But, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there was the night he came home and found a stranger poking around in the refrigerator. “A friend of Cherry’s,” the man said. Cherry? Jonas had nearly broken his neck racing down the hall to check on his daughter. Luckily, Birdie was safe in her crib, although she’d soaked the sheets and blankets because she was wearing the same diaper Jonas had put on her that morning before he left for work. Cherry didn’t come home for a week.
“So about the cult,” Remy said. “Is Cheryl extremely religious?”
He plugged the USB connection into his laptop and walked to the coffee table, remote control in hand. “Sometimes, depending on her mood. God, Buddha and Jesus have all dropped by on occasion.”
“Some people’s idea of the Dream Team.”
He gave a caustic hoot. He liked that she didn’t try to minimize his experiences or offer some lame platitude. He’d heard them all from coworkers at the insurance company and superior officers in the field.
“Before my deployment, I petitioned the state to have Cheryl hospitalized—for her own well-being and for Birdie’s sake. A woman I used to work with—she trained me for my first job with the company—was taking an early retirement to care for her grandchildren. She said she would be willing to take in Birdie—for a fee, of course—while I was away.
“I would have paid anything at that point, simply for the peace of mind of knowing my daughter was in a safe, consistent family setting. I knew these people. They were good Christians who raised three great kids, but Cheryl said she could see into their souls. She called them pawns of Satan. She was able to convince the state she was sane and fit.”
“At least you tried.”
He hit the power button. “Unfortunately, Cheryl decided that I was the enemy out to destroy her for some nebulous reasons I won’t repeat. Even after our divorce, we could usually talk about what was best for Birdie, but this deliberate act of betrayal in her book made her paranoid and supersecretive. She even told Birdie I couldn’t be trusted anymore.”
“Oh, no. Do you think she brainwashed your daughter into believing you’re the enemy?”
No. Yes. He couldn’t go there. Instead of answering, he opened the laptop and clicked on a random file. Most were labeled by dates. One said: Birthday. It had said “Last birthday” meaning the last one he’d filmed, but the label had taken on an ominous meaning, so he’d changed it. “This was the October she turned six. Obviously, I missed her seventh.”
He hit Play.
“We held it at a Chuck E. Cheese’s because the weather was as unpredictable as her mother. Cheryl was managing to keep it together at the time. I brought my mom for the weekend. Mom and Birdie both stayed with me.” For one tiny window in time, he’d had the family he’d long ago imagined—with only one key element missing. A wife. A wife was the glue that held the ship together when the seas got rough and the wind started to blow. He believed in that ideal because he believed the person who preached the philosophy—Remy.
“Do you remember what you told me about the roles of a husband and wife in marriage?”
She looked up from the slide show. “Don’t tell me you actually listened to that drivel. I was a cockeyed optimist who bookmarked three hundred quotes from Chicken Soup for the Soul. I knew less about life than a poodle knows about opening a can of dog food.”
“I thought you were pretty smart.”
“Because both of our home lives were so mixed up. Look at me. No known father of record. A mother with a reputation for hooking up with married men…including your father. And three older sisters, who I’m sure qualified as serial daters.” She shook her head. “So, tell me about Birdie’s nickname. Why do you call her that?”
“Well,” he began, happy to recall one of his favorite memories, “when she was born, the first thing I saw was this long-legged, scrawny, birdlike creature with a shock of bright red hair plastered to her head.” He snorted softly. “God, she was beautiful.”
Remy smiled broadly as if she could picture exactly what he described.
“Her mother had already made me promise that if we had a girl, we’d name her Brigitte Leann. Brigitte for—” He winced. “Bridget Jones’s Diary. The movie. Cheryl changed the spelling because she insisted the movie got it wrong.”
He could tell Remy was trying hard not to smile.
“Leann was for her mother. They’d had a turbulent, love-hate relationship. I used to wonder if there was a connection between Cheryl’s subsequent meltdown and her mother’s dying, but Cheryl refused to talk about her childhood. To me, at least. She must have told her court-appointed psychiatrists something, but I don’t know.”
