Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

 

Dedication

This one's for Supergroup

 

Contents

 

Chapter 1

Saturday

T
HE SETTING SUN
turns my family into dark silhouettes as I step onto the warm sand. The beach is nearly deserted, except for a lone figure walking north of us along the sand where the waves are crashing in from the Pacific Ocean.

A cool breeze makes me glad I trekked to the car to retrieve my daughter's little lavender parka. We promised her we'd stay until the sun set.

Donovan's back is turned, phone held to his ear. He's pacing in his bare feet, his jeans rolled up, a scowl on his face from what he's hearing. A murder. Every once in a while he glances back at Grace kneeling in the sand, playing.

Grace has dug deep channels with a small red shovel, chatting to herself, weaving tales about mermaids and sea creatures and fairies. She bounces a plastic dinosaur along the sand, a prize won in kindergarten for reading two books in one week.

Everything I've ever wanted is on that beach—­Donovan and our daughter, Grace. My own little family. My life.

I'm still far away, closer to the parking lot, when I see the figure walking along the shore growing closer. It's a man. His shadow, with its elongated arms and legs, stretches across the beach until it seems to take on a life of its own. Something about the way he moves seems frenetic and sets off small alarms in my head. I walk faster, the sand seeming to reach up and grab at my ankles, slowing my progress.

Donovan's pacing takes him in the opposite direction, away from Grace. He's not paying attention to anything besides his phone call. The man is now closer to Grace, who seems alone on the beach, although Donovan is twenty feet away. Donovan squints up into the pink and orange clouds, raking a hand through his perpetually spiky hair.

The man's path takes him straight toward Grace. My heart races. I can't tell for sure, but it seems like he's looking right at her. He walks at a determined clip, covering ground much faster than me in my flat, strappy sandals. I lean over in midstride and rip a sandal from one foot without stopping. Then I scoop up the other in one fluid motion.

Still, each step feels like my bare feet are being sucked into quicksand. I hurry but feel like I'm moving in slow motion.

“Grace,” I shout, but my words are carried away on the wind. I'm nearly breathless from fighting the sand tugging at my feet. The breeze, which has grown stronger in the past few minutes, whips my hair. Grace's brown ringlets bob as she hops her plastic dinosaur around, not noticing anything else.

Donovan isn't far from Grace, but now the man is closer.

At the same moment Donovan turns and sees the look on my face, the man reaches Grace. His long shadow falls over her small figure. She looks up with a smile and starts chatting. He leans down. His hand reaches toward her, his fingers millimeters from her arm. A wave of dread ripples through me. My feet feel cemented into the sand. My mind screams, but no words come out of my open mouth. Inside, I'm flailing and thrashing to get to Grace, but on the outside, I'm struck immobile.

The man reaches down and grasps Grace's arm, turning her toward him, and the spell is broken. I'm on wet sand, running, the scream caught in my throat coming out as a birdlike garble. I scoop Grace up onto one hip and take a step back. I gasp for air. My heart is going to explode in my chest.

The man looks at me with surprise, and for a split second, there is something in his eyes that sends panic racing up into my throat, but then the look is gone, as if I imagined it.

“Gosh. I'm so stupid.” His voice is nasally. He wipes his palms on the legs of his jeans, as if he is sweating even though the temperature is rapidly dipping along with the sun.

Donovan is at my side.

At first glance, the man seems boyish, with his bowl haircut, baggy jeans, and sneakers. Up close, a few crow's-­feet shows he is older. Maybe even closer to my age—­thirties. He has feminine pink lips and piercing blue eyes, the color of Arctic sea ice. The collar of his black jacket is pulled up. His smile is all “gee, golly, shucks,” abashed and embarrassed, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He paws at his jeans with his palms. He's done that twice now. He's nervous.

When the man meets my eyes again, I realize that something about him seems off, something about his eyes, more than just their intense color. One eye is close to his nose, and the other is set far apart. It's jarring and somehow unsettling.

“I'm so sorry,” he says in that same stuffed-­up-­sounding voice. “What a knuckleheaded move. I should know better than to walk up to someone else's kid like that.”

Donovan grips my arm.

“Everything okay here?” His words are clipped.

I'm finally able to catch my breath. Still, the words will not come.

“Your kid is so darn cute.” The man won't meet my eyes. “She looks just like my little sister used to look. I just wanted to say hi to her and didn't even think that was a total bonehead move to walk up to someone else's kid when her parents weren't around.” He gives an odd smile as he says this, looking at Donovan.

“We were around,” Donovan says in a monotone, staring the man down.

The man looks at the sand.

Grace is kicking and trying to get down. My knuckles are white gripping her.

“Ow, Mama, you're hurting me,” she says and tosses her curls in irritation.

Donovan shoots a glance our way before turning his attention back to the man.

“You live around here?” Donovan asks, seemingly casual, but the muscle in his jaw is working hard. His dark eyes under thick eyebrows have narrowed and hold a glint of menace. In a second, it alters him from the man on the cover of the Sexiest Bay Area Cops calendar into something feral and dangerous.

