Czytaj książkę: «Out at Night»
OUT AT NIGHT
SUSAN ARNOUT SMITH
For my father
Ernest Weschenfelder
who taught me to love mountains
and my mother
Florence Weschenfelder Johnson
who showed me how to move them
Rest in peace, Dad
The use of recombinant DNA could potentially alter man and his environment, for better or worse, by intention or accidentally. Therein lies the promise and danger of this new technology.
—Testimony at HEW hearings on
recombinant DNA (1978)
All the predators come out at night.
—TOUR GUIDE, Palm Springs wind farm
Table of Contents
Cover page
Title page
Dedication
Epigraph
One Wednesday
Two Thursday
Three Friday
Four
Five Saturday
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen Sunday
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two Monday
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Books By
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE Wednesday
“She’ll call the police if I don’t come home.”
Professor Thaddeus Bartholomew kept his hands on the wheel the way he’d been directed, his eyes straight ahead. Actually it was a desperate gamble, his last. His wife had been dead over two years.
“Shut up and drive.” The man in the seat next to him pressed the snout of the revolver against Bartholomew’s thigh and he tensed involuntarily and felt the gun nose him hard.
In the headlights, giant windmills whirred against the night sky. They’d been driving toward Palm Springs for almost half an hour and they were getting close.
Bartholomew had spent the entire time searching his mind for a way out and finding none. He was a scholar, at home in the tranquil world of old wars and settled battles; the voices that called to him were the ones that lived on the page and in polite debates on the History Channel. He realized in that instant he could speak so confidently about history because it was done.
It wasn’t sitting next to him reeking with sweat, crazed with some plan to maim and kill a substantial part of the world’s population.
A plan Bartholomew feared had every chance of working.
Bartholomew rubbed his hands on the wheel and tried again. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you could talk to me about it again. Make me see.” His voice held a tremor he didn’t like.
“Turn left here.” The gun jabbed him again.
“Careful with the gun.” Bartholomew instinctively jerked the wheel toward the dark dirt road leading between the high fields of soy. He slowed to avoid a sudden dip in the road.
He thought despairingly of how he’d almost made it to the car when the man had emerged from the shadows of the parking garage. He could admit it now; why lie, what was the point? He’d been flattered, more than happy to stand there a few moments listening. Relieved to postpone going home to an empty house and his solitary meal.
They’d talked before; or more precisely, he’d listened to him rant. Bartholomew wasn’t a man given to snap criticisms, but this man scared him.
At least he did now.
There’d been enough signs.
Documented. Why hadn’t he ever documented what the man was saying?
Ironic, when he thought about it. His lifework had been spent painstakingly resurrecting those marginalized, forgotten ones history had relegated to footnotes: the dispossessed, disenfranchised, the lost. Yet here was one of that very number whose words Bartholomew hadn’t thought to record. And the ingenious plan the man proposed had made him recoil in horror. The very next instant, it seemed, he’d found a gun pressing into his side.
Fast. It had happened so fast.
He wasn’t going to make it out of this.
Not alive.
“Stop right here.”
They were in a small dirt parking lot next to a four-acre plot of soy contained by a barbwire fence. On the fence was a sign:
USDA EXPERIMENTAL SOY PROJECT 3627
DO NOT ENTER
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
“Turn off the engine.”
Bartholomew shivered, his head bowed. The man reached over and switched the engine off, yanking out the keys.
“Move.”
“Where?” His lips were numb.
He’d left the headlights on and in the wash of light, barbwire hung in strands where it had been cut, revealing a hole large enough for a man to crawl into the dark rows of soy.
“I’m giving you to the count of ten.” His voice was flat.
Bartholomew lurched off the seat and scrambled toward the gaping hole, his heart hammering.
“One.”
He clawed through the fence break, his jacket catching on the barbwire, and plunged into the soy. A cloying, sweet smell bit his nostrils. The ground was uneven and the darkness almost impenetrable. He stumbled and went down hard on his knee, feeling the dark cold earth and the familiar odor of mulch. Pain shot through his knee.
“Two.”
The voice was coming from the outside perimeter of the fence.
Bartholomew whimpered and immediately cut it off, swallowing the metallic taste of fear that was flooding his mouth. He grasped a sturdy plank of soy and heaved himself up. The stalks upended under his weight, the roots leaking clots of dirt. He took a staggering step and regained his balance. The pain was volcanic, roaring up his thigh into his groin.
“Three.”
He thrashed farther into the thicket and felt the stalks give way, sending him sprawling into a cultivated field. He panted shallowly, getting his bearings. In the dim moonlight, he could see the soy laid out in neat, bristling rows. He scanned the field and spotted another place along the fence where the soy seemed to be growing wild. He limped toward it, gripping his thigh above his injured knee to brace himself.
Dimly, he’d been hearing numbers.
“Eight,” his attacker said, his voice still distant.
Bartholomew wormed his way as far as possible back into the dense undergrowth and slid down, gripping his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible.
His cell phone.
“Nine. I lied. Any last words?”
The voice was dead-sounding, clearly coming now from somewhere inside the fence, and most alarming, seemed to be turned straight toward him.
His attacker couldn’t possibly see him. Bartholomew yanked the cell phone free and dialed the familiar number, his hands shaking so badly he balanced the phone on his good knee to find the numbers. His phone was an old model, the kind nobody made anymore. The keys sounded unnaturally loud. He waited for the voicemail to kick in.
He had to focus now, figure out what to say and how to say it. He peered at the small electronic keyboard in his hand, lit with the comforting green light. His fingers moved carefully across the keys.
“Okay, then.” The man’s voice was closer.
The air seemed to shiver and in the next instant, a piercing pain slammed into Bartholomew’s chest. The velocity of it crashed him backward and sent the cell phone flying from his grasp.
At first all he felt was stunned disbelief coupled with a roaring pain, and then he realized something was lodged in his chest. A stick.
An arrow.
He couldn’t breathe. No, he could breathe, but not deeply; he couldn’t move, he was pinned to the ground. It was getting warm under him now, and that was a comfort. He touched the arrow and wondered if he could risk yanking it up. The soy above him parted and he stared up at his attacker’s face. It was blank as an insect’s. The man was holding aloft the cell phone.
