They passed a young mom with two preschool-aged kids stopping for ice cream. It was too cold for it but none of them cared.
“Thanks for my ice cream,” the older child said.
“You’re welcome, my precious,” the mother replied and Claire grinned down at the chocolate-covered face, noting the freckles, the carefully-arranged hair, and the excited bounce of the kid. Claire and Scott moved on, seeing several seagulls dive for sandwich scraps while another dog—this one tiny—went in a yapping circle around its owner.
Claire snuggled into Scott when there was a big gust of wind and then they sat down as they watched a school bus of little kids stop, and the kids get picked up by their parents. Each kid darted from the bus and into the arms of their parent. The kids chattered, looking up in utter delight at the most ordinary of people. The blond woman with thin hair. The guy in his mid-30s wearing ragged jeans. The large woman with the pack of kids. It didn’t seem to matter who the parent was, what they looked like, how smart they were…
“Oh no,” Claire said, staring as each parent took their child by the hand, taking them safely home.
I wish I had killed her.
“Oh no,” Claire said again.
You’re welcome, my precious. A mother had said. She’d said it as she stared down at her little child who gazed up with adoring eyes. She said it like a mother who would do anything for her child. Throw herself in front of a car. Save her from a bear. Remake her life…remake a life that many would have considered impossible. Get educated, work hard, do whatever it takes.
“Oh no, no,” Claire said, watching the last parent lift their child up on broad shoulders. The child laughed, digging their fingers into their parent’s scalp to hold on.
“Claire?” Scott asked, searching her face. He’d turned her to face him, but he was glancing between where she was staring and her face. She could see his head go back and forth, but she was so caught up in the pieces falling into place. It made so much sense.
“I don’t want to be right,” she told Scott. “I want to be very wrong.”
I wish I had killed her.
Claire wasn’t the only who had figured it out. That poor woman. How could she know? But…those muddy boots. The shell-shocked look on Helen’s face. She’d been mourning her mother. Oh, the storm. The storm brought the Mama Bear out in Helen, Claire bet herself. If she and Scott would check on Daisy, of course a mom would check on her child.
So…so…Claire’s mind raced with possibilities and new conclusions. Helen checked on her daughter, and she found something out…something that made Helen turn into a tearful zombie. Something that confirmed in Helen’s mind that her own child was the killer. Oh no, Claire thought. She was sure Helen did wish she’d killed her mother. If she had, her only child wouldn’t be facing a murder conviction.
Scott tugged Claire around while she was lost in her thoughts, heading them back towards the diner, but before they’d walked a block or two, someone darted in front of them, staggering before she pulled to a stop.
Claire saw the bright barrel of the gun first, but then her gaze was fixated on the face. Their eyes met in mutual recognition. It wasn’t the first time they’d commiserated.
Michaela’s voice rose in anguish. “Why did you have to interfere? You should have just left it alone. I know you’ve been trying to put the pieces together. Everyone said so. I’m just sorry it had to be you.”
“Michaela—” Claire stopped when she saw the pistol barrel being moved to aim at her head. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you.”
Michaela’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “She was horrible. To you. To me. To everyone. Things are better now.”
The problem was that Claire agreed to an extent. It was better that Gertrude Park wasn’t torturing her children anymore, interfering and spreading anger and sadness. Even then, a normal person wouldn’t just kill someone. It took a special kind of hatred to do that.
Claire didn’t say anything, and Scott slowly stepped in front of her, pulling her arm to put her behind his broad back. She peeked around his body, wanting to keep eye contact with Michaela. The sudden thought that the deranged woman might shoot Scott hit her with sudden force, adrenaline coursing through her veins.
“You should have left my mom alone,” Michaela Nathans hissed. “You should have just left it all alone.”
“They’ll know it was you, Michaela. You need to turn yourself in. What are you going to do with that gun?”
“No one knows it was me,” Michaela sneered. “This gun will take care of it.”
