The Shadow of Your Smile (20 page)

“C’mon, pick up, pick up.” Kyle let the phone ring until it rolled over to voice mail, but he didn’t leave a message. Maybe he’d turned into some sort of lovesick fool to believe the song Emma had sung on YouTube might be directed at him.

As he’d watched her sing, despite the grainy darkness of the video and the raspy, crackled audio, he’d traced her face, let her sweet voice churn up all the memories he’d tried to bury this past week. Only a week? It felt like an eternity.

Why do you like me, Kyle?

He’d stopped trying to figure that out, just retorted—in all his imaginary conversations, of course—
I just do, okay? Does everything have to make sense?

But see, he’d nailed the problem, the one thing that had kept his finger off the dial all week. Everything in his life made sense—at least the things he could control. His career choice, returning to Deep Haven. Even his cabin on the hill. It all fit into the plan he’d envisioned for his life after Kelsey’s death, as he watched his mother unravel, his father turn into a walking corpse. He would never let life destroy him like that. Never live on the edge.

Never find himself helpless. Without a plan.

And Emma fit perfectly into that plan. Hometown girl. She even loved music.

“I’m hooked on a feeling . . . that you’re in love with me.”

Kyle couldn’t actually pinpoint what love might feel like—was it wanting to hear her voice, thinking about her smile, tasting her kiss as if she were right there with him? Was it longing so badly to be in the audience there in St. Paul that he carried his cell phone out of the restaurant where he’d been listening to the local band JayJ Bump and played the YouTube video? The video had posted to Jason’s Facebook page, appeared on Kyle’s news feed.

Okay, so maybe he’d been rude to surf Facebook while sitting with the other deputies, but he couldn’t listen to any more shoptalk. Not when it meant remembering that he still hadn’t found his mother’s attacker. And a murderer—not just in Harbor City, but here in Deep Haven.

Kyle had spent the day tracking down the alibis of the fish house workers whose names Bonnie had given him. Every one of the seven employees, with the exception of Billy and the currently AWOL Hugh, alibied out. He had stopped in to a couple restaurants in town, asked if they employed a man matching Hugh’s rough description, but no one seemed to recognize him.

At the very least, he wanted Hugh for questioning.

If only Billy’s girlfriend hadn’t gone missing. That bothered him more than he wanted to dwell on.

Especially when Marc called from Harbor City with the report that Duluth Pawn had a class ring matching the description of Billy’s, pawned only two days earlier. They were sending him the digital footage from their surveillance camera.

Whoever had murdered Billy and Cassie Mitchell and hurt Kyle’s mother could be seated at the tavern right now and he wouldn’t even know it.

Facebook seemed the only escape.

Now Kyle sat down on a cold bench outside the restaurant, in the park overlooking the harbor, flakes still drifting from the sky, and replayed the YouTube video. So beautiful. So—

His phone vibrated in his hand.

He was smiling before he answered and probably betrayed himself in his eager “Emma?”

“Sorry I couldn’t take your call earlier. I was finishing my second set.”

“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have called you so late.”

“It’s not late—oh, well, I mean, we just closed up here.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m walking out of Mulligan’s. Made about twice as much in my tip jar as I did waiting tables tonight.”

“I’m not surprised. You were . . . you’re amazing.” He wished he could see her, although he already knew she was wearing a pretty blue shirt with sequins and a pair of jeans. Her hair up but waterfalling around her face. He wanted to yank out the hair band, let it fall over her shoulders, weave his fingers through it. He took a breath. He had to remain calm. Remember that the last time he saw her, she had broken speed limits escaping from him. That should keep the sweat from piling up on the back of his neck. That and the way his words crystallized before him as he spoke in the sparkling night.

Behind him, the restaurant pulsed out Bump’s beat. The fresh snowfall glistened on the ground, the sky above moody.

“Thanks, Carrie. Good night.”

“What—?”

“Oh, sorry. My roomie. She walked home with me.”

He heard the sounds of doors closing, and then her voice turned quieter, more intimate. “I need to apologize to you, Kyle. I was . . . Well, it was a good weekend, wasn’t it?” The lilt in her voice, one that spoke of hope, warmed him to his bones.

“A very good weekend.”

Emma sighed. “I thought of you all week and the way I behaved, and I think . . . I wasn’t ready for the way you made me feel about . . . Deep Haven.”

It was a start, anyway.

“You know I don’t think you’re convenient, right? If anything, you’re inconvenient, all the way down there, five hours away.”

