Escape (29 page)

“Just give me a start,” he begged. “That’s all I ask. You don’t have to say anything. Just be there for moral support.”

“Oh, Jude.” I felt pulled in opposite directions, not wanting to be sucked into his life but not wanting to be responsible for having a little boy not know his dad.

And then he had the audacity to say, “You should have been the one having my baby, y’know. If you’d gotten pregnant that summer, my life would have been different.”

Same with mine, though not for the better. “Don’t go there,” I warned softly.

When he took my hand and fingered my wedding band, I repeated the warning. “Unless you’re going to tell me how beautiful this is, don’t say a word.”

His fingers stilled. After holding my hand for a minute, he set it down with deliberate care. It was a watershed moment. Just as Jude accepted what he couldn’t change, I accepted what I didn’t
want
to change. The Jude I saw here held no power over me. Rather, the power was in the life that teemed around us. Such was the rare beauty of this place.

By the time we left the alcove, the rain had let up. The falls continued to rush, but the sound was muted once we reached the other side of the granite wall, and farther past the Range Rover, a break in the trees showed a dramatic layering of gun-metal gray and flame.

“The coyotes are gone,” Jude remarked as we stood admiring it. “Haven’t been here since I left.”

I might have told him otherwise if I hadn’t been thinking just then of my kitten, a bright little spark in that fire, winging its way to a place where it wouldn’t wobble.

And that night, when the coyotes again serenaded me with their howls, barks, and yips, Jude was off somewhere and none of my affair.

That said, I did go to Noah’s game the next day, though I was doing it less for Jude’s sake than for Amelia’s. I couldn’t be with Jude the way
she wanted, but this was something. And who was I to predict Jude’s behavior? He might just be mercurial enough to take one look at the boy and be the best dad in the world.

None of the local towns had enough children to field a team, so the draw was regional, with games played at a park just south of Bell Valley. Since Jude was in Concord again, hence coming from the opposite direction, I drove myself there.

The teams were warming up when I arrived. My eye immediately found Jenna. Blond hair nearly white in the sun, she stood apart from the other parents, wispy against a waist-high chain fence near third base. She was clearly startled to see me.

“Jude asked me to come,” I explained, joining her. “He didn’t tell you?”

Of course he hadn’t. He would still be thinking that Jenna and I were rivals, though I no longer felt it at all. “I’m just a spectator,” I assured her. “He wanted the moral support.”

“Wonder why,” she muttered. She didn’t look happy, though I sensed it had less to do with my showing up than with her son meeting Jude. When a man appeared at her side with Dunkin’ cups, she introduced him. “This is my husband, Bobby Horn. Here for moral support.”

“And to see my kid play,” Bobby added, quietly possessive. I looked out at the boys on the field. “Which one is he?” They wore uniforms and ball caps, one identical to the next.

“Number fourteen,” Bobby said, pointing at a group near the coach. Once directed, I’d have picked him out even without the number. Seeing Jude’s face in miniature, I felt the same tiny jolt I had seeing his picture on Jenna’s desk at the Refuge.

The warm-up ended. The teams gathered at their benches. I glanced back at the cars, looking for Jude, but he hadn’t arrived. Pulling on my ball cap to get my hair off my neck in the warm, humid air, I must have looked like just another one of the moms, because when Noah grinned at his parents, he took no notice of me.

“Does he know Jude is coming?” I asked Jenna.

“No.”

“Does he know Jude’s his dad?”

“Yes.”

“Are your other children here?”

“No.”

Noah played shortstop, and it was uncanny. He was built like Jude and, even at nine, never having seen the man, he had the same moves. When he was key to getting yet another out, I said, “He’s a good athlete.”

Jenna didn’t answer. She was looking back toward the cars.

“Traffic,” I suggested.

But she wasn’t buying that, and rightly so. Maybe, just maybe, there was a tie-up leaving Concord, but Jude wouldn’t have hit traffic after that.

The first inning became the second, then the third. Noah struck out once with a powerful swing typical of Jude, but when he connected—which he did in the bottom of the third—it was a home run. On the other side of Jenna, Bobby hooted his support and returned the fist-pump Noah shot him right after he slid home.

Jude had missed it. I checked my phone for a message. I tried calling him. Nothing.

“Good thing I didn’t tell Noah,” Jenna said flatly.

“He’ll be here,” I replied, though I was starting to wonder. The fourth inning came and went, then the fifth. By then I was apologizing. “I’m sorry, Jenna. He said he wanted to come. He should have been here by now.”

Her eyes stayed on the field. “It’s okay. I don’t want him in Noah’s life anyway. I only agreed to this because Amelia helps us out. He’s my child,” she reasoned. “I want him to have everything he can.”

I searched the parking lot, thinking that Jude might be watching from there, too nervous to approach, but there was no Range Rover, no tall spectator, no blond-haired biological dad.

When the game ended with Noah’s team up by six runs, the boy
ran to his mother. “Did you see that last play?” he asked excitedly, and imitated it with his glove scooping the dirt.

Jenna hugged him. “You were
great.
” But he was already heading back to his teammates.

“He’s a fine boy,” I said.

The pride on her face clouded over. “I worry. Y’know, that he inherits things.”

“Like?”

“Well, his body is like Jude’s. He’s tall for his age, and he’s a good athlete. But he can be cocky. He’s into being cool. There was a … thing with bullying at his school. I don’t think he was involved, and we talk with him about being kind to kids who can’t do what he does. But it’s scary.”