“Your mom does,” Claire said gently. She tried reaching out but Michaela jerked back. “Make it easier on her. You know you aren’t going to get away with this…but hurting Scott and I too? That will just make things even harder on your mom.”
Michaela swallowed, her gaze searching Claire’s face, and Claire let her see the truth of what had been said. Helen Nathans wished she had been the one to murder her mother. If Helen had killed Mrs. Park, then Michaela would be fine. Instead, she was going to go to jail. Probably for a long time. Her future was over. Even if she somehow got lucky enough to go to a mental hospital, Michaela wouldn’t be finishing her college. She wouldn’t be marrying and having children. She wouldn’t be doing any of the things her mother had dreamed of for her.
“She doesn’t know,” Michaela said. There was a bit of a plea in her voice.
“She does,” Scott said gently and his kindness made Michael believe.
“Of course she does,” Claire said. “She loves you. She knows you. She worries over you. Helen is the kind of mother all of us could have wished for.”
Michaela closed her eyes against what Claire had said. She closed her eyes against what she had done. How it would affect her mother. Michaela hated herself in that moment, and Claire could see it merely because of the expression on her face.
She hissed to Claire, “Grandma was going to disinherit my mom again. She only let us be part of the family because I wanted it. And then Grandma was going to throw her away again. Aunt Mary hated Grandma. That didn’t matter to Grandma though. My mom…my mom let go of the past, of all the mean things. She let it all slide off of her.”
Claire saw Darryl coming down the street towards them. He must have recognized that something was wrong but the very slight shake of her head was enough to keep him from charging into the situation. Silently, he crept closer with a lightness of foot Claire wouldn’t have expected, and he stopped and listened, his gun drawn.
“You know why she was going to be disinherited? She was divorcing my dad. My adopted Dad. They were breaking up because Dad is cheating on Mom and when Mom called him out on it, he was drunk. And he hit her. He hit her, and Grandma told Mom to suck it up. To go back to him. Leah is leaving Uncle Ethan. And grandma told Uncle Ethan he’d find someone better. Younger. Smarter. SOB Grandma told my mom to suck it up and take it and she told Uncle Ethan to upgrade.”
Michaela jerked her hand across her face, angrily removing the tears that fell.
“So my mom should suffer. She’s not good enough to have a happier life but good old Uncle Ethan. It’s fine for him. You know what’s the worst? He agrees with my mom. She should leave my dad. She should shake off Grandma and live her own life. She should make her own happiness. But, of course, he’d say that, right? He was going to get more money that way.”
“Your Mom would have gotten a third of the money,” Claire said. “If she had stayed. That was the incentive.”
Michaela scoffed and then said, “No she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have gotten jack. There’s no way Gertrude Park was going to split that money evenly. Why would she?”
“We can’t really know,” Scott said. “But hurting Claire and me won’t help your case.”
He wasn’t afraid. Darryl was right there with cuffs and a gun. Better to disarm yourself though than to have the police fight you down.
“Put the gun down,” Claire sai
d softly. “Let us try to help you. Years of systematic abuse will help your case.”
Michaela shook her head frantically.
“Don’t do this to your mom,” Claire tried. That was the right thing. Michaela took a deep breath as Claire said, “Officer Portman is behind you. He’s a good man, Michaela, he’ll do what he can for you.”
Claire saw the moment Michaela accepted that she wasn’t going to get away with what she’d did, her shoulders slumped and her fingers started to shake as she lowered the gun.
“Just…Claire…will you take care of my mom? I…I should have just told her she was amazing and to shake off what Grandma was doing. Mom would have been fine. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. I…I…”
“I’ll tell her all of that,” Claire said. “And I’ll be her friend. We all will.”
Michaela took a shaky breath and then said again, “Grandma was just always so mean to me. Always. I just hated her so much. And when she tried to tear my mom apart…I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stand by and watch it anymore. My mom is so wonderful. She was such a good parent. And my dad…they weren’t in love anymore. He loves her…but he doesn’t love her. Mom would have been fine.”