Goggles, Bartholomew thought wonderingly. Why was he wearing goggles?
Wordlessly, the attacker shifted the crossbow in his grasp. He reached down and grasped the arrow and—God no!—yanked it with all his might and then tipped it back and forth as if trying to work it free and a fresh wave of pain engulfed Bartholomew.
He cried out in terror and pain, his voice an incoherent tumble of words pleading and thank God it stopped, stopped and his attacker pulled a water bottle from his jacket.
Bartholomew’s field of vision was narrowing, the edges fuzzy and gray. He fought to stay conscious. His attacker unscrewed the bottle and tipped it over him and for a brief instant, Bartholomew thought, Water, he’s going to grant me that, at least. He caught the sudden sharp odor of gasoline. Through an agony of pain, he peered up and saw the attacker light a match, the sharp tiny prick of flame a bright cold thing, the burning match falling, falling like a small meteorite through the black night.
Flames boiled up his body and the last thing he heard was a crackling noise, close to his face, and the attacker retreating into a haze of orange. And then the orange window narrowed to a pinhole and Bartholomew eased into it and was gone.
TWO Thursday
“Let me get this straight.” Mac McGuire shifted on the blanket, digging his feet into the sand. “You’ve come all the way from San Diego, down through Florida, on to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, so you can take our five-year-old swimming on a beach that’s covered with razor-sharp coral.”
“First of all, it’s not covered with coral, just that one side.” Grace Descanso squirted a dollop of sunscreen directly onto his back and smoothed it in. “And secondly, she’s wearing beach shoes. She’s fine.”
A warm wind gusted across the waves, creating a froth of white that enveloped Katie in foam. She twisted her arms out like a windmill, the turquoise water sparkling around her chest, floating the ruffles of her hot pink swimsuit. Her hair was wet, the golden curls darker than usual.
Katie saw them watching and beamed. “Hi, Daddy Daddy Daddy.”
And Mommy Mommy Mommy, Grace thought sourly.
“Hi, sweetheart, I’ll be back out in a minute.”
Grace could tell by the sound of Mac’s voice that he had a sappy look on his face.
He kept talking, his voice dropping down into the reasoned, considered tone he used on air. He was a CNN health reporter, responsible for filing two stories each week and available for live reports. He was also the face of the unit, on air every weeknight introducing stories researched and prepared by producers behind the scenes. When viewers turned on CNN, they often thought of Mac. At least that’s the way they spun it in promos.
“I know she’s fine, I just thought it might be nice to take her someplace amazing. Both of you,” he amended.
Grace worked the sunscreen into his muscles a little too vigorously. He smelled like a tropical fruit drink. She’d already slathered Katie again, until her daughter was slippery as a baby seal and just as quickly had slid out of Grace’s grasp into the water. Then it had been Mac’s turn with Grace, his fingers strong, his touch lingering. The mating dance of the tropics.
Now his skin glowed hot under her fingers; he’d arrived in the Bahamas the day before, and the sun had already streaked his hair with gold. Grace shifted position and kept working. Over his shoulder she could see part of his dark green swimming trunks. A fine pink scar ran up his left arm, still new. She felt a twinge. She’d put that scar there, and if it had happened the other way around, she doubted she’d be letting Mac anywhere near her body, no matter how good his fingers felt.
“I mean, it’s interesting the place you rented,” Mac continued. “But I would have opted at least for a real bathroom.”
“It’s ecofriendly.”
“It’s a compost heap, Grace, with a wooden throne that sits behind a curtain. How in the world did you find that place?”
“A Portuguese cousin in the travel business. Remind me to kill her when I get home.”
In truth, the bed-and-breakfast was a little more primitive than she’d expected; the promised gourmet lunches had turned out to be leftover mac and cheese wrapped in crinkled aluminum foil and cut into cold wedges, served with hamburger buns studded with raisins accompanied by a vat of peanut butter; and the beach billed as remote was an inaccessible clamber down spiny-ridged limestone. Luckily, she’d rented a car, and after adapting to the harrowingly narrow roads filled with traffic hurtling straight at them, they’d found the beach not far from where they were staying.
The main thing had been to get away. Everything else had been secondary. Life for Grace Descanso had changed in an instant on a sunny October day in San Diego when a monster had reached into her world and grabbed her daughter, and by the time Grace had gotten her back, nothing was ordinary ever again.
Mac was back, for starters.
She’d contacted him in the middle of the kidnapping, when she was desperate and cornered. He’d represented the best hope of getting Katie back. The only hope. And now Grace couldn’t say, Gee thanks, for saving my life and helping find our daughter, but you can leave now.
Katie Marie had no memory of the kidnapping, but Grace relived it beat by beat, startling at sudden noises, tensing at the sound of alarms, always looking for the shadow with the long arm that could snag into the shot and blur out of frame, loping away with Katie in its jaws.
The price of getting her back was constant vigilance. Even worse was the guilt, and Grace feared that would never go away. She had lied to Katie growing up, telling her daughter that her father was dead, and now here he sat, sucking down a canned mai tai and criticizing her parenting skills.
“You know this isn’t healthy.” His voice was mild. “You need to take a breath. Relax. The bad guy’s gone.”
She snapped her eyes back to his shoulders. She’d been watching Katie with the intensity reserved for photos on a post office wall. Mac had the kind of skin that never burned, turning golden and ripe as a peach and then browning. Katie had that skin, and his hair color too, but she’d inherited Grace’s dark Portuguese eyes and a dimple that appeared whenever she smiled, and Grace had to admit she’d been seeing a lot more of it lately, ever since Katie had learned her father was still alive.
“And you know the bad guy’s gone because?”
“I have the money and resources to figure things like this out, that’s the because. He’s not getting back into the States, don’t worry.”
“We’re not in the States.” She glanced around the quiet beach and saw a sand crab busily dragging the corpse of a small sea anemone across the sand.
“Still.”
