The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  Vanessa moved slowly and backed onto the sofa. She made no move toward Maggie, nor did she make eye contact with her.

  “So tell me a story,” Vanessa said.

  “When I was a kid, I was very small. And I stuttered. Everyone made fun of me, knocked me around. Nobody ever stuck up for me, except for one person. Know who that person was?”

  Oh, shit, she thought. I think I can see where this is going …

  Aloud she said, “Who, Edmund?”

  “The man you sent to prison. The man who died there, beaten to death like a dog. My cousin Eugene.” He stared at her through flat black eyes. “You should have taken it, Vanessa. Whatever you did to make him put you in your place, you should have taken it. You had no right to call the cops on a family matter. You should have taken it, then worked it out with him later. It’s your fault he’s dead, Vanessa. The Bible says an eye for an eye, right?”

  He got off the step and started toward her, the hand that held the gun swaying, his free hand clenching and unclenching. She was pretty sure the first blow would be with a fist. He wasn’t going to shoot her before he hurt her. Grady had been right about that. She braced herself for the punch that was coming.

  “No! Don’t touch her!” Maggie jumped from the sofa and lunged toward him. Just as he raised the gun there was the sound of something hitting the floor in the dining room.

  Edmund smacked Maggie with his free hand and swung toward the sound just as a black plastic flower pot rolled across the floor.

  “What the f …” he muttered.

  From the kitchen doorway, Grady leaped forward and landed on Edmund’s back and slammed him, face-first, onto the floor. The gun Edmund had been holding slid on the hardwood almost to the front door.

  “What the hell took you so long? And where’s Hal?” Vanessa rushed to help Maggie up.

  “I’m all right, honey.” Maggie stood shakily. “I’m all right.”

  “Pick up that gun, Ness,” Grady told her. “Put it on the table near the window.”

  She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, as if it had a life of its own, and placed it on the table.

  “Grab the cuffs from my back pocket, would you?” Grady asked as he twisted Edmund’s hands behind his back.

  She assisted Maggie onto the sofa, then pulled the cuffs from his pocket and handed them to Grady.

  “Hal’s out back, probably still trying to catch his breath,” Grady told her as he cuffed her would-be assassin. “He ran the entire way, but he’s just not in shape. He was breathing so hard I was afraid you’d hear him before I could create a distraction, so I told him to wait outside. He’s called for backup but told them to hang back.”

  “Hal’s outside?” Maggie started to rise, and Vanessa hurried to help her up. “Is he all right?”

  “I think he’s better off than you are right now.” Vanessa tilted Maggie’s face to get a better look at her injury.

  “What if he’s having a heart attack? Maybe we should call an ambulance …” Maggie ran to the back door.

  “Tell him to let his backup know it’s time to move in,” Grady called after her.

  “Get off me. I’m gonna sue you for excessive force …” Edmund yelled.

  “Nothing I haven’t heard before,” Grady told him, then read him his rights. He turned to Vanessa. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Maggie got the worst of it. He was just winding up, though. You didn’t arrive any too soon, you know.”

  “I know. I was paying attention.” Grady grabbed Edmund and pulled him to his feet. He held him by the back of the neck with one hand; with the other, he pulled his cell out of his shirt pocket. Vanessa smiled, and did the same.

  “Hello,” she said into her phone.

  “Hello,” he replied, then snapped his phone closed and said, “You’d have made a good cop, Ness. You followed instructions to the letter, you never lost your cool, you kept focused just like I told you.”

  “I was scared to death,” she admitted as the first patrol car came screaming to a stop out front. “I had no cool. I thought I was going to pass out or throw up.”

  “You did just fine, babe,” he said softly. “Just fine …”

  She opened the front door for Gus and Sue and pointed to the man on the floor. “He’s all yours, Officers …”

  Vanessa and Maggie sat across from each other at Hal’s conference table waiting to give their statements regarding the day’s events while Grady paced in the hallway talking on his cell.

