His fists clenched. Jimmy had finally left town for good and Gabriel hoped never to see him again. What he did to the family was criminal, and he’d burned every bridge in the Chesapeake Bay. He’d found some rich bitch a few years ago, a stupid blonde who doted on him and paid his way. Fine by Gabriel—as long as Jimmy left their mother alone, Gabriel could care less about what happened to him or anyone who was stupid enough to fall for his lies.
The navy had been Gabriel’s salvation. He knew everything about sailing and boats because of his childhood, and he loved the ocean. If he didn’t see land it never bothered him, there was a peace being at sea that had eluded him his entire life. Between his dad’s drinking and his mother’s desperation to make everyone happy and his brother’s crimes, Gabriel wanted simple.
Six years in the navy and he planned to re-up. What else would he do? But first, he needed to see his mother.
He hitched a ride to the Cape Haven turnoff, then walked the couple miles into town with his pack. The September humidity was tempered only by a sea breeze. Gabriel breathed in, breathed out. The salt air was tinged with oil from the increase in tourist boating. The Chesapeake was losing its vibrancy, the fishing was even worse now than when his father worked on the water, but without the tourists, the towns on the bay would have no income. It was a catch-22. The tourists made the situation worse, but without the tourists the towns would go bankrupt.
It’s not your problem.
He walked up the brick walk to the two-story Cape Cod–style house on the corner of Main and Elm. The only home he had ever known that didn’t float on the water. Bittersweet, perhaps, but it was home, and his mom only had a few more months to enjoy it. He hoped she lived through Christmas, because it was her favorite time of the year. She loved to bake and decorate and sing Christmas carols when she thought no one could hear her. Gabriel loved his mother’s singing, but she didn’t like her voice, so he would hide on the stairs where he could hear her but she couldn’t see him from the kitchen.
He knocked on the screen door so he didn’t startle her. “Mom, it’s Gabriel,” he called as he entered.
The house was exactly as he remembered. The same warm, spicy smells from daily baking—today it was apples, because Gabriel’s favorite dessert was apple cobbler. The same furniture, worn but clean and functional. The house was tidy, though there were papers lying on tables and stacks of children’s books on the coffee table. Maybe she was babysitting—she loved children, and had often been the go-to house for neighborhood kids. The house where parents didn’t mind their kids going for Halloween for fresh-baked cupcakes or caramel apples because everyone trusted and loved sweet Emily Truman.
“Mom?” He walked through the dining room and into the kitchen. There was a high chair in the corner. On the counter a bib. A pink ribbon on the table.
The timer on the oven went off. Gabriel looked inside—apple cobbler, the juice bubbling through the holes in the crust. Some things never changed. He turned off the oven, pulled the mitt out of the drawer, and retrieved the dessert. He heard footsteps on the stairs.
“Gabriel!”
He put the cobbler on top of the stove and turned to his mom. His face froze in a half smile. There was his mom, white hair and big green eyes, looking far thinner than he’d ever remembered her. She’d never been overweight, but she looked a decade older than her sixty-two years.
But that wasn’t the most startling change. Emily held a baby. A girl, dressed in pink, with white-blond curls and the biggest blue eyes he’d seen on an infant. She stared at him as if assessing him, but she couldn’t even be a year.
“Mom?”
“I’m so happy to see you.” She walked over to the high chair and strapped the baby in, then hugged him tightly.
His arms wrapped around her and he feared he would break her in two. She was all skin and bones. “Mom.” His voice cracked. “You should have called me earlier.”
“I didn’t know until last month that it was cancer.”
“You didn’t lose all this weight in a month.”
She was really dying. Soon, he would have no one. No family. No home.
He could berate her, complain that she should have gone to the doctor sooner, that she should have caught this before it got so far. But none of that would change the fact that his mother had only months to live.
“Are you sure you should be babysitting?” he asked. “Are you feeling okay?”
“You must be starving,” she said. “Sit, I’ll make us sandwiches.”
“I can make them.”
“It’s my kitchen, Gabriel. I’m not dead yet.”
He sat in the chair he’d always sat in growing up. When his dad was alive they would eat dinner in the dining room—too formal for his taste—but breakfast and lunch were always in the kitchen. His food digested better here, he’d always thought.
The high chair was directly across from him. Emily put a cup with a lid in front of the child. The girl picked it up with chubby hands and drank, still watching him quietly.
“What’s her name?” Gabriel asked.
“Genevieve, but that’s a mouthful, don’t you think? I call her Eve.”
Something was not right.
His mom had made turkey sandwiches. Not processed turkey meat, but a sliced turkey breast. She used to bake a turkey once a month and they’d have it for dinner one night, then sandwiches, turkey noodle soup, casseroles—whatever struck her fancy. His mom was the best cook in Cape Haven.
“Can I get you something else?”
“Sit, Mom.”
She did. She took a small bite of her sandwich. She looked pained as she chewed, but she tried to hide it.
“How are you, Mom? Really.”
“I have good days and bad days.” She glanced at the baby. “How long were you able to get off?”
