Shadows on the Sand (21 page)

One individual called out to you on some elemental level, and something in you responded. Why a melancholy ex-cop/widower who disliked his current career appealed to me I didn’t know. He came with so much emotional baggage, baggage I wasn’t certain he’d ever jettison. That scared me, but it didn’t stop the pull he exerted on me. He was the magnet, and I was the iron filings; he was the moon, and I was the tide. Clichés, and corny ones at that, but true nonetheless.

Greg placed his knife and fork across his plate and leaned back in his
chair. “I’ve got a question for you, Carrie. It’s highly personal, but I hope you’ll answer because it’s part of my crusade to learn all about you.”

I could feel his intensity rolling across the table, and I shivered. My stomach lurched. Maybe the fried fish wasn’t that great after all.

“Go ahead,” I said, wary. My hands gripped each other in my lap.

“How’s your mom doing today?”

I sighed. “I was afraid you were going to ask me something about her.”

“Hurtful topic.”

“You have no idea.”

It would have been nice if he’d said something about seeing that his question upset me so he was changing the subject, but he didn’t. He sat watching me, face grave, waiting.

I hunched my shoulders, knowing I might well be killing any good thoughts he had about me. “I have no idea how she is.”

I also had no idea where she was or whether she still lived at the last address we’d shared. Given her record for nonpayment of rent, she’d probably skipped in the middle of the night for a new place to lease and not pay on.

Greg stood and took his dish to the sink. He was frowning as he scraped the crumbs into the garbage disposal. He turned to me. “When was the last time you saw her?”

I couldn’t look at him, and I had to force the words out. “Seventeen years ago.”

It was clear my answers to his questions about Mom troubled him. They troubled my counselor and my pastor too, and I found myself getting defensive with Greg just as I had with them. After all, what did he with his loving family know about mothers like mine? Nothing!

“That’s a long time,” he said, voice mild. “Do you even know if she’s alive?”

I watched him return to his seat. “No, I don’t.” And I don’t care!

I knew he didn’t understand, maybe even thought I was terrible, but he didn’t know what it had been like. Protecting myself and Lindsay from Mom’s men was only part of the story. There were constantly things, like the time I’d saved money from my job sweeping the floors and straightening the shelves for the mom-and-pop grocery down the street. I was saving to buy the cleated shoes, leg guards, and a hockey stick I needed so I could be on the junior high field-hockey team when school started in the fall. The day I got the final amount needed, I hurried home, excited to be able to buy something I needed and wanted. I opened my bureau drawer to get the envelope I hid the money in, but I found only the envelope, empty and torn.

“Oh, I borrowed it,” Mom said when I questioned her. She and her guy du jour were pulling bottles of Grey Goose and Absolut from paper bags. “I needed it because we’re going to have a tasting contest to see which of these is best at getting you drunk fast.” She held up the vodka bottles. “Have some, and you can vote too.”

I was thirteen.

There was the time in third grade I got up the nerve to invite home a friend from school and we found Mom and her boyfriend on the living room floor, half dressed and wholly toasted. My friend was never allowed at my house again.

Or the time she swore a blue streak at my teacher when the concerned woman called to talk about my belligerent attitude.

Or the time she came to school so drunk she swayed as she talked to the principal.

Or the time she offered to find me a guy to introduce me to the mysteries of sex.

So I didn’t care where she was or even
if
she was, but I was aware how my attitude made me look to others. Most of the time I ignored the fact that the few who knew how I felt about Mom thought me cold and unfeeling,
but Greg was different. I wanted his good opinion, and I wanted it badly. But I also wanted him to give it in spite of who I was. I would be honest with him and hope he could accept me as I was and forgive my intransigence.

“Shouldn’t you try to make some effort to rebuild bridges here?” he asked. “Isn’t that what everyone says is the emotionally healthy thing to do?”

I nodded. “Everyone tells me I have to go see her. My counselor, Pastor Paul, Mary P. The only one who doesn’t is Lindsay.” I pushed back my chair and got to my feet. I carried my dishes to the sink, where, dishes still in hand, I stood staring out the window at the black night. The color of my soul where Mom was concerned? “But I can’t!”

“Why not?”

Was there anything worse than a reasonable man when you’re feeling anguished and threatened? “Because!”

“Because why?”

“Because I’m afraid.” I slapped a hand over my mouth and looked at him with appalled eyes. I’d voiced something I rarely acknowledged to myself.

He stood, took my plate from me, and placed it in the sink. He reached for my now-empty hand and brought it to his chest where he held it over his heart.

“But from what you’ve told me about her, Carrie, she’s not going to hurt you, at least not physically. And you’re an adult now. You don’t have to be afraid. Even if she’s got some guy with her, you’ll be okay.”

I blinked back tears at his gentle manner. I deserved for him to lecture me about how a good Christian should honor her mother, care about her and for her, not reject her. Forgive her.

“I’m not afraid physically.” Could I make him understand something I had difficulty understanding myself? “I’m afraid emotionally.”

He thought for a moment and nodded.

I swallowed the tears burning the back of my throat. “As long as I’m away from her, I can handle what happened. I can say I’ve forgiven her for exposing us to all the garbage we faced, and I can even mean it. Distance is what makes forgiveness possible.”

“But is that forgiveness?”

It was a fair question. “Probably not. But it’s as good as it gets for me.”

He ran a hand over my hair. “She did a number on you, didn’t she?”

I gave a sad little smile. “Understatement.” And I’d thought he had a lot of unresolved baggage.

“What do you think would happen if you saw her? To you and to her?”

“To her, nothing. She barely noticed we existed when we were there, so I doubt she’s ever missed us. As for me, I’m afraid all the resentment and anger I can control from a distance is going to overwhelm me.”

