Her Mother's Shadow (28 page)

T
he woods surrounding Rick's cottage were thick with the sound of cicadas as Lacey opened her car door. She slipped on her sandals before getting out of the car; she had learned the hard way that walking through these woods barefoot could be painful. The last time she'd tried it, she'd stepped on a sandspur.

She could smell the onions on the sandwiches she'd brought with her, even though they were wrapped in paper and inside a brown bag. She carried them the short distance to the cottage, climbed the two steps to the deck and peered through the screen door. Rick was working at the computer in the corner of the minuscule living room, and she hoped he wouldn't mind being interrupted.

“Hello!” she called through the screen.

He twisted in his chair to look at her, breaking into a smile, and she knew right then that he would never mind being interrupted by her.

“Surprise!” she said, pulling open the door. “I hope you
haven't had lunch yet.” When he was working, he sometimes forgot to eat.

He hit a couple of buttons on his keyboard and stood up. “No, and I'm starving, now that you mention it.” He looked freshly scrubbed, as he always did. “This is so sweet of you.” He moved forward and kissed her on the lips.

It
was
sweet of her. She was still not certain she believed Bobby's explanation of his liaison with the woman in the parking lot, but nevertheless, witnessing that event reinforced her belief that she should focus her attention on Rick.

“You sit, and I'll wait on you.” She pulled out a chair for him at the doll-size kitchen table. He sat down, grinning at her as she opened one of the kitchen cabinets, then another, in search of plates.

“I forgot to get us something to drink,” she said. “Do you have anything?”

“Root beer,” he said. “Wine. OJ. Water. Take your pick.”

She took two plates from the cupboard, then opened the refrigerator to find a six-pack of root beer, three bottles of wine, a carton of orange juice and two large bottles of water. There was little else on the shelves. “Which would you like?” she asked.

“I'll take a root beer,” he said.

She poured one for him and another for herself. “Was it weird having wine in the house when Bobby was here?” she asked as she set the glasses on the table.

“What do you mean?” His big eyes and long lashes made him look completely guileless.

“You know,” she said, shrugging. “A recovering alcoholic.”

“If you mean, did I find wine missing while he was here, the answer is no. Not that I paid attention, but I think I would have noticed.”

She sat down at the table, the plates in her hands. “I'm a bit paranoid about him,” she said.

“Well, I can understand that, but I think he's okay.”

“He told me the blond woman is from AA.”

“She probably is,” Rick said.

Lacey unwrapped the sandwiches and transferred them to the plates.

“Onions,” he said, breathing in the scent of the sub on his plate. “I hope you have them on yours, too.”

“I do.” She smiled but looked away in discomfort. Was he implying that they would be kissing later? Maybe something heavier than kissing? Did he think that her showing up like this meant she was ready for more? She was not.

“I can't stay long,” she said, tucking a loose piece of tomato back inside her sandwich. “I just came from the animal hospital and after lunch I'm going to the studio to get some work done. I haven't been there enough. Tom's getting on my case.” Tom was a bit annoyed with her. They were supposed to take turns with the less artistic duties of running the studio, but he'd been managing all the sales and administrative tasks lately. She'd been working on her stained glass at the keeper's house in the afternoons, not sure if it was because she wanted to keep an eye on Bobby or she wanted the closeness to him—or both.

Rick swallowed a bite of his sandwich and took a sip of root beer. “So,” he said, “how are things going with the little rebel in your house?”

“Better.” A smile came to her lips, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

She shrugged. “We're just doing better.” The feelings she'd experienced a few nights ago in Mackenzie's bedroom were only growing. She'd feared Mackenzie would withdraw from her again once morning came, that she would
be embarrassed at how she had reached out to someone she'd previously disdained, but that had not happened.

“Do I detect a change of heart here?” he asked.

She nodded. “I think so. On both our parts.”

“I'm glad to hear that, Lacey,” he said. “I know it's been hard on you.”

“I'm sure I still have some hard times ahead, but we're making progress.” She took a bite of her sub. They ate for a moment without conversation, and Lacey grew uncomfortable in the silence. What did she really have in common with this guy, except that he treated her well and she wanted to be treated well? Was that enough?

“You should see the dog Clay's working with,” she said. She told him the story of Wolf's transformation from easygoing search-and-rescue dog to unpredictable monster. “I have to say, he scares the daylights out of me. I have to pass the kennel when I walk from the car to the house, and he lunges at the fence to try to get to me.”

“Is the kennel secure?” Rick asked.

“Very. I mean, I know he can't get to me, but it freaks me out all the same. And I seem to be the only person at the house he reacts that way to. Clay's thrilled. He says he'll know he's succeeded when the dog no longer wants to attack me.”

“Oh, great,” Rick said.

