Dry-eyed, hands tucked deep in her pockets, she began walking. She went down the store side of the green and up the inn side of the green, down one side street and up another. Lights burned in windows, the occasional jack-o’-lantern behind which the townsfolk read or watched television. She didn’t look inside. She didn’t want to see what others were doing. She didn’t feel the cold, didn’t feel the darkness. Her body was as numb as her mind.
She went past the firehouse to the school, skirted the perimeter of the meadow, then returned and took the road out of town. She thought of walking and walking, never turning back, starting a new life in a place that was more honest and compassionate than the Notch. It was a sweet thought and brought a wistful smile to her face until she thought of Joshie. She walked on.
In time she retraced her steps, but her feet went past her street and took her into the center of town again. She crossed the green and turned onto the narrow path, not quite a street, that wound between the barber shop and the bakery. At its end was the Norwich Notch Police Station. Immediately behind that was the small frame house that belonged to the chief of police.
With calm, sure steps, she went to its door and knocked softly. Nolan answered. At the sight of her, he went dead still. He knew something had happened, could read messages beneath her skin. Filled with concern, his eyes roamed her face for no more than seconds before he reached out and drew her in.
He cared. Of all the things Donna loved about the man, what she loved most was that he cared. That was why she didn’t stop over the threshold but continued on into his arms. It was why she raised her face for his kiss and gave one back, why she let him take off her faded winter jacket, why she went with him through the small living room into the bedroom in back. He cared. He thought she was worthy of his caring. He treated her as though she were precious and very, very feminine. That was why she let him undress her, why she watched while he stripped down, why she took the weight of his naked body, then opened her legs and took him inside. He cared, and she loved him for it.
Twenty-one
You’ve been avoiding me,” Chelsea said the minute Hunter opened the door to her on a chilly evening in early November. She slipped her cold hands into the opposite sleeves of her coat and raised her voice to carry over a robust Tchaikovsky’s Ninth. “You’re never at the quarry when I’m there. You’re never at the office when I’m there. You’re never at church when I’m there.”
“Never go to church.” He glanced at her stomach, which was a marked protrusion between her topcoat’s lapels. “Surprised they let you in.” Chelsea grinned. “They have no choice. I donated a new organ. The pastor insists I sit in the front row, so that’s where I sit, baby and all.” As though it had been waiting for the permission that maternity clothes gave it, the baby seemed to have doubled in size in the last month. When Chelsea walked down the center aisle of the church, she very definitely looked pregnant.
“Bet the town’s leading ladies love that.”
Her grin broadened. “Don’t you know it.”
Hunter snorted and looked away, but not before a reluctant half smile touched his mouth.
“Can I come in?” she asked, hunching her shoulders. “It’s freezing out here.”
“Is this another I’m-lonesome-Hunter-I-want-to-talk thing?”
“No. I’m not lonesome. Buck is great company.” He was running around outside. “But I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“You.”
She put both hands on his middle, guessing—correctly—that he would move to avoid her touch. She stepped into the house just as the music crescendoed. When she looked back, he was standing by the closed door.
“Will you turn it down?” she called.
“I like it,” he called back.
“But I can’t hear myself think.”
“If you want to think, go home.”
Shooting him a look of annoyance, she went to the stereo herself and lowered the volume, then sighed in relief. “The neighbors must love this.”
“That’s why I do it.”
Bothering the neighbors might be a side benefit, but she figured the main attraction was the music itself. Given the size and nature of Hunter’s collection, he appeared to be a connoisseur. “You never did tell me what got you hooked.”
“No.”
She waited expectantly.
After a time he said flatly, “I went to the symphony every Saturday night when I was a kid.”
“Hunter.”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“My mother liked classical music. Okay?”
Chelsea found that interesting, another element of his background to explain why he was the way he was, another thing they had in common. “It’s fine. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that it’s none of your business.”
“That’s what bothers me.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her coat and faced Hunter across the floor. “I thought we were getting to be friends.”
He tucked his hands under his arms and said nothing.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.
He shrugged dismissively.
“Did someone in town say something about me that upset you?” There might have been gossip about her baby, or where she’d come from, or what she planned to do with the Notch when the year was done.
He shook his head.
When he remained silent she pulled out the drawing she’d made of the silver key and brought it to him. “Have you heard about this?”
He gave the drawing a passing glance. “Nolan showed it to me. Where did you get it?”
She told him the story, then said, “I want you to help me find out where it came from and where it is now.”
“Me?” he asked. “Why me?”
“Because I like you.”
He looked wary. “I’m not a likable person.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s the message I’ve been getting my whole life.”
“Then you read messages wrong. Judd likes you. The guys at work like you. I think you set yourself up not to be liked, then when it doesn’t happen you turn and walk away and tell yourself that it happened anyway.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”
Chelsea chuckled. “Cydra should be here.” She missed her. They talked often on the phone, but it wasn’t the same as sweating on the road together. That had been therapy, both the exercise and the talk. “Do you remember Cydra from the open house?”
