“No, Mom.”
“I can’t…we…he was persecuted…”
And when investigators had failed to turn up enough proof to charge Frank with the crime for which he’d been arrested, he’d been run out of town like a low-life criminal, Emma silently filled in the blank Rose’s words left hanging.
And worse, they’d kept tabs on him, contacted school officials who might hire the ex-principal and coach, preventing Frank from getting a job in the field he loved so he wouldn’t harm another child. Rose and Emma had spoken openly at conference after conference, educating the public about child-safety issues, raising money for the search for missing children and talking about the man who still walked free.…
They hadn’t named Frank. That would have been illegal. But they’d introduced themselves. They’d talked about Claire by name. And anyone who’d wanted to know more could have found out anything they wanted. Including Frank’s name.
Frank and Cal had been kicked out of town—but first, they’d been kicked out of the family.
Rose processed the news silently. Emma’s heart cried for both of them.
She breathed a sigh of relief when her mother finally spoke. “Have you heard from him?”
“No. I really don’t think they’d contact us, Mom. Not after…”
Beside herself with grief the day Claire had disappeared, Rose had latched on to any hope at all of finding Claire—even if that meant she believed her fiancé was the one who could lead them to Claire. She’d latched on and lashed out. With a vengeance.
“I… Oh, my God…”
“Detective Miller told me they’re living in Tyler, Tennessee,” Emma said slowly. “They know your address. I’d be shocked if we heard from them…but we might. So…”
“They? They…who?”
“Cal and Frank.”
Rose didn’t ask the question Emma read in her mother’s eyes. “Neither of them ever married. They still share a home. Cal’s an English professor at Tyler University, Mom.”
“A professor?” Rose’s lips tilted slightly upward.
Emma smiled. “Yeah.” She’d missed him so much over the years. They’d only lived together a year, but there’d been no doubt in Emma’s mind that Cal was her big brother.
That he’d always be there to look out for her. Protect her.
Minutes passed. “And Frank?”
“He worked as a janitor until just recently.”
“A janitor?”
“In a nursing home.”
“I have to call Cal, Mom.” Emma finally got to the real point of the conversation. “I can’t not call him.” And she couldn’t contact Rose’s ex-fiancé’s son without letting her mother know.
“I accused an innocent man....” Rose’s words trailed off and hung there.
“You were a mother who had to do whatever she could to find her missing child.”
“I threw him out. Threw them out…”
“You were agonized.”
“I sent letters, contacted schools.…”
“You did what you felt you had to do to protect other children.” The crusade to stop Frank Whittier had probably saved Rose’s life. It had certainly given Emma her mother back, as it had provided Rose with an outlet for her anguish.
“You did what any mother would have done, given the evidence.” From his backyard hideout, Cal had seen Claire in his father’s car. When the police had searched the car, they’d found Claire’s favorite teddy bear, the one she’d slept with the night before and brought to breakfast the morning of her disappearance, under the front seat of Frank Whittier’s car.
“Cal was hiding under those bushes that used to be in the backyard. When he first got there, he peeked around the corner to make sure Frank’s car was still there. That’s when he saw Claire. He didn’t look again, but he heard the car drive off. There’s no way he or any of us could’ve known she’d gotten out of the car during those six or so minutes.”
Rose’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked over at Emma. “I loved him. I should at least have given him the benefit of the doubt.”
“At the risk of losing Claire forever?” If Frank had been guilty, and Rose had protected him, stood by him, it could have been too late.
“We did lose her,” Rose said. “And we lost Frank and Cal, too.”
And Emma and Rose owed the Whittiers the respect of an apology, at the very least.
“I have to call him, Mom.” She’d handle this one.
Her mother had forbidden Emma to write to Cal over the years, but she’d wanted to. So badly.
Would her life have been different if she had? Would she have avoided coming home to find another woman in her man’s arms if she’d ever, even once, dared to take a chance? To demand for herself as much as she gave to Rose and Claire?
Looking sick to her stomach, Rose nodded, and retreated to the balcony that looked over the Atlantic Ocean, in the distance.
Putting their untouched dinner in the refrigerator, Emma cleaned up and let herself out.
Life wasn’t easy. Not for Rose. Not for any of them.
Rose couldn’t make things right for her daughters.
Claire was gone.
And Emma just felt dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NUMBER OF TIMES Chris had felt grief were so few and far between he could remember all of them. He relived each and every one as he sat at Citadel’s that Friday night and nursed a second glass of not-cheap whiskey. A single shot this time.
Every hurt, every disappointment, every little insecurity he’d ever felt, came back to him as he sat there alone, trying to hold on to faculties he refused to do without.