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Katie crooned. She clasped her small hands together as if she were holding a Mr. Microphone in a karaoke bar. “I just want my daddy.”
“I’m coming, princess.”
Pet names. He’d met Katie face-to-face for the first time exactly twenty-four hours before, and already he had a raft of them. Little dimple toes. Miss periwinkle flippy hair. Sunshine happy girl.
He clambered to his feet and reached for a towel.
“Do you remember that old movie, A Man and a Woman?” Grace twisted the cap back on and tossed the suntan lotion aside.
“I wonder if I should take off my sunglasses.”
“Remember, Anouk Aimée, and she loses her husband, and then she meets this race car driver, and they both have adorable kids and then they all go out to dinner? Or maybe she lost her race car driver husband, and met somebody else, I can’t remember.”
“She’ll probably splash all over them, right?”
“Well, it’s not like that here.”
“What are you talking about?” Without the sunglasses, his eyes were a brilliant green against his skin. He dropped the sunglasses onto the blanket.
“The kids. In that movie. They were there. But somehow in the background. They were present, but didn’t take over the whole thing. The grown-ups still had a nice, normal dinner and they were flirting to beat the band and—”
“So.” Mac shot Grace a swift, evaluating look. “Are you thinking about the dinner or the flirting part?”
“I am hungry.”
He smiled, his teeth very white, and she felt her body flush.
“Daddy.” Katie flung her arms wide.
“I’m coming, sweetie girl,” he called, his eyes still on Grace. “Ten minutes. Then I take you and your mom back to your place so you can get changed for dinner.”
They’d already agreed to that; it was just that he said it with such authority, and she thought about that as she gathered up the blanket and stowed it in the car. What she didn’t want was Mac upsetting the balance she had with her daughter, and it was already too late for that.
He had come over in the morning in his rental—a classier, cleaner car than the cheap one she’d rented before he got there—and picked them up, and now he was driving them back, and it seemed, incrementally, that he was in the driver’s seat a lot. She still wasn’t certain how she felt about that.
From the moment yesterday when Mac had flown in and found them, the life she’d shared for five years with Katie had been over. She’d stepped over a threshold into another world, and it scared her.
What was worse, she had no idea what it was doing to Katie.
Katie had been subdued—shocked—when she’d met him, stealing quick looks up at his face before moving out of reach. Mac had taken it slowly, never pressing, and that, too—his restraint—pressed a guilty place in her heart and made Grace want to run.
That first night, they’d eaten dinner in a small local café, the only outsiders. The wife of the cook served them steaming plates of rice and fish and when Katie yawned as the plates were cleared, the server said in a musical voice over her shoulder as she swayed back to the kitchen, “Looks like it’s time to get your little one home.”
Home.
They were so far from that, all of them. Far from the safety of home. From the idea of it. And Grace feared she’d never find her way back, and that even if she could, she might be returning empty-handed. Losing the one thing that mattered most.
She watched as Mac and Katie came up the beach toward the car, wrapped in damp sandy towels, Katie chattering. There was a warm gusty wind but suddenly Grace felt chilled, the growing tug of distance, separation.
She gripped the side of the window as Mac bumped the car down the narrow rutted road that led to her bed-and-breakfast. They turned a corner and a haphazardly built octagon painted a startling shade of Creamsicle purple appeared, set back in a tangle of undergrowth.
A truck idled in the drive. The back looked like a flimsy covered wagon held together with duct tape. A sunburned man with a nest of red dreadlocks sat hunched in the driver’s seat, talking on an iPhone. He clicked it shut and sat up and eased out of the truck as Grace and Mac got out of the car. Mac was taller and bigger through the shoulders but the other guy was younger. He smiled.
Grace made a sound. “He’s back. That’s my landlady’s son. Clint. He likes to stop by unannounced.” She reached into the backseat to help Katie out.
“Swell,” Mac said. “And he has the key, right?”
“Actually the door doesn’t lock.” Grace unsnapped Katie’s seat belt and she scrambled free.
“Ah.” Mac nodded.
Clint plodded over and pulled a crinkled envelope out of the pocket of his board shorts. The flap had been opened and resealed with a piece of cloudy Scotch tape.
“Here.”
She ripped the envelope open and pulled out the single sheet, scanning it.
“Is that who I think it is?” His voice had a lilt to it, as if he’d had a couple extra beers and couldn’t quite shape the hard vowels anymore.
She glanced up.
Clint was staring at Mac.
“No, Clint, you’re getting them mixed up.” She refolded the letter and put it in the pocket of her cover-up. “The other guy’s better-looking and works for Fox.”
Clint frowned and brightened. “Oh, I get it. A joke. Very funny.”
Mac touched her arm. “Okay?”
She knew he was talking about the letter. She shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him, he’s already read it.”
Clint ignored her, hitched up his board shorts and padded over to a twisted tree that stood in the yard.
“It’s from my uncle Pete,” she said to Mac. “Wants me to call him. Said it’s business. He works for the FBI in Palm Springs. Whatever it is, it can wait.”
“I didn’t know you had an uncle in the FBI.”
“He’s not even a blip on my radar, Mac. We haven’t talked in years.”
“Forgot to tell you, Grace, about this tree.” Clint cleared his throat importantly. “Katie, this is important for you, too.”
Katie started to trot forward and Mac shot out an easy hand and stopped her.
Black sap oozed from creases in the bark. Clint scooped a finger of sap and held it out. “See this sap? Don’t touch it. It’s called a poisonwood tree, because that’s what it is.”
“Poison?” Katie cried. Grace instinctively reached for her but Mac was there first. He rested his palm on Katie’s curls.
“Yes, Katie, it can kill you.” Clint leaned on the word kill like it was a horn. “Some people are immune, like me.” He wiped the sap onto his board shorts and left a trail. “But no worries! It stands next to this tree.” He patted an ashy colored tree with flaking bark. “It’s the antidote. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, but it’s here, if you need it.”
“Ah,” Mac said again.
A black snout poked through the slats of the truck, followed by a second, more massive head.
