The Next Always (43 page)

“I hurt him more. Then you—Beckett.” Shaking now, she clung to him. “Oh God, Beckett.”

“The cops.” Hope glanced toward the windows and sounds of sirens. “I’ll go down, let them know, see if they can keep it quiet and not wake the kids. Oh, and that we need an ambulance.”

She glanced at the unconscious and battered Sam. “But there’s no hurry on that.”

She caught Ryder’s hard grin before she backed out of the room.

“I’m going to take you downstairs, away from him.” Beckett lifted Clare into his arms. “You can tell us what happened downstairs.”

She nodded, let her head drop to his shoulder, hoping the room would stop spinning if it rested there. “Avery.”

“I’ll check on them again. Don’t worry.”

“He said we were leaving tonight,” Clare told Beckett as he carried her down. “Going on a trip, just leaving the kids alone—until he put them in boarding school because they’d be in his way.”

“He won’t touch you or those boys. Ever again.”

“When he told me that, told me to pack a few things? That’s when I hit him with the hairbrush. Hard as I could. I think I knocked one of his teeth out.”

“Upstairs first,” he said to Charlie Reeder as they passed at the bottom on the steps. “You hit him with a hairbrush.”

“It was all I had.”

“No.” He held her tight, sat, held her tight on his lap. “You’ve got a hell of a lot more.”

Beckett sat beside her while she gave her statement, didn’t spare a glance when they took Sam away, cuffed to a gurney. Hope brought her tea while one of the paramedics doctored his torn knuckles.

Once the cops located the jimmied window, documented it, Ryder went out for tools to repair it.

When the police left, Avery came out of the kitchen. “I made soup. When I’m upset I cook, so everybody’s eating soup.”

While she ladled it up in the kitchen, Ryder dropped down to a chair at the table. “Now that the law’s gone, let’s have it straight, what you danced around telling them. How did you know Clare was in trouble?”

“Lizzy.” Beckett laid a hand over Clare’s, and told the story.

“Pretty smart for a dead woman,” Ryder commented with a glance at Hope. “The innkeeper’s going to have her hands full.”

“The innkeeper has a name,” she informed him.

“I’ve heard that.”

“Hope and I are staying tonight.” Avery set soup in front of Owen. “I wouldn’t sleep if I went home. We’re staying.”

“I’d like you to.” Clare let out a long breath. “Elizabeth told you I needed help. And you came.” She turned her hand under Beckett’s, laced fingers. “You all came. I guess that’s a lot more than a hairbrush.”

Beckett didn’t leave until she slept. He tossed Harry’s Spider-Man sleeping bag in his truck before driving to the inn.

He spread it out on the floor of E&D.

“She’s fine. She’s okay, thanks to you. He hurt her a little—but he’d have done worse if you hadn’t let us know.”

He sat, pulled off his work boots. “He’s in the hospital, under guard. He’ll be in a cell as soon as the doctors clear him. One of us broke his jaw—either Clare and her trusty hairbrush or me. Lost his caps, and two teeth. Busted up his nose. I figure he got off easy.”

Exhausted, wired, he stretched out. “Anyway, I thought I’d bunk here tonight, if it’s okay with you. I figured you might like some company, and I’m just not in the mood to go home. I guess I’m the first guest—alive anyway—of Inn BoonsBoro.”

He lay staring at the ceiling. He thought he felt something cool across his throbbing knuckles, then the light he’d neglected to shut off in the bathroom went dark.

“Thanks. ’Night.” He closed his eyes, and he slept.

SUNDAY MORNING, AT
his insistence, kids and dogs loaded in the van.

“We’re supposed to go to the arcade,” Harry reminded him. “You said.”

“Yeah, this afternoon. There’s just something I want to show you first. It’s not far.”

“It certainly is a secret.”

He looked over at Clare. She’d softened the bruises with makeup, but he knew the boys had seen them. Just as he knew she’d told them the truth, if not in every detail.

He drove out of town, listening to Liam and Harry bicker and Murphy sing to the dogs, who’d already learned how to howl in harmony.

Normal, he thought. It all seemed so normal. Yet there were bruises on Clare’s face.

“I can take them to the arcade if you want to stay back and rest.”

“Beckett, he slapped me a few times. It hurt, and it was really scary, but that’s it. And it’s over.” She kept her voice low, under the music from the radio.

He didn’t think it would ever be over for him. Not all the way.

“Hope talked to a friend of hers, a psychiatrist in D.C.,” Clare continued. “She said—best guess as she hasn’t talked to him, observed him—this was classic stalker behavior, with narcissism tossed in. He’d grown more and more obsessed with me, was convinced I wanted to be with him, but kept stringing him along—adding in the kids who were an obstacle. It was one thing when I wasn’t seeing anyone, but my relationship with you caused a kind of psychotic break. Basically, he went off the rails. Now he’s going to jail. He’ll get help. I’m not ready to care if he gets help, but he’ll get it.”

“As long as help comes with bars and a prison jumpsuit, he can have all he wants.”

“Right there with you.” She glanced around. “Doesn’t your mother live over this way?”

“Not far. No, we’re not going there so she can fuss over you again today.”

“Thank God. I had about all the fussing over yesterday I can take from friends, family, neighbors, police. I want to feel, and be, normal and boring today.”

He turned off onto a gravel lane, bore to the right and up a slope. “Ryder lives back that way, Owen over that way,” he added, with gestures. “Not too far, but not too close either.”

He stopped in view of a partial house, and even the partial was still unfinished.

“Eight acres. Nice little stream on the far side of the house—or what will eventually be a house.”

“This is your place. It’s beautiful, Beckett. You’re crazy not to finish it off and live here.”

