The Great Escape

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “Exactly what is the purpose of this call?”

  “To tell you I’m … I’m sorry I disappointed you. And to ask you to be nice to Mom. This is hard on her.”

  “I do not need reminders from my granddaughter about how to behave with my daughter.”

  “Not exactly true.”

  That precipitated a bristling lecture about respect, integrity, and the responsibility of those to whom much is given. Instead of listening, she found herself replaying a conversation she’d had with her mother a few months ago.

  “You know I’m jealous of your relationship with him,” Nealy had said.

  Lucy had looked up from the wedge of coconut custard pie they’d been sharing at their favorite Georgetown restaurant. “He was an awful father to you.”

  “And he’s hardly the world’s best grandfather. Except to you.”

  It was true. Lucy’s sibs avoided him at all costs, but he and Lucy had hit it off from the beginning, even though she’d been mouthy and rude when they’d first met. Maybe because of it. “He loves me,” she’d said. “And he loves you, too.”

  “I know he does,” Nealy replied. “But I will never, ever have as comfortable a relationship with him as you do.”

  “Do you really mind so much?”

  She remembered Nealy’s smile. “No. I don’t mind at all. The old curmudgeon needs you as much as you need him.”

  Lucy still wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant by that.

  When her grandfather finally concluded his lecture, she told him she loved him, reminded him to eat right, and asked him not to growl so much at Tracy.

  He told her to tend to her own business.

  After she disconnected, she tossed her coffee dregs into the weeds and got up. But just as she started to turn back to the house, she heard an odd sound. A human sound. The sound someone makes when they trip and try to catch themselves. It came from the grove of trees that marked the north edge of the lawn where the woods began. As she turned to look, she caught the flash of an electric-yellow T-shirt disappearing into the pines.

  Toby had been spying on her.

  Chapter Seven

  TOBY RACED THROUGH THE TREES, cutting to the left around the big stump, darting past the giant boulder, hurling himself over the trunk of the red oak that had come down in a storm last summer. Finally he reached the path that led to the cottage. Even though he was smaller than a lot of the other guys in his grade, he could run faster than any of them. Gram said his dad had been a fast runner, too.

  He slowed as he reached the cottage. She was sitting on the back step smoking another cigarette and staring out into the yard the same way she’d been doing since she got here two weeks ago. It wasn’t as if she had anything to look at. The yard sloped down to a gully, and except for the tomato and pepper plants Mr. Wentzel had put in, Gram’s garden was nothing but a bunch of weeds. There were a couple of apple and pear trees behind the honey house, but they weren’t near as good as the trees in Mr. Wentzel’s cherry orchard.

  The woman blew a long stream of smoke but didn’t even notice he’d come back. Maybe she thought if she didn’t look, he’d disappear, but she was the one who needed to disappear. He wished Eli and Ethan Bayner were still here so he could go to their house. They were his best friends—kind of his only friends—but they’d gone to Ohio for the summer because their parents might be getting a divorce.

  She flicked her ashes in Gram’s rosebushes. “It’s going to rain,” she said. “The bees are all heading inside.”

  He glanced uneasily toward the hives. Fifteen of them sat on the edge of their yard not too far from the border of Mr. Wentzel’s orchard. Gram had loved the bees, but Toby hated getting stung, so he stayed far away from them. At first when Gram had gotten sick, Mr. Wentzel had taken care of the hives, but then he’d gotten sick, too, and he’d had to go live at this nursing home on the mainland. His son was in charge of the orchard now, and he didn’t even live on the island—he just hired people to take care of the fruit. Nobody had checked the hives since Mr. Wentzel left, and if they got too crowded, the bees would start to swarm, something Toby didn’t even want to think about.

  He didn’t want to think about a lot of things.

