The Marked Star

by Vicki Hinze

  Ben just stared at his wife. “Kelly, explain.”

  “I’m sorry for not telling you, honey,” she said. “Jaycee swore me to secrecy. I couldn’t tell anyone unless it became absolutely necessary.” She shrugged. “Now, it’s necessary.”

  Nick frowned. “Did she tell you why?”

  “I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer.” Kelly sat back down in her seat. “Look, I’ve worked with Jaycee for months. She’s a wonderful mother. She said it was a matter of life and death and that she had to know Lizzie would be safe.” Kelly shrugged. “That was more than enough for me.”

  “Sorry, Nick. The signs were there, but I didn’t put them together.” Ben sipped from his cup. “I should have known.”

  Kelly raised her eyebrows.

  “You just redid the bedroom next to the baby’s. I should have realized it wasn’t random timing, you had a purpose.”

  “I did.” Kelly looked at Nick. “If Lizzie had to come to us, I wanted her to feel like this was home. Not like she’s a guest. You know what I mean. She needed her own room with her own things—her space so she belongs.”

  Nick’s voice went gruff. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Kelly.”

  Her gaze turned liquid. “I remember how I felt. I didn’t have any of that for a long time, and it hurt.”

  Nick hadn’t had any of that since he was six until he provided a home for himself. It had hurt. But he couldn’t talk about it like Kelly did. Sometimes, though, he wished he could. “Lizzie could be in danger,” he warned them. “You need to know that, especially with the baby and all…”

  “I promised Jaycee, Nick.” Kelly lifted her chin. “We’ve got protection. Mark’s seen to it and I’m having faith that we’re in capable hands.”

  “You can rest easy on that front.” Ben reassured Nick. “Lizzie will be safe here. We’ll do whatever we have to do to protect her.”

  Elle spoke up. “She’s lucky to have you.”

  “We all need someone we can count on.” Kelly swallowed her coffee. “Lizzie can count on us.”

  Nick cleared his throat. “Well, I guess we’d better go tell her. We’ll bring her back in a couple hours, if that’s okay.”

  “We’ll be ready and waiting.” Ben stood up and shook Nick’s hand. “I don’t envy you, having to tell her. But, Nick, don’t worry. We’ll make a home for her here.”

  “That’s…good.” It was all he could manage. From the compassionate look in Ben’s eyes, it was more than enough.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday, June 7th, 5:00 p.m.

  The Lodge

  When Nick and Elle walked into the Lodge, Sam was at the stove frying fish and Lizzie stood on a stool beside him, taste-testing a filet.

  Sam took one look at Nick’s face and dread filled his eyes.

  “What do you think, Lizzie?” Elle asked.

  She cocked her head, studied Elle and then Nick. “You’ve got bad news or else you guys have been fighting again.”

  “We don’t fight,” he said. “We discuss.”

  “Nick’s right.” Elle slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar. “But I was talking about the fish. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s good. I didn’t let Sam burn it.” She shoved the plate toward Elle. “Have some.” She looked at Nick. “You, too.”

  “Thanks, Lizzie.” He sat down beside Elle. Grabbed a piece and took a bite. “Mmm, it’s good.”

  Lizzie drank down a gulp of water. “So is my mom…hurt, or what?”

  Leave it to Lizzie to be blunt. Nick admired straight-talk, but he hated that any kid had to go through this, worrying about a parent. He knew how that could rip you apart inside. “We don’t think so. We just don’t know yet.”

  She chewed slowly, then screwed up her courage to ask the question she most wanted answered. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Your mom wants you to go to stay with Ben and Kelly.” Nick answered quickly. Prolonging her agony wasn’t just cruel, it was a sure-fire path to hyper-anxiety. Between the wreck, the unexpected guests here at the Lodge where she was supposed to feel safe, the stint in the vault and everything else, the last thing Lizzie—or any of them, for that matter—needed was more anxiety.

  Elle licked at her lips. “Kelly’s fixed you a room at their house, Lizzie. She showed it to me, and it’s beautiful.”