Remy watched the birthday-party slide show without comment for a good five minutes. When the show ended, she looked at him and said, “Why does Cheryl look vaguely familiar? Is she from around here?”
He pushed to his feet and walked to the étagère. He opened the door of a lower compartment and took out a porcelain frame adorned with roses. The bride and groom smiling at each other in the staged pose looked like strangers. Happy, beautiful strangers.
He passed it to her.
“Oh.”
Oh, indeed. Cheryl was the same height, had the same curvy body and the same color of blond hair as Remy. Were their facial features similar? Not exactly, but there had been moments when Jonas first met his future bride that he could swear he caught a glimpse of Remy in her laugh, her coy wink.
Cheryl had nearly lost what slim hold she had on reality when she stumbled across a yearbook photo of him and Remy. Cheryl had instantly recognized the obvious doppelganger aspect between her and his ex-girlfriend.
“You sick bastard,” she’d screamed. “You married me under false pretenses. Do you close your eyes when you kiss me so you can pretend you’re with her?”
Nothing he said could sway her. Finally, after hours of weeping, tearing of hair and threats of jumping off the nearest bridge, he calmed her with a promise that he would never have anything to do with Remy Bouchard ever again.
“And if I ever find out that you’ve slept with that bitch, I will kill myself,” she’d told him with such stone-cold truth he had no choice but to believe her.
She might be mentally unstable but she was smart and she instinctively knew where to find his weakest point. As the child of a suicide victim, Jonas would do whatever it took—no matter what—to keep his own child from having to experience that pain and spend the balance of her life wondering if she was to blame.
Remy stared at the photograph for a good minute, finally handing it back with a sigh. “Life is strange, isn’t it?” She attempted to smile but there was no sparkle of humor in her eyes. “I dated a couple of boys who reminded me of you at the beginning, but they could never quite match the image I’d built up of you in my mind. Eventually, I was able to let that go. But it took a while.”
He wanted to ask about those boys. How many? Who was the first? Did you love him? The warble of a cell phone saved him from making a complete fool of himself.
Remy bounced off the sofa, producing a phone from her purse. “Hello? Jess? Oh, my gosh, I forgot all about you. I’m so sorry. Jonas took me to Catfish Haven. What’s up? Are you ready to leave?”
She stepped away—not out of earshot, but across the room to the wide picture window that overlooked a lawn that needed mowing. The neighbor boy he’d hired had been on vacation with his family this week. If nothing broke with the case, Jonas would have time to do it himself.
“Don’t be silly. I’m fine. We’re at his house now, looking at photos of his daughter. What did you think? He ravaged me on his mama’s sofa?” She glanced over her shoulder. “As delightful as that sounds, nothing has happened. No laws of nature have been broken.”
Jonas shook his head at the obvious innuendo. He realized she was probably worried that they would let the intense emotional circumstances sweep them away, but that wasn’t going to happen.
He grabbed a couple of dessert plates and fork
s from the cupboard and walked to the patio table.
He had everything set out when Remy joined him a few minutes later. “Sorry. I told her she was turning into a hover mother and if she didn’t stop, Shiloh wouldn’t let her father marry her.”
“Did the threat work?”
“For now.” She didn’t seem too worried about what her sister thought. “What kind of pie did Suzie pick for us?”
“I didn’t look, but guests choose first.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious. This is Catfish Haven pie. Regardless of the disquieting oxymoron of its name, they make the best pie on earth. Two pieces, two forks, one plate. That’s the rule.”
He laughed. How could he not? This was the Remy he’d loved from day one, thought he’d lost forever, and, now, in a strange twist of fate was sitting across from him in his backyard. Despite all the reasons he shouldn’t find pleasure in that fact, he was powerless to resist the sweet synchronicity of being in her company.