  The lady crossed her legs and took a deep drag on her cigarette, holding the smoke in her lungs like she didn’t know how bad it was for her. She had long red hair, and she was tall and real skinny with sharp bones that looked like they could cut you. She didn’t ask him where he’d been. Probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone. He was like Gram. He hated having strangers around. And now there was also the new lady at the Remington house. She told him her name was Viper. He didn’t really think that could be her name, but he didn’t know.

  All morning he’d been spying on the Remington house in case Panda, the guy who owned it, showed up, too. Toby’d never met Panda, but he was pretty sure he’d stop sending the money if he knew it was Toby instead of Gram who’d been taking care of the house ever since Gram got sick in January. Toby needed that money or his plan to live here by himself wouldn’t work. The last time Panda had been here was two months ago, and he hadn’t called Gram to complain about anything, so Toby figured he’d been doing an okay cleaning job.

  She stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer she left on the steps. “Do you want me to fix you something to eat?”

  “I ain’t hungry.” Gram didn’t let him say ain’t, but Gram wasn’t alive now, and he had to make sure this lady knew he could take care of himself so she’d go away and leave him alone.

  She stretched out her legs and rubbed her knee. Even for a white lady, her skin was really white, and she had little freckles on her arms. He didn’t believe she really knew how to cook because all she’d done since she got here was heat up stuff Gram had left in the big freezer. Like he couldn’t do that himself.

  She finally looked at him, but it was like she didn’t really want to see him. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.” She sounded like she was really tired, but he didn’t see how she could be, since she didn’t do any work.

  “Then why don’t you leave?” he said.

  “Because your grandmother left me this place and made me your guardian and I haven’t figured out what to do about that.”

  “You don’t have to do nothing about it. You can go. I can take care of myself.”

  She picked up her cigarette pack and stared at the honey house. It was like she’d lost interest.

  He stomped past her and followed the flagstone path around the side of the house. Why wouldn’t she go away? He could get himself to school and cook his own meals and wash his clothes and all that other kind of crap. Hadn’t he been doing it ever since Gram got sick? Even those couple of weeks he’d stayed with Mr. Wentzel after the funeral, he’d done stuff. Gram believed in keeping to herself, so she didn’t have a lot of friends except Mr. Wentzel and Big Mike, who used to drive her to the doctor’s. Toby was the one who took care of about everything else.

  He reached the front of the cottage. Him and Gram had painted it three summers ago—robin’s-egg blue with light gray trim. Gram had wanted to paint it this purple color, but he’d talked her out of it. Now he wished he’d let her paint it any color she wanted. Just like he wished that he’d never talked back to her or tried to make her feel bad about not buying him a new game system or any of the other stuff he’d done.

  He grabbed the bottom branch of the biggest tree in the front yard, a maple that Gram had said was older than she was. As he climbed he scraped his knee on the bark, but he kept going because the higher he climbed the farther he was from her and from the bees and from thinking about the lady in the Remington house. And the closer he was to Gram and to his dad in heaven. His mom, too, but she’d left him when he was a baby, and he didn’t think much about her. Gram said she’d loved her daughter, but that she’d been sort of worthless.

  Gram and his mom were white, but he was black like his dad, and as much as he missed Gram, right now he missed
his dad more. He’d been four when his dad died. His dad was a tower dog, the most dangerous job in the world, ask anybody, and he’d died saving this other guy who’d gotten stuck on this big cell phone tower up by Traverse Bay. It had been in the winter, a couple of degrees below zero, and there’d been a snowstorm. Toby would give everything he had—he would even cut off his arm or his leg—if that meant his dad could still be alive.

  LUCY FOUND THE EXPENSIVE MOUNTAIN bike in the garage and a fancy sea kayak in the boathouse, both too new to be castoffs from the Remingtons. After discovering the journey into town wasn’t nearly as complicated as her first night’s wanderings had led her to believe, she used the bike for transportation, carrying the groceries she bought in her backpack. Charity Island was used to all types, and her orange dreads, nose ring, and combat boots didn’t attract much attention.