“I remember her.”
“She was intrigued with your looks.”
“Most women are.”
“If she came up for a week, would you take her out?”
“I don’t take women out,” Hunter said. “I do my thing and leave.”
My thing. Chelsea gave him a droll look. Enticingly she said, “Cydra’s a great girl.”
He gave her a disinterested look.
“Okay, if you won’t do that, will you help me find the key?”
His hands fell to his hips. His suddenly cross expression was Oliver all the way. “What in the hell can I do?”
“Ask around.”
“Nolan’s been asking.”
“But you’re on the inside,” she argued. It was time she actively looked, but she couldn’t do it alone. “You know the Corner like Nolan doesn’t. People might tell you things that they won’t tell him, or me. Someone has to know where the key is.”
“What does it go to?” he asked, retreating into his old defiance. He sounded as if he were testing her, and she supposed that was fair. She was asking him to put himself out. He had a right to know what for.
“I was told it goes to a music box.”
“But you don’t have that. So why do you want the key?”
“Because it’s mine,” she said with a defiance of her own. “I have nothing at all of my birth parents but that. I want it back. And if I can’t get it back, I want to know who gave it
to the lawyer who then sent it to my mother.”
“Who was the lawyer?”
“I don’t know. On the Baltimore end, the adoption was handled by a friend of my parents, but he died and left no records behind. It was a home birth, so there were no hospital records. I checked with Neil on the chance that my mother might have had a problem during the pregnancy and gone to the hospital for that, but the only visit like that at the time was made by your mother. I thought I might have a chance with the midwife.”
“Did you talk with her?”
“Oh, yes.” Chelsea remembered their meeting vividly. “She claimed that she had been too young to assist at any births then and that her mother would have been the one to know, but her mother is dead.” Chelsea had sensed that the woman knew more. She had begged. She had offered money. Desperate, she had even threatened to go to court, though that would have been a waste of time and effort. If the woman wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t talk.
One thing Chelsea knew for sure. She wasn’t having that woman deliver her baby. Home birthings were supposed to be warm, intimate, and emotionally rewarding. Given the choice between a more formal hospital delivery and a home birth attended by a midwife who couldn’t see a legitimate human need when it was right before her eyes, Chelsea would choose the hospital any day.
“So since she wasn’t any help, the key is the only thing I have to work with. Will you help me look?”
He took his time answering, and then it was an ungracious, “I suppose.”
“Supposing isn’t good enough. You either do or you don’t.” And she didn’t care if she did sound like Kevin, she felt strongly about the cause.
“You just want me to ask around?”
“I’m offering a reward. One thousand dollars for information leading to the return of the key.”
He made a sarcastic sound. “That the best you can do?”
“For starters. It may change. Well?”
After another long moment, during which time he stared at her, he took the paper, refolded it, and slid it into the pocket of his jeans.
“Thank you,” she said with an exaggerated sigh of relief, and crossed that matter off the list in her mind. “One more thing.”
He scowled. “What now?”
“Thanksgiving. I’m having dinner with Judd and Leo. Join us?”
“I thought you were going to the Farrs’.”
After five months of living in the Notch, Chelsea was still occasionally surprised by the work of the local grapevine. “What do you know of that?”
“I know it got Donna in deep shit. Matthew was shooting his mouth off in the bar at the inn. So, they decided not to invite you?”
“Oh, they invited me,” though she wished Donna had never asked Lucy. The price she’d had to pay wasn’t fair. “But they didn’t want Judd or Leo or Nolan.”
“You ought to go. Wear skintight clothes.”
“Shame on you, Hunter.”
“Still, if you’re on the A list, you ought to go.”
“Let me tell you something,” she said conversationally. “I’ve been on the A list for most of my life, and I haven’t been impressed. People on the A list are usually so busy either getting there or staying there that they don’t have time for much else, which makes them very boring people. I’d opt for dinner with the B or C list any day. So. Will you join us for Thanksgiving dinner?”
He returned his hands to his armpits. “I don’t know.”
“Yes or no.”
“I may not be around.”
“Where are you going?”
“I usually leave town for the holidays.”
“Because they’re depressing,” she guessed. “Well, I’m giving you a chance to stay here without being depressed. Join us.”
“I’ll see.”
“I want a commitment.”
“Why?” he asked, and his crossness returned. “Why are you on my back? And don’t say you like me, because that’s a crock, and don’t say you want me, because we both know you want Judd. What are you after?”
She wished she knew. From the first she’d been drawn to two men in the Notch, Hunter and Judd. She understood her attraction to Judd. It had a face and a name. Her attraction to Hunter was different. She felt an affinity for him, didn’t know why or where it was supposed to lead, only that the draw was there. She wanted to be his friend—but she’d told him that before. So, with a sigh, she said, “What I want is to be able to communicate with someone who has experienced similar things to me.”
“Similar things?” Hunter exclaimed. “Baby, we’re talking black and white, night and day, bad and good.”
