Broken Pieces (2 page)

She moved around the desk and took a seat in the large overstuffed chair where her father had so often sat. She ran her hands across the top of the desk, her mind flitting back in time, seeking one single moment when she’d felt loved, felt wanted, by her parents.

Her mind remained blank. Sighing, she pulled open the first desk drawer and stared at the bundle of letters that lay inside. She picked up the bundle
and stared at the return address written in her own hand.

Over the years she’d written to her mother to let her know what was going on in her life. She’d written about Kelsey’s birth and about getting her teaching degree. She’d chronicled each of Kelsey’s special moments of childhood, thinking her mother would want to know about the grandchild she’d never met.

The letters had been her attempt to maintain contact with the only two people in the world who
should
have loved her. And the letters had never been opened.

A small bitter laugh escaped her lips as she shoved them back into the drawer. This would be the first place where she’d start the changes to the house. She’d have the furniture hauled away, repaint the walls, then buy a dining room set so the house would show nicely when it was placed on the market.

She’d give herself a month to take care of things. Then she and Kelsey would get the hell out of here and go back to the life they’d built in Chicago.

Chapter 2

“M
om, are you going to feed me or what?” Kelsey called from the living room.

Mariah stirred from her dark thoughts and glanced at her watch. It was after five and lunch had been a hamburger on the road a long time ago. “I’m going to feed you,” she said as she left the dining room. “We’ll see what the Red Dragon has to offer a couple of weary, travel-worn women.”

Exhaustion weighed heavily on Mariah as they got back into the car to head to the restaurant on Main Street. The long drive that day, coupled with the emotional baggage of coming home, had taken its toll.

She just wanted to eat a meal, then tumble into bed for a long night’s sleep. Anything else could wait until the morning.

The tension that had tightened her shoulders slowly dissipated as they drove into town. At least here lay some of Mariah’s best memories. School had been nirvana, a break from the house and her parents. And on the rare times she’d been allowed to come into town after school or on the weekends,
she’d reveled in the sense of freedom and the joy of meeting up with friends.

Kelsey sat up straighter in her seat as they passed a coffee shop where half a dozen young people were standing out front. “Maybe it won’t be such an awful summer,” she said.

“You won’t have any problem making friends. You never do,” Mariah replied. “And I’ll contact the phone company and get some Internet juice in the house so you can keep up with your e-mail to your friends back home.”

“Cool,” Kelsey replied.

Mariah found a parking space in the same block as the restaurant and together she and Kelsey got out of the car. Clouds had begun to form in the southern sky and the air-conditioning in the restaurant was a welcome relief from the thick humid outside air.

An attractive Asian woman led them to a booth in the back and then left them alone with oversized menus. There were several other diners and Mariah eyed them curiously, wondering if she knew them, but none of them looked familiar.

She turned her attention to her daughter, who studied the menu with single-minded focus. For years Mariah had studied her daughter’s face, seeking a physical clue to the identity of the man who had raped Mariah that night so long ago. But Kelsey was the spitting image of her mother with her heart-shaped face, dark hair and blue eyes.

“I know what I want,” Mariah said, and set her menu aside.

“Let me guess, sweet-and-sour chicken and some crab rangoons,” Kelsey replied. Mariah nodded. “You never want to try anything new.”

Mariah shrugged. “I know what I like. You’re the adventurous one when it comes to food.”

At that moment the waitress arrived and took their orders, and Mariah sat back against the bench seat and drew a weary sigh.

“Does it feel weird to be back here?” Kelsey asked.

“I think I’m too tired to process everything at the moment.” Mariah picked up her water glass and took a sip. She set the glass back down and frowned. “There’s so much more to do than I thought there would be. I don’t even want to talk to a Realtor until some of the basics in the house are taken care of.”

Kelsey gave her mother a sly grin. “Don’t you have any old boyfriends that could give us a hand?”

Mariah laughed. “I imagine all my old boyfriends are married and have families of their own.”

“Then maybe you could hire some single hot dude to help with the work,” Kelsey said.

