A Daughter's Story (6 page)

She was committed. To finding out the truth.

And to seeing Cal again.

She was confronting the past that had taken away her present
and future for long enough.

And she was still breathing.

“Weird how you still feel like family to me,” she said, not
quite ready to hang up.

“It’s not so weird,” Cal said. “We were an impressionable age
when we were told we were going to be a family forever.”

“You were the best big brother, Cal.”

“You were easy to be nice to.”

“Yeah, but I was a stupid girl.…” She remembered one of Cal’s
playmates saying that about her once. She’d hated that boy after that. Hated Cal
playing with him.

“Other than Dad, you and your mom and Claire were the only
family I’d ever known.”

His words hung in the air.

“Mom and I, it’s always been just us.” Whether the past was her
fault or not, she felt responsible for at least part of his suffering. “Mom
never, after your dad, after Claire… There’s never been another relationship for
her. She just works and goes home.”

“That must be hard on you.”

“Not as hard as it is on her.” She wanted him to know that
Rose’s choices had not brought her happiness. That no one had won. Maybe, if he
knew how much they’d suffered, he’d find a measure of justice in that, at least.
“Remember that last day, how Claire sat on her knees on that chair at the table,
with her bear in one hand, and shoved so many Cheerios into her mouth she
choked?”

“Yeah. She said she was late and had to eat fast.”

“She was always mimicking the rest of us,” Emma said, brushing
away a tear that dripped down her cheek.

“Like the time she answered the phone and told your mom’s
principal that she had to hang up because she had bills to pay?”

“I’d forgotten that!” Emma said with a grin, remembering. And
wondering if Rose remembered. Then she said, “Mom still has that kitchen table.
She’ll never get rid of it.”

“My father wants to talk to her.” His tone dropped.

“You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

“He’s lost a good portion of his life because of her. What do
you think?”

“I think that our parents’ lives are their own,” Emma said
slowly, saying words she’d never have said before. She couldn’t protect Rose any
more than Rose could protect her. “I think they need to do what they feel is
right,” she added.

“I’m not convinced.”

“You might not have a choice.”

“Meaning?”

“They’re adults. And they were in love.”

“She’d better not throw blame, or interrogate him, or—”

“Don’t worry,” Emma said, feeling a tremendous surge of love
for the boy who’d grown into a man. “Mom feels even worse than I do about all of
this, if that’s possible.”

“I just want you to understand that I won’t tolerate any more
blame cast on my father. Or any more slander. I’ll take whatever means I need
to.”

“And I’ll be right there fighting with you, Cal,” Emma said.
“Because right is right. And because, in spite of all the years and all the pain
and sadness, the past couple of hours have reaffirmed that you’re still my
brother.”

CHAPTER TEN

C
HRIS
WENT
BACK
to see
Marta.

There was no reason for his visit. But Sunday, when he knew Jim
would be at the bar with his cronies, Chris stopped by to see the woman who was
his godmother, if one put any stock in that kind of thing. Chris never had.

She was sitting on the back patio with a cup of coffee when
Chris pulled up.

“You came back,” she said, opening the screen door to let him
in.

He acknowledged the obvious with a nod.

“You still take your coffee black and as strong as God can make
it?”

“Just like my dad.” Chris had lost count of the number of times
he’d heard how he drank his coffee just like Lyle Talbot had done. And, where
coffee was concerned, he’d quit trying to be his own man.

While Marta went to the kitchen, Chris settled into the largest
of the white wicker chairs facing the ocean in the distance.

He didn’t need the view. He had a better one from home.

“I talked to Anne Havens at church this morning.”

Anne and her husband, Trick, had been a couple of years ahead
of Chris in school.

He didn’t need to ask how they were doing. He’d just come from
their house.

“She says Trick’s having a rough go of it.”

Trick had been the one to pull Wayne Ainge out of the
water.

“He’ll be fine.”

“She was looking for someone to help out with Trick’s boat
until…” Marta looked him in the eye. She wouldn’t tell him what to do—she wasn’t
as bold with him as his mother had been—but her expectations were clear.

“Already taken care of,” he said, thinking about the
conversation he’d just had with Anne.

Marta’s approving smile went deeper than he’d have liked.

“You’re a good boy, Chris.”

He was no boy. And if he didn’t quit thinking about long legs
and dark brown curls, he wasn’t going to be good for anything, either.

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, Aunt Marta—” Uncle Jim had
become just plain Jim around the first time Chris had worked a full day on his
father’s boat, but Aunt Marta was still his “aunt” “—but, the other night, about
the fact that I don’t come by as often as I should…”

“You took your folks’ death hard, Chris. Everyone knew you
would. It’s understandable that you pulled away. I just hate that you still
think you have to. You’re not thirty anymore, son. If you don’t start to open
up, before long you’ll be Jim’s age and have no one but the guys at the bar to
know if you’re even alive or not.”