“Oh, and don’t worry about those guys.” Clint gestured grandly to the dogs. He walked down the path toward the front door of the B-and-B. “They only attack if they smell fear.”
He pushed open the door. “Got anything to drink?”
“Okay,” Mac said. “We’re done.”
Half an hour later, Mac moved them. He turned in both cars, took them by water taxi to Harbor Island five minutes away, and relocated them to the Pink Sands Hotel, owned by the man who started Island Records. Now they stood in the living room of a villa.
Katie dropped her backpack, her eyes wide. “Wow. It’s got flatscreen.”
“And movies, Katie. I can rent whatever you want.”
Katie flung her arms around Mac’s legs and Grace looked away. The windows and French doors opened onto a patio that faced a three-mile pink-sand beach dotted with lavender beach umbrellas, sand as soft as corn silk, the water a turquoise that slid into mauve at the horizon.
“Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
Katie took his hand and skipped beside him and Grace trailed behind, the sherpa hauling suitcases. It occurred to Grace that Mac already knew where the bedrooms were.
“Here’s where you and your mom can stay.” The room held two queen-sized beds with a view of the beach. “My room’s on the other side, and the bathrooms are in between. Want to see?”
Katie nodded, her eyes round.
“I’ll wait,” Grace said. Mac shot her that look again and she flushed.
That night they ate in the hotel dining room at a small table covered in brocade, next to a plaster wall of vivid pinks and oranges, wooden mermaids hanging in the archway. Katie sat next to Mac and insisted he cut her chicken, and he bent over it as if it were a sacrament. Nobody bothered them.
Clemens, the manager, explained that their villa had housed kings and queens, heads of business and Hollywood royalty, and that one of the hallmarks of the place was the other guests’ exquisite ability to leave those whose faces were familiar alone.
That, and the staff’s attention to detail, anticipating every need and silently meeting it.
It was as if the ground were slipping, but it was quality ground, a finer silt than Grace was used to. Even the towels she used to dry Katie after her bath felt better. Fluffier. Softer. Whiter. Part of Grace loved being taken care of. And part of her feared it. But Katie seemed to be slipping into this life with Mac effortlessly—and that, too, scared her.
She’d been alone for so long, making every decision about Katie, and now here was a man—her man, he’d been, a long time ago—reverently embracing his role as dad. Daddy. The big guy. Mr. Right who could do no wrong. At least not in Katie’s eyes. Part of her wanted to yell, Hold it! Wait! Who’s the parent here, anyway? Not wanting to hear the answer.
Some uneasy thing tremored under the surface and Grace knew what it was.
Sometime soon, Katie would look her right in the eye and ask out loud why Grace had lied to her about her dad. Lied about the most important thing in Katie’s life.
And Grace didn’t have a good answer.
She doubted she ever would.
“How do you want to handle this?” They were sitting on lounge chairs on the patio. From the bedroom, Katie murmured in her sleep.
Mac reached across the dark expanse and took Grace’s hand, his fingers warm, touch solid.
Past the railing and down the terraced walks, waves foamed whitely against the dark expanse of sand. Landscaping lights illuminated the palm trees and Grace saw a man and woman wading along the edge of the waves, holding hands in the growing dark.
The setting sun was turning the water a soft pink that glowed as if it were lit from within, and the air was heavy with the scent of hibiscus and the sea.
“We have to take it slow,” Grace said.
And then she got up and sat down next to him on his lounge chair, placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. He kissed her back, and pulled her on top of him. The rush was instantaneous, greedy, joyous, drugged with heat and desire. He rolled to his feet, picked her up, and carried her to his bed.
The clothes came off, and she wished again she’d packed better underwear, but who knew that instead of playing four rounds of Candyland she’d be sliding her hands over a man voted by People magazine as one of the top 100 sexiest men in America?
Last year’s list, she reminded herself. Although he still looked pretty good. His chest gleamed with a fine sheen of sweat. He shifted and she felt him against her. Liquid fire.
“Oh, brother,” she said. “Oh, oh, brother.”
She rolled away and wrapped a sheet around her. She took a long shaky breath. She rolled back toward him and put her hands on the flat of his chest. His skin burned the palms of her hands and that close, his eyes were heavy-lidded, his gaze intense.
“Grace.” He kissed her shoulder blade, the hollow in her throat where her heart was beating. “Talk to me.”
“It means too much.” Her voice was quiet. “If we made love and it didn’t work—and it would be making love, Mac, not just the physical part, what it means.”
He slid his hand under the sheet and cupped a breast and she sucked in a breath, almost in a panic, her body flooded with warmth.
He removed his hand with effort. He was breathing through his mouth. He had a nick on an incisor. He’d chipped it as a kid using his teeth to cut a fishing line. She was doomed. She already knew how he’d gotten all his childhood injuries. His knees touched her shins and shifted away.
He regarded her, loss and desire on his face. “What do you want, Grace?”
Her eyes filled. She felt his breath, soft, on her face. He searched her eyes. All the bones in her body seemed to soften; she was warm wax in his hands.
“For the last five years to go away. Not the part with Katie. The part without you.”
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. In the moonlight, his eyes glowed bright. “But see,” his voice was low. “That’s just it, Grace. That was the part without Katie. For me. That was the part.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her throat closed. The night air felt heavy against her face. She had done this, she had done this. And there was no fixing it.
She rolled away from him with effort and slid free of the sheets. She stood. Her legs trembled. Their clothes lay in a jumbled trail across the Saltillo tile floor and she took a shambling step.
“You bolt at the first sign of trouble.” There was no accusation in his voice; it was as if he were tracking the beats of a song, figuring out its rhythm. She realized her heart hurt.
“I bolt.” The floor was cold. She found her T-shirt and put it on. She needed underpants. She needed distance. She needed to remember to take her birth control pills.
“It’s as if you’re there one moment, and then you flip a switch and you’re gone. I don’t want you to go.”
Mac flung off the covers and stood. The heat between them was old, and raw and real. She looked away, but not before she’d seen that he’d seen it, too, in her eyes, on her face.
