Girls of Summer

by C. E. Hilbert

  “Make a wish.”

  She snapped her head toward the dugout. Peace poured through her, blanketing the anxiety and fear threatening to consume her.

  With ankles crossed, Mac leaned against the dugout entrance.

  “Why would I make a wish?”

  Shoving against the dugout bar, Mac’s long stride closed the distance between them, meeting her at centerfield. “Shooting star,” he said, pointing skyward. “You have to make a wish.”

  Charlotte laced her arms, hugging her waist with a shrug. Despite the mountain of wishes and hopes she had screaming to be answered, she couldn’t focus on one as the priority.

  Should she wish Mama wasn’t a murderer? A wish for Georgie to be safe? A wish to close her eyes and wake up yesterday, last week, or last year—before her life turned into a made-for-TV movie? She had plenty of wishes, but history taught her not to place hopes on anything but her own skill. Wishes were for dreamers. Her dreams twisted to nightmares. “I’m not much of a wisher.”

  “If not a wish, then how about a prayer? A simple prayer to the Lord that you and your overly protective sister can make it through the New Year without being arrested.”

  “What? What’s wrong with Georgie?”

  “Special Agent Murphy thinks you made a run to your Mama.” Brushing hair behind her ear, he slightly squatted to link his gaze with hers. “Georgie hid his cell phone to keep him from calling the police.”

  “She shouldn’t have. I wasn’t running.” She said with a shrug. “I said I needed air. Just air. Why’s everyone so touchy?” Twisting away, she shuffled toward the warning track. “How’d you find me?”

  “Didn’t take too much deductive reasoning.”

  His chuckle sent a shiver down her spine. Swallowing against the lump growing in her throat, she spoke to the outfield wall. “Now that you found me, could you leave me alone?”

  Mac shifted to stand beside her. “No, Charlie. I’m not leaving.”

  He stepped onto the warning track clay directly in front of her. “I think one of the major problems is all of the people who’ve left you in your life actually left when you demanded it.” His long fingers squeezed her shoulders. Heat flowed through her with the simple touch. Human kindness. Such an exotic gift.

  “I’m not leaving you alone,” he said. “I’m not letting you run. I’m not going. I’m here, Charlie.”

  Tears burned her vision. She didn’t deserve his support. She deserved to have Murphy chasing after her. She should be hopping a plane back to New York or California. Anywhere far from Georgie, Mac, Remy, and the family. Maybe she should be in jail. Her family would be safer if she was away. Wouldn’t they? Her heart screamed in protest.

  Her family. This odd collection of blood relatives and new-found friends was now as vital to her as the air she sucked into her lungs. Somehow, in a few weeks, the people she’d kept at an icy distance for nearly three decades had stitched themselves as a healing cover to the years of agonizing scars slashed across her heart.

  Part of her understood the connection with Georgie, Savvy, and the extended aunts, uncles, and cousins. Through the years of friendship, Remy had kept her southern roots close with the sweet scent of night blooming jasmine and a kaleidoscope of anecdotes.

  Remy. What would she do if he didn’t wake up? He was everything pure and right about her childhood. And he was barely clinging to life because of her.

  “Taylor, you should get as far away from me as you can. Look at Remy. He’s in the hospital…in the ICU… because he chose to be my friend.”

  “No, he isn’t. Remy isn’t in the hospital because of you.”

  “How can you be sure?” she whispered. Dragging her hazy gaze to meet Mac’s eyes, she choked against the surge of grief threatening to drown her in the swell.

  “Because you didn’t cause his accident.”

  “But if Murphy is right, my mother is behind…” She couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t even think them. The possibility her mother was the monster the FBI believed her to be was inconceivable. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe Mama was capable of...

  No. Her mother was many things. She was a selfish, neglectful mother, but Charlotte couldn’t believe someone she shared DNA with was capable of the atrocities Special Agents Murphy and O’Neal outlined.

  Wrapping her arms around Mac’s waist, she buried her head in his chest. Every part of her shivered and warmed. His arms tightened around her.

