What Washes Up

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  He smiled at her as they met each other in the parking lot. “Hey, Maggie, how are you?”

  “I’m good, John, how are you?”

  “Pretty good, pretty good. Hotter than heck.” He frowned at her. “Maggie, I know I said it before, but I am so genuinely sorry about David.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  “Man, it just seems like there’s way too much tragedy going on this summer,” he said. “First David, now those poor people from—was it Nicaragua?”

  “Guatemala.”

  “Right. Just an awful thing. Especially those kids.” He looked down for a second. “What’s gonna happen to ’em?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know. The guy from Homeland Security says Guatemala won’t take the bodies back.”

  “What? So what are we supposed to do, put ’em back?”

  “I don’t know. I’m kind of out of the loop.”

  “That’s nuts. They’ve got to have people back home that’ll want to bury ’em, get some closure.”

  Maggie nodded. “Yeah. But we don’t even know who most of them are.”

  John sighed and they were silent for a moment.

  “Well, I’ve got to run, John,” Maggie said. “It was good to see you, though.”

  “Yeah. Yeah sure. Me, too. Margo just wanted me to pick up some floor cleaner. New puppy.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You and the kids take care, huh? Call me if I can do anything.”

  “I will.” Maggie lifted a hand at him, and she watched him as he started for the store, his eyes on the ground until he got to the door. Then she walked to the Jeep and got in.

  She had just started the engine when the niggling that wouldn’t go away came back, with clarity. The floor. Wyatt said they’d swabbed the tile floor at Sea-Fair. But when she’d been in the new processing room to talk to Boudreaux about Wilmette, the floor had been bare concrete.

  Maggie pulled her cell out of her purse and dialed Wyatt. It went straight to voice mail. She left him a message to call her, then took a deep breath and headed for her parents’.

  Wyatt walked out of Judge Richardson’s reception area and down the granite, second-floor hallway of the courthouse. As he walked, he tucked his copies of the folded paperwork into his small leather binder. When he looked back up, he saw Patrick Boudreaux standing by the stairs, thumbing a message on his phone.

  A wave of heat he could almost see as being red coursed upwards from his stomach to his chest, and he breathed in slowly through his nose, then exhaled through his mouth. He tapped the binder against his thigh as he approached Patrick, then stopped.

  “Hello, Patrick,” he said politely.

  When Patrick looked up, the hint of distaste on his face almost distracted from the shadows under his eyes, which Wyatt was surprised he hadn’t called in sick for.

  “Sheriff Hamilton. You here for another search warrant for my father?” he asked, working up half a smirk.

  “No, I’m here on other business,” Wyatt said pleasantly.

  “Your own, I hope,” Patrick said, and looked back down at his phone.

  Wyatt smiled and walked around Patrick to the head of the stairs. He started down, then stopped and looked back at Patrick. “Are you gay?”

  Patrick looked up quickly, his lip curling. “No, I’m not gay,” he said.

  “Huh,” Wyatt said. “You might want to try harder. It might make your prospects more agreeable.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Patrick said, his face reddening.

  “Well, while you’re at it, you can pretend you understood it,” Wyatt said, and headed down the stairs.

  Maggie’s parents were sitting at the table on the back deck when she walked out there with the bottle of wine and three glasses. Kyle and Sky were sitting on the steps, watching something on Sky’s phone.

  “Hey, y’all,” Maggie said.

  “Hey, Sunshine,” Gray said.

  Georgia put out a hand and brushed Maggie’s arm as she set the glasses down on the table. “Hey, sweetie. Long day?”

  “Yeah, kind of,” Maggie said. She set the bottle down in front of Gray. “Can you open that, Daddy?”

  “Is it a cork?”

  “No. But my hand, I still have a little trouble with it.”

  “I thought Dr. Vinson said it would be fine,” Georgia said.

  “It will,” Maggie said. “It’s just the nerve. I have trouble with squeezing little things.”

