Hideaway Cove (A Windfall Island Novel) (18 page)

J
essi woke, smiled, rolled over. And found the bed beside her empty. She closed her eyes and flopped onto her back, bereft and grateful at the same time. As amazing as it would have been to wake up with Hold beside her, finding him gone meant he cared enough to honor her wishes.

And made her love him more.

Yeah, she thought, time to admit it. She was in love with Hold Abbot.

She’d begun to stumble the first time she’d seen him, crossing the tarmac, tall and handsome, with his gilded hair shining in the sun. And the first time she’d locked eyes with him—those dancing melted-chocolate eyes of his—she’d lost her balance even more. Looking back now, the fall had been inevitable. And nothing like she’d imagined it would be.

Falling in love should have been chirping bluebirds and circling hearts, happy, sun-drenched days and moonlit nights filled with pleasure. Falling in love should have made her heart sing, her lips smile, her world bright and fresh.

Her world had definitely changed, she allowed, but while being in love did make her heart shine, her head kept telling her to be careful, and that put a shadow of sadness over the happiness.

As for Hold—well, she didn’t know how he felt about her, but he’d been so gentle, so careful with her last night. Then again, Hold was a gentle man. He’d taken care, taken his time, made sure she felt tended to because he was that kind of person. And because he cared enough to respect her feelings, in her home, with her son sleeping across the hall.

The hour was still early when she glanced at the clock, but she sat up anyway, clicked on the lamp. Picked up the Bible. She didn’t open it right away.

Maggie’s possible connection to Eugenia had been found first, and once they’d discovered how quickly someone was willing to strike, a conscious and calculated decision had been made to wait before anyone else was endangered. But since she’d found the blanket— God, was it just three days ago?

She took a deep breath, let it out as she opened the Bible to the births and deaths page, and faced the fact that she had to stop burying her head in the sand.

In a surprisingly short time, she had her answer. A baby had been born, a daughter, to Joseph and Claire Duncan, Jessi’s great grandparents, less than two months before Eugenia Stanhope’s February 1931 birth date. Jessi’s grandmother would have been that baby.

She very well might have been Eugenia Stanhope.

A measles epidemic had raged on Windfall Island that winter, taking the very old and the very young with indiscriminate cruelty. The supposition went that Eugenia had replaced an infant who’d succumbed to the measles. While Jessi’s grandmother had been nearly two months older, none of the women in her family had been particularly tall, as far back as the photographic evidence adorning her own walls attested. Not to mention her own vertical challenge.

Her grandmother would have been small for her age, easily replaced by a slightly younger child. Eugenia had gone missing in October. With the winter just socking in and with sickness to be avoided, Windfallers had kept to their own homes. No one would have seen Elizabeth Duncan for months, certainly not recently enough to mark any changes that couldn’t be written off to those due to seven or eight months of growth.

It wasn’t proof, Jessi concluded, but the possibility existed. She’d have to tell the others. She’d have to tell them all—

She heard a pounding, loud enough to make her jump out of bed and run down the stairs, Benji right on her heels. Chewie beat them both to the bottom, standing stiff-legged, fur on end, barking so hard he bounced each time.

Jessi might have laughed if she hadn’t seen Lance standing in the open doorway, his breath frosting in the frigid air as he squared off with Hold. Lance shifted his gaze to her, took in her robeless, slipper-less state, then turned back to Hold, who was shirtless, his pants zipped but unfastened at the waistband.

“Nice,” he sneered, slamming the door behind him and moving farther into the room. “Don’t worry about the kid or anything.”

Benji, a shaking, growling Chewie locked in his arms, looked up at her. Jessi drew him back against her, wrapped her arms around them both. “You can go,” she said to Lance.

“Not until you tell me about this break-in.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“George had a few questions for me. Thanks for the show of faith.”

“I didn’t tell George to talk to you.”

“It makes sense, though,” Hold said. “You being back on the island so suddenly. Makes a body curious as to what brought you back after eight years.”

Lance stepped forward, violence clear in his eyes.

Jessi slipped around Benji, moved to block him. She agreed with Hold, but saying it would only make Lance angrier. “Not in my house.”