She shook her head. “We were born in the same town in the same year, to women who conceived when they weren’t supposed to. Neither of us has any blood relatives who acknowledge us. We both like classical music, even though we’re not musical ourselves, we both like motorcycles, and we both wear earrings. For all we know,” she went on brashly, “Oliver was my father, too, only instead of hiding me away for five years, my mother gave me up for adoption. How does that sound? Think we might be half brother and sister?”
“No, I don’t!” Hunter yelled.
“Okay. No sweat. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be related to me. I’m sharp-tongued, filthy rich, and pregnant.” Her voice gentled in a final plea. “But I really would like to spend the holiday with you. Think about it, please?”
HUNTER NEVER DID GIVE HER AN ANSWER. AS THOUGH IT WERE an issue of control, he refused to be pinned down. Nonetheless, shortly before four on Thanksgiving afternoon, he came with a swirl of falling snow through Judd’s door. Nolan was there, as was Millie Malone, who had no family in town, and the ever-faithful Buck.
As Thanksgivings went, it was totally different from the formal feasts with rented tables and chairs, a full service staff, and dozens of guests. Chelsea didn’t miss the pomp; she did miss Kevin and Abby. For that reason she was grateful for the work involved in preparing the meal. Judd was in the kitchen as much as she was, which made the work fun. Hunter was inoffensive, even entertaining when he could be cajoled into talking. Leo was innocently vacant, once he recovered from a small fit over when Emma was arriving, and Millie, though solicitous to his needs, giggled her way through more than her share of the wine Judd uncorked. Only Nolan seemed distracted.
Chelsea didn’t get him alone until the very end of the meal. She was making a pot of coffee in the kitchen, setting up for dessert while the football game went on in the living room. Nolan had volunteered to help, which suggested he wanted to talk, too.
“You’re worried about Donna?” she guessed. She knew about the recent intensification of their relationship and what had prompted it. Donna had spilled all when the issue of Thanksgiving had come up.
Nolan leaned against the counter with a look of distress. “Matthew’s a difficult man.”
“She should be fine today,” Chelsea reasoned, but she, too, was uneasy when she thought of what Donna’s day would be like. She wished she were there, if only to act as protector. But her presence would have stirred Matthew up, which was why she had decided not to go. So now she rationalized, “The house will be packed. There’s safety in numbers.”
“Not with Matthew. He’s doubly mean to her when they’re with family, because then he’s more frustrated than ever. His sister-in-law is nearby, but he can’t touch her.”
“Does Donna know about Joanie?” Chelsea hadn’t gotten any hint of it and wasn’t callous enough to ask outright.
Nolan sniffed. “She knows there’s a woman, but she’s too good-hearted to guess who.” He studied his hands. “I keep telling her to divorce him. She doesn’t need him. I’ll take care of her. But she won’t.”
Donna had told Chelsea that, too. “She’s afraid for Joshie, and for the family name. It’s commendable, I suppose.”
“It’s stupid.”
“That, too,” Chelsea mused, because Donna was suffering so.
Nolan ran a hand through hair the
color of the speckled gray granite at Moss Ridge. He wasn’t handsome by a long shot, but Chelsea could see why Donna loved him. A kinder man would be hard to find.
“What scares me,” he said, “is that it’ll take something really bad before she leaves him. He slaps her around. He throws things at her.” The pain in his eyes was a vivid enough picture, yet he painted another. “He threw a fork at her—I mean, had to have hurled the thing just like a knife, because she had puncture wounds right where it hit, and they were a long time in healing. That’s assault with a deadly weapon. She could take him to court on it. But she won’t.” His nostrils flared. “I’m a goddamned officer of the law, and that bastard’s going to break the law one more time and really hurt her, and there isn’t anything I can do to prevent it.”
“Talk to him, Nolan. Tell him what you know and what you can do.”
“Know what he’ll do then? He’ll take it out on her. So maybe he won’t hit her, but there’s different ways to skin a cat. He could take every cent from the cash drawer, scatter it all over the store, and make Donna scrounge around until every blessed penny is accounted for. How can I do that to her?” he asked, then swore. “I haven’t felt so hamstrung in my whole life. I swear there’re times I’d like to put my badge in the drawer and hit the street with my shotgun.”
“But you won’t,” Chelsea cautioned.
“No purpose to it besides getting rid of the bastard. I’d be locked away from Donna. Besides, give the guy enough time and he’ll do himself in. Know what he does three or four nights a week? He holes up at the bar at the inn until he’s good and drunk, then goes driving around until he thinks he’s tired enough to sleep. The guy has self-destructive tendencies. No doubt about it.”
“Can’t you pick him up for drunk driving?”
“I have. More’n once. And each time, I get a visit from Emery reminding me that my contract is up for review before the selectmen. I can keep my job by letting Matthew drive wild on the roads in the middle of the night, or ticket him and be ousted. If I lose my job, I have to leave town, because law enforcement is the only thing I know, and if I leave town, I won’t see Donna. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Life stinks sometimes.”
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 39