Kelsey, at the age where she was discovering the attraction of the opposite sex, had decided her mission in life was finding her mother a boyfriend, or preferably a husband.

Mariah had had one fairly serious relationship when Kelsey had been seven years old. Tom Lantry had been a fellow teacher at the school where Mariah worked. It didn’t take long for Kelsey to bond with Tom.

Mariah thought Tom was great. Kelsey thought Tom was great, and unfortunately Tom thought he was great, far too good to limit himself to one woman and a kid that wasn’t his.

Kelsey had been far more upset than Mariah when Tom had walked away, and it was at that time that
Mariah decided no more dating until Kelsey was grown.

The one thing the relationship with Tom had done was prove to Mariah that she could enjoy a healthy sexual relationship with a man as long as the man let her set the rules.

As they ate, Kelsey kept up a steady stream of conversation that would be of most interest to any person her own age. She talked about the latest CD release from her favorite singer and gossiped about her friends back in Chicago and as usual worked in the fact that she was probably the only teenager left in the world who didn’t have a cell phone.

Mariah pretended to give her daughter her full attention while her mind whirled with all the work that lay ahead of her. Maybe she would take Kelsey’s advice and hire a handyman to help out, although she wasn’t looking for a hot dude, just a man who knew how to paint and use a hammer.

They were just finishing up their meal when the door opened and a tall, portly man walked in. He wore the khaki uniform of law enforcement and swaggered like a man who enjoyed his position.

His gaze met hers and he stopped, a look of surprise on his face, and in that moment she recognized him. Clay Matheson.

A vivid flash of memory filled her mind, a memory of youthful love and promises never fulfilled. He approached the table, a wide smile curving his mouth. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “If it isn’t Mariah Sayers.”

“Hello, Clay,” she said. There was little left of the young man she remembered. His handsome features had coarsened over the years and he had the telltale
broken vessels in his nose that said he was probably a man who liked his booze.

“I wondered if you’d show up here. Sorry about your dad, may he rest in peace.” He grinned at Kelsey. “It’s easy to see where you came from. You look just like your mama did when I knew her.” He looked back at Mariah. “We need to get together and talk about old times. I’ll let Sherri know you’re back in town, and maybe you could come over for dinner one night.”

“Sherri? Sherri Weaver?” Mariah asked.

“Yeah. She chased me until she caught me ten years ago. We’ve got four boys who keep her on her toes.” He gazed at her for a long moment. “I always wondered what happened to you. You just disappeared one day.”

“Long story for another time,” she replied.

“How long you planning on staying in town?”

“Just until I can get the house in order and on the market,” she replied.

He drew his shoulders back, the gesture doing little to lessen the thick paunch around his middle. “You need anything or have any problems, you let me know. As the sheriff and as an old friend, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

“Thank you, Clay. It was nice seeing you again.”

He nodded, gave Kelsey another smile, then left their table. “Wow, it’s nice to know my mom knows all the important people in town,” Kelsey exclaimed.

Mariah laughed. “The last time I saw Clay, his biggest claim to fame was that he could catch any football that any quarterback could throw to him.”

“He looks like he’s been catching more pizzas than footballs lately,” Kelsey said.

Mariah tried to give her daughter a stern look, but it was impossible to do with Kelsey’s eyes dancing with humor. “I’m sure he’s a great sheriff,” she finally managed to say. “And now let’s get out of here and head back to the house. I’m so exhausted I feel like I could sleep for a hundred years.”

“What are we going to do for groceries? There’s nothing in that kitchen that I’m going to eat tomorrow,” Kelsey said as they got out of the booth.

“When we get up in the morning, we’ll head to the grocery store and get some supplies in. I just don’t feel like doing it tonight.”

When they left the restaurant, dark clouds hung heavy overhead and a distant rumble of thunder accompanied a brisk wind.

“Looks like a storm is coming,” Kelsey said as they got into the car. “Hmm, I’ll sleep good tonight.”

Thankfully Mariah hadn’t transferred her own dislike of storms to her daughter. Kelsey had always slept like a baby when it rained.

