Her arms came up to circle his neck. He held her against him, lifting her to fit against his chest. Her heels came up off the floorboards. She’d forgotten how tall he was, tall and solid and warm. His hand, rotating against the base of her spine, urged her closer and closer still. Every nerve came to life. She made a small inarticulate sound and pressed herself into the vee of his legs as naturally as if she’d done so only yesterday.
Russ’s breathing altered and stopped. He waited for a timeless moment, his lips clinging to the softness of hers, until he’d regained the edge of his control. Slowly, tentatively, his tongue traced the edges of her lips.
“What are we doing?” she whispered against his mouth.
“What we should have been doing for the last seventeen years.”
She tilted her head, giving him greater access to her neck.
His nerves were raw. She was making him crazy, leaching the sanity from his brain. Dipping his head, he found the pulse at the base of her throat and sucked lightly. Her eyes closed and her head fell back as his mouth moved down her shoulder to the slope of her breast. He stayed there, breathing heavily, pressing down on the tempting fullness, remembering when he’d had the right to slide his hands under her blouse, lift the cups of her bra and feel the soft weight of her in his callused fisherman’s palms.
Libby could feel the heat of his mouth through the clinging material of her blouse. She trembled.
“Easy, baby, easy now,” he muttered, shifting her into the saddle of his hips. He settled her against him, gritting his teeth, feeling the ache in his middle that had started when he first saw her dancing in the rain. He brushed his hand against her cheek. Her eyes were closed, the lashes dark half moons on her cheeks. Bending his head, he began to kiss her, deliberately at first, with unhurried skill and then, when the tip of her tongue touched his lower lip, with increasing intensity.
The strength of his arousal thrilled her. Refusing to think of the disaster she courted or how she would feel tomorrow, she slipped one hand inside his shirt, laying it flat against his smooth, water-slick chest. The other, she slid down between their tightly wedged bodies and cupped him.
He jerked and froze, holding her against him for agonizing seconds. Libby was aware of nothing but his deep, shuddering breaths, the incessant rain and the slamming of his heart against her ribs.
His hands tightened on her arms and he swore. “Damn you, Libba Delacourte. This time I’m not going away with a slap on the wrist.”
She released her breath. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding it, wondering if it was too late, terrified that he would change his mind. Shamelessly, she wanted him, wanted him to take her here in the middle of a driving rainstorm on the floorboards of the Hennessey porch. And why not? She was an adult and she was single. No one would be hurt. “I want you,” she whispered. “Whatever happens tomorrow, I want you now. No regrets. I promise.”
He believed her and it was enough, more than he’d hoped for. Slipping his arm under her knees, he lifted her against him and started for the door. Light streaked across the sky, illuminating the porch and the short hall leading to the kitchen. Pushing the door open with his foot, Russ carried her through the hall to the stairs.
Standing at the top of the landing in a knee-length T-shirt, biting down on her thumbnail, was his daughter, Tess.
Libby’s dreamlike trance was broken. For one horrified, humiliating moment she stared at the child. Then, succumbing to cowardice, she buried her face in Russ’s shoulder. “Let’s see you charm your way out of this one, Hennessey,” she mumbled into his shirt.
Russ swore under his breath. Apparently, nightmares came dressed in T-shirts with tangled curls and doe-brown eyes. The drawbacks of parenthood had never been more clear. He cleared his throat. “You’re up late, Tess. Is anything wrong?”
Tess’s voice shook. “The storm woke me.” She pointed a finger at Libby. “What’s wrong with her?”
“The storm must have bothered her, too,” he improvised. “She got soaked and stopped by to dry off.”
A bubble of laughter rose in Libby’s throat. Trust Russ to come up with a lie that was almost the truth.
“Is she sick?” Tess demanded.
“Nothing that won’t fix itself by morning,” Russ answered cheerfully.
“Why are you carrying her?”
