by White, Karen
Linc joined her at the table again and took a sip of his coffee, grimacing at the bitterness. Jillian had one of those fancy European coffeemakers, and he hadn’t quite figured out how to use it in the two days she’d been on bed rest and he’d been keeping an eye on Gracie.
“How come you don’t have kids?”
He paused with his mug held halfway to his mouth before he thought better of it and put it back down on the table. “Because I’m not married.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like that makes any difference nowadays.”
“You’re not supposed to know about that stuff, you know.”
She leaned back in her chair, and the expression in her eyes almost made him forget that he was talking to a child. “I know.” She swung her legs back and forth under her chair. “Are my waffles ready yet?”
He stood and pulled the waffles out of the toaster, touching them in the center to make sure they were cooked this time. He placed them in front of her along with the bottle of syrup, and patted her on the head before he realized what he was doing. He heard the sound of the hammer pounding next door at his house and he wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was doing babysitting when he had work to do.
Gracie looked up at him with one of her impish grins. “We can go over there after I’m finished with breakfast, if you want. I’ll color or something so you can get to work.”
He looked at her with narrow eyes. She’s an old soul. He didn’t know where the thought had come from. But he remembered Martha Weber, when she’d arrived the previous day to see Jillian and the baby, saying that to him. He wasn’t sure what she had meant, but he was beginning to suspect that he’d learn very quickly.
Linc studied Gracie for a long moment, looked at the round face that hadn’t lost its baby fat and the way her feet were too short to touch the floor when she sat in the kitchen chair. She was a child, although one who referred to her own mother by her first name. He thought of Jillian at that age, on the beach with her grandmother, and knew he couldn’t go back to work. Not yet.
“Let’s go look for shells. We’ll have a contest to see who can find the most.”
She had jumped off her chair and was running out of the kitchen before he finished his sentence. Her voice carried down the stairs to him. “You’ll have to get your own bucket. I only have one.”
With a smile and a shake of his head, he followed her up the stairs to check in on Jillian and tell her where they were going. He tapped on the slightly ajar door and pushed it open when he heard Martha’s voice telling him to come in.
The room was filled with flowers, three bouquets alone from Mason Weber in an attempt to alleviate some of his guilt at not being able to predict a bizarre shift in the weather. Jillian was propped up on starched white pillows, her hair neatly brushed and settled over her shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted toward the light from the windows, and he almost wouldn’t have recognized her without the large mound of her pregnant belly. Even her face seemed thinner, her hair more glossy, reminding him more than ever of the young girl he had once known. She’s beautiful, he thought. Had he always known that? Or had he simply acknowledged it when he first saw her again after all those years—when there was no Lauren to compare her to?
He looked away to where Martha sat in a rocking chair next to the bed, quietly knitting beside the cradle he had made. Inside, surrounded by brightly colored blankets, lay Ford Parrish Ryan, looking much smaller than his name but quite content to lie back and stare at the swaying of the rocking chair. Linc wasn’t sure why, but he squatted in front of the cradle and touched his finger to the tiny palm, and was rewarded with a tight squeeze.
Taking his finger back, he stroked the baby’s cheek. “There’s a little guy joke I can teach you about pulling fingers, but it’ll have to wait for when there aren’t any ladies present.”
“He’s already got the belching down pat. All I’ll need to do is get him a recliner and a remote control, and he’ll be all set.”
Linc looked up to where Jillian was peering over the side of the bed, her hair streaming around her head like a halo. He stood up, feeling self-conscious under Jillian and Martha’s perusal. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to know if it would be all right if I took Grace down to the beach to hunt for shells.”
She smiled at him. “Yeah, that would be nice. Thanks.”
“Well, there’s not a lot of work going on next door right now, so I had a bit of free time. . . .”
His voice died, and she looked at him with a half-smile. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for the cradle. It’s beautiful. You didn’t have to do it, but I’m glad you did.”
