Sea Glass Cottage

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Sometimes. He does it with his mom, too. I saw Henry kick her once. She usually gives in to him to avoid a a scene.”

  Jenna’s mouth dropped open. She did her best to pretend as though that news hadn’t shaken her to the core. She tried to draw in a calming breath. “Yes, well, I know Mrs. Navarro thinks she’s doing Henry a favor. But what she’s really doing is enabling him to become more violent. Of course, I’m not his mother and you aren’t his family, either. You don’t let him treat you like that, Isabella. Do you understand?” Jenna bent down so she was eye level with her daughter. “Do you understand me? Don’t let that boy or anyone else for that matter hit you like that or treat you disrespectfully again. You don’t have to put up with his meanness.”

  “But he lives right next door. I love Henry.”

  “Oh, Isabella. There will be other boys. There’s a world full of good guys out there. Don’t ever settle for the Henrys because he’s…disturbed. Thank goodness he’s only here in the summers otherwise I’d be concerned for your safety. This infatuation you have with him has to stop though. I’ll discuss it with your father. It’s not such a bad idea if we lessen our contacts and visits with the entire Navarro family. It might be awkward at first, but we’ll curtail the year-round personal events.”

  Jenna paused, studying her daughter’s face. “The fact he’s a boy doesn’t give him the right to do that to anyone. From this point forward, if he’s mean to you, you let me or your father know. Understand?”

  “Sure. But I love Henry. He’s my oldest and dearest friend.”

  “He needs to learn how to treat people better, Isabella, that includes friends like you. Don’t let him push you around. Are you listening to me, honey? Do you understand how important it is not to let Henry keep doing this to you?”

  “Yes. Okay,” she agreed after some reluctance.

  Even at six, Henry couldn’t hide his darker sides. He had several. Yet it was nothing compared to what he would come to be as an adult. Her mother had known that early on.

  Marisa Lattimer came out of the dream, grateful it hadn’t been real. She remembered the day Isabella had told her the story, reliving it in gritty detail. While it hadn’t been the first time Henry had showed his temper to Isabella, it had been the first time the little girl had known fear because of it.

  Marisa had listened to Isabella as she’d poured out her story. She recalled now how the fear had come into her friend’s eyes at the memory of that childhood incident. Together in group therapy, they’d shared their past at the women’s shelter where they’d both found a measure of solace.

  They’d gone over their stories, tried hard to better understand why they’d put up with such abusive behavior for so long. If only they had recognized the signs and had the sense to run the other way, far, far away from…

  But how could she pass judgment on Isabella or anyone else when Marisa Lattimer had done exactly the same thing? How long had she put up with Garth’s violent outbursts before she’d done anything about it? How long had she put up with the bruises she had to cover with massive makeup just so she could stand to look at herself briefly in the mirror?

  When Marisa realized she was trembling under the covers, she tried to calm down knowing this time the dream hadn’t been about Garth. It was somehow easier to handle a memory when it belonged to someone else.

  She and Isabella might’ve come from the same dark place. But how long would she have to go back in time to relive those days again and again? To be reminded of all the mistakes she’d made, all the days she’d spent fearing the man she hated? Did she intend to let her past haunt her forever? Would she ever be rid of it?

  Marisa blinked awake, understood immediately she was nestled beside the man she loved. When Thane stirred beside her, she took the opportunity to latch on to him for security.

  But in her need, it suddenly dawned on her. What had she done? She’d fallen in love with a man who didn’t even know her real name. How on earth did she plan to fix that?

  At breakfast the next morning she could barely concentrate on pouring a bowl of Cheerios for Jonah. She was that upset about telling Thane the truth. Over the last two months, he’d asked about her past, had hinted that he wanted to know all there was to know about where she’d lived, who she’d been before. Today the bill came due. The day of reckoning meant she’d have to come clean.

  Edgy and tense, when she went to take the carton of milk out of the fridge, it slipped out of her grasp. The container hit the tile floor and splattered, its contents spilling out onto the cracks of the inlay.

  “Wow!” Jonah exclaimed. “I didn’t know a carton of milk could explode like that.”

  As Thane rolled off paper towels to sop up the mess, he noticed her odd, jittery demeanor and sent her a long look. “What’s bothering you?”

  Like a woman with a secret, she dashed around the counter, hurriedly dabbing at the liquid before it could spread farther under the cabinet. “I’m sorry to waste the milk. I’m sorry for being so clumsy. I’ll fix Jonah pancakes instead.”

  “Isabella, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re as nervous as a rookie before a big game.”

  “I am? Hmm, I guess I’m stressing out about…work.”

  “Work? Is River giving you a hard time?”

  “River? Um, no. I think I might’ve messed up on a couple of entries in one of the categories though. I have to correct it.”

  Thane narrowed his eyes, unsure about whether or not to believe that lame excuse. Instead, he looked at the clock. “Come on, Jonah. We’re running late this morning. Go get your clothes on, grab your backpack. I’ll fix you a waffle with peanut butter.”

  “I’ll get the waffles,” Izzy offered quickly.

  By the time Thane and Jonah left the house to make the walk to school, for the first time ever, she was grateful for the solitude. It helped her think. But there was really only one way out of this situation.

