In response to the baby, Quinn moaned and sounded like a freight train as he pushed past Carol and moved to stand beneath his baby. Lacey jiggled the infant in a frantic, herky-jerky motion that told Carol the girl was walking the fine edge of control.
Jack stepped out of his apartment and Carol moved at the same time, edging closer to Lacey and the baby.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, not trusting her voice to work on more than a one-word answer.
His features tightened, but he didn't go back into his own apartment. Instead, he turned away from Carol and expertly scooped Liz out of Lacey's arms. Instantly, the baby quieted. Silence dropped over the three people clustered together in the tiny hallway lit only by the Christmas-tree sconce. Lacey stared at the baby, hurt confusion dazzling her eyes. "How did you ..."
"She probably sensed how tense you were, that's all," Carol said quietly, trying to quell the urge to grab the baby from him. She remembered just how good he was with Liz. How the baby had settled for him and no one else and she wondered why it was he couldn't see it. Couldn't see how much he had inside him to give.
And she wondered how she would ever live without him.
"She's going to sleep," Jack said and swayed gently from side to side, easing the baby's tiny hiccups of distress. Quinn moved in close, nudging his nose up
against the child, leaning into Jack and whining in sympathy.
"I couldn't make her stop," Lacey said, her face crumpling. Fresh tears streamed from her eyes and ran unchecked down her cheeks. "She's been crying forever and she wouldn't stop." The girl's voice rose and fell like waves on a choppy sea. She looked from Carol to Jack and back again, carefully keeping her gaze from landing on the now-sleeping baby.
"Nobody has all the answers," Carol said, stepping close enough to rub Lacey's back with long, gentle strokes. "You're doing the best you can."
"It's not enough," Lacey said, and at last looked at her daughter. Shaking her head fiercely, she repeated, "It's not enough for her. She deserves better than me. Better than what I can give her "
"It's okay. Liz is all right now. Everything will be all right." Carol wrapped her arms around the girl and held on, sensing that Lacey was hanging on tight to the unraveling threads of control. The girl curled into her, laying her head on Carol's shoulder and sobbing as though her heart were being ripped out of her chest.
"You did the right thing coming here, Lacey," Jack said softly.
"I needed help," she said.
"And you were smart enough to get it," Jack told her.
The girl sent him a grateful, tear-filled look, then inhaled sharply and turned back around. "Nothing's all right, Carol. Nothing is." She wrapped her arms around Carol's waist and clung to her as a drowning man would grab at a lifeline. "I can't do it. I tried. I really did. But I can't do it."
Carol's heart lurched painfully in her chest. Hope was a desperate cry through her brain. Her blood roared
through her veins and her stomach did a quick spin. Her emotions churned and charged through her mind, one after the other in a crazy parade of color and sound. She didn't know what to think. What to dream.
Lacey pulled her head back to look at Carol. Ignoring the man and baby behind her, she met Carol's gaze squarely, and in a voice that dripped with shame and regret, she said, "Would I be a terrible person—a terrible mother—if I asked you to take Liz?"
Carol's knees went weak at the same time that yearning rushed in to fill her heart so completely, it ached in response. "Lacey ..."
"You love her," the girl said, her words tumbling from her mouth in a torrent that wasn't slowed down by little things like commas or periods. "I know you do because of how you treated her before you knew about me and I know I really hurt you when I took her away and I know I don't have the right to ask you to be my baby's mother, but I can't do it, Carol. I tried and I just can't do it because moms are supposed to know stuff and all I know is how much I don't know. And if I keep her"—she tossed a glance at the sleeping baby lying in the sheriff's arms—"I'll mess it up and I'll ruin things for her when she doesn't deserve that, you know?"
At last, she ran out of breath and steam. It was as if all the air left her body at once and she slumped, from the top of her head right down to the toes of her sandals.
Stunned and too overcome to speak, Carol felt the sting of tears fill her eyes. Her vision blurred as she watched a girl become an adult before her eyes. And pride rippled through her.
