Heron's Landing: The Complete Series

by Iris Morland

  Grace couldn’t breathe. She had to warn Jaime.

  “When are they arresting him?” she asked, because she needed to know how much time she had.

  Adam shrugged. “They didn’t tell me. I just know it’s soon. It could be today, it could be in a week.”

  “And that’s it? He’s going to jail and we’ll just sit here and act like it doesn’t matter?” Grace breathed, but it came out more like a sob. “We’ll let it go and act like we never cared about him at all?”

  “Of course not. Adam is working to make sure Jaime doesn’t go to jail for a long time. He doesn’t even want to press charges,” Julia said.

  Grace laughed. Tears blurred her vision, and she laughed and laughed. She knew her family was looking at her like she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. Maybe she’d gone crazy the second she’d laid eyes on Jaime, all those years ago.

  “Honey…” Julia reached out to touch her again.

  “No!” Grace pulled away and stood up. “Don’t you dare.” She wiped her eyes, remembering the receipts, the checks. She grabbed her bag and began furiously rifling through it. She heard someone say her name, but she didn’t care. She tossed the papers on the coffee table and kneeling down, began sorting through them.

  “Look, I’ve found all of these invoices. They show gradual price increases for almost all of the items, and for ones that shouldn’t have become more expensive.”

  She handed the invoices to Adam. He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t ask if she’d been in his office. He glanced at them. Then he handed them back, shaking his head. “Grace, this doesn’t prove anything.”

  She wanted to scream. She shoved the checks toward him. “Look at these then! You’re missing checks, Adam. And I can tell you right now that it wasn’t Jaime who stole that money. It was Eric. Eric’s the one who’s been stealing right under your nose and setting Jaime up to take the fall.”

  No one said anything. You could hear a pin drop, it was so silent. Grace sat on the floor, trembling with rage and despair.

  When she looked up, though, she saw that Adam’s jaw was rigid. Her heart fell. He didn’t believe her. She looked at her mother, and Julia just shook her head. Even Joy didn’t say anything.

  “Grace, the police have found enough evidence to charge Jaime. If Eric had been responsible, don’t you think they would’ve realized that?” Adam implored her, his dark eyebrows furrowed.

  Grace couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. It was like someone was burying her alive, shoveling soil on top of her until she suffocated. It was all she could do not to panic.

  But reaching deep down inside herself, she found the strength to stand up and collect the papers she’d strewn across the living room. She bit back the tears pushing at her eyelids, her hands trembling and her heart pounding. When she looked behind her, she saw Emma staring at her, her blue eyes wide with confusion.

  Clutching her bag, she said in a low voice, “I know Jaime is innocent. He is one of the best men I’ve ever met. He is good, and kind, and he’s my friend.” Her voice stuttered on friend, because he was so much more than that. “I’m not going to sit here and condemn him because none of you are capable of looking beyond the obvious.”

  Carl stood up as well, pointing a finger at her. “If you go out that door to go to him, young lady, just know that we will not let you back into this house. That’s my final warning. I’ve had enough of this behavior.”

  “Carl!” Julia exclaimed.

  Grace laughed, but it was a sad, devastating laugh. She slung her bag over her shoulder. “Then I guess this is goodbye.” She looked at Emma and Gavin, the latter of whom was looking both shocked and bemused.

  “Grace…” Gavin said.

  She nodded at him and Emma and then, without looking at anyone else, she left. She drove her car to Jaime’s because she had to warn him. She knew he couldn’t go anywhere. She knew that if they were pressing charges, nothing she could say or do would help. But he deserved to know. The tears from before dried up, and she was only filled with desperation and a need to see him. This one last time.

  But as she pulled up into his driveway, she saw that she was too late. Three cop cars were outside his house—which she had to admit was rather excessive. She ran to his front door and burst through the open door, only to see Jaime in his living room with four cops surrounding him.

