own. Could get ugly.”

  Her mind shot to her mother’s journal, the transcripts. “And why would it get ugly if no one has anything to hide?”

  “I’m just saying, Meg. A lot of people just wanted to put this behind them. Not all of them could leave town.”

  Irritation flared right back up to the surface. “Is that why you really came by? To stop me from doing this?”

  “Maybe I came to bring you some food. Look at yourself. You haven’t even plugged your fridge back in. What have you been doing all the time, holed up here in the dark, in this vandalized house that needs a cleaning service? What’s with all those papers in the safe?”

  She moistened her lips, unsure suddenly of how much to share, how much to trust. Trust was an unfamiliar thing to her. She’d learned how to stop trusting the day her dad killed Tyson Mack and kicked his body to a bloody pulp. His gaze ticked to her diamond, then back to her eyes.

  “You know what worries me,” she said. “is the fact that so many people do seem to feel threatened by my doing this.”

  “Like who?”

  She hesitated. “You, for some reason. Deputy Dave Kovacs. He came by earlier, yesterday—” It struck her suddenly how time, days were blurring. “He warned me off.”

  “Dave came by here?”

  She nodded. “As I was moving back in. Like he’d been waiting for me to show up. He cautioned me not to go near his father, or mother. Apparently Ike has a heart condition, and getting his blood pressure up, as I apparently would, could kill him. Dave also let drop that it was an election year, and that he’s running for sheriff.”

  Blake snorted. “Yeah. And he’s running on his dad’s law enforcement legacy. I can see why digging up an old case of his father’s that resulted in the key suspect’s death might threaten Dave right now.” He hesitated, as if reading something deeper in her demeanor. “What are you not telling me, Meg?”

  “I want to know why you seem threatened by this, as well. What’s bothering you?”

  He braced his hands on the sink and blew out a chestful of air. He stood like that, as if fighting himself for a moment, then he turned slowly back to face her.

  “It’s personal,” he said softly, quietly. He reached up and moved a wisp of hair off her brow, hooking it behind her ear. His skin was rough. Warm. Meg’s pulse raced.

  “I’d gotten over you. I was working through things. And when I saw you again … I didn’t feel like having my boat rocked again. I was being selfish.” He paused, lowering his hand. But his eyes continued to bore into hers. His mouth was close. “You can trust me, you know?”

  “Blake, I—”

  A noise startled them. Both spun around.

  Noah stood watching them from the archway. Blake cleared his throat and quickly stepped back from Meg. Her heart hammered.

  “Hey, buddy, how long you been standing there? TV no good?”

  The kid remained mute, hands fisting at his sides. He glowered at Meg.

  “Noah,” Blake said, going up to his son. “You okay?”

  “My dad only married my mom because you went away!” Noah spat the words at Meg.

  She reeled, shot a look at Blake. The color had drained from his face.

  “And now she’s gone.” Noah’s voice rose, going high, sharp. His eyes started to pool with tears. “And now my dad is stuck with me, the kid he never wanted in the first place!” Noah whirled to face his father, his neck muscles tight little cords. “And now she’s back.” He pointed at Meg. “What about Mom? What about me?”

  “Noah, oh, Noah, come here—” Blake crouched down to gather his son in his arms. But the boy forcibly shoved him away.

  “Get away from me. I don’t want you, either!” He spun around and raced for the front door. Jerking it open wide, he slipped out into the wet, black night.

  “Noah!” Blake called as he started after his son. He wavered at the door. “Meg, I’m sorry, I have no idea what’s gotten into him. He’s never done anything like this—”

  “Go, go after him. He needs you.”

  The door shut with a click. She heard the truck door slam. Meg dragged both hands over her tangle of hair, her world spinning.

  CHAPTER 9

  Whakami Cove. 9:58 p.m.

  Geoff drove his silver Wrangler Rubicon into the near-empty parking lot of the new Whakami Bay Beach Hotel. Mist was thick as he reached into the back of his Jeep for his duffel and slung it over his shoulder.

  He entered the lobby. The place was so new it had a chemical smell. He approached the desk, rang the bell. A man came out from the office behind the reception desk.

  “I have a reservation.” He smiled. “Geoff Sutton.”

  The front desk clerk signed him in, handed over a key card, and gave directions to a room on the second floor. “Sea view,” he said. Geoff smiled his thanks. But the smile died on his lips as he turned away from the clerk and swung his duffel back onto his shoulders. He doubted many of the rooms were occupied this time of year, hence the sea view. Nothing special there.

  Not that anyone would be able to see much in this fog, he thought as he made for the elevator. But he had to admit, it was one thing he loved about this place, in winter, especially. The moodiness, the atmosphere of it. The Hitchcockian shadow play at night, the baleful moan of the foghorns. The way the weather had no regard for man nor beast.

  Literature, classics, art, movies, photography, human moods, and the magic of story—these were his passions.

  Upstairs in his room, he opened the drapes. As suspected, nothing but blackness—the halos of lamps vanishing into the fog along the sea walk. And his own reflection in the glass. He smoothed his goatee between his thumb and middle finger, a reflexive habit, and then he checked his watch. Not too late to call.

