In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... (19 page)

Thomas gripped his hair. “Do you two think that you’re the only two in mourning right now?”

Realizing that a line had been crossed, Heather raised her hand. “Thomas, honey, I think they understand that it’s been difficult for us all.”

“But Heather,” he argued back, “this is ridiculous. How are we
, as a family, going to heal and move on if we don’t accept it?”

Wren
angrily stood. “Move on? Really? You’re accusing us of holding on too long when obviously, you’ve let go too easy.”

He moved towards her but his wife stood in his path.

“I think we’re all getting a bit too heated here,” she warned. “We’re saying things that we’ll regret later, and I know that we’re not really angry at each other.”

Wren reclaimed her seat next to Jay in the sofa and Thomas dropped down in the loveseat. He was angry—angrier than he’d ever been in his life. Yet, he wasn’t angry at his children. He was
angry at himself. He’d had no idea that Larke had gone on any type of vacation out of the country. She used to tell them everything, but over the past couple of years, her communication with them had dwindled.

He was angry that he hadn’t made a fuss of it and picked up the phone a few more t
imes to talk to his daughter, or make the trip out to see her. In such a short time, he was already starting to forget the last time he heard her hearty laugh. He was also beginning to forget the subtle nuances of her face and spent several minutes staring at both his and his wife’s image in the mirror to piece her back together. How had nearly a year passed since he’d last seen his daughter? Had he just gotten comfortable with the fact that she would show up during the holidays, spend a few days during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that would be enough for him? When did he become the kind of father that stopped trying?

He examined his children. Jay was turning into a man right before his eyes at the tender age of seventeen. Soon, he would be leaving the comfort and safety of home to attend a university that could possibly be on the other side of the country. As for Wren, when did she stop being
a seven-year old ginger with an arrangement of colorful beads in her coily hair? Now, that same coily hair was flat-ironed straight down her back and adorned by a simple scarf headband. Round cheeks and large, curious eyes were nowhere to be found. If something were to suddenly take them both from him as what had happened with Larke, would he remember those things? Would he even remember the angry creases they now wore in their brows as they sat across from him with the gall to think that he could move on from Larke’s death?

“Wren, Jay,” Heather was saying, “all we’re saying is, this isn’t healthy. We understand that it’s natural to be in denial when something tragic like this happens, but if you aren’t willing to work through it, you might become obsessed and not able to carry on with your lives in a normal way.”

Jay turned away and Wren bit the inside of her cheek.  “Just hear us out?” She pleaded.

Thomas dropped his face into his palms. “Look, I want the two of you to know that your mother and I aren’t saying this because we’ve somehow
figured out a way to move on. We love Larke too, you know. I can still remember when she was nine and we first spotted a Mute Swan over in Chippewa County. I mean, sitting there and waiting for a rare bird to show was probably the most boring thing in the world to do, and I was pretty sure that it was the last thing that a nine-year old girl wanted to do, but the way her face lit up when we saw it was a special moment for me. That quiet excitement between father and daughter and the realization that she was a part of me. It’s something that I’ll never forget. Those are the things we need to be focusing on. We need to keep the happy memories alive in order to keep her spirit alive. Larke will always be with us wherever we go. She will never be lost.”

No longer able to withstand his father’s words, Jay stood, tossed a pillow towards the patio
doors and left the room. Wren forced back tears as she watched him leave. She couldn’t believe that her parents couldn’t even give her theory a few seconds of thought, or at least give them a lazy ear. She knew that they were concerned about she and Jay holding onto grief and eventually succumbing to depression, which is something that only great parents would do, but the least that they could do was let them fully explain their stance and why they decided to take it.

“Fine,” she conceded. “Jay and I won’t bother you with this anymore. You guys can handle your grief your way. We’ll deal with ours our way.”

Then, she followed Jay’s path out of the room.

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing, honey?” Heather asked, rubbing her husband’s knee. “They looked so hopeful. Maybe we should have listened a bit just to get them to confide in us and work from there.”

Thomas pulled her into his arms and kissed her cheek. “We need to give it a bit more time for some of the shock to wane. We’ll be able to better talk to them once that happens.”

In the foyer, Wren and Jay regrouped.

“I’m so mad at them,” Jay argued. “Who are those people in there? When did they get so close-minded? Usually, they give our ideas at least a little bit of thought but now, all of a sudden, they want to be straight-aces.”

Both of their heads suddenly popped up at the mentioning of the word “ace.”

“Nana,” they said in unison. They were out the door in record time and on their way down to the senior center where their grandmother Ruth spent most of her afternoons playing poker. As soon as she spotted the two of them walking through the door, she smiled and began to collect her things, ignoring cries from the people at the table arguing that her royal flush was suspiciously devoid of a few face cards.

“My
son sent you to pick me up?” She asked, hooking her arm through Wren’s and planting a kiss on Jay’s cheek.

“No, but we need to talk to you Nana,” Wren told her. “It’s about Larke.”

A serious expression replaced the smile on her face. “What’s wrong?”

They took a seat at a picnic table on the front lawn of the community center.

“Nana,” Wren began, “we don’t really know what we’re looking for, but Jay and I just can’t stop thinking that Larke is still alive. And please, before you say we’re crazy, just hear us out.”

The old woman remained silent but tapped Wren lightly on the wrist to let her know that she was listening. They proceeded to explain their theory to their grandmother, ignoring once again how crazy
everything sounded. Ruth kept her hand at the base of her throat and nodded occasionally, saying nothing until Wren had uttered her final word. Then, she paused and looked between the two of them.

