The Off Season (10 page)

“Or you’ll be moving in with Mom, if she has her way.” Annie wrinkled her nose.

“I told her before she started renovations that I’m sure we’ll all be happier long-term if Lilly, Max, and I have our own space.” As much as their mother loved spending time with Lilly, she’d never had a high tolerance for messes. Or the idea of a large dog living in the house.

“But for now it would be okay? My coming here?”

“I’ll have to ask the homeowners’ permission,” Christina said, figuring she could always blame them if she decided this was a terrible idea.

Annie flashed a perfect smile, her blue eyes reminding Christina of Lilly’s when she’d first heard there were doughnuts. “You’ll really ask them? Today? Because I’m already packed up.”

Before she could answer, Christina noticed what her daughter was up to. “Don’t give him that, Lilly! He’ll get sick,” she warned, but it was too late. Max had already scarfed down the half doughnut Lilly had offered.

His strong whip of a tail drummed a happy rhythm against the table leg.

Fifteen minutes later, Christina was cleaning up vomit from the family room—of course Max had picked the one carpeted area on the entire ground floor—when there was a knock at the front door.

As Annie hurried to answer, Christina warned, “Check the peephole.”

“It’s Harris.” Annie hurried to undo the dead bolt. “How’s your little boy? We’ve been so worried about him.”

Harris came in with a puff of cool air and the fresh smell of the sea.

“He’s better this morning than he was. Even talked a little more,” he said as Max wagged his way over and pushed his long snout beneath the lawman’s hand. “He’s got a ways to go, but the doctors are saying things look hopeful.”

Annie clapped her hands together. “That’s fantastic.”

“I’m so glad.” Christina wadded up the towel and stood. Though she had earlier called the floor nurse for an update on Jacob’s condition, she sighed to hear the relief in Harris’s voice.

Reflexively, she glanced at Lilly, who didn’t look up from the area rug where she was playing with the plush pony her grandma had given her. Christina’s eyes widened as her daughter made the pony kick the green T. Rex, a blow that sent the dinosaur tumbling from the coffee table to land—in slow motion, thanks to her hand—on its head. Horrified to realize what she was acting out, Christina’s first instinct was to snatch the toys away.

Instead, she left her daughter as she was, afraid Lilly might throw a tantrum—or blurt out something even more disturbing than what she’d said yesterday.

All gone. Like Katie-Mommy. Broken.

“I’ve been—I’ve been thanking God myself,” said Harris, either not noticing or pretending not to notice Lilly’s play. He’d changed into fresh jeans and a sweater, which he wore beneath a lighter jacket. If he’d slept, though, it hadn’t been for long, judging from the dark stubble on his jawline and the tired look around his eyes. “And thanks to you, too, for getting Dr. Marshall for us. She seems to really know her stuff.”

“The nurses think she walks on water.” Christina ducked into the laundry room off the kitchen, where she left the soiled towel and carpet cleaner. As she returned, she added, “Far as I’m concerned, that’s the best way to figure out who you’d want working on your family.”

“Good strategy.”

She flashed what she hoped passed for a smile. What was he doing here? “How ’bout some more of that ill-gotten coffee?”

“I’m good for now, thanks. But I was wondering, think we could talk?” Shifting his gaze to Annie, he asked, “Would you mind if I spoke to your sister privately?”

“Of course not,” Annie said before looking to Christina. “Should I take Lilly upstairs and get her dressed?”

Christina couldn’t get a word out. Was he about to tell her that Renee planned to try to file some kind of complaint about Lilly? Surely, no law would hold a toddler culpable. Or did he know something about the damage to her car or the woman on the monitor?

“How ’bout we go for a short walk?” Harris suggested. “I could use a little of this sunshine.” When she hesitated, he said, “C’mon, Christina. Humor me. It’s nice out, close to fifty. Better enjoy a little milder weather while we’ve got it.”

She, too, had heard another winter-storm advisory for later in the week. They’d be on the edge of it, which might mean only a few inches. Or it could jog the other way, dumping a foot or more of snow.

“Go ahead,” Annie told her. “Lilly and I will be fine.”

“Okay,” Christina said, anxiety prickling at the back of her neck. “Just let me grab my jacket.”

She ended up leashing Max as well, hoping the fresh air would help settle his stomach. Or maybe she really wanted the big dog as a buffer between Harris and whatever news—or questions—he’d brought.

