A Daughter's Story (11 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“M
S
.
S
ANDERSON
?”

Looking up from the tests she was grading after school on
Friday, Emma put down her pen. “Tammy? Come on in.”

The dark-haired sophomore came slowly forward. “There’s a phone
message for you in the office. I told Mrs. Olsen that I’d let you know.”

Barbara Olsen, the high school’s office administrator, had
agreed to let Tammy spend the last period of the day volunteering in the office
in place of attending a study hall the gifted student didn’t need.

“Thanks, I’ll stop in on my way out,” she said, smiling,
putting the rest of the papers in her leather briefcase and pulling on the black
cardigan she’d worn with her black slacks and white blouse. “You aced your
test.”

“Oh, good!” The straight-A student seemed surprised every time
she did well.

“How’s your mother doing?”

Tammy stood just inside the doorway. “Okay. She goes in for
more treatments today. She really wants to be well and I know she’ll make
it.”

Tammy’s mother, a drug baby, had been fighting addiction
problems since the day she was born. Usually she won the fight, but not
always.

“You’re staying with your aunt in the interim?”

“Yeah.”

“Is your uncle in town?” The man scared Tammy, but he hadn’t
done anything overt enough to warrant contacting the authorities. And staying
with her aunt kept Tammy out of the child-welfare system and foster care.

“Not right now. He gets back next week.”

“How long is your mother going to be away for this time?”

“Six weeks.”

Most of the fall semester.

“You’ve got my number programmed into your cell phone,
right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do not hesitate to use it, Tammy. For any reason. If you just
miss your mom and want to talk, you call me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I mean it, Tammy,” Emma spoke firmly. “I promised your mother
I would be here for you when she couldn’t be. That’s how the world works. She
got dealt some hard cards, and because of that, so did you. But you were also
dealt a lot of good cards. I’m one of your aces, okay?”

With tears in her eyes, the girl nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just call me.”

“I will.”

Emma believed her.

* * *

T
HE
PHONE
MESSAGE
was from Chris.
She’d had sex with him twice now, but still had not exchanged phone numbers with
him. He knew where she lived, where she worked—she’d told him the name of the
school the night she’d told him what she did for a living. She knew where he
worked. He thought they might be having a baby together…but they hadn’t
exchanged numbers. Or email addresses, either. He hadn’t asked for hers. And
she’d thought it for the best.

They had no future. There was no point in opening the means for
convenient, immediate contact.

According to the note Barbara had left in her box, he’d not
only asked her to call him, he’d said it was important. He’d left his
number.

Walking out to her car, she punched the digits into her list of
contacts. She wasn’t ready to speak to him yet. Perhaps it was the coward’s way
out, but she couldn’t follow in her mother’s footsteps and make the biggest
mistake of her life. She couldn’t let herself fall for a fisherman.

She had to let him know that her doctor was out of town until
Monday of the following week and probably wouldn’t be able to see her until
Tuesday at the earliest, and that she wanted to wait to see her own
physician.

He might not like that choice. But her body was hers and she
was comfortable with her own doctor.

In spite of what Chris thought, there was no rush. Her doctor
didn’t even recommend a first prenatal exam until six weeks. And she couldn’t
let herself consider the
what ifs
of being pregnant.
Not right now. She had so much coming at her and couldn’t afford to let Chris’s
panic affect her. Anyway, they’d know soon enough.

Emma might be strong, but she was also smart enough to know
that she couldn’t afford another heartbreak. Not any time soon.

She’d just dropped her phone in her purse when the ring tone
sounded. She didn’t recognize the number, or even the area code.

Sitting in her car in the teachers’ parking lot, she took the
call.

“Hello?”

“Emma? This is Detective Lucy Hayes, you got a minute?”

She gulped. She wasn’t ready. Not while facing a drive through
town at dinnertime. Comfort Cove wasn’t a metropolis, but it had more than
doubled in size since she was a kid.

“I’m just leaving work.…” The woman was a cop. Cops didn’t
encourage cell-phone distraction while operating a motor vehicle.