“I don’t see why not. You let all kinds of things go on in your house.”

“
I
let,” she shot back, refusing to give him any defense at all. Lance could think whatever he wanted to think. “This is my house, and you’ll be welcome in it when you can be civil.”

“I’m not going anywhere without my son.”

“Oh, you really are. Get out.”

Lance stepped around her, appealed directly to Benji. “It’s not safe here. You should come stay with me.”

Jessi put herself between them again. “Absolutely not.”

“Your mother,” Lance said, biting off each word, “is more concerned with her boyfriend than she is with you.”

“Go home and cool off, Lance.”

“So you and Loverboy can play house with my kid? Not on your life.” He took a step closer to Benji, making the puppy growl even louder. “Go pack some clothes. You’ll be staying at Grandma’s where you’re safe.”

“Mom?”

“I’m your father,” Lance snapped. “Do like I tell you.”

“Out.” Jessi pointed at the door. “If you cared— You can’t put him in the position of choosing between us, Lance, even if you thought for one minute your record could stand up against mine.”

Lance’s hands curled into fists.

“Go ahead,” Jessi dared him.

Hold stepped up behind her. “This is Jessi’s business. I’ve been willing to stand back and let her handle it.” His voice notched down to put gravel into his drawl. “But if you intend to throw a punch, Proctor, you’re going to want to pick a different target.”

Lance held his ground, jaw bunching.

Hold simply moved Jessi aside, and shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. He kept his gaze locked on Lance’s face the entire time.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Lance said after a tense moment. “I was angry because of the questions.”

“You didn’t say where you were yesterday,” Hold put in.

Lance’s jaw bunched, but he answered. “I was at Meeker’s, with my mother. She’s looking for a new table, and well, you’ve seen that place. I spent most of the day shifting furniture from one part of that flea market to another.”

Jessi studied his face. She couldn’t see any sign he was bullshitting them. But then, he was a pretty damn good liar. Still, Meeker wouldn’t vouch for Lance out of the goodness of his heart, so Lance must be telling the truth.

“You were asked to leave,” she reminded him.

“Benj—”

“You want to hang around,” Hold said, “we can pick up where we left off.”

“I’ll go. But this isn’t over.”

Before the door shut behind him, Jessi was already kneeling down in front of Benji, who was knuckling tears away from his eyes. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

“Okay.”

“Jessi,” Hold said.

“Not now—”

He drew her to her feet and a little away from the stairs. “At the moment,” he whispered, “it’s his mother versus his father. I’m the closest thing to Switzerland there is.”

Jessi glanced back at her son, dragging his feet up the stairs, Chewie by his side. “Okay,” she sighed. “Will you tell me about it later?”

Hold shook his head, shifted his gaze to Benji, and winked because he had to know they were talking about him. “It’s just between us men,” he said loudly enough for Benji to hear. And smile over.

Jessi could have kissed him for that alone. “It’s barely five a.m.,” she said instead. “See if you can’t get him back to sleep for a little while. One of my men has to attend the second grade in a few hours.”

“Not sure which one?”

“Oh, I know which one. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t use a refresher.”

Shaking his head, Hold grabbed his shirt and headed for the stairs.

Jessi grinned at his back, called after him, “They teach a lot of useful stuff in the second grade.”

Yeah, Benji thought when he heard the knock on his door like a half a minute after he got to his room. Usually his mom would be coming to talk to him. She was always talking to him, but it was worse when she just stared at him without saying anything. She looked so sad and worried. It made his stomach feel all squishy, and his eyes hot.

He wanted to tell her to stop acting like there was something wrong. He wanted to yell at her sometimes, he got so mad. Only he wasn’t mad, exactly. He didn’t know what he was, but he knew it wasn’t his Mom’s fault that he felt like his whole world had turned upside down.

Everything had started to change when Dex and Hold came to the island, but it wasn’t them, either. The adults would glance at him and whisper when he was around, but he’d never thought they were whispering about him.

Now he knew they were, and he knew why. It made his stomach even squishier and his eyes even hotter—

“Ben?”

