True Blend (22 page)

“There. You’re all dressed. You look so pretty, now I could never forget that,” she says while lifting Grace off the bed and standing her on the floor. “We’re twins today, wearing the same outfits.”

Grace lifts her beach pail and the seashells clatter as she pours them out onto her bed. Angel jumps up and walks slowly between clam and mollusk shells, whiskers stiff, eyes wide. She’s never smelled the sea before.

“George says we have to stick together, you and me.” Amy crouches beside Grace. “He must be pretty smart, because he knows I’ll always stay with you. Always, always.” She hooks a finger beneath Grace’s chin and lifts her face. Morning sunlight coming through the lace curtain touches wisps of her ponytails. “You know that, right? You always stay with Mommy. Even if Mommy is upset and you feel afraid. Do you know Mommy loves you?” She looks directly at Grace’s mouth, willing words to form. “Answer me, honey. Please,” she whispers. “Just a little bit. Do you know I love you? Say yes, Grace. Tell Mommy yes.” Her hands frame Grace’s face while her thumb strokes her lips. “Come on. Try to say it. Yesss. Hear Mommy make silly sounds?” Her thumb presses at Grace’s mouth. “Ssss. Like a sssilly sssnake.” Tears rise in Amy’s eyes as she wills her daughter to speak. One spills down her cheek and Grace’s eyes follow it. “Now Mommy’s crying tears. Tearsss.”

Grace lifts her finger to Amy’s mouth and touches it to her bottom teeth as Amy hisses. Amy tries to do the same to her, moving Grace’s bottom lip and touching her little pearl teeth. “Knock-knock.” She taps lightly on a tooth, waiting.

It doesn’t work. Nothing works. Grace turns to her scattered shells. Some are chipped, some still damp with the sea, most are sandy. The scent of tangy salt catches in their intricate whorls. After a second, Amy stands up and her hand moves to bless herself in one sudden, fluid motion.

*  *  *

When she walked onto the front porch holding Grace’s hand, he knew the sight of Celia would silence her. She’d figure if he went out of his way to find her friend at work staging some remodeled colonial or three-bedroom cape just to watch Grace for a while, things are bad.

George takes her hand after Celia and Grace leave and walks her to the backyard. “My mother called,” Amy tells him. Two dragonflies hover over the grass; a robin doesn’t stop toodling; the sky is hazy with the day’s heat; Amy walks barefoot in her denim shorts and a pretty tank top. So all should be easy, he thinks, just like this summer day. “She wants to visit in a couple of weeks.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” George says. He feels that perspiration has dampened his white shirt to his back.

“She still worries about me. First it was because I was widowed. Then when I decided to keep the house, she worried if I could take care of the property. Then after Grace was kidnapped, she worried about everything. She wanted me to move back home until they caught the men who, well, you know. I haven’t heard from Detective Hayes for a few days. Do you think he’s made progress with the investigation? If he had anything to report, I’m sure he’d call. I guess the more time goes by, the colder the trail gets. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll ever catch them. I think my mother wonders, too. That’s why she wants to spend time with me.”

“Amy.” They had walked to the tire swing the whole time Amy prattled on. She pushes the tire gently as though it holds her daughter.

“Grace is her only grandchild, you know. I really don’t mind indulging her.”

“Sweetheart,” George says quietly.

She turns to him with angry tears in her eyes. “Mom can help me in my boutique. I need to put out more summer dresses. I have a Starlight Special going on, for the summer evening weddings. Celia helped me decorate the shop for the sale, with twinkly lights everywhere. Just like stars.”

“Shh.” George sits in the shade beneath the tall maple and tugs her hand to sit, too.

“It’s not fair,” Amy says.

“What isn’t?”

“Do you know the signs that someone is emerging from grief? Well I’ll tell you.” She takes a quick breath. “First. Reinvesting in other people’s lives. Like I did in Grace’s.” She looks up at the blue sky, fighting back those tears. “That’s why I decided to keep this house alone, for her. What a beautiful home my daughter has. And having new dreams and goals, that’s a good sign. And I did, I reinvented my bridal shop with the vintage angle, decorating it with stars. Because what bride doesn’t go into a marriage full of wishes? But the strongest sign of emerging from grief?”

