by B. D. Riehl
“Want to explain why you messed with my calendar, Dad…on my one Saturday off?”
Bryan stared blankly at her and shook his head slowly. She cocked her head at him; who did he think he was he fooling?
“Not sure what you’re talking about, Sweetie.” He reached back to clap a hand on the other officer’s shoulder.
“But I’m glad you’re here. Meet Central Valley PD’s newest recruit. He recently transferred from Emmett and is riding with me the next few weeks until he gets his bearings. Sam, meet my daughter, Charlotte. Char, meet Sam.” He looked at the coffee for two on the table and mumbled something about Sam’s coffee being on him while he strode to the counter.
The two nodded awkwardly to each other. No matter how stone-faced her father could be, Charlotte knew when he was up to something. And he had better think twice if he thought she would be attracted to some cowboy from Emmett, Idaho.
Seeing no way out of it at the moment, Charlotte gestured to the other chair. Sam’s duty belt squeaked as he took a seat.
“I’m sorry—Sam is it? I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t know what my dad told you, but I’m not out to bait you. I just got out of a relationship, and my dad is a little too excited. He hated the guy.”
Sam leaned forward with his arms folded casually on the table top, and spoke in a low tone. “It’s just fine. Your dad’s been talking my ear off about you, and while I’m sure you’re just as delightful as he says, I’m in a relationship myself.”
She groaned in embarrassment, “Did he just not listen when you told him?”
“Who says I told him? I wanted the free coffee.”
Charlotte laughed out loud, to which her father smiled triumphantly from the counter. She wagged her finger at him playfully and considered the man across from her. He was ruddy and handsome: a boyish face, light brown eyes, rusty hair.
Hmmm. Not bad looking for a guy her father had chosen.
“Now,” he began, “tell me all the ways I can get back at your dad for making me interview the naked guy riding his bike down the street.”
In the end, her father’s scheme had worked. Sam’s relationship was a casual thing. He and Charlotte found more reasons to get together and eventually began dating, then married soon after. And her dad would never let her forget it.
The phone rang, disrupting her reverie. It was her mother, Stacey Gray, accepting an earlier invitation to dinner. Stacey had left work and would be there in just a few minutes and asked if she could bring anything?
While Charlotte waited, she added a few more potatoes to the oven, and searched for another tube of refrigerator rolls. Her mother came through the front door ten minutes later and Charlotte smiled as her daughters screeched in excitement.
“Is Lydia coming too?” Char was busy counting plates when her mother finished greeting the kids and entered the kitchen, dropping a packaged salad on the counter.
“Should be,” her mother mumbled, digging in a cupboard for a salad bowl.
“You’re not sure?” the younger woman asked, unimpressed.
“Don’t start. We gave you a lot of freedom as a teen too.”
“Right, but I was responsible.”
Her mother opened her mouth to respond, but her cell rang just then, ending the conversation before it became heated. Stacey dug in her purse until she found the little black device. She missed the days before cell phones and said as much.
Charlotte smiled at her mother’s familiar grumbling.
“Yes? Yes, this is she.” Stacey’s face turned white.
Charlotte, the daughter and wife of police officers, felt her stomach drop. She reached out to touch her mother’s elbow.
Stacey mouthed “Lydia,” then shook her head in disgust.
Charlotte rolled her eyes and groaned deep in her throat.
“Yes, I’ll be right there.” Stacey snapped her phone shut and shook her head again. “Sorry, dear, we’re going to have to cancel dinner. I’m going to pick up your sister from Boise PD.”
***
Stacey drove through rush hour traffic to the Boise Police Department. When she realized she was speeding, she eased her foot off of the accelerator, wishing, as she did, that she could ease her racing thoughts. What would she find when she arrived? Was Lydia okay?
The brusque voice on the phone had only said that Lydia had been picked up by a Boise officer and could she please come retrieve her.
Retrieve her daughter? As if she had lost her purse somewhere or something.