Martha’s knitting needles stilled as she looked up at him, an amused expression on her face. Linc shrugged under her gaze. “It wasn’t any trouble. I had some extra wood and I figured I’d make something useful.”
The baby burbled, as if giving his opinion on the truth of Linc’s words. He was saved from speaking by Grace, who raced into the room, carrying two sand buckets. She handed the pink Barbie one to Linc and smiled innocently up at him. “You can have this one. I forgot I had it.”
She moved over to the cradle and squatted in front of it, then leaned over and kissed the baby on his forehead. “Can Ford come with us?”
Jillian settled back against the pillows. “Not yet. I wish I could go, too, but for some reason Mrs. Weber thinks I need to stay in bed for another day, even though the doctor said I was fine.”
Mrs. Weber stopped rocking. “With each of my eight children, I stayed in bed for a whole week and was pampered. It’s not right that they expect mothers to be up and about so soon after giving birth.”
Linc took Grace’s hand. “We’ll let you two argue it out. Grace and I have shells to find.”
As they headed toward the door, he heard Martha say to Jillian, “I still can’t believe how that little girl slept through the storm and her mother giving birth.”
Grace stopped and turned slowly around. “I did wake up. But she told me that Mr. Rising was coming and that everything would be all right. So I went back to sleep.”
Jillian was sitting up straight in her bed now, her eyes focused on Grace. “Who told you, Gracie?”
Grace looked at her mother, then up at Linc, then back again. Quietly, she said, “Lauren did.”
Martha Weber dropped a knitting needle, but she didn’t stoop to pick it up.
Linc tugged gently on Grace’s arm, leading her out of the room. He called back to Mrs. Weber, “She’s got one heck of an imagination, doesn’t she? Her imaginary friends seem so real to her. We’ll be back later.”
They rushed down the stairs as fast as Grace’s short legs could go. Linc paused on the boardwalk and looked down at the little girl. “Your mother gets upset when you talk about Lauren, doesn’t she?”
Gracie looked down at her pink-tipped feet strapped into white sandals. “I’m not supposed to say her name.”
Linc knelt in front of her. “But she’s real to you, isn’t she?”
Grace nodded. “She is real. And she tells me things.”
A prickling sensation touched the back of his neck, and he rubbed it quickly to make it go away. “Like what?”
She turned her head toward the beach. “Let’s go get shells.” She pulled her hand away and raced down the boardwalk and onto the sandy beach. He followed slowly behind, his attention focused more on the child than on any of the shell specimens spilled on the beach.
The beach was strewn with the storm debris; shells, rocks, and twigs scattered across the sand and dunes like dandelion spores blown from an unseen mouth. Linc bent to pick up a broken sand dollar, and when he straightened, he recognized a familiar figure approaching them on the beach. She wore sandals similar to Grace’s, her hair pulled back in an unruly braid. The pouch with her baby doll was strapped across her chest, but bounced in rhythm with her walking.
Linc held up a hand. “Hello, Miss Janie.”
“Hi,�
�� she said, sounding like a young girl. Gracie ran to stand next to her, and Janie patted her on her head before smoothing hair away from her forehead. “I’ve come to see the baby. I’ve brought a present.” She held up a handmade yellow knit bonnet, old and faded but clean.
Grace placed her hand on the pale yellow-and-white ties. “Is this your baby’s?”
“Yes, it was. But she doesn’t need it anymore. She understands.”
Grace’s hand slid down to where a monogram had been stitched in pink—J. M. “Did you make this all by yourself?”
Janie sent a conspiratorial wink toward Linc. “When Baby was in my tummy, I knitted this bonnet to keep her warm after she was born.”
Linc looked up in the direction of the house, wondering if it was wise to let Janie see Jillian. And then he remembered the no-nonsense Mrs. Weber, and knew that she was in safe hands.
“She might be sleeping, but knock on the door and Mrs. Weber will answer it.”