“Of course she’ll be okay,” Claire said, hoping it wasn’t a lie. There wasn’t much belief in that really. Helen adored her daughter, and her daughter was going to jail.
“When I was little,” Michaela told Claire, “My mom fell in love with my dad. But she waited to marry him. She waited and she made sure he wouldn’t be a deadbeat. That he’d be good to me. She’d have left him if he didn’t love me, too, but he did. He adopted me. He loved me. He and mom fell out of love, and he shouldn’t have hit her. But he loved me. He still does. Loves us both. Mom would never have given him a chance if he wouldn’t love me, too. Just like she never settled for a crappy job. She never settled and it was all for me. She wanted to be the best person she could be…just so I could see it in her.”
Claire tilted her head as she gently said, “That’s what good moms do. They stand tall for their children, so their children have someone to look up to.”
Darryl was very gentle when he arrested Michaela Nathans. Scott asked Claire if they should go tell Helen, but Claire thought about it for a long time before she said, “Let’s go get Mary Miller.”
* * *
Mary’s eyes were wide and horrified when they explained what happened to her mom, sister, and niece. When they said Helen needed her sister, Mary was on the phone in a moment. She called Ethan as she drove to her sister’s side. The two Park siblings were together with Helen when she found out her daughter was arrested. Within hours, the eldest sibling hired the best lawyer possible for Michaela and the youngest held her sister’s hand as they took care of Helen. After living with a matriarch that had divided the family for so long, there was a curious calm as the children started regrouping. The Park family would continue, and this generation seemed determined not to have any greed or manipulation involved. None of them could change the past and what had happened—but they could try to make the future better.
Chapter 14
The last remnants of the storm fronts had blown out of Brightwater Bay by the time Claire returned to the bakery. The sky was dotted with the large puffy clouds that set off the blue of the sky. After so many days of drizzle and gray, the light of the morning sun rising high was nearly blinding. Claire walked through the swinging doors, settling Roscoe in his bed and crossed to Mrs. Applegate.
“It’s finished,” Claire told her boss. “We’re out of the shadow of the Park murder and no one will flinch when they eat our cookies.”
Mrs. Applegate laughed in delight and listened carefully as Claire poured out her story about Helen and Michaela. When the day’s baking was done, Mrs. Applegate loaded up a box of baked goods for Claire to bring to Helen and the Park family. Delivering them was far less painful than Claire would have thought. Bringing a second box down to the police station for Michaela Nathans and the police force wasn’t even so bad.
What was delightful, however, was taking the sky-high chocolate and salted caramel cake to Scott, Daisy, Lucy, and Darryl as they met in Claire’s cottage for a hotly-contested game of Scrabble, a fresh pot of coffee, and one of the best cakes that Claire had ever made. They couldn’t take away the tragedy that happened in life, but they could sure wrap each other up in friendship and find the good as often as possible.
Which is what they did. They did it for each other, for their town, and—most often—for the ones they loved. Claire breathed in her coffee, letting the scent mingle with the chocolate cake, and then she looked past Scott’s shoulder to the window. She wasn’t experienced enough with the weather around there to know if a storm was rolling in or not. Either way, she wasn’t worried, not with friends like these around. She was safe in Brightwater Bay.
Author’s Notes
Thank you for continuing your adventure at Brightwater Bay! Just when it seems that things are calming down, you’ll discover all sorts of new things happening, so please come back and visit us again.
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Love cozy mysteries? Here’s Brightwater Bay Cozy Mysteries – Carolyn L Dean, Angela C Blackmoore, and Beth Byers
A Little Taste of Murder (book 1 in the Anthology Three Carols of Cozy Christmas Murder)
A Tiny Dash of Death (book 2)
A Sweet Spoonful of Cyanide (book 3)
A Sweet Spoonful of Cyanide Page 9