The three of them headed for the beach, where the churning gray-blue surf rumbled, scrubbing the sand and polishing the clear quartz pebbles known locally as Cape May diamonds. Coming in off the water, the wind was chillier than she’d expected, ruffling the white feathers of a few of the heartier gulls.

“Hard to believe there’s a storm brewing out there somewhere. Doesn’t seem possible, on a day like this one,” Harris told her as he climbed onto the jetty. Made of piled rock, it extended some fifty yards offshore, providing protection from the worst waves, and serving as a popular platform for fishermen in the warmer months.

“I can’t take Max up there,” she said, raising her voice to be heard. She knew that greyhounds’ long, thin legs could be fragile, and the algae that grew in patches could be dangerously slick.

“That’s okay.” He craned his neck, looking across the water toward the south. “I’m just trying to see—there it is.”

“What’s that?”

“The Willet’s Point lighthouse. The light’s long since been replaced by that flashing buoy the coast guard put nearby. Foghorn’s gone, too, but on a clear day, you can still just make out the silhouette.”

She smiled at a memory of the first time she’d seen the lighthouse up close. “When I was around twelve, my parents took Annie and me inside once and gave us a tour. Renee, too, come to think of it. We were inseparable back then.”

“I thought it had always been locked up tight,” he said. “Don’t tell me the whole bunch of you walked out there over those rocks.”

“No way would my parents take a chance like that, especially not with three kids in tow.” She shivered at the thought of navigating the treacherous path carved into the jagged rocks arranged like vertebrae along the point’s spine. Submerged probably twenty hours a day, the rocks’ weathered surfaces would be even more slippery than the jetty. “We took Dad’s little fishing boat and tied it up by the ladder.”

She remembering how seasick she’d been with their boat bobbing at the base, and how terrified she’d been to climb up the rusted rungs to the lower gallery platform and the lighthouse’s heavy double doors. If she hadn’t known her spider monkey of a nine-year-old sister, who’d clambered up with ease and then turned and stuck her tongue out, would’ve lorded it over her forever, she never would have risked the twenty-foot fall into the sea. Or maybe she’d been more afraid of Renee, who’d followed, telling everyone at school what a baby she was. Maybe telling Christina that she didn’t want to be friends with such a loser anymore.

“You remember that scheme to make it into a tourist stop after the place was decommissioned?” she asked.

“It wasn’t exactly on my radar.” Harris shrugged, a reminder that his family would have been more focused on day-to-day survival.

“My dad was involved with the historical society back then,” Christina said, not mentioning that her father had been the group’s president, “so he had the keys—this was all before the fire, of course. After that, the plan was off.”

She frowned, thinking what a shame it was that an electrical blaze had so heavily damaged the interior, including the living quarters once used by shifts of coast guard light keepers. “We might’ve been the last people to see it from the inside. It was cool as can be, with real bedrooms and a kitchen, like a little house beneath the top level where the light was.”

“Then you have to check it out. Just give Max a bit of slack and step on up here. I won’t let you slip.” Reaching down, he offered her his right hand. There were scars visible in the webbing between his thumb and index finger, another sign of the high price he’d paid for stopping a disturbed soldier with mass murder on his mind.

“It’s all right,” he assured her when she hesitated. “You can trust me.”

Her eyes locked with his. “So you really don’t . . . blame Lilly for what happened? Renee was—”

“The divorce has been hard on her,” he said. “And losing her teaching job. If she lost Jacob, too, I’m not sure how she—hell, who am I kidding? I have no idea how either of us would survive it.”

“Lilly doesn’t understand what she did,” Christina said, needing him to understand. “She was only trying to make him let go of her arm so he wouldn’t pull her where she didn’t want to go.”

“Of course it was something like that. Little kids fight sometimes, and Jacob can get pretty bossy when he plays with other children. I know she never meant to hurt him. At that age, they don’t even understand the concept.” He smiled at her. “When Jacob started speaking, you know what was the first thing he asked us? If he—if he could go and play at Lilly’s.”

Christina’s vision swam until she blinked away the gathering tears. “They remind me of two siblings, at each other’s throats one minute and hugging the next.”

“Come on, Christina.” Harris reached down. “Take my hand. Step up here.”