She risked a glance at Jack and saw naked emotion in his eyes. Pleasure for her, and sympathy for Lacey. If
there was another, deeper emotion there as well, she didn't identify it. Because what would have been the point?
She drew in a breath, then reached up to cup Lacey's face in her hands. This girl, suffering the pangs of guilt and defeat, was the one important thing right now. The one person she had to reach. Had to convince. Staring into those blue eyes so filled with despair and shame, Carol felt another solid tug on her heart.
"I'm proud of you, Lacey," she said, speaking slowly, clearly, willing the girl to believe her.
Lacey's bottom lip trembled and she blinked at the tears crowding her eyes. Soul-deep confusion glittered in those watery blue eyes, but along with that emotion was another. Hope. Proud of me? But I messed up everything."
"No." Carol spoke quickly, shaking her head for emphasis. "No, you didn't." Smoothing the girl's tangled hair back from her face with a gentle touch, she smiled through the tears clouding her own vision. "You wanted to love Liz, there's nothing wrong with that. You wanted to take care of your baby, that's good, too."
"But I failed."
'This isn't failure," Carol said, and dipped her head to make sure Lacey was looking directly into her eyes as she said, "This is growing up. This is realizing that what you want to do isn't always what you should do."
She thought about that for a long minute, never looking away from Carol's steady gaze. Breathing slowly, deeply, easing back from the brink of despair.
"You think?" A world of longing colored those two words.
"Oh, yeah." Carol pulled Lacey in close for another tight, brief hug. "I know!'
The girl nodded and swiped away her tears before glancing at her daughter again while speaking to Carol. "Would you want to, you know, adopt her, so you could be her real mom?"
Carol's heart squeezed tight in her chest and she had to fight to speak past the huge knot lodged in her throat. "I love Liz, Lacey. I always will. And I'd love to be her mom."
"Good." Lacey nodded, then for the first time since arriving at Carol's door, she smiled. Faintly at first, but it was at least a smile. "And I can still see her, too, when I come home froqa school and stuff?"
"Anytime you want," Carol assured her.
A soul-deep yearning careened through her system as Carol watched Lacey gently take Liz from Jack's arms. Once his hands were empty, he shoved them into his jeans pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them anymore.
Liz squirmed, screwed up her little face, then settled uneasily into sleep again, her soft breaths huffing into the stillness. Lacey ran one finger over the baby's cheek. "I really do love her."
"I know," Carol said, her voice pitched low enough to be a lullaby. "Me, too."
Nodding again as if reassuring herself that she was doing the right thing, Lacey handed the baby over and Carol cradled Liz close, feeling the slight weight in her arms slide right down into her heart.
Where she belonged.
"Why don't we go inside, Lacey?" Carol said, barely able to tear her gaze away from the child she held so closely.
"Okay." The girl blew out a breath that seemed to
shudder right through her, then she turned and went into the apartment.
Left alone in the hallway, Carol and Jack stood separated by no more than a foot of empty space. The indistinct light threw shadows across his features and made his expression that much harder to read. In her arms, Carol held t
he baby she loved—and within reach was the man who could make the dream complete.
Within reach and yet so far away.
"I'm glad for you," he said, his voice rumbling along her nerve endings to sizzle and pop in the pit of her stomach.
"Thanks, Jack." Throat tight, her heart ached now only for him. For the other missing piece of the whole.
Jack stepped in closer. She could smell him. That faint, indefinable scent that screamed inside her and made her think of long, dark nights spent wrapped in his arms. His gaze moved over her hungrily, burning her flesh as surely as though he'd touched her.
"Carol, I—"
"Carol?" Lacey's tremulous voice wobbled from inside the apartment. "Can I have a Coke?"
"Sure."
Whatever he might have said was lost in the shattered spell lying between them. And maybe it was just as well, Carol thought as she took a single step back. She couldn't bear to hear another apology. Couldn't watch him turn his back on what might have been, one more time.
"I've gotta go," she said, eager now to have Liz back home. To savor the richness of having a child to love. To protect. To help her forget the wildness she saw in Jack's eyes and the craving for more that rippled through her.
