A Daughter's Story (8 page)

Chris’s foot dropped from the rail to the deck of the boat.
“She’s only four,” he said. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

“It’s a remote-control toy I bought him for his birthday.” Sara
chuckled. “Listen to you, Chris, sounding all protective and unclelike.”

“She’s the only kid left in my family,” he said. And not
technically even that. He wasn’t Lily’s uncle by blood or marriage. Just by
insistence from her parents, who considered themselves his family.

“Have Jeff call when he gets in, will you?” he said, frowning
at the lights of a couple of boats bobbing out on the dusky horizon. He resented
them. Because he wasn’t out there with them.

“Of course. And don’t worry, Chris, if he doesn’t have the
part, he’ll find it and overnight it to you.”

He was counting on it. He got ready to hang up. And then,
watching those boats, he blurted, “I’m thinking of selling the house.”

“What?” Another squeal he didn’t need. “You were born in that
house,” she said. “Your father was born in that house. It’s the most prime real
estate in Comfort Cove.”

His house was prime real estate by default, not by money. The
place was one of the original buildings in the area, built before Comfort Cove
was even a village. And when ordinances had been passed to prevent erosion of
the coast, forbidding the construction of any buildings within two acres of the
ocean, his family home had been grandfathered in. It sat alone, at the top of
the cliff that signified to boaters that they were reaching Comfort Cove.

“What do I need a three-bedroom house for? I’m hardly
there.”

“It’s your home, Chris. You are absolutely not going to sell
it.”

He watched the lights on the ocean.

“I could use the money to buy a new engine for the
Son Catcher,
a cabin cruiser to live on, pay off my
truck and have enough left over for a comfortable savings account.”

“Live full-time on the ocean? Over my dead body, Christopher
Talbot. You already give enough of yourself to the bitch that stole you from me.
You will not sell that glorious house and let her take the rest of you.”

He considered what she said.

The house might be too much for him, yet those walls, the
memories and voices they held, were all the family he had left.

Or would ever have.

But thinking about getting out sure beat sitting in the dark
listening to the silence his folks had left behind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

E
MMA
HAD
DINNER
with her mother three times the week following her return
visit to Citadel’s, and while they talked openly about Rob’s exodus from her
life, Emma didn’t mention Cal’s impending visit.

Emma mentioned Chris, the fisherman, to no one.

She bought fabric for a floral quilt in bright colors for her
bed and, as an afterthought, added fabric for matching pillow shams. She’d never
made them before, but she’d started a wall hanging that was shaping up nicely.
She was brightening her home, if not her life.

Rob called daily until she was tempted to block his number, but
didn’t, as she didn’t want to suffer the backlash. And when his emails started
showing up in her in-box, she read the first one to make sure he didn’t have a
legitimate reason for contacting her, and then deleted the rest without reading
them.

On Saturday night, Cal sent her his flight itinerary. He’d be
arriving Monday just after four. She was picking him up straight from school.
They were going to have dinner with Detective Miller and then he’d catch the
red-eye back. He’d booked a changeable flight and could afford to stay longer if
Emma needed him. Emma couldn’t sit still, thinking about seeing him again after
so many years. For so long she’d clung to the memory of him, of her big brother,
drawing strength from the past. Would having him in her life in the flesh be as
good as the memory? Or would she find that she’d clung to something that wasn’t
really there?

Would he be disappointed in her? A woman who’d spent her entire
life playing it safe, because of the danger inherent in taking risks?

On Sunday, she paid her bills. Made out her grocery list,
shopped and put away the week’s supplies. She ate a healthy lunch. Walked on the
treadmill in her spare bedroom—purchased because it wasn’t safe for a woman to
walk in the park alone—and then, after sewing for a bit, tried to read.

Camilla pulled the knife from her
sock.

Words bounced on the page, morphing into an image of Chris’s
face. Of Cal as a boy. Of Claire. Chris’s face. Cal. Claire.

Cal and Claire she could understand. They mattered.

But why couldn’t she let go of Chris?

It was his eyes. When he looked at her it was as if he saw
things inside her that no one else ever saw. She hadn’t shown them to him. He’d
just seemed to know.

He was a man from the docks. She was imagining things.

Camilla pulled the knife from her
sock.

Rose had warned her about fishermen. Rose had fallen for one
once. Which was why Emma and Claire hadn’t had a father until Frank Whittier had
come into their lives.

Their biological father had married Rose, but he’d cared more
about the sea than he had about his family. And when he’d had a chance to
apprentice in Alaska with the promise of owning his own boat, he’d left
them.