“Indefinite,” he said. He had a month of emergency family leave, but then he had to either return and reenlist or resign. He’d planned on reenlisting, had already filled out the paperwork, but his commanding officer had put it on hold until he knew what was going on with his mom.
“I didn’t want to call, I didn’t want to tell you—”
“I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“Things became complicated.”
“You’re my mother. I want to be here.”
She glanced again at the baby.
“You can’t babysit anymore, Mom. You’re tired.” Exhausted was more like it. There were dark circles under her eyes.
“Eve is a good baby,” Emily said. “I’m a bit worried—well, I overslept yesterday morning and she was crying. She never cries, so I think she was up for a while and I didn’t hear her.”
He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “Where are her parents?”
She glanced down at her hands. “I knew you’d be upset, Gabriel, but none of this is Eve’s fault. She’s innocent.”
His stomach sank. He ran through all the neighbors who could have left their kid with his dying mom. Who would be so cruel? So selfish? Then he knew.
“Jimmy?” He could barely spit out his brother’s name.
“Martha came for a few days in April. Eve was only a few months old. She said Jimmy had left them, she didn’t know where else to go. I think … I think Jimmy got into trouble again. Martha just wanted someone to watch her for a week or two, until she figured things out. But she never came back. I couldn’t just turn Eve over to child services. And being sick—I know that’s what would happen. They’d take her from me, put her with strangers. She’s my granddaughter. I always wanted a little girl, and now I have one.”
Tears slid down her weathered cheeks. He’d seen his stoic mother cry only once before, at his father’s funeral. Then, too, she’d cried silently.
“Where’s Jimmy?” He didn’t mean to sound so frustrated, but he couldn’t keep his anger inside.
“I don’t know. He called once, early July. Right before Independence Day. I asked him about the baby, he said he couldn�
�t come now, but he would. Someday he would, but he was working and couldn’t come. I asked about Martha, and he said she had to leave the country, she got into trouble with the law.”
Jimmy was a father? Martha left the country? What the hell was going on with these people?
Gabriel looked at his niece. “How old is she?”
“Martha left some papers in case I needed them—she was born January twelfth in Miami. That makes her eight and a half months now.”
“You have her birth certificate?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel had to find Martha and force her to do the right thing, but she’s just like Jimmy. She’s a con artist, always has been, always will be.
Gabriel had met Martha only once, over Christmas a few years ago when he had a week leave. He hadn’t known that Jimmy was coming home as well, and he would have kicked him out of the house except for the fact that his mother was thrilled to have her two sons home for Christmas. Emily was happy, but Gabriel watched Jimmy very closely.
At the time, Martha went by Martha Truman. Jimmy told Emily they’d married, but confided in Gabriel that it was just easier to pretend they were than actually get married. To this day, Gabriel didn’t know—or care—about his brother’s love life.
But now he had to find Martha, because his mother couldn’t raise a baby when she was dying. Gabriel would need to be in Cape Haven in order to help her and to search for the baby’s mother. He knew then that he wouldn’t return to the navy.
“I love her, Gabriel,” Emily said quietly. “She’s our family.”
Gabriel stared at Eve. She looked right back at him, as if she knew that this conversation was about her, as if she knew that her parents were losers and that he was the only one who might be able to protect her.
“Mom, I have decided not to reenlist in the navy. I’m staying home.”
“But you love the navy.”
“I’ve been keeping up on what’s going on around town. Brian Cooper is looking for someone to help him renovate the Cape resort and run the tour boats. He talked to me about it last year, when I was here for leave, and tried to get me to buy in. We talk from time to time. He still needs help—he has one investor, but it’s not enough. I have a small savings, and the skills he needs.”
The Coopers were like the Trumans in Cape Haven—they’d been around for generations. The Coopers were related to Emily by marriage—Emily’s sister had married into the family. She and her husband had moved to California years ago, didn’t keep in touch with either family, but the Coopers had always watched out for Emily. And Brian, who was more like a brother to Gabriel than Jimmy had ever been, had bought the run-down property with the help of an investor. But he needed help, and he wanted Gabriel to work with him.
It could be an important fixture in the community. Brian had ideas, but it wasn’t a one-man job.
“Brian is a good man. He’s been wanting to save that property for years.” Emily reached out and took Gabriel’s hand. “Please, Gabriel, when I go, take care of Eve. Promise me. I know Jimmy hasn’t always been … responsible. But we’re family.”
Not responsible? Try criminal.
Gabriel looked at Eve and she smiled. She actually smiled at him, revealing two dimples that melted his heart on the spot.
He fell in love, and vowed to do anything—anything—to protect her.
“I promise, Mom.”
Chapter Eleven
PRESENT DAY
Max never took “no” or “no comment” as an answer, but Gabriel Truman’s over-the-top hostility had her taking a step back and regrouping. She’d clearly missed something.
While Max understood that he might not want to talk about his brother who was an obvious jackass and a criminal, she’d made it clear she wasn’t here to damage his reputation or create any problems for him with his business. Was it that simple? Was he concerned that Jimmy Truman might still be in the picture, that he might come in and cause problems for Gabriel or his business? He’d conned his own mother, maybe he had something on Gabriel.
