“I’ve got the hair ribbons my mom used to put in our hair every day,” Emma said. They were still in the wooden box they’d always been kept in. It was tucked away in the back of the closet in her office. “She never put ribbons in my hair again after that day.”
Her mother had done everything she could to make certain that Emma was the plainest girl around. Not so unattractive to attract pity, just invisible, so that no one would notice her.
“If he can’t lift any of Claire’s DNA, he could get a sample of yours. It wouldn’t be an exact match, but there’d be enough to identify one of the victims as a close relative of yours. Or not.”
She didn’t really have a choice to make. They all needed answers. Frank deserved answers. After being hounded for twenty-five years, just having his name cleared probably wasn’t enough. The older man was probably not going to rest until he knew that the real culprit was caught and charged with the crime he himself didn’t commit.
“I’ll give the ribbons to Detective Miller. And a sample of my DNA if he needs it. I just need a little time. As badly as I need to know… I’m dreading… I mean, what if I find out my baby sister was—”
“Would you like me to go with you? I can fly up.”
She wanted to accept Cal’s offer.
“I’d like to, Emma. I know we won’t get the results right away, but I don’t want you doing that alone. Especially since I’m asking you to do it. It seems right that we go together.”
She hadn’t seen Cal in twenty-five years. Had never met him as a man. And yet, this was the big brother she’d lost at the same time her world had been blown apart. Right when she’d needed him most.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this—I’m usually so capable—but would you?”
“Of course.”
She wrapped her finger around a napkin. And watched it shake.
“Okay, good. When?”
In less than a minute, she had plans to see Cal in just over two weeks. He was in the middle of teaching an intercession class—a break in the college semester that allowed for special two-week classes—until then and wanted to be able to take a couple of days with her.
Just in case. He didn’t say that. But she knew.
“You’ll call me with your flight information?”
“I’ll do better than that,” he said. “Give me your email and I’ll send you a copy of the itinerary.”
She was committed. To finding out the truth.
And to seeing Cal again.
She was confronting the past that had taken away her present and future for long enough.
And she was still breathing.
“Weird how you still feel like family to me,” she said, not quite ready to hang up.
“It’s not so weird,” Cal said. “We were an impressionable age when we were told we were going to be a family forever.”
“You were the best big brother, Cal.”
“You were easy to be nice to.”
“Yeah, but I was a stupid girl.…” She remembered one of Cal’s playmates saying that about her once. She’d hated that boy after that. Hated Cal playing with him.
“Other than Dad, you and your mom and Claire were the only family I’d ever known.”
His words hung in the air.
“Mom and I, it’s always been just us.” Whether the past was her fault or not, she felt responsible for at least part of his suffering. “Mom never, after your dad, after Claire… There’s never been another relationship for her. She just works and goes home.”
“That must be hard on you.”
“Not as hard as it is on her.” She wanted him to know that Rose’s choices had not brought her happiness. That no one had won. Maybe, if he knew how much they’d suffered, he’d find a measure of justice in that, at least. “Remember that last day, how Claire sat on her knees on that chair at the table, with her bear in one hand, and shoved so many Cheerios into her mouth she choked?”
“Yeah. She said she was late and had to eat fast.”
“She was always mimicking the rest of us,” Emma said, brushing away a tear that dripped down her cheek.
“Like the time she answered the phone and told your mom’s principal that she had to hang up because she had bills to pay?”
“I’d forgotten that!” Emma said with a grin, remembering. And wondering if Rose remembered. Then she said, “Mom still has that kitchen table. She’ll never get rid of it.”
“My father wants to talk to her.” His tone dropped.
“You don’t think that’s a good idea?”
“He’s lost a good portion of his life because of her. What do you think?”
“I think that our parents’ lives are their own,” Emma said slowly, saying words she’d never have said before. She couldn’t protect Rose any more than Rose could protect her. “I think they need to do what they feel is right,” she added.
“I’m not convinced.”
“You might not have a choice.”
“Meaning?”
“They’re adults. And they were in love.”
“She’d better not throw blame, or interrogate him, or—”
“Don’t worry,” Emma said, feeling a tremendous surge of love for the boy who’d grown into a man. “Mom feels even worse than I do about all of this, if that’s possible.”
“I just want you to understand that I won’t tolerate any more blame cast on my father. Or any more slander. I’ll take whatever means I need to.”
“And I’ll be right there fighting with you, Cal,” Emma said. “Because right is right. And because, in spite of all the years and all the pain and sadness, the past couple of hours have reaffirmed that you’re still my brother.”
