Authors: Sandra Steffen
“I was referring to Henry and Anna and Karl.”
“It reaches all the way to us, Caroline, and you know it. I’m not surprised Vickie befriended you. She’s like that. I fell for her hard myself. We were married for eleven years. She ended it because she just plain didn’t love me, and never had.”
“I think it goes deeper than that, Shane. I think there’s something in herself she doesn’t love.”
They were standing at her door, her key in her hand.
“You’re the first woman I’ve wanted to be with since Vickie.”
The declaration stunned her, but only for a moment. “In four years?” she asked.
“I wasn’t kidding about monkdom.”
Heaven help her, but she smiled.
“I don’t take sex lightly, Caroline. If you invite me in, it’s because it means something.”
What he meant was that if she invited him in, it would be because
he
meant something. To her. And vice versa.
Despite her legal background and her courtroom training, her communication skills deserted her. She had the presence of mind to unlock the door, though. Evidently, it was all the invitation he needed.
He didn’t kiss her until they reached her bedroom, and then only for a moment. She dispensed with the buttons on his shirt as quickly as he dispensed with hers. He took over from there—his shoes and jeans went next. He barely waited for her to shimmy out of her slacks and kick off her sandals before lowering her to the bed.
Caroline could count on one hand the men she’d been with. In her experience, the first time was always slightly awkward. Her experience hadn’t prepared her for Shane, whose pleasure was pure, his enjoyment a crescendo of the
senses, of touch and sound and instinct. Their lovemaking was unrehearsed, uninhibited, undeniably unrestrained. At the heart of it all, he was careful, mindful of her condition.
Afterward, he rested his cheek on her belly. It was an act of reverence, of tenderness, and it touched her even more than the sex had.
The baby rolled beneath his cheek. Shane lifted his head. “He just kicked me.”
Their gazes met. “I’ll bet it’s been a while since you’ve felt that, huh?” she asked.
He nodded. “You’re worried about what Vickie will say about this, aren’t you? Don’t be. I’ll tell her.”
Her fingers splayed through his hair. “I should be the one to tell her, Shane.”
There was no turning back now.
A week later, Caroline was opening the first carton of Karl’s books. Shane placed the last box on the floor in her new suite of offices, pausing to say, “Have you seen Tori, yet?”
She shook her head. “An entire week, and I haven’t had a moment alone with her. Every time I call her she’s either going to a closing or getting ready to show a house.”
She picked up a certificate in a black frame. Looking at the four walls, she carried it to a waiting nail. She’d just received
notification that she’d successfully waived into the Michigan State Bar Association. She would be ready to see clients soon. “What’s a law practice without books?” Shane had asked when he’d shown up with Karl’s collection.
“What a gift, Shane. Thank you.”
She was the gift.
He and Vickie had just had a hell of a row at the marina. After she left, he’d thrown every wrench he owned. He wouldn’t have let it get to him if it were just a matter of her pushing his buttons. This was about Andy. He and Vickie never saw eye-to-eye when it came to their son. Shane had needed to go for a spin on the lake or better yet, take a dive off the cliffs. He’d had to settle for a drive in his Shelby. He’d headed for the open road. Somehow he’d ended up at Caroline’s office downtown.
She wore a simple summer dress and shoes he hadn’t seen before. The woman must own a hundred different pairs of shoes. He used to tell himself he’d never get tangled up with a high-maintenance woman again. It wasn’t high or low maintenance that made him keep coming back to Caroline. He’d spent five minutes in her presence this evening, and already he could feel the tension draining out of him. It was the same whenever he saw her. Every time her eyes rested on him, he felt the pull, the draw, the age-old lure of a man to a woman. He wanted her. It was that simple.
He hadn’t had this much sex since—he couldn’t remember if he’d ever had this much sex. He might have chalked it up to making up for lost time, except he didn’t want just sex. He wanted Caroline. While he was at it, he wanted to ease the worry lines in her forehead.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.
“I have a parenting class. Afterward, I’m going to talk to Tori if I have to tie her to a chair. Now go on,” she said. But she smiled. “Get out of here. I’d just as soon she didn’t see us together until after I’ve talked to her.”
“We’re not doing anything wrong, Caroline.”