His daughter … the Hendersons mentioned his daughter, and she’d also been mentioned in Emily Truman’s obituary. But no mention of a mother. He was a single dad. As her ten-month relationship with Detective Nick Santini taught her, custody issues were complicated and emotional. Maybe the mother didn’t know about the criminal brother, and if she did she might fight for custody. Maybe she was a troublemaker like Nick’s ex-wife. Maybe she was unstable. It honestly could be anything, and Max needed to know exactly what in order to convince Gabriel that she wasn’t going to do or say anything to put his family at risk. Maybe the fact that she was a reporter made him see red, if he thought she planned on writing about Jimmy Truman, which would embarrass him and his family. She’d assumed he hadn’t known about her occupation, but his partner Brian Cooper did, and it was reasonable that so did Gabriel Truman.
Max tried to put herself in Gabriel’s shoes. He’d obviously been living with his brother’s crimes most of his life, and here she comes in asking about him—yes, he had a family to protect. While she still felt his reaction was uncalled for, she could see why he might not want to discuss Jimmy.
She would make it clear to Gabriel that she wasn’t writing a book, an article, or airing a television segment about Martha or Jimmy. Her investigation was solely for her own peace of mind. She wanted the truth; she had no intention of publicly sharing it. Then he might listen. Maybe he still wouldn’t trust her, but she would convince him she was telling the truth.
She liked having a game plan. Back at the beach house, she went to the den and looked at her timeline on the wall. She hadn’t added the daughter, but it was clear she should have. The kid might not be important to Max’s case, but she was important to Gabriel. Max respected that—though she wished the man would have just let her explain.
Molly Henderson said that Eve Truman was a sophomore. That made her fifteen or sixteen. Gabriel left the navy in September the year that Max’s mother disappeared … maybe he left because he fathered a child. Had he been married? A one-night stand? Had his wife died young? A girlfriend who dumped the kid on him because she couldn’t take it? He would have only been twenty-three or twenty-four at the time. She had to admire a man who lived up to his responsibilities—it’s why she didn’t hate her ex-boyfriend for putting his son first.
Max put a sticky note up on the wall by that September: Eve Truman birth? Who is her mother?
Birth records weren’t generally available online, at least not recent records. Over the last decade county offices had become a lot more private about the information that was available to the public. But Cape Haven was a small town, and if Max asked the right people the right questions, she could learn what had happened to Eve’s mother.
Still, she needed more information before she started, and she certainly didn’t want her questions to get back to Gabriel when his apparent concern was about how her investigation into Jimmy Truman might impact his family and business.
People were often surprised at the vast amount of information available about them online—all legal and public. Social media, especially among young people, proved to be a proven place to gather data.
She’d already done a basic background check on Gabriel Truman, which was how she knew his discharge date from the navy and that he was part-owner of Havenly—formerly the Haven Resort and Club. He’d served six years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a petty officer first class. She didn’t know much about military rankings, but David had told her after six years that was a pretty high rating.
“He was likely bumped up right before he put in his papers, if his CO liked him he would give him the promotion. It affects pensions, things like that.”
His profile didn’t have anything personal on it—he’d won several racing competitions when he was a teenager, had numerous ratings and licenses from a variety of government and boating agencies. All things that would be important to someone who was hiring him to pilot their charter boat.
Nothing that helped her figure out exactly who Gabriel Truman was.
She then searched for Eve Truman. Teenagers had social media pages, and Eve was no exception. The problem was that every one of her profiles was private. Smart, for a teenager, but very annoying for Max who wanted information.
However, her name did come up in several articles on Google News.
Eve Truman was an accomplished sailor herself. She belonged to a junior racing club that had gone from last to first in the three years she had been a member. Max found a photo of Eve from last summer, along with the rest of her team. It was hard to make her out in the group shot, but she had long dark blond hair pulled back with a hair tie and a fresh, clear complexion. The caption read: LED BY CO-CAPTAINS JASON HARRIS AND EVE TRUMAN, THE HAVEN POINT JUNIOR SAILING CLUB TAKES ANOTHER FIRST PLACE TROPHY IN THE SUMMER CLASSIC.
Jason Harris. Co-captain?
Max read the accompanying article in depth. Jason was two years older than Eve and was now a high school senior, which made Eve a sophomore. He might be very interested in talking to Max—especially if she could find an in. Maybe if she was writing an article … no, boating was a small, close-knit world. He would likely know all the major magazines and sports reporters by name, if not by sight.
She could go as a philanthropist, perhaps, looking to create a scholarship. And because she loathed lying, even to gain information, she would go ahead and create a scholarship through the Sterling Family Trust. If the board balked, she’d set it up herself.
She had to tread carefully, however—Gabriel was already suspicious of her motives. She didn’t want to overstep with his daughter. So she would reach out to the Haven Point director and go from there. Maybe talk to Beth Henderson again.
Max made a to-do list. She felt there was something here, something she could learn from Gabriel Truman if only she was patient and diligent. Fortunately, she was both.
* * *
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