by Sophie Moss
“Becca—”
She ignored him, not even bothering to look back. Taking the front steps two at a time, she thought back to the night Tom had come to the island, the night she had thought she’d finally gotten him back. He hadn’t come down to comfort her. He’d come down to get information out of her for one of the partners at his firm.
He’d used her.
And she’d fallen for it.
How could she have been so blind?
She lifted her hand to knock on the door, and spotted the charm bracelet—the charm bracelet he’d said he’d been saving for their wedding night. Had he lied about that, too?
“I thought you wanted to talk?” Tom called after her.
She paused, looking back at him. Talk? What could they possibly have to talk about anymore?
“I have to get back to the office in Baltimore for another meeting,” he said, checking his watch, “but I could probably squeeze in a quick lunch…”
“Go ahead,” she said, and was amazed at the lack of emotion in her voice. “I wouldn’t want to hold you up.”
Tom hesitated for about three seconds, then turned, walked over to his car, slid behind the wheel, and drove away. She hadn’t expected him to put up a fight. She knew now that he was too weak to stick around, to risk one of his clients seeing him in a less than favorable light.
Turning back to the door, she knocked—three loud raps.
A few moments later, she heard footsteps on the stairs. The muted click of a woman’s heels came closer, until the mahogany door swung open and a tall woman with long, dark hair and pale green eyes stood on the other side. She was wearing gray slacks, a sleeveless white shell, and a necklace that looked like it was made of little bits of broken glass. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Becca said, lifting her chin. “My name is Becca Haddaway. I’m a second grade teacher at Heron Island Elementary and I’d like to speak with you about your decision to close the school.”
Lydia blinked, her gaze sweeping past Becca’s shoulder to the driveway, probably trying to see if she’d brought any reporters with her. Once she was satisfied that it was only the two of them, she looked back at her. “I’m sorry, Ms. Haddaway,” she said, her tone dismissive. “I was just on my way out. Now’s not a good time.”
“I’m sure you’re very busy,” Becca said, struggling to control her temper, “but I think I’ve earned a right to speak.”
Lydia’s expression grew cold. “This is highly unprofessional, coming to my house like this.”
“So is refusing to call us back and ignoring all our emails.”
“As I wrote in an email to your principal this morning, if you have any concerns, you should raise them at the public hearing this Friday. Situations like these need to be handled through the proper channels.” Lydia stepped back, about to shut the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
No, Becca thought. She would not excuse her. She would not be pushed aside. She caught the door before it swung shut and shoved it back open, stalking into the foyer. “Everyone knows the only reason you’re doing this is to get back at your ex-husband. You already got what you wanted. You sabotaged the governor’s announcement. You hurt his campaign. Can’t you let the school go now?”
“This is completely inappropriate.” Lydia reached for the cordless phone on the wall. “If you won’t leave, I’ll call the police.”
“Go ahead,” Becca shot back. “I can see the headline now. Retired public school administrator calls cops on second grade teacher intruder.”
Lydia lowered the phone to her side, studying Becca for several long moments across the formal entranceway. “I don’t know what kind of operation your principal runs, but you should know better than to get involved in decisions that are so far above your pay grade. The only thing you should be doing right now is looking for a new job.”
No. Becca shook her head. As soon as she got home, the first thing she was going to do was ask Shelley to rip up her resignation letter. She wasn’t leaving the island. She wasn’t leaving the school. And she wasn’t going to let Lydia shut them down.
She opened her mouth, about to tell her that, when a fragment of light in the living room caught her eye. She glanced over, at the beam reflected off a sterling silver frame, and trailed off when she saw the pictures. Dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes. They covered every surface, hung from every wall. It was the same person in every shot—a child, at various stages in his life.
“Is that…Colin?”
“No,” Lydia said sharply.
She took a step closer, unable to look away. Did Colin have a brother? If so, they must not be close, because he’d never mentioned him. The skin on the back of her neck prickled when she realized, suddenly, that this room was a memorial. The boy in the pictures had never aged past eighteen.
In the hallway, a grandfather clock ticked, triggering some distant memory. She turned slowly back to face Lydia when she remembered that Colin did have a brother, a younger brother—one who’d enlisted in the military right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. She remembered hearing about it on the news, before Nick Foley had been elected governor, back when he’d been running for Mayor of Baltimore. A reporter had asked him how he’d felt about having two sons serving in the military when he’d been so outspoken about his opposition to the wars. She couldn’t remember what his answer had been, but she did remember, now, that his youngest son—a helicopter pilot—had been shot down in Iraq a year later.
Gazing across the marble foyer at the woman still clutching the phone in her hand, Becca felt an overwhelming rush of sympathy. The only thing worse than losing a parent had to be losing a child. She could only imagine what Lydia must have gone through when she’d received that news.
She knew how hard it was to lose someone, how hard it was on those left behind. She started to say something to that effect, but then stopped…because something still didn’t add up. If Lydia had lost one son to the war, wouldn’t she be even closer with the only one she had left?