Caroline told herself the same thing fifty times a day. Legally, it was the truth. Morally, and ethically, too. But it wasn’t really about Caroline and Shane. Most people believed Tori was hard as nails. She wasn’t. There was a place inside her that wasn’t hard at all.
“All right,” he said, finally getting the message. “Go ahead and tell her. I’ll stop over later.”
“You’d better let me call you. This could take a while.” Caroline had been rehearsing her speech for days. And she still wasn’t sure what she would say. Whatever she said, she would do it as soon as her birthing class was over.
Tori’s
mind had been miles away all evening. Caroline wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. Several of the expectant mothers and a few of the fathers had asked if she was all right.
“What’s going on?” Caroline whispered during break.
“It’s Andy.”
“Do you need to leave?”
Tori shook her head.
Tonight’s class dealt with delivery by cesarean section and other high-risk birth situations. Those scenarios scared Caroline. This was her one chance at motherhood. Unlike some of the other mothers who complained about swollen ankles and stretch marks and just wanted the whole process to be over with, Caroline was enjoying being pregnant. She ate right, exercised and rested. Last night she and Shane had spent an hour lying on her bed, watching her belly shift as her baby stretched and rolled and kicked from within.
Caroline had seen the midwife again this morning.
Alice Cavanaugh had drawn more blood, as a precautionary measure, she’d assured Caroline. “Everything’s going according to schedule,” the other woman had said.
Caroline paid close attention to this evening’s lecture. Tori didn’t pay attention at all. Caroline wondered if she suspected, then told herself that was absurd. If Tori
had
suspected, she would have been sarcastic, perhaps even snide, but she wouldn’t have been quiet.
They had tentative plans to go to the movies with Nell, Elaine and their girls after class. Caroline doubted that would happen once Tori had been told. “What time does the movie start?” she asked.
“Eight-fifteen.”
That left them half an hour to talk. “Let’s go someplace to talk. Are you familiar with the park at the mouth of Oval Lake channel?”
“Are you kidding? Houses around it are prime real estate.”
Caroline wondered if it would be better to blurt it out right here. But Tori was already leaving the building, heading for her car.
Riding along, Caroline looked at Tori’s profile. Normally, Victoria Young was the one offering advice or making pointed comments designed to draw a smirk or a smile. She was doing neither tonight.
Since discovering those newspaper clipping two weeks
ago, a change had come over Caroline. Certainly part of it had to do with the knowledge that Karl had known he’d had a daughter, and eventually a granddaughter. He’d known love, honest work, friendship and contentment in his life. For the first time in her life, Caroline knew the feeling. In less than three months, her baby would arrive. It was hard to believe how much her life had changed since her child’s conception.
She took a seat in an Adirondack chair beneath an old hickory tree. After Tori sat, too, Caroline looked up into the canopy. “Before I moved here, I wouldn’t have known this was a hickory tree. One day I struck up a conversation with an old man who always throws his dog a stick. He told me his father planted this very tree when he was a young boy. You’ll recognize the old man if he comes by, because he always wears black socks with his Nikes.”
Tori stared straight ahead. “No one ever really knows what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.”
Caroline didn’t know where that had come from, but it was the perfect opening. “I want to talk to you about that.”
“I blew it,” Tori said as if she hadn’t heard.
“You. What?”
“Did I ever tell you I only gained nineteen pounds during my pregnancy?” Tori asked.
“I think you did, but Tori, I—”
“I wore my regular jeans home from the hospital. Not that my body will ever be the same. I was in labor for thirty-two hours. The epidural didn’t work. I thought I was going to die.”
Treading lightly, Caroline said, “Was it worth it, Tori?”
Tori got a look in her eyes Caroline had never seen. “It was the best thing I’ve ever done. There’s no one on earth as strong as a woman giving birth. You know what you have to do and you do it.” Her voice changed slightly, deepening as if she might cry. “I’d give anything to be that strong, that sure where Andy’s concerned again.”
Caroline was getting a really bad feeling. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“When Andy was small, Shane and I used to take him over to the lighthouse. There’s this huge outcropping of rocks there. Andy and his best friend used to pretend it was a giant turned to stone by its enemies. They made magic potions out of crushed shells and weeds and lake water. Shane would get us close in the boat, and the boys would fling the concoction at the rocks. By then, they believed it contained the secret ingredient that would awaken the sleeping beast. Now Andy looks at me as if I’m the monster.”