“I was wondering if we could meet,” the detective said, her
voice reassuringly calm.

“You have news.”

“I have a couple of things to talk to you about. We can meet at
the station,” she said. “Miller’s out on another case, but we can use his
office. Or we can meet someplace less formal if you’d like. There’s a
coffeehouse not far from the station.”

“The Caffeine Café,” Emma said. “I go right by there on my way
home.”

“Do you have time to stop?”

She had all weekend. And she wasn’t ready. “Of course. If I
didn’t have time, I would make time.”

Claire came first. Always.

* * *

C
HRIS
STOPPED
IN
at Marta and Jim’s after he left the docks Friday night.

“Well, it’s about time you showed up for Friday-night dinner.”
Marta greeted him at the door, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve got fried
tilapia and homemade chips nearly ready.”

“I can’t stay.” He gave his automatic response to pretty much
any invitation, and then said, “I just stopped by to let Jim know that Trick’s
going to be back on the water tomorrow. It would be good if he could keep an eye
out for him.”

“Come on in and tell him, then.” Marta stood back, holding open
the door leading into the kitchen, which looked the same as it had when he was a
kid. “He’s already at the table.”

The room smelled just like he remembered Friday-night dinners
smelling every week of his growing up.

“Sit down, boy,” Jim said, nodding at the chair across from
Marta’s empty place.

Chris hesitated.

“He says he can’t stay,” Marta said, pulling a plate from the
cupboard, silverware from the drawer, and shoving the drawer closed with her
hip.

“Of course he can stay.” The look he gave Chris had Chris in
his seat, a napkin spread across his lap, before Marta had the food on the
table. There were some lessons a guy learned young and didn’t have to learn
twice.

Going against that look—the one his father and Jim had
perfected—was one of those things.

Not getting a girl pregnant out of wedlock was another.

“You ever hear of a guy named Dale Sanderson?” Chris asked Jim
a few minutes later, spearing a piece of fish with his fork.

Jim glanced up at him and away, frowning while he chewed. “Name
rings a bell. Who’s asking?”

“An old acquaintance of his was down at the docks a Sunday or
two ago.”

He wouldn’t lie. But neither would he give them even a hint
that he’d had a conversation with an unmarried female.

Heck, the first time he’d talked to Sara in school someone had
told someone who told someone, and the next thing he knew his parents had heard
about it. Then his mom told Marta, who told Jim, and the following Friday-night
dinner the four of them had practically had him and Sara married.

The weeks after Sara had broken off their engagement, the four
of them had walked around looking as if someone had died.

But he wasn’t just keeping quiet for himself. He was protecting
Emma from any connection to the man she’d written off long ago.

Which didn’t stop Chris from being curious.

He’d eaten several bites of tilapia before he realized that Jim
hadn’t said a word. Marta was frowning.

“So did you know him?” he asked, looking from one to the
other.

“Heard of him,” Jim said. “Seen him from afar. Never had
occasion to speak with him.”

“Sounds like you remember him well.”

“He was a punk,” Jim muttered. “Gave the docks, and those of us
who worked hard for an honest living, a bad name.”

“He was just a kid,” Marta said.

“A punk kid.” Jim, who was always kind, almost snorted on the
last word.

“They said he stole from the boats,” Marta put in.

“He hired on with Kennedy,” Jim added, naming a man Chris could
hardly remember, but one he’d heard a lot of stories about growing up. The man
had been in his sixties when Chris was born, which would have made him close to
seventy when Dale Sanderson worked for him.

Kennedy had never married. But he took at-risk boys from around
town under his wing, taught them hard work and manners and honesty.

He’d died on his boat, out at sea. His traps had all been
empty, his lobsters banded and ready to sell. It had appeared as if he’d just
gone to sleep after a good day’s work.

His will had stipulated that his boat, and everything else he
owned, be sold and the money put into a scholarship fund at the local high
school.

