Low Country Dreams

by Lee Tobin McClain

  Mitch Mitchell.

  Rio was circling and nosing Mitch’s shih tzu, and the little dog jumped and barked fiercely. But both tails were wagging, and the little dog went into a play bow, and Rio rolled onto his back, tongue hanging out to one side. Whew. Not exactly a dogfight.

  “That beast could kill Daisy!” Mitch grabbed for the end of the little dog’s leash, which he had apparently dropped in the excitement.

  “Rio! Come.” Rocky spoke with authority.

  Rio turned instantly and ran to Rocky’s side, the little dog nipping at his heels.

  “You’d better call off your dog,” Yasmin said, fighting a chuckle.

  “It’s not a joke to have a big mutt like that running wild.” Mitch kept grabbing for his little dog’s leash, but she danced away each time he got close.

  Again, Yasmin restrained a giggle. “Look, I’m sorry my gate was open, but thanks to Rocky, our dog is well trained.” Then she mentally replayed what she’d said. Our dog.

  She was thinking of Rio as belonging to the three of them.

  It was a short step away from thinking of Rocky, Rio and Liam as her family.

  Rocky was focused on Rio. “Sit,” he ordered the dog, and he obeyed, his tongue lolling out in a laugh. “Stay.” He backed slowly away from the dog, one hand up like a stop sign.

  Rio sat, ears alert.

  Without losing eye contact, Rocky knelt, grabbed the end of the shih tzu’s leash and handed it to Mitch, who took it with an ill-concealed curl of the lip.

  “Okay, boy,” Rocky said to Rio, and the dog ran to him for a good belly rub.

  That feeling that rose up in Yasmin had to be like what a mother would feel: pure pride. How many thirteen-year-olds would be able to train an unruly dog and be polite to an unpleasant man so early in the morning? And to top it off, after a mysterious sighting of his missing mother?

  Mitch stomped on down the street, tugging his dog and muttering about reporting Rio.

  “Can he do that?” Rocky asked.

  “He can try, but no one will take him seriously. Not now, not the way you’ve trained Rio. That was impressive.”

  Rocky beamed. “He still makes some mistakes, but he’s doing really well.”

  “So are you, as a dog trainer. And as for mistakes...we all make some.” Yasmin felt like she was reminding herself at the same time she was reminding Rocky.

  She’d made mistakes in how she’d dealt with Liam, but he’d done the same, and that was just life.

  Maybe he couldn’t handle the way life was, due to his chaotic upbringing. Maybe he could change. Maybe he’d accept her with her limitations.

  But no. She wasn’t going to speculate about the “what-ifs” again.

  They walked back inside, and Rocky helped Yasmin clean up the kitchen floor, and then she fixed him French toast, even though she’d already given him something to eat earlier. He was growing so fast he could eat whatever he wanted; she couldn’t, but nonetheless, she made herself a plateful, too. Even though she was trying to watch her weight, it seemed like a good time to have a treat.

  As she poured another river of maple syrup over her last few bites, Rocky looked across the table at her. “Did you know there was someone in the house two nights ago?”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody broke in,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I heard him. I heard him talking, and there were footprints on the ground outside the house.”

  Yasmin stared at him, her heart skittering a little. “This happened Friday? And you’re only now telling me?”

  “Sorry. I guess I forgot.” He pushed his last bite of French toast around on his plate. “Liam didn’t act like it was very important.”

  “Liam knew and didn’t tell me?” She gripped the edge of the table to keep from pounding on it. What was wrong with the two of them? She was the homeowner. Wasn’t it her right to know what happened on her property? “So let me get this straight,” she said. “You heard an intruder in the house. Walking around and talking.”

  “He wasn’t really talking, more like whispering.” Rocky shrugged and carried his plate over to the sink.

  And Yasmin sat, watching him rinse his dishes and put them in the dishwasher, and processed what he had said.

  Someone had been in her house. Someone had been here on the night she had heard the voices. Someone whispering in a way that other people could hear.

  Now she heard voices, all right: like a heavenly choir. Because maybe those voices she’d heard saying all the awful things to her hadn’t been in her head. Maybe they’d come from somebody trying to fake her out. Though why anyone would do such a thing she couldn’t imagine. No one knew she feared mental illness, or almost no one.

  Thank You, she whispered to the heavens. If she didn’t have the disease...if her fears were wrong... Wow. Just wow.

  Be sensible, she told herself. This is a teenager reporting on something that happened in the middle of the night. She needed to cool off a little and then probe for details in a friendly way, find out more about what he’d heard and what he’d seen.

  “Okay if I watch some TV?” he asked.

  “Sure, go for it.” Even though he’d bounced back amazingly, he’d still had a rough morning. She couldn’t add to his upset by piling on a bunch of questions. She had to think of him first.

  It was only when she was washing the mixing bowl that she took the next step in reasoning it all out. If the voices had come from a real person, voices saying unkind things to her, who could it be? Who would do that?

  After all, Josiah had told her that his voices didn’t tell him bad things. He had said his voices were good.

