Carol shut the door behind her. As she was stepping down off the top step she heard her personal cell phone ringing inside the house. She almost went back inside to answer it, but then changed her mind. She was already running late, and she had her work cell since she was on call.
“Anything similar in any open cases that you know of?”
“Not this particular combination. But we are definitely checking.”
“Okay. Thanks for calling.”
“Sure thing. Enjoy the princess’s party. Send her the wife’s love.”
Carol grinned. “I will.” She made sure Lisa was strapped in, then got into the front seat and started her car. She had fifteen little eight and nine year olds showing up at Lisa’s grandparents’ ranch in less than three hours and had Lisa’s birthday lunch in the meantime.
The birthday girl had selected her favorite pizza parlor for her eighth birthday lunch, just as she had every year since she could pronounce the word. She brought Amy Bradford, best friend since kindergarten, along with her just as she also always had since the day they met. The two little girls giggled and whispered as they ate green olive pizza with extra cheese, and Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Carol Mabry intentionally let go of all thoughts concerning the strangled Certified Public Accountant.
She forced herself to focus entirely on her daughter while they were in the restaurant. By the time they piled back into her Jeep, she had mentally left murder and autopsy reports behind, and transformed from A. C. A. Carol Mabry into just Carol, just Ms. Mabry, just Lisa’s mom.
The drive to the ranch took twenty minutes, and the girls sat in the back seat, continuing their whispered conversation. The whispers got louder until they were full-fledged yells, and Carol finally interrupted them. “Girls! What are you two arguing about?”
“Ms. Mabry, who do you think is cuter? Trevor West or Bobby Kent?” Amy asked. Carol felt her stomach tighten.
“I told you, Bobby Kent is way cuter than Trevor West. Besides, Trevor West is married and has like a dozen kids. Bobby Kent isn’t married, so that makes him even more cute,” Lisa said. “Plus, he has the same name as my grandma and grandpa. That’s even more extra points.”
“What do you think, Ms. Mabry?” Amy asked again.
Carol refused to get a headache on Lisa’s birthday. Sometimes, tension and stress built up so badly that she would get headaches that made her have to lie down in a darkened room and fight back tears of pain. She had already decided it wasn’t going to happen to her today, despite the pain she felt creeping into her temples. She would will it away. “I think you two should play rock-paper-scissors, and whoever wins is right,” she said, turning into the drive that led to the ranch house.
The game brought on another bout of arguing, but by then, Carol enjoyed the beautiful flowering dogwoods that lined the stretch of lane leading to the ranch house. On either side, rolling hills with green grass stretched out beyond black fences, peppered with grazing horses.
As they pulled up in front of the house, she noticed the extra vehicle but thought nothing of it. This time of the year, the Kents often hired extra hands to help with planting the hay fields and prepping the kitchen garden.
As they got out of the vehicle, she looked around and realized nothing had been done to prepare for Lisa’s party. Harriet was so efficient that Carol usually had nothing to do by the time she came over. She remembered her phone ringing right before lunch and immediately worried that something had happened to Robert. She turned to the girls as they got out of the Jeep. “Lisa, go look in on the new foal Lightning dropped last week. I’m going inside to see what grandma’s up to.”
“Okay, Mommy. Come on, Amy,” Lisa urged. They took off at a run toward the horse barn.
“Don’t go inside the stall without a grown-up. Just look if Daniel isn’t in the barn!” Carol called to them, then turned to go in the house. She had her hand on the door when Harriet opened it and stepped out onto the porch. With the older woman’s red rimmed eyes, pale skin, and scraggly hair, Carol immediately knew something was very wrong.
“Carol,” Harriet greeted with a hitched breath, then she stopped.
“What’s the matter, Harriet?” Carol asked, taking the older woman’s arm and guiding her back to the door. “What happened? Is Robert all right?”
Harriet put her hand over her face and burst into tears. “Oh Carol. I’m so sorry.” Carol steered her through the door and into the kitchen. Harriet collapsed into a chair at the table and buried her face in her hands, her body wracking with sobs. Carol looked over and saw Robert seated at the table. He looked so frail, like a strong wind might just break him to pieces. He reached out to take his wife’s hand.
“Robert, what is it? What happened?” she asked. She started feeling really frightened.
“Carol,” he whispered, then cleared his throat and stopped. He cleared his throat again, then said in a stronger voice, “Whatever happens, whatever gets said, you have to know that we are truly sorry. Don’t let this spoil Lisa’s birthday.”
“What’s going on?” Carol demanded, her teeth set. “Tell me right now. Right this second.”
UNOBSERVED until this moment, international Country Music superstar Bobby Kent studied Carol Mabry from the doorway of his parents’ kitchen. His parents had finally decided to tell him about two hours ago having exhausted every ploy in their arsenal in an attempt to convince him to leave. The anger at his parents burned through his system slow and low, like an underground lava flow.