  Lizzie bit into a piece of fish, and chewed it at a snail’s pace, glancing at Sam and then at Nick, gauging their reactions. “My mom isn’t coming back, is she?”

  Nick could lie. His heart squeezed so hard he wanted to lie. But he couldn’t make himself do it. He’d known lies when he’d heard them and Lizzie would, too. “Right now, it doesn’t look like it, no.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. Stilled.

  Sam put down the pinchers and held open his arms.

  Lizzie leapt into them and Sam scooped her up. “I’m so sorry, half-pint.”

  She cried, soft sobs that shook her shoulders and ripped Nick’s heart to shreds.

  Elle discreetly grabbed his hand and squeezed, her cheeks wet.

  When Lizzie’s sobs softened to sniffles, Sam dabbed at her cheeks with the edges of a wadded paper towel. “We’ll be here for you, Lizzie. No matter what. You know that, right?”

  She nodded. “But how am I gonna know if she’s okay or not? What if she needs me? I won’t even know it, Sam.”

  “You’re going to have to have faith. Sometimes things happen we can’t control. We have to trust that nothing is going to happen to your mom that she and God can’t handle. He’ll be with her, Lizzie. She’s never gonna be alone, and that’s the way it works.”

  “Trust God?” she said. “After our house blew up?”

  “Hey, you weren’t in it.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “You got out of there and you’ve been safe here.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “For a while, anyway.”

  “Your mom’s really smart, Lizzie,” Sam said. “She’ll be thinking of a way to get back to you every single day.”

  “I don’t know about that. She’s smart, but I think she’ll stay away.” Lizzie looked at Nick then Elle. “She told me this could happen one day.”

  “That she’d leave you?” Nick asked.

  Lizzie nodded.

  “Because she didn’t want you to think she just left you,” Nick said. “She wanted you to know that she had no choice—to keep you safe.”

  She looked him in the eye, challenging him. “It still hurts.”

  He looked right back. “Yeah, I know it does. Part of you will always hurt.”

  “That’s true,” Elle added.

  “How do you know?” Lizzie asked Elle.

  Elle worried her lower lip with her teeth, not eager to disclose. “My parents pretty much kept me a secret,” she admitted. “They gave me a different name, and even when I worked with my dad, everyone thought I was his cousin. No one knew I was his daughter—at least, not until he told Nick.”

  “That’s just crazy.” Lizzie sniffed and asked, “Why’d they do that?”

  “They were scared.” Elle shrugged. “They thought it was the best way to keep me safe.”

  “From what?” She sniffled. “Are bad men after you, too?”

  “They have been for my whole life. But not the same kind of bad men after you and your mom. At least, I don’t think they are.” Elle paused, thought, frowned. “Well, maybe now they are the same.” Elle stiffened. “I’m just not sure yet.”

  “It’s hard not to be confused, huh?”

  “It is.” Elle nodded at Lizzie. “Angry, too.”

  Lizzie’s brow furrowed. “You’re angry at the bad men?”

  “I really am. And I’m angry at my parents, too,” Elle admitted. “Actually, I’ve spent more time being angry with them than with the bad people. In my head, I know they were just trying to keep me safe. But in my heart, all this time I’ve been worried that I’d done something wrong to make them do what they did
.”

  Lizzie’s jaw dropped. “Me, too.”

  “Well, you just get that thought right out of your head. You didn’t do anything wrong, Lizzie. You either, Elle,” Nick said. “Not a thing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Yeah?” Elle asked. “How do you know?”

  Nick bristled, looked at Sam in a silent plea for an escape or diversion. None came. “Because I do.”

  Elle stilled, blinked twice, then gave him a reprieve. “Nick’s right,” Elle told Lizzie. “For a long time I was sure something was wrong with me and that’s why they didn’t want anyone to know I was their daughter. I thought they were ashamed of me because I was kind of weird. You know, with building things and loving my dad’s work. Most little kids don't care about those kinds of things.” Elle sighed. “But they weren’t ashamed. It just wasn’t true. They were scared and trying to do the best they knew to do to keep me safe—even if it didn’t feel that way.” Elle stiffened. “That’s what they were doing.”