Unfortunately for him, he’d taken up with another man’s woman
shortly after arriving in Alaska. A man who hadn’t been so ready to give up his
wife.

Camilla pulled the knife from her
sock.

Everyone knew that fishermen were all alike. Rugged and coarse.
They were drinking men who spent their days fighting waves that could kill them
in an instant. Men who weren’t available when you needed them.

Stop it already.

Emma stared at the book she held—a lighthearted adventure novel
she’d been looking forward to for months.

Camilla pulled the knife from her
sock.

Who was Camilla?

She stared. White and black piano keys appeared in her mind’s
eye. Strong fingers coaxed beautiful music from them. Just as they’d later
played all over her body…

Chris’s fingers had been clean, manicured. Nothing like the
dirty fisherman’s hands Rose had warned her about.

She’d had sex before. Why in the heck couldn’t she put that one
night behind her? Why did every taste and smell from that night linger in the
deepest recesses of her being?

Camilla pulled the knife from her
sock.

Emma had no idea who Camilla was, why she had a knife in her
sock or even why she was wearing socks.

“I’m sorry,” she said aloud, offering her regrets to her
favorite author as she put the book down on the table beside her.

The table with the drawer that held her journal.

Pulling the drawer open, she removed the leather-bound book and
read the two lines she’d written.

1. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that that love
changes him.

2. I want to be brave enough to live life to the fullest.

Emma put the journal away and stood up from the couch.

Clearly she’d made a huge mistake in going to Citadel’s the
night she’d caught Rob with Tiffany. She’d entered a dangerous world and it was
time to get herself out of it—for once and for all.

Grabbing her purse, she didn’t even look at herself in the
mirror, let alone stop to put on makeup or fix her hair. In her blue cotton
slacks, loose-fitting sleeveless blouse and expensive flip-flops, she was not
dressed for the seamier side of town. But she was going there, anyway.

She was going to find Chris and quit romanticizing or
fantasizing, or whatever the heck she was doing.

She’d made a mistake; she would learn from it. She was not
going to let it trap her at home.

Someplace out there was a life with her name on it. Waiting for
her.

She just had to be brave.

* * *

C
HRIS
WENT
FISHING
on
Sunday, making it his fourteenth day in a row on the water pulling up double
traps. Because it was Sunday, he was on Trick’s boat alone. Hired hands could
afford to take an occasional day off.

And because his conversation with Sara the day before had
coughed up more issues than he wanted to give time to, he was tired, too. But he
brought in a better than average catch, sold the entire take to Manny, bedded
Trick’s boat down for the night and still had several hours of daylight to give
to the little engine that could.

Jeff was sending him the part he needed—it was due to arrive by
special courier later that day. He was going to be ready to drop it into place
the second it arrived. And if all went well, he’d be back on the
Son Catcher
later that week. He hoped to God that
Trick was ready to get back to work, as well.

Not that he minded the extra work—or extra money—Trick’s
absence brought him. What he minded was that one of the brotherhood was at odds
with the ocean.

In the denim shorts and stained gray T-shirt he’d worn under
his coveralls, he was up to his elbows in grease and stepping out of the galley
when he saw her. He stepped back quickly—his ages-old deck shoes saving him from
falling on his ass as he nearly missed the stair.

The string of curse words he softly emitted didn’t take the
sting off the anxiety he felt.

At Citadel’s the night before, after he’d unloaded the owner’s
order, he’d shared a beer with Cody. The bartender had been on break and asked
to have a word with him.

The woman, Emma, had been in there looking for him the week
before. Cody had said more than he would have except that he’d assumed she
already knew what Chris did for a living, and he’d been meaning to apologize for
the indiscretion. Bottom line was, she knew where to find him.

Cody had said something else, too. Emma had seemed uneasy.
She’d ordered wine but hadn’t taken more than a few sips, at which time she’d
switched to soda.

What woman spent hours at a bar on a Friday night drinking
soda?

She hadn’t asked the right questions for a woman trying to
check up on a guy she might want to make it with. Like did he meet women there
often. Or did he have a special woman. No, she’d said she was there for the
music.

Cody thought she’d been looking for Chris.

In his experience, a woman did that only if she wanted
something from him.

But what could she possibly want from him? He hadn’t left
anything behind in the hotel room, had he?

Maybe she was coming back for more. There was always that
chance—which was a good reason for Chris to avoid her.

Standing below, sweating, listening for her approach, Chris
swore again.

Three sips of wine, Cody had said. From a woman he’d known to
consume many, many glasses.

And now she was here. At the docks. Looking for him.