  Which, if that were the case, meant that Josiah didn’t have anything to do with the dead man. On his own, he’d never come up with the idea of harming anyone. She knew that for sure.

  But maybe the voice she’d heard in the night did relate to the crime.

  She cast her mind back, trying to remember what the voice had sounded like, what it had said exactly. If only she’d written it down. If only she’d had the sense to get herself fully awake, and turn all the lights on, and look around her room, she could have caught the whisperer in the act.

  Except the whisperer might be dangerous. And he’d been in her bedroom. Goose bumps rose on her arms and a prickle ran up and down her spine. How unsafe was that?

  And what could possibly be the motivation? To make her insecure, to silence her? From saying what?

  The only other motivation was that someone was trying to make her feel crazy.

  The question was, who?

  * * *

  THE NEXT EVENING, a Monday, Liam walked from his cruiser to the junior-senior high school with a strong sense of déjà vu. Did you ever forget that smell, the janitors’ chemicals never quite able to scrub away the teen sweat? Did you ever forget that high, almost hysterical sound of kids’ voices greeting each other at the start of a new school year?

  In truth, he was glad to be giving this presentation tonight, glad for any extra work he could take on, because it kept him from thinking about his own concerns.

  It was looking more and more like Rita was telling the truth; she was his mother. Which just stuck in his craw, because they felt nothing for each other. But her story, such as it was, had checked out. There was some shaky stuff in her background—she’d had to use a fake ID—but she’d explained why she’d done it and it wasn’t for criminal reasons. She’d been worried that whoever had beaten her up—according to Sean and to his own memory, their father—would be looking for her. So she’d taken on a new identity for safety, and because she didn’t remember her old one.

  As she’d talked, explaining things without expecting him to fall head over heels in love with her just because she said she was his mom, he’d started to believe her. But she’d been a poor excuse
of a mother, letting all that happen to her when she had three boys to take care of. Surely she could have found a way out if she’d tried.

  He glimpsed Rocky walking in with Yasmin, and a wave of sympathy passed over him. Rocky didn’t have friends to greet; he was stuck walking in with an adult, not even his mother. And Yasmin hadn’t bargained for doing the real work of parenting a teenager when she’d invited Rocky to stay with her just a couple of weeks ago.

  She looked great in her close-fitting, above-the-knee summer dress, greens and blues like the ocean and her eyes. Just flip-flops on her feet, but her toenails were painted gold and...was that a toe ring?

  Liam’s body tightened and he swallowed.

  “We’re about ready to start,” Mr. Smith, his ex-landlord who also happened to be the school principal, said. “Thanks for doing this for us again.”

  “No problem. I like it.” And the fact that the guy had evicted him didn’t affect the fact that he felt like kids listened to him well, like he could relate because he remembered the challenges of the teen years with particular clarity.

  Principal Smith spoke for a while, welcoming students and parents, letting them know a few changes in the schedule for the new year, the progress of the construction project on the new wing, because the school was growing.

  “But this is primarily a safety program,” he said, “so without further ado, let me introduce Officer Liam O’Dwyer, who’s going to talk about safety issues specific to middle and high school.”

  Liam launched into the talk he did every year, updated for new trends in social media bullying and internet-related crime, new challenges on the local drug scene. But there was a lot the same, even the same as when he’d been in school, about the risks of dating the wrong person or getting involved with the wrong friends. He always gave a particular push to dating violence and other risks that plagued young girls, because oftentimes, this was where it all started, in adolescence and in school.

  He wondered if that was where Rita’s problems with domestic violence had gotten started. Had someone beaten up on her when she was a kid or a teenager, made her think that was how love was supposed to feel?

  He tried to stay focused on his subject, not Rita. And not on Yasmin and Rocky seated on the left side of the auditorium. It was tough not to look at them, to wonder what Yasmin, in particular, was thinking of his talk and of them. Rocky, he could almost guarantee, wasn’t thinking about Liam’s words at all; he’d be more upset and worried about the difficulties of being the new kid in school.

  That was confirmed afterward when he joined the two of them, walking toward the students-only part of the presentation, run by the guidance counselors. When Liam approached, Rocky almost visibly cringed.

  The only thing worse than being the new kid, here with your mother figure who wasn’t really your mom, was being associated with a cop. And from what he understood, the area where Rocky had lived with his mom was deep country, fifty miles and a whole world away from Safe Haven. Rocky must feel out of place.

  Trying to be sensitive to the boy’s feelings, he fell back and talked to a couple of teenagers who’d been involved in a citizens’ ride-along they’d run last year. Their conversation got animated, so when his group caught up with Rocky and Yasmin in the crowd heading toward the cafeteria, Liam introduced the kids to Rocky, told them he was new. They were nice kids, and they soon found a common interest in dogs and actually had a half-decent conversation.

  Liam passed his old locker and, as he always did, banged on it with his fist, right in the spot where he’d dented it all those years ago. Back then, he’d never have thought a kid like him could become the cop at the front of the auditorium. It just went to show you how much things could change, and not always for the worse, either.

  As the kids filed away into the gym, he was left standing with Yasmin.

  She glanced up at him. “That was nice. I’m glad he can get to know a couple of kids before the first day.”

