“He still smells her there,” Lacey said.
The dog looked back at his owner uncertainly.
Clay whispered something to the woman. “Go find!” the woman called, and the dog continued his hunt, barking when he found the right crate, struggling to sit still as he waited for his playmate to come out of the box.
Rick tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “Speaking of scents,” he said, “what did you say Gina’s fixing for dinner?”
The exotic scent of Gina’s cooking had made its way out into the yard.
“Aloo gobi and biryani,” Lacey said. “She’s a fabulous Indian cook.” She and Clay had never eaten Indian food before Gina’s arrival, but she’d gotten them hooked on it.
“It smells incredible,” he said. His hand crept up her back to her neck and he kneaded the muscles there, and she did her best to prevent them from tightening under his touch.
Over dinner Mackenzie was full of questions about training dogs for search-and-rescue work. There was an electric charge in the air that everyone except Mackenzie seemed to be aware of. She was talking. She was engaged. She was even eating aloo gobi without protest. Bobby caught Lacey’s eyes across the table and raised his eyebrows at her, smiling, nodding his head in Mackenzie’s direction. She smiled back, holding his gaze as long as she dared.
She shifted her eyes to Rick. Rani sat in her high chair between Gina and Rick and had somehow managed to stick some rice onto Rick’s hair when Gina wasn’t looking. Rani giggled, and Rick played along, asking her what she was giggling at, which only made her giggle harder.
“I have a dog coming tomorrow afternoon that’s just starting her wilderness training,” Clay said to Mackenzie. “Would you be comfortable going into the woods to hide?”
“Sure,” she said, a forkful of biryani halfway to her mouth. “As long as it’s not dark. Would I be standing behind a tree or what?”
“There are plenty of places to hide in the woods,” Clay said. “I dragged in huge boards and some chunks of concrete, and there are fallen trees to hide behind. But you might want to take a book or something with you. It can get pretty boring while you wait for the dog to find you.”
“I’ll take my cell phone.”
“Well, that won’t work,” Clay said.
“Oh, yeah. The dog would hear me.” Mackenzie slipped the biryani into her mouth and swallowed. “I can text message, though, right?” she asked.
“As long as the phone doesn’t beep or make any sounds, that would be fine.”
“Sweet,” Mackenzie said, then she set down her fork. “Can I be excused, please?” She looked at Lacey, who suddenly felt like her keeper. “I want to check my e-mail. I can dry the dishes and sweep the floor after, all right?”
“Sure,” Lacey said.
Mackenzie got up from her seat and had nearly left the kitchen when she remembered her plate. Coming back to the table, she picked it up, along with her milk glass, and carried them both to the sink. “That was good, Gina,” she said as she headed for the stairs.
“Wow,” Lacey said to Clay when Mackenzie was out of earshot. “I guess you found the key to her heart.”
Clay shrugged. “She’s a natural. She has good instincts with dogs, and the dogs pick that up.”
“It was obvious how much she loved working with that retriever,” Rick said.
“I was watching from the sunroom,” Bobby said. “She was having a blast out there.”
So he had been watching. Had he noticed Rick’s hand on her back, and hers on his thigh? And so what if he had?
“You know—” Rick patted his lips with his napkin and shifted in his seat “—I’ve mentioned this to Lacey, but I’ll tell you, too, Clay. If you or your father want any help preparing for the parole hearing, let me know. I’d be happy to take a look at your victim’s impact statements for you.”
Lacey wanted to groan. She supposed Rick saw this topic as his one inroad with not only her, but her family, as well.
“Thanks,” Clay said, “but my dad and I have already turned ours in to the attorney we’re working with. We’re waiting for a few more statements from people in the community. But the main holdout is Slowpoke O’Neill, here.” He kicked Lacey lightly under the table. “Maybe you can influence her to speed it up.”
Lacey sighed, pushing her empty plate a few inches toward the center of the table. “I’m trying,” she said, annoyed with both Rick and her brother. “I’m just a bad writer.”
