“I don’t think I ever have,” she admitted. “At least not from a man. Well, other than my father or Tom.”
“Hard to believe,” he said. “A woman like you deserves flowers.”
She shrugged off the compliment, and he thought he might have taken things a bit too far with it.
Two customers, a man and a woman, walked into the studio and began wandering among the glass and photographs. Rick lowered his voice to avoid being heard by them.
“Listen,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that I spoke with a friend of mine who’s more familiar with criminal law than I am. He had some suggestions for you on how to protest that guy’s parole.”
She was suddenly all ears. “What did he say?”
“You’ll need to contact the members of the parole commission,” he said. “They’re the people who decide whether this guy…what’s his name again?”
“Zachary Pointer.”
“Whether he should be paroled or not. They’ll take into account his previous criminal record and his behavior in prison. Do you know anything about that?”
Lacey glanced over at the man and woman, who were standing in front of a glass panel, talking about its colors.
“I don’t think he had a criminal record,” she said, looking as though that fact disappointed her. “And I have no idea what he’s been like in prison.”
“Well, here’s where you have some input,” he said. “The commission has to take into account any information they get from you or from other people who knew your mother and were impacted by her death. You’ll need to write what they call a victim impact statement. How his crime has impacted your life. Everyone in your family can submit one. You’re in the best position to write one, though, since you were impacted both by the loss of your mother and by witnessing her…what happened.”
She nodded slowly, her gaze somewhere in space as she thought over what he’d said. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that.”
The man and woman headed for the door, and the woman turned to Lacey, waving with a smile. “We’ll be back later,” she said. “I want to get my sister to see that stained glass rooster.”
“Okay,” Lacey said. “See you then.”
Rick waited for Lacey’s attention to return to him. “You—or your attorney, at least—will want to look back at any statements the guy made after the arrest and during the trial,” he continued. “Look for a lack of remorse, or that he’s still protesting his innocence. Anything that shows he needs continued incarceration.”
“All right,” Lacey said.
He hesitated, a little nervous about the next item on his agenda. “On another note, though,” he said, “I have something for you.” He handed the book to her. She looked at the title. Forgiveness. Then she raised her eyes to him, her expression quizzical.
“Are you very religious or something?” she asked.
He smiled. “Nope. Just a run-of-the-mill, hardly-ever-goes-to-church Presbyterian. But I’ve just…Well, I’ve worked hard at figuring out my priorities,” he said. “You know, what’s most important in life. What’s worth my effort and energy and time and—”
“He killed my mother, Rick,” she said, a flash of fire in her deep blue eyes.
He nodded. “I understand. Or rather, I guess I don’t understand what that must feel like. I’m sorry.”
The jingling sound of glass against glass caught their attention, and Rick turned to see a woman push the studio door open with such force that the small, stained glass sun-catchers hanging on it were in danger of breaking. The woman was very tanned, her white-blond hair pinned up at the back of her head. She wore a navy blue suit with a small gold pin on the lapel, and she was not a customer, that much was clear. Her eyes were red and smudged with mascara.
“Nola!” Lacey was instantly on her feet, rushing toward the woman. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Lacey, I’m beside myself!” The woman stood in the middle of the floor, looking as though she might burst into tears. Her hands were pressed to her cheeks and the heavy gold bracelets on her wrists clanged together. Her fingers sparkled with rings.
“I can see that.” Lacey took her arm and drew her toward Tom Nestor’s worktable. “Here, sit in Tom’s chair. Are Jessica and Mackenzie all right?”
“I think so,” the woman said. “I mean, I think they’ll be all right. But I’m on my way to Arizona and wanted to stop in to let you know what was going on before I left.” She looked at Lacey, her eyes wide and filled with pain. “Jessica and Mackenzie were in a car wreck,” she said.
“Oh, my God.” Lacey’s hand flew to her mouth. She lowered herself to her haunches in front of the woman, her long skirt billowing around her on the floor, and rested one of her hands on Nola’s. “How bad?”
