by Ines Saint
It also didn’t help that he had somewhat misjudged her. It made him second-guess himself where she was concerned. But he had a job to do, and right now, it didn’t involve Paige, so he pushed his doubts out of the way, got out of the car, and headed north, toward the first place Glenn had been picked up by security cameras without the bulge of a package in his jacket.
From there, he’d spread out, ten houses at a time, in every direction, until he hit upon someone who had seen something. It kept him moving, and with all the financial data he’d been analyzing in his other cases, he needed the fresh air and interaction.
“Agent Hooke, Agent Hooke! Wait up!” Alex turned to see a redhead half-running and half-teetering on her heels, behind him.
He stopped and she caught up, but she put one hand up and doubled over to catch her breath before either could talk. Alex waited until she finally straightened. “I’m the owner of Red Realty”—she waved toward her office—“and I hear you’ve been asking everyone if they saw Paige Piper—I mean, Paige Galloway’s husband in town a few months back, wearing a Reds baseball cap and jeans?”
Alex nodded once.
“Well, you’re scaring off potential buyers. Nobody wants to buy a home in a town where they think crime is running rampant, okay? So please wear some different clothes and stop flashing your badge so much. Everyone here already knows who you are.”
Alex stared a moment. “You stopped me to tell me I’m hurting your business?”
“Yes and no. You are, but that’s not why I stopped you. If you promise to try to be more discreet, I’ll share my intel.” Her shoulders were squared, as if she truly believed she could negotiate her “intel” the way she negotiated house sales.
Alex tried not to grit his teeth. Engaging in arguments with the locals, no matter how misguided, clueless, and ballsy they were, would lead nowhere. He took his sunglasses off, pierced her with a serious look, and said, “I’ll try to be more discreet, Miss McGillicuddy.”
She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “How do you know who I am?”
He shrugged one shoulder. They had a staring contest. He won.
She rolled her eyes, but finally deigned to share what she knew. “Fine. Marie Stern, a new Realtor from my Toledo office, was here in town for her first interview with me on April twenty-sixth at seven thirty p.m., which was my only available time slot that week. We were on a conference call today and I mentioned how your presence was making things difficult for us here”—she paused to shoot him a newly annoyed look—“which got us talking about the questions you were asking around town, and she remembered something.” Here Cassie McGillicuddy’s eyes widened, and she leaned in with the conspiratorial air of a person who had just discovered the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.
“Turns out Marie was early that day, and when she saw the coffee shop, she decided to have some coffee before her interview—you know, for a pick-me-up. The door was closed, but when she looked inside, she saw a man wearing a red baseball cap—leaving out the back door!” She practically yelled the last part, and a few people turned to stare. “That’s when she noticed the sign saying they closed at six. When she looked up again, the man was gone. Marie isn’t from here, so she thought it had been one of the owners, and she’d forgotten about it until today. I asked her if she thought he’d seen her, and she’s almost sure he didn’t because his back was turned to her.”
He met her triumphant look with a polite nod. “Thank you, Miss McGillicuddy. You’ve been very helpful. And I promise I’ll do my best to be more discreet. Do you mind giving me Marie’s contact information?”
When he’d gotten the information, Alex walked on. Though the search at the café had been thorough and hadn’t uncovered or revealed a thing, he’d have to review the log once again. Off the top of his head, he knew all three women kept spare keys to their houses there. They’d already searched Sherry’s house during the raid, and all but Sherry had been at home the evening of April twenty-sixth. It was unlikely Glenn would’ve hidden anything at their houses. But Ruby lived in the direction he was heading now. Could she have been watching television or sleeping so soundly she wouldn’t have heard Glenn come in?
Before moving farther north, he’d make a phone call, and then talk to Ruby, Rosa, and Sherry once again. Minutes later, three very angry women were pacing in their café. “He had the nerve to break in here?” Rosa thundered.
“This is sacred ground. He’ll pay.” Ruby narrowed her eyes.