“I’m not going to get married just so someone will know I’m not
dead.”

“I’m not talking about marriage. I’m talking about opening up
to people. Letting them care about you.”

She cared. And he’d hurt her. He read the pain in her eyes.

And he understood. Marta knew about the life of a fisherman.
She’d accepted the dangers. The long hours. And she opened her heart to them,
anyway. All she asked in return was that they love her back.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

He should go.

“What’s on your mind, Chris?”

What was niggling at him was nothing. He had more to do than
there were hours in the day and night combined.

“The day my folks were killed,” he said, and stopped when he
saw the shadow cross Marta’s face. “Do you know where they were headed?”

Or where they’d been?

“Yes.”

“My mother told you?” He wasn’t surprised. Marta and Josie
Talbot had been best friends.

“Yes.”

Marta would have sympathized. Women stuck together. She might
even have encouraged Josie. At the very least she’d have understood.

Chris didn’t.

Glancing at the older woman now, studying the lines on a face
weathered from years of looking out to sea in hopes of seeing the right bow come
up over the crest of the waves, Chris didn’t blame her.

“I wasn’t sure you knew,” Marta said now.

Even though she was sitting at home alone this Sunday, there
was no saying that as a younger, thinner, more attractive woman she’d been
content to spend all those long hours alone.

“They’d just changed their wills. I was executor of both
estates. And sole beneficiary, as well.”

Graying eyebrows drawn together, Marta said, “I’d hoped they
hadn’t gotten that far. That at least their secret had gone to the grave with
them.”

Lyle and Josie had had a joint funeral—as husband and wife.
They were buried side by side beneath the Talbot family marker in the seaman’s
graveyard in the middle of Comfort Cove.

The plot of land that divided the real town from the more
upscale tourist district.

The plot that divided Chris’s life. In so many ways.

“You’ve known all these years, and yet you never said
anything.”

The only response he had to give was a shrug.

“You blame her.”

His mother had been named as the plaintiff.

“I know that my father would never, ever have left her.” Or
turned his back on her, no matter what she’d done. Lyle had loved Josie more
than he’d loved any other human being on earth.

“She spent the majority of her life alone, Chris.”

He knew that. Women who married full-time fishermen often
did.

“When you were little, it wasn’t so bad, but once you got
older, and joined your father on the boat…”

So this was his fault?

“Some people like time to themselves. Josie never did. Her head
played tricks with her. She’d start to imagine problems at sea, imagine the
phone call telling her that she’d lost both your father and you.”

Out of respect for Marta, Chris forced himself to stay seated,
but he didn’t need to hear any more.

“You were about three months old when she had her first panic
attack. She called me, unable to breathe, certain that she was having a heart
attack.”

Fingers clenched around the arms of his chair, the wicker
punching a pattern in his skin, Chris stared out at the ocean—the only mate he
was ever going to have.

“I called 9-1-1….”

His gaze swung to Marta. “I never heard about a 9-1-1 call.”
He’d never heard about the panic attacks, either, but then he’d only really ever
had one interest—the sea. Which was why he was still single at forty.

“She didn’t want me to say anything to Jim or your father.”

“And you did as she asked?” If his mother had a problem, Lyle
had had a right to know.

“I rode with her in the ambulance and was there with her when
she saw the doctor. He said she was just suffering from panic and that she had
to get a hold of herself. Back then panic attacks weren’t seen as legitimate
physical ailments. They were considered the result of mental weakness. There
were drugs that tranquilized but no medications prescribed to help control the
chemicals in the brain that trigger them.”

“And that’s why she didn’t want Dad to know. Because she didn’t
want him to think she was…mentally lacking.”

“Right.”

He could understand that. Sort of. Surely, if his mother and
father had shared any kind of real closeness, as a husband and wife should, then
she should have been able to trust Lyle with the information.

To know that he loved her enough to stand by her, to help her
if she needed it.

“I’d hoped that hearing from the doctor that she had the
ability to control her emotions, to control how she reacted to things, would
help her get better, but it didn’t. That day just escalated her panic. What if
she’d really been having a heart attack? There’d have been no way to reach your
father—and you were so little and helpless. She’d have died alone and left you
alone, too.”

So his mother had chosen to insure that she wasn’t alone? Was
he expected to believe that she’d just been staving off panic all those years
she’d cheated on his dad?

Chris didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He’d
wasted enough time. Women were women. He was a lobsterman. And he had work to
do.

Standing, he took one sip from the cup of coffee Marta had made
for him, and bent to kiss her on the cheek.

“Thank you.”

“I’m always here, Chris. Anytime you want to talk.”

