by JoAnn Ross
A woman who looked at least as old as her poppy opened the door. She was skinny and wearing jeans and a red shirt with a ballet dancer on the front of it. Which had Emma looking down at her feet, which instead of ballet slippers were wearing sneakers covered in gold sequins.
“Why, my goodness. You must be Emma,” the woman said, opening the door wider.
“How did you know my name?”
“Oh, you’re famous.” Her warm smile told Emma that she’d picked the very best house. “I’m Zelda. Why don’t you come in and have some cookies and milk while we call your daddy to come pick you up?”
“You know my daddy?”
“Only from the radio,” she said. “But I know how to get hold of him. He’s going to be very happy to hear you’re safe.”
“I was always safe,” Emma explained as she entered the house. “I was just lost.”
“And doesn’t that happen to all of us from time to time?” Zelda assured her.
61
Annie had never been as relieved in her life as she was when Mac called to let her know that Emma had been found. He’d arrived back at the Buchanan house with her just as Boyd and Marian pulled into the driveway.
“Annie,” Emma said as she squirmed out of his arms and went running toward her. “Guess what? I was lost!”
“I know,” Annie said, kneeling down to hold her tight. “We were very worried.”
“I’m sorry. I was a little scared, but then I met this really nice lady and guess what else?”
“What?”
“She’s a famous ballerina who’s going to teach me how to dance. Just like Angel!”
Annie looked up at Mac, who while obviously looking better than he had when he left the house, still showed signs of stress around his eyes and his mouth.
“Isn’t that special?” she answered Emma, even as her gaze assured Mac that she knew ways to relieve that stress. Later.
• • •
The good news was that Mac had his daughter back. Safe and sound, thanks, in large part, to Zelda Chmerkovskiy. The bad news was that while Emma was still recounting her adventure, wishing she’d thought to take pictures with her new camera, Kara showed up at the house.
“I hate to tell you this,” she told Mac, her expression echoing her words, “but your grandfather’s gone missing.”
“What?”
According to what the bartender had told Kara when she’d responded to the call at the sports restaurant, Charlie had had the bad luck to see the AMBER Alert about Emma, and had, for some reason known only to himself, decided to go find her.
Which had resulted in the second AMBER Alert of the day.
Were they having fun yet?
Emma, who’d been remarkably calm, though still angry at her former friend when Mac had picked her up at Haven House, burst into tears when she heard the news about her grandfather.
“It’s all my f-f-fault.”
“No,” Annie, who’d stayed calm throughout the ordeal, assured her as she wiped away the tears streaming down Emma’s cheeks. “It’s just one of those things. Your grandfather used to wander off before you even arrived in Shelter Bay.”
“Which is why he’s living in Still Waters,” Mac’s father reminded her. “To keep him safe.”
“I know. That’s why I never should have told him about the cave.”
“Cave?” Kara asked.
“The cave with the diamonds on the beach. I told him if he ever wanted to run away that would be a good place to hide out. And I’d bring him food and stuff.”
Kara and Mac exchanged a look.
“I know the one she’s talking about,” Kara said. “I’ll go check it out. Meanwhile, now that it’s dark, I want you to stay put. Besides, your daughter needs you.”
“Peggy said you had P-P-PMS,” Emma told Mac. “And that you might shoot someone because of it. So I left because you told me I’m not supposed to hit people anymore.”
Mac could practically feel the gray hairs sprouting on his head. “It’s PTSD,” he said. “And no, I don’t have it, and it’s good that you didn’t hit her. But the next time you decide to leave someplace like that, I want you to call me, okay?”
“Okay.” She snuggled closer to Annie. “Or maybe I could call Annie.”
“Absolutely,” Annie said.
“Okay. So, I’m not going to be spanked?”
“Of course not.” Mac wondered what he’d ever done to make her think she might.
“Or grounded?”
“No.” He was too grateful to have her home safe and sound. But they were going to have to have a talk about her tendency to fly off the handle.
“Do you think Poppy will be okay?” She sniffled and her eyes welled up again.
“Absolutely,” Annie repeated.
As Mac thought about Charlie, out there in what had become cold, pouring rain, perhaps walking along the cliff in the dark, lost and confused, he only wished he could feel as confident as Annie, who he knew was as worried as he was.
62
“And isn’t this a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Charlie muttered as he stood in the center of a grove of towering Douglas fir trees.
Although he hated to admit it, even to himself, Charlie was lost.
Somehow, although he’d been walking for what seemed like hours, he had the feeling he’d been going in circles.
Then again, maybe that could be all in his mind. Maybe, he thought, he was actually back in bed at Still Waters and all this was just a bad dream. Like the one he still sometimes had of the Lexington sinking. Or Annie dying.
“It’s not a dream, darling,” he heard a familiar voice say.
He spun around, almost tripping over a damn stump, only to see her standing on a trail he hadn’t even noticed while stumbling around through the trees like the old man he was.
“Are you real?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition,” she said. “But I’m as real as I am whenever I visit you, and no, you’re not dreaming and no, I’m not a hallucination.”