She slipped her hand into his, letting the coiled end of Max’s leash run through her fingers as Harris helped her onto the big, flat rock where he was standing. Gently turning her to face the peninsula, he pointed out the faint silhouette of a red-and-black conical figure in the distance. As they stood together, looking, she felt the past lapping at her ankles, receding into a present where things were even less clear.

Despite the warmth of the callused fingers wrapped around hers, she shivered. If he meant to make her feel secure up here, the effect was offset by her own long-dormant regrets, along with a pleasant tingle reminding her of how very welcome his touch had once been . . . and how long it had been since she’d been—

She sucked in a ragged breath. She was still grieving for Doug, or she should be, no matter what challenges they’d faced in their marriage. And no matter how much he’d begun to seem part of a different woman’s life, one receding in her memory’s rearview as quickly as her years in Dallas.

But some things couldn’t be denied, as she looked up at the handsome face, the hazel eyes that studied her with such obvious concern. “You’re not the same man, are you? You’re different now. We both are.”

“I was no man back then,” Harris admitted, “just a stupid punk, bent on getting even for something out of your control. Never thought I’d get the chance to tell you how sorry I am about it.”

“You’re sorry,” she repeated, trying to understand what she made of an apology so many years belated. Would it have made some difference if he’d told her long before, before Doug? Did it make any difference to her now?

“I do forgive you,” she said, hoping at least that getting it out in the open would make dealing with him easier. But that didn’t mean she was about to let him make a fool of her again. Pulling her hand free, she asked, “But that’s not why you came this morning, is it?”

“No. It’s not. I’m afraid I’m here on official business.”

Her heart accelerated. “You found something? Or someone?”

“Just a question, that’s all,” he said, “about why you lied to me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

In the few seconds that passed before she turned and hopped back down to the packed sand, Harris watched Christina’s shock turn to fury. But as much as he hated to undo whatever scant trust he’d built, he couldn’t lose this chance to startle her into giving him the information he needed.

“You’re still the same con artist,” she accused him as he followed in her wake. “Only now you’re hiding it behind a badge—”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were being sued,” he pressed, “to the tune of 3.2 million dollars?”

When Fiorelli had filled him in on it last night, Harris’s first reaction had been anger. He’d asked her directly about inheritance issues, and she had lied to his damn face. Since then he’d cooled down, reminding himself that she had every reason to be wary of sharing personal information with him. But he swore he was going to get some answers, if only to determine whether she was in real physical danger.

“Because I’m not,” she snapped back at him. “Not anymore. It’s all been worked out. Doug’s son and daughter—”

“Your stepchildren.”

“Believe me,” she said bitterly as he pulled even with her, “we’ve never thought of one another as related. Never once, thanks to the previous administration.”

“Previous administration?”

Her sigh was followed by a pained smile. “Doug’s first wife. Evelyn had a lot of issues with his remarriage. The age gap, the
trophy-wife
thing.” She sketched out air quotes with her fingers. “You name the objection, even though they’d been divorced for years before he met me. I tried to head things off by signing a prenup. Everything Doug owned or inherited before the wedding passed directly to his kids.”

“
All
the kids?” he asked, imagining how little the ex-wife would like seeing her own children’s portions reduced by a Lilly-Come-Lately.

“All three of them,” Christina confirmed, “which created hard feelings, as you might imagine, especially since I’ll be trustee for Lilly’s share until she comes of age. So they came after me for everything: the house, Doug’s percentage of the new practice he established, even the life-insurance policy he’d taken out especially so I would be provided for.”

“Provided for how well?”

She crossed her arms and looked at him, her mouth pursed.

“People always hate talking about money,” he said. “They’ll spill their guts on every other subject—adultery, past abuse, you name it—but you start asking for figures, and they clam up every time. But you don’t have to worry. Whatever you tell me about your bank account stays with me. I swear it.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she blew out a breath and answered, “It was for a million, because he knew I couldn’t keep up the house on just an ER doctor’s salary.”

Must’ve been some house, then. “So was it the ex or the kids themselves who sued?”

“I’m sure Evelyn was the instigator, but the suit was in the kids’ names. Legally, they’re not children anymore. DJ—that’s what everybody calls Doug Junior—is twenty-three now, and Ashley’s nineteen.”

“College kids, then?” he guessed.

“DJ’s just started med school at Johns Hopkins.”

