Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  Hallie ignored the question because she didn’t know what to say. What did you say when your best friend tells you the woman you thought loved him more than life stepped out to find a breeding stud? Especially since this woman had also been a friend you thought you’d known almost as well as you knew yourself.

  Or Joe.

  “What has this got to do with the pictures, Joe? I mean—” She sifted through the disturbing-but-relativelyinnocent snapshots of Mary alive. “I can maybe see what it has to do with these shots of Mary, maybe him stalking and killing her, but the rest of this stuff?”

  Joe studied his hands. “There were other things in the box with the pictures, Hal. A couple of letters, no signature. She ended the affair, but he didn’t want to. I get the feeling that he probably wasn’t a deputy or a cop, but that he may have been close to the department somehow. She was a social worker. I mean, deps, cops, cons and social services—who else did we know?”

  “Her clients?” Hallie suggested. “So it’d be someone you wouldn’t necessarily know?”

  He shrugged. “Possible, I guess, but—”

  “Did you go through her files?”

  “Are you asking did I break the law and hack her computer at work to get ’em?”

  Hallie nodded. “Okay.”

  Joe looked at her, sidestepped the direct answer. “You don’t think it would’ve been easier for me to go through channels, get help from you guys and her department to get ’em?”

  Her smile was grim. “What I think now—same thing I thought then, by the way—and what you were thinking, the shape you were in during and after the funeral, are two different things.”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed and glanced away, feeling not exactly repentant but guilty as charged. He looked back at her. “Put it down to I got copies of her files. She had a bunch of ‘em at home. The others...” His mouth twisted. “Let’s just say the others came my way. I went through ’em. Found a couple of possibles.”

  “They didn’t pan out.” A lament rather than a question.

  “No.” Joe shook his head. “Plus there were the other pictures. Pretty sophisticated stuff for any of the guys in her files who might’ve fit my profile. Someone video’d her murder and sent me stills and a chit saying she’s dead because of me. That if today were Judgment Day, I’d have to ’fess up. If it’d make a difference, I’m willing, but what to? That because she never intended to do anything but use him and stay with me, I’m responsible for him killing her? Or if he’s not the one who actually killed her, somehow it’s my fault she died? And the worst of it is, I don’t know how long Mary had the pictures before she was murdered. Or if I could have stopped it even if I had. At least I’d have known she needed protecting. Anything.”

  Hallie ignored the chill that swept down her spine, the abrupt sense of panic that made her want to get up, find a phone and make sure Sam, Ben and their father were all right. But she couldn’t let some photographs spook her into scaring the boys or Zeke before she had some real inkling as to what was going on. Her ex-husband had a difficult enough time reconciling her career with their sons’ lives as it was. And truthfully, there was no evidence that the person who’d shot the pictures was the same person who’d killed Mary.

  “Other than being Mary’s husband, you don’t know what he’s got against you,” she said, the lieutenant sheriff sliding into interview mode. It beat the frightened-mom mode all to hell. “What does he want from you and why is it so personal he’s started on pictures of us? How could he even know to try to threaten you with us?”

  Joe shook his head. “Not a clue. Especially nothing that should begin to involve you. I mean—” He spread his hands, a gesture of frustration. “Hell, Hallie, it’s not like we haven’t each made our share of enemies over the years. Goes with the job, right? But this... I get little messages and leads that send me running in different directions. I feel like I’m close, then, bam! I’ve got air. He doesn’t make any demands so I don’t know why he wants me, but I know why I want him—” His tone became ugly. “And I want him bad.” He looked at her suddenly, his mouth a hard, thin line. If anything, the ugliness in his tone increased. “And now he’s stalking you and the kids, I want him worse.”

  Hallie’s mouth quirked at his passion. “I want him pretty bad, too, Joe. I don’t want him following and videotaping anybody’s kids, but he makes it personal when he does it to mine.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They considered each other for a long moment, old friends whose lives were no longer the open books they’d once been.