The rain held off as they drove to the house. When they arrived, Kelsey went directly to her room and Mariah followed after her. She sat on the edge of the bed while Kelsey went into the bathroom and changed into her pajamas; then she tucked her daughter in with a good-night kiss.

“I’m sorry this screwed up all your summer plans back home,” she said as she stroked a strand of Kelsey’s dark hair away from her face.

“It’s okay.” Kelsey grinned. “You’ll pay for it later. When I want you to buy me a car, I’ll remind you of the sacrifice I made this summer.”

Mariah leaned forward and gave Kelsey another kiss, then rose from the bed. “You have a long time
before you need to think about what kind of car you want to drive.”

“In two months I’ll be fifteen and can get my learner’s permit,” Kelsey yelled after her mom.

“Talk to me in two months,” Mariah said with a laugh as she left the bedroom.

The laughter faded as she went into the small room she’d called home for all the years she’d lived in this house. Kelsey believed her birthday was in two months’ time, but the truth was she’d turned fifteen three months ago. Only one other person knew the true date of Kelsey’s birth … exactly nine months to the day following Mariah’s rape.

Mariah had always feared that one day she’d have to come back here and she’d never wanted anyone to know that Kelsey had been conceived by someone in this town.

Mariah’s best friend in the whole world, the nurse who had taken her in when she’d been eight months pregnant and living at a shelter, had not only helped Mariah in a home birth but had also fudged the dates of the blessed event. Fifteen years ago it had been easier to pull off such a feat than it would be today. Mariah had obtained a birth certificate and Social Security number based on the falsified record of Kelsey’s birth date.

It had been important to Mariah, a way to distance the daughter she loved from the act that had resulted in her birth.

She quickly changed from her slacks and blouse into her pale blue silky nightgown and then went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face.

When she returned to the bedroom, she turned off
the light and went over to the window. The storm was upon them, lightning streaking across the sky as the wind shrieked around the eaves of the house.

It had been easy to focus on her dysfunctional relationship with her parents, so much easier than dealing with what had happened the night beneath the trees while a storm raged overhead.

There were moments of that night that were burned into her memory, forever a part of her nightmares. The weight of the man on top of her, the slickness of the bag against her face as she tried to scream, still lived in her as if the rape had happened mere hours before instead of years ago.

But there were also moments of that horrendous event that were vague, moments that she felt if she could just focus in on, then she would know who had attacked her. And even after all these years she wanted to know.

She leaned her head against the window and listened to the wind. It sounded like the screams that had been trapped inside her on that night so long ago.

She was back.

He’d watched her get out of her car and go into the Chinese place on Main, a quivering fear coupled with an edge of excitement racing through him.

He’d thought of her so many times over the years. She’d been his first, but certainly not his last.

That first time had been magical to him, an epiphany of sorts that had forever changed his life.

Now standing in the grove of trees on her property, he stared up at the darkened window on the second floor. He’d thought about her often, wondered
if she’d ever return to Plains Point and what he would do if she did return. She was a joker in his house of cards.

Over the years he’d grown smarter, been more careful to make sure that nobody would ever be able to identify him and connect him with his crimes.

But with her he’d been less careful, made mistakes that had haunted him over the years. She’d never reported the crime … not that night and not in the weeks following. Then she’d simply vanished.

And now she was back and he wasn’t sure what that meant for him. For the moment he’d watch and listen and if he felt that she was a threat, he would deal with her.

He’d learned a valuable lesson since that first night with her. He’d learned that dead girls couldn’t tell; especially dead girls whose bodies were never found.

Chapter 3

M
ariah was up before dawn and in the kitchen to tackle the mess. Sleep had been a long time coming the night before. Along with the storm came the haunting of ghosts to keep her awake.

Many nights she’d fallen asleep listening to her father practicing his Sunday sermon, his deep voice booming from the basement of the house to the rafters overhead.

Even though she knew that he was dead and in his grave, his voice had filled her head until finally she’d slipped from her bed and gone downstairs to the foyer.

