“Good.” Jo unfolded herself from the chair and stood. “It’s a date.”
5
Saturday morning dawned with blue skies, but soon clouds began rolling in. Gray and thick, they swirled andtwisted in the ever-rising wind. The temperature began to plummet, and by the time Katie left the house, she had towear a sweatshirt. The store was a little shy of two miles from her house, maybe half an hour’s walk at a steadypace, and she knew she’d have to hurry if she didn’t want to get caught in a storm.
She reached the main road just as she heard the thunder rumbling. She picked up the pace, feeling the airthickening around her. A truck sped past, leaving a blast of dust in its wake, and Katie moved onto the sandymedian. The air smelled of salt carried from the ocean. Above her, a red-tailed hawk floated intermittently onupdrafts, testing the force of the wind.
The steady rhythm of her footfalls set her mind adrift and she found herself reflecting on her conversation withJo. Not the stories she’d told, but some of the things Jo had said about Alex. Jo, she decided, didn’t know whatshe was talking about. While she was simply trying to make conversation, Jo had twisted her words intosomething that wasn’t quite true. Granted, Alex seemed like a nice guy, and as Jo said, Kristen was as sweet ascould be, but she wasn’t interestedin him. She barely knew him. Since Josh had fallen in the river, they hadn’tsaid more than a few words to each other, and the last thing she wanted was a relationship of any kind.
So why had it felt like Jo was trying to bring them together?
She wasn’t sure, but honestly, it didn’t matter. She was glad Jo was coming over tonight. Just a couple offriends, sharing some wine… it wasn’t that special, she knew. Other people, other women, did things like that allthe time. She wrinkled her brow. All right, maybe not allthe time, but most of them probably felt like they could doit if they wanted to, and she supposed that was the difference between her and them. How long had it been sinceshe’d done something that felt normal?
Since her childhood, she admitted. Since those days when she’d put pennies on the track. But she hadn’t beencompletely truthful with Jo. She hadn’t told her that she often went to the railroad tracks to escape the sound ofher parents arguing, their slurred voices raging at each other. She didn’t tell Jo that more than once, she’d beencaught in the crossfire, and that when she was twelve, she’d been hit with a snow globe that her father had thrownat her mother. It made a gash in her head that bled for hours, but neither her mom nor her dad had shown anyinclination to bring her to the hospital. She didn’t tell Jo that her dad was mean when he was drunk, or that she’dnever invited anyone, even Emily, over to her house, or that college hadn’t worked out because her parentsthought it was a waste of time and money. Or that they’d kicked her out of the house on the day she graduatedfrom high school.
Maybe, she thought, she’d tell Jo about those things. Or maybe she wouldn’t. It wasn’t all that important. Sowhat if she hadn’t had the best childhood? Yes, her parents were alcoholics and often unemployed, but asidefrom the snow-globe incident, they’d never hurt her. No, she didn’t get a car or have birthday parties, but she’dnever gone to bed hungry, either, and in the fall, no matter how tight things were, she always got new clothes forschool. Her dad might not have been the greatest, but he hadn’t snuck into her bedroom at night to do awfulthings, things she knew had happened to her friends. At eighteen, she didn’t consider herself scarred. A bitdisappointed about college, maybe, and nervous about having to make her own way in the world, but notdamaged beyond repair. And she’d made it. Atlantic City hadn’t been all bad. She’d met a couple of nice guys, andshe could remember more than one evening she spent laughing and talking with friends from work until the earlyhours of the morning.
No, she reminded herself, her childhood hadn’t defined her, or had anything to do with the real reason she’dcome to Southport. Even though Jo was the closest thing to a friend that she had in Southport, Jo knewabsolutely nothing about her. No one did.
“Hi, Miss Katie,” Kristen piped up from her little table. No dolls today. Instead, she was bent over a coloring book,holding crayons and working on a picture of unicorns and rainbows.
“Hi, Kristen. How are you?”
“I’m good.” She looked up from her coloring book. “Why do you always walk here?”
Katie paused, then came around the corner of the counter and squatted down to Kristen’s level. “Because Idon’t have a car.”
“Why not?”
Because I don’t have a license, Katie thought. And even if I did, I can’t afford a car. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll thinkabout getting one, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She held up the coloring book. “What do you think of my picture?”
“It’s pretty. You’re doing a great job.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll give it to you when I’m finished.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” she said with charming self-assurance. “But I want to. You can hang it on your refrigerator.”
Katie smiled and stood up. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
“Do you need help shopping?”
“I think I can handle it today. And that way, you can finish coloring.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
Retrieving a basket, she saw Alex approaching. He waved at her, and though it made no sense she had thefeeling that she was really seeing him for the first time. Though his hair was gray, there were only a few linesaround the corners of his eyes, but they added to, rather than detracted from, an overall sense of vitality. Hisshoulders tapered to a trim waist, and she had the impression that he was a man who neither ate nor drank toexcess.
“Hey, Katie. How are you?”
“I’m fine. And yourself?”
“Can’t complain.” He grinned. “I’m glad you came in. I wanted to show you something.” He pointed toward themonitor and she saw Josh sitting on the dock holding his fishing pole.
“You let him go back out there?” she asked.
“See the vest he’s wearing?”
She leaned closer, squinting. “A life jacket?”
“It took me awhile to find one that wasn’t too bulky, or too hot. But this one is perfect. And really, I had nochoice. You have no idea how miserable he was, not being able to fish. I can’t tell you how many times he beggedme to change my mind. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I thought this was a solution.”
“He’s okay with wearing it?”
“New rule—it’s either wear it, or don’t fish. But I don’t think he minds.”
“Does he ever catch any fish?”
“Not as many as he’d like, but, yes, he does.”
“Do you eat them?”