  “Vanessa, I don’t know how to thank you for saving my life this morning,” Maggie said. “You didn’t have to come.”

  “Do you believe he would have killed you?” Vanessa asked.

  Maggie nodded. “There’s no question in my mind. Several times, I thought he was going to pull that trigger …” She shivered at the memory. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I will never forget that you put yourself in danger to save me.”

  “Maggie, you’re my mother.” Vanessa sighed. “Whatever else has happened, whatever issues we have, the fact remains that you’re my mother, and I could not let him kill you in my place.”

  Tears rolled down Maggie’s cheeks. “Look, I know I screwed up as a mother. There are so many things I did back then that I’d never do now. I never meant to hurt you or Beck, Vanessa. I did love you—I still love you both—but I screwed up big-time. Every good relationship I ever had, I screwed up.”

  “Yes, you did.” Vanessa faced her and met her eyes without blinking. “You screwed up your life, and you screwed up both of ours. But here’s the thing: in screwing up, you gave us both what turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to either of us. You sent us to Hal. He saved us—both of us—so for that I have to thank you. It makes up for everything you didn’t do.”

  Maggie covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry, Vanessa. I know I was a poor excuse for a mother.”

  “A piss-poor excuse, when you get right down to it. But maybe instead of beating your breast and crying about everything you did that hurt us …”

  Maggie’s head shot up.

  “Yes. Hurt, Maggie.” Vanessa took a deep breath. There were things she’d waited a lifetime to say. Now might be her only chance. “From the time I was seven years old until I was about fifteen, I was afraid all the time. Did you know that?”

  “Afraid of what, honey?”

  “Afraid that the men who came home with you at night would come back during the day when I was there alone. I hated the school day to end, because all the way walking home, I’d be getting more and more scared.” Even now, years later, Vanessa could feel that cold finger of fear on the back of her neck. “What if someone was there when I got home? What would I do? What would I do if you were out at night and one of them came looking for you? What would they do to me?”

  “Oh, baby, I’d never have let anyone hurt you. I’d have died before I’d let anyone touch you,” Maggie wept.

  “Good to know now, but it would have been even better to hear when I was a child.”

  “Dear God, I’m sorry. Look, I know I was a mess back then. I did so much wrong when I was too young to know better. I made a million bad choices and few good ones. I lost the best man I ever knew—the only man I really loved—because I was too weak and too scared to stand up to my father. You can’t imagine what it was like for me back then, Vanessa.” Maggie patted her eyes with a tissue she’d taken from her purse. “I was bullied and forced into marrying someone I didn’t love. My entire life went wrong from that one wrong turn.”

  “This isn’t all about you, Maggie. A simple I-screwed-up-my-life-and-I-screwed-up-yours-too-and-I’m-sincerely-sorry is probably all that’s necessary at this point. The rest of it—the explanations, the attempts to excuse yourself that you’ve been making all these years—they don’t matter so much anymore to anyone except you. I can’t help you to clear your conscience but I can give you some of the best advice you’ll ever get.” Vanessa scanned the table and foun
d a pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote something and handed it to Maggie. “This is the therapist who helped me. Maybe she can give you a referral to someone in North Dakota that you could make an appointment with.”

  Maggie frowned.

  “You have issues that you’ve been dragging around for years, Maggie. You haven’t been able to resolve them on your own, so maybe someone else can help you. It might be worth a try.” Vanessa shrugged. “Of course, it’s up to you.”

  Maggie studied the paper for a moment.

  “You’re right, of course.” Maggie folded the paper and tucked it into her bag. “Thank you.”

  “Ladies, if you’re ready to give your statements”—Hal appeared in the doorway—“Sue is ready to take them. Maggie, come on into the office across the hall, and we’ll get started with you first.”

  “All right.” Maggie stood and walked to the door. She turned back to her daughter and said, “Thank you, Ness. For everything.”