  He inhaled deeply, bit the bullet. Dialed. His heart gave a kick of adrenaline when a male voice answered.

  “Hey. It’s me. Geoff Sutton.”

  Silence. Thick, palpable silence. Nerves bit into him. Perhaps this was a mistake.

  Then came a low whisper. “Where the fuck did you get this number?”

  “You’re listed—”

  “Don’t call me on this landline. Ever.” A quick hesitation. Then, “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk. I’m in town. I’m staying at the Whakami hotel.”

  A soft, hot curse. “Is this because of Meg Brogan, because she’s back, because of the story she’s writing?”

  “So you know that she’s doing a book. Who told you?”

  “It’s still a small town. Everyone knows everything by osmosis. It’s even been on the radio.”

  Geoff closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Blake knows that I was on the spit that night, near the point where he found Meg. He saw me returning earlier in the evening, without my shit. He saw blood. But he covered for me—it was no one’s business to know.”

  “What’re you saying? Why are you even telling me this? I know that he covered for you.”

  “Because he won’t keep his silence any longer. He said he’ll tell Meg if she asks him to rehash that night from his point of view. A
nd she will—Blake was the one who found her, saved her life. He’s key to her story.” Geoff wavered. “He suspects I’m hiding something.”

  “Shit.”

  Geoff inhaled, anxiety twisting deeper. Upsetting another person was never easy. “I need to talk to you. We need a plan.”

  “Not on this phone, understand?” The voice was barely audible now, the words coming fast. “I … I’ll meet you. At seven a.m. There’s a strip of beach down from the Whakami hotel. It’s isolated, no one there in winter. There’s a parking lot behind the dune grasses.”

  The phone clicked.

  Henry Thibodeau set the receiver quietly back into its cradle. His bowels had turned to water. Outside, leafless branches backlit with streetlight looked like the gnarled hands of crones, and they tick, tick, ticked against his window. Shadows twisted in his dimly lit office. A dog barked down the street, and a siren wailed somewhere far along the coast road.

  He palmed his hand over his thinning hair. Everything. He could lose absolutely everything. Wife. New baby on the way. The sudden realization of just how deep this would cut cloaked his shoulders with a heavy, cold dread. He’d dared believe they’d gotten through those years—that it was over. He’d even begun to believe that maybe it didn’t actually happen, that it was some bizarre nightmarish imagining of youth, because if he didn’t believe this, his life now would make no sense.

  Fucking Geoff. Fuck fuck fuck.

  He rubbed his face, trying to seek a way out. But no matter which way he sliced this, he couldn’t see escape. Packing up his family and fleeing town was not an option. He couldn’t even quit his job—he’d dreamed about it once upon a time, but he was basically a prisoner there. And now Geoff. Now this. Meg Brogan. Blake and his pathetic crisis of conscience.

  Fuck!

  It wasn’t fair. He was the victim in all this. Somehow, Meg Brogan needed to be persuaded to stop this stupid shit. If she stopped, if she packed up her bags and went back to whatever rock she’d crawled out from under, Geoff might shut up. Blake would stay silent. Meg.

  It boiled down to Meg.

  He reached for the phone. But fear choked him for a moment, and it pulled up from the pit of his gut an almost forgotten bile-like festering hatred. Sweat dampened his armpits. Then he grabbed the receiver.

  The call picked up on the second ring.

  He just blurted it out straight. “Geoff Sutton is back.” His hand tightened on the receiver.

  “So what?”

  “He’s … here to talk to Blake because Blake knows that he was on the point that night, and will no longer cover for him. Blake will tell Meg if and when she asks him to recount that night.”

  A pause. The branches tick-tick-ticked. Sweat pearled on his brow, slid slowly down the side of his face.

  “Why are you even telling me this?” came the voice.

  Because this is on you, mate. Your fucking doing, you sick, twisted, controlling, evil shit. You’re the one who needs to fix it.

  He closed his eyes. “Because something is going to crack, and it’s all going to come out. I can’t control this.”

  “And I can?”

  “If the Sherry Brogan case is reopened—”

  A soft laugh. “Reopened? On what grounds? They got their man. And so what if people know Geoff was on the spit that night? It has nothing to do with me, Henge, old boy. I was never there. We both know that, don’t we? And we know what the evidence will show if they take another look.”

  Another laugh. The phone went dead.

  A scratch sounded outside his study door. Henry’s heart lurched into his throat and he spun around, panting, receiver still in hand. He listened.

  Nothing more sounded. Other than the noise of wind and branches. He set the receiver carefully back into its cradle, and edged toward the door on socked feet. He creaked it open, peered down the passage. Shadows blue and black moved softly against the wall. He made his way down the passage, stopped outside the baby’s room. He put the light on. The baby mobile above the empty crib was turning slowly. The window had been left open a crack. He swallowed the new taste of fear in his mouth and securely closed the window. Quietly he went down the passage and opened his bedroom door.

  She was asleep. Lori-Beth. His wife. Bathed in the soft glow from the night-light she insisted on plugging into the wall. She was like a child sometimes. Her wheelchair sat empty next to her bed.