  “We’ll get through this, Charlie,” Mac said with a soft kiss to the top of her head. “Together.”

  They stood half on the outfield and half on the warning track, her toes burrowed into the thick clay. The mix of rough grass on her heels and cold, soft dirt squishing between her toes settled her broken spirit. The simple memory of running barefoot through the outfield as a child was a gift outlawed at home for fear of fire ants and hidden nefarious creatures in the wide expanse of grass and marsh.

  But the ballfield was safe.

  At the ballpark she was free. She didn’t have to wear dresses, say the right words, or dab the corner of her mouth with a napkin. Here she could run barefoot as fast as she wanted, scream at the top of her lungs, and Daddy would just laugh and holler at her to steal second. In the sanctuary of baseball, she’d asked him outrageous questions, and he always had an answer. Sometimes quick. Sometimes after a long, thoughtful pause. But she always knew that within the green walls and dirt track of the Bombers’ ballpark, answers to the hardest questions could be found. The ballpark was the one place she felt safe. Tonight was no different than the hundreds of summer days and nights she’d run the bases. She’d come for a specific reason.

  She needed answers.

  “What if…” she whispered into Mac’s chest.

  “What if your mom is the horrible person the FBI believes her to be?”

  Leaning back, she nodded.

  He shrugged. “What if she is?”

  She pushed away from him with a sigh. “If she is…that makes me…”

  “That makes you what, Charlie? I don’t see what your mother’s crimes, if she’s committed any—and we don’t know that she has—have to do with you.”

  “You can’t? What they are accusing her of is more horrible than my brain can process. My mother wouldn’t have won any mother-of-the-year contests, but she’s still my mama. I can’t believe she could really be responsible for taking another person’s life or orchestrating the laundry list of criminal activities the suits have tied to her, but...”

  “But you suspect her of something, or you wouldn’t have hired Remy.”

  “Yes, but, suspecting. Having a hunch that something terribly awful is happening is entirely different from knowing it definitively.”

  “Then find out.”

  “How am I supposed to do that, Taylor?”

  “Ask her.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Did you get one too many concussions blocking home plate? You want me to ask my mother if she’s a criminal mastermind who orchestrated the near drowning of my best friend, planted a bomb in my car, and laundered money through my art gallery to support a human trafficking ring. Seriously?”

  “How else will you find out?”

  “Let the FBI do the FBI’s job.”

  “They’ve done their job, but you can’t believe the evidence they’ve uncovered. And frankly, I’m having a difficult time believing all of it, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I trust your instincts, Charlie. Even though those instincts can be a little sneaky and tend to be less than forthcoming. You’re smart, and you know your mother better than anyone else.”

  Pinpoint shivers raced through her body.

  He believed her?

  He trusted her?

  How was that even possible?

  From the moment she’d arrived in Colin’s Fancy for the funeral and the reading of her father’s will, she’d pitted her spirit against his.

  And yet, at every turn, he met her anger wit
h honesty and fairness.

  He told her when she was being awful, comforted her when she was in pain, and protected her when she was at her most vulnerable. In spite of the litany of crimes associated with her mother, and by association with her, Mac Taylor wasn’t giving up on her. His unwavering support merely waited for her to embrace it. If she wasn’t careful, she would fall in love with Mr. Cranky-Pants Taylor.

  Maybe she should follow his lead and simply start with trusting him. Completely. Could she? “So, just ask her?”

  “Everyone is innocent until proven guilty,” he said, shoving his hands into his front pockets.

  “Sure, but the scales of justice are slanted with the heft of the accusations against Mama. They’re tilted so heavily I’m surprised a reality show hasn’t been pitched about their weight.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty. All the evidence against your mother is circumstantial. Granted, its solid evidence. But nothing is concrete.”

  “Do you ever turn the lawyer off, Taylor?”

  “Yes. But I never turn off my desire to see justice served. Your mother deserves justice.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because everyone deserves justice, Charlie.”