“I doubt the quality of the writing matters,” Gina said. She’d gotten to her feet and was wiping Rani’s grimy little face with a washcloth.
“Yours counts the most, kiddo,” Clay added. “You know that.”
“Maybe with all the other statements you’re getting, hers won’t be necessary,” Rick said. Surprised, she looked across the table at him and thought she saw sympathy in his eyes. He may not be doing much to increase her physical desire for him, but he was certainly working his way into her heart.
“Wishful thinking, Rick,” Clay said. “Our attorney said we could forget all the rest of them if we had a good one from Lacey. Hers is critical.”
Rick looked directly at her. “Maybe you’re having trouble writing it because you have ambivalent feelings about keeping a guy in prison when he’s made amends,” he said.
“I’m not ambivalent,” she said, wanting to put an end to the conversation. “I’m just a pathetic writer. Maybe I’ll work on it tonight.”
After Rick and Bobby left the house, Lacey went upstairs and knocked on Mackenzie’s closed bedroom door.
“Come in,” the girl said. She was sitting at her computer, as usual, both hands on the keyboard.
Lacey leaned against the doorjamb. “I didn’t know how to type until I was in high school,” she said.
“Mom taught me when I was little.” Mackenzie’s fingers tapped quickly on the keys.
“You had a great time with Clay and the dog today, huh?”
“It was okay.” Mackenzie kept her eyes on the screen. She wasn’t going to give Lacey an inch. The enthusiasm she’d shown at the dinner table seemed to disintegrate now that Lacey was her only audience.
“Well, have a good night,” Lacey said, giving up. She backed out of the room, and then, because she could think of nothing else to say, added, “Don’t stay up too late.”
She closed the door, imagining Mackenzie’s fingers flying across the keyboard as she typed e-mail to her friends: My jailer just told me not to stay up too late. She’s such a loser.
In her room, she pulled a notepad from her desk and sat on her bed, her back propped up against the pillows.
I miss my mother very much, she wrote. Was that the truth? She missed the Annie O’Neill she had once known, but not the Annie who had lived a secret, shameful life. She should focus on the mother she had known her to be. Before the revelation. She set her pen to the paper again. She was the sort of mother that was a friend to all my friends. Everyone loved coming to my house. She baked and sang and was a very creative artist. She was good to everyone. Good to sailors and fishermen and tourists and—
What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she stay on track? Why couldn’t she get this stupid thing written?
She got up and pulled out the photograph album from her bookshelf. She turned to the picture of her mother, a miniature of the one in her studio.
“How could you?” she asked in a whisper. “I thought you were so wonderful. I loved it when they called you Saint Anne. How could you do that to Dad? How could you do that to us?” She took the picture and tore it end to end, then side to side. Then she tore the pieces again. “I don’t want to be like you, Mom,” she said. “I don’t ever want to be like you.”
CHAPTER 29
Mackenzie could not possibly be his daughter. If Bobby had had any doubts, they were erased now as she sat in the sunroom with him, trying to draw a picture of a dog from a photograph in a magazine. Artistic talent ran in his family as surely as alcoholism did, and this
child had absolutely none.
She’d wanted an art lesson, and he loved that she’d asked him to give her one. But her dog looked more like a rabbit. It was hard for him not to laugh. She was only eleven. Maybe he’d been as clumsy with a pencil at that age, but he didn’t think so.
“I’m not too good at this,” she said sullenly. She sat at the other worktable in the sunroom, which he had carefully cleared of the glass Lacey was cutting for her work in progress. Mackenzie’s stubby nails were painted an almost nauseating fuchsia, and at her request, he had added a small, delicate sunflower to the nail of her ring finger. Every few minutes he’d catch her lifting her hand to admire his artwork.