George waits for a quiet second. “Tell me.”

“I know that one, George. I reached it. Feeling a sense of joy with life. Coming out of grief feels like a budding spring that follows a long, nasty winter. Like a rose unfolding to the sun.”

“You’ll get there.”

“But I already did!” she insists. “I felt all those things. Every one of them. On the morning when I walked out of that bank … I had new goals, I was reinvesting in life and I felt so happy. Then a monster took it all away from me.”

“Amy, stop.”

“No. No, listen. Because then? Then I got it all back again.”

She looks straight ahead, down over the gentle sloping hill to her farmhouse. But George knows she isn’t seeing her small garden off to the side of the yard. She isn’t seeing the zinnias growing taller in front of the fence. She isn’t seeing the closed-up gown room with June sunshine reaching in its window, waiting for her to get back to the business of brides. Because the silent tears streaming down her face tell him that she knows. She knows his next words will change everything.

“I got it all back with you,” she explains. “This weekend. I was reinvesting in
us
.” She turns to him then, her eyes welling. “Last night, joy came spilling back into my life. I never thought I could trust again, but then? Then I trusted you. Did I tell you what a perfect night I had? That I’m so happy you came into my life? And you’re going to change that now, aren’t you? You’re going to scare me and take it all away. That’s how it goes. I take a baby step forward and life sends me a giant step way, way back, until I just can’t move anymore.”

George takes her hand. “Nothing’s going to change last night, do you understand? Nothing. We’ll get through this together. And it is scary, but it’s more dangerous for you not to know.”

“Dangerous?”

“I hoped it would blow over, that it was all just a prank. But when you called me this morning, I knew someone had been in your house when you were sleeping. It wasn’t a flashback, Amy. It wasn’t you who turned on the stove. And you
did
park your car in V-3 last week. I didn’t know until now what I should do with this.” He pulls the photograph from his shirt pocket. “When I saw you taking tranquilizers, I knew I had to tell you. You don’t need the pills, your mental health is fine, and you’re
not
blacking out and losing your memory. Grace is very safe with you. You’re a wonderful mother to her.”

“Then what is it?”

He looks at the picture of Amy crouched in the mall parking lot and hands it to her. “I think you’re being stalked.”

Nineteen

SOMEONE TOOK A PICTURE OF me that day?”

“Apparently. All the little things that you thought were memory lapses? They’re not. They’re stalking, Amy.”

She looks up from the photograph. “George, you’re scaring me. Are you sure about this? Because memory problems
are
a symptom of PTSD.”

George reaches over and traces a soft line around her face. The day is summer still, with only the buzz of cicadas and the call of a blue jay moving through the warmth. “Your memory’s fine. You’re a good mother to Grace.”

“But why would someone just take out Mark’s coffee cup, or leave my radio on? And the teakettle? I don’t get it.”

“It’s complicated. They seem like simple things, but they aren’t. Someone’s playing a serious mind game by trying to undermine your confidence. It’s not getting into your home that matters to them, it’s getting into your head.”

“Why though? What have I done?”

“Nothing, sweetheart. It’s got to all be connected to the heist, somehow.”

Amy studies the photograph again, then hands it back to George. “Do you really think that’s it?”

“I don’t know. If they’re setting things up to make it seem like Grace is in jeopardy in your care, then that throws you off the heist trail and on to something else. It takes the heat off.”

“Oh my God. I’ve got to tell Hayes.”

George folds up the photograph. “Let’s think this through, first.”

“What do you mean, think it through? I need to report this, George. This is serious.”

“Of course it is. But when you tell Hayes, he has to see you’re on top of things. He can’t see the situation the way a stalker might like him to.”

“Which is?”

He presses the back of his hand to his perspiring forehead and squints into the early summer sunshine. “As though you’re coming undone by things.”

“So what do I do?”

“Okay. First we need a written log of everything. Of every incident that’s happened.”
To buy me time to get to the bottom of this,
he thinks.

“I can do that.”

“And you need evidence that you’ve taken precautions since the crime. That you installed security lights, changed your locks, that I cut the shrubs back from your windows, anything to ensure Grace’s safety.”
I need to ensure that if this is Reid, he stops.