As far as he knew, there was only one reason a woman quit
drinking. And looked up a man with whom she’d recently had sex.

A long time ago, Sara had refused a glass of wine he’d poured
her, the time she’d been afraid they’d made a baby. She’d also broken their
engagement shortly after his horrified reaction to her news.

Just as soon as she’d started her period.

She hadn’t wanted to be married to a man who would willingly
take on the dangers of the ocean even when he might leave behind a fatherless
child. She hadn’t wanted to marry a man who found the thought of being the
father of her child so distressing.

It had been the beginning of an end, and that refused glass of
wine had started it all.

Could Emma be pregnant? His absolute worst nightmare. Something
that scared him more than death.

Flashbacks from their night together haunted him. The
long-legged part. The moments when he’d felt like he could fly without a
plane—and the part where he’d used the same condom twice because he hadn’t taken
it off before they started in again and he hadn’t had a second one to use.

He could not be a partner. He could not be a husband. And he
most definitely could not be a father.

* * *

“C
AN
I
HELP
you?”

The man had a definite paunch, but otherwise looked exactly
like the stereotypical fisherman her mother had described.
Manny,
his tag read. He looked old enough to have been around the
summer Rose had hung out at the docks.

Whether Manny had known the boat hand who’d hired on with a
local fisherman more than twenty-nine years ago, Emma didn’t know. And she
didn’t care. She had no intention of speaking to the man about her father.

“I’m looking for Chris. Do you know which boat is his?”

“If you mean Chris Talbot, yeah, I know. What do you want with
him?”

Talbot. Piano man had a last name.

Turning away from Manny, she caught a glimpse of movement down
at the dock. On a boat. A figure appeared briefly. So briefly she almost missed
it.

But she hadn’t missed the ragged, dirty clothes. The machine
parts strewn around the boat.

And she hadn’t missed the face.

“Uh, nothing,” she said. “Sorry to bother you.” She backed down
the sidewalk, away from the marina store, leaving Manny standing outside on the
stoop, and headed to her car as rapidly as she could without breaking into a
run.

Heart pounding, feeling sick to her stomach, she started the
car and sped away.

The one time she tread dangerously, the
one
time, and she had to have sex with a
fisherman?

Her mother would have a stroke if she knew.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

C
HRIS
WAS
A
MAN
of honor. When a man’s life
depended on an entity like the ocean, duplicity didn’t much pay. And when his
sole companion was his conscience, the only way to keep the relationship stable
was to get along with it.

Which was why he called in another favor. He had a couple of
police-officer acquaintances who were lobster lovers. They’d been purchasing
fresh catch directly from Chris for years. In exchange, they drove by to check
on his house occasionally while he was out on the water.

On Monday, they did a little detective work for him. Manny’s
surveillance camera had recorded an image of Emma’s car in the lot. The license
plate was clearly visible. By the time Chris finished work for the day, the
woman who wouldn’t get out of his mind had a last name. Sanderson. And an
address, too. She didn’t have a landline, only a cell phone, and it was
unlisted. His law-enforcement friends drew the line at passing along what was,
technically, privileged information.

Any private eye could have ferreted out the information they
did turn over. Just not as quickly.

At that moment, Chris was all about getting it done. If he had
a potentially life-altering problem, he needed to tend to it immediately.

* * *

C
AL
’
S
FLIGHT
WAS
late. Waiting inside the terminal, just beyond the secured arrival
gate, Emma realized what it meant to shake in her shoes. She was a nervous
wreck. How was she going to recognize him? She should have brought a sign, told
him what color she’d be wearing. Something. She hadn’t thought of it. This was
Cal. She’d once lived with him.

He wouldn’t know her, either.

And what if Detective Miller’s suspect was Claire’s abductor?
What if this day became one of those days that forever altered her life?

She needed to know what had happened to her baby sister.
Finding Claire had been her life’s purpose since the day she had gone missing.
Emma needed closure. But to go to bed at night without hope of ever seeing
Claire again? For so long that hope had been the source of her strength. She was
Claire’s big sister. She had to hold on.

She had to believe.

And what about Rose? Could her mother survive without hope?
Without purpose?

With a twinge of guilt, thinking of her mother’s reaction were
she to know what Emma was doing right then, Emma peered through another throng
of travelers exiting the gate.

She just had to spot a man standing around with no one to meet
him.

She had to quit thinking about the old wooden box of ribbons in
her bag. She was doing the right thing.

She was not making another big mistake.

Cal was a brother to her. She hadn’t asked to have him move in
with them all those years ago. She hadn’t asked to love him.

Cal had done no wrong to her or her mother. Neither had Frank,
for that matter. Just the opposite.