  “Jaime Martínez, you are under arrest,” Sheriff Jennings said as another cop cuffed him. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”

  One cop who Grace didn’t recognize raised his eyebrows at her presence. “Ma’am, you can’t be here.” He moved to escort her out.

  But she didn’t move. Jaime wouldn’t look at her. She wanted to beg him to look at her, so she could tell him she was here to warn him even though it was too late. When the cop touched her arm, she pulled away.

  “Ma’am, please. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll have to take you in, too.”

  She trembled, saying nothing. But eventually she nodded. The officer took her outside, but when she asked to stay by her car, he seemed to take pity on her and let her stay.

  She watched as the three other cops brought Jaime out of his house, his hands behind his back and his gaze on the ground. He still wouldn’t look at her. The tears that had disappeared returned, and she let them fall unimpeded. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be happening, yet no matter how hard she’d tried, it had all been for nothing.

  Sheriff Jennings placed Jaime in the back of a cop car, shutting the door. All but the officer who’d escorted Grace from the house went back inside. Sensing this was her only opportunity, she walked up to the officer; she read his nametag: HALDON.

  Officer Haldon was fairly young, perhaps not much older than Grace, with surprisingly kind eyes and a look about him that seemed to hint he hadn’t been on the force for long. When he saw Grace approach him, though, he narrowed his eyes.

  “Ma’am, please step away from the suspect.”

  She stopped, but in a pleading voice, said, “May I just talk to him? Say goodbye? Please. I’ll leave and never bother you again.”

  Officer Haldon considered. She knew he saw the tears on her face, and how desperate she sounded. She also knew that he’d probably assume that a young woman like her couldn’t be any real threat. He glanced back at the house, then back at her. “Three minutes,” he said. “You can sit on the passenger side. But if you do anything suspicious, you’ll be going to the same place as him.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  Officer Haldon opened the passenger front door, and then Grace slipped inside. The officer stood right next to the door with Grace in his line of vision and with the window cracked so he could hear their conversation. But she didn’t care. She turned and saw Jaime through the mesh that separated the front seat from the back.

  Jaime stared at his feet. She could only see that his expression was grim, his mouth in a thin line.

  “Jaime. Jaime, look at me.”

  He clenched his jaw. Then he looked up at her, and his eyes were such a mixture of defeat and sadness and shame that her tears started all over again.

  “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to warn you. That’s why I’m here.” She was babbling, making no sense. “I had no idea this was going to happen.”

  The hardness in his face softened some. “How could you have known? It’s not your fault.”

  “No, no, don’t be kind to me.” She cried harder. “You’re the one who needs people to be kind. You shouldn’t be here. This is wrong.” She wiped her eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop. “I know you’re innocent.”

  “Hush, Graciela.” He leaned toward the mesh, his forehead almost touching it. “You can’t do anything, at least not right now.” His gaze intensified, like he could impart what he really wanted to say in that look. “But we both know this isn’t the end. Right?”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.” She pressed her fingers into the mesh, touching his cheek. She knew she was pro
bably overstepping her bounds, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care if they threw her in jail, too. “I have some savings. I can use that as bail.”

  He shook his head. She could see him still clenching his jaw, and through her haze of tears, she saw the shimmer of tears in his eyes. She touched his bottom lip, and her heart broke when he kissed it. Just a brush of his lips. But it was enough—for now.

  “You’re killing me,” he said simply, devastatingly. “I don’t deserve you.”

  “Don’t say that. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. You were my first, in so many ways.” When she saw Officer Haldon giving her a look to knock it off, she pulled away from Jaime. But she didn’t stop speaking. “I love you,” she said in a soft voice.

  Jaime didn’t say anything, but he seemed to breathe harder. She saw a tear track down his face.

  “I love you,” she repeated. “And I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this.”

  He swallowed and she heard him say her name. She was about to reach out to touch him when the passenger door opened.

  “Okay, time’s up,” Officer Haldon said. “We’re taking him in.”