For years Lydia had been a question mark to her parents. She had always been quieter and more reserved than Charlotte, but Stacey still remembered the way she could light up the room with her sweet smile as a young girl. It had been years since they’d really seen Lydia smile. She went to school, to work, to church, all with that quiet blank face, in those brow-raising outfits. She knew most girls these days dressed similarly, so she didn’t want to make a big fuss, but she wished the style of late was more…modest.
Lydia had always marched to her own drum. She was a good kid in elementary and junior high, never one to run with the crowd or do the popular thing to just to fit in. Her clothes, even if they were mostly in style, still told of her independent taste.
But for the last few years she had been closed off—distant. Defiant. Stacey had thought the private Christian school would help, but they had seen her spiral even more within herself. Stacey narrowed her eyes. Or had the behavior started after Lydia had begun at Central Valley? It didn’t matter now.
She pulled into the parking lot in front of the department, found a spot near the front, and turned off the car. With a deep breath, Stacey opened the door.
Ten minutes later, she and Lydia sat beside each other in cold metal chairs in a hall outside of an office, waiting for a detective. Stacey couldn’t look at her daughter. Lydia only looked at her nails.
The door next to them clicked open and a tall man with black hair, dusted white at his temples, stepped into the hall. “Mrs. Gray…Miss Gray, I’m Detective Marshall. Come on in.” He backed up slightly to let them enter before him.
The clean, warm office surprised Stacey. She didn’t have time or heart to appreciate it as the man took his own seat across from them and steepled his fingers together.
“I’ll get right to the point, Mrs. Gray. A little over an hour ago, we received an attempt to locate on what turned out to be your daughter’s boyfriend’s truck. Numerous motorists had seen the driver of the vehicle, a…uh—” he rifled through some papers on his desk, “Mr. Elliot—Ethan Elliot, driving erratically, swerving and speeding. A few thought he might be drunk.”
Stacey nodded and stared straight ahead, knowing if she looked at her daughter she would lose her careful calm.
“We located the car down a back road, near the foothills, and when Mr. Elliot didn’t immediately comply with officers, they had to restrain him.” Stacey widened her eyes at him but didn’t respond.
The detective continued, “Anyway, we wanted to be sure the kids weren’t drunk as we suspected, and while we didn’t find any alcohol—“
“Well, that’s a relief,” Stacey interjected.
Detective Marshall flattened his mouth. “We did find this.” He tossed a clear plastic baggie on the table. Stacey could clearly see a joint inside. It had obviously been smoked.
Stacey chanced a look at Lydia who picked at a fashionable fray in her jeans. “Where did you find that? On Ethan?”
Detective Marshall’s eyes flitted to Lydia and back to Stacey. “In your daughter’s backpack.”
Stacey slammed back as if he’d shoved her. He talked more, but she couldn’t hear anything above the ringing in her ears.
“Due to your husband’s position with Central Valley, and the fact that Lydia has no record, we thought it would be best to bring her here and call you.”
Stacey nodded. Bryan had worked hard for eighteen years to become a sergeant. She could imagine how he would react to this news.
The det
ective slid a waiver across the clean desk for her to sign, then left to retrieve Lydia’s things.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. Lord, I’m at a loss here. I can hardly wait to get home and hear what Bryan has to say. No doubt he’ll place the blame at my feet.
When he returned, Detective Marshall asked to speak with Stacey in private. She handed Lydia her keys and told her to wait in the car. Stacey’s look dared Lydia to be anywhere else when she got outside.
“Mrs. Gray, I don’t know how to tell you this, but my guys tell me they interrupted what looked like a physical altercation between Ethan and your daughter.”
Stacey felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Her anger bawled into fear and sank her to the chair again.
“He was hitting her?” she whispered.
“Not exactly. Just looked like he’d been shouting in her face, grabbing her hair. The officers definitely surprised him and he was keyed up for a fight when they approached the car. If I were you, I’d keep my daughter far away from that guy.”