“Sometimes.” He nodded. “But Josh usually throws them back. He doesn’t mind catching the same fish overand over.”
“I’m glad you found a solution.”
“A better father probably would have figured it out beforehand.”
For the first time, she looked up at him. “I get the sense you’re a pretty good father.”
Their eyes held for a moment before she forced herself to turn away. Alex, sensing her discomfort, beganrummaging around behind the counter.
“I have something for you,” he said, pulling out a bag and placing it on the counter. “There’s a small farm Iwork with that has a hothouse, and they can grow things when other people can’t. They just dropped off somefresh vegetables yesterday. Tomatoes, cucumbers, some different kinds of squash. You might want to try themout. My wife swore they were the best she’d ever tasted.”
“Your wife?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I still do that sometimes. I meant my late wife. She passed away a couple ofyears ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her mind flashing back to her conversation with Jo.
What’s his story?
You should ask him, Jo had countered.
Jo had obviously known that his wife had died, but hadn’t said anything. Odd.
Alex didn’t notice that her mind had wandered. “Thank you,” he said, his voice subdued. “She was a greatAlex didn’t notice that her mind had wandered. “Thank you,” he said, his voice subdued. “She was a greatperson. You would have liked her.” A wistful expression crossed his face. “But anyway,” he finally added, “sheswore by the place. It’s organic, and the family still harvests by hand. Usually, the produce is gone within hours,but I set a little aside for you, in case you wanted to try some.” He smiled. “Besides, you’re a vegetarian, right? Avegetarian will appreciate these. I promise.”
She squinted up at him. “Why would you think I’m a vegetarian?”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Oh,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets. “My mistake.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been accused of worse.”
“I doubt that.”
Don’t , she thought to herself. “Okay.” She nodded. “I’ll take the vegetables. And thank you.”
6
As Katie shopped, Alex fiddled around the register, watching her from the corner of his eye. He straightened thecounter, checked on Josh, examined Kristen’s picture, and straightened the counter again, doing his best to seembusy.
She’d changed in recent weeks. She had the beginnings of a summer tan and her skin had a glowing freshnessto it. She was also growing less skittish around him, today being a prime example. No, they hadn’t set the world onfire with their scintillating conversation, but it was a start, right?
But the start of what?
From the very beginning, he’d sensed she was in trouble, and his instinctive response had been to want tohelp. And of course she was pretty, despite the bad haircut and plain-Jane attire. But it was seeing the way Katiehad comforted Kristen after Josh had fallen in the water that had really moved him. Even more affecting had beenKristen’s response to Katie. She had reached for Katie like a child reaching for her mother.
It had made his throat tighten, reminding him that as much as he missed having a wife, his children missedhaving a mother. He knew they were grieving, and he tried to make up for it as best he could, but it wasn’t until hesaw Katie and Kristen together that he realized that sadness was only part of what they were experiencing. Theirloneliness mirrored his own.
It troubled him that he hadn’t realized it before.
As for Katie, she was something of a mystery to him. There was a missing element somewhere, something thathad been gnawing at him. He watched her, wondering who she really was and what had brought her to Southport.
She was standing near one of the refrigerator cases, something she’d never done before, studying the itemsbehind the glass. She frowned, and as she was debating what to buy, he noticed the fingers of her right handtwisting around her left ring finger, toying with a ring that wasn’t there. The gesture triggered something bothfamiliar and long forgotten.
It was a habit, a tic he’d noticed during his years at CID and sometimes observed with women whose faceswere bruised and disfigured. They used to sit across from him, compulsively touching their rings, as though theywere shackles that bound them to their husbands. Usually, they denied that their husband had hit them, and in therare instances they admitted the truth, they usually insisted it wasn’t his fault; that they’d provoked him. They’dtell him that they’d burned dinner or hadn’t done the wash or that he’d been drinking. And always, always, thesesame women would swear that it was the first time it had ever happened, and tell him that they didn’t want to presscharges because his career would be ruined. Everyone knew the army came down hard on abusive husbands.
Some were different, though—at least in the beginning—and insisted that they wanted to press charges. Hewould start the report and listen as they questioned why paperwork was more important than making an arrest.
Than enforcing the law. He would write up the report anyway and read their own words back to them beforeasking them to sign it. It was then, sometimes, that their bravado would fail, and he’d catch a glimpse of theterrified woman beneath the angry surface. Many would end up not signing it, and even those who did wouldquickly change their minds when their husbands were brought in. Those cases went forward, no matter what thewoman decided. But later, when a wife wouldn’t testify, little punishment was meted out. Alex came to understandthat only those who pressed charges ever became truly free, because the life they were leading was a prison,even if most of them wouldn’t admit it.
Still, there was another way to escape the horror of their lives, though in all his years he’d come across onlyone who actually did it. He’d interviewed the woman once and she’d taken the usual route of denial and self-blame. But a couple of months later, he’d learned that she’d fled. Not to her family and not to her friends, butsomewhere else, a place where even her husband couldn’t find her. Her husband, lost in his fury that his wife hadleft, had exploded after a long night of drinking and had bloodied an MP. He ended up in Leavenworth, and Alexremembered grinning in satisfaction when he’d heard the news. And when thinking of the man’s wife, he smiled,thinking, Good for you .
Now, as he watched Katie toying with a ring that wasn’t there, he felt his old investigative instincts kick in.
There’d been a husband, he thought; her husband was the missing element. Either she was still married or shewasn’t, but he had an undeniable hunch that Katie was still afraid of him.
The sky exploded while she was reaching for a box of crackers. Lightning flashed, and a few seconds laterthunder crackled before finally settling into a loud, angry rumble. Josh dashed inside right before the downpourstarted, clutching his tackle box and fishing reel as he entered the store. His face was red and he was panting likea runner crossing the finish line.