  “But you were still mad at them.”

  “Well, yeah. Sure, I was. Sometimes, I still am.” Elle sighed. “Sometimes even when someone does something really hard for them to do because they believe they must, it still hurts. It’s okay to be mad about it. It took me a while to figure that out.” Elle reached for a second filet of fish. “Now, when I get mad at them about it, I think about how hard it must have been for them to act like they didn’t have a daughter. Especially my dad. He was actually pretty proud of me and what I was doing, working with him. But he didn’t say much because he worried someone might figure out the truth. “

  “It was hard for them and you,” Lizzie said.

  Elle nodded. “Very.”

  “Does that make you feel better?”

  Pausing a long second, Elle admitted the truth. “You know, it does.”

  Lizzie went silent for a long beat. Then another, clearly mulling things over in her mind. “I think I’m not mad at my mom. I’m not going to get mad at her, either.”

  “Why not?” Nick asked, fascinated. How had Lizzie processed this so quickly?

  She looked across the bar at Nick. “My mom doesn’t cry much. But when she told me this could happen one day, she cried.” Lizzie pulled in a shuddery breath. “She didn’t want to leave me. But she didn’t want our new house to blow up with me in it, either.”

  “You’re lucky to know she didn't want to go,” Nick said.

  “You weren’t lucky?”

  Nick nodded that he wasn’t. “Mine wanted to go and she did.”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He started to ignore her, but she needed the reassurance she’d found in her mom. He couldn’t give her peace but he could give her honesty. “I was six. I got up and ate cereal for breakfast, dressed, and went to school. She wasn’t up yet, so we never even said good-bye.” He remembered coming home, facing his father’s fury, being blamed for her going. “She left and she never came back.”

  Lizzie walked around the edge of the bar, put her hand in Nick’s and held them clasped. “Why would she do that to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said, staring at her tiny hand offering him—him—reassurance. A lump formed in his throat. “She wasn’t happy. I am sure about that. My dad was gone a lot on business and she hated that. They . . . discussed it all the time,” he said, deliberately toning down the screaming matches he’d covered his head with his pillow to snuff out.

  “But he said it was your fault she left.”

  “He did.” Over and over. “Maybe it was. I was smart and she didn’t like it.”

  “Why didn’t she like it?” Lizzie asked. “Parents usually like having smart kids, don’t they, Sam?”

  “Yeah, they do. Bragging rights.”

  Nick looked up at Lizzie. “I think she kept a lot of things to herself and she didn’t want me to know them.”

  “Secrets?”

  He nodded.

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “I don’t know.” How many times had he asked himself that question? Strained to remember every word overheard? Wondered what could be so awful she’d desert him?

  “Maybe she didn’t want to leave you,” Lizzie said. “Maybe she had to leave to protect you.”

  “I thought that for about a minute, but she really was not happy.” She’d locked herself in the bath but he’d heard her muffled sobs through the door too many times to think anything else. “She left because she didn’t want to be there.”

  “So how come she didn’t take you with her?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” He let out a sigh of sheer frustration. “It’s not like my father would have missed me. He sent me away right after she left.”

  “Sent you away where?”

  “Boarding school.” Nick grimaced. “He got married again and his new wife didn’t want me around, so he sent me away.”

  “He left you with nobody?” Lizzie’s indignation was swift and strong. “What did you do?”

  “I learned to never need or trust anyone.”

  “Well, did he ever come get you?”

  “No, he never did.” She innately squeezed his fingers. Feeling the sting, Nick let his gaze fall again to their clasped hands. “I lived at the school until I grew up, and then I started my own life.”

  Lizzie’s jaw clenched. “You didn’t see your dad anymore, either?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  She stilled, went silent for a long minute, then said, “You learned not to trust anybody but I know you trust Sam and Joe and Tim and Mark and Elle.”