“I’m taking her upstairs. Sometimes adults need some pampering.”
Libby untangled her arms from around Russ’s neck and kicked her legs from his grasp. “Actually, I think I’m okay now.” She folded her arms against her chest. “A dry T-shirt and something warm to drink would be great.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Bad timing.”
Whose, Libby wondered, hers or Tess’s?
He smiled. “How about some hot chocolate?”
“That sounds wonderful.” Libby smiled at Russ’s daughter. “How about you, Tess?”
“Yes, please.”
Russ disappeared into the kitchen.
The girl walked slowly down the stairs until she stood even with Libby. “You’re Chloe’s mother, aren’t you?”
“I’ll admit to it,” said Libby, “although sometimes I wonder if I should.”
“She’s different,” observed Tess.
“She’s a Californian,” answered Libby. “That explains a lot.”
“I like her,” Tess said.
Libby looked, really looked, at this frail, ethereal child for the first time and her heart melted. “Would you do me a favor?”
Tess looked wary. “What kind of favor?”
“Would you tell her that?”
Tess looked horrified. “It’s not something that would just come up in normal conversation.”
Libby’s smile faded. “I guess not.”
Tess frowned, opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again without speaking.
Libby explained. “Chloe doesn’t feel as if she fits in here. She wants to go home.”
Tess’s eyelashes fluttered. “Why can’t she?”
“I want to stay here. This is my home.”
“But it isn’t hers. She wants to live with her dad.”
“Did she tell you that?”
Tess nodded.
Libby’s shoulders sagged. “I know.”
“It might be better to let her go back,” Tess advised.
Libby collected herself. This heart-to-heart with a peer of her daughter’s wasn’t appropriate. “Maybe you’re right. Shall we see about that hot chocolate?”
Tess eyed Libby’s shirt. “I think I should get you something else to wear. You’re pretty wet.” She eyed Libby’s full breasts, clearly exposed under the soaking shirt. “I don’t think anything I have would fit you. I’ll check in Dad’s closet.”
She was back in a minute with a soft gray sweatshirt. Libby excused herself and changed in the bathroom, leaving her dripping blouse hanging in the shower stall. Then she joined Russ and his daughter, taking a seat around the old oak table in the kitchen.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” asked Russ. He appealed to Tess. “Wouldn’t it be great if Chloe was here, too?”
Tess was sitting beside her father. The light from the overhead lamp shone down upon them. She rolled her eyes and looked across the table, giving Libby an unshadowed view of her face. Her eyes were brown, a deep velvety brown, without the slightest touch of hazel.
Libby looked from father to daughter and back again. Blue eyes, brown, blue. She looked down at her cup of hot chocolate and called up the memory of her last encounter with Tracy Wentworth. Pale hair, clear gray eyes. The genetic law so without exception that it was used as a model for decades of schoolchildren popped into her mind: Two recessives can never, absolutely never, produce a dominant. Light-eyed parents do not produce dark-eyed children. Once again her eyes moved from Tess to Russ, searching for the slightest resemblance. Then she went completely still.
“Libba.” Her name on Russ’s lips revived her. “I think it nee
ds to be explained to them.”
She looked dazed. “What?”
“The watermen. The problem needs to be explained to them in terms they understand. I think you should do it.”
“Me?” Dismay clouded her features.
Russ nodded. “Who better?”
“I can think of a number of people.”
“Think about it. These people know you. If you treat them like you’re on their side, you won’t be seen as the enemy, the one shutting them down.” He leaned forward. “They’ll have plenty of time on their hands and you said you needed help.”
“What are you talking about?” Tess asked.
Russ spoke first. “Remember I told you there’s a problem with the crabs?”
She nodded. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
“We need to find out why,” Russ explained. “And we need to do it quickly or we can’t fish.”
“I need trained help, Russ,” said Libby.