She’d grabbed the willow sticks from the umbrella stand and snapped them into pieces, then thrown the pieces out the front door and into the storm. She’d gone back to bed then and slept the rest of the night through.

It had been strange this morning to awaken to the silence of the house in the bed she’d slept in for the first seventeen years of her life. Despite her lack of sleep, a warm shower had invigorated her. She was
ready to kick this old house into shape and get it on the market.

She pulled on an old pair of denim shorts and a navy blue tank top, yanked her long hair into an untidy ponytail, then found cleaning supplies beneath the kitchen sink.

She’d always found cleaning cathartic. She’d done a lot of cleaning of this house when she’d been young. Cleanliness was next to godliness, as her father had reminded her a million times. But she’d never minded her chores, found the act of taking something dirty and making it clean strangely fulfilling.

Her best friend, Janice, thought that her enjoyment of cleaning was nothing short of psychotic. “If you ever decide to jump back into the relationship game, you’ll make some man a great wife,” Janice often said, then laughed. “Hell, I’d marry you if you could cook as well as you clean.”

Mariah smiled as she began to scrub down the countertops, her thoughts filled with the woman who had, in all probability, saved her life.

Janice Solomon had been a twenty-nine-year-old nurse and trained midwife when she’d come to the shelter to talk to a very pregnant Mariah. That day Janice had taken a chance. She’d taken Mariah into her apartment. It had been Janice who had risked her career to fudge the dates of Kelsey’s birth. She was the only person on the face of the earth who knew the truth about the rape.

Over the years she’d become like an older sister to Mariah and a favorite aunt to Kelsey. She’d encouraged Mariah to go back to school to get her teaching
degree at the same time Janice had returned to school to get a degree in psychology.

Janice now had a private practice and worked as a life coach and counselor for troubled teens. She’d never married, although over the years she had often dated. Now at forty-five years old she believed she was far too set in her ways to ever entertain the idea of marital bliss.

Mariah lost herself in the cleaning, occasionally stopping only long enough to write down something on a list she’d begun to keep of what needed to be done.

The kitchen floor was hopeless. The old tiles not only dated the house horribly but also looked just as bad after she cleaned them as they did when they were dirty. She definitely needed to find a handyman who could do the work she couldn’t.

“Wow.”

Mariah jumped at her daughter’s voice and whirled around to see her standing in the doorway. She threw the rag she’d been using to scrub the floor in the sink, then smiled at her daughter. “Better, yes?”

“At least now I won’t be afraid to touch the countertops.” Kelsey scratched her stomach, then hitched up the pajama bottoms that hung precariously low on her slender hips. “The floor still looks gross.”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to find somebody to replace it. Now that I have everything clean, I think it’s time we make a trip to the store to stock the fridge and pantry.”

“Cool, I’ll go get dressed.” Kelsey disappeared from the doorway and a moment later Mariah heard her
climbing the stairs. The fourth and fifth stairs still creaked just like they had when Mariah had lived here.

God, how she’d hated the creak of those stairs when she knew her father was coming up to confront her about some sin or another. She’d hear that first creak and her stomach would tie into a million knots.

Mariah washed her hands, hoping all thoughts of her father would go down the drain with the dirt. Then she headed up the stairs to get herself ready for a trip into town. She cleaned up, considered putting on makeup, then decided it was too hot. Besides, she’d be coming right back here to get some more work done.

She refastened her hair into a neater ponytail and then grabbed her purse and car keys from the bedroom. Kelsey waited for her at the front door.

“We’re not just buying frozen junk, Mom,” Kelsey said as they got into the car. “We need to buy stuff that I can cook with, too.”

Mariah smiled. Kelsey was her budding chef. After watching several reality shows focusing on cooking competitions, Kelsey had decided she wanted to become a chef and eventually run her own restaurant.

“Whatever you think we need, we’ll buy,” Mariah replied.

It was almost ten when they pulled up in front of the Bag and Save, the only grocery store in town. The parking lot was half-full and Mariah regretted not putting on at least a dab of lipstick in case she ran into somebody she knew.

