Snowfall on Lighthouse Lane

by JoAnn Ross

  “What if he gets released on bail? Or on his own recognizance?”

  She’d either looked up the process of arrest to trial previously, or watched a lot of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

  “When I leave here, I’m taking copies of your medical files and photos, along with other information I managed to collect, to the DA, who I called on the way here after talking with Dr. Lancaster. He’ll be ready to press charges this afternoon. Which in this state gives us seventy-two hours before he has to appear before a judge for the bail hearing.

  “Both Dr. Lancaster and Dr. Honeycutt will be there to testify, if necessary, and the prosecutor who’s going to be appointed to the case just happens to be a woman whose mission in life is to put bad guys away and she has a particular distaste for husbands who beat their wives. Probably because her sister was one of them, who didn’t escape in time to avoid being killed.”

  He felt bad about causing what little color she’d had in her face to fade to white, but he’d feel a lot worse having her end up on a slab in the morgue. Not in his town, Aiden thought again. “If you can give us other towns where the police have been called, the DA can start creating a case. Then, if he doesn’t plead guilty on the spot, we’ll gather even more for the trial.”

  “You still have to catch him. As I said, he’s brilliant. And has gotten really good at survivalist stuff.” She dragged a hand through her hair, which was stiff from dried blood. She paused and he watched as realization dawned in those sad, tired eyes. “All that time we were hiking and camping, he could have been practicing for this. Maybe to escape and hide after he killed me.”

  “You may be right, but we’ll find him. Meanwhile, after you’re released, we’ll take you to a safe house run by a former Portland homicide detective and her Navy SEAL husband.”

  “But the nursery... As I said, this is a busy time for me, and although I could absorb the loss, I have employees who would be hurt by a closure.”

  “Can they run the place for a few days?”

  “Emily and Jen can handle the inside business,” she said slowly. “And most of the seasonal greenery will probably be sold at your family’s farm anyway. Jesus, Emilio, Greg and Tom take care of stock and planting, which we don’t have that much of this time of year, except I expect we’ll get some calls to plant some of the potted Christmas trees. Your dad offered to hand out my cards to people who buy them.”

  “So, you’re set on that front.”

  “I guess I am. At least for a few days.”

  “Okay. Good. I’ll let them know what’s going on. You’re not going to be able to keep what happened a secret in this town anyway. It makes sense to give everyone the Thanksgiving weekend off, since, honestly, from Friday to Monday, my family’s going to get most of the floral decorating business and that way none of the will have to deal with an angry husband looking for you.”

  “I wouldn’t want any of them to get hurt.” Her eyes filled at the thought.

  “That’s not going to happen.” He hoped. Hell, he’d put one of the volunteer cops on nursery duty if they hadn’t apprehended the husband by Monday.

  “I’ll handle the police business while Dr. Lancaster takes care of the tests you need. After that, she’ll take you to up to the surgery recovery floor. That way, even if your husband decides to show up here, he won’t find you in the ER. As soon as the doctors say you’re good to go, we’ll move you. If you give me a key, I’ll have Jennifer Stone, the department’s new deputy chief, get some personal things out of the house for you. Anything special you need?”

  “Just my purse. And some clothes and underwear.” She blushed a bit at that. “And shampoos and toothpaste and stuff.”

  “Consider it done. They’re good people. I think you’ll like them. And I know they’ll like you. And keep you safe.”

  The tears she’d been trying to hold back broke free and streamed down her face.

  “I’m sorry.” She wiped at the tears with the back of her hands. As a cop, he’d gotten used to tears, but they still tore him up inside. He decided the day he got so numb to the results of crime that they didn’t, it’d be time to get into another line of work.

  “You’ve nothing to feel sorry about,” he assured her, handing her a handkerchief.

  She dabbed at her eyes, then looked up at him “I’ve never met a man who carries a handkerchief.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. “I hear that a lot.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GLORIA’S HANDS SHOOK with nerves she’d been trying to hide from Jolene as she unhooked her bra after taking off her shirt behind the closed curtain of the dressing stall. The lab tech had given her a little pep talk about she didn’t have to worry, and explained that the ultrasound was safe and painless, that she’d have some gel placed on her skin, then high frequency sound waves would be transmitted from a probe through the gel into her body, which would bounce back to allow a computer to view them as sound waves to create an image. No different from the kind every pregnant woman received.

  Yada yada yada. As if Gloria hadn’t already read every article she could find online. She might be the empress of denial, but now that she’d started on this unwanted path, she intended to be prepared for whatever might happened.

  Despite her outwardly brave words, she’d learned early in life that it was better to expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Like the old saying went, if you’re going through hell, just keep on going. That was how she’d always lived her life, and she had no intention of changing. As the machine started beeping, which the tech assured her was merely the Doppler evaluating blood flow (again, something she’d already learned online), she also vowed that she was not going to die. At least not anytime soon.