“I think you’re trying too hard,” he said, looking up from the scrimshaw belt buckle. He was using a fine blade to cut fur lines onto one of the dogs in the illustration, a task that would have been impossible without the sunlight that filled the room. The light came with a price, though: heat. He’d opened all the windows, but the thick, clammy air worked its way into every corner of the room, putting waves of dampness into Mackenzie’s drawing paper. “Loosen up a little,” he said to her. “You don’t need all the details. Start with just getting the basic shape down.”
She shook her head, leaning away from the table. “I think I’m giving up,” she said.
He smiled. “You can’t be good at everything.” He ran a hand over his scalp, a habit he’d developed when he’d had hair to run his fingers through. It still surprised him sometimes to feel nothing there. “Look at how much skill you have with animals,” he said. “With dogs. They love you. Clay said you could be a trainer yourself someday.” He hadn’t seen much of Clay and Gina since his arrival in the Outer Banks; dinner the night before had been the first quality time he’d spent with them. Clay had looked familiar to him. Bobby couldn’t recall meeting him during the summer of ’91, but perhaps he had. He was grateful for the way Clay had taken Mackenzie under his wing.
“I’d like to be a vet,” Mackenzie said, holding her ring finger up to study the sunflower. “Clay’s father is a vet.”
And so is Lacey’s, he thought. He knew how much it bothered Lacey that Mackenzie simply would not connect with her, and he felt sorry for her. The harder Lacey tried, the more she failed.
“He’s Lacey’s father, too,” he said. “Maybe she could take you to his office for a visit sometime.”
Mackenzie shrugged, tapping her fuchsia fingertips on the photograph of the dog.
“I could see you as a vet,” he said, not wanting to lose the momentum of the conversation. “How are you in math?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “I’m even better in science.” Then she let out a great, dramatic groan and flopped her head and arms down on the worktable. “I can’t believe I have to start school in three weeks. August eighteenth! That is so crazy. In Phoenix I wouldn’t have to start until after Labor Day.”
He set down the blade he was using. It was always dangerous to try to make exacting cuts in the ivory when he could not give it his full concentration. “Are you scared about going to a new school?” he asked.
“No. Just pissed.”
Of course she was scared. Who wouldn’t be?
“The kids around here are really nice,” he said.
“How would you know? You’re not from here, either.”
“But that’s just the way it is here,” he said. “People are friendly.”
“All the kids are going to know each other, though.”
“I bet there’ll be other new kids.” He swiveled his chair to face her directly. “People move here all the time. And even if you’re the only one, you’ll fit in fine. Just one warning.”
She looked a bit alarmed. “What?”
“You have to stop saying ‘in Phoenix this’ and ‘in Phoenix that.’ It drives people crazy and they’ll talk about you behind your back.”
“I can’t help it if Phoenix is so much better than this place.”
“When I was a kid,” Bobby said, “my family moved from Norfolk to Richmond, and I fell into that trap. I was always saying, ‘in Norfolk our school was newer,’ ‘in Norfolk we had pizza in the cafeteria,’ and pretty soon people starting answering me with ‘so go back to Norfolk then.’”
Mackenzie laughed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try not to say it.”
“Bite your tongue when the word ‘Phoenix’ comes into your mind.”
“Okay.”
He heard the back screen door slam shut and knew that Lacey was home. So did Mackenzie, apparently, because she suddenly became engrossed in the drawing of the dog once again.
Lacey walked into the sunroom, instantly filling the room with her presence, at least in his mind if not in Mackenzie’s. Her hair was pulled back by a black scrunchie and her fair, freckled skin glistened from the heat. She had on a long, light blue wraparound skirt that hugged her hips and a cropped navy blue top that suggested, but did not flaunt, the curve of her breasts. Since the moment he’d arrived in Kiss River, he’d wanted to kiss her, to take off whatever clothing she had on and make love to her. He wanted to undo the sloppy way he’d taken her virginity from her. It would be so much better now, when his desire for her body was both tamed and heightened by his affection for her. He liked her gentle way with people, he admired her artistic talent and the sympathy he felt over her struggle with Mackenzie ran deep.
