“Better than single?”
Ann was quiet again, then said, “Not better than single, just different. It has its own dynamics. I wouldn’t change being married to be single again because Paul is in the equation. But put any generic guy in the picture, I’d probably be happier being single than married. Paul is the reason this marriage is a success. I got very lucky—very blessed—with the guy who chose me.”
“You didn’t go looking for him?”
Ann smiled. “I gave him every reason I could come up with for us not to be more than friends, and he saw something appealing enough in what the marriage could be that he kept pursuing it. It came down to trusting that he was right, and saying yes even though I knew there was risk involved. It felt like stepping off a cliff when I made it, but I don’t regret the decision. Never will.”
“I wouldn’t have figured there was a struggle,” Evie said. “Not looking at you today.”
“Some days God smiles at you, and Paul was one of those blessings that just showed up when I wasn’t looking for it. God is nice that way.”
Evie was pretty sure Rob was not her Paul. The man had a lot going for him, but it didn’t feel at all like Ann’s experience—not that she was trying for the same journey, but she liked the outcome Ann had found. She’d like, in her own way, to end up with at least something like that one day.
Yeah, she was thinking too hard. She went back to counting stars and wondering if they might be God’s brushstrokes tonight to keep her occupied.
Gabriel Thane
Restless, Gabriel drove out to the campground just after eight p.m. and found Ann and Evie sitting by the fire. He looked at the dark motor home behind them. “Grace already turned in for the night?”
“Josh talked her into going his way for popcorn and a movie,” Evie said.
Gabriel got himself a cold soda and took one of the extra chairs. “I hope it’s a good distraction, helps her sleep tonight.”
“She needs to get far away from Carin County,” Ann remarked. “When she leaves, when this is done, thankfully she won’t be coming back—won’t again be facing all the memories lumped together like this.”
“Josh will be saying goodbye a second time.” Gabe sighed, shook his head. “It’ll be as hard on him as it was back then, probably harder.” He stretched out his legs, looked over at Evie, smiled at the sight she made on the blanket, feet crossed at the ankles and propped on a log. “Nice camping spot. Great view of the stars tonight.”
“Come out to see Grace about anything in particular?” Evie asked.
“Mom would like her to come over for dinner tomorrow. Figured I would invite her, if Josh hasn’t already.”
“That’s very kind of your mom,” Ann said. “Evie, maybe you could stay here until Grace is back, tend the fire, make sure she’s okay? I can take the convertible to pick up Paul—and I’m putting the top up. Maybe Gabe can bring you back to your place?”
“Sure,” he put in, “no problem.”
“I’m not planning to move for a while,” Evie said, tossing the car keys from her pocket across to Ann. “I’m still counting stars. I hate to leave a job unfinished. Tell your husband I’d like his pancakes for breakfast,” Evie requested. “I’m partial to his cooking over yours or mine.”
“A wise choice,” Ann agreed as she stood. “Gabriel, you and I need to talk soon about Will and Karen.”
He looked her direction, blinked, sighed again. “Don’t take this wrong, but I’d actually forgotten about them. Text me when you’re turning in. I’ll call you when I get home if I haven’t heard anything from you before then.”
“That works.”
Gabriel followed her over to the yellow rental to help with the top. He watched her car lights fade, settled back into his chair, listened to the night sounds and finished his soda, enjoying the peace of the moment.
“You don’t need to stay, Gabriel,” Evie said. “I’m sure Josh could run me home when he brings Grace back. Wander up to your brother’s place, say hello to Grace. Josh might be in dire need of help if she’s crying again.”
“Josh can handle Grace. The best thing for her would be just that kind of open, honest grief.” He reached for a long stick and stirred the fire. “He made her a Valentine’s Day card, back when he was in the sixth grade. That’s what I remember most about Josh and Grace, that sweet crush he had on her. Made me proud to be his brother, even if I did give him some minor grief about having a girlfriend. I mostly wished I had one too.”
She smiled. “Childhood days are the innocent ones. We don’t see the evil lurking around us.” She studied him across the firelight. “You okay, Gabriel?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been better.”
“I bet your dad is having an equally hard night.”
“He’s got Mom. She won’t let the grief overpower him. He didn’t know any of this, but it doesn’t lessen the pain of it now.”
“Your father would have stepped in front of a train for that little girl—both Ashley and Grace. He would have dealt with this hard and fast, if he’d known.”
Gabriel nodded and watched the fire. He was grateful that nothing else was needed of him tonight. He felt at his limit.
“Grace couldn’t talk about it.” Evie looked over at him. “You know that, don’t you, more than just the theory of it? She couldn’t talk about it or she would have. He’d destroyed her world, her sense of self, so completely that telling someone wasn’t possible. She was only six years old. She buried it in order to keep breathing, simply to survive.”
“I know it, Evie.” He blew out a breath, put the empty soda can on the ground. “My head knows it, but my emotions can’t yet accept the fact.” He looked over at her. “You have any secrets buried this deep?” he asked idly. “No need to answer that—simply curious.”
She lifted the bottle she held, moved it out to arm’s length, using it to block stars to make it easier to count a line of them. “I killed my brother.” She said it so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.