“Gina is angry about it.” Lacey knew she was blathering, but she felt a need to fill the silence. “She doesn't think we should have a dog like that living so near children, and I think she's right.”

Gina and Clay had argued about it over breakfast that morning. It was the first time she'd heard harsh words between the two of them, and it had upset her. “Give me a couple of weeks with him,” Clay had said. “It's impossible for
him to get out of the kennel, and if I'm ever working with him off-lead, I'll be sure to let you know so that you and Rani are inside.”

Gina had finally acquiesced, but Lacey knew she wasn't happy about it. Gina had encouraged Clay to get back into dog training, knowing the passion he felt for it could only do him good, so it seemed fitting that Clay should listen to her when she expressed consternation. Or maybe it was Lacey's own unspoken apprehension about Wolf that was making her want Gina to win the argument. She did not like that dog, no matter how skilled he had once been at search and rescue.

Clay had brought Wolf into the animal hospital that morning to have their father examine him. The second Wolf had spotted Lacey, he'd started growling, baring his teeth, and she was glad she was seated behind the high counter of the reception area. Her hands were shaking, though, as she typed on the computer keyboard. It was rare for her to be fearful of an animal, but it was also rare for an animal to show such hostility toward her. Her sole consolation was that she was not the only person the dog took a disliking to. He had it in for Mike, one of the vet techs, as well, and it was quickly decided that the dog needed to be muzzled before he could be examined.

She did not dare go into the examination room while her father checked the dog over. The examination lasted a long time. Blood was sent to the lab, and Wolf's handsome body was palpated and explored. He appeared to be in good health, her father said. He thought that Clay was probably right, that Wolf had experienced a trauma and needed time and retraining to get past it, but he recommended that the dog have a neurological work-up to be sure there was not something more going on. Clay would have to take Wolf to
Norfolk for that, and he could not get an appointment with the specialist for a couple of weeks.

“You haven't mentioned the whole parole thing lately,” Rick said, pulling her from her thoughts about the dog. “What did you decide to do about your victim's impact statement?”

She sighed. “You mean, am I going to write it?”

He nodded.

“I really have to,” she said. “But I have writer's block or something.”

“Let them go forward without yours, then. It sounds like they have plenty of ammunition.”

“But everyone's waiting on mine,” she said. “The attorney called me yesterday to tell me I could come into her office and speak about…what happened into a tape recorder and her secretary would transcribe it.” Lacey had resented the intrusion. The call had made her feel panicky. They were going to get that statement out of her one way or another.

“Lacey.” Rick rested his hand on hers, and there was such concern in his face that she felt tears spring to her eyes. “You're putting too much pressure on yourself, do you hear me?” he asked. “You're letting people push you around. Look at all you've had to deal with this summer. Let this one thing go. Wouldn't it be a relief?”

She shut her eyes. Yes, it would be. She wouldn't have to revisit that scene again in her head. She wouldn't have to struggle to write about her mother's wonderful qualities when she knew Annie O'Neill had been two-faced, both saint and sinner.

Rick ran his thumb over the back of her hand, and she did not pull away from the tender physical contact. It was not sexual, not in any way.
This is what I really need,
she thought.
Support and caring.

“You're the only person who seems to understand how hard it is for me to have that damned statement hanging over my head,” she said.

Rick nodded, a sad smile on his face. “What can they do to you if you don't produce it?” he asked. “They're not going to put you in jail for not writing a statement.”

“Everyone will be upset with me,” she said. She sounded like a little kid, even to her own ears.

“They'll get over it.”

“And if Zachary Pointer gets out of prison, they'll blame me.” That would be the worst of it, she thought: her family's disappointment in her. She let out a long sigh, shaking off the thoughts as she looked at her watch. “I'd better leave,” she said. “I told Tom I'd be there by 1:30.”

“You barely touched your sandwich,” Rick said.

“I'll take it with me.” She wrapped up the sandwich, no longer hungry, and leaned over to kiss him on the lips. He tasted like onions. “Thank you,” she said. “I'll talk to you later.”

 

She was more than surprised to find Bobby in the studio when she arrived. He was sitting in her chair, engaged in conversation with Tom, while three women and a young child admired the stained glass and photographs. Tom looked up when she walked through the door.

“Ah, my missing co-worker-slash-daughter,” he said. The women looked at Lacey. One of them smiled.

Lacey's gaze rested on Bobby. “Were you waiting for me?” she asked, perplexed as to why he'd be there.

“Well, I'm glad to see you, of course,” Bobby said diplomatically, “but I thought I'd just stop in and say hi to Tom.”

She frowned, trying to remember if the two of them had ever met before.

“We go to the same AA meeting,” Tom said quietly.

“Ah,” she said, pleased. Bobby really was in AA, then. The thought of the two men together at a meeting was comforting.

“Go take a break,” Lacey said generously to Tom. “I'll take over.”