He walked into the kitchen and returned a second later with a dinner plate. “Happy?”
“I will be when I start eating,” she said, taking a seat. She pulled his chair a little closer with her foot and transferred both pieces to the larger plate.
“One bite of what looks to be fresh boysenberry, then one bite of my favorite—cherry cream. The gods have smiled on us today, Jonas Galloway, they surely have.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“IT’S PIE, SWEETHEART. Eat it.”
Birdie shook her head. “No, it isn’t. I saw you grinding up those crackers. You can’t make pie out of crackers, Mommy. You can’t.”
Birdie was hungry. Real hungry. She had to eat her cereal without milk in it this morning. And for lunch all the kids got was some peanut butter spread inside some limp, skinny celery stalks that didn’t crunch when you bit down on them.
“Brigitte, stop being difficult. We all have to make sacrifices to do the Lord’s work. Be thankful we’re not living in the desert, eating locust.”
Birdie didn’t know what a locust was but she doubted if it could be any worse than cracker pie. “When can we go home, Mommy? I don’t like it here.”
Her mother moved so quickly Birdie didn’t have time to put down her plastic fork. It fell to the ground of the cooking tent, turning instantly black with dirt and leaves. But before Birdie could reach for it, her mother had hold of one of Birdie’s braids. Mommy pulled on it. Hard.
She brought her face close to Birdie’s and whispered, “Never say that again. This is our home. Until it’s time for us to start our missionary work. A mission that will bring the word to the enemies of God. We’ve been chosen, Birdie. It’s an honor to go.”
“G-go where, Mommy?”
Her mother dropped Birdie’s braid and turned to pull a fresh plastic fork from a box. She held it up triumphantly like it was a prize, her gaze focused off in the distance. Toward Brother Thom’s RV. “Wherever God—and Brother Thom—send us.”
She quickly served a large piece of the grayish, mushy-looking pie. “Say grace before you eat, dear. We must be thankful for the good Lord’s gifts.”
IT WAS NEARLY THREE IN the afternoon by the time Remy finished watching the videos Jonas had compiled over the seven and a half years of his adorable daughter’s life. He had a good eye for capturing small, perfect moments that truly told a story about the person he was filming. He was particularly astute where his daughter was concerned.
Brigitte Galloway was a normal kid. Average height but a tad skinny, Remy decided, comparing her to the many nieces and nephews Remy had rocked, chased and babysat over the years. Her proud papa was right, though, Birdie was also special.
Remy couldn’t define that exact essence that made the child so adorable. Was it her gangly legs that churned with happy abandon, running even before she could walk without falling? Or possibly the wide, gap-toothed smile that robbed you of the ability to breathe with its sheer cuteness. More than likely, the sparkle of intelligence and curiosity in her big green-gold eyes had a lot to do with Birdie’s appeal.
“Your daughter is a doll. And I love how feisty she is when the two of you butt heads.” Remy had seen all she could take. Feeling a little bit like a voyeur, she’d tried to skip ahead through the parts that showed Jonas and his ex-wife. But it hadn’t been easy. She was curious. How could she not be? This was the man she’d loved with all her heart, and he’d married someone who could have been Remy’s sister.
He looked up from his mother’s older, dinosaur of a desktop computer, which sat on a boxy oak desk in the far corner of the room. Terrible feng shui, she’d decided, since the person at the desk had his back to everyone. The entire home was in need of a serious makeover.
And Jonas was right about the carpet. It didn’t look bad, but she was quite certain it was the source of the smell that seemed to have settled in her nostrils. Cat? Coffee? Or simply a residual mustiness that came with age?
“Thanks. She is amazing. And you’re right about us butting heads, but I always figured this was a good thing.”
“How so?” She checked her cell phone to make sure she hadn’t missed any calls from her sister. She wondered how far north they would make it today.
“Kids need to feel safe enough to test their boundaries. When you live with someone with mental-health issues, the parameters change daily, sometimes hourly. I tried my best to give Birdie unconditional love with room to take risks.”