“Sounds pricey.” And extremely time-consuming.
But the kid could drive up here from Baltimore in less than three hours if he took it in his head to screw with his late dad’s second wife.

“Very expensive, yes, but there’d be nothing for him to gain at this point.”

Unless all he wants is the chance to shake up the woman whose kid cost him a fatter piece of the pie.
“And what about the daughter? She tied up in school, too?”

“Maybe community college or some kind of job-training program.” Doubt threaded through Christina’s voice. “You’d never know it to talk to her, but Ashley has a learning disability. Enough of one that her mom really had her work cut out for her getting Ashley through high school—and fending off the boys.”

“Pretty girl?”

“Extremely. And so sweet—we got along famously at first, until her mother convinced her that
consorting with the enemy
was an act of treason.”

Harris imagined that protecting a daughter like that from those who might seek to take advantage would get to be a habit. Which moved Mama Bear higher on his list of suspects. “So where’s home for this family? They in Dallas, where you and your husband lived?”

Christina shook her head. “No. They’re back in Pittsburgh, where Doug started out.”

Pittsburgh was a longer drive—maybe twice the distance the boy would need to cover from Baltimore—but still doable, especially if the
previous administration
was sufficiently unhinged. “But you said it’s all been settled?”

In the bright morning sunshine, Christina’s blush was easy to see. “Yes. I just wanted it over before I moved back home, so I caved on everything except the car and that one life-insurance policy I mentioned—a drop in the bucket compared to what they were getting. And Lilly’s share, of course, though if I have anything to say about it, she’ll be through school and have her own career established before she even hears about the money.”

“Smart,” he said before returning to the point. “So First Wife’s kids ended up with more than the will stipulated, but not everything. And I take it this Evelyn had already gotten some kind of settlement at the time of their divorce.”

Christina nodded. “They were satisfied, the lawyer said. And why not? They have more than enough money to go to school, to travel, to do just about anything if they don’t get too crazy. What more could they ask for?”

Harris snorted, thinking of all the trust-fund brats who flooded these shore communities every summer. Entitled and obnoxious, ripping through town on their expensive wheels, then throwing fits when he ticketed them or had their fancy rides towed. Privileged young jerks walking out on restaurant bills or stiffing some poor local server after running up a huge bar tab. Using their daddies’ high-priced lawyers to weasel out of charges for everything from DWIs and public lewdness to sexual assault. “I know that type. I arrest them—or kids like them—way too often. And for everything they have, what they’ve been handed without lifting one damn finger, all they want is
more
.”

She shook her head, distress gleaming in her eyes. “I can’t believe that they would—”

“And what they can’t get, they’ll destroy, like a toddler stomping a cookie when he’s told to share it,” Harris said, needing her to face what she clearly didn’t wish to. “Or scratching the hell out of their father’s car when it doesn’t come their way.”

She went quiet after that, clearly struggling with the concept that the vandalism had been personal. It must be easier, he thought, to assume the vandals were simply misguided individuals who’d mistaken her for someone she considered
really
rich.

They left the beach to walk along the street front, passing more grand historic houses painted a variety of colors, many sporting turrets and ornate, contrasting trim. Too fussy, and nearly impossible to keep up all that old woodwork in this beachfront climate, but he had to admit, the Old Town area kept a hell of a lot of area painters and contractors and their families in groceries.

And, yeah, the homes were nice to look at, landmarks he took an odd and complicated pride in. They’d be even prettier come summer, with their shutters open and colorful flags and awnings out, but he liked this time of year best. Liked driving empty streets and keeping watch over empty houses. Liked having more time to spend with Jacob as they collected shells on empty beaches and then went inside to make hot chocolate and grilled-cheese sandwiches with cups of canned tomato soup.

The thought of his son sent a fresh pang slicing through him, one Harris fought to compartmentalize as they made their way back to the big white Victorian on Cape Street. Breaking the silence, he asked Christina to repeat the ex-wife’s and her kids’ full names and locations, which he recorded on his smartphone. Apparently still lost in thought, she volunteered nothing else.

“Is that all?” she asked as they stood on the front porch.

He nodded. “I have to head over to the station for a bit. Then back to the hospital.”

“Coffee for the road?” she offered. “I’m sure I have a spare travel mug—and frankly, you look like you could use the caffeine.”