  Grace stepped out. “Where are you taking him?” Heron’s Landing was too small to have its own holding cells.

  “We’ll take him up to Columbia. We’ll book him and set bail. You can call up there for updates if you want.”

  She nodded. She watched as Sheriff Jennings got into the car and she stepped away. The car drove off with the other two officers following close behind. Officer Haldon stayed standing next to her, and she had a feeling he almost wanted to touch her shoulder in sympathy. But he just cleared his throat and asked in a gruff voice, “You'll be okay, ma’am?”

  She almost laughed. “I’ll be fine. I’m not the one who you should be worrying about.” Before she turned to leave, she added, “Thank you for letting me talk to him.”

  He nodded tightly before also driving off.

  Grace stood there, feeling the world turn to twilight. It was cold, and she was—as usual—not wearing a coat. She went inside Jaime’s house and locked the door before lying down on the couch. She inhaled his scent, rubbing her cheek against the fabric, and she let the tears flow. She cried and cried, not even sure how much time passed. All she knew was that heart was broken, and she wasn’t sure how she’d ever be happy again.

  Much later, she got a text. Then another. When she got a third, she took her phone from her bag and scanned the words on her phone. It was from Joy.

  I heard what happened. Are you at Jaime’s? We’re worried about you. Do you want to stay with me?

  Then: Grace, please answer.

  Then: I’m coming over.

  It was only a few minutes later that Grace heard a car door slam. Joy entered and Grace simply lay on the couch, like she were paralyzed.

  “Oh, Grace.” Joy squatted down next to her and brushed her hair from her face. “We’re going to my place, okay?”

  She bit her lip and then, before she could stop herself, she threw her arms around Joy’s neck and sobbed into her shoulder.

  16

  J aime stared down at the concrete floor of his holding cell and watched as a spider scurried into a corner. The spider—some little brown thing with more legs than sense—crawled up the wall, to hang in a web it’d created between the cell door and the wall.

  He wondered if this was a metaphor for his life. He’d gotten caught in a web, or maybe he was the spider stupid enough to create a web in a jail cell. He closed his eyes. He wished he could sleep, but the thought of closing his eyes in this place was unbearable.

  So he stared at the spider and watched it rebuild a hole in its web instead of thinking about everything that had happened that day.

  Of course, it was impossible not to think about what had happened. The knock on his door, the officers pouring in, the cold bite of cuffs on his wrists. That had been bad enough. But then Grace had shown up and seen him like that, and it had taken all of his strength not to beg her to leave. He couldn’t bear for her to see him as some criminal. It didn’t matter that he was innocent: that had been lowest point of his life.

  He’d known she wouldn’t abandon him. Not his Graciela. No, she’d somehow sweet-talked one of the cops into letting her talk to him in the car. Her voice had soothed his agitation. While half of him wanted her gone, the other half had almost cried with relief that she was there.

  Seeing her tears and hearing her promises had wrecked him—more than the cuffs biting into his wrists or the charges laid against him. He knew she’d fight for him until her dying breath. And because Grace was Grace, she’d told him she loved him again and he was fairly certain if her goal was to destroy him, she’d done it without laying a hand on him.

  The hours petered on. The spider seemed to have taken a nap—of spiders even slept—and now the only movement in the room was Jaime’s fingers tapping against his knee. It was stupid, but the drumming reminded himself that he was still alive. He wasn’t really sure otherwise.

  Although he wanted to get out of this place, he also knew that he had nowhere to go. He couldn’t return to Heron’s Landing; his job was as good as gone. He didn’t know if he could get another job as a chef. Who was he except a chef? He’d poured his life into becoming the best, and now it had all been swept away within a day. Within hours.

  Jaime balled his fist against his leg. If before he had only felt despair, now he felt rage. He raged against Eric doing this to him, he raged against Adam for not believing in him, he raged against the police for using flimsy evidence to book him, and he even raged against Grace for believing that they could do something to prevent this from happening. He realized he was gasping for air, almost hyperventilating, but the swirl of anger didn’t dissipate. Instead, it felt like it grew into every crevice of his being until that was all he was. A being of unadulterated rage.