“Rumor was that Sanderson might have had something to do with
Kennedy dying,” Jim said, setting down his fork. “He’d married in between his
first and second summers on the docks. Had a kid. Kennedy liked the girl—and
took a shine to the baby, too. Then he found out that Sanderson had been
stealing from him—taking the catch in to Manny every day and siphoning off the
payout. He also found things missing from his house and the boat, too. When he
confronted Sanderson, the guy laughed at him. Told him he was just an old dodder
who should have quit years before. Said that Kennedy wouldn’t be bringing in any
fish at all if it weren’t for Dale. Claimed that the money was rightfully his
since he did all the work…”

Chris was almost sorry he’d asked.

“Right about that time Dale found out that his wife was
pregnant again,” Marta said.

Chris took a bite of salad, glancing at her. “Did you know her?
Sanderson’s wife?”

“No.” Marta shook her head. “She used to hang around down at
the docks, that first summer, but she was just like any of the other high-school
girls that think the fishing life is romantic, or the fisherman rugged because
they’re forbidden.”

Marta had grown up down at the docks, the daughter of a
fisherman. She’d known better.

“Once they were married, she never came down to the docks
again.”

“Sanderson wasn’t the only one who behaved poorly,” Jim said.
“There’s enough guys down at the dock who do exactly as outsiders claim they
do—the drinking and fornicating and taking off from responsibility.”

Chris knew all about them. To some men, fishing, being out on
the ocean, was a way to escape from life’s duties. The docks would always
attract some of their kind.

“The young SOB got drunk and loud one night and told everyone
down at the bar that Kennedy wasn’t up to fishing anymore, that he was a waste
of weight on his own boat.”

Oh, God, no. Chris felt the blow almost personally, figuring he
knew exactly how that had to have felt to a man who’d given his entire life to
the ocean.

“Next day, Kennedy took the boat out alone. Brought in his
entire catch. Prepared ’em for sale. And died.

“By the time the dust settled after Kennedy’s funeral,
Sanderson had run off. I heard he divorced his wife while she was pregnant with
their second baby.

“No one knows what happened to him, for sure,” Jim said,
picking up his fork again. “We were just glad to be rid of him.”

Chris could have told the older man about Dale Sanderson’s
unfortunate fate. But it wasn’t his story to tell.

And he didn’t think he was going to tell Emma about the legacy
she’d escaped, either. There was no point in her learning about a man she’d
never known.

* * *

“T
HANKS
FOR
MEETING
with me on such short notice.” Detective Hayes, dressed in a
fashionable tweed pant suit, met Emma at the door of the Caffeine Café.

“Of course.” Emma pulled open the door and held it for the
detective. The woman walked into the place as if she owned it, in spite of being
a few inches shorter than Emma. Her short blond hair bobbed as she moved.

Pulling her brown curls out from under the shoulder strap of
her purse, Emma followed her inside.

They ordered coffee—black decaf for Emma, a caramel latte for
Lucy—and found a small round table at the back of the room, across from a young
man engrossed in his computer and wearing earbuds.

Lucy started in right away. “We got Claire’s DNA results back
today.”

Holding her coffee cup between her hands, Emma soaked up the
warmth. “So soon? I thought it would be a couple of weeks.”

“So did Ramsey, but Shawn, at the lab, worked on the Walters
case and he pushed it through. Ramsey was called out on a homicide just after
Shawn called him, so I told him I’d meet with you. If that’s all right with
you?”

Emma nodded, just as happy to be dealing with Detective
Hayes.

Staring down into the black liquid she’d yet to taste, Emma
steeled herself. They’d been on this roller coaster for twenty-five years. It
was time to get off.

She saw Lucy Hayes’s fingers slide across the table just before
the detective wrapped them around the top of Emma’s hand where it still clutched
her cup.

“There was no match between Claire’s DNA and the Walters
case.”

Every muscle in her body gave way, leaving her weak. Limp.
Relief was a physical ache as the tension she’d been holding in began to give up
its grip.

When she could, she glanced up. “She wasn’t one of his
victims?”