Giving Jack one last look—because really, how could she help herself?—she closed the door, leaving him where he'd wanted to be.
On the outside.
then before he could lose his nerve, ripped at the strapping tape holding the box closed. His heart slammed against his rib cage, his breath caught in straining lungs that felt like balloons filled to near bursting.
Jack swallowed back the tide of emotions raging inside him. He'd avoided this box for days. Never considered opening it until recently. Never would have considered it if not for Carol.
Longings, cravings, rose up in him and nearly strangled him. He wanted to live again. Wanted to be the man he'd once been. The man Carol and Liz deserved.
With the cardboard flaps thrown open wide, he stared down into the remnants of his past as the chains holding him to it tightened around his throat. Crap from his desk, a photo of his ex-wife, a snapshot of him and Will together at a softball game. The commendation he'd received for killing that boy in the alley.
Memories, good and bad, charged through his brain, one after the other, until they were nothing more than a blur of color and sound. He inhaled deeply and smelled the past as it reached out for him.
Steeling himself, Jack reached into the box, and almost instantly, his fingers curled around a videotape. The tape of the shooting. The piece of evidence that had saved his ass. Taken at the scene by an interested bystander at an upstairs window, the tape had upheld the story he'd told IAD. Internal Affairs had then cleared him of any wrongdoing. But Jack hadn't been able to accept that. His friend dead, his wife's accusations ringing in his ears, Jack had picked up the burden of blame and strapped it to his back.
Carol was right.
He had been a martyr.
But Judgment Day was finally here. Fist closed over
the videotape, he walked to the television, slapped the tape into the VCR, and pushed play.
The screen jumped to life and the tape flickered, rolled, then settled again. The film, taken by a local man hoping to catch footage of stray lightning, started out focused on the rain-choked sky. The camera jumped, the cameraman cursed, then, at the sound of a racing engine, swung the lens down to focus on the alley two stories below.
Jack watched as his squad car roared into the darkness, headlights slicing through the curtain of rain, illuminating every drop until they glittered like diamonds. A torrent of water poured along the alleyway, plastic bags and crumpled papers sailing on the current, looking like a poor man's boat parade. Videotape couldn't recapture the stench of that damned alley, but it seemed to Jack that the smells oozed from the television, reaching for him, trying to drag him back.
The sounds rushed at him with eagerness. The car engine, the pounding of the rain, the car door opening as Will stepped out before the car had stopped rolling.
Jack saw himself climb out of the car, squinting into the rain, just a step or two behind Will as they headed into the inky darkness, looking for a killer.
The first shot erupted and Jack jolted in the comfort of his living room. He saw the flash, watched himself instinctively duck as the bullet pinged into the wall behind him. He saw Will turn and stare at him blankly as if trying to figure out what had happened. Jack's hands fisted on his knees, his gut twisted, as he heard his voice shout from the past, "Getdown!"
But it was too late. The second shot came too fast. Too accurately. Jack watched the look of stunned surprise etch itself onto Will's face just before he staggered
backward, collapsing into an overfull Dumpster and splashing down face up, into the dirty river at his feet. Trash spilled over the edge of the dirty brown Dumpster, falling into Will's face with the same steadiness as the raindrops pelting him.
Jack groaned, old pain new again, tearing at him with claws of memory and talons of regret.
It all seemed to move so slowly, he thought now, watching the scene play out like a badly written movie. But that night, seconds had become hours, minutes were days. The shooter kept firing. One shot after another, wild, crazy shots. Hitting Will had been some terrible stroke of luck—or fate. Jack couldn't get to his partner. His friend. He saw himself trapped behind the car, saw the fury, the pain on his own face, and remembered the sense of helplessness. Of inevitability.
He knew what was coming next and braced himself to relive it. At the next muzzle flash, Jack took a chance. He stood up and fired three rounds in quick succession.
A scream knifed through him, echoing from the television, pulling him back into the nightmare, back into that stinking alley. He watched himself run first to the shooter, making sure the gun was out of play. He felt again the hideous shock of finding a child bleeding to death in the rain.
