All That Remains

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “I have a garage,” Alec said. “I don’t usually bother to park in it. Far as I’m concerned, it’s yours as long as you save me an accessible corner for the lawn mower and garden tools.”

  “You’re serious?” Randy looked incredulous then grinned again. “Damn. Okay. For now I’ll take you up on it.”

  Wren put food in front of the two men. Even though he talked the entire time he ate, Randy was done by the time she sat with her own short stack of pancakes and a couple of slices of bacon. She acknowledged his thanks and said a cheerful goodbye when he left. She half hoped Alec would make an excuse not to return, but no such luck.

  His expression unreadable, he busied himself replenishing his coffee. “Those were good pancakes. Did I see you putting applesauce in them?”

  “Yes.” She took a sip of her juice, then cooed at Abby to give herself an excuse to look elsewhere.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said quietly.

  She shot him one quick, alarmed look and shook her head. “No, you don’t. If anyone owes an apology, it’s me. I guess the stress has been getting to me. Otherwise I don’t know why I went off the deep end like that last night. You didn’t say anything—”

  “I kissed you.” His voice was deep.

  She felt a clench of misery. “Is that what you’re apologizing for?”

  “Uh…no, actually. Maybe I should, but no.” He rasped his hand over his unshaven chin, the way he did when he seemed to want to give himself a moment. “What I’m saying sorry for is the way I’ve shut you down every time you’ve asked about my ex-wife and kids. I’ve been raw, but that’s no excuse. God knows you’ve shared enough with me.”

  “That’s not the same,” she said. “I mean, I had to tell you about James if you were going to help me.”

  “I’d like to think we’ve become friends.”

  Friends? A word that should have made her happy instead increased her misery. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “You must have wondered.”

  She was mutilating her breakfast more than eating it. “Yes,” she admitted softly.

  “Carlene and I shouldn’t have gotten married.” His grunt was almost a laugh. “Probably every divorced person says the same thing. In our case, it’s the truth. We should have dated longer. If I’d canceled enough of our plans, she would have lost interest. Instead we got married eight months after we started seeing each other. Mom and Sally had moved, and I was probably trying to fill a vacuum.”

  Wren knew that feeling.

  “The first couple of years were okay. Things got worse when I was promoted to detective. She was enthusiastic initially, because in theory I was less likely to be killed on the job. Patrol is more dangerous.”

  “Really?” Wren said in surprise. “But as a detective you’re dealing with murderers.”

  “Cops are in the most danger on a domestic disturbance call, serving a warrant or walking up to a car after a traffic stop. Detectives don’t go unarmed, but mostly we’re information gatherers.”

  “Oh.” That made sense, she supposed.

  “Unfortunately, the downside was that my schedule became less predictable. I worked longer hours. I couldn’t quit at five because my wife was putting dinner on the table. I missed all kinds of occasions.” He rolled his shoulders as if to release tension. “She was distracted for a while when she was pregnant with Autumn, but being home alone with a baby can be hard. India… When I didn’t make it to the delivery room in time, our relationship was pretty much over even though we held on for almost three more years.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Wren whispered.

  He transferred his gaze to her face briefly. “I was, too. I’m, uh, ashamed to say I didn’t mind my marriage ending. What I minded was her moving out with the girls. Sure, I worked long hours. But I could hardly wait to get home to see my daughters. I loved them.” As if he’d heard the past tense, he said more softly, “I love them.”

  Wren wanted desperately to wrap her arms around him, but something in the way he sat, gripping his mug, staring out the window, held her back. He looked so solitary. And tired, too, as if he hadn’t slept much last night. There was so much strain on his face.

  He was quiet long enough, though, that she couldn’t bear it. “Don’t you see them?”

  Alec scraped that hand over his face again. “At first we did the every-other-weekend thing, and I took them out for pizza or to McDonald’s at least once a week. Carlene started to date someone pretty quickly. That actually worked out well for me, because she was happy for me to take the girls when she was going out, or, uh, spending the night.”

  Frozen, Wren stared at him. No matter what he said, it must have hurt to know his ex-wife and the mother of his daughters was spending the night with her boyfriend.

  “I was living in a dream world, though. Carlene married the guy. Unfortunately for me, he’s an executive with a corporation that does business all around the world. No sooner were they back from their honeymoon than Carlene was all excited on my doorstep telling me that he’d been transferred to Sydney. Half a damn world away.”

  “Oh, no. Couldn’t you stop her taking your kids?”

  “Wrench two little girls out of their mommy’s arms? Argue that they were better off with me? Working the erratic schedule I did? How could I, Wren?”

  He couldn’t. She could see that, but…

  “How long are they supposed to be there? In Australia?”

  “Who knows. Two years? Forever?” A rough sound escaped his throat. “Maybe he’ll get transferred to Berlin next. Beijing. Who the hell knows? And what difference does it make?”