Too late now, she thought as she got out of the car. She spent the next thirty minutes chasing after her daughter, who drove the shopping cart like it was a sports car.

With her ATM card singing the blues, they were back in the car. Mariah pulled out of the grocery-store parking area and back onto Main Street, her thoughts once again on all the work that remained ahead of her.

“Mom, look out!” Kelsey screamed just as Mariah caught the flash of something dark running in front of her car. She slammed on the brakes, but not before she heard a sickening thump and a high-pitched yelp.

Kelsey jumped out of the car before Mariah could peel her shaking hands off the steering wheel. A horrible feeling filled her as she got out of the car and walked to the front, where Kelsey was crouched down by a scruffy little dog who lay just to the right of Mariah’s tire. The dog whimpered and didn’t even try to get up. One of his legs twisted unnaturally.

“Mom, we’ve got to do something,” Kelsey said, tears streaming down her face.

Mariah looked around wildly, wondering where the dog belonged. Seeing nobody in the immediate area, she got back into the car, grabbed an old sweater from the backseat and returned to Kelsey. “Let’s see if we can get him into the car. I remember seeing a veterinary clinic as we drove into town.”

Kelsey took the sweater from her mother, then gently wrapped it around the hurt animal. Mariah worried about the dog biting, but he allowed Kelsey to pick him up into her arms.

They jumped back in the car and Mariah headed toward the clinic. She still felt shaky, sickened by the fact that she’d hurt the poor dog. “I didn’t see him. He darted out of nowhere,” she said as much to herself as to her daughter. “I couldn’t stop in time.”

Tears coursed down Kelsey’s cheeks as she murmured soft words of comfort to the whimpering dog. He licked her hand and that only made her cry harder.

“He’ll be okay,” Mariah said. “It looks like it’s just his leg.” She hoped that’s all it was. A broken leg could be fixed. She prayed there weren’t any internal injuries. She’d hate to be the reason that somebody lost a beloved pet.

The veterinary clinic looked like a new building and a small sign out front indicated that Dr. Jack Taylor was the practicing vet.

Jack Taylor. The name was vaguely familiar, but Mariah didn’t have time to place it as they scrambled from the car and into the cool interior of the clinic.

There was no receptionist behind the desk and only a low deep bark from someplace in the back heralded their arrival. “Hello?” Mariah called out.

A dark-haired man in a white lab coat came out of a back room. Despite the situation that had brought them in, Mariah felt an immediate jolt at his attractiveness. His green eyes widened slightly as if in recognition as his gaze landed on Mariah. But when he looked at Kelsey and the dog in her arms, he quickly waved them into an examining room.

“I didn’t see him,” Mariah said. “He darted right out in front of me and I couldn’t stop the car fast enough. I didn’t mean to hit him.”

Kelsey laid the dog on the steel table, then backed away as the doctor took over. “He’s been running the streets for weeks.” His voice was deep and pleasant. “I’ve tried to pick him up a couple of times, but he wouldn’t let me get near him.”

As he spoke, his fingers roamed over the dog’s
body. The dog quivered beneath his touch, but didn’t protest. “It’s okay, little guy,” he said as he came to the twisted front leg. “Nobody knows where he came from. I have a feeling somebody passing through town might have dumped him. I’m going to have to get an X-ray on this leg and see what I can do.” He scooped up the dog in his arms and flashed them a reassuring smile. “This will take a few minutes.”

As he left the room, Mariah sank into a chair and Kelsey paced back and forth on the tiled floor in front of the examining room steel table.

“He’s going to need some tender loving care,” Kelsey said, and moved closer to her mother. “Poor little thing was dumped and probably hasn’t slept in a bed or had anything good to eat for who knows how long. And now he’s hurt and it’s our fault.” She looked at Mariah expectantly. “You know I’ve always wanted a dog.”

“Kelsey, we don’t know anything about him. We don’t know if he’s sick or mean. Besides, what would we do when we go back home?”