The man meets Donovan's eyes, and for a second it looks like he is challenging Donovan to dispute his story, but then he looks down again and digs a sneakered toe into the sand.

“Marin. Meeting some friends here in the city for dinner. Was early, so I came here to kill some time. I didn't mean to cause any problems. I just wanted to say hi to her. Maybe you're overreacting a bit.”

Donovan runs a hand through his hair. His posture relaxes. Instinctively—­or luckily—­this man has honed in on Donovan's Achilles' heel. We've talked at length about our tendency to be overprotective parents because of our jobs, me as a crime reporter, and him as a detective. Donovan has argued we can't let this affect Grace's childhood. We need to protect her but let her grow up carefree. I agree. But it's easier said than done.

We've also talked about my irrational fear that something will happen to Grace.

This man, whoever he is, may not realize it, but he's instantly off the hook with this one simple word—­“overreacting.”

“Why don't you continue on your way, buddy,” Donovan says, dismissing him.

“My bad, really. Wasn't using my head. Have a nice night,” the man says and turns to leave.

I set Grace down, and Donovan wraps his arm around me.

“You okay?”

“I don't know.” I don't tell him that it felt like I was having a heart attack, that I couldn't breathe or move. A stranger walked up to my daughter and I stood there, weak, helpless, frozen.

Donovan gives me a look before we both turn and watch the man's figure growing smaller. We watch without saying a word. We stand there until the man turns and heads toward the wooden boardwalk bordering the road. He never looks back.

 

Chapter 2

“W
ASN'T THERE SOMETHING
you wanted to talk about before your phone rang?” I ask after the man leaves.

“Another time,” Donovan says, looking away.

Earlier, he was acting odd: pulling me away from Grace, swallowing, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets, and not meeting my eyes. Then his partner Finn called. Nine times out of ten, that call meant they were up for a murder. As Donovan talked to Finn, I spotted goose bumps on Grace's bare arms. We'd promised her we wouldn't leave until the sun set, so I went to grab her jacket out of the car.

Now, with her wrapped in the jacket and snuggling close to me, my heart has returned to normal. I'm appalled at how my own body betrayed me by freezing when I needed to act. The man's “gee shucks” act didn't fool me. There was something about him that struck terror in my heart.

“Look, Mama,” Grace says. The three of us turn toward the horizon as the last orange sliver of the sun slips into the dark water.

“No, green.” The corners of Grace's little pink lips turn down in disappointment.

“Maybe next time,” Donovan says, ruffling her curls with his hand. “If it happened every time the sun set, it wouldn't be magical, would it?”

Her face scrunches as she thinks about this. She takes his hand as we walk to the car.

We talked about the green flash on the drive here. How a vivid and intense green light could appear right as the sun disappears. How she had to keep her eyes open as the sun set, since the flash only lasted a second. Sitting in her little car seat on the drive to the beach, she practiced not blinking so she wouldn't miss it.

It's not until we are in the car and Grace has dozed off in her car seat that Donovan brings up what happened at the beach.

“Dude probably didn't mean anything. Unless you're a parent, you don't think of things like that, that coming up to someone else's kid is not cool.”

It sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

“He
grabbed her arm
.”

“Come on, Ella. You know you and me got some baggage around strangers coming up to kids.” He says this staring straight ahead out the windshield. When I don't answer he darts a glance my way, but I quickly turn my head and look out the window.

My sister's murder isn't
baggage
. But deep down inside I know what he means. We both have a tendency to be overprotective and sometimes over react.

Like last year when a man came up to Grace while she was playing in Washington Square Park. I was sitting nearby on a bench, drinking a cappuccino. My phone was ringing, and I was digging around in my big purse to find it. When I looked up, I couldn't see Grace. When I spotted her near the edge of the park, a man in a hat was leading her by the hand. I took off at a run. When I reached them, I barked, “Let go of my daughter,” and yanked the man's arm so hard he fell on his butt. To my horror, it was my grandfather's old friend Gino. I hadn't recognized him with a hat on.

Gino blinked up at me with a confused look. I apologized profusely and helped him up, feeling awful, especially when I saw his wife, Carmela, on a bench at the edge of the park. She watched us, horrified.

“I was just taking Grace over to say hello to Carmela,” Gino said. “Carmela's knee is so bad, she can't walk on this uneven grass.”

It was mortifying.

When I told Donovan about it, I cried, saying I would never be a normal mother. I would always be looking for danger around every corner.

But today is different.

I know what I saw on the beach. I know what I saw in that man's eyes.
Stay the fuck away from my kid
.

Donovan changes the subject.

“Finn says we caught a body in Suisun Bay,” he says, looking in the rearview mirror at Grace. She's in a deep sleep, her mouth hanging open, softly snoring. It's past her bedtime.

“Floater?” I ask.

“You're going to want to be there.”

Instead of taking the exit for Oakland, he keeps going. Without saying a word, it's agreed—­we're dropping Grace at my mom's house in the East Bay.