  After a few days, she took the ferry to the mainland to get rid of her rental car. While she was there, she shopped for a couple of additions to her new wardrobe, as well as some incredible temporary tattoos.

  By the end of her first week at the house, she’d cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. Each time she entered, she hated the big table more. It was not only hideous and much too large for the alcove, but also painted an ugly shade of mint green that was supposed to match the walls but didn’t. She’d even baked a few loaves of bread.

  Other than occasional glimpses of the twelve-year-old spying on her from the woods, she had no distractions, which made it the perfect time to start the writing project for her father’s book. Since she hadn’t planned to resume her lobbying work until September, she’d originally intended to begin working on it as soon as she got back from her honeymoon. Mat said he was fed up with other people defining Nealy’s legacy, and he believed future generations deserved a more personal history of the nation’s first female president.

  Her father was an experienced journalist, and he’d originally intended to write the book himself, but after a few months’ work, he’d decided one viewpoint was too limiting. He wanted several perspectives, each highlighting a different aspect of Nealy’s life, so he’d asked Nealy’s father to write one section and Terry Ackerman, Nealy’s longtime aide, to write another. Most of all, he wanted Lucy’s viewpoint. She had been an inside witness from the time Nealy had first run for the Senate through her presidency, and she was to write about Nealy as a mother. Lucy had jumped at the opportunity, but so far she hadn’t written a word. Even though her deadline wasn’t until September, now would be a perfect time to get started.

  She’d found a laptop computer in the den—a computer wiped clean of any personal information—and after she’d finished breakfast, she carried it out to the porch. As she arranged herself on one of the chaises she had covered with a beach towel, she inspected the tattoo of thorns and blood drops that encircled her bicep. It was gloriously tacky, and she loved it, or maybe she simply loved the idea of displaying something like it, if only temporarily. The packaging said it could last up to two weeks, but she’d bought replacements as well as a few other tattoo patterns she might or might not use.

  She pulled her eyes away from the bloody thorns and thought about what she wanted to write. Finally she set her fingers on the keys.

  When my mother was president …

  A squirrel chattering just outside the screen distracted her. She pulled her attention back to the keyboard.

  When my mother was president, her working day started every morning before six with a stint on the treadmill …

  Lucy hated treadmills. She’d rather walk outside in the rain and snow than on a machine.

  My mother believed in the benefits of exercise.

  So did Lucy, which didn’t mean she liked it. The trick was to find something you didn’t hate doing.

  A trainer had designed her program, but she and my father were usually alone in the gym.

  Lucy didn’t like gyms, either.

  They started their routine with easy stretches, then—

  She frowned. Anyone could have written those boring sentences. Mat wanted something personal, and this wasn’t it.

  She deleted the file and shut down the computer. The morning was too beautiful to write anyway. She grabbed her baseball hat and climbed down the rickety wooden steps to the boat dock. The life vest in the kayak was too big for her, but she cinched it up anyway and took the boat out.

  Even as she paddled around the rocky beach that marked the perimeter of Goose Cove, she had a hard time believing she was holed up on an island in the Great Lakes. She’d come here to unearth the secrets of the man her parents had hired to keep her safe, but the house hadn’t yielded any clues, so why was she still here?

  Because she didn’t want to leave.

  The wind picked up as she hit the open waters of the lake, and she turned the bow into the waves. She rested her arms for a moment, rubbed the bloody thorn tattoo. She didn’t know who she was anymore. The product of a chaotic childhood? An orphan who’d taken responsibility for her infant sister? A celebrity child who’d become part of the symbolic American family? She had been an exemplary student, a dedicated social worker, and she was an accomplished lobbyist. She’d raised a lot of money for some very worthwhile causes and promoted legislation that had made a difference in a lot of lives. Never mind how much she’d grown to dislike that work. Most recently, she was a neurotic bride who’d turned her back on the man destined to be the love of her life.