To the casual observer, Bobby Kent had an even temper. Some might even describe him as mild-mannered, unflappable, or cool headed. In reality, Bobby had his father’s temper, which is to say, he was a hot head with a short fuse. He could instantly go from feeling annoyance to full blown anger and all the way to wrath. He had recognized his anger problem early in life and taken steps to contain his emotions. He had taught himself coping skills and went to great pains never show his anger, which he perceived as weakness, to the world at large. It was the single aspect of his father’s personality he specifically wanted to prune from the family tree.
Even a lifetime of coping with feelings of anger had not sufficiently prepared Bobby for what his parents had confessed earlier. His mind rejected the fact that he had a daughter; an eight-year-old daughter. It was too much to fathom at one time. How could two people who professed to love him have kept that information from him? He hadn’t been able to get an explanation out of them yet. Both of them had been too upset to make any sense, but he assumed it had something to do with money. It nearly always did.
He figured the woman standing over them at the table could shed some light on the subject. For obvious reasons, he’d known who they were talking about before they’d even said her name. The moment she spoke, the moment he heard her voice, every recollection of her became vividly pronounced in his memory. They’d met in a classical violin class during a summer semester at the University of Georgia just four weeks before he received the call about his demo and packed his bags to leave. He had been amazed with her musical skill and impressed with her in general. He had asked her out and they had shared some lunches, a dinner, and gone to a movie together on a double date.
The night he got the call, they had celebrated. They’d sat on the tailgate of his truck and eaten too many cheeseburger sliders, washed down with way too much celebratory champagne. The celebration had gone until dawn. Bobby assumed Lisa arrived a scant nine months later.
He wanted to turn his anger on someone other than his parents, but he couldn’t find it in him to force it onto her. The one thing his father, Robert, had been very clear about was that they had misled Carol all this time. All these years.
Years!
All that time, all these years, Carol believed Bobby knew all about his daughter, Lisa. Taking a deep breath, Bobby ran his hand through his hair and prepared himself to face her righteous wrath. He had a feeling it would take some time to convince her that he wasn’t the bad guy here.
“Oh, of course! Should have known,” she bit out through gritted teeth. “Exactly what are you doing here? Today of all days?”
He had no idea how to even begin so he decided to start with his defense. From the look on her face, though, he wasn’t sure she would even hear his words. “I didn’t know, Carol.”
Carol put a hand to her temple as if warding off a headache. “What are you doing here, Bobby? Why are you here?” she repeated in a weak voice.
He took a step toward her. “I swear to you, Carol, they never told me. They lied to you. They lied to both of us.”
He heard the sound of two pairs of feet running across the porch. A look of panic flashed across Carol’s face. She spun around as the screen door flew open. “We have fifteen kids and their parents showing up in less than an hour. I can’t deal with this right now,” she declared over her shoulder through gritted teeth.
He watched as she kept her back to them and intercepted Lisa before she made it completely into the kitchen. Bobby had a chance to see a flash of hair and the toe of pink sneakers, but Carol blocked the rest of his view. It took every single ounce of willpower in him to keep from shoving her out of the way to look at his daughter for the first time in his life.
His daughter.
“Mom. You should see the baby horse!” Lisa yelled, her voice rising in excitement with every word.
Carol opened the door and guided Lisa outside. Bobby could hear her speaking as she said, “Come show me, babe. Then we need to set up the tables. Grandpa isn’t feeling well.”
Bobby walked over to his parents and looked down at them. He felt no sympathy at the sight of their ragged faces. “It is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to her,” he said. He put his palms flat on the table and leaned closer. “It is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to me. But most of all, it is absolutely unacceptable that you did this to your own granddaughter, my daughter.”
Bobby waited until both of them looked away from his face. Then he straightened and walked slowly outside. He was going to have to bank his rage until the party was over. He wasn’t going to disappoint Lisa any further.
“Bobby,” his father said from the doorway. Bobby stiffened, but didn’t turn around.
“You know what, Dad? Fire up the grill. We have a birthday party to host today.”
Robert stepped out onto the porch. “Bobby, we can’t have a party right now. Your mother isn’t up to it and we need to sit down with Carol and talk about all this.”
Bobby swung around and advanced on his father. “I could not care less whether my mother is ‘feeling up to it’ or not. There’s a little girl in that barn who’s waiting for all her friends to come over and celebrate her birthday, and as sure as the sun is shining, you aren’t going to spoil that for her or her mother. Nor are you about to spoil my little girl’s birthday for me. I’ve already missed seven of them, and I’m not going to miss the eighth.” Robert’s back was against the door, and Bobby was almost nose-to-nose with him, his fists clenched.
“We had our reasons, son.”
“I’m sure you think you did and I’m prepared to hear you out on some later date. But in my opinion, there isn’t a reason good enough for what you’ve done. Not one reason under God’s blue heaven could possibly be good enough.” He turned and walked away before he actually let his temper get the best of him and punched his own father.
Bobby headed to the storage shed to pull out the tables that needed to be set up in the yard. He carried the first one out and nearly ran into Carol. She had her arms crossed over her chest, rubbing them as if she felt cold, and her eyes stood out from her pale face, dark circles shadowing the skin under them. If he thought it would have done any good, he would have given her a hug, but he didn’t think she would welcome that right now.