Thinking back to how upset Colin had been when he’d come to her house on Easter, Becca looked back at the living room, scanning the photos for a clue. But the only thing that stood out to her was the lack of photos of Colin anywhere in the house. She turned back to face Lydia. “Why don’t you have any pictures of Colin?”
Lydia said nothing and her expression betrayed nothing—not even a hint of emotion.
“You hurt him, you know,” Becca said. “By sabotaging your ex-husband’s announcement, you hurt Colin, too. He worked really hard on that jobs program. He worked his butt off all winter to get the veterans’ center ready to open by Memorial Day. He’s doing everything he can to help his fellow service members, to give them a second chance.”
“Not everyone deserves a second chance.”
Becca took a step back. What was she saying? That she didn’t think the people who’d fought for their freedom deserved to be taken care of when they came home?
Was she talking about Colin or veterans in general?
Becca had never supported the idea of going to war. She’d probably been as against it as both Colin’s parents, but that didn’t mean she thought any less of the men and women who’d served in it. Most of the people who went overseas had nothing to do with the decision to go to war. They had simply carried out an order that had been handed down to them. Now, over two million post 9/11 veterans were back home, many of them suffering from lingering physical and psychological wounds from a war their country had sent them to fight…and Lydia didn’t believe they deserved a second chance? “More people got hurt in the wars than your youngest son. Colin got hurt. He lost a leg in Afghanistan.”
“Colin got what he deserved.”
Becca gaped at her. She couldn’t possibly mean that. No one deserved to have a limb amputated. No one deserved to lose his fiancée when he came home because he wasn’t whole anymore. No one deserved to lose two of his closest friends in a single day. She continued
to stare at Lydia across the formal entranceway as, suddenly, everything clicked into place. “This was never just about the governor, was it? You came after the jobs program and the veterans’ center on purpose? You wanted to hurt Colin?”
“If it wasn’t for Colin,” Lydia lashed out, her emotions finally snapping, “Hayden would still be here.”
“What?” Becca asked, baffled.
“I begged Colin not to join the Navy. I offered him everything—money, a car, a full ride to any graduate program in the country. I offered him anything he could ever possibly want. But he wouldn’t listen. No. He wanted to be a hero. He wanted to prove something. Even though he knew Hayden would follow in his footsteps.”
Follow in his footsteps? Becca’s head spun. Lydia couldn’t possibly be implying…?
“Hayden died because of Colin’s selfishness,” Lydia said, her voice breaking.
Selfishness? Becca took another step back. The last word she would ever associate with Colin was selfish. The air conditioning clicked on, blowing a cold stream of air through the vents, despite the fact that the weather was perfect outside. Becca was vaguely aware of the tick of the grandfather clock again in the hallway, the only sound inside this cold, lonely house.
No wonder Colin had been so upset when he’d come to her house last weekend.
She knew what it was like to carry grief around, to have lost a family member at a young age. There was always a certain amount of guilt that snuck in when a loved one passed away. Had you spent enough time with them? Had you told them you loved them often enough? Had your last conversation together been a good one?
Her last conversation with her mother had been an argument. She’d been sixteen and desperate to go to a concert in Baltimore with some friends the following weekend. The rest of her friends’ parents had all said they could go, but her mother wouldn’t give in. She’d been against it from the moment Becca had first brought it up. But Becca hadn’t been willing to let it go.
A part of her had always wondered if the words they’d exchanged that night had left her mother so angry that she hadn’t been focusing when she’d been driving, if they’d caused her to lose control of the car on the slippery roads on the way to the restaurant. But her father had silenced her every time she’d brought it up. Even Tom had shot her down, vehemently, whenever she’d tried to take the blame. It hadn’t made it any easier, but at least she’d always known that any guilt she carried was her own.
How would she have lived with herself if her father and Tom had blamed her? If they’d laid the same guilt on her that Lydia had laid on Colin?
The phone in the house rang, a shrill reminder of the outside world pealing through the silence.
“I want you to leave now,” Lydia said coldly. Not waiting for a response, she turned, her heels clicking over the marble floor as she walked into the next room, stopping only when she came to the window overlooking the water.
Becca started to follow her, then paused when she spotted an envelope lying on a table in the foyer. It was mostly hidden under a pile of mail, but she could clearly make out the embossed logo belonging to Tom’s firm on the seal. She looked back up at Lydia. The other woman’s back was still turned as she picked up the phone call, as she gave her full attention to whoever was on the other line.
Slipping the envelope from the pile, Becca turned and walked quietly back out the front door. She walked down the steps, got in her car, and started to drive. She didn’t stop until she’d made it to the stop sign at the intersection of Ritchie Highway a few miles away. Her hands shook as she picked up the envelope and pulled out the contents.
She took one look at the photos and knew instantly that they were pictures of Lydia with another man. She flipped through the financial statements. She didn’t know why they were important, but she would find out. Sliding everything back into the envelope, she set the package on the passenger seat and reached for her phone, punching in one of the first numbers on automatic dial.