  Onetime lovers who’d never seen each other in either the light or with quite the intensity, the unacknowledged and unacknowledgeable desire that they saw each other now.

  Hallie drew breath and broke the silence first. “As far as you knew, you were never coming back here, right?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at her, then away. Turned back and gazed levelly at her. “If those pictures’d wound up in my truck, it wouldn’t matter where I was. I’d’ve turned up on your doorstep like that—” he snapped his fingers “—and you know it.”

  “I know,” she agreed softly. “You’d never let anything happen to the kids.”

  He snorted an impolite but forcefully descriptive expletive. “And you know damned well it wouldn’t be just the kids.” His eyes were steady points of deep pewter that commanded her attention. His promise—or was it a threat?—was succinct and definitely not comforting. “I’d die before I’d let anything happen to you.”

  It was too charged an admission for so confined a space.

  It wasn’t the words themselves: as partners they’d made the same implicit commitment to each other a thousand times and more, every day, every shift they’d spent in each other’s company, backing each other up. As friends, too, they’d made the pledge, but tacitly, no verbalization needed. This was different. The emotion was different. The way he vowed it was different. More personal. More explicit.

  More exclusive.

  More ferocious.

  It was also spoken aloud. And the unwritten rule was that there were some things better left unsaid. Some admissions that, if you really cared for your partner, your friend, you simply never made.

  Some...awarenesses... you didn’t permit yourself to feel.

  But after all the time he’d been gone, the infant and the history that stood between them, Hallie wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to think of Joe as a trusted “friend” again, and they hadn’t been partners for almost a year.

  She swallowed and got to her feet. She wasn’t a kid; she understood need and desire, want, when she saw it—or when she experienced it. And she’d been fancied and lusted after, liked and courted by enough men not to find the view remarkable. But it had been a hell of an afternoon, filled with too-unexpectedly-much Joe, too many revelations and way more variety of emotions than she’d experienced in, oh, say, ever. And to be perfectly honest, she really wasn’t ready to visit this particular feeling now, if ever.

  Especially not with Joe.

  Even if her body was making little please-please-please noises in that direction. She knew her body had a tendency to lie when it wanted things that weren’t particularly good for it; to tell her that things like all the french fries, onion rings and chocolate she could eat would make her feel like a million when she was feeling like zero, would never be bad for her, were, in fact, all she needed for a perfectly nutritious anytime-of-the-day snack for any reason whatsoever.

  She’d learned long ago that if she wanted to continue to be able to outrun fleeing felons, she couldn’t always give in to the things her body said about what she ate.

  Similarly she understood that if she gave in to her body’s current please-please-please awareness of Joe, she’d never outrun her heart where he was concerned. And if she couldn’t outrun her heart...

  There were reasons beyond Maura she hadn’t even admitted to herself that made her angry with Joe for leaving. Just as there were grounds o
utside her concern he’d somehow be able to take Maura from her that made her afraid of his coming back.

  The need to busy herself, to stop thinking, rose like the tide. She looked down. The table needed to be cleared. She reached in front of Joe to collect his chili bowl. Without warning he caught her hand, and the dish stuttered against the oak, fumbled by fingers she’d always been able to count on to be steady.

  “Hallie...”

  The sound of a baby waking from sleep came from the direction of the claw-footed buffet set against one dining-room wall. Startled, Joe and Hallie both turned, half expecting to see that Maura had somehow materialized in their midst while their attentions were otherwise engaged. The gurgle, of course, came from the portable half of the baby monitor sitting atop the buffet. For his part, Joe wasn’t entirely certain what he felt about the interruption—besides determined to meet his daughter properly at last. Hallie snatched at it with relief.

  “I have to go. The baby’s up. She’ll need to be changed.”

  When Joe didn’t immediately release her, she looked up at him.

  “Let me go, Joe.”

