Welcome Home, Katie Gallagher

by Seana Kelly

I TURNED THE CORNER, following the cop toward the small police station on Firefly Lane. Was there ever a street that struck less fear in the hearts of its citizenry? Watch out, buddy, or they’ll drag you to Firefly Lane. Did you hear they busted a crack house on Firefly Lane? I thought a name change was in order, perhaps Gulag Terrace.

  Possible incarceration aside, it was good to be back. The town hadn’t changed all that much. The downtown was quaintly charming, vibrant shop fronts lining Main Street down to the water. An older man was hosing down the sidewalk in front of a neighborhood market, carts of fresh fruit and vegetables already flanking the door.

  I tapped my fingers on the cold steering wheel. “Think he sells forty-pound bags of dog food in there?” Hopefully that big feed store was still on the other side of town. “We’ll need to find out soon. You’ve almost finished the bag we brought with us.”

  Chaucer sniffed around at the mention of food, but when none was forthcoming, he sat back, no longer blocking the rearview mirror.

  Stopping at a red light, I caught myself checking out shoes in a store window. What the hell was wrong with me? I was following a cop to a police station to be questioned in a criminal case, but instead of concerning myself with my own defense, I was considering whether or not I should buy a pair of cute new boots with a wedge heel. I was clearly unhinged.

  “Look, Chaucer. I had my first kiss in the park down that street.” Michael Emerson. He’d been sweet and shy, smelling of fabric softener and freshly mown grass. Looking around, I began to relax. This was a good decision. I’d done the right thing for once.

  I followed the police cruiser into the station parking lot and stepped out of my car. I’d been happy here once. I would be again. I took a deep breath. I’d missed the cold, salty ocean air. I closed my eyes and let the feeling settle. I hadn’t realized how beaten down I’d become, how hollow. Being back in Gran’s hometown made me feel steady and hopeful.

  The glowering cop standing by his car took care of that feeling quickly, though. I couldn’t see his eyes through the reflective sunglasses he wore, but I could see the disapproving scowl. Years of a scowl like that had been part of what had beaten me down. I wasn’t bowing to that disapproval anymore. I turned on my heel, jogging around the back of the car. Pressing my key ring, the lock on the passenger side back door popped up. I opened the door for Chaucer.

  The cop stepped forward. “Why don’t we leave him in the car while we talk?”

  Chaucer stepped down and leaned into me. “Are you kidding? You don’t leave dogs alone in cars. Do you want him dying of heat exposure?” Not to mention the poor pup needed to use the facilities. Hopefully we could make a quick detour to the lawn.

  “Well, as it’s in the high thirties with a forecast of getting into the low fifties today, I’m pretty sure he can avoid heat exposure.” He held his hand in front of Chaucer, who sniffed him thoroughly before stepping forward to let the cop pet him. “Fine, you can bring him.” He turned to lead us.

  “Right behind you,” I said, as Chaucer and I headed in the opposite direction toward the lawn. The russet colors of autumn dripped from the trees. We walked on stiff, crackling leaves until Chaucer found a perfect spot. During a ridiculously long potty break, I sensed the cop’s eyes on me. It was strangely comforting, like he was watching over me rather than keeping me under surveillance. When Chaucer finally finished, we met the cop at the door to the station.

  He’d taken off his sunglasses. “Impressive,” he said, while scratching the top of Chaucer’s head.

  “Good morning, Chief!”

  He turned to a pretty woman with light brown hair. She was bundled up in a long, ivory sweater coat and was wearing an adorable pair of high-heeled boots that put her close to the cop’s height. He grinned at her, and my stomach fluttered. No, no. Men were strictly verboten, especially the ones who liked to mock and criticize. New me, new choices.

  He nodded. “Nancy.”

  She was breathless, as though she’d run to catch up with him. She placed a hand on his sleeve. “Chief, I’m so glad I caught you.” She glanced at me. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” She shifted her stance, partially blocking me. “I had a quick question about the festival. I need your opinion...”