“And I'm heading to Nola's to pick up Mackenzie,” Bobby said, standing up. “She called and asked if she could come home early to work with Clay again. I hope that's okay with you?”

“Of course it is,” she said. “As long as it's okay with Clay.”

She took her seat behind the worktable as the men left the building. The women who'd been strolling through the studio bought two small stained glass birds and a kaleidoscope, and as Lacey was carefully wrapping the items in tissue paper, she spotted Bobby in the parking lot. He was bent over, leaning into the passenger side window of a small, dark car, talking to a blond woman, and Lacey quickly turned her attention back to her wrapping, unable to watch. She was afraid she might see something she didn't want to see.

“Y
ou want to hear something really awesome?”

Bobby looked up from his work on the belt buckle to see Mackenzie leaning against the doorway of the sunroom, her sneakers tied together and flung over her shoulder. Sasha was at her side, looking up at Mackenzie with big, adoring brown eyes.

“What's so awesome?” he asked, although he could guess it had something to do with a dog.

“Today I get to be Wolf's victim!” she said.

It sounded so funny, he laughed. “All right, Mackenzie!” he said. “You get to be a victim!”

She made a face at him. “You don't get it,” she said, walking into the room. She sat down in the chair behind Lacey's worktable. “This is, like, a
turning
point,” she said, her hands cutting the air in her typical dramatic fashion. “Clay thinks Wolf is ready to start practicing his search stuff again, so I get to do the hide-in-the-woods thing and Wolf will find me.”

Clay had been working with Wolf for a week, and Bobby
admired the man's tenacity and skill. He was spending so much time with the dog that Bobby wondered what was happening to his architecture practice, but Clay did not seem concerned. Wolf was not the same dog who had lunged for Lacey that first day. The dog was nearly docile now. He was fatter, too, from all the little chunks of dried liver Clay was using to reward his good behavior. Wolf was even able to remain calm around Lacey, who would bravely walk near him while Clay held the end of the dog's loose leash, just in case. Wolf still went berserk, though, if Lacey walked past his kennel while he was inside it. “That's his territory,” Clay had said at the dinner table a few nights ago. “
No one
is to go into that kennel except me. Understood?” He'd looked directly at Mackenzie, who had nodded solemnly.

Wolf and Mackenzie, though, seemed to have a little mutual admiration society going. It was cool to see the dog greet her, his tail going so fast it was a blur. The first time Bobby saw the dog run toward her, though, he'd panicked. He'd been watching from the kitchen window, and he thought that Clay must have lost hold of the leash and that Wolf was on the attack. He'd run to the screen door, yanking it open, but then he saw the joy on Mackenzie's face and the obvious playfulness in Wolf's posture, and relaxed his grip on the doorknob, enormously relieved. The last thing he'd wanted to do was confront that dog. He couldn't help it; he still felt nervous around him.

“Clay said you can come watch if you want to,” Mackenzie said now, getting up from her seat.

“I'd like that.” He'd hoped to finish the belt buckle in the next hour or so, but this seemed more important.

He walked outside with Mackenzie, a bit shaken to see that Wolf was not on a leash. The dog looked in their direction but didn't budge from his sitting position in front of Clay.

“Clay has him on a stay,” Mackenzie explained. “Isn't he beautiful? He's such a good dog. I can't believe they were thinking of killing him.”

“This is a good test,” Clay called to them as they neared him and the dog. “He wants to run to you, Mackenzie, but he knows he needs to stay.”

“Can I tell him to come to me?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, honey,” Clay said. “Let me be the one to release him. You just stand there, tempting him, while I give him another thirty seconds on the stay.”

Bobby stood next to Mackenzie, impressed by Wolf's self-control and by the way his steady gaze was locked on Clay. The dog's body quivered with the excitement of having Mackenzie so near and yet so far.

“Okay!” Clay said finally, and Wolf bounded over to Mackenzie, who dropped her sneakers in the sand and ran off with the dog toward the water.

“Man, you have done some amazing work with that animal,” Bobby said to Clay as he watched Mackenzie and Wolf play in the shallow water around the lighthouse.

“Well, it wasn't like starting from scratch,” Clay said. He had his hands on his hips and his eye on the dog. “He already had all the training inside him. The trauma just knocked it out of him for a while.”

“You trust him completely with Mackenzie?”

Clay sighed, shaking his head. “I don't trust him completely with anyone, yet,” he said. “He's been great, but who knows what might still be misfiring in that brain of his. And I won't rest easy until after we get that neurological exam next week.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Mackenzie!” he called. “Bring him back. Let's get to work.”

Mackenzie walked back to them, Wolf trotting at her side.

“You ready to hide?” Clay asked her.

“Yup.” Mackenzie sat down on the sand and pulled on her sneakers, looking into the woods. “How far in should I go?” she asked, squinting up at Clay, the sun bright on her face.