  Still no compliance. If anything, he drew her closer, gripped her hand tighter. A hint of desperation crept into her voice.

  “Look, Joe, your house keys are hanging on a hook next to the refrigerator. There’s really not a lot we can do tonight. Why don’t you get your keys and go home. I’ll meet you in my office, say, seven tomorrow morning? Whatever you need to help you trace those kids, you’ve got it. The guys’ll want in on finding whoever took these pictures, too, so—”

  Mouth working around ironic laughter, Joe interrupted her. “You’re a piece of work, you know that, woman?”

  She gave him a look of injured innocence. “Excuse me?”

  Through the baby monitor in the background, Maura made noises that sounded like inquiries. Joe glanced at the monitor, then at Hallie.

  “I told you,” he reminded her, enunciating carefully, “I’m not leaving without my daughter. Did you think I’d forget that?”

  “No,” Hallie snapped with asperity. “I didn’t think you’d forget. I hoped you’d forget. There’s a difference.”

  “Ah.” Joe swallowed half a grin. At some point down the line, they might come out of this on the same side yet. “That there is.”

  For a moment Hallie studied him, sized him up, considered what she saw. Then she used his grip on her wrist to yank him down to eye level.

  “It seems to me,” she said evenly, patiently, and the wink of light Joe thought he’d seen in the tunnel suddenly seemed to have a train whistle behind it, “what you have to remember is that since I currently have court-ordered guardianship of Maura, you have no say about where she goes or what she does. And I say she doesn’t leave this house to go out chasing stalkers and murderers with a corkbrained idiot of a bounty-hunter father before she’s even three months old.”

  “And what I said,” Joe responded, equally patiently, “is that I’m not leaving this house without my daughter. I didn’t say anything about taking her anywhere. I said, I’m—not—leaving. Ya got somebody I’m after taking pictures of you and the kids, you’ve got me for company. Get used to it.”

  Upstairs, all cute-and-happy-baby after a long, crabby day, Maura cooed and oh-ed, oblivious to the pounding din of her surrogate mother’s heart.

  “You’re staying?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said dryly, dropping her hand and stepping back. “That’s what I said.”

  The thumping racket of Hallie’s heart grew louder, moved into her head. She couldn’t think. “Here?”

  “You live anywhere else?”

  “I could.” She rubbed her hand where he’d squeezed, feeling the imprint of his palm and fingers where they’d wrapped around hers. She nodded slowly as her desperation shaped a plan. “Yes. I could—we, the kids and George and I—can. Easily. You stay here, we go somewhere else and don’t tell you—Hey.” She broke off when Joe rolled his eyes and headed toward the front of the house. “Where’re you going?”

  “Upstairs to check my daughter’s diaper and get her out of bed.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  She charged after him. He was already on the stairs.

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t stop climbing. She took the steps two at a time to catch up with him.

  “Because...” He’d discomfragmented her enough, she had to stop and think a minute, wasting time. “Because she doesn’t like strangers.”

  Still ahead of her, Joe turned the corner that led to the second-floor landing.

  “She’s going to get to know me sooner or later,” he said coolly. “And since sooner is good for me, there’s no time like the present.”

  “But you don’t know how to change diapers.”

  “I used to change Sam’s and Ben’s. Anything I’ve forgotten, you’ll remind me.”

  He stepped into the combination master-bedroom nursery. Hallie stepped in after him. In her crib, Maura grunted happily, clearly up to something. A cautious sniff of the air in the room told Hallie exactly where the infant’s good mood came from—and indicated precisely the best of all possible introductions Joe could have to his redolent little girl.

  Apparently too intent on getting a good look at Maura to notice the odor, Joe headed for the crib.

  “She’s been real colicky lately,” Hallie warned him. “If she’s feelin’ this good, you might not want to—”

  “I’ll handle it, Hallie.”

  “I just thought maybe you’d like to know—”

  “Hallie.” He didn’t merely say her name, he commanded it.