“Maybe it’s just the age.”

She shot me a wary glance. “I don’t want him to be like that. Amelia can give us money, but I won’t let her raise him. Look at Jude. He’s totally irresponsible. Look where he’s been for the last ten years. Look what he did today. Noah thinks his father just lives off somewhere else. Can you imagine if he’d been waiting today? I mean, I knew this would happen. I don’t trust Jude any more’n I can throw him.”

It was the most she’d said to me at a stretch, and she was clearly emotional. I searched the parking lot again, though part of me felt it would be worse for Jude to show up now than not at all.

“He didn’t have the guts,” Jenna said with scorn. “We’re better off without him, right?”

I would have agreed if she’d stayed long enough to hear, but the words were barely out when she went off to join Bobby and Noah. I returned to my car. This time when I called Jude, I left a message.

“Either you have a great excuse, or you were right about bombing as a dad. Where were you, Jude? I was there, Jenna was there, Bobby was there. Noah played a great game, only the guest of honor didn’t show. And you wonder why I told you not to seek custody?”

Jude didn’t return my call. This time he was in Burlington, on what Amelia claimed was
not
Refuge business. Much as I had felt bad for her before, so I did now. She had no control over him, and he continued to disappoint. I could argue that she had been wrong to push a meeting with Noah—but what man wouldn’t want to meet his own child?

Defective. That was the only word I could use to describe Jude’s character, though I didn’t have to say it aloud. Vicki did it for me, arguing tenaciously when Amelia came over that evening.
Where are his brains? Where is his
heart—
does he even have one? Am I actually related to this man?
More noticeably pregnant, she was emotional to match her baby bump. I understood that, but Amelia wasn’t as forgiving. She fired countercharges back at Vicki—
Did
you
ever try to help him?—
until they both stormed out, leaving me alone in the kitchen with the remnants of their ill will.

The ill will lingered through the next day, with Vicki grumpy, Amelia annoyed, Jude back as though nothing had changed, and Lee scurrying around with one eye out for a shooter.

There was no shooter. This time it was an arsonist, and the target wasn’t Lee’s bungalow in Bell Valley, but the unoccupied mansion in Massachusetts. The call came Thursday night, early enough for Lee to panic, but too late for any formal declaration of arson prior to the court hearing the next day.

Chapter 18
 

Vicki woke me with the news Friday morning. Within minutes, I was in the kitchen with Amelia and Lee, and once I had the basics, the only thing I could think was that I wanted feedback from James.

Someone tried to burn Lee’s house in MA
, I texted.
Call when you can
.

The BlackBerry was still in my hand when it chimed. Barely a minute had passed.

“Hi,” I said, and stepped out of the kitchen onto the back porch of the Red Fox.

“What happened?”

“There was a fire last night. The house was alarmed, so the fire department got there before the whole thing was engulfed, but there was still a lot of damage. Lee is traumatized.”

“How did she find out? I thought the bank repossessed.”

“Not the bank,” I said, telling him what I had just learned. “The mortgage was taken over by a company called East Sea Properties.”

“Owned by the brothers?” James asked.

I smiled. “My first thought, too. The brothers would have wanted the insurance money. But no. East Sea Properties is actually quite large. Some of its holdings date way back, and they aren’t all on the coast. They cut a swath inland, all the way to Bell Valley.”

“Amelia,” he deduced as I knew he would.

“It’s not that she actually thought Lee would ever want to live there again, but she says it has emotional value and that Lee, not those brothers, should be the one to decide what she does with the house. Amelia’s pretty belligerent about it. It’s the principle of the thing, she says. I’m not sure Lee agrees. She isn’t into belligerence. But there’s no way Amelia would want that house damaged. She’s kept it maintained so that it would be ready for Lee if she wants to return.”

“A kind thing to do, but a tip-off. The brothers must have followed the trail. Otherwise, there’d have been no motive. Are the police sure it was arson?”

“Not yet, but the way the fire spread is suspicious. They’re putting a team on it today. They want to talk with Amelia and Lee, but I want to talk with that team. It’s a small town. Think they can handle this?”

“I’m looking at the website,” James said, sounding distracted as he read. “The police department has more than twenty officers. So they have the numbers, but I doubt they see much arson. You may want to ask.”

“I will. I take it we can’t use this in court today.”

“No. Arson, vandalism, threatening letters—they’re a whole other case. Today’s only about the trust fund. Sean may be able to slip in something about a pattern of intimidation. The other side will object, but the judge will still hear it, and if Lee is as sympathetic a witness as I’m guessing, it could register. I’d give him a call.”

“Right now. Anything else?” I had my own list of questions, mostly for Amelia and having to do with her insurer helping with the arson investigation. But James was good at this.

He considered it. Finally, he said, “Yeah. Meet me there?”

“Where?”

“At the house in Massachusetts. I want to see it. I also want to stop in at the police station to meet whoever’s doing the investigation. Actually, I have a better idea. I don’t know how early I can get out of here, but if the hearing’s at three, I could catch a shuttle and be at the courthouse by five. We could drive there together.” He smiled then—I could hear it when he said, “I’d do the driving. I miss my car.”

I wasn’t offended. I liked his plan. I might have said he would miss precious work time, or that Mark wouldn’t be pleased, or that he would be dead on his feet moonlighting this way. But I didn’t. I might be occasionally impulsive, marginally irresponsible, or borderline cowardly, but I wasn’t dumb. Arson in Manchester-by-the-Sea was a gift.