“Wait. There were no signs of a break-in.” Sherry turned to Alex. “Are you sure?”
“I called the woman who saw him. I’m reasonably certain he was inside.”
Rosa tapped her long fingernails on the countertop and frowned. “He didn’t need to break in. Paige has a copy of the key to your house. He was there earlier that day. He could’ve taken the key to the café then.”
Alex agreed. It was what he’d been thinking. “From what I’ve pieced together so far, he could have gone to your house to leave the keys before coming back here,” he added. They’d searched Sherry’s house and come up with nothing, but it wouldn’t hurt to search both her house and the café again. It felt like they were going around in circles. “I know it’s asking a lot, and I know we’ve asked you to do this already, but I need you to keep taking inventory of everything to figure out whether anything’s missing. Anything that’s missing could be important.”
Rosa got up. “We all keep spare keys to our houses here, keys that we’ve lent to our kids and grandkids throughout the years, when they’ve stayed with us. Who knows how many we have or whether one of them is missing? I think it’s time to change the locks to our houses.”
“We never thought we’d have cause to be careful about those things.” Ruby looked disappointed. “And if anything else is missing, it can’t be important or else we’d have noticed.”
“I know it’ll be hard, but any little thing could be meaningful. Let me know if you remember anything.” He’d ask a few agents if they could possibly get away and help him search the three homes and the café again.
Ruby’s house would be first on the list. Asking Rosa for permission to search her home would not go over well.
* * *
Paige glanced at the dashboard clock once again, though she knew she was early. But her eyes kept going back to the clock. Anything to prevent her from looking around.
In theory, the job for fund-raising and special events director at Twelve Bridges Adolescent Rehabilitation and Addiction Center sounded like a perfect fit. It was right on the edge of the next town over, only fifteen minutes away, and her skills could be applied to a cause important to her and her family. Maybe it was time to embrace the past as part of her future. Maybe then, she could feel like she’d come full circle. Maybe that was what Grandma Sherry had been trying to tell her.
Maybe.
Now that she was there, she was having difficulty looking around the serene, five-acre parklike setting. Breathing began to hurt, and she closed her eyes and laid her head on the steering wheel for a moment, to get it together. How many times had they visited their mother in rehab? Each time trying hard to hide that aching jumble of pity, hope, fear, and anger.
As hard as she tried, she couldn’t manage to keep a few memories back. The smell of sweat and vomit filled her nostrils. Her mom’s sweat and vomit. Why could she never forget that smell? It had been especially bad the times her mother had tried to quit cold turkey and without help. When she inevitably succumbed again, she’d fall into the grips of a deep depression that would trigger especially bad binges. Paige would hold her mother’s hair back and wipe the sweat from her face as she sprawled on the bathroom floor. So. Much. Vomit.
Why . . . why hadn’t it ever worked out? The black hole, as her mother called it, always won. A clawing, pitch-black pit of despair only alcohol could blur. The older she got, the more the pity, hope, anger, and fear had waned, giving more space to compassion . . . and hopelessness.
But the thought
and feel of the darkness closing in made her force herself to open her eyes.
She breathed in and out, and began to feel better by degrees, until finally, she could take a steady look around. A beautiful, Colonial-style mansion on top of a small hill. Below it, mature trees shading a pond dotted with wooden benches. The sun shone. Clouds moved across it. Ducks waded across the water. Birds chirped in the distance. Life went on.
Paige got out and made her way to the building. But when she went inside, the first thing she saw froze her in her tracks. A young girl who looked just like her mom looked in an old picture Grandma Sherry kept on her fireplace mantle. It made Paige feel like she was losing it. All the stress was finally catching up to her, and at the very worst moment.
The girl met her eyes and smiled, and it was such a weak, sad smile. Like she was tired, but she was trying. She had headphones on and was tapping along to whatever she was listening to, her fingers trembling. A woman in plum-colored scrubs went to her then, the girl took her headphones off, and they chatted. The girl put her headphones over the other woman’s ears, and the woman said something that made the girl’s smile widen.
