In Too Deep (25 page)

“
I see the way you look at
him.”

She could plead ignorance and ask,
“What way?” but she didn’t know if she had enough of her mother’s
acting talent to pull it off with a straight face. Safer to remain
silent.

“
It’s the same way you looked at
him way back then.” Glenna picked up another potato and positioned
it on the board, resting the knife along its length. She paused and
looked down at the utensil in her hands. “You look at West the same
way I looked at Michael when we were young. He was my first love
too, you know.”

“
Mum.” Piper slid off the barstool
and moved around the counter.

Her hand hovered an inch from her
mother’s shoulder and she tried to push past the blockage in her
mind and go in for a bear hug. But she saw him there—her dad—in the
same position, his big, broad shoulders filling the kitchen,
Glenna’s laughter as he tugged her into his arms, running his
stubbled jaw along her neck, kissing her soundly.

In the years since her father’s
death she’d never once heard Glenna say his name. She always
referred to him as “your father,” or “my husband,” or “Mr.
Harland.”

Never “Michael.”

Glenna dropped the knife and
caught Piper’s hovering hand, pressing the back of Piper’s fingers
to her flushed cheeks. “I spotted this thing between you and Ryan
before either of you did, so don’t look so surprised.”

Piper moistened her lips. “You
did?”

Her mother nodded, squeezing
Piper’s hand. “Here, you finish these, I’m shaking.”

“
Sure.” She patted Glenna’s
shoulder. “Why don’t you pour us a glass of wine?”

“
Before three in the
afternoon?”

“
After the day I’ve had, Mum, I
think we can risk moving Happy Hour forward a little.”

“
Chardonnay, then?”

“
Perfect.”

While her mother poured the wine,
Piper chopped potatoes and transferred them into a pot.

Glenna slipped onto a barstool and
slid a glass of wine across the counter. “You were
fifteen.”

Piper looked up from filling the
pot with water. “What?”

“
When West noticed you weren’t
just Ben’s little sister anymore.” She leaned forward, lacing her
fingers under her chin. “It was on one of those picnics we used to
go on to Kahurangi Bay. Your father—I mean, Michael—insisted on
bringing a bunch of Ben’s friends along for a seafood feast. Do you
remember that day?”

Actually, she’d blocked it from
her mind, stomping it underfoot when they’d taken the three couples
to Kahurangi Bay. The day Glenna mentioned,
that day
, should
come with its own disclaimer: Piper’s most mortifying moment.
Ever.

She took a
big
swallow of
wine. “I remember.”

“
You were wearing that cute little
bikini and you just had to compete with the boys who were diving
off the top of Michael’s boat—”

“
Mum—”

“
And you can’t have knotted the
top’s ties properly—”

“—
that, and I had absolutely no
boobs to keep the top in place. Gawd.”

The memory yawned open—standing on
top of the highest point of her dad’s boat, looking down into the
clear water, droplets sparkling in the sun as the group of
teenagers dog paddled and frolicked below. West staring up at her,
the grin on his face making her shiver, making her feel warm in
places that should’ve been cold from the water below.

“
Watch me!” she shouted and
propelled herself off the cabin into a cannonball, hoping to splash
a tidal wave of water over West and the other boys.

She had.

Only, losing her bikini top in the
process hadn’t been part of the plan. The others hooted and
whistled, while West swam over, told her to hold on to the boat’s
ladder while he clambered on-board and grabbed the nearest tee
shirt, which happened to be his Chilies one.

“
Well,
boobs
or not, I saw
the way he looked after you that day, the way he looked at
you.”

Piper transferred the pot to her
mother’s stove and turned on the element. “I think we’ve
established that West is a kind man, that he used to be a kind
boy.”

Glenna shook her head, the gold
hoops in her ears swaying. “He wasn’t just being kind that day. You
were so embarrassed you never noticed.”

“
So, how did he look at me then,
Mum?”

“
Like you were his.”

The blossom of warmth in her chest
solidified into a hot throb. Once she’d thought that too. She’d
thought they’d belonged together. That West would one day own Due
South and she’d help her dad and Ben run dive tours. They’d get
married under the colorful blooms of a fuchsia tree and tell their
future kids about how their mum and dad started off as mates, and
ended up as soul-mates.

The hero-worshiping dreams of true
love, as seen through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old. A wildly
gullible fifteen-year-old, as it turned out.

“
And he’s looking at you that way
again.” Glenna raised her wine-glass at her. “Point in case, the
way he went after Gav today.”

“
I’ve already had this
conversation with Ben. West just did the macho guy thing and you’re
both reading way too much into it.” Wiping her hands on the kitchen
towel, Piper picked up her wineglass. “And whatever happened back
when we were teenagers is ancient history.

“
So something
did
happen
back then.”

Crap. Once again she’d
underestimated her mother’s sneakiness. She took another swallow of
wine, wondered what the reaction would be if she drained the whole
glass and poured another.

“
You used to tell me everything,”
Glenna sighed. “How Johnny Martin screamed like a girl when you
scared him. How Jake Cummins promised to write you when his family
left Oban and how he never did.”

Piper forced out a laugh. “Oh
puh-lease, Mum. I was like twelve—naturally I told you
everything.”

And she’d continued over the years
to tell her mother about the Johnny Martins and the Jake Cummins
clones that came and went in her life. The terrible blind date who
thought her being a cop meant she’d get his traffic violations
wiped. The funny, and sometimes plain weird, anecdotes from her job
that her mum enjoyed. She populated her phone calls with these
kinds of stories.

“
You didn’t tell me how West broke
your heart just before Michael died.”

Piper lowered her glass to the
counter with shaky hands. “How did you know that?”