“That’s very evolved. Where did you learn to be such a good parent?”
He swung his high-back upholstered chair to face her. “The one positive aspect of Cheryl’s condition was it forced me to read everything I could get my hands on about coping with craziness—for want of a better word. Knowledge saved my sanity and, I hope, made our family a little bit more normal for Birdie. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.”
“Is Birdie the reason you stayed together as long as you did?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His sigh sounded sad and reflective. “Even though life was a roller coaster some of the time with Cheryl, there were moments when it was a fun ride. I’ve never been big on spontaneity. Probably ’cause the one time I acted impulsively, I wound up in a deep, dark well, right?”
“So, having a partner who kept things edgy might have seemed like a good mix.”
“Exactly. Until things got out of hand with her disappearances. She wouldn’t call, text or email. I once filed a missing person’s report with the police, the whole she-bang. They were considering sending out search parties along the river when she strolled in as calmly and carelessly as if she’d been shopping and forgot the time.”
“Where was she?”
“I don’t know. She told the police one thing. Me, another. My mother something else completely. I moved out, totally prepared to call it quits. But a month later, she called to tell me she was pregnant.”
A thought Remy had no business thinking popped into her head, but before she could even scold herself for being so quick to judge, Jonas added, “The first words out of my mouth were, ‘Whose baby is it?’” He made a face. “Not the best way to start a reconciliation. Cheryl insisted she’d been faithful. But, given what happened with my dad, I suppose you could say I’m not the most trusting person in the world.”
“Did you ever…”
“Get a paternity test?” he finished for her. “Yes. Even though I knew the minute I held Birdie that she was mine. I didn’t want some stranger from Cheryl’s past to show up one day and make claims that I’d be forced to disprove.”
“You’re a smart man, Jonas. And a good dad. I’m proud of you.”
He seemed bemused by her comment, but before he could say anything, his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “Oh, crap. I have to take this. And I need privacy. Would you mind?” He looked apologetic.
“No problem. I’ll be outside, soaking up some sun in that beautiful yard.”
He flipped open his phone.
“Thanks,” he mouthed before his expression turned stormy. “Goddamn it, Greg, what’s taking so long? How can a caravan of freaking motor homes suddenly disappear off the face of the earth?”
Remy hurried out the sliding door from the kitchen to the covered patio. She made a slow circumnavigation of the perimeter, pausing to admire the brilliant color of a bird of paradise.
When the heat started to get to her, she moved to a padded chaise and sat, letting her head rest against the cushion. For the past hour or so, Remy had felt a memory hovering at the edge of her conscious mind. As she became more familiar with Birdie through her father’s pictures and videos, Remy realized she’d had a second dream.
Last night.
She closed her eyes and the image came rushing back to her.
The child’s hand was icy cold, pale and very small. Fragile-looking, like an old woman’s.
Remy had held the hands of many elderly patients as they prepared for their journeys onward and beyond. But the little girl who had appeared with no warning was young, pretty and very much alive. Only her eyes were dead.
Remy swung her new companion’s hand, back and forth as they walked—the way Remy and Jessie had when they were children. They’d sung made-up songs and chattered the way children who felt safe in their skin often did.
The girl was like a puppet whose strings had come loose. Remy’s heart twisted in her chest. Poor little kid, she thought. This isn’t right.
She stopped moving and looked around. They appeared to be in a shadowy jungle of naked trees with exposed roots and a miles-tall canopy of some dubious color that blocked the sun like gauze. A skinny silo of smoke drifted upward from a dying fire. The ring of rocks encircling the smoldering embers was haphazardly placed, small and irregularly sized, as though a child had arranged them.
“Did you build this fire?” she asked the youngster.
The girl’s dull red-orange braids bobbed ever so slightly against the bodice of her old-fashioned dress—the sort a friend of Tom Sawyer’s might wear. Her skinny legs were bare and her shoes didn’t match.
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