  Honestly, I stopped listening at that point. I leaned over and whispered in Chaucer’s ear. “He’s distracted. Now’s our chance. You run that way and I’ll run this way. I think we can totally get away if we act quickly.” I glanced around to make sure he was still engaged in chatting up the brunette.

  He’d moved away from the woman who was still talking, a hand still on his arm. All his attention was on me; eyes squinted, he was practically daring us to make a break for it. Focus never wavering, he said, “Nancy, I’m in the middle of something. You can discuss all this with Heather. She’ll know the answers better than me, anyway.”

  I leaned back down. “Abort. Abort.” Stupid, observant cop.

  He moved to the steps of the station house, extending his arm to us. “After you.” As Chaucer and I passed, he gave a low grumble. “Not exactly a criminal mastermind, are you?”

  I paused, eyebrows raised in question.

  He smirked. “Your plan was ‘run.’ Really?”

  I gave him my most dismissive hair flip and walked through the door. I had Chaucer on a leash, but he would have stayed with me, anyway. And honestly, as the dog outweighed me by at least thirty pounds, if he ever wanted to get away, there’s not much I could do. Luckily he was devoted to me, almost as much as he was devoted to never exerting himself.

  Inside, a soft, middle-aged woman wearing a headset looked up from her cluttered desk. Her eyes comically rounded at seeing Chaucer walk in.

  “Heather, this is Katie Gallagher. We’ll be using the conference room.”

  I started at hearing the name Katie Gallagher. The name on my license was Katherine Cady. No one had called me Katie in a long time. Justin called me Katherine, and I insisted that my friends call me Katherine or Kate. I’d refused to be known as Katie Cady. That was too ridiculous, not to mention redundant.

  As I walked through the police station, I knew I should be feeling fear, concern, abject terror, something. But I wasn’t. It was like a dream. Weird, bad things kept happening, but they didn’t touch me. I floated through. Maybe I was in shock, or that grape soda was laced with quaaludes. One or the other.

  “It looks different,” I observed.

  “Make a habit of studying the insides of police stations?” He led me past desks toward a rear hall. A few cops watched my perp walk, or maybe it was the Newfoundland trying to sniff out forgotten food that caught their attention.

  “Not a habit so much as a hobby,” I said, studiously regarding the tips of my shoes. My eyes were definitely not drifting up to watch the world-class butt directly in front of me. Nope. “My Gran brought me here when I was thirteen as part of her scared-straight campaign. A couple of kids were busted for pot, and she was certain I was a member of their drug-guzzling gang. Never mind that I had never met any of them, nor had I ever been high.”

  “Nor did you realize that drugs weren’t guzzled.” He opened the door to the interview room, which, I must say, was far less frightening than I had been trained to expect watching cop shows on TV. It was a very cozy, pleasant room with an unusually large number of cardboard ghosts and pumpkins strewn across the far end of the table.

  “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Gran decided it was better to punish me before I did anything, in case she missed it afterward. I spent a Saturday afternoon locked up in a cell back there while Gran sent in random folks she’d found in the shops to come scare me straight with their stories of prison.” Chaucer flopped down on the floor, rested his head on my foot and fell asleep. It had been a big day for him.

  “You’re making this up,” the cop said as he sat down.

  “No, not at all. It was
kind of fun for me. As they told me their stories of depraved incarceration, I tried to identify which shows they were stealing from.” I smiled, remembering. “Mr. Wilson told me he had tunneled out of Shawshank Prison with nothing but a rock hammer. Oh, wait, do I get the same number or a new one?”

  His brow furrowed. “Number?”

  “For my mug shot. The bottom of the picture. Will I have the same number I did when I was thirteen? Is it like a Social Security number that follows you around, or is it the case number or something?” This was knowledge I hadn’t realized I’d ever need to possess.

  “It follows you, but according to your record, you’ve never actually been booked. Unless you have an alias.”