“Are you here to finally take me with you?” he asked hopefully.
“I’m sorry.” Her expression was the same one she gave him every time he asked. “But I’ve told you, Charlie, my love—”
“We all have our own time,” he finished the damn words for her.
“Exactly.” She reached out and ran her fingers down his cheek. Or perhaps it was simply a gust of soft sea breeze blowing in from the coast. Wherever the hell that was. “Just as you told Emma about her fish.”
“I was looking for Emma.”
“She’s home. Safe and sound and with her father.”
Relief flooded over him. “That’s good news . . .
“I miss you.” He felt his damn eyes filling up. “I don’t know what to do without you, Annie.”
“You’re doing just fine,” she said.
“We both know that’s not true. I’m out in the middle of the goddamn woods in the middle of the night even more lost than when I was bobbing around in the sea after my ship went down. I miss you every day. And every damn night. And it’s just not fair.”
“I can’t argue that,” she answered.
“Ha! I thought once you got to heaven you had all the answers.”
“And wouldn’t that be lovely,” she agreed. “All I can say is that my time isn’t the same as your time. I can’t explain it, but you’ll understand someday.”
“Why not now? If I just found the damn cliff and threw myself off it, would that finally work?” Remembering what Emma had said about Dory and Nemo, he realized he was now thinking like a six-year-old.
“It might solve one problem. But it would create a host more. Your grandson’s doing better than he was. Mac’s fallen in love and he’s learning to be a father. But he still needs you, Charlie. As does Emma.”
And he needed his Annie. But she’d always been wiser than him.
“They’re probably going nuts,” he said.
“Th
ey’ve very worried,” she agreed. “Which is why you’re going to take my hand now. And I’m going to lead you out of the woods and help you find your way home.”
“You’re my home. You’ve always been.”
“Just be patient a little longer and know that wherever you are, darling, I’ll always be with you.”
She led him to what he recognized as the Coast Highway.
“Now take this.” She pressed something into his hands. “And wait just a minute. And you’ll be all set.”
And then she did what he’d been dreaming of ever since she’d had that stroke that had taken her from him.
She kissed him. Full on the lips, a familiar, wonderful kiss that had stayed in his mind all during the war and helped him make it back home to her. And at this moment, it warmed him all the way through.
And then, like morning mist over the harbor, she was gone.
At the same moment, a log truck came barreling around the corner.
Charlie looked down at what she’d pressed into his hand. Turned it on. And waved the flashlight like a beacon signal, bringing the truck to a stop with the squeal of air brakes.
The driver’s window rolled down.
“Hey, man,” the bearded guy called out to him. “Everybody in the state’s been looking for you. So why don’t you get the hell out of this rain and I’ll take you home.”
63
They were waiting for him. All but Emma, who, having arrived safely home herself, had fallen asleep, exhausted after her adventure, so they’d put her to bed.
“You had us worried to death,” Mac said, looking pretty much like death himself, Charlie thought. But he’d be okay. Because he had his Annie.
“Sorry about that,” he muttered. “I guess I screwed up.”
“Well, you’re all right,” Annie said, putting her arms around him for the first time since they’d met. At least the first time he remembered her doing that. “That’s all that matters.”
“Absolutely,” said Boyd, who didn’t look that good himself.
“I thought maybe I was going to die out there,” he admitted. “But Annie, my Annie, told me that it wasn’t my time yet. That I needed to come back because you”—he shot a look at Mac—“can’t convince this lady to marry you.”
“I’m working on it,” Mac muttered.
“Well, work on it a little faster,” Charlie advised. “Because, believe me, boy, life goes by pretty damn quick while you’re not paying close enough attention.”
Then he turned to Annie. “You’re already part of this family,” he said. “You’ve seen us at our best. And well, maybe today not exactly our best. But you stuck with us. You stuck with my grandson here because you love him.”
She was holding Mac’s hand the same way Annie had held his. In both of her soft, pretty ones.
“So,” Charlie demanded, “why don’t you quit keeping us all in suspense and just say yes?”
“I believe that’s my question to ask, Gramps,” Mac said quietly. But Charlie wasn’t fooled because anyone could see the humor in his eyes. His grandson had always enjoyed life. And now that he was finally with the right woman, Charlie knew firsthand that he was going to enjoy it a helluva lot more.
“Well, then? What’s keeping you?”
“Maybe I’d like some privacy?”
“Oh.” That made sense, and although he’d like to hear the girl say the words, he guessed he’d be dancing at their wedding.
“Okay, then. Just make sure you do it right. Women like you to get down on one knee. It may seem old-fashioned, but it gets them every time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mac murmured, this time exchanging a laughing look with Annie, who smiled back.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said to his grandson’s Annie. “My Annie says that it’s mostly good around that bend of yours. And what isn’t, you’ll handle together. Because that’s what families do.”
“So I hear,” she said.
Damn. He didn’t mean to make her cry. But, from the way she was still smiling, even wider, Charlie took that to be one of those female crying things that he would never, even if he lived to be a hundred—which it seemed he just might do after all—understand.