She laughed, something precious and healing in it. “You want to know a secret?”

“Always.”

“There was a record producer from Nashville there tonight. He gave me his card and wants me to audition for him.”

He hesitated for only a half second. “Emma, that’s wonderful.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He wants me to play some original stuff for him.”

“So?”

“So I haven’t written anything new—I mean, I haven’t completed a song since . . . Well, see, Kelsey was the lyricist. She always had the right words. I had the tune.”

“You two were an amazing pair.”

“That was the plan. We’d go on the road together. We’d follow the dream together.”

“And now you’re following it alone.”

“Right. Without Kelsey. Without her words. A half act.”

“Babe, I think you’re the whole act.”

She drew in a breath, and for a second he thought he heard a shudder. “You’re sweeter than I thought you’d be, Kyle. Much sweeter.”

“What, did you think I’d be a jerk?”

She paused. “I guess I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I shouldn’t have lumped you in with . . .”

“With whom?”

She drew another breath. “Aw, you know. Guys.”

Somehow he didn’t think that’s what she meant, the way her words came so easily, so without emotion. He got up so he could walk through the park to keep warm. “I wish I could help you write your songs, Emma.”

“I know you do. You don’t do helpless well.”

He could almost see her, almost see the twinkle in her blue eyes, feel her hand on his face.

He cut his voice low as he zipped up his coat all the way, tucking his chin inside. Must be below zero. “I believe in you. You have the words inside you—you just have to find them.”

“I have a couple weeks.”

He was already calculating his schedule.

“Where are you right now?” she asked.

“I’m trying to stay warm, walking along the harbor. I was at the basketball game earlier tonight. We won, and it was parents’ night. It felt strange to see my mother accept a rose from Kirby, knowing she has no memory of attending every game since fourth grade.”

“It’s nearly championship season, isn’t it?”

“Play-offs start this weekend. We’re a good team. Kirby has a few schools scouting him.”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t lost your scholarship?”

“I wish I hadn’t let it go to my head, hadn’t become so out of control. But I know being a deputy is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“You’re a good man, Kyle.”

He smiled into the phone. “Is that your way of saying you like me?”

“Not fishing or anything, are you?”

“Cut a guy some line here, Emma.”

“I like you, Kyle. You win.”

Oh, he wished he could reach out, kiss her. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m staring out my window, watching a drunk guy skate out to his car while his buddy wrestles the keys from him. Ouch! That couldn’t have felt good.”

“Come back to Deep Haven. I’ll keep you safe from the troublemakers.”

She said nothing. Oh, why had he said that? But yes, he wanted to. Hated that she was down there.

“I believe you would if you could,” she said finally. “But I’m not sure that’s in your hands. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We want it to be, and when it isn’t, we get angry. But the funny thing is, even when we are in control and it doesn’t turn out, we still get angry. Either way, we want a guarantee that everything will turn out all right.”

He drew in a breath, Bonnie’s words ringing through him.
Sometimes life just backfires on you, is all.

Not anymore. Not on him.

“You’ll have your lyrics, Emma; I promise.”

She’d spent the entire day studying the life of this beautiful young woman, entering into the history of the Hueston family and seeing her own face among the pictures. Noelle would do almost anything to retrieve the memories that lurked just beyond her grasp. Pictures of their family gathered around birthday cakes, of sand castles and snowmen and Christmas trees and every major event in the past twenty-five years, told her that they’d been a happy family. A family that laughed together. A family she wanted to belong to.

Headed by a man who had suddenly started to withdraw after the closeness of yesterday’s revelation. She’d felt it beginning this morning, the moment Eli began to unload from his truck the cartons of family mementos, Kelsey’s belongings. He’d piled them in the living room while she stared at him, admittedly thunderstruck.

“You packaged all this up and took it away?”

Eli wore his padded jean jacket and a baseball cap, his boots leaking snow onto her freshly mopped floor. He looked at her with such remorse in his eyes she didn’t have the heart to say anything else.

She remopped the floor after he delivered it all and returned to the garage to tinker with something in desperate need of repair, no doubt.