The girl was so young. Surely there was hope for her. The center’s website had touted their high success rate, and Paige knew it was because it was mostly funded by private donations and endowments, and could therefore offer a twenty-eight-day program and follow-up group and individual therapy, right there. Their focus was on mind and body, and they offered music therapy, yoga, and nutrition classes. The idea of it all made her want to smile one moment, and cry the next. It all sounded so hopeful . . . in a world she knew to be devoid of hope.
Her mind went back to the countless programs her mother had tried, and though it had all been so long ago, just thinking about it made her feel tired. Most had been one week long, because that’s what their health insurance covered, and it was all about detox and treating withdrawal, and it never stuck. Never. It was like getting your head slammed against the same, unmovable wall. Over, and over, and over again.
Grandma Sherry’s words, about how their mom should’ve let her pay for a private center, had hit her hard. Harder than she’d admitted to herself. Resentment, and then the guilt over feeling resentful about something she knew was a disease, had always been the most difficult battle for her.
The peace she’d felt once Grandma Sherry began begging them to go with her to Al-Anon meetings had been her first taste of freedom from the guilt. The day had come finally when Paige had stopped fighting against it all and accepted the whole mess. That there was darkness and love in them all. But she saw now that that the acceptance she’d thought she’d achieved had been slipping. She hadn’t felt it for her mom, and for herself, in quite some time.
She looked at the girl again and the nurse again. The trust and tenderness between the two was palpable. The familiar pang came back, but instead of turning away from it, she stilled, and allowed it to penetrate. Something she’d been avoiding for years. Standing there, watching and feeling, was scary and painful, but it felt good, in its way. Pure and raw. A different kind of regret and a different kind of hope. Only she didn’t know what to do with any of it.
The receptionist cleared her throat and asked for her name and the purpose of her visit, her voice kind, but loud, as if she had already asked and been ignored. Paige turned, gave her name and reason for visiting, and was pointed toward the administrative offices, where she was to meet with Dr. Gina Hernandez, the director of the center. As she stared down the hallway, she saw six teen boys flanked by two adults, walking toward the lobby. Three of the boys appeared to be joking with the two adults, while the two boys directly behind them appeared to be having an animated discussion. One teen boy trailed behind. His red-rimmed eyes kept darting from the floor to the others. Was he new? Lonely? Sad?
The receptionist again cleared her throat and Paige got moving.
Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting in front of Dr. Hernandez, trying hard not to wipe her hands on her skirt or shift positions as the clinical psychologist looked over her résumé once again, still wearing a slight frown.
Dr. Hernandez looked up with a kind, but reluctant look. “I’m sorry, but I believe there’s been a mistake, Mrs. Galloway. I’m interviewing for a fund-raising director and two staff nurses, and because of your nursing degree, you were placed on the staff nurse list. But you’re saying you’d like to interview for the fund-raising director position instead?”
Paige squeezed a steady, “yes,” out of her lips. But inside, she felt herself being pulled toward the lonely looking teen boy she’d seen outside.
Dr. Hernandez put her résumé down and stared at her desk for a moment before looking Paige in the eye. “I’m afraid it won’t be a good fit. The number of fund-raisers you’ve organized, and the amounts you’ve raised are certainly impressive, but we’re looking for someone with—a wider berth of professional experience. Our fund-raising and special events director will not only be responsible for the recruitment and training of volunteers, establishing campaign goals, and coming up with and executing successful events, which I’ve no doubt you could manage, but they will also be responsible for researching, writing, and securing grants, and partnering with other organizations and companies to secure sponsorship income, all while managing the complicated legal aspects regarding our nonprofit structure.”