  He didn’t know what time it was when he heard a lock clicking. The door swung open, and the young cop who’d let Grace talk to him stepped in; Office Haldon was his name. “You can have your one phone call now, Mr. Martínez. Do you know who that’ll be?”

  Jaime stared at the man. Who could he call? His parents? The thought of their devastation on his behalf made him grimace. Grace couldn’t help him; neither could Adam. So he just shook his head.

  Office Haldon gazed at him before sighing. “Well, let me know if you think of someone. You need anything? A bottle of water?”

  Jaime shook his head, a meager movement. “I’m fine,” he said in a low voice.

  “Okay, well, let me know.”

  The officer locked him up again. Jaime waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. Was he going to sit in this cell for the rest of his life? He closed his eyes again. God, he was tired. So tired. Maybe if he just took a quick nap, he could figure out what the hell he wanted to do…

  He must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing Jaime knew Officer Haldon was shaking him awake. “Hey, someone’s here to bail you out.”

  Jaime blinked. He stared at the officer’s face, noticed that he had a mole on his left eyebrow, and then the words finally registered. Someone, bail, you. “What?” Jaime croaked.

  “You’ve been bailed out. Come on, you don’t want to stay here.” The officer shook him again, and Jaime stood up, his joints creaky from falling asleep on the bench. He looked up and saw that the spider had disappeared, which for some reason made him smile.

  Office Haldon escorted him out of the cell area, and after going through the locked doors, Jaime stopped in his tracks when he saw who was waiting for him.

  It was Adam.

  “Jaime.” Adam came toward him and embraced him, slapping him on the back. “Jesus Christ, what a mess this is.”

  Jaime didn’t hug him back. He didn’t know how to feel about any of this.

  “We need to finish some paperwork,” Office Haldon said, “and then you can go. We’ll also mail you information regarding your court date.”

  J
aime stepped away from Adam. Filling out so many pieces of paper that his vision blurred, he was shocked to see that it was early morning when he and Adam walked outside. The sky was streaked with orange and purple, and when they breathed, it hung in a cloud in front of them. An owl hooted from nearby.

  “Let’s go get some coffee and talk. It’s fucking freezing.” Adam walked down the sidewalk, and Jaime followed him, mostly because he had no ride back home.

  Back home. Was Heron’s Landing even his home anymore?

  They walked the streets of downtown Columbia, which were deserted. The students at the nearby University of Missouri had all gone home for winter break, and as it was too early for anyone else to be around, it felt like a ghost town. Adam took Jaime to a coffee shop that had a grand total of one person inside, making drinks. Probably a college student who didn’t have the money to travel home, Jaime thought.

  After getting two large mugs of black coffee and a few pastries, the two men sat at a table in the back. Jaime wrapped his hands around the mug, only just noticing how cold he was. Adam looked at him and then, without a word, went and got him a large glass of water, which he pushed toward him with another look.

  Jaime gulped the water. It helped. Adam pushed a croissant toward him, which he ate with gusto. He realized he hadn’t eaten for almost twelve hours.

  Now feeling slightly more human, Jaime sipped his coffee and stared at his friend and boss from across the table. The boss who had betrayed him, and the friend who had bailed him out. He couldn’t find any words to say, so he sipped his coffee and waited.

  “How are you?” Adam asked, tearing a Danish into tiny pieces.

  Jaime just drank his coffee. “I’m fucking exhausted,” he muttered.

  “I’m sure.” Adam kept tearing at the Danish; he hadn’t touched his coffee. “Look, Jaime…”

  Jaime put up a hand. “I’m too tired to hear your excuses.”

  “I don’t have excuses, just explanations.” At Jaime’s look, Adam sighed. “I didn’t press charges. Sheriff Jennings did. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to think when it happened.”