CHAPTER TEN
CHRIS WENT BACK to see Marta.
There was no reason for his visit. But Sunday, when he knew Jim would be at the bar with his cronies, Chris stopped by to see the woman who was his godmother, if one put any stock in that kind of thing. Chris never had.
She was sitting on the back patio with a cup of coffee when Chris pulled up.
“You came back,” she said, opening the screen door to let him in.
He acknowledged the obvious with a nod.
“You still take your coffee black and as strong as God can make it?”
“Just like my dad.” Chris had lost count of the number of times he’d heard how he drank his coffee just like Lyle Talbot had done. And, where coffee was concerned, he’d quit trying to be his own man.
While Marta went to the kitchen, Chris settled into the largest of the white wicker chairs facing the ocean in the distance.
He didn’t need the view. He had a better one from home.
“I talked to Anne Havens at church this morning.”
Anne and her husband, Trick, had been a couple of years ahead of Chris in school.
He didn’t need to ask how they were doing. He’d just come from their house.
“She says Trick’s having a rough go of it.”
Trick had been the one to pull Wayne Ainge out of the water.
“He’ll be fine.”
“She was looking for someone to help out with Trick’s boat until…” Marta looked him in the eye. She wouldn’t tell him what to do—she wasn’t as bold with him as his mother had been—but her expectations were clear.
“Already taken care of,” he said, thinking about the conversation he’d just had with Anne.
Marta’s approving smile went d
eeper than he’d have liked.
“You’re a good boy, Chris.”
He was no boy. And if he didn’t quit thinking about long legs and dark brown curls, he wasn’t going to be good for anything, either.
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, Aunt Marta—” Uncle Jim had become just plain Jim around the first time Chris had worked a full day on his father’s boat, but Aunt Marta was still his “aunt” “—but, the other night, about the fact that I don’t come by as often as I should…”
“You took your folks’ death hard, Chris. Everyone knew you would. It’s understandable that you pulled away. I just hate that you still think you have to. You’re not thirty anymore, son. If you don’t start to open up, before long you’ll be Jim’s age and have no one but the guys at the bar to know if you’re even alive or not.”
“I’m not going to get married just so someone will know I’m not dead.”
“I’m not talking about marriage. I’m talking about opening up to people. Letting them care about you.”
She cared. And he’d hurt her. He read the pain in her eyes.
And he understood. Marta knew about the life of a fisherman. She’d accepted the dangers. The long hours. And she opened her heart to them, anyway. All she asked in return was that they love her back.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
He should go.
“What’s on your mind, Chris?”
What was niggling at him was nothing. He had more to do than there were hours in the day and night combined.
“The day my folks were killed,” he said, and stopped when he saw the shadow cross Marta’s face. “Do you know where they were headed?”
Or where they’d been?
“Yes.”
“My mother told you?” He wasn’t surprised. Marta and Josie Talbot had been best friends.
“Yes.”
Marta would have sympathized. Women stuck together. She might even have encouraged Josie. At the very least she’d have understood.
Chris didn’t.
Glancing at the older woman now, studying the lines on a face weathered from years of looking out to sea in hopes of seeing the right bow come up over the crest of the waves, Chris didn’t blame her.
“I wasn’t sure you knew,” Marta said now.
Even though she was sitting at home alone this Sunday, there was no saying that as a younger, thinner, more attractive woman she’d been content to spend all those long hours alone.
“They’d just changed their wills. I was executor of both estates. And sole beneficiary, as well.”
Graying eyebrows drawn together, Marta said, “I’d hoped they hadn’t gotten that far. That at least their secret had gone to the grave with them.”
Lyle and Josie had had a joint funeral—as husband and wife. They were buried side by side beneath the Talbot family marker in the seaman’s graveyard in the middle of Comfort Cove.
The plot of land that divided the real town from the more upscale tourist district.
The plot that divided Chris’s life. In so many ways.
“You’ve known all these years, and yet you never said anything.”
The only response he had to give was a shrug.
“You blame her.”
His mother had been named as the plaintiff.
“I know that my father would never, ever have left her.” Or turned his back on her, no matter what she’d done. Lyle had loved Josie more than he’d loved any other human being on earth.
“She spent the majority of her life alone, Chris.”
He knew that. Women who married full-time fishermen often did.
“When you were little, it wasn’t so bad, but once you got older, and joined your father on the boat…”
So this was his fault?
“Some people like time to themselves. Josie never did. Her head played tricks with her. She’d start to imagine problems at sea, imagine the phone call telling her that she’d lost both your father and you.”