  She had to figure the best way to tell Thane the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  That day on her lunch hour, Logan agreed to meet her at twelve-thirty on the pier so they could talk. While Marisa sat on the bench overlooking Smuggler’s Bay, she contemplated the absurdity of what she’d done, how she’d lived for the last several years, the lies she’d told to maintain the ruse. There were so many lies the thought of them all but paralyzed her brain. She couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t breathe without fear creeping in. What would Thane think of her? How would he react? Would he understand why she’d lived the last three years as another person?

  But staring out at the blue water and beyond to the horizon, she realized the source of her fear. If she lost Thane and Jonah because of this she’d never forgive herself.

  As soon as Logan walked up, she unloaded on him. “You do realize that when Thane finds out about all the lies I’ve told, he’ll be furious with me. Because that’s the way he’ll see this, Logan. He’ll probably put an end to our relationship, which means I’ve lost what has taken me a lifetime to find. What the hell am I going to do? I never bargained on falling in love with him.”

  “Tell him the truth?”

  The sarcasm didn’t bode well with her so she sent him a seething look. “Please tell me this isn’t funny to you.”

  “No, it isn’t funny. I’m sorry. Why don’t you tell me what happened to set this off?”

  “The dreams, Logan. The dreams keep coming back to me about what happened that night to Isabella. If I’d just been with her at the market... If I hadn’t let her go out alone...”

  “Stop it! If you’d been with her, Henry would’ve killed you, too. In your heart you know it’s true. And if Thane’s feelings for you are real, if they’re as deep as they seem, he’ll understand your motives.”

  “Understand?” She jumped up from the bench and began to pace back and forth in front of him. “I’m not sure I he will when I’m losing my ability to figur
e out why I did this in the first place. I’m beginning to forget why I ever thought this was such a great idea. I was motivated before I found Thane. Now, I’m not… Logan, it’s been three years. If Henry planned to show up here for Isabella, if he planned to finish her off, he’d have shown up by now. You know I’m right.”

  Logan blew out a shaky sigh. “Yeah, I do agree with that. As I see it you have two choices—either come clean with Thane and try to explain how and why Marisa Lattimer has been pretending to be Isabella Rialto or keep up the ruse as Isabella Rialto and say nothing After all, who will it hurt? Isabella’s gone. And with the death of her father, she had no family left. In the grand scheme of things, the time you spent with her, you two were more like sisters. Who is there left to care about Isabella Rialto but you and me?”

  “But I’m not Isabella. I’m Marisa Lattimer.”

  Now it was Logan’s turn to pace. “That’s right. And Marisa Lattimer at one time had Garth after her. There’s no reason on earth for you to have to go back on his radar, none at all. That’s what I’m saying. Think about it. Marisa Isabella Vidalgo Lattimer spent just as many years miserable, living with a bastard who beat her as badly as Henry beat Isabella. Sometimes you tend to forget you two were so similar. She wouldn’t want you paying the same ultimate price she did. You know it in your heart that Isabella wouldn’t care what name you use. The Isabella you knew, the one I knew, would be eager to have you avoid suffering the same fate. Neither one of us can ever bring her back no matter what we do or how hard we work at catching Navarro. That in no way equates to you going back to being Marisa Lattimer, the woman with zero self-esteem and no will of her own. That is, until she broke free and got out of Denver for good. If it gives you peace of mind we can always go to court in Santa Cruz to change your name legally in this country.”

  “Like we did in the UK? I don’t know what to do, Logan. I’m so confused.”

  “If you remain off the grid using Isabella’s name, Garth Lattimer will never be able to find a trace of you. It’s that simple. It’s worked all this time so I think it should stick. The name change, that is.”

  “That’s another layer of deception I have to own. But I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of my choices.”

  “Like you say, maybe it was a poorly designed idea on our part to go to such extremes to nab Henry. And maybe it’s time we forget about it entirely and move forward.”

  “Is that what you want, to forget about luring Henry here?”

  “Don’t you? When we hatched this thing up, I didn’t have Kinsey or my kids to worry about. For two years we’ve tried staking you out like a piece of meat—first it was on Long Island and now here. But the slime didn’t ooze out of his hole like we thought he would.”

  “At least not long enough to come sniffing around. Or maybe, if he did, we just missed our opportunity somehow. The coward’s still hiding behind his diplomatic immunity. He might be for years yet.”

  She shoved her hair off her face as the ocean breeze kicked up. “I don’t know what to do. What a mess! We don’t even know where Henry is for certain.” When Logan cleared his throat, she turned to cut a glance at his face and then just stared. “You know where he is, don’t you? How long have you known?”

  “Since Cosford lost him.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Okay, a couple months. My private detective says Henry’s been camped out in Morocco, or was last week. He’s masquerading behind that ridiculous Spanish nobility angle he so often uses.”

  “That would be just like the bastard, wouldn’t it? I told Thane the jerk was living in the South of France. It sounded better than telling him the truth that he’d gone into hiding again. You could’ve told me where he was.”