  “Oh.” Bummer. I kind of liked the idea of being a hardened criminal, a total badass with a record. I needed a leather jacket and maybe a tattoo—not one of those prissy deals. No dragonflies or mermaids for me. I wanted a skull or tribal pattern around my biceps. I also needed a biceps, preferably two. I was going to go all Sarah Connor, build up my guns and wear tank tops to show ’em off...

  “Katie?”

  Hmm? “Sorry, what?”

  He sighed and tapped the screen on his phone right before a flash blinded me.

  “Seriously, with your phone? Is this some kind of pity mug shot?” He was making fun of me. Man, he was going to be sorry when I became a badass. We didn’t forget shit like that.

  He smirked and returned the phone to his pocket.

  “I wasn’t ready!” Damn, I didn’t scowl or sneer or anything. “Do over!”

  “No.” He pulled out a portfolio and opened it. “You haven’t changed,” he said as he stood, removing his jacket before resuming his seat.

  “You know me?” I wondered over the planes of his face again. Had I met him when I’d visited Gran all those years ago? I considered the dark hair that curled near his collar, the Paul Newman blue eyes, the tall, muscular body, the cleft in his chin... Wait. The eyes, the cleft...those were familiar.

  He tapped his pen rapidly, ignoring my question. “Now, could you tell me why you tortured that poor car?”

  I wilted. Why was I the one in the police station? All I did was take Justin’s expertly fitted and weighted golf clubs to his beloved car. I didn’t lie to him day in and day out. I didn’t betray him. Nope. I broke a thing, not a person. Why the hell wasn’t he the one staring down a cop and answering questions?

  “I’d really prefer not to, and I don’t understand why I should have to. Taking a golf club to your own property is not against the law. It’s not like I went on a spree and destroyed all the cars in the country club parking lot. It was a surgical strike. I was a Tomahawk missile of tactical fury. And anyway, shouldn’t you have to identify yourself before you start asking me questions?” I clenched my trembling hands in my lap, trying to maintain my new, hard-ass persona.

  “Chief Cavanaugh of the Bar Harbor Police Department, ma’am.” He looked down at his portfolio and then back up at me, eyes cold. “You trashed your husband’s car and then fled, is that right?”

  I thought it would be different if I left, if I came to the place where I was the happiest. Even without Gran, I’d imagined being here would comfort me and help me figure out what the hell to do with myself now that I understood, what was apparent to everyone else, that my life was a pathetic sham. I leaned forward, dropping my head to the table. Repeatedly. My brain needed a reboot.

  A large, warm hand settled on my shoulder, the heat seeping into my bones. A shiver ran through me. I looked up through wet lashes, and I saw it. I knew who he was.

  “Aiden?” I sat up straight to better study him. “Aiden Cavanaugh?”

  His hand fell away, and I missed its weight and warmth at once. Unbelievable. How the hell did sweet, oddly geeky Aiden Cavanaugh morph into tall, dark and forbidding?

  “Wow,” I said. “Look at you with your big-boy muscles and your lumberjack build. You must have had one hell of a growth spurt. I knew there was something familiar about you. It was the eyes. You were always cute but holy shnikies. I’m feeling kind of dirty now for some of the things I was thinking about you up on the cliff.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Aiden

  DISTURBING SISTERLY ATTITUDE ASIDE, it was nice to know that the girl I’d obsessed over as a kid appreciated what she saw enough now to mentally grope me.

  I gave myself a mental slap. Women, for more than a couple of hours, were off the table. They couldn’t be trusted, and trust was vital. “Thanks. If we can get back to the destruction of property issue...” I said, and her smile dropped.

  She sighed. “He cheated on me. A lot. I moved out, met with a lawyer, but then...” She looked up at me. “Do I have to tell you all this? Can he really have me arrested for beating up his car?” Her bottom lip quivered before she stiffened it.

  “If you’re in the process of a divorce and you took a golf club to his things? Yes.”

  She looked down into her lap.

  “Would he willingly air the dirty laundry to punish you?”