“Yeah.” He turned toward the door. “I’ll be better about
stopping by.”

“Jim and I love you like you were our own son, you know
that.”

He couldn’t just walk out on her. Swinging around, he met her
gaze. “I know,” he said. “I love you, too, Aunt Marta.”

The words didn’t stick as badly as he might have expected.

Probably because he spoke the truth.

* * *

E
MMA
WENT
TO
work. She visited her
mother—telling Rose that she’d spoken with Cal Whittier, but mentioning nothing
about Cal’s imminent trip or Ramsey Miller’s investigation—and during all of the
empty hours she had she rearranged her house.

Rob’s desk went to charity right along with the clothes and
shot glasses he’d left behind. If he thought that she was going to come to her
senses, that he would be back, he was wrong. Her sewing machine got a new table
and was set up opposite her desk, and a Peg-Board went up above the machine to
hold an array of colorful threads. What used to be merely an office was now a
sewing room, too.

By Wednesday, she still wasn’t sleeping well. She’d moved from
the couch to the bed that was now on the opposite wall. She put in old movies to
lull her to sleep. At three in the morning, she redid lesson plans and graded
papers.

She tried not to think about Chris. She tried not to let her
body remember the sensations he’d evoked. When she started to respond physically
to things she wasn’t thinking about, she decided to use her quilting skills to
make a wall hanging and spent time on the internet familiarizing herself with
all sorts of quilting patterns.

On Thursday night, finding herself on the couch, irritated with
television commercials and no longer distracted by movies, she pulled out the
journal again. Just to see what she’d written.

1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that love
changes him.

She stared at the words. She’d written them down because, in
that moment, she’d felt them so strongly. Now, days later, she felt the same
way.

She grabbed her pen.

2. I want to be brave enough to live my life to the fullest.

She read what she’d written again. And reread it several times.
If there was going to be any value in this exercise, she had to be completely
honest.

And she realized that, like it or not, her resolutions were
about Chris.

Holding the page between her thumb and forefinger, she started
to tug gently, planning to tear out the page so that its removal wouldn’t show.
She could make the journal appear brand-new. Just as it had been before.

The first thread gave way and she stopped. Closed the book. Put
it carefully back in the drawer, in the space allotted to it. Returned the pen
to its rightful spot. And went to bed.

* * *

E
MMA
MEANT
TO
make plans for Friday
night. But she’d had a dance-club meeting to officiate after school and hadn’t
known what time she’d be through. She hadn’t known how hungry she’d be, or
whether or not her mother would want to spend the evening with her.

Other than her daily phone calls to see how Emma was doing,
Rose was giving Emma space. It was a first, and she appreciated it. But
eventually her mother was going to want to see her.

Eventually she’d have to tell Rose about Detective Miller’s
investigation. The detective had agreed to contact her first, before contacting
Rose, but she didn’t want to have to tell Rose at the last minute. Still, she
felt she needed more time to herself before she got around to that.

It had been exactly one week since Emma had decided to change
her life, and here she was, in her car, driving away from school toward a long
weekend filled with fabric squares.

She would not panic.

And she most definitely would not drink. The new Emma was not
to be trusted. She had some maturing to do before she got the reins again.

Her cell phone barely got half a ring in before Emma pushed the
green button to answer the call.

“Hello?” Pulling into a lot not far from the high school, Emma
put her car in park.

“Em? I’ve missed you, sweetie. How are you?”

Damn.
That’s what she got for not
checking caller ID.

“I’m fine, Rob.”
Hang up. Hang up. Hang
up.
“How are you?”

“Not fine at all. I can’t get a handle on a life that doesn’t
include you, Em. Nothing tastes right. Nothing feels right.”

Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care.
“Did you find a place to stay?”

“No. I’ve got my things in storage and I’m at that little motel
around the block from the office.” He spoke to her as though they were still
together. With the warmth that spoke of lifelong partnership. “I’ve looked at
some houses, but I don’t know. I just keep thinking that those cupboards won’t
work because your Pfaltzgraff, stoneware and Corelle won’t fit. Or the space for
the refrigerator isn’t big enough for our side-by-side.”

My side-by-side. I bought it.

“Or the kitchen will be perfect but the master closet won’t
have room for all of your jackets. And then I wasn’t sure you’d like the
neighborhoods. One was too new. One was older, like you like, but I thought
you’d think the houses more run-down than finely aged.”

Her townhome was finely aged. Sixty years old, with updated
wiring and plumbing, but original hardwood floors—even on the stairs—and white,
solid-wood slated cabinets.

Breath caught in her throat. She was all alone. And she didn’t
need to be.

The world was filled with male sharks. Rose had driven that
fact home to Emma from the time she was seven and had a crush on a boy in her
class.