“Thank you.” Stacey walked on wooden legs to the car, unsure of what to do now.
Chapter Three
Bryan leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed. Stacey knew his casual stance belied the anger roaring inside him. Never a man to lose his temper, she braced herself instead for a week of brooding and subtle displays of annoyance. She frequently complained about his lack of emotion, angry or otherwise, in important life moments. In all of their wedding photos, she beamed with joy while he stared stoically at the camera.
That night, Stacey appreciated what she dubbed his “cop face” in light of her churning emotions.
“Unbelievable,” Bryan murmured.
After Stacey dropped Lydia off to get her Jeep, she called Bryan to give him fair warning about the storm clouds racing toward him. Bryan’s silence on the line was telling: no matter how sullen of a teen Lydia could be, neither of them suspected she was into anything illegal.
Stacey beat Lydia home and set her things quietly on the kitchen counter. Bryan stared at her, arms crossed, eyes dark. She opened her mouth to tell him what the detective said, but stopped when they heard the scratch of Lydia’s key in the front door, followed by the squeak of the lock.
They waited for her to come into the kitchen and shared a look when she went straight to the stairs instead.
“Lydia,” Bryan called out sharply, “get in here.”
She sauntered in looking like she had no idea what they could possibly want. She slid onto a barstool at the island.
Bryan looked at her and was met with the same bored look Stacey had endured at the department. “Unbelievable, Lydia,” he repeated his appraisal, this time with a foul word. “What were you thinking? Do you not understand this sort of thing could make me lose my job?” he asked incredulously.
Stacey could tell he wanted to shake her.
Lydia rolled her eyes, “Don’t be so dramatic, Dad.” She spoke as if he were a dimwitted child. “No one will fire you over what I do.”
Bryan took a step forward and placed his palms flat against the marble counter. He leaned down to look into her face.
“Never, ever, talk to me like that again, do you understand me?”
A side smile broke out on his daughter’s face. She shook her head, golden tresses brushing her shoulder. “You always tell me it shouldn’t matter what other people think. And here you are, mad at me because you’ll lose face at work.” She snorted a little as if it were funny.
Bryan walked purposefully around the counter and grabbed Lydia, the barstool tottering before it crashed to the floor. He forced her into the wall and held her there.
“Bryan!” Stacey, ashamed of her daughter, shocked by her husband’s uncharacteristic outburst, rushed forward to grab his arm.
Lydia’s nostrils flared, but wisely, she clamped her mouth shut.
Stacey looked beyond the fierce set of Lydia’s jaw and saw the poorly masked hurt in her eyes.
Bryan must have noticed it too. He let her go. “Get out,” he growled, a muscle clenched in his jaw. “Get out before I do something I’ll regret.”
Lydia shoved herself away from the wall and shouldered past her mother to rush into the entryway. She snatched her book bag where she’d dropped it just minutes before and yanked on the front door handle. Her entire body tensed as she looked between her parents before she slammed the door behind her in fury.
Stacey winced and looked at Bryan in astonishment. “What good did that do?”
“Stacey, she has no respect for me. None!” He made a slashing motion in the air with his hand. “She has never respected me. Just like someone else I know.”
Stacey rolled her eyes at his statement, but immediately regretted the action when he strode past her and exited through the garage door.
She knew he would work on his Impala, in pieces in the garage. Cleaning the old parts and working to put the pieces together gave him a sense of control. He bought the shell of a car before Lydia was born, when he worked as a resource officer for a group of schools. He said he needed a way to clear the mess out of his mind when he got home, so he spent hours in the garage, late into the night. How many nights had she stared at that door, longing for him to work out his demons with her instead?
Stacey shrank down against the wall, eyes drifting between the front door and the garage. She dropped her head into her hands and wondered what had happened to her family…
***
On the way to drop off Lydia to pick up her car from Got Your Back, Stacey had used the twenty-minute drive to make some sense of her youngest daughter. Her emotions roiled as she attacked Lydia’s choices.