“Mackenzie’s fine, or at least that’s what they’re telling me. But Jessica has broken ribs and a collapsed lung and a broken pelvis—” the woman ticked the injuries off on her fingers “—and who knows what else.”
“Oh, Nola, how awful.” Lacey looked over at Rick. “Jessica—Nola’s daughter—is an old friend of mine,” she explained. “How did it happen?”
“A drunk driver,” Nola said. “That’s all I know. I’m going out there to take care of Mackenzie while Jessica is in the hospital. Right now, she’s with a neighbor.”
“You’ll feel better once you see Jess and know she’s in good hands,” Lacey said, and Rick could see tears forming in her eyes as well. He felt intrusive.
Nola nodded, but she looked unconvinced. “My poor little girl.”
Lacey stood up and leaned over to hug her. The woman was unresponsive, stiff as a stick. He wondered how old she was. There was not a wrinkle on her tanned face, and it was obvious she’d visited a plastic surgeon more than once.
“She’s tried so hard to make it, Lacey,” Nola said, a mix of anger and sorrow in her voice. “You know that. Raising Mackenzie by herself, holding down a stressful job, going to school at night.”
“I know,” Lacey agreed. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“No, no.” Nola opened her large brown leather purse and pulled a tissue from inside it. She stood up, dabbing at her eyes. “I’ll call you when I see how she is.”
“Please do,” Lacey said, embracing the woman once again. “Please call me right away.”
With a nod, Nola turned and walked out the door, the sun-catchers clanking against the glass once again.
Lacey sank into her chair behind the worktable. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Poor Jessica.”
“You’re very close to her?” he asked.
“We grew up together.” She was staring at the door, but he could tell she was not really seeing it. “She was my best friend from the time we were in kindergarten through junior high. She got pregnant when she was fifteen, though, and Nola shipped her off to Arizona to live with her cousins and she ended up staying out there. We’ve lost touch a bit since then, but we still have these long, wonderful phone conversations a few times a year. I haven’t seen Mackenzie—her daughter—since the last time they visited the Outer Banks, which must have been three years ago.” She stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to go home,” she said. “I want to call her. I need to hear for myself how she is.”
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
Lacey looked at her watch. “I’ll call Tom to come back to the studio to keep it open, but would you mind staying until he gets here? In case that couple comes back? Or I could just lock up and put a sign on the—”
“I’ll stay,” he said. “It’ll make me feel like I’m helping somehow.”
She smiled at him, a quick, distracted sort of smile. “Thanks,” she said, gathering up her purse and day planner. “I’ll talk to you later.”
He watched her leave. She was gentle with the door; the sun-catchers barely clinked against the glass. Looking over at her worktable, he noticed she had left behind the book on forgiveness. He wanted to run after her, press it into her hands, but he didn’t dare.
She already thought him strange in that regard, a religious zealot, perhaps. And the last thing he wanted to do was to scare her away.
CHAPTER 8
If it had not been for the beach traffic, Lacey would have ignored the speed limit and raced all the way to Kiss River from her studio. As it was, she was stuck in a sluggish trail of cars making their way north from Kill Devil Hills. She wanted to call the hospital and hear for herself that Jessica was all right. She wanted to talk to her old friend, hear her voice, reassure her that Mackenzie would be taken care of while she recovered. Again, she thought of packing a bag and flying to Arizona with Nola. They could spell each other while they took turns taking care of eleven-year-old Mackenzie and spending time with Jessica in the hospital. But even though she’d known Nola for as long as she could remember, she had never felt completely at ease with her. Nola could be difficult. She’d been divorced for many years and had never remarried or even dated, although at one time it had been clear that she had her eye on Lacey’s father. Thank God Olivia had come along at that point, or Lacey might have ended up with Nola as a stepmother. Just talking to Nola on the phone could send a chill up her spine.