Or maybe he was simply gifting her with privacy as she examined the life of their daughter. She’d unpacked the boxes slowly, peeling back the layers of Kelsey’s life. A menagerie of glass unicorns and pretty ornate boxes that held mismatched earrings. Stuffed animals—she counted no less than seven teddy bears. A tangle of necklaces, one of them made of shellacked Froot Loops, another of fishing wire and a glow-in-the-dark star. Another box held perfume and the contents of what had probably been her sock drawer. Posters, rolled up in one box, lay atop pictures in frames. Noelle pulled them out, set them around the room, chronicling the progression in age. Kelsey had worn braces, if Noelle compared the shot with her hugging Mickey Mouse to the one with her arms around a skinny, pimply boy who probably didn’t deserve her. She unrolled the posters—mostly of bands, but a couple of famous photographs. She recognized the World War II shot of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square. So her daughter had been a romantic.

She found shoes tumbled together as if Eli had simply scooped them off the floor and dumped them into the container. The violence of it rattled her. Oh, the grief of this man to want to tear something so vital from their memories.

You weren’t the same after Kelsey died.

She kept hearing that in her head. The same as what?

Whatever terrible grief that had defeated her, she felt nothing of it as she unpacked Kelsey’s clothes, examining her T-shirts. She had a number from the theater department—local productions of
Annie
,
Hamlet
,
Macbeth
.

Noelle had always wanted to be an actress.

Eli had packed away Kelsey’s books, too. Mostly titles Noelle didn’t recognize, although Kelsey had a well-worn copy of
Jane Eyre
, along with the complete works of Jane Austen.

Tucked in with the books were journals, dog-eared and doodled in, that contained lines and lines of poetry. She read through every one, spending hours in one titled “Life Lyrics,” caught in the joy of Kelsey’s words.

We are the hearts of today,

Our ages fresh and cool

Springing for the farthest star.

The age of second by second

Moment by moment

And the day is ours to find.

Where is your hope?

Can you not see past the lost?

Yours may pass, and you’ll be forgotten.

So rise up,

Hold to the moment you have.

For, children, we are the lives of the time

And flames of the start.

Run, and be the youth of your day

Owning each moment

As the hearts of today.

Noelle pressed her hand to it, traced the handwriting, the scratches, the scribbles.
Yours may pass, and you’ll be forgotten.
How could she have forgotten this amazing girl?

She sat in the middle of the living room, the sky unblemished today, the birch trees white and majestic as they rose above the ocean of snow.
Hold to the moment you have.

Had she held on to Kelsey? To her moments? Had her daughter known she was loved?

“Where did this come from?”

The voice made her look up. To her surprise, her cheeks were wet. She wiped a hand across her face, smiled at Kyle. He wore a brown flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, and a cap not unlike his father’s. But he had kinder eyes, at least today.

“I saw you at the game last night. Why didn’t you come and sit with us?”

He walked into the room and sat on the sofa, displacing a marbled unicorn. He picked it up. “I gave this to Kelsey for Christmas when she was twelve. She had a thing for unicorns.”

“She has fourteen.”

He weighed it in his hand. “What’s going on?”

She closed the book, slid up to the sofa. “Your father brought home all these boxes—”

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”

She hadn’t really looked at the omission as deception until she saw Kyle’s expression, the way his face twitched and his gaze slid away from her.

“I painted her yesterday. At the studio. I dreamed about her; then I painted her face. Your father saw it and realized he had to tell me.” Noelle set the “Life Lyrics” book down. Kyle’s gaze fell on it, something like pain passing through his eyes.

“I’ve been going through her things all day, trying to connect to her. Hoping that the feeling deep inside might surface, take form. It’s like it’s at the tip of my mind, and if I am just quick enough, I can grab it before it dashes away.”

“Maybe you should stop trying so hard. Maybe it’ll just come to you.” Kyle reached out, opened the book. “I have a couple poems in here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She was compiling a list of our poetry to give to you for Mother’s Day.” He looked up at her, smiled. “This was a school assignment, but you always liked it. ‘Paint me like I am. Paint me serene and focused. Paint me with a basketball, sweat down my spine. Paint me blue and fast and accurate.’” He glanced at her, and she smiled at him.

“Go on.”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s silly.”

“Please, go on.”

“‘Paint me on the court, the crowd wild, bright lights above. Paint me without fear, without doubt, without limitations, without weaknesses.

“‘But most of all, paint me unstoppable.’”

He blushed now, and it curled warmth in her chest. “I love it.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re my mom.”

“Technically, yes, but I have the unique position to not be bound by the constraints of motherhood. I really do love it. You loved basketball.”

He closed the book and shrugged but wore a smile that made him suddenly look about thirteen years old. “I did. But becoming a small-town cop was a much better course for my life. This was what I was meant to do.”

“Because of Kelsey?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I’d like to make sure that no one goes through what we did.”