But even through the ache of memory, he watched himself go by the book. Secure the gun. Then check on Will, calling for an ambulance as he ran, footsteps sliding and sloshing through the muck.
Jack's stomach did a hard lurch, then settled as he watched himself bend over Will. And as he hadn't been able to do then ... he mourned the friend he'd lost that night.
The ambulance had been too late, of course. Will was gone. The boy died not long after.
The videotape recorded the wail of the ambulance, then the screen went dark and the VCR went into automatic rewind mode. He hardly noticed the hum of the machine as it reset the past to play again.
Jack's hands slowly unfisted. His stomach stopped churning. He'd finally faced the past—and in the truth, he'd found a hard-won peace.
Two days later, Carol slept late.
Sunlight streamed through her bedroom window and lay across the foot of the mattress in a dazzling slice of golden light. Outside the window, birds sang and children were laughing and squealing.
Exhaustion tugged at her and Carol smiled. Getting back into "mommy" routine was tough. But it was all worth it. Every tear, every ache, every joy, tangled up together in her heart, and they each centered on one tiny girl.
Lacey was packing for college, making plans with Peggy Reilly for a future that once again looked bright and full of promise. Adoption proceedings were already in the works and Lizardbaby was home, where she belonged.
"Speaking of whom," she said on a chuckle as she rolled off the bed. "I'm guessing you're pretty hungry by now, aren't you, Liz?" And Quinn's kidneys were probably ready to explode.
Carol leaned over the crib.
Empty.
She frowned, picked up the discarded baby blanket, the
one with the ducks, and ridiculously, looked under it. As if the baby were only playing hide-and-seek and would soon pop out and yell, "Surprise!"
"Okay, let's not get crazy," she whispered, trying to ignore the sudden shift in her heart rate from slow and lazy to a frantic bass drumbeat.
Mouth
dry, Carol felt fear blossom in the pit of her stomach and reach out with long tentacles to every corner of her body.
Outside, children were playing, laughter sweetening the air. But inside, a child was missing and Carol heard only her own panic climbing up her throat. But she didn't surrender to it. Not yet. Instead, she kept looking in the crib, telling herself she must be dreaming. She'd put the baby to bed last night—with Quinn curled up right beneath the crib in his usual position.
Quinn.
Carol shot a glance and saw the dog was gone, too. She dropped to her knees, looked all the way under the crib, then under her own bed for good measure.
Nothing.
"I don't believe this," she muttered thickly, fear quickening inside her now and dancing to the frantic rhythm of her heart. "How do you lose a dog and a baby?"
She asked herself the question, but didn't have an answer. All she knew was the baby wasn't here. Her dog was gone. And the sunlight spearing through the bedroom window looked like the accusatory finger of fate, reaching down from heaven to point at her.
"Jack," she told herself, grabbing up her short dark blue terry-cloth robe and yanking it on over her boxer shorts and tank top pajamas. "I'll get Jack. He's still the sheriff. He can help. God, what's going on? What's happening?"
She wheeled through the room, slamming her shin into the bed frame as she took the comer too sharply. Stars burst behind her eyes and she winced, but it wasn't that temporary pain that had tears filling her eyes again. Grabbing the doorknob, she rushed out through the hall and, barefoot, skidded to a stop in the living room.
It was freezing in there.
The air-conditioner was on full blast.
A roaring fire snapped and crackled in the hearth and the scent of cinnamon candles drifted through the room like a spicy cloud. Nat King Cole crooned from the stereo and in the far corner of the room stood a straggly pine tree adorned with strings of lights and shiny bulbs. Quinn, wearing a bright red ribbon tied to his collar, lay on the floor in front of the tree and looked, she thought, a little embarrassed.
Confusion rattled around inside her, leaving her knees weak and her spine tingling. Every nerve in her body sat straight up as Jack stepped out from behind the tree, Liz cradled in his arms.
Some Kind of Wonderful Page 26