The passageway cleared. Emma paced, all but oblivious to the
others waiting to collect loved ones. There was a young man with flowers,
watching the hall down from the gates.

More people flooded the passage, held up by an older, heavyset
woman who probably should have asked for a wheelchair.

And then she saw him. In the middle of a mass of people pulling
carry-on bags, wearing backpacks and talking into their cell phones, was Cal. He
was taller than she’d expected. His hair was darker and his face shadowed with
whiskers, but his eyes were all Cal. And they were trained on her.

He smiled.

Her grin stretched all the way across her face. She could feel
it. And then he was through his fellow passengers, in front of her, and she was
in his arms.

Holding on as if she’d never let go.

Because she never was going to let go of him again. This time,
no matter what, her big brother was in her life to stay.

* * *

T
HE
WOMAN
WASN
’
T
home. In
black jeans and a clean gray T-shirt, Chris stood at her front door in
flip-flops, having knocked three times, and accepted the fact that this wasn’t
going to be over as soon as he’d determined it would be. He wanted to see her,
then get the hell out of the middle-class, suburban part of town.

It had to be clear to everyone who passed that he didn’t belong
there.

* * *

“M
S
.
S
ANDERSON
? I’
M
Detective
Miller, come on in.” At just under six feet, the man was shorter than she’d
pictured. He made eye contact so briefly she wasn’t sure it had happened, and
then she was staring at his suited shoulders as he motioned toward a hallway
with several doorways leading into rooms with large windows.

With the California rolls she and Cal had shared rumbling
around in her stomach, she turned to look at the man who’d flown all the way
from Tennessee to be with her. He nodded and, with a reassuring hand at her
back, accompanied her down the hallway.

Miller led them to the last door on the left. Inside, a young,
blonde woman sat on the far side of a conference table. She stood as they
entered.

“Ms. Sanderson, this is Detective Lucy Hayes. I hope you don’t
mind if she sits in with us.”

The other detective Cal had told her about.

Shaking her head, Emma smiled at Detective Hayes, taking the
hand she offered. Detective Hayes might be a small woman, a couple of inches
shorter than Emma’s five and a half feet, but there was nothing weak about her
grip.

“Detective Hayes has been working with me on this case,” Miller
said. “She’s helping me on her own time, not as an official member of my team. I
just need to make that clear.”

“The detective from Aurora,” Cal said, his eyes narrowing in a
way Emma already recognized as his quietly assessing look.

Miller eyed Emma’s brother. “Sorry,” she said, so focused on
breathing that she’d forgotten her manners. “Detective Miller, this is Caleb
Whittier. I understand you two have met by phone several times.”

“Mr. Whittier.” Miller stepped forward and shook Cal’s hand.
“Good to meet you in person.”

“Good to meet you, too,” Cal said. Then he peered over at the
female detective. “Since you’re so far from home, are we to assume that you
found something to do with our case?”

Fear gripped Emma as the two detectives exchanged a glance.
After twenty-five years of needing to know, she wasn’t ready.

“What?” Emma asked when the silence became unbearable. Miller
nodded at Hayes.

“It’s probably nothing.” Lucy Hayes looked Emma right in the
eye. “I’m actually working on a different case, also a baby abduction, that took
place around the same time your sister went missing. I signed out the evidence
kit for my case and it turned out to contain some evidence that fit Peter
Walters’s M.O.”

“The pervert you told me about,” Emma said, looking at
Detective Miller. His suit was green. Hunter green. A suit. Not slacks and a
jacket. The tie had thin, dark green stripes set amid beige and brown.

Her baby sister had not been molested at two years of age. The
knowledge would kill Rose.

Her throat closed up. Her lips started to tremble. She bit them
from the inside.

“That’s right,” Miller said.

“Did you tie that case to him?” Cal asked what Emma could
not.

“Fortunately, no,” Lucy Hayes replied evenly. “But there’s a
minor similarity between the case I’m working on in Aurora and a piece of
information from Cal’s book that Detective Miller told me about. We’re checking
on it but haven’t turned up anything substantial yet.” Her smile, given mostly
to Emma, was soft. Warm. “I had vacation coming so I took this week off to be
here and follow up with Ramsey. Ramsey told me about meeting with you and I
wanted to meet you both. I also wanted to ask your permission to take a sample
of Claire’s DNA back to Indiana with me. I have a private lab in Cincinnati that
is doing some work for me on the cold-case abductions I’m looking at there.”

Nodding, Emma relaxed a notch. She didn’t have to accept
anything just yet. “Okay. If it will help.”