Nola had been a lax and permissive mother with Jessica. Lacey’s mother had certainly been lenient and indulgent, as well, but Annie O’Neill’s permissiveness had been balanced by her deep love for her children. Although Jessica had often been critical of Lacey’s parents, she’d admitted just a few years ago that she had actually been envious of the close and loving relationships Lacey had enjoyed growing up in the O’Neill family.
The traffic was ridiculous! She was driving through Duck, her car creeping so slowly that she feared it might overheat. It had happened before. She turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to try to prevent it from happening again. She knew every alternate route available along the Outer Banks, but the island was so narrow here that there was only one road running south and north, and she was on it. She glanced at her cell phone lying on the passenger seat. She could try to call Jessica on the cell, but she didn’t know what hospital she was in, and the thought of coping with cellular information and the iffy reception in the area was more than she could manage.
Her thoughts turned to Mackenzie. What had the accident been like? Mackenzie wasn’t hurt, Nola had said, so maybe she had been conscious and had witnessed everything. Maybe she saw her mother’s body pinned behind the wheel, or maybe the car had flipped over. Then she began wondering, as she always did when she thought about Mackenzie, what had become of the girl’s father. That had been a sore spot between her and Jessica for years. Mackenzie’s father was Bobby Asher. He’d been one of the many guys she and Jessica had hung around with the summer Lacey was fourteen. In her mind, Bobby would always be that seventeen-year-old chain-smoking, beer-drinking, pill-popping, sexy-as-hell guy, with the blond hair that touched his shoulders and the same light blue eyes she saw in every picture of Mackenzie. Lacey had lost her virginity to him, as had Jessica, the very next night. She’d been hurt that Bobby had ultimately picked Jessica over her. Jess had been less uptight, ready for anything. Lacey had been fairly wild that summer, too, but she knew the scared little kid inside her had been evident to anyone who looked hard enough. Nothing had seemed to frighten Jessica, however, and Bobby had been drawn to that quality in her.
At the end of that summer, Bobby returned to his home in Richmond, Virginia, and neither she nor Jessica ever saw him again. When Jessica realized she was pregnant, she adamantly refused to tell Nola or anyone else who the baby’s father was. Only Lacey knew. Jessica had had other lovers, if you could call them that at age fourteen. They’d both had others. But the timing of her pregnancy fit perfectly with her time with Bobby.
At first Lacey thought that Jessica was right to keep the identity of the baby’s father to herself. Bobby was crazy. Undoubtably, he would have talked her into an abortion so he could rid himself of the problem. Nola had tried to talk Jessica into an abortion herself, but Lacey had persuaded her not to do it. Lacey had only recently lost her mother, and the thought of yet another life being wiped off the planet, no matter how tiny and unformed that life might have been, was unbearable to her. Jessica agreed. She had turned fifteen by then, and there was no way any doctor would take that baby against her will. So Nola arranged for her to leave the Outer Banks, spiriting her away to an aunt in Phoenix so that her expanding belly would not be a source of gossip and shame for Nola, a prominent real estate agent.
When Lacey was sixteen, she learned that Tom was her biological father and her feelings about Jessica keeping the identity of Mackenzie’s father to herself changed. A child needed to know who her father was, even if knowing the truth created more problems than it solved. And a man needed to know that he was responsible for a child. The subject of Mackenzie’s paternity had nearly caused a falling-out between her and Jessica. As recently as Mackenzie’s eleventh birthday this past April, Lacey had once again brought it up with her. “You really should tell Bobby Asher,” she’d said. “Mackenzie’s getting old enough to know the truth.” As always, Jessica had adamantly refused to even consider it.
She knew Jessica had told Mackenzie that her father was someone she’d seen for a short time and that she didn’t know where he was. That was true, but he was findable. Anyone was findable. Lacey tried to picture Bobby Asher now—he would be nearly thirty, Clay’s age, but the only image that came to her mind was of a long-haired man in need of a bath, standing at a corner of a busy Richmond street, holding a bowl out to drivers passing by, the sign at his side reading: Homeless. Please Help. That was surely the direction in which he’d been heading.