Caroline still didn’t understand whatever was at the root of the problems between Tori and Andy.
“He used to love me. He used to adore me. Even after the divorce, we got along so well. This afternoon he told me he hates me.”
Caroline closed her eyes for a moment. “People say things in anger they don’t mean.”
“He meant it. He’s hated me for a while. Two years to be exact.”
“I can’t imagine anyone hating you.” She doubted Tori heard.
“Shane believes time heals. How does time heal blame?”
“Blame?” Caroline asked.
Tori stared straight ahead. “It was windy that day. I shouldn’t have let the boys go sailing. They’d taken boating safety courses, and they’d sailed dozens of times. That day I had a bad feeling. I shouldn’t have let them go.”
Part of Caroline didn’t want to ask. “What happened that day?”
“There was an accident. Brian went overboard.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It couldn’t have been.” Caroline’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
“Did I ever tell you Andy’s best friend’s name was Brian Kerrigan? He and Andy were inseparable. They were best friends, but they were closer than brothers. They did everything together, and that day, they wanted to go sailing.
I always made sure Andy took his cell phone with him. He tried to call me.”
Caroline felt her heart constrict. She’d heard this story. Not this version, exactly, but the same set of circumstances. Two best friends had gone sailing. Only one of them returned.
How could she tell Tori that now?
“Andy was frantic. God. He was barely thirteen. He went in after Brian. But Brian had gone under and Andy couldn’t find him. He swam back to the boat and he called me. Me. He dialed my number because he didn’t know what else to do.”
“There isn’t a word in the English language powerful enough to convey how horrible that must have been for you, for all of you, Tori.”
Again, it was as if Tori hadn’t heard. Staring straight ahead at the current flowing gently along the channel, she said, “I heard my cell phone ringing.”
Tori became quiet. Too quiet.
“And?” Caroline asked. “You didn’t answer?”
Her laugh filled with self-derision, Tori said, “I was a little busy.”
Caroline knew it was too late to turn back now. Bad feeling or not, she said, “In what way?”
“I was having mind-altering sex.”
“You mean you and Shane?”
“No. We were divorced by then. It was just some man I’d been seeing. I figured I’d get the message and return the call when we were finished, you know? Andy left me a voice mail. I’ll never forget my baby’s message. He was sobbing and panicked. He’d just seen his best friend drown. He needed his mother. Can you imagine how he must have felt, sailing that boat back to shore? Alone?” Tori’s voice rose to near-hysteria. “And I didn’t take the call until, well, you can imagine.” Finally, she turned and looked at Caroline. “I wasn’t there when he needed me.”
“You’ve been there every day since.”
“Obviously, that’s not enough, is it?” She looked at the water again. “I think he figured out what I was doing. Who I was with. He hates me. And do you know what, Caroline? I don’t blame him.”
“My God.” Caroline didn’t know what else to say.
Everyone makes mistakes
seemed too simple;
it’ll all work out
seemed terribly naive. “Don’t a lot of teenagers say things like that?”
“It was a first for Andy.”
Caroline felt a little like she did when she agreed to take a difficult case. She had to sort through everything that had been said, and in the process try to discern what hadn’t been said. “Do you have any idea what instigated his outburst tonight?” she asked quietly.
Instead of replying, Tori stood. “I have to go.”
“Tori, wait.”
“I can’t. Do you need a lift back to the summerhouse?”
“I can walk, but Tori—”
Tori was already hurrying away.
“Where are you going?” Caroline asked, rising, too.
“To find Andy. I’ve been pushing and pushing and pushing him to make new friends. I’m only pushing him away. I have to tell him I was wrong. Two years ago. And this summer.”
“I’ll go with you,” Caroline said.
Tori shook her head. In that instant she looked far older than thirty-seven. “I have to do this alone.”
“All right, Tori. I’ll call Pattie, Nell and Elaine. We’ll be at my place. Call any one of us if you need anything. We’ll be waiting.”
Tori left. And Caroline was left sitting under the hundred-year-old Hickory Tree, thinking it had all been too easy, her friendships, her relationship with Shane, her new life.