Janie placed a light hand on his arm. “They’re not going to take the baby away, are they? They did that to me, you know. They took my baby away.”
Her eyes were looking at him but not seeing him, and he felt an unfamiliar rush of pity. “Miss Janie, look—here’s your baby. Nobody’s taken her.”
She stared vacantly down at the rag doll. “No, I guess not.”
“Do you want me to walk you up to the house?”
She looked at him, her eyes clear again. “No. I can get there by myself. Besides, you need to look at the big boo-boo in the sand. I think God came during the storm and made a footprint.”
Before Linc could ask her what she was talking about, she had turned and headed up the boardwalk.
Gracie raced farther up the beach, closer to his house, dodging large branches and brownish-green splotches of stranded seaweed. She stopped and pointed up toward the dunes surrounding his own boardwalk. “Come see, Linc. I think this is what she was talking about.”
Linc followed her, then stopped in confusion. The landscape seemed to have changed. Instead of the fat rolls of sand dunes with sea oats and grasses clinging to the shifting sands, a large bowl had been carved out, then filled with sand and the ocean’s debris.
Grace stood stock-still for a long moment, her head cocked as if listening to something only she could hear. Very slowly, she turned toward Linc with somber brown eyes, and he noticed how her eyelashes were sandy colored, a second before she started to scream.
CHAPTER 11
GRACE SLEPT FITFULLY IN HER MOTHER’S BED, PRESSING HERSELF against Jillian’s side, her stuffed Bun-Bun clutched under an arm. Martha Weber had gone, and Linc now sat in the vacated rocking chair, his dark brows knitted in worry as he watched Grace sleep.
“I’m sorry, Jillian. I don’t know what happened. She just started screaming. I picked her up and carried her home. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’ve never seen her like that before.” Jillian blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to hide the sting of tears. “I’ve been sitting here, trying to understand why this is happening. I’m sure the divorce was tough on her, and then the move . . .” She rubbed her eyes roughly. “She’s always had this imagination, but it’s starting to scare me.” She looked down at her hands, unable to look at Linc as she said the words. “You heard her talking about Lauren before you left. She talks to her all the time. I’m wondering . . . if I need to seek professional help for her.”
She watched as he rested his elbows on his knees, bowing his head as his fingers ran through his hair. Finally, he looked up at her. “Or maybe she’s gifted in a special way. Maybe she does see things we can’t, or hear things we can’t hear.” He paused, as if unsure he wanted her to know his thoughts. “Maybe she really does speak with Lauren. Our Lauren.”
“No.” Jillian shook her head. “No. Because that would mean . . .” She glanced down at her sleeping daughter, feeling the full implication of what Linc was saying. She lifted her chin and looked at Linc directly. “Because that would mean Lauren was dead. And that my daughter was talking to a dead person.”
His eyes looked as stricken as she felt. He stood suddenly, knocking the rocker into jerky motion. He kept his back to her, but she could all but see him building his barriers again. Their night together in the storm, she knew, had softened things between them, but he wouldn’t let go so easily. That had never been Linc’s way.
Without turning, he said, “She’s dead. I think I’ve always known that. Even at the beginning. And your father seemed to believe it easily enough.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled something out of it, keeping it in his fist. “He was so sure she was dead that he tried to have me thrown in jail for her murder.”
Jillian sat up straighter, trying not to disturb Grace. She tried to keep her voice quiet. “What are you saying?”
He turned to face her again, his hands now cupped around the object from his pocket. He looked at her, his eyes hard, and she barely recognized him. Gone was the boy she had known and the man who had offered her hope and sanctuary the night of the storm. The man in front of her was trying very hard not to allow her to see past his barriers. But it was too late.
“I don’t know, Jillian. But I think Grace has a gift—a gift you and I don’t understand and probably never will. If she can . . . communicate with Lauren, then maybe we can find out what really happened all those years ago.” His hands squeezed tightly over the object they held. “Assuming you really want to know the truth.”