The detectives exchanged another glance and Lucy gave a short
nod.

“Lucy has been working on her original case a long time,”
Miller told Cal and Emma. “She has a lot of information at her disposal. Some
pretty impressive databases she’s set up on her own dime. It’s not just a job to
her. If there’s something to find she’ll find it.”

Cal’s hand settled in the middle of Emma’s back.

It was time. Emma slid her hand inside her bag. She didn’t have
to look to find what she was after. She knew right where it was. Pulling out the
box, she extended her arm toward the detectives.

The detectives asked Emma and Cal to talk about the day Claire
went missing.

Lucy Hayes wrapped her hand around Emma’s. “We’ll take care of
it for you.” Her softly spoken words referred to the box. Emma was turning over
so much more.

She clung to it, finally giving in to the gentle tug of the
female detective’s hand.

“If you’re up to it, we have some questions for you,” Ramsey
Miller said.

Emma glanced at the little wooden box of ribbons in Lucy’s
hands, then at Cal. “Okay,” she said, and the two of them took seats opposite
the detectives.

The detectives asked Emma and Cal to talk about the day Claire
went missing.

Together, they recounted the story of that day. Their memories
sometimes gelled and sometimes collided as the detectives recorded the
conversation.

Emma and Cal both remembered their regular babysitter being
sick that day. And Rose, on the phone making arrangements and then telling them
that she’d have to pick them up after school.

They both remembered Claire’s bear at the breakfast table. Cal
thought she’d been in her high chair. Emma remembered her sister kneeling in a
big-people chair.

Cal remembered that Claire climbed like a monkey and that was
why she was still in a high chair and not a booster seat.

Emma remembered the climbing, too, but couldn’t remember why
her sister didn’t have a booster seat.

They both remembered the detective later finding Claire’s teddy
bear in Cal’s father’s car.

Emma thought Cal’s father had been in the house for a long time
after breakfast. Cal had been the first to leave.

They both remembered the truck that delivered meat in the
neighborhood, but only Cal remembered seeing it that day.

Neither of them saw anyone else.

The whole time they talked, Emma watched the detectives,
wondering what Detective Hayes had found in Cal’s book. She assumed the
detectives couldn’t say because it had to do with another case, as well, and she
wasn’t as upset about that as she might have been.

She just wasn’t ready.

“And who, in your current lives, knows any of these details?”
Miller asked when, more than an hour later, they’d run out of things to say.

“My fiancée, Morgan Lowen, knows most of them,” Cal said.

“Her knowledge is recent, right?” Miller asked, his gaze
intense. “Since the box of evidence disappeared.”

“Right.”

“And how about you?” Detective Hayes appeared equally serious
as she questioned Emma.

“I rarely talk about the past,” Emma said. “I mean, everyone
knows about Claire—my mother and I do a lot of local campaigning for
child-safety awareness—but we don’t discuss details.”

“How about other family members?”

“My family is just my mother and me and my grandfather in
Florida. Mom, by the way, knows nothing about this meeting. Or about…Peter
Walters…or any investigation. My mother’s…fragile…where Claire is
concerned.”

Both detectives nodded. “Detective Miller told me you’d asked
to leave your mother out of this for now,” Hayes said, and then asked, “have you
ever been married?”

“No.”

“What about love interests? Is there anyone in your life that
you might have confided in?”

Her face hot, Emma experienced a flash of humiliation as she
thought of Chris. Were they watching her? Could they know?

But she hadn’t confided in Chris. So he was a moot point.

“I…was engaged,” she said, refocusing her thoughts. “To Rob
Evert.” Another humiliating episode she’d rather not talk about, but preferable
to the lobsterman debacle. “He knows about Claire, of course. He knows about
this meeting, too, actually.” She glanced at Cal. She’d told him of her broken
engagement. “Rob’s been very supportive, helping my mother and me with various
fund-raisers, and so on. He knows all about our efforts to find Claire. But he
never asked about the day she went missing. He understood that it’s a painful
memory. And…like I said, I don’t talk about it. It’s not like I remember all
that much from before the abduction, anyway. Or—” she paused, shared a look with
Cal “—I didn’t realize how much I remembered until Cal and I started talking
about it. I was only four. And until Claire was…gone…it was just an ordinary
day.”

She remembered that night, though. The long hours when no one
went to bed and she was afraid to go to sleep. To leave her mother’s side at
all. And she remembered the horrible, nightmarish days that followed, too. Her
mother never smiled or laughed in those days. She was never in a good mood after
that.

And Emma was never unafraid.

She’d lost her baby sister—and her childhood, too.