Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  But they didn’t know what he knew about Mary, nor would he ever tell them. Kindness, as he’d learned for himself while searching for Mary’s burial shoes, often lay in what you didn’t disclose, rather than in what you did.

  There were other discoveries to be made, by him about his family. He’d missed a lot of events in the last year: confirmations, communions, baptisms....

  Maura, of course, was not the only new Martinez to arrive during his absence. Both of the sisters who hadn’t made this gathering were home with babies born within the past month; his one absent brother, Luis, and David had little ones six and eight months old respectively. Which meant the conversation turned to labor stories a lot sooner than Joe might have wished—that is, if he’d wished to hear labor-and-delivery stories at all.

  The stories were, he decided, gritting his teeth and bearing it—albeit not graciously—just another way to pay him back for not being around to witness Maura’s birth.

  Everyone got in on the act. His mother, his sisters, sisters-in-law, Mary’s mother, Hallie’s mother—his father, his brother and his-uncle-the-priest who Joe couldn’t fathom why he knew labor stories; the female deputy he hadn’t met last night, the male deputy he had; Hallie’s captain, noncommittal about everything but this; and the guys from FAT who were out here watching him instead of inside that blasted office with Hallie.

  The stories were, naturally, all horror stories of one sort or another. It was not, in Joe’s opinion, an illuminating experience. Until Hallie’s mother finally looked him in the eye and told him about Maura’s birthday and how Hallie had, for months prior, insisted they videotape the event just in case there came a time when Joe might want to view what he’d missed.

  At that point it was all Joe could do to swallow the sudden lump in his throat, to breathe in and out with lungs gone too tight to take in enough air; to try to appear natural when it felt like someone had reached inside his chest, grabbed his heart and squoze it.

  Claustrophobia set in. He tried to find space to collect his thoughts, but everywhere he turned, he stumbled over someone else who had something to say to him.

  At one point he even found himself turning in a circle, literally head and shoulders above the crowd but unable to spot a direct means of escape.

  It felt like he was back in Catholic grammar school, shuffling down the corridor of do don’t-do, should shouldn’t, seeking footing on the treacherous path of faith and ideals while bearing the weight of his grown-up cynicism. The way here was thick with the stumbling blocks of do-theright-thing-for-what-might-later-prove-the-wrong-reason.

  Someone—Mary’s mother? His?—handed him Maura to change. Someone else—Halite’s mother? One of his sisters? —whisked her away, carted her off, saying the infant was tired and needed a nap. He wanted to go after the woman and tell her he’d take care of Maura.

  But whoever it was, was gone too quickly, and he was suddenly not sure if he really was capable.

  It didn’t matter how many nieces and nephews he’d lulled to sleep over the years. This was his own child, but he’d known her for only a day. In too many ways where she was concerned he really was inadequate, and the women had cared for so many babies between them they had to know better than he.

  So instead of retrieving his daughter, for her own good—he thought—he let her go and sought escape. He’d just put his hand on the garage doorknob, planning to head out and let the cold clear his brain, when Hallie came up behind him.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “You all right? You look like someone stole your dog.”

  “Someone did,” he said shortly.

  She moved around in front of him and leaned back to look up, surprised by his tone. “What’s the matter? Too much family?”

  His jaw tightened and clicked. “That and other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like...” He looked around, found no privacy and grabbed her hand, started to tug her into the garage. “Come with me. I need to talk to you. Someplace quiet.”

  She tugged back, urging him in the opposite direction. “I’ve got to feed Maura so she can go down for her nap.”

  “Good enough.” He reversed, led the way toward the front staircase.

  She hung back a little. “Joe.”

  He drew her forward. “Not now, Hallie. Please.”

  If she’d planned to object further, his “please” stopped her; she climbed the stairs with him without another word.

  It was Mary’s mother who’d walked Maura into Hallie’s bedroom, trying to put the unwilling infant to sleep. The look she gave Joe when he moved to relieve her of her precious burden was initially refusal, then a sigh that was more facial expression than sound, then almost...pity. Finally she put the baby into his hands and left the room without a word.

  While Hallie watched, bewildered, Joe raised his sputtering daughter to eye level and told her seriously, “I know you’re hungry and crabby and tired, m’ija, but give me a minute with her first, okay? Then she’s all yours.”

  Maura made a rude sound of what might have been dissent, but amazingly she quit sputtering her discontent. Joe settled her in her crib on her back, hooked the string of dangling, brightly colored, different-shaped noisemakers between the bars above her, wound up the clockwork ones and bounced the others until they had Maura’s attention. Then he crossed the room, shut the door and turned to Hallie.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?”

  He moved toward her, silent, catlike, purposeful. She backed up.

  “Joe, what are you doing?”

  He reached her. “This,” he said. Then he caught her about the waist, lifted her off her feet, planted her back against the nearest wall and kissed her. Hard. Deep. Plundering her mouth with his tongue until she went boneless, moaned once deep in her throat and wrapped her legs tightly about his waist.

  It was his turn to groan, to withdraw from her mouth, to remember that whatever they mutually wanted, now was not the time and he had questions he needed to ask.