The baby whimpered in his sleep, and Jillian looked down at him in the cradle Linc had made for him. Her breasts responded to the sound, filling with milk and beginning to ache. She looked back at Linc. “I won’t use my daughter, Linc. I’m . . . scared of what it might do to her. Grace has already been through so much. . . .” Her voice faded as she looked again at her sleeping daughter, noticing for what seemed the first time the small smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose and how long her eyelashes were. Her much-loved bunny was clasped in the crook of her arm, one eye and most of its fur missing, an ear hanging by just a few threads. How did you learn to love so hard, Gracie? Who taught you?
Linc had moved closer to the bed. “I didn’t suggest doing anything that might hurt Grace. But I knew before I asked that you wouldn’t want to dig very deeply into what happened. He is your father after all is said and done, isn’t he?”
She pulled back from him, anger and hurt mixing in equal doses. Her voice came out like a hiss. “What are you saying?”
He leaned closer to her. “Grace told me that Lauren said that you had something of mine. What is it, Jillian? And why won’t you show it to me?”
Jillian thought of the box and of the letter inside and was tempted to show him, to let him know. But then she remembered the man who had crossed the dunes in a storm and had shone the light into her darkness and put his arms around her. Somewhere deep down inside of her, where the darkness still held her, she saw a glimmer of light and Linc standing in the center of it. No, she wouldn’t tell him. Couldn’t. He would need to understand on his own.
“I’m tired, Linc. I need to sleep now.” She burrowed down on the pillow next to Grace, feeling her child’s warm breath on her cheek.
“We’re not done with this conversation. I have not worked all these years and put myself in a position to return here, only to find that I’m no further ahead than I was when I first left. I’m a patient man, Jillian. I will find out the truth eventually.”
He dropped something on the bedclothes between her and Grace, then crossed the room toward the door. He seemed to stop himself with a visible effort when he reached the doorway. Without looking at her, he asked, “What time will Martha be back?”
Jillian kept her voice even. “Any minute now. She just ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things.”
He paused for a moment before responding. “I’ll wait downstairs until she gets here.”
“Thank you,” she said to the empty doorway, listening to his feet clattering d
own the steps. She picked up the small object that Linc had tossed on the blankets, knowing what she would see before she opened her palm. Smoothing her fingers over the wooden star, she wondered briefly how it had come to be in Linc’s possession. She held it up to the white painted ceiling, clasped between her forefinger and thumb, and imagined the sky beyond it, her wooden star the only constellation in the stark whiteness.
“It shines, Jilly-bean. It shines like a real star.” Grace spoke with a voice still filled with sleep, her eyes mere slits.
“It’s trying to, Gracie. And I’m trying to let it.”
Her daughter’s hand found her own and squeezed. Before Jillian could squeeze back, Grace had fallen back asleep. She nestled down into the covers and put her arm around the little girl, listening to the soft breathing of her children with an odd sense of contentment, until she, too, fell asleep.
Linc stood in the sand, staring at the yellow tape that surrounded the sunken portion of the dune. God’s footprint. That’s what Janie Mulligan had called it. He smirked as he spotted Officer Mason Weber approaching him from the boardwalk. More like God’s kick in the pants.
“Hey there, Mr. Rising.”
As he shook hands, Linc stared at his reflection in the officer’s Ray-Bans. The grip was firm and strong, and Linc knew that the slow drawl and affable smile hid a keen eye and bright intellect.
“Officer.” He jerked his chin to indicate the yellow tape. “Thanks for coming out so quickly and marking this off. I don’t think there’s a real danger, but I didn’t want anyone getting hurt before I had a chance to take a closer look.”
“What do you think happened?”
Linc shifted his feet in the sand, feeling the grit of it inside his shoes. “It looks like some sort of man-made cave or something. Your sister Lessie seems to think it’s an old tunnel used to hide from pirates or Indians. I’d like to do a full-fledged excavation right here.”