  Not when she still had her daughter’s wedding to attend someday. And hopefully, grandbabies to look forward to down the road. She was imagining a future festive family Christmas with stockings hung from the mantel when the tech broke into her daydream by cheerily announcing that they were all done. And that the radiologist would read the images and have them at her physician’s by Monday morning.

  After dressing, fluffing out her hair that had been flattened while lying on the table, and touching up her lipstick in a mirror beneath a fluorescent light that wasn’t the least bit flattering, Gloria returned to the waiting room where Jolene was reading a romance novel. Ironic, she thought, for a woman who insisted she didn’t believe in true love or happily-ever-afters.

  “All done,” she announced.

  On the TV Jolene had been ignoring, Pioneer Woman had given way to Trisha Yearwood, who was making a pecan pie for the upcoming holiday. Gloria hadn’t been counting on doing much for Thanksgiving herself. Perhaps picking up one of those already made dinners Mildred Marshall sold at the market. Or, since there wasn’t going to be anyone to share it with, nuking a frozen turkey dinner and baking a Sara Lee pie. But now, with her daughter home, she was going to have to rethink that plan.

  “Great.” Jolene stuffed the book in her bag and stood up. “We’ve plenty of time to make brunch.”

  * * *

  “THIS IS WONDERFUL,” Gloria said as she and Jolene sat in front of a stone fireplace tall enough for a grown man to stand in. After brunch, they’d taken their wine to a pair of chairs overlooking the lake that was just misty enough after today’s earlier rain to look like the entrance to a magic watery kingdom. “I’m so glad you thought of it. Despite the reason.”

  “We should have done it earlier,” Jolene said. “I should have come home more often.”

  “I always knew why you didn’t. And understood. I also can’t deny that I enjoyed those fancy LA restaurants and that Emmy party. Who would’ve thought that I’d ever be in the same restaurant with George Clooney?”

  “That makes two of us,” Jolene said. She’d never been fortunate enough to do the makeup for the superstar who always arrived with his own ento
urage, but had heard from friends who’d worked on his movies that he was as warm and funny as he appeared in interviews. But a terrible practical joker.

  “I am worried I’m keeping you from work,” Gloria said.

  “Don’t worry. I’d honestly already planned to take the time off to work on my skin care line. I have some new things I want to try.”

  “I thought you were just making that up so I wouldn’t feel guilty.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. And let’s make a deal. Whatever happens Monday, we’re going to be honest with each other. We’re not going to hold back any thoughts or feelings and we’re definitely not going to lie just to make the other person feel better.”

  “So, if I get bald you’ll tell me that I’m beautiful.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But you’re already beautiful. Besides, lots of movie stars have buzzed their hair. Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron—”

  “For a postapocalyptic movie set in a desert. Even she couldn’t have kept her hair looking good in a situation like that.”

  “Toni Collette.”

  “Who played a woman with breast cancer in that movie with Drew Barrymore.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay, that might not have been the best example... Demi Moore.”

  “In G.I. Jane. This may surprise you, but I’ve never wanted to be a Navy SEAL.”

  “See, you’re keeping your sense of humor. That’s a good thing. And let’s not forget Jada Pinkett Smith. Will certainly seems to find her sexy.”

  “Since I’m not interested in any men finding me sexy, that’s not an issue.”

  “You’re being stubborn.”

  “I’m entitled. I may have cancer. I shouldn’t be mocked by my own daughter.”

  “Sneaky how you’re now using the outside possibility of cancer to your advantage.”

  “One uses the tools one has. And this is where I point out that I do know how to use the internet enough to Google stars with bald heads. As you undoubtedly did after Sarah told you about my mammogram. No one, even a woman who works in Hollywood, could have rattled off that list so quickly.”

  “I was preparing to be supportive.”

  “I know... I need to admit something I never told you,” Gloria said, looking out over the lake. A man was in a wooden boat, fishing from the bow. With the mist over the lake and the lushly wooded mountains looming up in front of him, he could have been a watercolor painting.

  Jolene glance over at her. “Okay.”

  “When I found out I was pregnant, I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be pregnant at sixteen.”

  “Who would?”

  That was why those vicious, mean-spirited rumors about her mother were so hurtful. Also, knowing how difficult life had been for Gloria, there was no way she was going to make the same mistake. Of course, keeping her virginity wasn’t that difficult when there wasn’t any guy in school that she wanted to have sex with. Except Aiden Mannion. But they’d both had reasons to keep their secret relationship...romance...whatever it had been, from ever going that far.

  Except for that day...the last time she’d seen him before he left for basic training. When she’d clung to him like moss on a tree and begged him to make love to her. He’d turned her down flat, devastating her.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” her mom, unaware of Jolene’s thoughts, continued. “My parents had just been killed and I was all alone, which was probably why I had sex with your father in the first place.”

  “Comfort sex,” Jolene murmured. “That’s understandable.”

  “I suppose so.” Gloria sighed. “Social services sent me to live with my grandmother. Who’d be your great grandmother on my mother’s side.”

  “You never talk about her.”