  “I have to work at it. Honestly, it’s hard.” He didn’t dare look at Sam. “But, yes, you’re right. I do trust them. It just took me a long time.”

  “Cuz you’re still mad at your dad for sending you away.”

  “Yeah, I am.” He’d gone this far. Might as well confess the rest. “At my mom for leaving me. At my dad for throwing me away and forgetting I existed, and mostly I’m mad at Jacinda.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “My dad’s wife,” he said. “She hates me. She always has, but I don’t know why.”

  Lizzie stepped closer, craned back her neck and looked up at Nick. “Ain’t nobody ever loved you, Nick?”

  “My grandma did, but she died when I was little—before my mom left.” He hiked his eyebrows. “For some of us, life’s that way, Lizzie. Everyone dies or leaves us. Sometimes because they want to go, and sometimes because they can’t help it. Either way, they’re gone, and we’re on our own.”

  Unshed tears had her eyes shiny, overly bright. “That’s sad.”

  “That’s life.” He studied her a long second. “Until right now, I’ve only ever told one person about all this—even Sam didn’t know it.”

  Surprised, she glanced at Sam.

  “I didn’t.”

  She pivoted her gaze back to Nick. “Why’d you tell me?”

  “Because I want you to know, whether they go because they want to or because they have to, it’s hard not to be mad. But either way you have to accept it, Lizzie, and you have to go on and do the best you can do to make yourself a great life. You’re one of the lucky ones. You have Ben and Kelly, and they’ll be a family to you.”

  “And I have you and Sam.”

  “Dang right.”

  Nick didn’t think to complain about Sam’s language. Hearing this from Nick for the first time, Sam was pretty emotional, too. “All the team—Joe, Tim and Mark, and me.”

  “Me, too, Lizzie.” Elle’s voice sounded rough, thick.

  She hugged Elle then turned and hugged Nick, catching him by surprise.

  He hesitated, hands mid-air, then gently let them close around Lizzie’s slim shoulders. “You’re definitely a lucky one, and we’re lucky to have you in our lives, too.”

  Lizzie glanced up at him, her expression frank, her eyes earnest. “I ain’t abandoning you, Nick. Not ever. And I ain’t dying or leaving you, either. Never. Ever. And that’s a pro
mise.” She held up her little finger. “I pinky swear.”

  Moved, he linked their little fingers, then lifted his free hand and touched her face. “Thank you, Lizzie.”

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

  He nodded, too tight-throated to speak.

  “How long did you miss her? Your mom, I mean.”

  “I’ll have to let you know.”

  Lizzie’s face riddled with confusion. “What’s that mean?”

  Elle clasped Nick’s hand. “It means a part of him still misses her.”

  “Sensible,” Sam said. “She is still his mom. Of course, he still misses her.”

  “Yeah.” Nick agreed, then cleared his throat. “Now, I’m not going to blow smoke at you about Ben and Kelly, Lizzie. But I promise you they’re good people and they will take great care of you.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure.” She went back to her stool and snagged the last filet of fish. “I know them all really well. They’ve got a baby, Susan. She’s new.”

  Elle smiled. “You can be like a big sister to her, then.”

  “Yeah, but I sure am gonna miss my mom. She could do anything.”

  Sam stroked Lizzie’s hair. “She had to go, half-pint, but when she can—when it’s safe—she’ll come back.”

  “No, she won’t.” Lizzie’s voice was deadpan flat. “She’ll want to every day but she won’t do it. She’ll be too scared to ever come see me again.”

  The certainty in Lizzie’s voice cracked Nick’s heart. “You can hope she will.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Elle asked.

  “Because it ain’t gonna happen. When you know something ain’t gonna happen, you don’t hope for it. You just hope for things you can believe.”

  “Well, I’m going to believe things work out and she can come back someday.” Elle told Lizzie.

  Sam stroked his beard. “The thing is, we never know exactly what’s going to happen. If we don’t know, we don’t know. What do we have to lose by hoping?”

  “It hurts when it doesn’t happen.”