He pulled her to him and kissed her and she wrapped her arms around him and stood trembling, feeling the shock of his presence, the immediacy of his reaction. His arms seemed harder, somehow, than they’d been five years before, his muscles knotted.
“Hunger does that.” His voice had an edge.
She could feel her heart start to race. “That’s a little scary. Reading my mind.”
“I’ve had five years’ practice. You were squeezing it,” he added.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My arm. The muscle. You were squeezing it as if you were testing its strength against your memory. My arm won.”
“Yeah, memory’s a tricky thing.”
“Been my experience.” His body shifted and tensed and she felt the familiar fit of his body, both of them wanting more.
She dropped her hand to his back. She could still feel the sun in his skin. “Have you had a lot of that? Experience?”
“Do my best.” He slid a hand down her back, and she could see him tracking its impact, evaluating mentally the way her back tensed, the short intake of her breath when his bare hand slid from her T-shirt to her skin, the hooded light in her eyes.
And then it rounded a corner again, what she was feeling, and her eyes filled.
He stopped his hands and moved his naked strong body a fraction away.
“I did this to us, okay? I made it be not simple.”
“So now you’re beating yourself up.” His hands found her hips. He pulled her gently toward him and she felt again the blurring sweetness of desire, the melting heat. His palm grazed her buttocks, his eyes still on hers.
She was going to have to push him away. If not now, then soon.
Her breath came in short gusts. “What are you offering, Mac?”
“I think that’s pretty clear.”
“No, I mean it.” She rocked back away from him, but all that did was position her closer. If he moved, even slightly, toward her. Into her.
“Okay, what am I offering. The truth. Ask me anything.”
“Risky business.”
“Riskier not to.”
He touched her breast, her belly, the soft part of her that melted under his touch. They stood together in the dim light, their bodies naked except for her T-shirt. He swallowed. Sighed as if it took everything he had. He pushed her gently away.
“Truth then. I get the feeling you’re a whole lot of work. Maybe I’m not up to that. Maybe I’d give it my best shot, and still come up short.”
Her heart was beating very fast.
“You kept Katie away for five years. When I think about that too much, it makes me crazy.”
She couldn’t breathe.
“Maybe it is too late. Not for Katie. But for us.”
His room held a king-sized bed, a mahogany sideboard, a bar, a flat-screen TV. Through the French doors she could see the ocean. She looked everywhere except his face.
“So that whole ‘sticking around when you’re not sure’—that stuff you said after you got out of the hospital and flew here to surprise us and meet Katie—that’s bullshit?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore. Not here. Not this way.”
He was a big man, his movements economical. He found his shorts and pulled them on. It was abrupt, final, and changed everything. The small window he’d offered—the one through which she could have slipped without penalty or disguise—had closed.
It would take much more now to open it.
Yet as Grace returned to her solitary bed next to Katie’s, listening to the commingled sounds of the surf and Mac gargling into his sink, it seemed as if they’d been doing this forever, or a version of it, and maybe when things evened out, they’d add back in the sex part and get married.
A fantasy she’d construct brick by fragile brick.
THREE Friday
They spent the morning in a golf cart touring the candy-colored clapboard Harbor Island village, stopping at Angela’s Starfish for fresh conch, searching for Jimmy Buffett’s Cheeseburger in Paradise. Mac had been polite and remote with her, lavishing attention on Katie and right before Grace’s eyes, their daughter bloomed.
There had been one reoccurring speed bump, an awkward one, when she noted it: she seemed incapable of letting Katie and Mac hold a conversation without interjecting herself into it, trying to change the focus, not to her, but so that Mac was closed out.
He’d point at a modest wooden house set back from a road and tell Katie it was a library. Grace would turn her in the other direction and point out the sea.
As the morning wore on, the tendency became more pronounced until Katie and Mac’s defense was to close Grace out entirely, and it was then that she finally lost her footing on the emotional cliff face she was climbing—this strange new territory with no toeholds—and slid a good distance backward, scraping parts of her psyche she didn’t know existed.
Battered, she thought jauntily. But still there.
On the heels of that thought, she felt it start in her throat, and then behind her eyes. She’d found herself close to tears.
Now she and Mac lay on lounge chairs at the pool, watching Katie paddle in the shallow end, her water wings bright glints of inflatable pink plastic against the turquoise. A brilliantly colored wall of bougainvillea shielded the pool from the walkway. There were other people sunbathing on towels, but Grace didn’t get the sense that anybody was actively listening. It was only the two of them side by side, and the quiet sounds of Katie paddling and singing a small, tuneless song.
“I talked to my folks.”
“And?” She reached for her lemonade and drank.
“They were wondering if I could take Katie back to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. They live about an hour away. They could drive in.”
“You mean, by herself?” Grace kept her voice steady, but the panic was rising.
“Well, me.”
“That’s in less than two weeks.”
He was silent.
It hadn’t occurred to her until just that moment that maybe rehabilitating herself with Mac would be the least of her worries. The image of grandparents, bewildered and furious at having had a grandchild withheld, suddenly rose in her mind. It was another prick threatening the bubbly bliss of Grace’s imagined life.
“She’s barely five years old. I thought we were going to try trips, the three of us.”
“This is sort of one.”
“You flew out. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I wasn’t going to meet Katie while I was in the hospital, Grace.
We agreed. I didn’t want to scare her. You’d told me any time I was ready was fine with you.”
“Yeah, well, people usually call first, but maybe that’s me.”
He started to speak and stopped. This wasn’t going the way she’d envisioned.
“She’s got a whole other side of the family, Grace, she’s never met.”
“She’s got plenty of relatives she hasn’t met on my side either, she can start with those; I barely know them myself, we can start together.”
She stopped. It was exactly what she’d done all day; promised herself she wouldn’t do again.
“I found us a therapist. Elise Lithgow.”
She sucked in a breath.
Mac scribbled a phone number on a napkin next to his Coke and passed it to her. Grace glanced at it. It was a Mission Hills prefix.
“She wants to meet both of us separately first, to see if we’re each comfortable with her, so if it’s not a good match, I’m open to something else, Grace, if you’ve got another idea.”