He felt like he’d been hit by a fastball. “You . . . ?”
“I was seven. I gave him my toy plane to play with because I didn’t want him to play with my dolls, undo their ribbons, mess up their hair. He ate one of the wheels and choked to death. Our babysitter from that night committed suicide six months later.”
“Oh, Evie, I am so sorry. I—I can’t . . .” But he couldn’t finish.
She tipped the bottle back and forth. “I slit my wrist a year later. It was too painful for me to do the job properly, so here I am.”
“Talk about the wrong question to have asked. Have you . . . ?” There wasn’t any good way to word the question. “You’ve been able to deal with it?”
“I don’t know. My brother’s name was Sam. I called him Sammy. Some days it’s tolerable, realizing he’s not here, and other days it just aches. They tell you it gets better with time, but mostly it just is. ‘Accidents happen’ doesn’t change the fact he’s not here. And I caused it.”
“How are your parents?”
“Terrified I will die on them too. They abhor the fact I became a cop. They think I have a death wish.”
“Do you?”
In the dim firelight he saw her shrug. “I don’t know. That a deep enough secret for you, Gabriel?”
“Feeling guilty about something so catastrophic is pretty normal.”
“I know.”
“Have you told Rob about Sammy?”
“He knows I once had a brother, but no.”
“Why not?”
“He hasn’t asked about my secrets.”
“You’re not going to marry him, are you?” He punched a stick into the fire to have something to do. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be prying on that topic. Ann’s concerned.”
“I know she is.” Evie set down the root-beer bottle. “I do fine not answering when I think someone is prying, Gabriel.” She was silent for a while. “I don’t know. Rob has his flaws. He can be arrogant, and blind to it
. He can be overly impressed by people who have money. But he can also be generous to a fault. He remembers names of the janitors, he likes my jokes for the most part, and he puts up with my crazy work schedule with good humor.”
She sat up, wrapped her arms around her knees. “I like the fact he doesn’t have the details of a single crime to discuss while we’re having a meal together. It’s nice not dating a cop. He’s got generations of solid family behind him, no divorces, a confidence about himself, he’s sincere about religion, even if he’s—how should I put it?—more showy about it than I am. And he’s good to me. There would be much worse husbands to have.” She smiled at her own list. “But I’m not sure I want to quit being a cop for the sake of peace with my mother-in-law. His parents think marrying a cop is a bit too downscale for them—you know, blue collar. I don’t think they’d ever met a cop before Rob brought me to their brownstone on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.”
Gabriel smiled at the way she said it. “Do you love him?”
“Hmm . . . I can say I like him. And for now, that’s been enough.”
“Is he going to propose, you think?”
She thought about it. “He probably will,” she guessed. “He likes to present something as a fait accompli, let others adjust to the idea it’s been decided, rather than let things develop outside his control. He won’t ask as much as presume it’s a yes, until he’s certain what I will say. He’s big into knowing the outcome, saving face. Then he’ll want to have that elaborate engagement party, public wedding, make it a big social event.”
“Do you want to be married?”
She shrugged. “Some days I do. Like this one—the last thing I want is to be alone, churning through the memories of this day. But being married means big changes, probably kids. I’m not much on making changes.” She stirred the fire. “Tit for tat, Gabriel. You have something you consider a deep secret?”
He thought about how to answer, finally said, “I was engaged once.”
She turned her head on her folded arms to better see him. “Really?”
“Really. Didn’t tell my folks. Eventually told my brothers.”
“I’m thinking I might not want to know this story.”
“Your choice.”
She considered it, then said, “Tell me.”
“Elizabeth Sara Doevelly, a literature major, born in Paris, raised in London. I met her in Chicago when she was a graduate student at the same college as me.”
“Why the secret, Gabriel?”
“Her parents were divorced, her father a diplomat. He gave his blessing to us marrying, but asked for my word that we would tell her mother first before we told my parents. We made arrangements to fly to London to meet her mom.
“We wanted ceremonies in both America and England”—he gestured with a hand—“wanted to hang the marriage certificates side by side. So we got on the flight to tell her mom, were planning a garden ceremony at her parents’ home for that weekend. After a honeymoon in Europe, we’d come back to the States and tell my folks, have a church wedding here in Carin with family and friends. I know that sounds over the top, but we were young, Elizabeth was very creative, and it solved a stack of problems for how to honor her father’s request. My parents liked her, they were going to approve of our getting married, so it was a logistics kind of thing. Elizabeth was close to her mother, and it was a big deal for her to have a wedding in London.”
“What happened?” Evie asked when he stopped.
“Our taxicab in London got hit by a truck. Two doctors in a restaurant nearby came running. There was nothing that could be done. She was gone nearly instantly.” He had thought he could tell it without the pain, but he was startled at how it washed over him once more.
“That’s an awful way to lose someone you love, and so close to her becoming your wife,” Evie whispered.
His sigh was long. “Yeah, not good. I didn’t tell my family we were engaged and that close to being married—they already knew how important Elizabeth was to me. It would have added another layer to their grief for me, and I didn’t think either they or I could carry that. I came back, focused on being a good cop, became sheriff of Carin County.”