Out of respect for Marta, Chris forced himself to stay seated, but he didn’t need to hear any more.
“You were about three months old when she had her first panic attack. She called me, unable to breathe, certain that she was having a heart attack.”
Fingers clenched around the arms of his chair, the wicker punching a pattern in his skin, Chris stared out at the ocean—the only mate he was ever going to have.
“I called 9-1-1….”
His gaze swung to Marta. “I never heard about a 9-1-1 call.” He’d never heard about the panic attacks, either, but then he’d only really ever had one interest—the sea. Which was why he was still single at forty.
“She didn’t want me to say anything to Jim or your father.”
“And you did as she asked?” If his mother had a problem, Lyle had had a right to know.
“I rode with her in the ambulance and was there with her when she saw the doctor. He said she was just suffering from panic and that she had to get a hold of herself. Back then panic attacks weren’t seen as legitimate physical ailments. They were considered the result of mental weakness. There were drugs that tranquilized but no medications prescribed to help control the chemicals in the brain that trigger them.”
“And that’s why she didn’t want Dad to know. Because she didn’t want him to think she was…mentally lacking.”
“Right.”
He could understand that. Sort of. Surely, if his mother and father had shared any kind of real closeness, as a husband and wife should, then she should have been able to trust Lyle with the information.
To know that he loved her enough to stand by her, to help her if she needed it.
“I’d hoped that hearing from the doctor that she had the ability to control her emotions, to control how she reacted to things, would help her get better, but it didn’t. That day just escalated her panic. What if she’d really been having a heart attack? There’d have been no way to reach your father—and you were so little and helpless. She’d have died alone and left you alone, too.”
So his mother had chosen to insure that she wasn’t alone? Was he expected to believe that she’d just been staving off panic all those years she’d cheated on his dad?
Chris didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He’d wasted enough time. Women were women. He was a lobsterman. And he had work to do.
Standing, he took one sip from the cup of coffee Marta had made for him, and bent to kiss her on the cheek.
“Thank you.”
“I’m always here, Chris. Anytime you want to talk.”
“Yeah.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll be better about stopping by.”
“Jim and I love you like you were our own son, you know that.”
He couldn’t just walk out on her. Swinging around, he met her gaze. “I know,” he said. “I love you, too, Aunt Marta.”
The words didn’t stick as badly as he might have expected.
Probably because he spoke the truth.
* * *
EMMA WENT TO work. She visited her mother—telling Rose that she’d spoken with Cal Whittier, but mentioning nothing about Cal’s imminent trip or Ramsey Miller’s investigation—and during all of the empty hours she had she rearranged her house.
Rob’s desk went to charity right along with the clothes and shot glasses he’d left behind. If he thought that she was going to come to her senses, that he would be back, he was wrong. Her sewing machine got a
new table and was set up opposite her desk, and a Peg-Board went up above the machine to hold an array of colorful threads. What used to be merely an office was now a sewing room, too.
By Wednesday, she still wasn’t sleeping well. She’d moved from the couch to the bed that was now on the opposite wall. She put in old movies to lull her to sleep. At three in the morning, she redid lesson plans and graded papers.
She tried not to think about Chris. She tried not to let her body remember the sensations he’d evoked. When she started to respond physically to things she wasn’t thinking about, she decided to use her quilting skills to make a wall hanging and spent time on the internet familiarizing herself with all sorts of quilting patterns.
On Thursday night, finding herself on the couch, irritated with television commercials and no longer distracted by movies, she pulled out the journal again. Just to see what she’d written.
1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that love changes him.
She stared at the words. She’d written them down because, in that moment, she’d felt them so strongly. Now, days later, she felt the same way.
She grabbed her pen.
2. I want to be brave enough to live my life to the fullest.
She read what she’d written again. And reread it several times. If there was going to be any value in this exercise, she had to be completely honest.
And she realized that, like it or not, her resolutions were about Chris.
Holding the page between her thumb and forefinger, she started to tug gently, planning to tear out the page so that its removal wouldn’t show. She could make the journal appear brand-new. Just as it had been before.
The first thread gave way and she stopped. Closed the book. Put it carefully back in the drawer, in the space allotted to it. Returned the pen to its rightful spot. And went to bed.
* * *
EMMA MEANT TO make plans for Friday night. But she’d had a dance-club meeting to officiate after school and hadn’t known what time she’d be through. She hadn’t known how hungry she’d be, or whether or not her mother would want to spend the evening with her.
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