“Well, if that’s your professional opinion.”

She offered a weak smile, her cheeks pink with the cool air and the walk, her eyes bright with a quiet intelligence that had always drawn his eye. Though she had never been the prettiest or most popular girl in high school, she’d outworked and outstudied the loudmouthed guys always trying to dazzle their advanced classes with their brilliance. She’d outscored all of them from her perch below the radar—including one Swamp’s End smart-ass who’d been so sure he had a lock on the scholarship he’d counted on to take him far from Seaside Creek. Outscored him by 2 percent on the test that would’ve kept him from having to enlist.

After letting him inside, she went straight to the kitchen to pour coffee. Before he could follow her, however, Lilly wandered into his path, looking up at him with a serious expression.

“Jacob daddy?” she asked, her hands full of the stuffed horse and toy dinosaur—one of his son’s—she’d been playing with before.

Harris heard Christina’s sharply indrawn breath before she called, “Annie, could you please come get Lilly?”

“She’s fine,” said Harris, squatting down despite the bum right knee that would make rising painful. “Yep, I’m Jacob’s daddy. He misses you, princess.”

He heard the quickness of Christina’s footsteps, felt her hovering behind him, his cop-honed senses picking up on her anxiety. What the hell was she afraid of? Did she really think he was about to Mirandize the tiny girl?

“Just a minute,” Annie called faintly from another room. A bathroom, more than likely, since he heard the sound of water running.

“For Jacob,” Lilly said, thrusting both the dinosaur and her own toy horse into his hands. “Jacob come back?”

“I hope soon, sweetie,” he said.

Lilly hugged him, so surprising and so earnest that he amended yesterday’s odd assessment of her almost unnerving calm. She was a toddler, that was all, a tiny two-year-old probably in shock from seeing her closest playmate silent and unmoving, not to mention dealing with the fury of a caregiver she’d come to trust.

Harris hugged her back. “I’ll take them to him,” he said of the toys he still held. “And they’ll help make him better.”

“All better,” Lilly echoed solemnly before looking to her mother. “No like Kaydee-Mommy. Kaydee-Mommy got dead.”

He turned his head, confused enough by what she’d said to check out Christina’s reaction. In her wide-eyed pallor, he saw what he’d missed a moment earlier.

Christina
hadn’t
been afraid of anything he might do to her child. Instead, she’d been fearful of what Lilly might’ve—and had—told him.

But what the hell did it mean? And how could he get an answer without causing Christina to panic?

“L-let me get that coffee so you can be on your way,” Christina said, willing her voice to remain steady. But the way Harris’s gaze slid from Lilly to her made her feel as if she stood before him naked, her entire history exposed. Weighed and measured. Judged, not so much for the accident of birth that had led to her and Annie’s abandonment and subsequent adoption, but the way her history had come back to haunt her two years before.

Once he dug deep enough—and she had no doubt he was clever and determined enough to find some way around medical privacy laws—to find out about her diagnosis, would he suspect she’d been the one filling her child’s head with wild stories? The one, perhaps, who’d vandalized her own car and maybe even disguised her voice to call her sister?

Would he set Child Protective Services on her, fearing she might prove to be a danger to her own daughter?

Panic clawed at her throat. She couldn’t lose Lilly. Couldn’t risk the only thing that made her get up every morning.

While Lilly headed back toward the crate of toys kept in the family room, anxiety ripped through Christina. Moving back into the kitchen, she spilled coffee as she poured.

“Sorry,” she said as she reached for the roll of paper towels. “You wouldn’t think someone trained to sew up wounds with the tiniest of stitches would be such a complete klutz in the kitchen.”

Harris looked at her with an unreadable expression. “You seem kind of rattled. Is there something more you want to tell me?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. I’m just—it’s upsetting, everything that’s happened. First, with the car and that voice I heard, and now, with Jacob. I don’t know how you’re standing there so calmly when he’s back at the hospital.”

“He’s going to be all right. I know it.”

“I’ll look in on him,” she offered, needing to see for himself whether Harris’s optimism was well founded, “if it’s okay with you and Renee. When I head back to work tomorrow.”

“I appreciate that,” he said as he accepted the mug. He took a sip and closed his eyes a moment, his fleeting look of pleasure reminding her sharply of a time she wished she could forget. “This stuff is worse than crack,” he told her.