  Vanessa swiveled in the chair, trying to put it all into perspective. She did love her mother. She’d realized that earlier in the day when she’d willingly gone to the house where Maggie was being held hostage. There’d been no question in her mind whether to go or not go. She simply went, understanding that no one does that sort of thing—no one chooses to put themself in harm’s way—unless they value the person whose life was at stake. For all their differences, they were still mother and daughter. Vanessa hoped that she and Maggie could put aside their unhappy past and find out what that meant as adults. Maybe Maggie would make that phone call …

  A noise from the doorway drew her attention, and she looked up to see Grady standing there.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey yourself,” he replied.

  “Come on in,” she beckoned him. “Keep me company until it’s my turn to give my version.”

  He came into the room but did not sit.

  “I guess you’ll have to give your statement, too?” she asked.

  “I already wrote it up.” He smiled but to her he appeared troubled. “And handed in the gun Hal gave me.”

  “I was so glad you didn’t have to fire it.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Can you sit?” She pulled out the chair next to her.

  He shook his head. “Actually, I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be heading back to Montana. I spoke with the head of the group I’d contracted to take out on Friday and they’re really psyched for this camping trip. I hate to disappoint them—I’ve taken them before and it’s a great group—plus they’ve already paid for the trip.” He seemed to have trouble meeting her eyes. “With Dent in custody, I figured …”

  “Oh. Of course.” She nodded. “You don’t need to stay. Especially since you have that trip lined up, you should go. How fortunate that it worked out the way it did so that you could get back there in time.”

  “Well, I figured if I got back tomorrow, I’d have enough time to get all the provisions that we need, and I can check the weather and figure out the best route, that sort of thing. We get snow in April and May sometimes, especially at the higher elevations, and I don’t want to take them into unknown conditions.”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “I understand totally. You have a job to do. I appreciate that. And I appreciate that you extended your stay on my behalf. It was good of you to do that for someone you hardly know.”

  “Don’t do that, Ness,” he said softly. “Don’t make it sound like we’re strangers. From that day on Hal’s deck, we haven’t been strangers. Don’t make it less than what it was.”

  “I’m not quite sure what it was.” She stood and tried to force back the lump in her throat. She knew she’d be saying good-bye to him, but she hadn’t expected it now, and here. “Maybe ‘two-night stand’ says it best.”

  “That doesn’t say it at all, and you know it.” He reached for her but she crossed her arms over her chest as if to put distance between them. He put his arms around her anyway and kissed the side of her face when she tried to turn away from him. “I’ll call you when I get back from this trip.”

  She nodded. “Be careful,” was the only thing she could think of to say. Good-bye stuck in her throat and she couldn’t make herself say the word. “The house is open, so go on by and pick up your things.”

  He nodded, and then he was gone.

  Just like that, he was gone.

  Diary—

  The events of these past few days have my head positively spinning! Remember I said that Hal believed the same person who robbed Bling was responsible for the vandalism to Grady’s rental car? Well, he was right on the money, which just goes to prove once again that Hal Garrity was among the finest police chiefs this town has ever had. But when the identity of the perpetrator was revealed—well, let me just say that I wasn’t the only shocked soul in town!

  Now, the story that I heard—and I have this on very good authority—is that Vanessa’s ex-husband was a violent and abusive man (can you imagine?!). I’d heard that she’d had not one, but two bad marriages, but I never heard the details. And let me assure you that I was not one of those who assumed that she was a wanton young thing. No, I just knew there was more to that story than met the eye.

  Vanessa had this fiend arrested, but after he was convicted, relatives of his threatened her and burned down her house! If not for her mother spiriting her away in the night and sending her here to Hal, who knows what would have happened to her? It makes me ill to think of it! Now, it seems that the husband died recently in prison and one of those same vengeful relatives came after Vanessa, breaking into her shop, then into her home, where he ran into Vanessa’s mother, Maggie—who’d hung around St. Dennis after the wedding and has been seen with Hal a great deal, which has every tongue in town wagging, as you can imagine—and took the poor woman hostage!