  Gray started opening the wine, and Maggie walked over and kissed each of her kids on the top of the head. “Hey, guys.”

  “Hey, Mom,” Kyle said without looking up.

  “Hey,” Sky said.

  Maggie looked at Sky’s phone. They were watching a YouTube video of a skinny, young black man dancing.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Some guy breakdancing,” Kyle said.

  “It’s dubstep, dork,” Sky said.

  “Whatever.”

  “What’s dubstep?” Gray asked as Maggie sat down at the table.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I think maybe we used to call it Techno.”

  “Do I know what Techno is?” he asked, pouring their wine.

  “Probably not,” she said.

  “Good,” he answered.

  “Honey, we’re going to grill some fish later,” Georgia said. “Do you guys want to stay and eat?”

  “Um, you know what, Mom? I don’t know,” Maggie answered. She took a swallow of the wine.

  “So what’s this thing you need to talk to us about?” Gray asked. Maggie looked over at the kids. “Is it something we need to send the kids inside for?”

  “No. No, I need them to listen, too.”

  “Is it something about David?” Georgia asked.

  Maggie looked over at the steps as Kyle looked over his shoulder at her. “No, Mom.”

  “Is it something with work?”

  “Georgia, honey, we’ll know what it’s about when she tells it,” Gray said.

  Maggie waved Kyle over. “You guys, can you come over here for a minute?”

  Georgia took a decent swallow of her wine as the kids got up and walked over to the table. Sky was texting as she sat down.

  “Sky, I need you to stay off the phone for a minute, okay?”

  “Okay, hold up,” Sky said without looking at her.

  Kyle took a drink from a can of RC that sat on the table in front of him. “What’s going on?”

  Maggie looked at Sky, who glanced up at her, tapped her phone, and set it down on the table. “Sorry.” She leaned back. “So what’s up?”

  Maggie took a breath and looked at Kyle. “First, I need to know, Kyle, do you know what rape is?”

  Kyle swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. But, like, you’re not gonna make me prove it are you?”

  “No.”

  “He knows, Mom. Serious,” Sky said. “Dude, there’s not like a serial rapist running around or something is there?”

  “No, not at the moment,” Maggie said.

  “What’s going on, baby?” Gray asked quietly.

  Maggie took a deep breath and let it out, then looked at each of her parents, settling on her mother. “Do you guys remember when I was fifteen, I fell off my bike, banged myself up pretty good?”

  Georgie frowned a minute, then shook her head. “No, I don’t remember that.”

  Maggie looked at her Dad, and he shook his head. “I don’t think I do, honey.”

  “Was this in town?” Georgia asked.

  “No. I was fishing, down Bluff Road. You know, the woods by that sandy spot on the river. It was in November, right before Thanksgiving.”

  Gray sat forward slowly, leaned on the table. “I remember it,” he said quietly. He looked at Maggie. “You hurt your back.”

  Maggie nodded. “Yeah. I did.” She glanced over at the kids and her Mom, but then looked back at Gray when she spoke. “But I didn’t fall off my b
ike. I was raped.”

  Georgia gasped, but no one else spoke for a moment. Maggie watched as Gray tried to keep his face from collapsing. He laid his hands out flat on the table and rested them there. Finally, Georgia reached over and put her hand on her daughter’s.

  “Baby, why didn’t you tell us?” she asked gently.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I couldn’t. I didn’t.”

  “Mom?” Sky asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Sky baby, it was a long time ago.”

  Sky’s eyes watered. “I’m really sorry.”

  Kyle shifted in his chair. “But, you were younger than Sky.”

  Maggie nodded. “Yeah, buddy. I was.”

  Kyle looked down, focused on scraping a thumbnail against the soda can.

  “Who did this, Maggie?” Gray stared at the table as he spoke. “Was this a stranger?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was.”

  Gray looked up at her and waited.

  “It was Gregory Boudreaux,” she said quietly.

  “The guy that shot himself last month?” Sky asked.