He sat up and said, “Come in,” embarrassed when it came out kind of wobbly. It was Hold, and Hold treated him like he wasn’t a kid who might haul off and cry for no reason. Hold
talked
to him, and Hold listened.

Hold opened the door and leaned against the frame, and Benji felt better just because he was there. Benji thought that might be what it was like to have a dad and that made him feel even more miserable because he didn’t think that when his real dad was around.

“Hey Ben,” Hold said. “Want to talk about it?”

Benji scooted his feet under the covers, smiling a little when the puppy pounced on his toes. “I guess.”

“It’s okay if you don’t, but maybe I can help.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Um…” Hold looked like somebody’d kicked him, but Benji didn’t care.

“My dad said you’re the reason he and my mom are fighting all the time.”

“Ah. Do you believe that?”

Benji shrugged. “If you weren’t around we could be a family again.”

“Did you ask your mom about that?”

“I’m talking to you.”

“Okay,” Hold said, and then Benji could have sworn he said “shit” under his breath, and that was cool because nobody ever swore around him, not to mention Hold must be pretty nervous to slip like that.

“Do you think I’m in the way, Ben?”

“Are you going to marry my mom?”

Hold looked like he wanted to swear again, but he didn’t say anything this time.

“Do you love her?” Benji demanded. “You kissed her, I saw you.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Kinda. It’s gross,” he added, making the face that went along with the sentiment.

“You won’t feel that way forever, Ben.”

“My friend says you’re sleeping—”

“Jesus, kid.”

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Benji said seriously. “And you didn’t answer my question. It’s okay; adults don’t sometimes. There’s a lot of stuff they don’t tell kids,” he added, and waited for Hold to give him some stupid answer that wasn’t really an answer.

But Hold said, “I really like your mom.”

“Then you should marry her.” And there it was, Benji thought in disgust when Hold looked away. Maybe he was just a kid, but he could tell when an adult was about to blow him off. “It’s not hard to figure out, Hold.”

Hold smiled. “Matters of the heart are never simple, kid. But I’m here to talk about you, remember? About you and your dad.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Benji muttered, adding a one-shouldered shrug like he’d seen Auntie Maggie do a thousand times. “It’s my fault he left.”

Hold straightened away from the door frame, the hard look on his face matching the hard tone of his voice. “What gives you that idea?”

“He left ’cuz my mom got knocked up. With me.”

“Whoever said that needs to be knocked on their ass.”

“Everybody says it.”

“Okay, okay.” Hold shoved his hands in his pockets then pulled them out again. “Might as well try to outblow a hurricane as get folks here to stop giving voice to stupidity.”

“Huh?”

Hold came over and sat on the end of the bed, reaching over to scratch behind Chewie’s ear. “Your daddy didn’t leave because your mom was pregnant with you, Ben. He was just a kid, not all that much older’n you, really.”

“My mom was younger than him.”

“Well, some people don’t grow up as fast as others.”

“He didn’t come back because of me.” Benji said it on a rush, because it was the thing that made him want to barf sometimes, and because it made him feel better to get it off his chest.

“Did he tell you that?”

“Nah, it’s just…” Benji trailed off, his fingers worrying at a frayed corner on his quilt. “He spends all his time talking to other people, or staring at Mom when he’s here.”

“Listen to me,” Hold said. “Whatever’s going on with your daddy, it’s a failing on his part, not yours.”

Benji looked up at him for the first time. “Are you sure?”

“Yep. He left before you were ever born, because he couldn’t man up. That’s before he ever met you, Ben, so how could it be your fault?”

“I guess,” Benji said again.

“Sometimes life sucks—and yeah, I’m aware I’m not supposed to say that, but it’s just you and me here.”

“Sometimes life sucks,” Benji echoed, liking the sound of it.

“It’s how you react that makes the difference. You’ve been waiting your whole life to meet your dad, and I’ll bet you spent some time imagining what he’d be like.

“Well, Ben, things may not have turned out how you expected, but that doesn’t make it your fault. I’m going to be seriously disappointed in you if I think you’re blaming yourself, because I know you’re a smart kid.”