“Is that why you’ve never married?”
He honestly didn’t know. He tried his own shrug. “I am marriage-minded. I like the thought of it. But practicalities have pushed it to the background. I like my work. I don’t mind the hours, though some disruptions can begin to irritate. I want to have what I have now, plus something more, and it’s not a simple thing to figure out.”
“Paul and Ann are interesting to watch together,” Evie said thoughtfully. “She still travels a lot, more than you realize at first. But their marriage works. Works well, I would say. There’s no sense of distance in their relationship when you see them together.”
Gabriel smiled. “Nothing happens in Ann’s life that she doesn’t tell Paul. That’s part of it.”
“The other part?” Evie asked, sounding curious.
“Paul has created a safe place for her in his world. She can still be herself inside the marriage. She’s understood and welcomed for who she is; he went into the marriage having figured that out before he asked her to marry him. He was smart that way.”
“He does that all very, very well—accepting, customizing, loving Ann as Ann.”
“Envious, Evie?”
She sighed. “Green with it.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Yeah. I can relate.”
It was eleven p.m. before Grace and Josh returned. Evie went inside with Grace to make sure she was settled in the motor home for the night, Gabriel quietly suggesting she stay until Grace had fallen asleep. He needed a few minutes of conversation with his brother.
“Josh, you want to talk?” Gabriel asked.
“About which part of this horrific day?”
He nodded toward the road. “Let’s walk for a while.”
Josh shoved his hands into his pockets and matched his stride to his brother’s. “She cried much of the evening. The whole thing is killing her.”
“She needed to do this, Josh, or she wouldn’t have come.”
“Yeah. Got that.” Josh sighed. “What’s a guy suppose to do? Nearly as long as I knew her, this was going on. I didn’t have a clue. To care about someone, yet not catch on . . .”
“We were kids, Josh. I have to keep telling myself that.”
“So was she.”
“Her tears are probably the best thing that could happen.”
Josh shook his head. “You didn’t see Grace out in those woods this morning, staring at the lake, wondering if a car could be driven over one of those bluffs and not be seen again. There’s an anger in Grace that feels . . . well, feels almost physical, and it’s an emotion she has nowhere to direct for some closure. It’s eating her alive. And this afternoon, just walking that land around the house, she’s stretched beyond anything I can imagine with those memories. She can put on an appearance that she’s okay, but she’s dying inside.”
“She’s talking with a doctor, with Ann. She’s come back here. She’s dealing with it, Josh.”
“Not very well. I should insist that she not be part of the search. I can tell her I can do it better, faster without her there. Which is true.”
“Do that if you need to,” Gabriel agreed, “but it doesn’t help the inevitable, Josh. If you find an answer—or don’t—regarding her parents, she’ll have to face it then. Same with any information about the Dayton girl. Grace will have to find a way to come to terms with all of it. We can help, but ultimately it’s her journey, one step at a time.”
Josh blew out a breath. “There’s no way I’ll find her parents after twenty-five years—not unless we trip over the car itself, which isn’t entirely out of the question. Otherwise it’s finding where the ground has shifted, the graves have worked back toward the surface as trees fall and roots push up the ground. Only under the very best of conditions will the dogs trigger on remains that old.”
; “You’ll do what can be done, and that’s what Grace needs. Even if we can’t find the remains, I think we talk to her about a small funeral service for her parents, one that she’ll remember and will provide some closure. She was two when the first memorial service was held,” Gabriel said, “I think she needs another fixed day to say, ‘Goodbye, I’ll see you in heaven.’”
“That would help,” Josh agreed. “Dad said he’d be out at the farm tomorrow morning, take up a shovel for a while. I think he wants to see the place again now that he knows the truth. I’ll ask him to take a walk through the house and barns once Grace and I are working the pastureland where she can’t see him.”
“Good. Anything you need from me, Josh?”
“Prayer for good weather. I don’t want to have to stop until we’re done.”
“Let’s do that now.” Gabriel put an arm across Josh’s shoulders, asked God for a reasonably good day tomorrow, especially for Grace.
“Amen,” Josh echoed.
Gabriel turned to the motor home as Josh headed back to his truck. They would get through this as a family. But it was going to get heavier as it went on.
He smothered the fire in the ring, collected the bottles to recycle, folded up the blanket Evie had used, and stored the chairs. Evie stepped out just as Gabriel finished scanning the area with a flashlight to confirm all was secure for the night.
“She’s asleep. I waited a bit to be sure, prayed for her and for the rest of us.”
“Josh and I prayed too before he left. There are so many questions, so much grief and anger that’s being dug up along with this search, Evie. It’s hard to know exactly what to ask the Almighty to do.”
“I know,” Evie said. “It’s a good thing our prayers don’t require instructions for God—He knows what each one of us needs.”
Gabriel smiled. “Probably better than we can put them into words anyway.” He helped Evie settle in his truck for the ride to her place, circled around to climb in himself, hoping the truck’s engine wouldn’t disturb Grace for more than a brief moment. “Why don’t you tip that seat back and close your eyes, Evie? You’ve earned a few minutes of quiet.”
Traces of Guilt Page 18