  “You’re entitled to visitation.” She hesitated. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Easier said than done, though.” He seemed to have aged ten years while they were talking, the lines on his face etched deep, his shoulders hunched as if braced against unbearable pain. “Do you know how long the flight from Sydney to St. Louis is? They’re little girls, Wren. It’s one thing to pop two kids on a plane from Philadelphia to St. Louis under the care of a flight attendant. It’s another entirely to have them travel that far by themselves. One of us could fly them each way, but it’s not cheap. And that’s not the worst of it.” He looked at her, and she almost gasped at the agony in his eyes. “They’ve been gone for a year and a half, Wren. I call them, but conversations are getting harder and harder. With India especially. She was barely five when they left. I wonder sometimes if she really remembers me.”

  “It’s not fair,” she said fiercely. “You should insist on having them. They’re your children, too.”

  His face relaxed; something like a smile touched his mouth. “You’re right. They are.”

  She frowned, everything she’d learned from him suddenly adding up in her head. “That’s when you left St. Louis, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He paused, renewed tension in his bearing. “I knew Mom was sick, but how could I go that far from the girls?” He gave a harsh laugh. “Then Carlene moves to Australia.”

  “So you feel guilty because you weren’t here sooner for your mom.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “By the time she was diagnosed, it was already too late for her. No, I’ll tell you what really eats at me. I might have saved my marriage and my mother if I hadn’t been so damned focused on my job. I could have moved my family here way earlier. Even law enforcement is slower paced in a rural county like this. I’ve been home for dinner every night, haven’t I?” His tone was harsh and getting harsher. “I could have given Carlene what she wanted. I could have been here for Mom and Sally. But me, I was stuck on the fact that they all knew from the get-go who I was and what I wanted from life, and I was damned if I was going to give an inch.”

  Feeling bruised herself by his pain, Wren grappled with the knowledge that Alec was here in Saddler’s Mill because he had been desperately trying to right everything that had gone wrong in his life and in the lives of the people he loved.


  He had been trying—too late—to fix the unfixable. And of course he couldn’t.

  He was the kind of man who was used to taking charge, to finding answers and solutions for other people. He thought he had to be. She had this terrible picture of him at his father’s funeral, watching the casket being lowered into the ground. At fifteen, he might have been as tall as a man, but he was a boy. She imagined him gawky and terrified, feeling the crushing weight of responsibility settling on his shoulders as his father was laid to rest. She knew he would have had an arm around his mother’s shoulders, and that he would finally have pulled her to him and let her sob against his shoulder while his other arm encircled his bewildered sister.

  He’d been the absolute worst age for a boy to lose his father. Especially since it didn’t sound as if there had been any other adult male figure to step in. He’d never said anything about an uncle or grandfather, and his mother had obviously never remarried. No more than a freshman or sophomore in high school, he had become, in his eyes if not his mother’s, the father figure.

  Then his mother died and his sister married someone he didn’t respect and his wife left him and took his little girls so far away he never got to see them.

  And still, he had been willing to leap for that attic windowsill, risking everything because a pregnant woman he didn’t know had needed him.

  If she hadn’t already been completely, totally in love with Alec, that was the moment she would have fallen.

  As it was, she stood, marched around the table and hugged him.

  He stiffened. In a belated agony of embarrassment, Wren almost withdrew. Was this the absolute dumbest thing she could have done? What if he saw it as pity? He’d already made plain that she was more of an obligation to him than anything. The friend bit, well, he was probably only trying to be nice.

  But at the moment when she thought, I have to drop my arms and step back, Alec turned. There was a sound; a groan, maybe. He moved so fast she didn’t have time to react. In something like a lunge, he clamped his arms around her waist and buried his face between her breasts.

  Pressing her cheek to the top of his dark head, Wren held on tight.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALEC HAD TAKEN COMFORT from her for only a minute, but he knew it had been a minute too long. He’d given away more than he’d ever intended.

  The last time he’d broken like that was after Mom died. Dry-eyed, he dealt with the doctor and the funeral home, and comforted his sister, but when she was finally gone he had walked upstairs to his bedroom— Mom’s bedroom—and punched the door frame. He’d had only enough sense, if you could call it that, to strike where he wouldn’t do damage to the house. Only to himself. Over and over, he’d pounded until his knuckles were raw and he’d broken half a dozen bones. He remembered being blind with tears. The doctor who had plastered his hand the next day hadn’t said much, simply looked at him with measuring eyes. By then he’d been able to sit calmly under the assessment. Alec had let Sally assume the injury had occurred on the job.

  Behind the wheel of his Tahoe, he remembered the moment last night, leaning against another human being. Wren. At least he hadn’t cried against her breast. He’d wanted to. Alec was humiliated at how close he’d come to sobbing. He didn’t even know why. Why it had hit him like that. Why he had needed, more than anything on earth, to hold her and be held by her. All he knew was that, when her arms came around him, suddenly he couldn’t help himself.