“If you’re right about this, I mean, should I get a dog?” She takes the picture from him and unfolds it again. “After Mark died and I stayed on here, my father said I needed a gun. He thought I was too isolated on this property. I didn’t get one, but I did apply for my permit. So do I need that gun now?”

“Amy, Amy.” George tips her chin up. “Slow down. Let’s plan this one step at a time. I’ll stay with you for a while, okay? I’ll move in here or you and Grace can move in with me. Because you cannot be alone.”

Amy shakes her head no with a sad smile and stands then. “I have to be, George. I need to keep working with Grace.” When she starts back toward her house, he quickly catches up to her. “With any more upheaval,” she tells him, “I’ll lose her once and for all to the damn silence. I love what you’re trying to do. And I promise I’ll be very careful, but I have to think of Grace first. It’s up to only me to hold things together here.”

George looks out toward the distant cornfields shimmering with heat waves, then back at her ready to argue.

“No,” she insists quietly, shaking her head as she opens the back screen door into the kitchen. “I can’t have you move in and disrupt her routine. It’s too risky.”

Risk, that’s what it’s all about, no matter what he does. He leans against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed, knowing she won’t budge on her decision. Instead she’s already got the sink filled with soapy water and has dropped in the breakfast dishes, trying to control the small stuff of her life, scrubbing forks and spoons first, then a breakfast plate, a pretty dish edged with blue flowers, for all she’s worth. Her shoulders move with the motion and no doubt she’s crying at the same time. He steps behind her, puts his hands on those shoulders and turns her to him. The plate drips in her grip and he hugs her, plate and all, for a long moment.

*  *  *

Since she gave voice to two particular words, she can’t get them out of her head. Saying them made the reality of the stalking situation stark. When she walks over to Celia’s house to get Grace, Celia has a tall glass of ice water waiting in the midday heat and Amy quaffs it down in long gulps. She paces back and forth on her friend’s deck watching the little golden retriever follow Grace with her green sand pail around the yard. The puppy steps with happy, loopy ease. Okay, so maybe a dog isn’t a bad idea. It would alert her to danger around her home. The two words keep alternating in her mind. Gun. Dog. Semiautomatic nine-millimeter handgun. German shepherd.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to go to your shop alone?”

“What?” Amy’s gaze turns slowly to Celia sitting at her patio table beneath the navy umbrella.

“If George is right and someone is following you, then you’re not safe even there.”

“Well now. Isn’t that nice? Then they won, didn’t they? I’ll just stay home and put bars on my windows and padlocks on my doors.”

“You know what I mean, Amy. I’m afraid someone can get to you there alone.”

Amy walks off the deck to the spigot on the back of the house. She tips her glass beneath it and turns the handle, letting cold water spit over her ice cubes. Sasha stands beside her cautiously watching the water flow, inching closer until she finally laps the running water. Her pink tongue curls around the stream. When Grace laughs, the noise surprises Amy and she turns to see her daughter behind her.

“Sasha’s drinking,” Grace squeals, grinning widely.

“That’s right,” Amy answers. Why can’t she be happy to hear her daughter’s words? She should repeat them and rhyme them and take Grace’s hands and do a dance and draw out a song of words. Why does there have to be this rage that she can’t even direct? When Sasha turns away and lies down in a shady spot near a gnarled lilac bush, Amy sets her water glass down. Cupping her hands together beneath the faucet, clear water fills them and she presses her perspiring face into the liquid. Again she does it, splashing the water up into her hair. As she turns off the water, Grace’s little hand reaches from behind her. Amy softens the flow and Grace moves her fingers into the water, then dabs her dripping fingertips on Amy’s cheeks. Her fingers are feathers, the sensation on her skin as good as words. Amy sinks to Grace’s height and her tears mix with the spigot water. Is her stalker watching this intimate moment? She won’t give whoever’s intruded into her life the satisfaction of looking around to see.

When Grace takes her wet fingers to the shade to cool Sasha, Amy returns to the deck and to Celia still sitting at the patio table. “I know why you worry, Celia. You think this nut will grab me off the street while I’m hauling gowns into my shop.”

“That’s right,” Celia says clearly, squinting up at her in the bright sunshine. “I do. Why take chances?”