“Maybe.”

Kids and dogs bolted out. Lots of room to run, he noted as they did just that. He knew where he intended to put a yard, some shade trees, where he intended to put a garden—and where he intended to put a lot of things.

“This is all your trees and stuff?” Harry demanded. “We could go camping here. Can we?”

“I guess we could.”

“I draw the line.” Clare held up a hand. “I do not, will not camp.”

“Who asked you?” Beckett plucked the ball from Harry, heaved it so all the four-legged and two-legged boys gave chase.

“This is the perfect boost,” Clare told him, wandering, circling. “Better than normal and boring. It’s beautiful and quiet. You have to show us the house, tell us what it’s going to look like when it’s finished.”

He took her hand to stop her from heading over to it. “I’ve come out here a couple times this last week, looking at what I started and never finished. And asking myself why I didn’t finish it. I love the way it feels here, the way it looks. The way it will look.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

His eyes, deep and blue and suddenly intense, met hers. “I hope that’s true, because I figured out why I’d never finished it, what I was waiting for. I was waiting for you, Clare. For them. For us. I want to finish it for you, for them, for us.”

Her hand went limp in his. “Beckett.”

“I can change the plans. Add on a couple more bedrooms, a playroom.”

He gestured with his free hand while the last of the season’s leaves swirled around them. “I think I should pave an area over that way, for riding their bikes, maybe put up a basketball hoop. They need more room, kids and dogs. I want to give them more room. I want to give you what you want, you just have to tell me. I need to give them what they want, have what I want. I want you Clare, I want all of you. Please—Shit. You have to wait.”

“What?” Her mouth fell open. “Beckett.”

“Sorry, just a minute.” He hurried over to the boys, who were hunting up sticks to throw for the dogs. “Harry.”

“They chew them up. They chew up the sticks. Watch.”

“Harry, I promised you something. I said I’d clear it with you before I asked your mom to marry me. I need you to tell me it’s okay if I do.”

Harry looked down at the stick while his brothers stood beside him, all eyes.

“Why do you want to?”

“Because I love her. I love her, Harry. I love you guys, too, and I want us to be a family.”

“The bad man tried to hurt her,” Murphy said. “But you came, and you and Mom fought him and they took him to jail.”

“Yeah, and you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Are you going to sleep in her bed?” Liam wanted to know.

“That’s part of the deal.”

“Sometimes we like to, if there’s thunder or we have bad dreams.”

“Then we’ll need a big bed.”

He waited while they looked at each other. He knew how it was, the unspoken language of brothers.

“Okay, if she wants to.”

“Thanks.” He shook Harry’s hand, then pulled him in, pulled them all in for a hug. “Thanks. Wish me luck.”

“Luck!” Murphy shouted.

If he hadn’t been nervous, Beckett would have laughed all the way back to Clare.

“What was that?”

“Man talk.”

“Oh really, Beckett, you start all that business about bedrooms and paving, then you just walk off for man talk?”

“I couldn’t finish until I’d cleared it with Harry. We had a deal, and guys have to know you keep your word.”

“Well, good for you, but—”

“I had to get his okay before I asked you to marry me. He said it was okay if you want to. Please want to. Don’t make me look like a loser in front of the kids.”

The hand she’d lifted to push at her hair froze. “You asked my not-quite-nine-year-old son for his blessing?”

“Yeah. He’s the oldest.”

“I see.” She turned away.

“I’m messing this up. I love you. I should’ve started with that. I swear I trip up more with you than anybody. I love you, Clare. I always did, but it’s different loving who you are now. It’s so damn solid. You’re so solid, so steady, strong, smart. I love who you are, how you are. I love those boys, you have to know.”

“I know you do.” For a moment she stared at the trees, their bare branches soft in the shimmer of her tears. “I could love you if you didn’t, because love, sometimes, just is. But I couldn’t marry you unless you loved them, unless I knew you’d be good to them. I love you, Beckett.” Eyes dry again, she turned back. “You brought them dogs I didn’t think I wanted, and you were so busy talking me into it you didn’t see me fall at your feet. I love you, Beckett, without any doubt, without any worry. And I’ll marry you the same way.”

She threw her arms around him. “Oh, you have no idea what you’re in for.”

“I bet I do.”

“We’re going to find out, because—What
is
that in your pocket? And don’t say you’re just happy to see me.”

“Oh, forgot.” He pulled out a small bag. “I got you a new hairbrush.”

For an instant she only stared. Then she cupped his face in her hands. “Is it any wonder?”

He scooped her in, swung her around. And holding her close shot a thumbs-up to the boys.

Her boys—his boys—their boys let out whoops and cheers, and ran toward him with dogs barking at their heels.

 

A
FAT WINTER MOON POURED LIGHT OVER THE OLD STONE
and brick of the inn on The Square. In its beams, the new porches and pickets glowed and the bright-penny copper of the roof glinted. The old and new merged there—the past and the present—in a strong and happy marriage.

Its windows stayed dark on this December night, prizing its secrets in shadows. But in a matter of weeks they would shine like others along Boonsboro’s Main Street.

As he sat in his truck at the light on The Square, Owen Montgomery looked down Main at the shops and apartments draped in their holiday cheer. Lights winked and danced. To his right, a pretty tree graced the big front window of the second-floor apartment. Their future innkeeper’s temporary residence reflected her style: precise elegance.

Next Christmas, he thought, they’d have Inn BoonsBoro covered with white lights and greenery. And Hope Beaumont would center her pretty little tree in the window of the innkeeper’s apartment on the third floor.

He glanced to his left, where Avery McTavish, owner of Vesta Pizzeria and Family Restaurant, had the restaurant’s front porch decked out in lights.