Dr. Hernandez was trying to be kind in explaining that she didn’t have quite all the experience they needed, and Paige didn’t know how to react or what to say. Too many feelings and thoughts were fluttering around inside. She loved fund-raising because caring about others was at the very core of who she was, and that passion made her good at rallying people around a cause. It was something she’d always felt, that her own dedication was a motivator for others. But of course there was more to it than that. Volunteering had allowed her to focus only on her strengths. A career would be different. Writing countless grants and dealing with anything legal hadn’t been on her radar, and the very idea of it zapped her. Both were long-acknowledged weaknesses on her part.
Dr. Gina Hernandez got up and extended her hand, but Paige remained routed to the spot, thinking about the woman in the plum-colored scrubs, the sweet smile she’d elicited from the young girl, and the boy with the red-rimmed eyes. It all made her ache in places where she had long ago numbed herself. Places where she now longed to feel, deeply, again.
There was an opportunity here, calling her to be the person she wanted to be. It was clear to her now, in everything she was feeling, and in the way she was being pulled, but it was too late. She’d blown it. Still, she twisted her hands in her lap and looked up. Her voice cracked as she gathered her courage and asked, “Can I interview for the nurse position?”
Dr. Hernandez slowly dropped her hand and hesitated before looking at her reluctantly. “You have a degree from a prestigious program, but no professional experience. Frankly, I’d have given you a shot anyway, because finding a good fit for our program isn’t always easy, and you do look like a gentle and caring person, Mrs. Galloway. But you didn’t come here to interview for the nurse position, and that tells me something. We’re passionate about what we do, and we’re looking for, and sorely needing, people who can match that passion.” She extended her hand yet again, and this time, Paige got up and shook it.
Never had she felt like she was feeling now. Like something important was slipping through her fingers. How kind Dr. Hernandez had been to her, even when faced with her ignorance and cluelessness. It showed her commitment to being caring toward other souls.
When Paige got to the door, she stopped, unable to open it. She had to stop beating herself up. She wasn’t ignorant or clueless, all she had to do was start opening up again, and to live with honesty instead of merely surviving by fitting herself into a prefabricated mold.
She turned around, fully, and said. “My mom was an alcoholic, Dr. Hernandez. And I became the primary caretaker for her and my two younger sisters from the time I was ten
.”
Dr. Hernandez studied her a moment before motioning to the chair she’d just vacated. Paige sat down, and, difficult as it was, opened up. “I know I don’t have to tell you how painful and hard it was, but caretaking came naturally to me. Nursing seemed like the perfect fit, and the pay was good to boot. I couldn’t wait to graduate and begin, because it would mean doing something I was good at and loved, while helping my sisters get ahead, and learning more about how I could help my mom get the treatment she needed. All my electives were in the psychology, addiction, and behavioral sciences. But I had to leave my family to go to school. There was no other way.”
Paige looked down, coming to terms with how young she’d been, and how much she’d been shouldering. Her voice shook a little, but she continued. “Then my mom died, and my sisters made serious, life-changing mistakes, and I felt . . . burned out. Like a failure, before I’d even begun. I realize now I was depressed, but I didn’t know who to turn to because I was supposed to be the caretaker. Then, two weeks into my first job, the first time I had to clean up someone else’s vomit—” She swallowed hard before looking up, not caring that what she was about to say was gross. “I didn’t mind the mess, but the vomit . . . it smelled like coffee and bacon, like my mom’s vomit used to, and it triggered something in me. I hid in a closet, broke down, and cried.”
She closed her eyes yet again, allowing herself to remember all those feelings, for the first time in years. “The thing was, I was dating someone at the time, someone who seemed too good to be true, and after that, he seemed like the only good thing in my life, so I latched on to the life he was offering me. A life where I could be with my kids always and not mess up. Only that life recently fell apart, and I started dreaming new dreams—until the moment I stepped in here and saw a girl who reminded me of my mother, right out front. But right now, even though it may seem like an impulsive decision to you, I know, more deeply and realistically and surely than I’ve known anything for a very long time, that I want to be a nurse here. I care, and I want to make a difference. I also want to volunteer to raise funds for you, even if you don’t need me as a nurse. But being a nurse here would give me a platform, and I know I could do a lot of good.”