  “Okay-okay.” Hands raised in a gesture of pacification, Hallie backed toward the door. “But remember, I did try.”

  “Did try what?” He leaned over Maura, started to lift her from the bed. “Hello, darlin’, how are you? I’m your dad—oh, man.” Making a phew face, Joe held his daughter at arm’s length. “Thompson!”

  “Uh-uh,” Hallie admonished from the doorway. “I tried, but you said you could handle it. You wanted to handle it.”

  “Hallie, please.”

  “Nope.” She backed out of the room. “Sorry. Can’t help. Not allowed. Oh, by the way—” She stuck her head back through the doorway just as Joe was about to lay Maura down. “You may want to know there are diapers, butt wipes and sheets under the change table, fresh pj’s in the dresser, and a baby bathtub in the upstairs bathroom.”

  She gave Joe a cheeky grin. “Welcome home, Dad.”

  He sent her a baleful glance over Maura’s head. “I’ll get you for this, Thompson, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “You’ll try,” Hallie agreed.

  Whistling cheerfully, she closed the door behind her and went downstairs to call Zeke’s and say good-night to the boys.

  The job took him a while, but he managed it in the end.

  Just as his father used to say about Joe and his siblings when they were under the age of two, Maura wasn’t the most brilliant conversationalist he’d ever met. She stared wide-eyed at him while he cleaned her up, supported her head, bathed her, but she was too young to make strange yet as Hallie had told him she might. He was just someone with big, awkward hands who didn’t have a clue what he was doing. She started, then squawked and whimpered a bit when he accidentally splashed water in her face in the bath, but she seemed to forgive him quickly enough. She liked the warm water, didn’t like to be toweled dry, enjoyed holding and chewing on his fingers and seemed to have quite a number of opinions about diapers and getting dressed.

  For his part, he couldn’t get over how small she was, cradled in his hands. How frail and strong at once, tying him in knots trying to hold on to her, keep her safe at the same time that he attempted to slide her rebellious and uncoordinated arms and legs into the bunny suit Hallie must have come upstairs and laid out while he gave Maura her bath.

  He lifted the soft-bristled baby brush from Maura’s dresser, swept it gently through the curl
y black hair on her head, then caught sight of a pair of cute little infant barrettes made of some kind of fabric shaped into tiny pansies. He pinched up some of Maura’s hair and made a clumsy attempt at clipping the barrettes into the semifine stuff. Failed. Tossed the pansies back onto the dresser. His fingers were just too damn thick to fuss easily with the tiny things.

  He’d always known he was big, but to have it so clearly illustrated by this diminutive being who was literally a piece of himself—the whole idea was incredible, unfathomable.

  Ludicrous.

  Even more so than the extraordinary fact that this piece of himself was also a piece of Mary, and had been carried and formed and nurtured inside Hallie.

  Strange, because even though Maura’s black, black eyes and creamy brown skin were clearly Mary’s legacy to her daughter, Joe imagined he saw resemblances to Hallie, and to Sam and Ben, too. There, around her nose, and there, in the curve of her mouth, the lobes of her ears, the length of her toes and fingers. She was a miracle within herself and she was a part of them all.

  Especially Hallie. Because if it weren’t for Hallie, there’d be no Maura at all.

  The urge to protect and keep rose, savage and unexpected, almost primitive. He would not let anything happen to Hallie, ever. His daughter’s life depended on it. And in truth, so did his.

  Always had, if only he’d known it.

  But he’d never get Hallie to believe that now. Hell, he’d only realized it himself ten minutes ago.

  Wondering if he had any chance of untangling then balancing the combination of elements that, in the space of a late afternoon and evening, had overtaken and destroyed the clarity of his life, Joe scooped his daughter close and took her downstairs to Hallie.

  Hiding in the shadows, behind doors and bends in the walls, Hallie watched him with his daughter. Just to make sure he didn’t encounter problems, she told herself.