  Between her job, her family, and planning her wedding, she’d been too busy for introspection. Now that she had time for it, she didn’t like the way it made her feel, so she headed back toward the house. She was paddling against the current, and she had to work harder, but it felt good. She reached the shelter of the cove and paused to rest. That’s when she saw the lone figure standing on the end of the dock.

  His features were indistinguishable, but she would have known that silhouette anywhere. Wide shoulders and narrow hips. Long legs braced for action, hair blowing around his head.

  Her heart started to pound. She bought herself time by making an unnecessary detour to inspect a beaver lodge, then another detour to check out a tree that had fallen into the water. Taking it slow. Pulling herself together.

  He should never have kissed her at the Memphis airport. Should never have looked at her like that. If he hadn’t kissed her—hadn’t looked at her with all those turbulent emotions churning in his eyes—she’d have gone back to Washington—gone back to her job—and he’d have been nothing more than her only one-night hookup.

  The closer she got, the angrier she became, not just with him but with herself. What if he thought she was chasing him? That hadn’t been it at all, but that’s how it would look.

  She slid the kayak up to the dock. The rocky shoreline made it hard for her to beach the boat, so as long as the weather was good, she generally tied it to the ladder. But she didn’t do that now. Instead she secured the kayak loosely—too loosely—to the post at the end of the dock. Finally she looked up at him.

  He loomed above her in his standard uniform of jeans and T-shirt, this one bearing the faded insignia of the Detroit Police Department. She took in those high cheekbones; that strong nose; those thin, sadistic lips and laser-sharp blue eyes. He glowered down at her.

  “What the hell happened to your hair? And what are you doing out on the lake by yourself? Exactly who did you think was going to rescue you if you went in?”

  “Your two weeks are up,” she shot back, “so none of that is your concern. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d help me up on the dock. I’ve got a cramp.”

  He should have seen it coming. But he knew only Lucy, not Viper. He moved to the edge of the dock, a lamb to the slaughter, and reached down for her. She grabbed his wrist—braced herself—and, using all her strength, gave a sudden, sharp yank.

  Dumb ass. He went right in. She went in, too, but she didn’t care. She cared only about getting the best of him in whatever way she could.

  He came up cussing
and sputtering from the freezing water, hair wild and wet. All he needed was a cutlass in his teeth. She flipped her own dripping hair out of her eyes and yelled, “I thought you couldn’t swim.”

  “I learned,” he yelled back.

  She swam away from the kayak, the life vest inching up under her armpits. “You’re a jerk, you know that? A lying, money-grubbing jerk.”

  “Get it all out.” He swam toward the ladder, his strokes long and powerful.

  She swam after him, her own strokes choppy with anger. “And you’re a first-class—” Viper found the right word. “Asshole!”

  He glanced back at her, then mounted the ladder. “Anything else?”

  She grabbed the bottom rung. The water hadn’t lost its spring chill, and her teeth chattered so hard they hurt. “A liar, a fraud, a—” She broke off as she spotted the lump. Exactly where she expected to see it. She scrambled up the ladder after him. “I hope that gun is waterproof. No? Too bad.”

  He sat on the dock and peeled up the right leg of his jeans, revealing the black leather ankle holster that explained why he’d refused to wear shorts at Caddo Lake, why he wouldn’t go in the water. He pulled the gun out and flipped open the bullet chamber.

  “Are you back on duty?” She shoved her wet, dyed hair out of her eyes, her finger snagging on a dread. “Did my parents extend your contract?”

  “If you have a problem with what happened, take it up with your family, not with me. I was just doing my job.” He knocked the bullets into his hand.

  “They hired you again. That’s why you’re here.”

  “No. I’m here because I heard that somebody was squatting in my house. Anybody mention that breaking and entering is a crime?” He blew into the empty chambers.

  She was dizzy with fury. “Anybody mention that bodyguards are supposed to identify themselves?”