There was the time his father had called home and asked him to bring his mother to the phone, and Chris, running into her room to get her, had found her beneath a naked man he’d never met in the bed that his parents shared.
He touched briefly on the night Sara had given him back the diamond engagement ring she’d accepted several months before, but didn’t allow himself to linger. The void that Sara’s leaving him had created was soon filled again—by Sara. She was another man’s wife now, but she was Chris’s best friend.
He thought about calling her, telling her about Ainge, and took another sip of Scotch instead. Part of the reason she’d left him was because she couldn’t live with the constant possibility of his death on the ocean. He didn’t need to bring the possibility any closer to home.
Which left Chris with his morose trip down memory lane.
There was the morning he’d received the call that his parents had been killed in a pileup on the freeway just fifteen minutes from home. That was also when he found out they’d been on their way home from a court hearing because his mother, who’d already broken his father’s heart, had filed for divorce.
The last time had come a couple of days ago, when word had spread that Wayne Ainge had gone overboard, when they’d all waited as rescue crews attempted to get the young man up from the bottom of the ocean in time to save his life, and then heard the news that they’d failed, that the boy was dead.
Oh, and there was Christmas Day. He always had invitations for the day, places he was wanted and welcome. But for some reason that day got to him. Which was why he was usually the lone boat out on the ocean on December 25.
Still, only a handful of sad memories in forty years… He was a lucky guy.
“You playing tonight?” Cody was back, tipping the
bottle over the top of Chris’s glass. He might have stopped him. Probably should have. Instead, he allowed the younger man to fill his glass and then raised it to his waiting lips.
The piano up on the dais was the reason he was there.
“Yeah,” he answered after he sipped.
Nodding, Cody headed down the bar. Chris was pretty sure he heard him say “Good,” but he could have just imagined it. No matter. He didn’t play for Cody. Or for anyone.
He played because music was good for the soul.
And because he could.
He played because doing so helped ease the tension that came with lobstering every day of your life.
* * *
SHE’D GIVEN ROB twenty-four hours to get out of the house. She’d told him she was going to stay with her mother. She’d known she could. Truthfully, she hadn’t planned anything. Contrary to her normal way, she’d spoken without first analyzing the various ramifications of her decision.
She didn’t have a house to go home to. She’d left her mother’s and she wasn’t going back that night.
Her attachment to her mother was probably part of the reason Rob had cheated on her. A woman with her mother attached to her hip couldn’t be much of a turn-on.
A woman who couldn’t climax probably wasn’t much of a turn-on, either. Lord knew she tried, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of letting go.
And even if her relationship with Rose had nothing to do with any of her problems, Emma needed to be away from her mother long enough to be able to breathe on her own.
First, she needed a place to spend the night.
She’d walked out without packing so much as a toothbrush.
She kept one at her mom’s. Along with pajamas and changes of clothes. Maybe she should go back. It made sense to go back. What was one more night going to hurt?
She could start her new life tomorrow. Right after she changed the locks on her doors.
And what if Rob was at her townhome tomorrow, waiting for her? What if he tried to change her mind? There she’d be, going straight from her mother’s house back to the secure life Rob offered her—albeit a life spent putting up with Rob’s philandering ways.
No, she couldn’t go to her mother’s. She couldn’t show up at home tomorrow, the same woman she was today—the woman who hadn’t been exciting enough to hold her man’s interest.
She couldn’t go home as the woman who settled for safety and security.
If she was going to change her life, it had to be tonight. She had to take a chance. To do something, anything, that wasn’t her norm. She had to be someone different.
Switching from her MP3 player, which was loaded with classics—soft and soothing music that was there to relax her after a day with rambunctious high schoolers—Emma stopped at the first satellite radio station that was blaring a beat.
The LED dash display broadcast the song title and artist in little green letters. She recognized neither and turned up the volume. She’d drown out her thoughts. And if she ever found a song she knew, she’d scream the words at the top of her lungs and pretend that she was singing along.
* * *
THREE HOURS INTO Friday evening, Chris was on his third drink. He wasn’t drunk, but even the ageless hag at the bar was beginning to look a little better.
Awaiting his turn on the piano, he listened to his competitors pounding the keys of the baby grand on the raised carpeted dais that was the restaurant’s centerpiece. The dais turned; the tables surrounding it did not.
The gleaming black instrument shone under professional spotlights and was the only furniture on the stage.
Chris’s number in the single elimination competition was up soon. He’d won the last draw of the night, which meant that he’d be up against the pianist voted by preselected judges as the best of the bunch. Chris liked the spot because he could stay onstage after he’d finished his set and play for as many hours as it took to wipe away the tension from the past week.