  He took a shower and washed the acrid smell of fear from his pores. He crawled in under the covers.

  LB turned and moaned. She reached out her fingertips to touch his shoulder. “Everything okay?”

  He rolled over, kissed her, and smoothed soft hair back from her brow. All he’d built, this family they were becoming, respectable in this community, well-off. Normal. It could all be gone in a flash. He’d fashioned himself into an all-American guy. A good accountant, and then vice president of a massively growing company based right here in Shelter Bay—handling top and tricky accounts. And yes, sometimes big business involved some sleight of financial hand. That’s what corporations did. But as he lay back onto his pillow, the doubt demons laughed.

  It’s a house of cards, you Thibodeau fool, all fake, you’re a prisoner in your own skin, you should have had the guts to flee Shelter Bay all those years ago, like Geoff …

  Because now … now he was in so deep and so twisted, that no matter where he went, it could not end well.

  “Who was on the phone?” LB murmured.

  “Just a client.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Fine. All fine.”

  Lori-Beth Braden Thibodeau lay there, eyes wide in the dark, heart thudding as she listened to the wind. Her husband had begun to snore. Quietly she sat up. She manually moved and dropped her legs over the side of the bed, reached for her chair.

  She wheeled down the hall, past baby Joy’s room. She stopped outside her husband’s study door, and listened to be sure he had not woken. She edged the door open, wheeled softly in. Neat as a pin inside. The big desk in front of the window had nary a stray piece of paper. The chair in front of it was positioned just so. The framed accounting accolades on the walls had been hung in plumb-straight lines. The windows of the gun cabinet that contained his neat rows of hunting rifles and pistols had not a smudge. Even the books on his shelves were arranged alphabetically.

  LB picked up the phone, checked to see the last number Henry had called. She frowned. Then ice branched into her chest as she sensed something, someone, behind her. Slowly she turned, then gasped as a shape shadowed the doorway. Her hand shot to her throat.

  “My God, Sally,” she whispered. “You gave me a fright. What are you sneaking up on me like that for?”

  Her sister pulled her fluffy white nightgown close over her chest. “I thought I heard something.” She glanced at the receiver still in Lori-Beth’s hand. “You look pale—are you all right?”

  LB nodded and replaced the phone. “I … I … couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither. Let me wheel you back.”

  “I can do it,” LB snapped quietly, harshly. Then toned it down. Her older sister had come to stay, to be here to help when baby Joy came in the next week or so. “I don’t want to wake Henry,” LB said more gently, with a smile.

  Her sister nodded, casting another glance back at the phone, then she followed LB out and closed the study door quietly. She watched Lori-Beth go to her room.

  LB paused, looked back over her shoulders. Sally met her eyes. And it troubled her that Sally hadn’t even asked what LB was doing in Henry’s sacred study in the dark of the night.

  Blake locked up the marina office and the house. It was around 11:30 p.m. when he walked past his son’s room and paused. The door was closed, but a band of light showed beneath it.

  He knocked.

  Silence.

  Blake tried the door handle. To his relief, it opened. Noah had not yet locked him out fully. His son was in his Spider-Man PJs. His face was red from crying and he was read
ing the book they’d up until now been reading together. Lucy lay on his feet.

  Blake sat on the edge of his son’s bed, but Noah did not look up. His son had given him the silent treatment all the way home from Meg’s place, and had marched straight up to his room and slammed himself in the minute they’d arrived. A hollowness ballooned through Blake. The sense of emptiness, unhappiness, aloneness, inside their home tonight was stark.

  “Please, Noah, tell me where you got that idea about me not wanting you?”

  Noah’s mouth tightened. A little blue vein swelled under the pale skin at his temple.

  “It’s not true. And if you heard someone say that, you must remember that people often say really odd things about others, and they’re usually totally out of context … I wish you’d tell me where you heard that?”

  Silence.

  “It hurts me, too, you know. This is not just an attack on you. It’s an affront to our family. To your mother’s memory.” He placed his hand on his boy’s knee. “We’re a team, champ. You need to tell me what you know and who said this, so I can fix it?”

  Silence.

  “Was it Alex Millar? Is that why you hit her?”

  Noah’s eyes pooled with moisture. A tear slipped down his cheek. He started to shake.

  “Come here.”

  He gathered his son up into his arms. Noah resisted, tensing his body. But Blake was not going to give up. He’d never give up. He was going to win this one. He was going to learn his son. He held his boy until his little body stilled, until he felt the crying had stopped.

  “Talk to me, please,” he whispered into his boy’s hair that smelled like hay, and sunshine and childhood. “Tell me what Alex said.”

  “She … she heard her mom and dad.” Noah’s words were muffled against Blake’s shirt. “They … they said, ‘poor little Noah, with that rough father raising him on his own at that crumble-down marina, when he never wanted the marriage in the first place. That kid is the only reason he married Allison. And if she hadn’t of died he’d never have come home. He only quit the army to look after a kid he doesn’t want.’”

  Blake’s heart slowed to a sickening thud. He looked up, at the ceiling, as if some heavenward being might yield him some help.