“Mrs. Ellis on the third floor has a dog. You’d probably just need to make a pet deposit or something. You know I’m responsible and he’s not sick or mean. He just needs me, Mom. I could tell. It was in those big brown eyes of his.”

Mariah sighed, unsurprised by her daughter’s plea. Kelsey had always loved animals and over the past year had been asking if they could get a dog or a cat. It seemed the Fates were conspiring to attempt to grant her wish.

“Let’s wait and see what Dr. Taylor has to tell us when he’s finished,” Mariah hedged.

It took thirty minutes before Dr. Taylor returned
to the examining room with the dog sporting a plaster cast on his front leg. “Almost as good as new,” he said as he handed the docile dog to Kelsey. “I’ve got him sedated. The break was clean, so I don’t anticipate any problems with the healing process.”

There was no denying it—the man was a hunk, Mariah thought, and there was something about his voice, something familiar, that niggled in the back of her mind. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” she asked.

He flashed a smile that warmed her to her toes. “Junior year, second-period English. I sat behind you, but there’s no reason why you would have remembered me. I was one of the nerds, barely seen and rarely heard.”

For a moment Mariah didn’t know what to say. It was difficult to reconcile the confident and very hot man in front of her with the vague mental picture she got of the shy, skinny boy who used to sit behind her in English class.

“Don’t worry. It’s okay if you don’t remember me. But I do remember you, Mariah. Are you back in town to stay?”

“No, just for as long as it takes to settle my parents’ estate.”

“Yeah, I heard your father passed away. It’s always hard to lose a parent.”

She nodded and opened her purse to withdraw her checkbook. “How much do I owe you?”

He leaned back against the table and cocked his head to one side, a lock of his dark hair falling across his forehead in charming fashion. “Here’s the deal. My receptionist took the day off today and she’s the one who takes care of all that.”

He reached out and gave the dog a scratch beneath
his chin. “I’ve been worried about this little guy and it looks like maybe he’s going to get a home?” He exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Kelsey and then both of them looked at Mariah.

“Yes, I guess he’s going to get a home,” she replied reluctantly. What else could she do? Besides, maybe the little dog would make the summer away from home and her daughter’s friends more palatable for Kelsey.

Kelsey grinned and held the dog close to her chest. “Did you hear that? You’re coming home with us.”

“Don’t worry about any bill,” Jack said. “Use the money you would have paid me for all the things you’ll need to buy for your new pet.” They walked out of the examining room and into the lobby. “Call tomorrow and make an appointment with my receptionist to bring him back in for a checkup in a couple of weeks. I’ll give him a round of shots at that time.”

“Thank you,” Mariah said. “And it was nice seeing you again.”

He smiled at her and a faint flutter stirred in her stomach. “Oh, we’ll see each other again.”

As she and her daughter walked out of the clinic, Jack went to the front window and watched them. Mariah Sayers. He’d been stunned by the old feelings that had rushed back to claim him at the sight of her.

She’d been his high school obsession, the girl who had stirred every teenage hormone he’d possessed. Day after day he’d sat behind her in class, smelling the clean scent of her long dark hair, wishing he had the nerve to reach out and touch the shiny strands, wanting to summon the courage to talk to her.

It hadn’t been just pure lust that unraveled him at the very sight of her. There had been something in
her eyes, a hint of darkness, of pain, that had both intrigued him and called up a protectiveness that made him want to fix whatever needed fixing in her life.

On the day he’d finally worked up the nerve to speak to her, she’d vanished.

And now she was back and he was surprised that she still stirred a touch of that old youthful lust. She’d looked amazing.

Maybe it was just his imagination. But he thought there was still a shadow of sadness that clung to her. He turned away from the window and shook his head ruefully.

The young girl had obviously been her daughter. Most likely Mariah was happily married and couldn’t wait to get back to whatever life she’d built for herself elsewhere.

Rescue complex, that’s what his best friend, Josh, told him he suffered, and that desire to play the role of hero protector was what had gotten him into a heartbreaking mess with his ex-wife.