  27

  Cold leather scratched at the back of Charlotte’s knees as she slid onto the backseat of the classic, black town car. The driver scurried around the front of the sedan, slipping into the driver’s seat.

  “Where to miss?”

  “Park and 82nd.”

  Charlotte snuggled into the thick leather, closing her eyes against the familiar graffiti lined path connecting the waterfront of LaGuardia to her beloved Manhattan. She’d hated leaving South Carolina with Remy barely clinging to life. Her best friend needed her, but the only way she knew to help was to return home.

  Her return wasn’t to her gallery, apartment in SoHo, or the trendsetters of Lower Manhattan. She wouldn’t be dining in Little Italy or spending the afternoon reading a book in Washington Square Park. She wasn’t returning to her life. She was entering her mother’s world in the hope of answers to her never ending questions.

  Three weeks earlier, Charlotte and Mac returned to his apartment after her ballpark confession. She’d barely crossed the threshold when Special Agent Murphy began threatening her with obstruction charges, raising his voice several notes above charming. Mac flipped off his lawyer switch, and both Georgie and Dylan were required to keep Mac and Murphy from using each other’s faces for sparring instead of the heavy weight bag greeting visitors at the front door.

  Murphy’s temper quickly simmered with the announcement Charlotte was willing to fly to New York to ask her mother the tough questions and testify against her if the answers were as the FBI suspected. The federal agents’ faces flashed relief, but Georgie screamed in protest.

  “It’s too dangerous.” Georgie spat after she dragged Charlotte into Mac’s make-shift home office.

  “I have to know, Georgie. I have to know if my mother is who these men think she is. My mind believes them. It’s logical and their facts are reasonable.”

  “But…” Georgie filled in the pause.

  “She’s my mother. Although sometimes it feels as though it’s merely a DNA connection, she is my mother and my heart needs to believe she has a moral compass bigger than a cereal puff.”

  “I can understand,” Georgie said, but her words didn’t connect with the worry stretched across her face.

  What Charlotte didn’t say was she could believe her mother’s moral compass was so shallow as to involve herself with men who used the depravity of the world to lead a life of luxury. Her mother always chose herself above everything and everyone else in life. Her mother was superficial and self-centered, but could she really be at the center of a criminal organization? Charlotte was about to discover the answer.

  “Here we are, miss.” The driver’s subtle Bronx accent pulled her from her thoughts.

  Charlotte glanced out the window and up to the twenty-eight-floor building her grandmother had called home since refusing to return to the familial apartment she shared with her husband, for decades, after his death. Handing the driver a few bills, she thanked him and stepped through the car door opening.

  “Hello, Mr. Raymond.” Charlotte smiled at the aging doorman who seemed to be always present in her grandmother’s building.

  “Hello, Ms. Dixon. Will you be staying with your grandmother?” he asked as he lifted her bag and hustled to the front of the building. He propped open the glistening glass door and ushered Charlotte and her carry-on bag through to the spacious lobby.

  Glimmering with subtle chrome and low leather chairs, Babushka’s new building was a stark contrast to the entrance leading to the six thousand square foot apartment that had been the home of Bickfords for decades. Five years later, Charlotte still struggled with the loss of her grandfather’s study and the comfort of his worn leather furniture. When she complained to her grandmother about the sudden change of residence, Babushka’s response was simple and final. “Death is end. I want beginning.”

  She followed Mr. Raymond into the elevator and slipped off her wide-framed black sunglasses. “I’m sorry. My mind was somewhere else. You asked me if I was staying with my grandmother. Yes. But only for a day or so.”

  “Are you liking…where is it you moved?”

  “South Carolina. Yes, but I needed to come home to check on the gallery and Baba. How has she been?” Doormen knew more about the residents of their buildings than a family doctor who spanned five generations.

  “She’s been doing as well as can be expected. She meets the ladies once a week for cards and tea. And of course she has her duties at the church.”