  Maggie nodded at her daughter. “Yes.”

  “Good,” Kyle said to his soda can.

  Georgia coughed softly and Maggie looked over at her. Her eyes were large as she looked back at Maggie. “Excuse me. I’m sorry,” she said, as she got up.

  They watched her walk through the open sliding glass door, then Maggie looked back at her Dad. After a moment, he looked back at her. “Gregory Boudreaux.”

  “Yes.”

  Gray nodded slowly, then took a swallow of his wine, stared at the glass after he set it back down.

  “Mom?” Sky asked. Maggie looked at her. “He did kill himself, right?”

  “Yeah, Sky.” Maggie put a hand on hers. “Yeah.”

  Sky nodded. “I mean, I wouldn’t blame you. I’m sorry.”

  Maggie shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  She looked at Gray, who was still staring into his wine, then she looked over at the door. “I’m going to go check on Mom,” she said as she got up.

  She heard the toilet flush as she walked down the short hallway off of the living room, then heard the water running. When she opened the bathroom door, her mother was rinsing her mouth in the sink.

  She stood up and looked at Maggie in the mirror. “I’m sorry, honey. I just—the shock.”

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Am I okay? Maggie. Who cares if I’m okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said.

  Georgia turned around and grabbed up Maggie’s hands. “I can’t help thinking I should have sensed it. I’m your mother—I’m a woman, and I didn’t even sense it.”

  “Mom, how many times have you told me how good I am at shutting people out?”

  Georgia dropped one of Maggie’s hands and put her hand to her chest. “Only since you were a teenager.”

  Maggie shrugged a little. “Yeah.”

  “It’s getting too close in here,” Georgia said, fanning her chest with her hand.

  Maggie stepped back out of the bathroom, and her mother brushed past her. Maggie followed her into the kitchen, watched her mother as she opened the fridge and took out a tray of fish filets.

  Maggie stood there for a few moments, as her mother pulled a grill rack out of the oven drawer, grabbed some salt and seasonings from a cupboard, and a lemon from a bowl on the counter. Every now and then, Georgia looked Maggie’s way, but never met her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Georgia finally said. “I just need something to do with my hands. I just need to process this for a minute. I need to pray, is what I need to do.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’m going to go back outside, okay?”

  “Okay,” Georgia said to the fish.

  Maggie walked back out to the deck. The kids were sitting where she’d left them, but Gray was standing, leaning against the stair rail. Maggie put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

  “You guys, why don’t you go inside and get your stuff together and we’ll head home in a minute, okay? I just want to talk to Granddad for a little bit.”

  They both stood up, and Kyle walked inside. Sky put an arm around her mother’s neck for a moment, and Maggie patted her back. Then Sky followed Kyle into the house.

  Maggie walked over to the stairs, and Gray put his hands in his pockets, walked down the steps. Maggie followed him, and they walked slowly across the grass toward the dock.

  “Mom’s hurt because I didn’t tell her,” Maggie said after a minute.

  “Your mama’s hurt because she can’t undo it,” he said.

  Maggie looked over at him as they walked. He was looking down at the grass, at his old Docksiders as they whispered through it. A longish lock of his sandy brown hair fell over his widow’s peak, over one eye, and he ignored it. Maggie could see his jaw working as he thought.

  “I can understand why you didn’t tell me,” he said, not looking at her. “A young girl…that would be a hard thing to tell a man, even your daddy.”

  “Daddy, I wasn’t ashamed.”

  “You damn well better not have been.”

  “But you would have killed him, and then where would I be?”

  He stopped, and she stopped with him. When he looked at her, she thought his green eyes had lost some of their color. She wanted to put it back. “Daddy, I’m really—”

  “Don’t apologize to me, Margaret Anne. I don’t think I could stand it,” he said quietly. Maggie swallowed and looked away toward the bay. “Talk to me about Bennett Boudreaux,” Gray said.