He didn’t need another win. He needed relaxation. He needed peace.
He needed to forget the grieving faces of those who’d loved—and lost—a man of the sea.
* * *
THE PLACE SMELLED as heavenly as she’d remembered—a mixture of spices, freshly baked rolls and prime cuts of steak marinated in Citadel’s secret sauce. Locals didn’t usually patronize the glitzy establishments on the tourist strip in downtown Comfort Cove, but a son of one of the teachers at school had played in a piano competition there a couple of times and Emma had accompanied the divorced mother on both occasions.
Now, sitting alone at the bar—something she’d never have considered doing before—she sipped a glass of white wine and concentrated on convincing herself that she could stay right where she was at least until she finished her drink.
Making deals with herself.
If she stayed fifteen minutes, she could make a trip to the ladies’ room to reassess.
If she stayed half an hour, she could think about getting a table. Maybe even order something to eat. If she made it an hour, she’d have to call someone—her divorced teacher friend, probably—and let her know where she was.
If she had more than two glasses of wine she’d call a cab.…
To take her…where?
Raising the heavy crystal glass to her lips, she gulped. She’d figure that out later. There were plenty of hotels downtown.
And because she paid her credit card off every single month, she had plenty of limit to cover whatever exorbitant fee they’d charge.
She’d show Rob.…
No. She was there to show herself something. To save her life.
She sipped again, raised her gaze and took in the people around her. A couple of men sitting alone at the bar, both dressed in suits with their ties loosened at the collar. A woman who was also alone and probably there on business. Just not the white-collar kind.
There were couples—both at the bar and filling the tables around the center stage—but those she ignored. And there were families, healthy groups of people who laughed and talked and fought and took one another for granted. She’d spent a lot of her youth wondering what it felt like to be one of them.
And then she’d grown up and realized she could make a family of her own. That’s where Rob had come in. They had plans to make a family.
And she’d kicked him out.
She had to phone him. To apologize for her hastiness. He’d be expecting the call. So maybe she should text him instead.
“And I did it my…” She suddenly heard the famous melody and it caught her attention.
Reaching beneath her jacket to make sure that her red silk blouse was still tucked into her black slacks, Emma sat up straighter. The words continued to play in her mind.
But they’d been placed there by the pianist up onstage. The timing seemed odd. Fortuitous. As though this song had been chosen for her. A song about facing the end of one’s life with absolutely no regrets.
And the way to do that?
Live by the dictates of your own heart. And only your heart.
Have I ever done that?
Emma sipped her wine.
She watched the pianist’s strong masculine fingers fly over the keys. She’d seen him play before. He’d won the competition on both the nights she’d been there.
Forgoing her fifteen-minute-mark trip to the ladies’ room, she ordered a second glass of wine and let the music envelop her. The man playe
d with more passion than Emma had ever dared feel in her entire life.
And he did so as though completely unaware of all of the people watching him from the tables below.
If there’d been a competition that evening, it was over.
The man with the weathered face and longish hair had the stage all to himself.
* * *
HE’D WON AGAIN. If Chris were the sort to care about what other people thought, he’d probably be embarrassed. He didn’t care. So he wasn’t.
He also wasn’t stone-cold sober, not that anyone was paying his state of inebriation any mind. His room at the inn across the street would be waiting for him. He rarely used it, but every Friday night he had a free room at his disposal—paid for by Citadel’s owner as part of their business agreement.
Tonight he was going to use that room.
Breaking into one of his own compositions, a piece that flew from his fingers without any conscious thought, he let the music take him on his own private journey. He was a little boy, scared of the waves that crashed against his father’s boat. And he was the waves, with the strength and the will to steal men from their lives, their loved ones. He was the source of all power. Others were afraid; he was invigorated.
He played until he trembled from the inside out, until emotion rose in his chest, and threatened to choke him. And still he played.
With the demons of hell at his back, with the determination to go to his own grave with no regrets, he ran as fast and as far as he could from the sight of a mother’s face who’d buried her son that day, from the memories of the faces of the other women there—those who, except for a fate he’d never understand, could have been the ones grieving. He ran from the expressions on the faces of the men left behind who would not—could not—spare their loved ones the risk of a similar fate.
And maybe, just maybe, he ran from the fact that he was all alone.
* * *
EMMA WASN’T PARTICULARLY hungry. But she ordered food, anyway, so that she had an excuse to stay in her seat at the bar and continue to lose herself in the music emanating from the fingers of a man she’d never met but knew she’d never forget.
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