  “The church?” Her grandmother had only attended church twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, Charlotte’s entire life. Having been raised in post-Revolution Russia, where religion was outlawed in favor of communism, her grandmother had little use for the ritual of the church of Charlotte’s grandfather.

  “Of course. Your grandmother attends St. Nicholas. She has since she’s lived here. I thought you knew. Figured she’d been going there the whole time she’s been in New York. Kinda a bit of the motherland, right?”

  Charlotte nodded, but the knowledge her grandmother was claiming to attend church for the last five years twisted at her belly. Had Charlotte been so self-focused that she’d missed her grandmother’s newfound devotion to God? Or was she fooling everyone else?

  The doors to the elevator shut and thoughts of her grandmother’s faith were suffocated in the sweltering heat of the four by six-foot metal box. Mr. Raymond pressed the button to her grandmother’s floor and Charlotte swallowed against the growing lump threatening her air.

  Soft strands of sweat stretched across her forehead. She gripped her leather gloved hands together releasing a squeak against the gentle music playing over the speakers nestled in the ceiling. Resting her head against the cool paneled wall, Charlotte could hear each click of the lift zooming to its destination. And she began counting the floors as each passed.

  Four…

  Five…

  Six…

  Seven…

  Ding.

  The doors opened with a swoosh revealing her grandmother’s gleaming white foyer. Charlotte tumbled into the open space and sucked in a burning lungful of air.

  “Are you OK, Ms. Dixon?”

  She nodded. Snatching a folded bill from her wallet, she thrust it into his hand.

  With a tip of his cap, the doors slid closed, only to reveal her drained complexion in their fuzzy reflection. Pulling a handkerchief from her pocket, she patted her forehead and cheeks, sucking in three more heart slowing breaths.

  “May I helps you?” The high-pitched voice held the rhythm of Eastern Europe, and as Charlotte turned, she recognized the new housekeeper her grandmother hired.

  “Hello, Marta.” She stretched her hand in greeting. “It’s good to see you. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Madame Bickford�
��s granddaughter, Charlotte.” She tugged at her gloves and slipped off her cashmere wrap coat, handing both to the diminutive blonde draped in a chambray shirt dress.

  Marta nodded and pointed toward the east end of the expansive flat. “Your Babushka id in zee sitting room. You’se expecting?”

  “No. But I had some business in the city and my loft is leased out for the year. I was hoping to stay in the spare bedroom.”

  Marta nodded and turned, her sneakers squeaking against the marble swirled floor.

  Charlotte fell into silent step behind her.

  The apartment her grandmother selected was draped in the golden opulence she favored in her bedroom and personal study at her previous home. Without her husband’s conservative pallor to soften her tastes, Baba’s home sparkled like a jeweled encrusted rainbow.

  Lifting her free hand, Marta wrapped her knuckles softly against a twelve-foot Christian door with gold set inlays and a gleaming handle, sparkling in the early afternoon sun. With a crack of the door, Marta whispered. “Madame, your granddaughter iz heres.”

  Charlotte tapped the maid’s shoulder and slithered by her into the study with walls lined floor to ceiling in books stacked like neat soldiers on cherry shelves.

  “Baba?” Charlotte said. Her voice held a tremor of shock at the sight of her grandmother, draped wrist to ankle in black, a small patch of dark lace covering her brilliantly white waist length hair, twisted neatly in a French knot. When was the last time Charlotte had visited her? Had Baba been in deep mourning without Charlotte noticing?

  Baba lifted her gaze to meet Charlotte’s, their dark depths flashing surprise. “Dorogoy! Oh, my dear. What surprise! Did I knows you coming for visit?” She stood. The elegance of her decades of training with the Bolshoi Theatre Ballet melted through each wide-armed step toward Charlotte.

  Nearly a foot shorter and teetering on ninety years old, Alloochka ‘Alla’ Bickford was anything but fragile. Snatching Charlotte to her chest, she chuckled. “I care not if I knows you comings. Your face makes heart smile.”