“As deep as you feel comfortable,” Clay said. “You've got your phone with you in case there's a problem?”

She stood up and nodded, jutting out her hip so that Clay could see the phone fastened to the low waistband of her shorts. She was going to be a seductress, just like her mother, Bobby thought. In another few years, she would be driving the Outer Banks boys crazy.

Clay patted his thigh and whistled, and Wolf trotted over to him. “I'll take him for a walk around the other side of the house for ten minutes or so,” he said to Mackenzie. “Then I'll send him after you.”

“Okay.” Mackenzie ran toward the woods, quickly disappearing into the thick brush. They should be checking this kid for ticks, Bobby thought. He would mention it to Lacey.

He joined Clay and Wolf as they started walking away from the woods and pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Do you mind?” he asked, and Clay shook his head.

“Not out here,” Clay said. “Plenty of fresh air.” Wolf took off a few yards ahead of them, following some unseen trail in the sand. “Heel,” Clay said, not harshly, not even loudly, and the dog fell into step next to him again.

Around the side of the house, Bobby stopped to light his cigarette, turning his back on the breeze to prevent the match from going out. “I don't want to smoke around Mackenzie,” he said, exhaling smoke as they started walking again. He might still have a vice or two, but Mackenzie did not need to know about them. His parents had both smoked—and drank—around him, his father even giving him sips of hard liquor when he was a toddler, thinking it was funny.

Since recognizing Clay a week earlier, he had toyed with the idea of talking to him about the night they met. He thought of asking, “Do you remember meeting me years ago?” But he didn't. What would be the point?

So instead, they talked about Rani's adoption as they slowly circled the house. What an incredible nightmare that had been! He'd known that Clay and Gina had faced a multitude of obstacles when they tried to adopt Rani, but he hadn't understood how close they came to losing the little girl and how close Rani had come to losing her life because she was not able to get the heart surgery she'd needed in India.

“I'm glad it all worked out for you,” Bobby said. “Rani's a lucky kid.”

Clay did not look directly at him, but he smiled. “So's Mackenzie,” he said, and Bobby felt tears burn his eyes at the unexpected compliment.

They returned to the edge of the woods. Wolf stood on the alert, looking from the trees to Clay and back again, apparently waiting for some sort of signal. Clay bent low, saying something to the dog that Bobby couldn't hear, before motioning toward the woods. “Go find!” Clay said.

Wolf took off into the woods, and Clay turned to Bobby as he set out after the dog. “See you in a while,” he said. “With victim in tow.”

Bobby nodded. “Good luck!” He watched as the woods swallowed the dog and the man, then started walking back to the house.

He was nearly to the porch when he heard the sound of tires on the gravel lane and turned to see Lacey's car pull into the parking lot. Bobby waved at her, then thought of Wolf, loose in the woods, only yards from where Lacey was emerging from her car.

“Lacey, wait!” he called, quickly changing direction from the house to the parking lot. “Don't get out of your car!”

“What?” She couldn't hear him. She was already out of the car, reaching back inside the driver's seat for something, and an image filled his head: Wolf, streaking out of the woods and knocking Lacey to the ground, his teeth sinking into her jugular.

“Get back in the car!” he called as he got closer. “Wolf is loose!”

At those words, she quickly slipped back into the driver's seat and pulled the door shut after her.

He reached her car and got in on the passenger side, moving a grocery bag off the seat to his lap.

“What do you mean, he's loose?” she asked.

Bobby's heart was pounding all out of proportion to the reality of the situation.

“He's in the woods looking for Mackenzie.”

She looked alarmed for a moment.

“She's playing victim,” he said, and her face relaxed.

“You scared me there for a second.” Then she laughed. “I think you overreacted just a teeny little bit,” she said, smiling at him in a way that showed her dimples. “If he's in the woods looking for Mackenzie, he's working. He's not going to suddenly get my scent and come racing out of the woods after me.”

He laughed himself, feeling foolish. “I guess you're right,” he said. He could see beads of perspiration on her freckled cheeks and forehead. The two of them were more likely to die from the heat in the car than from the attack of a dog.

He opened the car door. “Let's go,” he said. “I've got the groceries.”

Still shaken, he could think of nothing to say as they
walked toward the house. He looked at her from the corner of his eye. She was barefoot, wearing a sundress that fell to her ankles and that, in the way it merely hinted at the body beneath it, was sexier than a bikini might have been on her. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was. He wanted to say he admired her, that he thought about her when he was in bed at night, that he wished he could make love to her
now,
and do it right this time.

Was she making love to Rick? There was no doubt in his mind that Rick would be far better for her than he could ever be. Money, status and security were all part of that package, not to mention good looks and hair. So he settled for putting an arm around her shoulders on the pretense of protecting her from a dog that was nowhere in sight.