  “Because I don’t want to think of those days. She didn’t live long enough for you to meet her, but believe me, you didn’t miss anything. She was a harridan who treated me like an indentured servant. I probably wouldn’t have minded that so much if she hadn’t spent all our time together complaining about how my mother and father eloped because my mother turned out to be a slut who got herself ruined by a smooth-talking boy.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Jolene only knew her grandparents had eloped. To save the money and all the fuss of a wedding, her mother had always told her.

  “I never saw any point in sharing it,” Gloria said. “Because my mother was certainly no slut and it was obvious that they were madly in love, and even if the reason for the elopement was true, which I doubt because I could do the math and my mother would’ve had to get pregnant immediately, they still would’ve gotten married.

  “My father was the sweetest, most romantic man. I wish you could have known him. He was taking Mama to a lodge on the coast, not far from where the Mannions have their summer home, to celebrate their anniversary. He’d run all his plans by me first to make sure she’d really love it. Including having chocolate-covered strawberries waiting in the sea-view room with a bottle of champagne and an anniversary cake after dinner in the restaurant with Dennis Loves Janice piped on in pink frosting. Pink was her favorite color.

  “The only thing that kept me from falling apart when the trooper came to tell me that they’d been killed was the fact that they’d been on their way home from the trip when the accident had happened. Mama had called me from the lodge that morning, telling me how beautiful everything was, and how they’d just come back from beachcombing and she had a bag of shells and another of agates and sea glass. She’d decided that we could buy one of those rock tumblers to polish the rocks and glass and make jewelry together. She was so excited and happy. That was the last time we ever talked.”

  “That’s so sad. But it’s a nice memory.” Yet so bittersweet.

  “The car was totaled. I never got the shells. Or the rocks.”

  “Is that why you make your jewelry?” Necklaces, rings and bracelets from stones and sea glass her mother found on the beaches she’d once sold on eBay for extra money. She’d continued to make them but now they were sold in her salon, a boutique in the Dancing Deer dress shop and at the Herons Landing gift shop.

  “It is. Every necklace or bracelet I make has me feeling as if a part of her is with still me. It helps keep her memory alive.”

  She quieted, as if lost in thoughts Jolene didn’t want to intrude on.

  “What do you think happens when we die?” she asked finally.

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “We’re all dying, darling. You, me, that good-looking young man who waited on us in the dining room. Who, I noticed, had his eye on you.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “He did. As did Aiden when we ran into him at the hospital.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did, too. He looked at you the same way he did at Kylee and Mai’s wedding. Like you were a frosted cupcake he’d like to eat up. But you kept moving as far away as you could from him.”

  “Maybe you should have had a brain scan while you were in radiology,” Jolene said. “Because you were obviously hallucinating.”

  “I know what I saw. And I saw that Aiden was more than a little interested. And you were trying not to be.”

  “Mother...”

  “There were sparks,” Gloria insisted. “And I wasn’t the only one who saw them. Sarah and I discussed it afterward, and she agreed there was definitely a mutual attraction.”

  “Even if there was, and I’m not saying that’s true, there’s no way I’d get involved with Aiden Mannion.”

  “Surely not because of that night?”

  “Partly.”

  “But he was the good guy. The one who rescued you.”

  “I know. But you weren’t there. A lot of that night is blacked out, but I definitely remember throwing myself at him, begging him to have sex with me.”
Years later she’d looked up Ecstasy and learned that increased libido was one of the reasons some seriously scummy guys used it to drug girls’ drinks. Which had happened at that party she never should’ve gone to.

  “Oh... Well. You had been given drugs, so you can’t feel responsible for what you did under the influence. And the doctor who did the rape exam at the hospital told me you were still a virgin.”

  “Only because Aiden and Seth arrived in time. And after beating those boys up and chasing them off, Aiden turned me down.”

  “Of course he did. Because, despite all the trouble he’d get into, he was, at heart, a good boy. Who grew up to be a good man.”

  “He was always a good boy. He just hid it well.” He’d also been the only person she could talk with back in those days. She still had no idea why he’d kept sneaking out with her, since she’d made it clear that he’d never get past second base, when she knew other girls in town who’d brag about having gone all the way with him.

  “Though I have to admit that I never, in a million years, would have expected him to become Honeymoon Harbor’s police chief.”

  “He’s turned out to be an excellent one.” Gloria sipped her wine. “He only agreed to take the job temporarily, but Sarah says she thinks he’ll stay.”

  “All the more reason for me not to get involved with him. Because it couldn’t go anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t do long-term relationships.”

  “That’s because you’ve never been with the right man. The one you can’t imagine a life without. Your relationship with Chad just ended. I’d say you’re entitled to have a have a rebound fling to get over the cheater.”

  “I don’t need to get over Chad. Because I was never emotionally invested. Although this is probably not something to share with a parent, our relationship was mostly sex and a way to avoid becoming one of those women who takes some strange guy she’s just met home from the bar for the night because she’s lonely. I happen to be a serial monogamist.”