Grace picked up on the second ring. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?” Becca asked.
“At my apartment. Why?”
“Stay there. I’m coming over.”
“Now?” Grace said, surprised.
“Yes. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I thought we were meeting in Annapolis this afternoon? For the practice run at the salon?”
“No,” Becca said, turning onto the highway. “The wedding’s off.”
Walking across the tarmac at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Colin took in the sleek private jet idling at the end of the runway. “Nice ride,” he said, holding out his hand to the man who’d insisted on picking him up and flying him out to Colorado as soon as he’d expressed the slightest bit of interest in his offer the day before.
Austin Turner returned his handshake. “Beats the birds we used to ride in.”
Colin smiled, remembering the days of being strapped into the cargo holds of Black Hawk helicopters flying under the cover of night on the way to a mission. The tactical transport aircraft were designed for high-risk combat insertions and enemy engagement, not for their passengers’ comfort. He had a feeling this plane had been designed with the exact opposite in mind. “Is it yours?”
Austin shook his head, releasing his hand. “It belongs to a client.”
He said it like it was no big deal, like it was perfectly normal for a former SEAL to have access to a private jet. Colin had grown up with wealth, but this was another league entirely. He couldn’t help being intrigued at the prospect of working with someone who had those kinds of connections, who could tap into that kind of money for vets.
He’d done a lot of thinking over the past twenty-four hours. It was time to refocus on the mission at hand. He’d gotten sidetracked, letting his feelings for Becca cloud his better judgment. He’d fallen for the romance of Heron Island—the idea of buying a home, of putting down roots, of belonging somewhere.
But Heron Island wasn’t his home. It would never be his home. Not the way it was Will’s, or Annie’s, or Becca’s.
Becca had been right when she’d assumed he’d only been passing through. He didn’t belong there. He didn’t belong anywhere.
“I’ve been following the news on your father,” Austin said, gesturing for Colin to walk with him toward the stairs leading up to the jet. “He’s denying everything. Who should I believe?”
“I don’t know,” Colin admitted. Frankly, he didn’t care anymore. The only reason he’d agreed to work with his father when he’d come back from Afghanistan was because he hadn’t known what else to do with his life.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life now—help other veterans. If Will saw him as a liability because of his connection to his father, then it was time for him to leave. He needed to go where he was wanted, where he could make a difference. Maybe Colorado would be that place, for the next few years, at least.
After that, who knew?
It didn’t matter. If it was just going to be him, he could go anywhere. He could reinvent himself every few years if he had to.
Stepping into the cabin, Colin’s gaze swept over the plush leather seats, the comfortable sofa and coffee table, the fully stocked wet bar. Austin had retired from the teams only a few years ago. Life as the CEO of a private security firm seemed to suit him just fine.
As if the picture weren’t appealing enough already, an attractive woman with long auburn hair stepped out of a room in the back and offered him a chilled bottle of water. He took it and thanked her as the slow quiet whir of the stairs receded behind them.
“We’ll be taking off in five minutes,” she said, her voice soft and soothing. “Is there anything else I can get for either of you?”
“No. Thank you, Nicole,” Austin said. “That’ll be all.”
She smiled at Austin and blushed before pressing a button on the wall and slipping into the cockpit with the pilot, disappearing with a quiet whoosh of the electric door.
Austin smiled. “She’s got a twin sister who lives in Crested Butte. It’s a few towns over from where we’re going, but they offered to meet us for a drink later, if you’re interested.”
I’m not, Colin thought, but he caught himself before he said the words out loud. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be. There was nothing holding him back. Maybe a meaningless hookup was exactly what he needed to help him put things back in perspective. “Sounds good,” he said, settling into one of the aisle seats and buckling the belt low across his hips.
The pilot came over the loud speaker, instructing them to prepare for takeoff. Colin took a sip of water and looked out the row of windows as the plane began to taxi, picking up speed down the runway. In moments, the nose tilted up and they were airborne, heading west.
Austin waited until the pilot came back on with word that they’d reached a comfortable elevation and they were free to move around the cabin. Leaning back in his seat and stretching out his legs, he turned his attention back to Colin. “Enough with the small talk. Tell me what I need to say to convince you to move to Colorado and work for me.”
Not much, Colin thought as the fields and highways faded beneath them. He’d already made his decision.
Becca parked on the street outside Grace’s apartment in Capitol Hill. Grabbing the envelope, she got out of her car and dodged a trio of twenty-something girls giggling over a text one of them had just received on her phone. She let herself into her best friend’s tiny front yard through a rusted wrought-iron gate, dialing Colin’s number as she made her way up to the door. When the call went straight to voicemail, as it had every time she’d tried calling him since leaving Annapolis, she hung up, frustrated. Why wasn’t he answering?
Shoving her phone back into her purse, she reached for the knob. The door swung open before she had a chance to touch it. Grace stood on the other side, her gray eyes filled with concern. “Hey,” she said worriedly. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