“Never in my life have I been so embarrassed,” she ranted. “I raised you better than this, Lydia. Much better. When did you become the kind of idiot kid that does drugs?”
“Oh, my word,” Lydia sighed dramatically, “I’m not doing drugs, Mom.”
“Really?” Stacey gave a humorless laugh. “So that joint was just acting as an accessory in your book bag?”
Lydia gave an unladylike snort. “Wow. You really need to chill out.”
Her tone grated on Stacey’s nerves. How could a young girl, with just the inflection of her voice, put an adult woman on the defensive? In the past, Stacey had written off her daughter’s sarcastic tone, her sighs, and eye rolls. She hated to compare her daughters, but couldn’t seem to help it.
Charlotte had never been this disrespectful as an adolescent. She and Bryan had barely been married three months when they became pregnant with Charlotte. When they tried for more children, they were met with years of negative pregnancy tests and heartbreak. Eventually, they accepted that Charlotte would be their only child and relished every moment of her upbringing: a happy family of three.
When Charlotte was thirteen, Stacey got a terrible case of the flu. She just couldn’t shake the nausea even weeks after her fever broke. Bryan finally took her to the doctor. They laughed when the check-in nurse suggested a pregnancy test. They were speechless when it came back positive. Stacey remembered how excited Charlotte was. She and Bryan were more reserved.
A baby? Now? They were set in their routine, older. Not entirely thrilled to start all over. Once the shock wore off and she was safely into the second trimester, Stacey was ready to tell her friends.
She had driven to her closest friend’s house, Elaine Patterson, to give her the news in person. She smiled as she turned the car into her friend’s driveway, imagining them jumping up and down in just a few moments. Elaine was also pregnant, but as she had five children already, the news wasn’t a surprise or a secret.
When Elaine opened the door, it had been obvious she’d been crying. Heart in her throat, Stacey had thought maybe she suffered a miscarriage and led her directly to the couch, demanding to know what was the matter.
“Henry, he—we’re having problems,” she offered lamely, referring to her husband. Stacey didn’t buy it, and eventually she found out Henry, a deacon
at the church, had confessed to having an affair. Elaine wasn’t sure what to do. Stacey remembered she tried to get Elaine to kick him out, get a divorce. Elaine was set to keep her family together. And she had. She and Henry went to counseling, patched themselves back together, and seventeen years later, seemed to be really happy. She had once told Stacey that her pregnancy, with who turned out to be Michelle, was what helped them grow close.
Stacey had drifted away from Elaine. She couldn’t understand how her friend had stuck by a man that stepped out on her. Perhaps it was the fragile state of her pregnancy, but her emotions were raw. She was convinced that Elaine stayed because she couldn’t support herself or her kids.
Stacey started to be suspicious of Bryan then. He had begun work in the schools and worked with all of those successful teachers. Where Elaine said her pregnancy drew Henry close, Stacey’s pregnancy seemed to push Bryan away. Did her growing belly disgust him? Upset at starting over? Did he think it was all her fault?
She was determined after she had Lydia to get a job: if Bryan did step out, she was not going to be a pampered woman, unable to care for herself and her girls.
Her part-time job at a call center paired well with Bryan’s hours. He came home, she went to work, and the girls didn’t need babysitters. When his schedule changed, she moved to a bank teller position. Eventually, she worked more hours and was now the assistant manager at her branch. When she first started working more, Charlotte had just met Sam.
Charlotte would twist her mouth and comment, “You sure it’s good for Lydia for you to work so much?”
But Stacey knew it was for Lydia’s sake she worked; she would always be able to take care of her, no matter what. Lydia grew to be a lovely child but was much more reserved than Charlotte—and also more stubborn. Sometimes Stacey would see hardness in her face and wonder if she sensed the turmoil around her birth.
When Stacey learned that many of the executives at the bank sent their kids to private school, she mentioned it to Bryan, and they agreed it would be good for Lydia and their careers, for her to be enrolled at Central Valley Christian School.