  “It’s important. I remember all too well.”

  She nodded, looking distracted, and drew in a breath. “Hey, Rocky told me that there was someone in the house the other night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said that he heard someone walking around and whispering, and found footprints outside a window. He said you knew about it.”

  He tilted his head, looking at her, trying to figure her out. “Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “I saw the footprints. Saw the guy, too.”

  “What?” She said it so sharply that several people near them stopped their conversations to look their way. “You actually saw some guy lurking around my house and didn’t tell me?”

  He squinted at her. “It was Buck,” he said. “Figured he was there by invitation.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Now she was looking at him like he was nuts. And then concern grew in her eyes. “Buck was in my house?”

  He shrugged a little. “I thought it looked like him. It was late, and he was climbing down the trellis from your room.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “So let me get this straight. You thought I had a nighttime male visitor, and instead of having him come in the front door like a normal person, I had him climb in through my window?”

  “It seemed weird,” he said, “but...” He waved in the direction Rocky had gone. “I figured you didn’t want Rocky to know. Maybe even Josiah.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, making it even wilder and curlier than it had been before. “I can’t believe this.”

  It was dawning on Liam that her reaction was 100 percent sincere. Which meant Buck hadn’t been in her bedroom...at least, not by invitation. “If it wasn’t Buck, then who? How could someone get in?”

  “I’m not letting go that assumption you made, Liam O’Dwyer, just because figuring out who did it is more urgent.”

  He ignored her comment, his adrenaline racing, because if it hadn’t been Buck, then someone else must have broken into her house. “Do you have a security system?”

  She snorted. “Half the neighbors have keys. Rocky and Josiah are in and out. We don’t usually lock the house.”

  “Did you hear anything about what I was saying about safety, even in a small town like Safe Haven?” He took a step closer, frustrated. She didn’t seem to realize that there was a murderer unaccounted for, who’d already killed one person in town.

  She stood her ground. “The horse is out of the barn, Liam! Who got into my house and whispered really weird stuff to me?”

  “Whispering stuff?”

  “Uh-huh. Telling me I was crazy, and a horrible person. And fat.”

  “We need to make a report,” he said. “Look for prints in your house, develop a list of people who might have something against you and start checking out where they were. I can take the report, or someone else if you’d rather.”

  “Well, considering the voices told me to send Rocky and Josiah away and stay away from you...”

  “What?” He put a hand on each of her upper arms, the better to glare at her. “And you didn’t tell me that?”

  “I thought it was all in my head! I thought I’d developed schizophrenia!” Tears rose to her eyes and he ushered her away from the crowd to a table at the edge of the cafeteria. “That’s why I really needed to know there was someone in my house. It’s not good news, but it is.”

  Liam pulled napkins from a dispenser and handed them to her, and she wiped her eyes. His mind was racing. Who had been in Yasmin’s house? Had it really been Buck? But why would he have whispered such mean words to her?

  “Excuse me,” Principal Smith said. “Can I talk to you a minute, Liam?” He looked apologetically at Yasmin. “I’ll just keep him a minute.”

  She waved a hand. “I have to go, anyhow. We’ll talk,” she added to Liam, and was he wrong to see that as a promise...in a good way? Yes, definitely wrong, because his focus n
eeded to be on her safety.

  “Listen, Liam,” Principal Smith was saying. “I made a mistake, and I want to set it right. I shouldn’t have evicted you from my apartment building.”

  Liam shrugged. “It’s okay. My dog had gotten too big for the place, according to the rules. Though you’ll be glad to know he’s getting better trained.”

  Smith shook his head. “I was told some things that influenced me in that direction, and I should have known better than to listen to gossip.”

  Liam didn’t get it. “Someone was gossiping about me?”

  The older man nodded.

  “Can I ask who?”

  “Someone I thought I could trust. But I realized tonight how much you always do for the schools, and even my evicting you didn’t make you turn down the invitation. You’re a good man, Liam.” He looked Liam in the eye and added, “I’m not sure I can say the same about your colleague. Buck Mulligan. He’s the one who as much as told me to evict you.”

  Buck Mulligan. There he was again. As he thanked the principal and walked back through the school, the image of Buck’s face and name revolved through his head like a mug shot.

  What did Buck have to do with the craziness happening in Safe Haven?

  * * *

  WHEN YASMIN PULLED into her own driveway later that night, she saw a woman standing at Liam’s door.

  Her heart turned over. Tell herself what she might, she cared for Liam and didn’t want him to be with someone else. Yeah, he was infuriating—especially with not mentioning that he’d seen an intruder climbing down from her bedroom window—but his relief that she wasn’t with Buck had been gratifying.

  She was still flummoxed about why someone would whisper crazy-making ideas to her. So flummoxed that she couldn’t think about it anymore. Instead, she focused on the woman, who was knocking on Liam’s door and standing on tiptoe to look in through the door’s small glass windows.

  Yasmin had gotten the impression that he cared for her, from how he’d talked to her in the school cafeteria, but now he had a late-night female visitor. His truck was in the driveway, so at any minute he’d be coming out to greet her.