“Well,” she began, folding her hands
in front of her on the tabletop, “a fella that I used to date has a grandson that works for the police department. I can get him to pass the information along to his grandson who might be able to help us out.”

Jay pumped his fist in excitement and tears welled up in Wren’s eyes as she threw her arms around her grandmother. She didn’t know if any of this would make any difference, but it was a much better feeling than wallowing in misery.

“One more thing,” Jay added. “Mom and Dad didn’t go for this so—”

“I won’t say a word to them,” she reassured.

She then slung her purse over her shoulder and hooked elbows with Wren once again as they walked to the car. If there was one thing that she knew about her grandchildren, it was that they always had their heads on straight. Even if nothing came of their amateur investigation, she wasn’t going to turn her back on them when they needed her the most.

As they slid into the car, Jay’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, Nana, did you say a ‘fella that you used to date?’”

She confidently nodded. “Yes sir. Just because I’m old, doesn’t mean I’m not hot stuff.”

Jay playfully rolled his eyes and Wren finally had a real laugh for the first time in what seemed
like an eternity.

*****

Edward Jarvis extended his thighs only to end up rubbing against another silkier pair on the bed next to him. On his right, a dark bouquet of hair was strewn across his chest and stomach while to his left, the naked body of an alabaster, curvaceous redhead was pressed into his side. Although he knew that it had been uncharacteristically messy of him to indulge in women so soon after his escape, the prospect of never having another woman for the rest of his life had nearly sent him off the edge.

The minute that he was secured in Aspen, he had the two women brought over to the palatial cabin that he was staying in. They were both undergraduate students from the University of Michigan and the redhead studied engineering while the brunette was pre-med. The redhead was also a senator’s daughter and had been using Daddy’s money to treat herself and her best friend—who happened to be the daughter of a Hall of Fame football player—to a private birthday weekend
retreat. Surprisingly, neither of them had a clue who he was and he could only attribute that to their being so detached from the real world, that the only news they cared about was whether their bank accounts would be replenished.

They’d both been delectable and losing himself in their warm flesh had felt as though he hadn’t experienced pleasure in ages. But now it was morning, and he was annoyed by them. They were two spoiled girls, princesses as they’d called themselves, who’d probably never known a minute’s worth of struggle in their entire lives. People like that, women especially, made him sick to his stomach. They would never know what it was like to come from defecating in a metal pail because advanced plumbing was nonexistent where you lived, to having homes all across the globe, powerful friends in high places, and even more power than those very friends possessed. Without that kind of struggle, they could never be powerful and without any power, they would always be beneath him. He had no time for people that were made for him to walk on.

He used an open palm to shove the dark-haired beauty off his midsection before sliding off of the bed. Someone would be up in a few minutes anyhow to retrieve them and take them back to wherever they were found.

He
sneered as he watched them curl towards each other on the silken duvet cover. They would probably have no recollection of what had happened the night before, and it disgusted him at how easy it had been to persuade them to get drunk and take unlabeled pills from a complete stranger. The redhead had even complained that it was the first time she’d truly ever lived, and he’d found it piteous that something so trite as an intoxicated one-night stand was her notion of an epitomic life. He’d accomplished too much not to enjoy all of the rewards that life had granted him, however those rewards did not and were never going to come in the form of recreational drug use no different from what he disseminated on the streets.

He slipped into a clean pair of boxer shorts and padded across heated floors to the eastern wing of the immense cabin. As much as he’d enjoyed himself the night before, one major issue still plagued him: he couldn’t orgasm. It had started in the middle of the trial when he
’d first had doubts about getting an acquittal. Even with all the confidence that he’d oozed on the outside, he never failed to acknowledge that he was one defense attorney slipup away from a guilty conviction. That threat to his freedom had been enough to allow his body to disobey him.

Interestingly enough, even though he’d been in the throes of sexual dysfunction, all of his blood would pool to his groin whenever that smug female prosecutor, Larke Tapley, opened her mouth. Yes, he’d loathed her during the en
tire trial and had wanted to shove the pencil she would rhythmically tap on the table straight through her chest, but the other half of him was titillated by her. On numerous occasions, as she’d stood in front of the witness stand, she would turn and meet his gaze in a challenging deadlock. And, to his surprise, he never saw any fear. She’d remained calm and refined. She hadn’t even stirred when one of his lower-level constituents had threatened to wait for her in the shadows outside her townhouse. Instead, she’d walked into the courtroom the following day, hips snug in a black pencil skirt and pumps putting a fuller curve to her already round bottom. It had irked him that she’d looked so well put-together—her clothes were delicately ironed, outfit intricately matched detail for detail, and her hair looked as though she hadn’t even given a second thought about being threatened. Like she’d felt as though she had some kind of power over him.

I
t was that sense of power that had set his loins ablaze. For the first time in his life, he’d found someone that he couldn’t control.

He
’d spent most of his days conjuring images in his head of her naked body strapped to a mattress, and her arms pinned above her head as he forced her to take him. As he claimed her, he would take back whatever power she’d tried to rob from him, unsatisfied until he watched tears stain her cheeks and hear her beg for her life. Hear her tell him that he could do whatever he wanted to her.

Eddie
made his way to a heated pool room towards the back of the cabin. As expected, he found exactly who he’d been looking for at one edge of the pool with a blonde in his lap, and a cigar in his mouth.

“Edward,” the man greeted, waving him over. “How was your night?”

Eddie squatted at the edge of the pool and gave the blonde a quick glimpse before settling his eyes on the man. “Good.”