  “Why? Henry never stays put for long. He’s snuck out of the country twice before, the last time about six weeks ago, took a trip back to Spain to see his dying uncle.” Logan snorted. “More like making sure he wasn’t left out of the family fortune. Before that he tracked down Alistair and set his house on fire.”

  “Oh my God, that poor man, is he all right? What about his wife and kids? You might have mentioned that to me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to freak out. Let’s face it, if Interpol and the RMCP had done their jobs back when this all happened, we’d already have the son of a bitch extradited back to Canada to answer for what he did to Isabella.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen and neither did using me as bait. Maybe Henry knows she’s dead, Logan. That’s the only explanation. Did you consider that? Maybe he’s smarter than we’ve given him credit for. Maybe he never fell for the story that she crawled out of that ditch for help and lived. That’s the story we planted. But our pretending she recovered hasn’t gotten us the results we wanted. We can’t touch him for killing Isabella or for the murder of her father. Maybe we should just accept reality and move on.”

  “I think I can prove he twisted Isabella’s arm to turn over her father’s insurance money. Once she did that, he tried to subjugate her, control her, and beat the hell out of her at every opportunity.”

  “You’re getting worked up again. You know Henry beat her. We both do. But that isn’t the same as being able to prove he murdered Isabella’s father. I can make all those same comparisons to Garth. He was a wife-beater. Even though I don’t think Garth ever killed anyone, he was a miserable, controlling asshole. But abusing your wife on a regular basis doesn’t automatically mean we can prove Henry killed Javier Rialto. We’ve been over this all before.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Listen to me. We’ll never be able to get Henry for the murder of Isabella let alone her father. That’s the bottom line here. We might as well chuck this crazy idea and start accepting that we messed up.”

  Logan ran his hands through his hair. “It doesn’t take much for me to get worked up and hate Henry Navarro.”

  “That makes two of us. But that’s no reason to keep this up. Maybe it’s time to put an end to this whole charade once and for all. Maybe I should start living my life here as Marisa Lattimer.”

  Even thinking about taking that step made chills run through her body at the notion of coming clean with Thane. “If I do that, not only will I lose the man I love, but the town will think I’ve lost my mind. Either way, I lose everything I ever wanted in this town.”

  “They don’t have to know. You’re divorced legally from Garth. You’ve put that portion of your life behind you for good. For almost three years now you’ve been living as someone else, someone who happens to be dead. You can’t exactly go back and erase all that.”

  Logan finally managed to inhale a calming breath. “But it’s your decision. I’ll support whatever you want me to say or do. Just make sure it’s for the right reasons. Because as much as I cared and loved Isabella and thought of her like a sister, I can say the same thing about you.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, looked her in the eyes. “It’s taken courage to do what you’ve done. When we started out we had no way of knowing Henry wouldn’t take the bait and come after you two weeks after we forged this thing. I think you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever known.”

  Tears welled up, started filling her eyes. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “By this time, you know me better than that. I don’t hand out accolades or false praise unless I mean it. Just promise me that in the future you’ll never sell yourself short like you did with Garth, not ever again. Not with Thane Delacourt or anyone else.”

  She shuddered at the memory, locked her arms around herself. “If it weren’t for people like you and Isabella, I might not have stuck it out enough to become the survivor I am, to get out of my own ordeal and stay out.”

  “Sure you would have.”

  “I don’t know. Even knowing Garth was so horrible to me, my friends wanted me to stay with him, stick it out. They continued to work that angle while I tried to come up with a plan. Believe it or not, there are people out there who tri
ed to sabotage me every step of the way. It wasn’t enough that I had to find a way around Garth’s controlling nature but I had to play a character role with my own friends. I’m not sure I can ever forgive them for that, for abandoning me when I needed them the most. I don’t want to be around people like that anymore.”

  “No one’s blaming you. You had to keep listening to that sanctity of marriage crap when you needed to rely on them to help you get out. And yet, they weren’t the ones getting their face pummeled on a regular basis, or going to the ER with broken bones, now were they?” Logan shook his head. “You haven’t spoken to any of them have you? Not since you left?”

  “No. And I won’t. I’m in this thing just as deep as you are.” She rubbed both temples with the fingers of both hands. “I’m so confused, Logan. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose Thane and Jonah. That’s the bottom line.”

  “Look, it’s your decision. I’m just suggesting that keeping Marisa Lattimer permanently on ice might not be such a bad idea for a variety of reasons. One, Garth never knew your whereabouts. After it happened, you immediately began living life as Isabella. Marisa Lattimer simply disappeared off the radar. I’d like to go on record to keep it that way. It wasn’t a bad plan, honey. You don’t ever have to feel guilty about becoming Isabella. If Thane cares about you as much as it seems he does then remind him that he fell in love with the person you are inside. He didn’t fall in love with a name. He fell in love with you. But like I said before, that part of it is always your call.”

  When their conversation ended, she left Logan, but the doubt and indecision overwhelmed her. Still at odds with what she’d done, she went back to work. But she found it difficult to concentrate. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t focus.

  The fourth time in the last hour she placed the wrong tag on one of the obsidian figurines, River finally looked over at her and asked, “Earth to Isabella, what’s wrong with you? It isn’t like you to be this sloppy.”