“But if you’ve forgiven her—”

“I know, I know. If I’ve forgiven her, it should be all finished. Forgiveness is supposed to be once for all, like Christ’s forgiveness of us.” I sighed. I hated this part of myself, this fist that held tight to my right to be angry and bitter. “But it’s not that simple. There are the memories of all those nights of fear, the days of want and hunger, the humiliation of everyone knowing what she was like and looking at Lindsay and me like we were bound to be as bad. And then there’s the knowledge that I stole because of her and the guilt over that behavior.”

His thumb made sweet circles on the back of my hand. “What if I went to Atlanta with you?” he asked as if he were asking about going down the block to the convenience store on the corner for a quart of milk.

My heart jumped and I stared, flabbergasted. “You’d do that for me?”

“I think I’d do most anything for you.”

He said it so simply my insides melted. “Oh, Greg, I’m such a bad risk. Ginny was so wonderful. I’m such a mess.”

“Not in my book. I think you’re brave and amazing. You’re even strong enough to tell the truth.”

I started to cry. He wrapped his arms around me and held me while I wept all over his shirt. When I started to calm down, he kissed me on the temple. I turned my face up, and our lips met.

A
s night closed in, Harl Evans sat back and watched Mike as he continued to read from Jason’s laptop. The set of the man’s jaw and the narrowing of his eyes told Harl that if Jason wasn’t already dead, he would be soon. He’d seen Mike angry before, but never like this.

“How
dare
he!” Mike looked up and glared at Harl. “You won’t believe what he’s written. About me!”

Harl fought to keep his expression neutral, swallowing his incredulity at Mike’s naiveté. Of course Jason hated him. Who wouldn’t after what Mike had done? The man had begun to believe his own press releases, statements he’d made up himself:

“Michael the Archangel, the messenger God has sent to give you abundant life!”

“Listen to the anointed words of Michael, God’s archangel, and find life!”

“Let Michael the Archangel pray for you, and God will rain blessings beyond belief.”

Harl had always liked that one with all the
b
words at the end. So did Mike. “Blessings beyond belief” had become one of his favorite lines, as in, “Send your gifts, and I will give you blessings beyond belief!”

Not God; Mike.

For a charlatan as sharp as Mike at shearing the sheep, it was amazing how he craved the approval and adoration of the shivering and newly poor lambs. Why one lamb might turn into a snarling wolf was a mystery to him.

“All I ever showed him was kindness.”

Harl’s stomach turned. His noble leader sounded like a thwarted, whiny child.

“And this is how he planned to repay me?”

Looked like one too with his lip pushed out in an angry pout.

Mike went back to reading. There were lots of disastrous things about The Pathway and about Mike’s misuse of the organization’s finances, but Jennie’s chapter was the
pièce de résistance
. With great emotion Jason told how he loved Jennie and wanted to marry her. He wrote of her sweet spirit and gentle heart. According to Jason, her desire to marry him was as strong as his to marry her—if you could believe him, and Harl did. He’d seen both Jason and Jennie plead with Mike. And anyone who read the book would believe too.

Mike saw Jason’s request to marry Jennie as a challenge to his authority, especially when the kid asked that Mike do away with the premarriage night. Mike refused the request, choosing one of the older men for her as a mark of his position of unquestioned and unquestionable leader. And the premarriage night was to go on as always.

“Allow one couple the right of selection,” he complained to Harl, “and before you know it, others will demand the same privilege. The beginning of the end.”

When three of Mike’s lieutenants went for Jennie the night before her marriage, Jason followed them to Mike’s quarters in spite of Mike’s direct order that Jason be confined to his room. Jason forced his way into Mike’s garish bedroom with the huge bed draped in red gauzy material and topped with the velvet quilt that Marty had made, all red and beige and white.

Harl couldn’t understand that quilt. Polygamy, okay. Great, in fact. But making the covering for the bed where your husband took one young woman after another? Marty was sicker than Mike, who was only doing what came naturally as the ultimate male authority figure.

Harl watched from the video room as Jason pleaded and Jennie begged and Mike became ever more furious with them both. Harl watched the lieutenants drag Jason off by force. Then he’d watched Mike take the hysterical Jennie against her will.

She was buried in the compound cemetery.

Now, miles and weeks away in Seaside, Harl looked up as rain began to beat on the windows, pulling him from memories of that unbelievable night.

“What if Jason wasn’t the one who took your missing disc, Mike?” As Harl had gone over that night just now, he realized Jason couldn’t have gotten to the video room. He’d been dragged away and locked up. All three of the men who dragged him off said he was never out of their sight the rest of that night.

Mike looked startled. “If it wasn’t him, who?”

“What if it was Andrea?” After all, she went missing too. And she was a thorn in everyone’s side, a rebel through and through.

Mike scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a kid, and a girl at that.”

“She escaped when no one escapes. And she’s managed to stay hidden for several weeks. Of course, she didn’t have a family to rush home to like Peoples. And we didn’t try to find her. We were all better off without her. Even her father agreed.”

“Say it was Andrea, which I can’t believe. How would she even know about the disc?”

“I don’t know,” Harl admitted. “But Jason was never alone all that night.”

Mike rubbed his forehead, his anger gone. For the first time, Harl saw doubt in him. “Are we running out of time, Harl? Is it time to cut and run?”

Yes!
“Let me finish what I have to do, and then we can fade away. Just a couple of days more.”

“It’s going smoothly?”

“Very. It’ll provide a nice tidy income.” To join the income from all the other deals he’d worked with The Pathway’s funds, all funneled neatly through untraceable offshore accounts.

Mike nodded. “Good. Now if we only knew where to find Andrea, we could tie up that loose end.”