Grace shook her head. Katie grabbed the side of the pool and kicked. She was wearing pink nail polish on her toenails and every so often the color winked in the water.
“Grace, when you stopped me last night—slowed me down so I could think through what I was doing—I realized something. You were right.”
“No, no, I wasn’t. Do over. Let’s do a do-over.”
“Let’s just do it right.” He looked at Katie and hesitated. “When I was in the hospital I worked with a Realtor. I bought a place near your house; with the market sliding, everything’s available. It’s a condo in the Rondolet. Right around the corner.”
“I know where it is.”
It stood on Shelter Island, an enormous round building with views on one side of the San Diego Yacht Club.
“It’s far from perfect right now; it’s packed with an old person’s furniture—I bought the place from an elderly woman moving into a nursing facility—but it’s a place, and it means Katie will have her own bedroom when she visits.”
It sunk in. He had planned this. The whole time he was in the hospital, while she sat by the edge of his bed. While they talked about how the light fell on San Diego harbor and the exact timbre of their daughter’s laugh. He’d been working with a Realtor.
“Lots of kids wind up going between two houses. It’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing, either.”
Dissolving into sparkly bits! The big candy-colored house with the granite counters and the security gate. Evaporating into air! The three of them climbing, skipping the stairs to some phantom life where Mommy and Daddy lived in the same bedroom and Katie was down the hall and everybody ran in slo-mo in fields of daisies like some personal hygiene commercial. Fragmenting into pieces! The dream of laughing around the kitchen table ha ha ha and having the only silences be good ones, not the lethal kind that took years of explaining and apologies and therapy to sort out.
Gone, gone, gone, not ever having to work at it, and never, ever having to say she was sorry.
She started to say, Right! Say it with conviction and nonchalance and stopped, straightening in her lawn chair.
A Royal Bahamas policeman was bicycling to a stop outside the gate leading to the pool, and even before he scanned the sunbathers and locked eyes with her, she knew he’d come for her.
FOUR
They walked the beach. Pink sand foamed into a burst of white, the waves a dark green flattening into a purple so deep it looked inked. On the horizon a sailboat stood motionless.
Grace cut him a look. He was slightly built, very black, his gray shirt and shorts still crisp despite the humidity. He was wearing sandals. His name on the tag read epsten and when he spoke his voice was a deep baritone. “Thaddeus Bartholomew. Does the name mean anything to you?”
Grace shook her head.
He glanced around. No one was close enough to hear. A man in a leg cast and crutches limped away from them down the beach, his wife walking ahead, holding a cooler and a blanket. The wife never turned to check on him, striding briskly away from her husband as if he was paying for something not quite current in the marriage account. She seemed to be picking the least steady ground, the softest sand. He followed, a resigned slant to his shoulders, his wedding ring a dull flash against sunburned fingers.
“You received the message from FBI Special Agent Peter Descanso.” Epsten peered at Grace, his eyes bright.
“I’m on vacation.”
“Yes. With your daughter and her father.”
Grace shot him a look of surprise.
He said mildly, “Not all white people look the same, but those two do.”
“She has my color eyes,” Grace said. A rogue wave washed toward them and Grace took a step back. “And a dimple. You can’t really see that from where you stood, but it’s there.”
He started to speak and stopped.
“Some people think that Mac’s the one with the dimple, but he really isn’t. His is more of an indentation.”
He looked at her a long moment. “Thaddeus Bartholomew,” he repeated gently.
“Name’s vaguely familiar but that’s as close as I can get.”
She was still smarting that a stranger had immediately seen the connection between Mac and Katie. What if it wasn’t just physical? What if it transcended any bond she’d built with her daughter? And wow, the wrongness of that. Already putting Katie between them in a game of cosmic tug-of-war.
“He died in Palm Springs two nights ago. He was a history professor at Riverside University. Somebody shot him with an arrow. A bolt, they call it, in the States.”
“Special Agent Descanso—my uncle Pete—has been trying for years to get me to spend more time with him and his family. If you knew him—”
Officer Epsten shook his head.
“—but if you did, you’d understand this is so. Like. Him.” She was working up an aggrieved tone of voice. Soon she’d be able to thank Officer Epsten nicely and he’d leave, reassured that she’d done all she could, had nothing to offer. “Tracking me down on a family vacation so I could get pulled into something I know nothing about. Have no relationship to.”
Epsten stopped walking. “Special Agent Descanso, he didn’t explain in the letter?”
She shook her head.
“Mr. Bartholomew left a clue, one investigators think does involve you. He was dying, but resourceful.”
Epsten’s voice was measured and Grace realized in that instant she’d underestimated him. He wasn’t going away.
She was.
That’s what he’d come to tell her. She stared at the water. A teenage girl stood in the waves, her hair a springy golden mane against perfect skin.
“He sent a message to his home phone right before he died. At first, they thought it was just clicks, a child perhaps, playing. He had an oldstyle cell phone, no text messaging.” He turned. “It was Morse code.”
She snapped a look at him. He stared at the water. From the side, his profile was strong. A slight graying near his glasses betrayed his age.
“He spelled out your name, Grace.”
She licked a lip. “My first name? Because spelling out the word grace when you’re about to get killed by a maniac with a crossbow is probably standard stuff.”
“Both names. Actually the exact message was Find Grace Descans. He was cut off before he could add the o. He picked you, and they’d like to know why.”
He stooped and picked up a shell. It was small, fan-shaped, a soft purple and cream. He wiped off the sand and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt. “My granddaughter collects these.”
“I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Not really.”
The teen in the ocean turned. It was a woman in her forties who’d had very good work done. A little too tucked around the eyes for Grace’s taste, but still.
“It’s bigger than somebody dying randomly in a field. Isn’t it?”
Three horses picked their way carefully down a path toward the water, riders gripping saddle horns, and Grace turned back toward the Pink Sands cabana on the beach where a Bahamian attendant named Bolo smiled, waiting to offer a towel and a mauve-colored lawn chair. Grace smiled and shook her head and kept walking, taking the soft sand trail cut into the side of the hill that led back to the villa. Officer Epsten kept pace.