“I don’t want to tell her yet,” she said. Her voice sounded very strained.
It took a few heartbeats for him to process what she meant. Then the meaning of the words tore through him and he felt his jaw tighten and his eyes slit. He set the table down and faced her. “Are you telling me she doesn’t even know who I am?” he demanded.
“She knows your parents are her grandparents. But, she doesn’t know that your parents are your parents. I didn’t want to tell her who you were, and it wasn’t until this year that she realized that her father’s parents didn’t come with a face for a father.”
“Oh? May I ask why?” He kept his voice low, calm, and steady despite the fact that he felt his heart rate increase and heard his pulse roar in his ears like ocean surf. He thought he might just explode with all of the emotions rushing through him.
Carol ran a hand through her hair with jerky movements. “Because everyone knows you. You wouldn’t have been some faceless man that never came back. She could have turned on any radio in America and heard you or looked through any magazine and seen a picture of you alongside Melody Mason or some other starlet.”
“Melody Montgomery,” he corrected automatically, as if it mattered. He tasted something sour in his mouth. He didn’t like it, but she made sense. “Then tell her. Then she’ll know and I won’t be some faceless man, and I won’t stay away anymore now that I know she exists.”
Carol’s eyes filled with tears, and Bobby felt certain that she wasn’t a woman who gave in to tears very often. “I wasn’t prepared for this. Give me some time to work out what to do.”
He relented, but wouldn’t give up everything. “I want to get to know her,” he stated. “Carol? Hey. I want to know my daughter.”
He watched emotions play across her face; anger, mistrust, and eventually acceptance. She finally nodded. “I’ll tell her when the time is right. Until then, please don’t say a word.”
Relief poured through him, then he turned to go back to the shed. “You better see what my mother hasn’t done yet. She’s been in the shape she’s in now all morning.”
“Bobby,” she said. His heart skipped in anticipation of the softness of her tone. He turned and looked at her, and she shifted her eyes away, as if uncomfortable. “Lisa’s spending tonight at her friend’s house. If you want to come over tonight, I’ll tell you about her. Show you some pictures. I don’t know. Maybe the right way to tell her is to tell her together.”
He nodded, and had to force the words past the lump in his throat. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 4
Personal Journal Entry
April 21
I’m so angry. I can’t even express how angry.
Who does she think she is to turn me down? Red haired tart! I wasn’t asking for a lifetime commitment. I just wanted a few stinking minutes of her time and her oh-so-precious presence.
She never even sat down? Thanks, but no thanks?
I’m beginning to think my life would be less complicated if I just let him kill her. I know the world would be a simpler place without her in it. I can’t argue with him on that point.
Why is this hunger gnawing at him again so soon? Last time it was years in-between. Now it’s less than a week? Why can’t he control it? Why am I, even now, scouting another target for him?
Decompensating. That’s what the experts would call it. That’s how she would label his actions. She thinks she knows everything. But, it’s because she’s so close. Not like the others. She’s so close and I can’t do anything about it.
BARBARA Daniels rolled her head on her shoulders. She’d just worked third shift, then helped Danny by picking up the breakfast shift too. All she wanted to do was crawl under some covers and hide away for the next 12 hours before her next shift.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the bus. She
worried a bit that she’d fall asleep and miss her stop, but it was so noisy she doubted she would. When she felt someone sit beside her, she barely opened her eyes to see who it was, then closed them again.
The cute guy wearing the black glasses with the jet black hair and goatee looked and smelled a whole lot better than anyone she’d ever met on this bus. He kind of looked like her favorite movie star, Trent Scott. She straightened and put her hand to the side of her hair, worried about what she might look like after fifteen straight hours in the diner.
She spared another glance at him and gave half a smile. “Hi.”
When he looked at her, she thought he had the most striking blue eyes she’d ever seen in her life. He captured her gaze and just simply would not let go. “Well, good morning,” he said in a slow southern drawl. “How are you today?”
CAROL made it through the party without speaking to Harriet or Robert, which was a chore, and effectively ignored the fact that Bobby was there, which proved even harder. Everyone there recognized him, of course, and by the end of the festivities, he’d pulled his guitar out and sang for the guests. She tried to ignore that, too, but his voice sent her heart fluttering the same as it had nine years ago.
She endured the knowing glances from the adults who pieced together Bobby’s role in Lisa’s life, and wondered about the relatives there who already knew. Bobby had no siblings and Lisa openly called the Kents her grandparents. That meant every single person at the party who knew Bobby was Harriet and Robert’s son played a part in the ongoing deception. What kind of planning and engineering did that take?
By the time the last guest left and she had packed the Jeep with Lisa’s presents, she was an emotional wreck and almost told him not to come over that night after all. She could not bring herself to do it, though. He’d already missed eight years, and it wasn’t going to be on her shoulders if he missed any more.
A Carol for Kent Page 3