  She sat up straight, her head cocked, considering. “No. Image is everything to him. The Asshat used to go shopping with me to make sure I dressed like a successful man’s wife.” She paused, her fingers tapping on the tabletop. “I doubt he’d want his clients to know why I did what I did.” She nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  My hand twitched, wanting to touch her once more. Damn it. I wasn’t going down that road again. Not after Alice. “Are you visiting or planning to stay awhile?”

  “I want to stay. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I know Gran’s gone, but I was hoping—I don’t know. I was happy here once.”

  I laughed. “You were a menace here once, Katie.”

  Outraged, she said, “Menace? I was a sweet and charming addition to this community for two months every summer!”

  Choking, I stood. “Sweet and charming? How many Fourth of July parades did you ruin?”

  “Enhanced. The word you’re looking for is enhanced.”

  Dropping back down in the chair, I fixed her with a stare. “Enhanced? When you stole Old Man Benson’s crickets and released them into the crowd, you believed that it improved their parade-viewing experience?” I paused, considering. “And how the hell did you end up on different floats every year? You were a member of the Kiwanas? The Elks? A volunteer firefighter?”

  She laughed, relaxing. “Good times. The kind and trusting people of this community welcomed me with open arms. It helps that they have short memories. Every summer, I’d promise that I’d learned the error of my ways and they’d let me climb on their floats.” She grinned at the table, remembering.

  “Crickets?”

  “Do you know what he planned to do with those poor little crickets? He was going to skewer them with a fishing hook. I heard him talking to Gramps outside the bait shop. He had a big container of live crickets that he and his buddy were going to use the next day on their fishing trip!” She shook her head. “While they chatted, I grabbed the bin out of the back of his truck and ran to the parade. It was a crime of opportunity. Anyway, I was like seven or eight at the time. Hasn’t the statute of limitations run out on that one?”

  “Perhaps. What about the rubber balls?”

  She tried to hide her guilty expression. “Who doesn’t like bouncy balls?”

  “Off the top of my head, I’d say the guy driving the tractor directly behind your float. When you sent hundreds of bouncy balls in every direction, quite a few bounced into his engine. You broke his damn tractor.”

  Cringing, she said, “Not broke. They were able to fix it. I screwed up the parade, though. It took a while to get the tractor moved so the rest of the floats could go by. On the bright side, people had bouncy balls to play with while they waited!”

  “Where did you even get
hundreds of balls?”

  “Brought them with me. It was some kind of ordering mistake at my parents’ university. I think they were supposed to be ordering condoms, but checked the wrong box. I don’t know. I was nine. There were boxes of bouncy balls sitting in the back of the administration building.” She looked at me, wide-eyed. “What was I supposed to do? Just leave them there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pfft. I filled my backpack and a plan began to form.”

  I shook my head. “Like I said, menace.”

  She waved away my concerns. “I worked all summer at Mr. Sheets’s ranch to pay for the tractor repair.”

  “You did?”

  “Oh, sure.” She grinned. “He was only annoyed with me that first day, though. I went from mucking out the stables and polishing the tools to apple picking and horse brushing. Fun summer.”

  Her expression shifted, memories scattering. “I thought—with everything going on—I could start over here.” She shook her head, shrugging. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  I ignored a twinge of sympathy for Katie, closing my portfolio. “You’re going to your grandmother’s?”

  “Yeah. She left me her house. Not him, not us, just me.” She clenched her hands in her lap. “I don’t know if that’ll work, though. California is a no-fault, community-property state. My lawyer is—well, she’s doing what she can.” She moved her foot, and her dog groaned at having his pillow taken away. “So, is it okay? Can I go?” She bit her lip, and I looked away.

  I stood and moved toward the door. “Yes, but only because charges were never actually filed. I guess your husband forgave you.”

  Pushing up from the table, she rolled her eyes. “Sure. We can go with that.”

  What did that mean? I put my coat back on and waited for her to collect her dog and bag. “What happened to your hair?”

  She laughed, a quick outburst of breath, and shook her head. “I see your skill with compliments hasn’t improved. I believe you once told me I had very straight shoulders.” She walked past me without answering the question.