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“There’s an international agricultural convention hosted by the United States government that starts in Palm Springs tomorrow and runs through Monday night.”
“Heard about it. Its official name is the International Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology.”
He stared.
She shrugged. “A friend has a friend who’s involved in it.”
“Apparently Mr. Bartholomew was involved in it, too.” He scuffed the sand with the heel of his sandal. “He was not who he appeared.”
“How so?”
Epsten stared at her soberly. “You’ll have to ask Special Agent Descanso that.”
The villa was coming into view and she could see Katie on the balcony. She waved, and Katie bounced up and down and waved back. Mac appeared on the patio and he put his arm easily around Katie’s shoulders and Grace felt hollowed out, light.
“If you know about Katie’s father, then you probably know we haven’t had much time together.”
“And I am sincerely sorry for that, madam.”
Katie was laughing, Mac bending over her saying something only she could hear. Katie impulsively reached up her arms and hugged Mac hard.
Whatever Grace’s uncle needed her to do in Palm Springs was far less important than the likelihood of Mac forging a bond with Katie that forever altered the relationship she had with her daughter.
“I’ll be back to drive you to the water taxi, which will take you to Eleuthera. On Eleuthera, there’s transport waiting to drop you directly at the plane. They’re holding it for you.”
“Am I supposed to go right to Palm Springs?”
He handed her a sealed letter with an FBI insignia on it. “That, I do not know, madam.”
“How much time do I have?”
He glanced silently at the villa. Mac and Katie had disappeared inside, the balcony empty. He looked at her neutrally.
“Enough to say good-bye.”
“Mommy! Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!”
Katie threw herself at Grace. She was still in her swimsuit; her skin smelled of chlorine.
“Daddy’s going to take me out in the golf cart later, just the two of us. We’re going to find a store where they sell kitties. We’re not going to buy one, just look. I want to hold a fluffy one.”
Grace met Mac’s eyes over their daughter’s head. He shrugged and Grace felt a territorial tug.
“You need to take a bath, sweetie.”
“There was a bird that flew onto the balcony. It had orange on its head and a very, very big beak. This big.” She held out her hands in front of her nose.
“Sweetie, that’s great. I need to talk to Daddy a minute, okay? Let’s get you out of this wet swimming suit.” Her tone held just the faintest hint of criticism, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mac tense.
It eased something in her. She rested an open palm on her daughter’s shoulder.
“Come on, kiddo, I’ll start the water for you.” She moved toward the bathroom, Katie skipping next to her. “I’m going to show Daddy how hot to make the water, so he knows.”
She glanced back at Mac just in time to see his jaw tighten. After a beat, he followed.
“What’s going on?”
Mac followed her into the bedroom and closed the door partway. From the bathtub came the sounds of quiet splashing, Katie singing an off-key version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Grace could feel his eyes on her as she moved to the closet and pulled down her suitcase from the shelf.
“I have to go to Palm Springs and help Uncle Pete with something. Today’s Friday. Katie’s got Monday off—it’s a teacher planning day—she has to be back in San Diego for school Tuesday.”
“Katie stays here. You’re not taking her.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. A bold squaring off.
Her intestines felt spongy. “No. I know you need time with her.”
He crossed his arms loosely. He’d scuffed up his right hand somehow and the knuckles looked chapped. “I still want her Thanksgiving.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Now.”
The splashing stopped. “What?” Katie called.
Anger surged and spread through her body. Love was better, but this still had a warm glow to it. She shot Mac a look as she moved past him to the door.
“Everything’s fine, honey,” she called through the open door.
“I heard my name.”
“Daddy and I were just talking.”
“About what?” There was alarm in her voice and Grace went into the bathroom. A flotilla of rubber duckies bobbed in the water. A soap bubble bloomed on Katie’s shoulder, like a glittering corsage.
Grace sat on the edge of the tub and reached for the shampoo.
“About what a cool daughter we have.”
“You sounded mad.” Her eyes were dark and wide.
Grace massaged the shampoo into her scalp. “We’re fine.” She heard Mac come in behind her. “Aren’t we?”
“Absolutely.” His voice was a little too hearty.
“Lean back, honey, I’m going to rinse this off.”
Katie took a breath and held on to her nose and sank back into Grace’s hand. Katie’s hair floated in the water like a sea nymph’s, her lashes dark against her cheeks. Her head felt fragile in Grace’s hand, easily injured.
“You want me to—”
“Everything’s fine.”
He tried again. “But I could—”
“I’ll be right in, Mac, okay?” She lifted Katie up and squeezed out the water. She felt him moving away from the door, felt the absence of him.
“I held my breath.”
“I saw. When you’re done playing, I’ll rinse your hair again.”
Katie nodded, peering up at her uncertainly as if there was something that needed asking. That needed clearing up. That threatened world peace as she knew it.
“Okay,” she said finally.
Mac was leaning up against the door jamb, waiting for Grace when she got into the bedroom.
“She hears everything,” Grace said pleasantly, her voice low.
“I got that.” He smiled back pleasantly. “But let’s talk about you. What I especially liked was the bit about how hot to make the water. I think I can figure stuff like that out.”
Grace picked up a straw hat and a pair of espadrilles and carried them to the suitcase. She and Mac hadn’t danced this one before, but she remembered it from the times her parents did the steps.
“Go on, say the rest. The even-though-I’ve-never-had-the-chance-to part.”
He smiled. “Even-though-I’ve-never-had-the-chance-to.”
“Thanks to me,” she prompted. She lifted a clump of underpants and dumped them into the suitcase.
“Thanks to you. Here. Let me help you.”
“Gladly.” She was keeping her voice down, but it rang with hurt and her need to be right.
His eyes were bright with calculated interest. As if he’d waited a long time to play this game. As if he’d spent years studying the rule book. As if all bets were off.
He went to the set of drawers, yanked open the top one, and carried it over to the suitcase, upending the bras and tank tops into the suitcase, shaking the drawer hard.
“There. All set.” He tucked the drawer under his arm and carried it back to the dresser, shoving it back into the slot. “Anything else?”