  “Joe?”

  Her eyes were very blue from this distance and in this light, and were filled with unabashed desire. He couldn’t help but notice, sure that what he saw in her eyes had to be mirrored in his own. He needed something from her, he understood with resignation, that had nothing to do with sex. Something that would never go away, that would make simple sex never enough.

  “You filmed Maura’s birth?”

  She nodded, still puzzled.

  “For me?”

  “Who else?”

  “I—” He swallowed. Language was inadequate to the moment, but it was all he had. “Why?”

  “Because.” She shrugged, unwound her legs and slid down to find the floor. “She’s your daughter. You might’ve made me angry enough with you to want your head on a plate, but hating you enough to...” She hesitated. “Leave you out of her life even though I want to keep her...” She shrugged, offered him a wry half smile. “It wouldn’t be right. So I asked Zeke to tape her coming-out party for you.” She moved over to her closet, walked in and returned with a VHS cassette. “This is it, if you want it.”

  He took the tape, turned it over, held on to it until his knuckles paled around his grip. “I want it.”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  She went to collect Maura, seat herself in the rocking chair, and unselfconsciously open her blouse, camisole, bra, tuck a cloth diaper under her breast and Maura’s chin, and bring the baby to her nipple. She glanced up to catch him gazing hungrily at her—not with sexual desire, she realized with unexpected longing, but with the far more complex yearning to be in some way a part of the act of nourishing Maura.

  She reached for him with her free hand, gave it an insistent stretch when he momentarily hesitated. Then, when he reluctantly, hopefully crossed to take her hand, she tugged him down to kneel beside the chair, flattened her palm along his cheek and drew him into the simplest, lightest and most dangerous of kisses.
>
  “Stay,” she invited.

  God, he wanted to. And not only here and now, but later, too. “It won’t make you uncomfortable if I...watch?”

  “After last night?” She laughed softly. “Being uncomfortable with you after that would be kind of silly, don’t you think?”

  His entire face twisted in a lopsided grin. “Probably. But I was thinking more about not wanting to embarrass you, considering how many other people are in the house and Sam and Ben are downstairs.... And maybe you—we both—should think about appearances for a change.”

  More quiet laughter. “The man who got fitted for a pink maid-of-honor dress in order to blow my mother’s mind telling me to think about appearances? You’re years too late for that, Joe.”

  He smiled, finding relief in history. “Maybe.”

  “No ‘maybe’ about it.” She rubbed her thumb along his cheekbone, leaned over to blow a single whisper across his lips. “Stay.”

  He opened his mouth once, shut it, knelt up straight and took Hallie’s face in his palms. Slanted his head and gave her back, kiss for gentle, perilously intimate kiss, what she’d given him.

  Then, without further argument, he made himself comfortable where he could see both her and Maura.

  Allowed himself the luxury to simply be for the first time in months.

  Let himself stay.

  Chapter 12

  The day progressed.

  It was an unusual grouping, to be sure, especially for the before lunch crowd, but the community was small, with fingers reaching into most of the surrounding neighborhoods and farms. What affected one of them, affected them all. Ties were close—a sizable portion of the community was related by marriage; friendships were decades old. And with the exception of blood and genetics, everyone had ties to Maura that Joe lacked: they’d been there; he hadn’t.

  Hell of a thing to realize: his daughter had a bigger family than he did himself. They each had a stake in her existence; her tiny fingers had more hearts than Joe could count wrapped securely around them. And whether the members of the sheriff’s department in particular had children of their own at home or not, by virtue of circumstance and conception, Maura was different, special. Community property, community pride. She belonged to them all.

  And one by one, they all—family members, old friends, peers—took him aside and told him so. Made sure he knew that if he fought Hallie for custody, he fought them all.

  Which was why, Joe realized belatedly, amused and angry at once, the captain was here. Not only did she intend to be on the scene to coordinate the search for the stalker, but she was also here to send Joe a message that people in high places were on Hallie’s side. They’d vouch, if needed, that she’d make Maura a better and more stable parent. Why—as she off-handedly pointed out—only a phone call away, the captain’s good friend the local family court judge waited. Heck, if someone sent out the plow for her, the judge would be at Hallie’s for lunch herself. Always did like a good party, not to mention Joe’s mother’s paella, the judge.

  Especially a party that hosted a lot of happy kids—which Hallie’s impromptu Gabriella-planned parties always did.

  It was hell being the current number-one pariah in a small-town county seat where everybody knew who you were, what you’d done and why—and didn’t like it that you’d done it to your best friend for exactly that reason.

  The cause for the number of deputies in attendance was less subtle. They were here to supply security for Hallie and the kids, keep an eye out for trouble—and generally give Joe a hard time. Not difficult to accomplish under the circumstances, chiefly because Joe was already giving himself the crash course in hard times.

  Sometimes, he thought, guilt was a damned fever blister on the lip of creation: the minute you thought you had it under control, the blasted thing spread.

  Naturally, Joe’s family and the rest of the blood relations just thought the captain, FAT and the deps were on tap for the food and games because it was a slow crime day.