“Kelsey’s death has such a grip on this family,” she said quietly.

He said nothing as he ran his hand over the journal. “Do you mind if I borrow this?”

“It belongs to you more than me.” She sighed, staring at the array of Kelsey’s life around her. “I don’t know how to stop trying. I see so much of the past in Eli’s eyes, but no matter how I try, I can’t step into it, can’t shoulder it with him. I want to be there in our memories, but I can’t.”

“What do you feel?” He tucked the journal beside him.

“Actually, when I look at her pictures and I read her poetry and I count these unicorns . . . I feel joy. I can’t explain it, but there is an unabashed vibrancy that flows out of it all—like Kelsey lived every minute for all it could be.”

“That was Kelsey. She liked to live large. When she had a girls’ sleepover, in the morning we’d find them all with their blankets outside on the lawn, staring at the stars. Shivering, of course.”

“Did we fight? Ever?”

“Are you kidding me? You once took her door off the hinges because she slammed it too often.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. When you and Kelsey crossed horns, we men ran for cover. But you were also crazy close. You never missed a performance, and once you even tried out for a play just to be in it with her.”

“Did I get the part?”

“You were . . . well, you were the lion’s paw in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
.”

“I was a paw.”

He grinned. “Actually, you just worked a giant paw, one of two, like a puppet for Aslan’s body. But to your credit, you were the best paw I ever saw.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m your mom.”

“Yep.” He winked at her. “Hey, where’s Dad?”

“He told me he was going to the lake to bring in his ice house.”

Kyle reached for Kelsey’s Bible, lying on the ottoman. Noelle had paged through that also, reading her script, her highlights.

“I guess it doesn’t surprise me that you feel joy—Kelsey’s life verse was Romans 15:13. ‘I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.’” He looked up. “She always said our job was to trust. God’s job was to overflow us with joy.”

“Maybe that’s what I feel. The joy that came from her trusting God.”

She picked up a silver object—it reminded her of a credit card, only it had earphones attached, the string wound around it. “I’m guessing this is for music?”

“Kelsey’s iPod.” Kyle took it from her and wound his thumb along the dial. “She has some of her own music in here. Wanna hear it?”

“Of course.”

He got up and walked to the stereo on the built-ins, plugged in the iPod, and turned it on.

A beat rolled out, filling the room. It had a bluesy tone to it, a pulse that made Noelle find her feet. Bob her head.

“It’s the Blue Monkeys, Kelsey’s band. She and another girl named Emma were in it. They cut an album, just for fun.”

The vocals began with something soft, husky, shimmering under her skin, then rising high, a powerful vibrato that she felt against her breastbone.

“Daydreaming, I came across a place in my mind,

Found you . . .”

The tones were sultry and rich, confident.

“And that’s Kelsey.”

A rich, joyous voice that could make Noelle’s entire body thrum.

“Dance with me, Kyle.” Noelle held out her hand, stepping out of the nest she’d made of Kelsey’s belongings.

Kyle looked at her hand, back to her, then smiled. “Okay.”

She had the moves of the untrained, but then again, twenty-five years had passed since she’d last danced. The music swam through her as she smiled at Kyle. He was shaking his head in between bobbing his shoulders, grinning crazily back.

Joy. If she couldn’t shoulder the Huestons’ grief, perhaps she’d collect the joy. Bring it back to them.

The song ended and another came on. “Okay, Mom. Let me teach you something. You used to make Kirby and Kelsey and me practice dancing in the kitchen after you and Dad took classes.”

“We took classes?”

“When we were little. You were good.” He held out his arms. “You can swing dance to the blues. Just follow me. It’s a six count with a back step. Start by stepping out with your right foot.”

He led with his left. She stared at her feet, but the movement did feel familiar, and in a moment she got the beat.

He led her in a turn, back again into his arms. “You always did have hot moves, Mom.” Kyle had a sweet sparkle in his eye, something of joy there too, now.

“What’s going on in here?”

The voice made her jerk. She turned to see Eli. He hadn’t shaved yet today, his cheeks ruddy from the brisk air outside.

“Are you dancing?”

She looked at Kyle, smiled. “Yeah. Apparently you and I used to have some hot moves. Kyle was just teaching me—”

“Don’t do that. Don’t dance.” Eli glanced at Kyle, who let her go, and then back at Noelle. He shook his head, something like betrayal in his eyes, and walked out of the house. It shuddered at the slam of the door.

She stood there with Kyle, the music pulsing behind them, as Eli roared down the driveway in his truck.