“I’m good.” She unhooked a row of hangers and flung the shirts and pants in a clattering heap into the suitcase. “Ready to leave.”
“Works for me.”
The air left her body. A bullet of pain lodged in her belly. Not exactly a direct hit. He just needed more practice.
She was certain he’d been aiming for the heart.
She straightened. “I’ll be back in San Diego Monday night. Tuesday morning at the latest.” It sounded like a warning.
“Take your time.”
“You’re not keeping her.” It slipped out and the ferocity of it took her by surprise and made real the possibility of Katie leaving for good.
He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time and not quite liking it.
“Why are you doing this?” His voice was even. “She’s my daughter, too. Mine. And frankly, that’s all I’ve been thinking about. What you did. What it cost.”
She slipped the shirts and pants out of their hangers, one by one, not looking at him. The hangers were wooden, well made. She carried them back to the closet and hung them up. They clicked together. The only clothes that hung now were the dresses that belonged to Katie, a small bright row of pink and lime green, splashes of yellow and orange.
“Grace?”
“Don’t think I won’t be checking with the school, to make sure she gets there safely.”
“Nice.” He shoved past her into the hall.
“Okay, so it’s going to be really fun.” Grace cradled Katie in her lap as she dried her hair with a towel.
“Why are you going?” Katie sounded worried.
Grace kissed her. “Oh, honey, I have a couple of days of work to do, that’s all.”
“But I want you to stay.”
“I do, too, sweetie.”
“But Daddy’s going to be here, right?”
“Right here.”
“With me.”
“Every second.” Grace lifted Katie down from her lap. The towel had left a damp splotch on her shorts. “Okay, what do you want to wear? A sundress, shorts?”
“Do you like Daddy?”
The question caught her by surprise. She turned away from the closet. “Very much. Why?”
“I think shorts. Those pink ones.” Katie dropped the towel and scampered to the set of drawers. “And the pink underpants. Everything pink.”
From the back, she was golden except for the pale band where her bathing suit had been. “Does Daddy like you?” Her voice was muffled as she dug through her underpants and pulled out a pair.
“I hope so. Sure. Maybe. Probably. The main thing is, Daddy likes you. Lots. I’m going to get the lotion we use on your hair, so we see the curls.”
Grace went into the bathroom she shared with her daughter and stared at herself in the mirror. A woman she barely recognized stared back. Her eyes were dark, intense, her face looked hunted. She slicked on gloss, smacked her lips together, recurled her eyelashes and fringed on mascara, her mind blank, back on Katie’s question.
Does Daddy like you?
She found the hair conditioner and went back into the bedroom.
Katie lay sprawled on her stomach, next to the open suitcase, shorts and a ruffled top a pale pink against her glowing skin. “How am I getting home?”
Grace sat next to her and worked a dollop of conditioner into her hair. “I’m glad you got dressed. That’s good. You’ll fly with Daddy and then stay in his house.”
Katie yanked up her head in surprise and Grace gently tipped it forward again. “He has a house?”
“Daddy bought a place almost right next to ours, so you’ll spend Monday night there, and then I’ll pick you up after school Tuesday.”
“He lives in San Diego in Point Loma?” Her voice was astonished.
“Not too far away. He bought it when he found out about you. He wants very much to get to know you and be a real daddy.”
Katie sucked in a breath, her head still bent. Her curls were damp ringlets against her scalp. “He is a real daddy,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “He’s mine.”
Grace nodded. “Yes, honey. He is.” The bullet now was burrowing, worming its way up toward her heart. It was one of those time-release ones, guaranteed to keep chewing up her insides for some time to come. She wondered what it would take to get rid of it.
“All done.” She carried the conditioner into the bathroom, found what she was looking for and returned.
Katie sat with her knees up, her face down, protecting herself.
“Sunscreen.” Grace put it on the dresser. “Even if Daddy forgets. Don’t you forget.” The bottle was bright orange and had a cartoon of a fish on it.
“Mommy.” Katie’s voice was muffled, forced. “Did you just forget?”
“Forget.” Grace looked around the room, her eyes settling on the open suitcase, mentally reviewing the contents. It was a jumbled mess.
“I think I packed everything.” She closed the lid and zipped it. “If I forgot something, bring it back with you, okay?”
“No, silly, that I had a daddy.”
Katie raised her eyes and looked at her. Her eyes were wide, dark brown, fathomless.
Katie’s aim was much surer than Mac’s. It was a direct hit.
Grace felt the aftershock first, the trembling as her body braced for a blow that had already come, and then she felt the pain coursing through her. It was hot, electric, a wire that stung with recriminations and truth.
Grace had tried to leave Mac behind for good. What she hadn’t factored in was how much that decision would cost Katie.
“Am I interrupting something?” Mac stood in the doorway, a hopeful look on his face, the parent at the fence, the one on the outside.
There was a split second when Grace could have said something, fixed whatever it was between her and Katie, a single word and everything would have been okay, but in that blinding moment of time, Katie turned toward the sound of his voice. Grace had always reached out to Katie, instinctively, joyously, but now she stalled, free-falling, unable to move. She stared at Katie and for the first time felt the awkwardness of not reaching out, embracing her, and in that instant she lost her standing as a mother. Not with Katie, perhaps, but with herself.
“He’s here. That’s what I came to tell you.”
Katie turned to take a look out the window. Officer Epsten sat in an idling golf cart. Katie trotted for the door.
Grace made a small sound.
“Wait,” Mac said. “Give your mom a hug.”
Katie came limply into her arms, her body angled away. Grace felt an elbow. Katie squirmed free, leaving behind the familiar scents of new-mown grass and lemon.
Grace swallowed. She felt faint and afraid. “My cell doesn’t have an international connection. I’ll call you from a landline when I get in.”
“Sure,” Mac said, his hand touching Katie’s curls.
Grace walked the two of them out the wide door and to the golf cart. Mac stowed the suitcase in the back.
Epsten eased the cart forward along the bumpy path and Grace grabbed hold of the frame to steady herself, and by the time she angled her body around to take a look behind her, they were gone.
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