When she finally reached Kiss River, she was glad to see that the chain across the driveway was already down and she wouldn’t need to get out of the car to unhook it. She turned onto the shaded lane and sped over the ruts, spraying gravel behind her, not really caring about anything other than getting to the phone.
Clay’s Jeep was next to Gina’s van in the parking lot, and she knew he was either in the woods with one of his search-and-rescue trainees or in the house waiting for a client to arrive. She jumped out of her car and ran across the sand toward the house.
Clay and Gina were in the kitchen when she pulled open the screen door, and Gina lifted a finger to her lips.
“Shh,” she said. “I just got her down for her nap.”
Clay was sweeping the always-sandy kitchen floor and he looked up from his task. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and she knew her worry was showing in her face.
“Jessica and Mackenzie were in an accident,” she said. “They’re alive, but Jessica was hurt.” She rattled off Jessica’s injuries to the best of her memory. “I’m going to try to call her at the hospital.”
“Whose fault was the accident?” Clay asked, as if it mattered.
“Drunk driver.” Dropping her purse on the table, she reached for the cordless phone and dialed Information.
“Who’s Jessica?” Gina asked Clay.
“An old friend of Lacey’s,” he said. “She was crazy. She got pregnant when she was fourteen, and I think she used every drug in the book that summer.”
“She’s completely different now.” Lacey felt tears burn her eyes as she waited to get a human being on the line. She didn’t know the name of a single hospital in Phoenix, much less which one Jessica was in. “Besides,” she added, “you were not so staid yourself.” She was annoyed at the speed with which her brother jumped to judge her friend.
“My guy?” Gina asked, putting her arm around Clay’s shoulders and planting a kiss on his cheek. “Did you have a wild side back then?”
“Lacey was so wasted that summer that she wouldn’t have known what I was doing,” Clay said.
She had known, though. She’d been at parties where she’d watched her older brother drink himself into the adolescent oblivion that was typical of the other graduating seniors that year. True, he’d only used alcohol, at least to the best of her knowledge, while she and
her friends had dabbled in marijuana and an occasional tab of LSD. Some of the rowdier kids had actually used crack. But Clay had been old enough to pass himself off as a responsible adult when he needed to. She—and Jessica—had simply been a mess.
Finally, a male voice came on the phone. He gave her the numbers for three different hospitals and she wrote them down on a piece of paper Gina slipped onto the counter in front of her.
“I’m going to call her from the studio,” she said, clutching the paper in her hand as she headed out of the kitchen in the direction of the sunroom.
“Good luck,” Gina called after her, and as Lacey walked through the living room, she could hear her sister-in-law chastising Clay for his insensitivity.
Sunlight poured into her small home studio, filling it with color from the panels of glass hanging in the windows. The room was at the back of the keeper’s house, away from the ocean and the lighthouse. Her view was of the stretch of sand between the house and the scrubby maritime growth in the distance. There were two worktables, one where she drew her designs out on paper, the other where she cut glass. Sitting down at that second table, she reached for the phone and dialed one of the numbers on the list.
“She’s in the ICU,” the hospital operator told her after Lacey gave her Jessica’s name. “No phones in the rooms up there.”
The ICU. She pictured machines and tubes. Respirators and EKGs. Poor Jess.
“Can I find out how she’s doing?” Lacey asked. “Maybe talk to a nurse?”
“Hold on.” The operator sounded sick of her job. “I’ll connect you to the ICU.”
A woman answered quickly, her voice friendly and upbeat.
“Hello,” Lacey said. “I’m calling to find out how one of your patients is doing. Jessica Dillard.”
“Are you family?” the woman asked.
“Nearly,” Lacey said. “A very close friend.”
“Her condition’s been upgraded from critical to serious,” the woman said.
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