Tori was wounded so deeply, Caroline couldn’t even imagine how she would feel when she learned about this relationship between Caroline and Shane. What were the chances her first friend in Harbor Woods would turn out to have once been married to the man Caroline had fallen in love with? What were the chances she would have become
pregnant in the first place? Or that she would discover the clues that would bring her here? What were the chances Henry O’Shaughnessy’s death would stir up so many questions, or that the answers would be so far-reaching?
Tori still didn’t know the half of it. Caroline never should have slept with Shane until she’d talked to Tori. Shane would have waited. That entire family was hurting, and Caroline was only making things worse.
Could she be any worse at relationships?
Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she walked home. She waited until she got there to call her friends. Pattie’s husband Dave said she’d already left for the movies. She called both Pattie’s and Nell’s cell phones, and left a message on each of them. Elaine wasn’t home, either.
Caroline paced as she waited.
It was liable to be a long night.
Shane was watching television in the dark when the knock sounded on the cruiser’s hull.
“It’s me, Shane. Dan Mitchell.”
There were several reasons the local sheriff might pay him an unannounced visit after midnight. Every one of them scared the spit out of Shane.
He was up on deck before Dan finished coming aboard.
“It’s Andy.” By the time Dan said, “He’s all right, or at
least he’s going to be,” a hole had blown through Shane’s left ventricle.
Okay. Andy was going to be all right. Breathe.
Damn.
Shane ran his hands down his chest, settling them on the waistband of his jeans. The sheriff was here. And Andy was going to be all right. What did that mean? Andy was in jail? No. Juvie? Impossible. He rarely went out.
“Where is he?”
“He’s at the hospital getting stitched up.”
Shane started for the pier, only to stop and backtrack for his shirt and shoes.
“Shane, wait.”
Something in Dan’s tone sent another kind of fear through Shane. Dan wasn’t in uniform. Balding now, he’d thrown on some clothes haphazardly. They’d been on the same baseball team when they were kids. They’d attended each other’s weddings and had gone fishing in the old days. The Mitchells held a barbecue every summer. Shane, Vickie and Andy used to go every year. After Shane’s divorce, Dan and Sharon both assured him nothing would change. But everything always changed.
It had been Dan who’d come to the marina the day they’d found Brian. He was a decent man, and a good sheriff, which was why, when he told Shane to wait, Shane waited.
“There was an accident,” Dan said, running a hand down his fleshy face. “A car accident.”
“Andy was involved in a car accident? With Vickie?”
“No.”
“A pedestrian accident? Someone hit him?”
“Apparently he was driving.”
The right ventricle blew. Shane staggered. “Andy hasn’t taken driver’s ed. He’s barely fifteen. He doesn’t have his driver’s license.”
“Yes, we know. One of my deputies is waiting to talk to him right now. Off the record, if he were my son, I’d call an attorney.”
The horrors just kept coming. Through it all, Shane heard himself say, “Was he alone?”
Dan shook his head.
Shane didn’t recognize his own voice as he said, “Are the others—”
“They were alive. The last I knew.”
Later, Shane wouldn’t recall the drive to the hospital. He arrived fully clothed, so he must have gone below for his shirt and shoes. He was a mile away from his destination before he remembered Dan’s advice regarding an attorney. By rote, he took out his cell phone and punched in Caroline’s number.
She answered on the first ring.
“It’s Shane. Are you still out with your friends?”
“No.” Caroline had been pacing. Tori hadn’t returned her calls. Elaine, Nell and Pattie hadn’t heard from her, either. Caroline was feeling frantic.
“Can you come to the hospital?”
A dozen scenarios flashed through her head. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“It’s not me. It’s Andy. He’s in trouble, Caroline.”
In the background she heard a voice over the intercom calling some doctor to E.R. “Which hospital?” Caroline asked.
“County Memorial. In Charlevoix.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The call was disconnected.
Caroline stopped, her feet rooted in place. The night just kept getting worse.
Thankfully, her professional demeanor kicked in. She located her keys and started her car on the first try. She drove within the speed limit. Barely. When her phone rang again, she placed it to her ear and calmly said, “Yes?”
“Caroline, there are eight voice mails from you.”
“Tori?” It didn’t sound like Tori.
“Yeah, it’s me. Is everything all right with the baby?”