“
Puh-lease, as you say. I am your
mother. You think I didn’t notice when you’d been crying all night?
That I didn’t notice West stopped coming by the house?”

“
Did Dad know that we were, ah,
more than friends?”

“
I don’t think so.”

“
I’m surprised you didn’t tell
him.”

Glenna rotated the wineglass stem
between her fingers. “Your father had other things going on at the
time.”

“
His preoccupation with the
free-diving Nationals?”

“
Yes. That was certainly on his
mind.”

Piper remained silent, but the one
question she’d never found the courage to ask burned on her tongue.
“Mum.” She lifted her gaze to see her mother watching her with
shiny eyes. God. But if she didn’t ask now, she never would.
“Before I left Oban you told me that you and Dad had an argument,
and that you went to the Komeke’s late that night and slept in
their spare room.”

Her mother nodded, continuing to
fiddle with the stem of her glass.

“
A year later at the inquest you
told the court you argued over finances. That he accused you of
spending too much money on your little fripperies.”

Her mother nodded
again.

Piper kept her voice pitched low
and even. “You lied at that inquest, didn’t you?”

A fat teardrop spilled over her
lashes. “I—I—” Her chest hitched, snatching the rest of her words
away as more tears fell.

“
Dad never once complained about
the money you spent. I remember he always told you to splurge on
something nice for yourself.”

Her mother sniffed. “He was a
generous man.”

“
What did you really fight about,
then?”

Glenna drained the last of her
wine and shoved the glass away. “His diving. His blasted
free-diving. Oh, it was an awful,
terrible
argument, and I—”
her mother’s voice cracked “—I told him, ‘You’re too old and
foolish to still be doing this.’ The look on his face, darling, I
just crushed him.”

Piper’s breath evaporated,
imagining her proud and stubborn father’s reaction to
that
accusation. “Jesus, Mum.”

With legs filled with jelly, Piper
stumbled to the dining table and slumped into a chair. Her fingers
splayed over her breastbone, tried to keep her heart from pulsating
right out of her chest. “So you left Dad?”

What had her father thought as
they’d chugged through the cool morning fog into Paterson Inlet to
his favorite diving spot? After a massive fight with his wife, he
still chose to free-dive?

Scratching around the edges of her
memories, she unearthed some discrepancies which before now she
couldn’t explain. He’d seemed quieter that morning, subdued and
lock-jawed—she assumed his unusual surliness was due to her mood
turning his sour. Could his focus, split between his wife and the
need to concentrate, be part cause of her dad’s fatal dive? It
didn’t excuse her culpability, but she now had a possible
explanation for what may have gone wrong.

Glenna hiccoughed, slid off the
stool and came to sit next to her. “We needed time apart so we
could talk things through when we were calmer. I came home the next
morning, and found you both gone.”

“
But you and Dad never
fought.”

“
Of course we did.” Glenna
retrieved a tissue from the pocket of her apron and delicately blew
her nose. “All couples disagree, especially when you have the
Harland temper to contend with. Michael and I learned to disagree
quietly.”

Piper sat glued in place at the
table, studying the pattern of the wood grain. “You never told
me.”

“
I never told anyone. No one
needed to know that I’d tried to shame such a proud man into
changing because I was petrified of losing him.” She flung up a
hand and shrugged. “And what use afterwards, when the love of my
life had gone? So I’ve lived with the bitter words of our last
argument every day for the past nine years and I’ve learned to make
my peace with them.”

Piper looked up. “He loved you and
he knew you loved him. He would’ve known it was a silly fight, that
you’d be back in the morning.”

Glenna’s gaze cut away from her
and she drew in her lower lip with her teeth, her fingers twisting
the tissue into a little ball. “Yes.” She laid her hand over
Piper’s. “And he loved you kids too. He’d have been so proud of you
all.”

Her father would’ve been proud of
Shaye, pursuing her dream of becoming Due South’s head chef, and of
Ben, for taking over the family dive business, even with this major
setback.

But, her?

Following in his footsteps,
becoming a cop whether he wanted her to or not. And taking it
further, fighting the odds to become a police diver so that other
families wouldn’t face a memorial stone that sat on bare earth, no
body beneath.

Would he be proud of her?
Maybe
.

But maybe he would’ve cursed his
middle child who left him to float away from his wife and family
because she was so brokenhearted she forgot to check her dive watch
at a critical moment.

Glenna squeezed her hand. “Well,
that’s enough doom and gloom, don’t you think? We were talking
about you and West.”

“
Right. Me and West.” Piper
shifted on the hard dining chair.

Changing the topic back to West
seemed less painful than their shared grief, though no more
resolvable, at least in her mind. “It won’t work between us. His
life is here in Oban, mine is back in Wellington—I’m a cop,
remember?”

“
Pffft.” Glenna flapped her hand.
“You’re a woman first
and
you have strong feelings for him—”
She held up a finger when Piper tried to object. “Uh-uh, I know you
do and I’m not asking you to tell me about them, just be aware Oban
does have a police presence here. Or I’m sure Ben would love to
have his sister as a business partner—should you ever get weary of
B and E shenanigans.”

Her mother was seriously
suggesting she stay? Transfer to the Oban police department or
partner up with Ben? Exactly how much wine had Glenna
drunk?

“
Mum, the island’s not big enough
to support two full-time officers and I don’t think Noah Daniels
has any plans to move on. And as for Ben…” Piper’s voice trailed
off and she raked a hand through her hair.

She couldn’t say Ben still blamed
her for their father’s death, not without her mother cornering him
to try and smooth things over. “We don’t see eye to eye. I can’t
see how we could ever work together.”