“Hi, you two,” Lacey said. “How’s the art lesson going?”
“Great,” Bobby said quickly before Mackenzie could deny it. She was leaning over her drawing, moving her pencil around on the page as though she were focussing on the work. “I hope you don’t mind that we appropriated your table.”
“No problem at all.” Lacey looked at Mackenzie. “Can I see what you’re working on?” she asked.
Mackenzie answered her by turning her drawing face-side down on the table. “I think Bobby should live here instead of at Rick’s,” she said out of the blue. “He’s here all the time, anyway.”
He was both surprised and touched by the suggestion. “I have a perfectly good room at Rick’s,” he said. It would be harder for him to see Elise if he lived in the keeper’s house, yet the idea was seductive.
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.” Lacey leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her chest. “It really would make sense for you to be here,” she said to him. “Your work is here. Mackenzie’s here. We have a big pot of coffee brewing every morning.” She smiled, as if that would be the one enticement sure to win him over. “Why don’t you consider it?”
“I’d love it,” he said, forgetting about Elise for the moment. He liked the idea of being closer to Mackenzie. And, if he was being honest with himself, he liked the idea of being closer to Lacey, as well. “How soon can I move in?”
CHAPTER 30
Faye lay nestled in Jim’s arms. He’d been in a wonderful, generous mood tonight, and the lovemaking had been so tender it had made her cry. Now she felt content. Her body was heavy from the warmth of the hot tub and there was an undeniable bliss inside her she had never expected to feel. In her chronic pain program, one of the tenets she emphasized was that peace and happiness could only be found inside oneself, that perfect health or a million dollars or another person could never have the power to make someone happy or unhappy. She was beginning to wonder if her theory might be wrong about the “other person” part of that equation. Having someone special in your life certainly didn’t hurt.
She felt Jim press his lips to her temple. “I know something you don’t know,” he said, sounding like a little boy with a secret.
The childish taunt intrigued her. “What?” she asked.
“Can’t tell.”
Gently, she pounded her fist against his chest. “That is so mean of you.”
“Yes, you’re right. But I’m still not going to tell you.”
“Well,” she said, “can I assume it’s something good?”
“You can assume anything you like.”
&n
bsp; “When will you tell me?”
“Tomorrow.”
“First thing in the morning?”
“I don’t think so.” If she were not in love with him, she would be getting angry. Instead, she laughed.
“When then?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Jim!”
He laughed. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
She wanted to press him for more information, but he stopped her questioning with a kiss.
The following morning, she was sitting in on a pain management class, evaluating the young nurse who was teaching it, when Judy poked her head in the door and motioned for her to come into the hallway. Quietly, Faye left the classroom.
“You have a call,” Judy said.
“It couldn’t wait?” Faye was surprised that Judy would drag her out of the classroom, since the physical therapist certainly knew how critical a thorough evaluation could be for the nurse’s advancement.
“They said it was important,” Judy said. “Sorry.”
Faye walked down the hallway to her office and lifted the phone from her desk. “Faye Collier.” She hoped her annoyance wasn’t evident in her voice.
“Hello, Ms. Collier,” a woman said. “My name is Sharon Casey and I’m president of the San Diego County Nurses Association.”
The woman’s name was familiar. “Yes,” she said, “I recognize your name. What can I do for you?”
“Not a thing,” the woman said. “I’m calling to tell you that you are the recipient of the Nurse of the Year award for San Diego County.”
Faye was quiet as the news sank in. “I am?” she asked, incredulous.
“Many doctors and several nurses submitted your name for your work with chronic pain. I’ve read your new book. It’s rare to read something that can speak to both the professional and the lay person so beautifully. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She lowered herself to the chair behind her desk, smiling now. “I don’t know what to say. I’m just amazed and…and thrilled.” She knew this had to be what Jim had teased her about the night before. Somehow, he’d been privy to the information.