  On the other hand, having the deputies around would give Joe—as soon as he could corner them alone, that is—an opportunity to question the ones who’d baby-sat Maura the prior evening. He could ask about anyone else who might have had access to the house during their tour.

  In the meantime, he had his own questions to answer. Such as, who else might have been in the house after he’d arrived yesterday afternoon? Only Hallie, himself, Zeke, the boys... Frank, the two deputies... His eyes narrowed with the automatic sense he’d left someone or something out. No. He relaxed, counting. Make that four deputies who’d come to the house with Frank. Crompton and Montoya who’d stayed, and Tom and Gina who’d gone out with them.

  Hallie’s neighbor, Nadie Kresnak, had been in, of course, but that was before.... Then there were the two detectives who’d helped with last night’s reconnaissance, but they’d met Hallie and Joe at the scene.

  He sucked a sound of frustration between his teeth. He supposed two of Hallie’s phones could have been unplugged at some earlier time, leaving the one in the front hall that Joe had used to make his calls last night still functioning.

  Leaving one phone working reduced the culprit’s risk immeasurably, made it far more difficult to pinpoint when the others might have been unplugged. And it was possible, if someone knew the layout of Hallie’s basement, that the wires that appeared to have been cut inside the house might actually have been pulled through, cut outside and carefully shoved back in.

  But that would have required the vandal knowing Hallie had an excess of phone wire rolled into a loop at the foundation.

  With a crawling sense of unease, Joe stood back and watched Crompton and Montoya and wondered. Crompton was older, had been around awhile and Joe had known him long before Mary was killed. Montoya was younger but seemed familiar. Still, Joe didn’t think he’d ever worked with her as a deputy. Frank... Well, Frank was about as straight and protective of Hallie as they came. And as for the other two deputies... Joe didn’t think they’d been out of sight the entire few minutes they’d been at the house last night.

  Then there was Hallie’s ex-husband. But Zeke as Hallie’s stalker made no sense to Joe—not that that was any criterion for dismissing him, only that Joe could see no obvious reason for Zeke to stalk Hallie. As far as he knew, Zeke bore no grudge against either Hallie or Joe. He had as much access to her and the boys as he could want; no need to stalk. Nor was he the type to suffer a grudge quietly. Zeke, as the saying went, was not prone to the ulcers silent grudge-bearers got.

  Not to mention that Joe had no idea how, without an accomplice having been here, Zeke, Frank, the deputies or anyone else with regular routines in Cuyahoga—city or county—could possibly be connected, when he’d received batches of photos for the past year from someone who’d found and followed him—and/or possibly led him—about when Hallie hadn’t.

  Or hadn’t bothered to.

  The thought brought him up short. Had he really been so difficult to locate over the last year? He’d taken some pains to cover his trail, but he hadn’t gone to the extraordinary efforts that, as one of law enforcement’s finest, he certainly knew how to employ. Hadn’t changed his socialsecurity number or his name. Hadn’t set up blind paths to hidden post-office boxes. Hadn’t, in short, done anything that should have prevented an investigator of Hallie’s talents from finding him if she wanted to.

  Wanted to being the operative phrase in that thought.

  His jaw tightened against the notion. It wasn’t, he decided, as if she’d spent the year sitting on her hands, after all. Still, while she might not have thought to consider looking for him as a bounty hunter, private freelancing was a fairly obvious step. And even at that, he’d merely moved around a lot, chasing, as he’d told Hallie, one freaking lost lead after another.

  And now all leads had led home.

  His unease and paranoia grew with the scent of his mother’s paella filling the house, compounded by Hallie’s laughingly serious view of security
-in-numbers.

  A draft of cool air from the front door arrested his attention. He turned to see Zeke and one of the deputies slip back into the house, each man carrying two cardboard file boxes. They disappeared into Hallie’s library-office with them, reappeared moments later. Joe thought Zeke regarded the door he closed behind him with mulish uncertainty, but that might have been applying his own questions to the situation. He drifted closer, hoping to overhear what Hallie’s ex told the deputy before the officer disappeared into the crowd. Around him voices rose and fell—laughter quickly muted out of respect for Maura and other short preadults asleep upstairs; snatches of conversation halfheard.

  “Naw,” his brother David told someone. “Crews were out all night moving this stuff. Long’s it stays stopped, road’s oughtta be cleared by late afternoon....”

  “...glad all the new power lines have gone in underground. Lot fewer houses without it...”

  “...seems like a lot of money to put into one bond issue.”

  “Yeah, but if the schools and the library need it...”

  “You children have to play more quietly—” Ears instantly attuned to the once-familiar, he picked out the voice of his former mother-in-law talking with a group of the younger crowd that included Sam and Ben. “Otherwise you’ll wak—” Her voice went abruptly hoarse. She coughed and tried again. “Otherwise you’ll—” No better. In fact if anything, worse. She choked and coughed, waving a hand at the children.

  “Mrs. Montalban,” Sam asked, alarmed, “what’s wrong?”

  Another headshake accompanied by hand waving that was obviously a request. Joe turned to see if he could find a glass of water or other handy liquid, spotted Hallie already weaving her way toward Maura’s grandmother, glass in hand.