64
Mac and Annie dropped Charlie off at Still Waters, then went on to Castaway Cove.
“How did he know that?” she asked as they sat on the porch swing, watching the moon begin to rise over the top of the Douglas fir trees, casting a silvery sheen on the water. The rain had lessened to a soft mist. “About my bend thing?”
“Beats me,” he said, rocking gently, his arm around her shoulders, her head on his. “Sax said he had ghosts return from the war with him. Real ones, who drove around in his Camaro and ragged him and stuff, just like they did when they were alive. Maybe he’s not imagining his Annie visiting him.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. “Did you notice something else?”
“What?”
“He was dry. It was pouring rain out there, but he was as dry as if he’d spent the entire night indoors by the fire.”
“Damn. That is something to ponder. But I think it can wait until later.”
Leaving her for a moment, he went back to the truck and returned with a package.
“You got me something from my own shop?” Annie asked as she recognized the wrapping paper.
“Kim helped me pick it out.” Mac was suddenly nervous. “I hope you like it.”
Unlike Emma, who tore into packages, Annie carefully slid off the ribbon, then cut the tape on the ends and bottom with her fingernail, folding back the paper to reveal the gift he’d come up with weeks ago.
“A scrapbook?”
“Open it.”
She did, then looked up at him. “It’s blank.”
“I figured we could fill the pages with all the days of our life together.”
She didn’t immediately answer. As her eyes filled, he could only pray that her tears were happy ones.
“This is”—she ran her fingertips over the ivory and black woven cover—“the most wonderful present anyone has ever given me.”
“It’s just a scrapbook,” he said, even as he was relieved that she liked it. The past few days he’d begun second-guessing himself, wondering if she’d rather have a ring. But then he’d figured she’d rather that they pick one out together. Wouldn’t she? He’d never been so conflicted in his life.
“No,” she said as she looked up at him. “Scrapbooks are about preserving the past. This is looking forward to our future.”
“Speaking of that.”
And then, because his grandfather had never steered him wrong, Mac left the swing, got down on one knee, and said, “I love you, Annie. For better or worse. Whatever lies around that bend. I love you now, and I’ll love you forever. Until, like it goes, death we do part.”
He waited a beat, thinking of Charlie and his war bride. “And beyond. You’ve always wanted a family, and I want to give you one.”
“You have,” she said softly, her eyes getting all moist again.
“But here’s the thing. My family won’t be complete without you. So, would you make my grandfather, my father, my daughter, and me very happy, and just say yes?”
Her answer was in those remarkable eyes. And on those lips he could taste even when she wasn’t anywhere in the room.
“Yes,” she said. Her laugh was light and breezy. “Absolutely, positively yes.”
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve just made my family very, very happy.
“As for me . . .”
And because making love to Annie on this swing had been his fantasy since he’d first seen it, hanging there beneath the porch roof, Mac sat down on the swing again, put the scrapbook on the table, took her into his arms, and kissed her as he pressed her down upon the pretty flowered cushions.
It was all either of them would say for a very long time.
* * *
Eight months later
“Happy?” Mac asked Ann
ie.
“How could I not be?” She glanced around at the party in full swing at Bon Temps. “Everyone we know is here.”
“It’s a special celebration,” he pointed out. “We’re now officially, according to the State of Oregon, a family of five.”
“And Charlie, your father, and Marian make eight.” Annie thought it was cute how Boyd was obviously so in love with his bride of six weeks.
“We Culhane men lucked out,” he said when she mentioned that. “Gramps with his Annie, my dad with my mom, and now Marian. And topping the hit list, me, with you.”
“We’re both lucky,” she said as she looked over at Emma demonstrating a slightly wobbly arabesque to her eleven-year-old twin brothers, Jordan and Justin.
Annie had met and fallen in love with the two boys while volunteering at Camp Rainbow, a summer camp for separated foster siblings. When Mac, who’d come to the camp for an afternoon of letting the kids play deejay, had met them, he’d fallen just as fast and, although they’d been in and out of state care since they were toddlers, he’d told her they’d better scoop them up before someone else realized how great they were.
Although the boys had been living with Mac, Annie, and Emma on Castaway Cove since September, today’s party was to celebrate the finalization of their adoption.
Emma, who’d proclaimed to have always wanted a big brother, was thrilled to now have two.
She was flourishing in first grade, and growing up so fast that both Annie and Mac often wished children came with a Pause button. Over the past months of ballet lessons, her princess stage had been swept away by her new goal of becoming a ballerina. One thing hadn’t changed, though, and that was why she was wearing a petal pink shirt with TU-TU CUTE spelled out in darker pink rhinestones.
“You need to hold Zelda,” she informed Jordan, as she picked up the pug, the one she’d chosen from Charity Tiernan’s shelter the day after she’d gotten lost. Which, she’d told Annie, had been a lot better than being grounded for life. “So I can get another picture.”
“How many does that make?” her older brother asked as she plopped the dog onto his lap.