  Whew! Take a breath, Gracie!

  Then, this evil man held the woman at gunpoint and forced her to call Vanessa and tell her she had to come home or he was going to shoot her mother! Well, didn’t that courageous girl run home to save her mother’s life?! God only knows what would have happened if Grady hadn’t dashed to the house, created a distraction, then disarmed the villain! Talk about a knight in shining armor!

  I have it on excellent authority that Vanessa is just not herself these days since Grady returned to Montana. This simply will not do.…

  Yes, yes, I know. I swore off the spells after that fiasco with Rocky and that sweet young woman from Rock Hall last year (well, who knew that he was gay?). But there are times when one must take matters into one’s own hands, and I do believe this is one of those times. Now, how to get my hands on some of those herbs Alice kept in those glass jars in her basement.…

  —Grace

  Chapter 19

  “Ness, you shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” Steffie told her. “If you don’t want dinner and you don’t want to drink, at least let me bring you some ice cream.”

  Vanessa paused. “Ice cream would be good.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Steffie arrived at Vanessa’s door with a bag filled with numerous paper containers, some napkins, and a couple of plastic spoons.

  “I couldn’t decide what flavor, so I brought a bunch,” Steffie explained when Vanessa opened the door.

  “Good.” Vanessa grabbed the bag and took it into the living room, where she plopped into a chair. “Let’s see … we’ll start with this one.”

  “Don’t you want to see what flavors?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “Flavor, schmavor. It doesn’t really matter.”

  She handed Steffie the bag.

  “You’ve had one hell of a day, girl.” Stef picked a random container out of the bag and opened it. “Maybe we should put the others in the freezer.”

  “They won’t last long enough to melt,” Vanessa told her. “And yes, this was one hell of a day. To reiterate: my second husband’s crazy cousin Edmund breaks into my house
, takes my mother hostage, and threatens to kill her unless I come here so that he can kill me …”

  “Why’d you do it, Ness?”

  “Why’d I do what?”

  “Why’d you come back here knowing that crazy bastard had a gun?”

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I’d just sat back and let him kill her.” Vanessa finished her first dish and went back into the bag for another. She opened the lid and looked at the contents. “This looks good. What is—”

  “No, put that one back. Better yet, give it to me.” Steffie reached for it.

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?” Vanessa dipped her spoon in. “It’s yummy.”

  Steffie sighed. “I made it yesterday and named it after Grady because he’d been such a sport about driving me to Scoop when it was very clear he had private plans for you.”

  “You named an ice cream after him?” Vanessa’s spoon wavered halfway between the dish and her mouth. “What did you call it?”

  “Mountain Man Fudge.”

  “Mountain …” Vanessa started to giggle, then couldn’t stop, and before long, she was in tears, sobbing.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I should have made up some other name when you asked. I shouldn’t have brought him up at all.”

  “It’s okay,” Vanessa wept. “It’s just that I didn’t expect him to leave so abruptly. I’ll be fine. I’m just going to have this one cry, then it’ll be done.”

  “I should have followed my first instincts and brought a couple of bottles of wine,” Steffie muttered.

  “No, no, I’ll be fine. I just need to cry it out.” She picked up the bag and swung it to Steffie. “This may take a while, though …”

  “Take as much time as you need.” Steffie helped herself and returned the bag to the coffee table. “But just so I know … is he, Grady, a bastard for leaving that fast, or what?”

  “I knew he was going. I knew he had this trail thing he does. Camping trip he was taking some people on. That’s how he makes his living.” Vanessa got up and went into the kitchen and came back with a box of tissues. “So it’s not like he misled me or deceived me or anything like that.” She blew her nose and appeared to think for a minute. “I think what hurts is that it feels so … unfinished. You know? Like there should have been more, but there isn’t going to be.”