He shrugged impatiently. “What does it take to check out the waste systems of production plants? At least they’ll know what they’re looking for. C’mon, Libba Jane. Give them a chance.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said reluctantly. “However, it’s a big job and a lot more complicated than you think.”
Russ winked at this daughter. “Think fast because I’ve called a meeting for tomorrow evening.”
“You have four trawlers, Russ. How many people do you employ?”
“Twelve. But this concerns all the fishermen on the bay, not just me. We’ll have the meeting in the library and we’ll figure out how to get through this.”
Libby stared at him, dismayed. She’d only just returned to Marshyhope Creek and still felt like a newcomer, insecure of her welcome. The last thing she wanted was to hold a town meeting under false pretenses. Still, Russ’s request made sense. She really couldn’t refuse. It wouldn’t hurt to have everyone know the facts, if only she was sure of what the facts were. Searching for PCB leaks wasn’t a bad idea. It certainly couldn’t hurt, and maybe someone would uncover something more in the process. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I suppose it is a good idea to keep them busy. At least I can tell them about collecting their benefits.”
Twenty-One
Nola Ruth Delacourte’s dark eyes were fixed on her husband’s face, their expression of horrified disapproval so palpable that he felt as if her hands were around his throat squeezing the air from his breathing passage. Sweat broke out on his brow. Carefully, he lifted his water glass to his lips and looked back at her steadily. They were in his study. He sat behind his desk. She faced him from her wheelchair.
Her voice was surprisingly clear. “How could you, Cole?”
“The case would have been mine, anyway.”
“You’re nearly retired.”
“I’m pleased you recognize the operative word is nearly.”
“Please don’t do this.”
Cole sighed, stood and walked around the desk. He knelt beside his wife. “She’s an old woman, Nola Ruth. Who else is there? She’s done a dreadful thing, but not maliciously. There’s no one else to help her. Surely you don’t want an old woman to spend her final years in a jail cell.”
“She’s a murderer,” Nola Ruth said icily. “How can you represent someone who killed a child?”
“I’m an attorney. That’s what I do. I represent all kinds of people. You know that.”
“What she did was wrong.”
Cole stroked his wife’s hand. Nola Ruth had lovely hands, long-fingered and graceful with beautifully kept oval nails. “That isn’t the way it works, Nola Ruth. You’re an intelligent woman. You know that.”
She remained silent.
Cole didn’t want to play his trump card. It wasn’t necessary. He would represent Drusilla Washington no matter what reservations Nola Ruth had.
“You’ve involved Libba,” his wife said petulantly. “I didn’t want that.”
“On the contrary. You confided in Libba. You had every intention of involving her on your terms. Only something else got in the way. She’s bright, Nola Ruth. Did you think she would leave it alone? Her powers of observation are strong. She’ll know everything before long. She’s already drawn to Verna Lee.”
Nola Ruth pulled her hand away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cole frowned. This conversation was unproductive. He had work to do and the evening was getting away from him. He rose, crossed the room to open the door and then returned to wheel Nola Ruth down the hall and into her room. “I’ll tell Serena you’re here.”
“I don’t want Serena,” Nola Ruth said coldly. “I want Libba Jane.”
Cole’s patience never thinned. “I’ll be sure she knows that when she gets in.” He kissed his wife’s cheek. “Good night, Nola.”
She didn’t answer and after a minute he left the room once again, returning to his study and the case before him. Drusilla was an old woman. Her age was in her favor. She was not a criminal nor had she been an activist, not even during the early civil rights years when nearly every black woman in domestic service was. Not a single complaint had ever been filed against her by those she’d served, and she’d served many, mostly the disenfranchised who knew by implication that Dr. Balieu would never receive them in his pristine office on the right side of Marshyhope Creek. She’d single-handedly raised her granddaughter, an educated woman who’d returned home to run her own small business. So much for character. Now, for her defense. Obviously premeditated murder wasn’t a charge he needed to concern himself with. Drusilla had gone to the young sharecroppers’ dwelling to deliver a baby, to bring forth life. Murder was the last thing on her mind. She was not a murderer, yet the coroner’s report said the child was strangled. What then, were the circumstances that led her to such an action?