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever heard you mention his name,” he said. “But Gregory Boudreaux kills himself and suddenly you’re sitting at Boss Oyster with the man, and dancing with him at the Cajun Festival. Talk to me about that.”

  “Well, I mean, I was working his nephew’s case,” Maggie said. “But then, I don’t know. He fascinates me, I guess. And I wondered what he wanted.”

  “What he wanted,” Gray repeated. “What does he want?”

  “Atonement, maybe?”

  Gray squinted at her a moment. “He knew about this?”

  “Gregory told him the night before he killed himself.”

  “He told you this?”

  “Yes.”

  Gray looked off toward the water, his eyes flicking back and forth as he worked things in his mind. “What else is going on? You’re telling us now for a reason.”

  Maggie sighed. “Oh, Daddy. What a damn mess.” Gray watched her and waited. “Brandon Wilmette, the guy with the foot?” Gray nodded. “He was trying to blackmail Boudreaux about the rape. He thought Boudreaux would want to save himself the embarrassment.”

  “And how did this man know about it?”

  “He was there. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. He was watching.”

  Her chest seemed to knot together as she watched her father’s face. New lines and cracks seemed to form before her eyes, and his face seemed to disassemble and reassemble within seconds, as though an audience for her rape was worse than the thing itself.

  After a moment, he let out a slow breath and looked back out at the bay, then he looked at Maggie. “I’m assuming you’re telling me he killed him.”

  “Yes.” She swallowed. “Wyatt executed a search warrant at Sea-Fair today.”

  “You told Wyatt.”

  “I had to. I had no business on these cases,” she said. “And I was tired of the secrets.” Gray nodded. “But if they arrest Boudreaux, it’ll come out. I needed you and the kids to already know.”

  “There’s all kinds of nasty things about Boudreaux that are public knowledge or at least public rumor,” Gray said. “He didn’t kill that man because he was afraid of being embarrassed.”

  “No.”

  He looked at her for a moment, long enough for her to wonder if he was waiting for her to say something. “Did he tell you why he did it?”

&n
bsp; “I think he thought it was the right thing to do,” Maggie said. “I know that sounds crazy.”

  “No, it sounds about right. For him.” Maggie tilted her head at him. “I sold the man oysters for forty years, Maggie. We’re not strangers.”

  Maggie nodded, and they both looked elsewhere for a moment.

  “You know, Maggie, I didn’t remember that day, the thing with the bike,” Gray said finally. “But you did change around that time, and I did notice. For a long time, I thought it was David’s fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought maybe you’d lost your virginity.” He huffed a small laugh, but there was no humor in it. “That’s awful young for a girl, and I thought it had made you different, made you keep more to yourself.”

  “No wonder you were so hard on us back then,” she said. “Every time we turned around, there you were, and David was actually intimidated by you. That was weird for him; you guys were so close. David and I never—we didn’t do anything really, until we were married.”

  Gray nodded. “Yeah. I figured that out after a while.” He looked at her, almost apologetically. “I figured it was just teenage girl stuff.”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Maggie, I’d really like it if you stayed away from Boudreaux,” Gray said.

  “Yeah. You and Wyatt both.”

  “I bet that’s true,” he said. “Nobody’s all bad, any more than anyone is all good, Maggie. But I think he’s bad for you.”

  Maggie nodded and looked back at the house. “I need to take the kids home, talk to them,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t really talk to Mom about it anymore right now.”

  “Don’t worry about your mama,” he said. “She’s strong stuff. Stronger than I am. She’s not like us, though; she lets it all out for a bit, and then she bucks up. You and I, we just buck up and wait for somebody to drag it out of us.”

  “Yeah.” Maggie tried to smile. “That we do.”

  Kyle opted to ride home with Maggie, while Sky followed in David’s truck.

  Clouds were heading in from the east, and the breeze had picked up a bit in anticipation of a cooling rain. Maggie rolled the windows down, and breathed deeply.