Cole picked up his pencil and notepad and jotted down the facts as he knew them: the child was horribly mutated, possibly even in pain. He struck that. Drusilla would not have known if the child was in pain. But she did know that the infant was obviously deformed. Drusilla, with years of midwifery behind her, knew it could not survive. Then why didn’t she allow it to die naturally? Why had she taken matters into her own hands and orchestrated the time of death? Cole thought of various possibilities, both actual and those he could convince a jury to believe. More than likely Drusilla was afraid the child would live and two teenagers who survived hand-to-mouth picking crops would end up abandoning the child somewhere by the side of the road. A mercy killing. That would be Cole’s defense. After all, it wasn’t the young parents who’d questioned Drusilla’s action. The plaintiff was the State of Maryland. Again he jotted down notes, questions he would ask the mother and her husband. With any luck they would be sympathetic witnesses. Perhaps Drusilla had prior knowledge of what they would do. Perhaps she’d seen something similar.
“Granddad?” Chloe’s voice interrupted him. She stood in the doorway, unsure of her welcome. He set aside his notes, removed his glasses and beckoned her into the room. “What a wonderful excuse for a break,” he said.
Relieved, Chloe curled up in a wing chair that swallowed her small form and regarded him seriously.
“Is this purely a social call or do you have something on your mind?” her grandfather asked. “Because I refuse to consider anything important unless I have a piece of Serena’s cobbler with ice cream in front of me.”
Chloe grinned. “You’re on.”
He stood and reached for her hand, leading her down the long hallway into the kitchen.
“So,” he said, when they were seated across from each other at the small table in the breakfast room, enormous helpings of peach cobbler a la mode in front of them. “Tell me everything.”
Chloe nibbled at the edges of her cobbler. Her cheeks were flushed. “Skylar Taft said some mean things about Bailey’s mother.”
Cole knew he should say something, anything so that Chloe would continue, but teenagers were particularly sensitive. “Oh?” was t
he best he could come up with.
Chloe nodded. “They said she’d had a lot of boyfriends and that she didn’t even know who Bailey’s father was.”
“I’m fairly sure that Lizzie Jones has never taken Skylar into her confidence,” Cole said dryly.
“So, it isn’t true?”
Cole considered her question. “Some of it may be true, but certainly not all of it. I’m sure she knows who Bailey’s father is and, yes, she’s probably had a lot of boyfriends.”
Chloe held her spoon over her plate and watched the melted ice cream drip down into the pastry and peaches. “She’s sick.”
Cole nodded. “I’ve heard.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with, you know—” she hesitated and then continued “—her lifestyle?”
Cole studied his granddaughter under lowered eyelids. She was a small girl, slender and delicately muscled with fine features, exotic blue eyes and flyaway silvery hair, an ethereal child, fairylike. But she was much more than that. She had a quick intelligence and a seeking mind, perhaps even more than her mother had at the same age. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had done Libba a tremendous disservice by asking her to come home. His concern had been for his wife and, to a smaller extent, his daughter. But he had completely disregarded Chloe. Before he knew her, she had been Libba’s daughter, a mere child whose needs and wants could be sacrificed according to the wishes of the adults around her. Now, with the living breathing Chloe before him, he saw his mistake. He loved her desperately and he was ashamed. The years rolled back, oblivious years, when he was caught up in righting the grievances of his generation at the expense of knowing his daughter. He collected himself. Chloe needed an answer, an honest one. “Are you suggesting that Lizzie might have AIDS?”
The blue eyes swam with tears. “She’s so nice, Granddad. But she’s really weak and she looks worse every time I see her.”
“Have you ever actually seen anyone with AIDS, Chloe?”
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