  Thank God he’d been able to pull himself together quickly, to say, “Thanks, Wren,” then stand and walk out of the kitchen. His voice had been hoarse; she wouldn’t have missed that. But she hadn’t said a word, merely stood there, her eyes dark with unhappiness, and had allowed him the dignity of retreat.

  She’d made dinner later, as usual. He left the TV on while they ate and pretended to care about the news. About all he had actually paid attention to was the flood update. Disaster here in Arkansas had been true devastation farther south on the Mississippi delta. Cleanup was proceeding much as it was here, with governors asking for and receiving federal assistance and the people who could least afford to lose everything the least likely to actually get any meaningful help.

  He made a few comments about the recovery; Wren asked questions. They managed civilized conversation. He’d made some effort to not meet her eyes, and he thought she’d done the same. The entire while all he wanted was to circle the table and snatch her into his arms. Or maybe beg her not to leave him. To say, what’s Gainesville, Florida, got that Saddler’s Mill doesn’t?

  The whole while, he grappled with the idea of love and all it entailed.

  Their exercise in civility had lasted an excruciating hour before Abby woke up and he had a good excuse to suggest Wren go somewhere else while he cleaned the kitchen. She’d headed upstairs and didn’t come back.

  She’d gotten up early as always and made his breakfast this morning. Alec had felt like death warmed over and Wren looked worse, fresh bruises under eyes red-rimmed as if she hadn’t slept at all—or had cried.

  Could he take the risk that he wouldn’t hurt her, that she wouldn’t hurt him? If not, he owed it to them both to back off, before living together became unendurable.

  But at the moment, he was pulling to a stop in front of the farmhouse where he’d been called, so Alec forced personal issues to the back of his mind. A dead man lay on the front porch, his wife sobbing inside a patrol car.

  Two hours later, Alec had determined that the guy had slipped on sludge the flood had deposited in the barn, slammed his head against the sharp corner of a stall and somehow been able to stagger as far as the porch before he collapsed and died.

  The tragedy was no less. The poor bastard’s wife was left to wonder whether, if she’d been home, she would have been able to get him help in time. All the reassurance in the world would never make her believe there was nothing she could have done.

  By the time Alec left, the wife’s sister had arrived and taken her away, and the body was being bagged and carried to an ambulance.

  He arrived at the station in a piss-poor mood. He’d pulled into a slot and was getting out of his SUV when a middle-aged deputy he knew slightly stopped his patrol car and rolled down his window.

  “Detective, I hear you’ve got a couple of unidentified bodies at the morgue.”

  Alec walked over to him. “You heard right. You got something?”

  “We found a car this morning. Looks like it went off the road and tumbled into the river. Wedged there against an old snag. Nobody in it, but I could see from the plates that it was a rental.”

  Alec felt the faint buzz that told him he was about to hear something important. “Did you call the company?”

  “I did. It was Enterprise, and they hadn’t gotten any accident report.” He reached for a notepad that lay on the passenger seat, lifted it and squinted. “The driver was a guy named Miner. James V. Miner. Washington State license plate.”

  The buzz became something more. Son of a bitch. Was there any chance one of his two stiffs was Wren’s James? That he had indeed been here in Saddler’s Mill all along, but had been dead? Very likely drowned by the time Alec delivered Wren’s baby?

  “They’re faxing over a copy of his driver’s license and insurance card,” the deputy said. “I told them to send it to your attention.”

  Alec thanked him cordially. As he walked into the building, his brain was working with a speed and precision he hadn’t yet managed today. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that both the unidentified bodies fit the general description of James Miner?

  Because they fit the general description of a quarter of the male population of the United States, that’s why. Brown hair, eyes of the indeterminate shade that could be labeled hazel, brown, gray, green, even blue. Average height, average build, no distinctive identifying feature. Alec wanted to excuse himself but couldn’t entirely.

  Was James likely to be the gunshot victim? What if he’d thought he had found Molly’s house and
bullied his way in? In these parts, most home owners had guns and were prepared to use them. Still, this guy had been shot in the back, which might explain why it hadn’t been reported.

  Maybe. But if the car had tumbled into the river it seemed likelier that Miner was the drowning victim.

  They could wait and identify him by fingerprints.

  Ignoring the normal hubbub of the cramped police station, Alec walked to the fax machine and found that the one he wanted had come in. He’d already seen the driver’s license photo, of course. Wren had admitted it didn’t look much like James. He’s way better looking, she’d insisted. Alec had shrugged. The guy might not photograph well, or he’d been particularly unlucky that day at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hell, most people were unlucky when it came to license photos.

  Alec stared now at the black-and-white faxed copy and tried to reconcile that face to either of the corpses at the morgue.

  It was possible.

  What should he do? Contact Seattle P.D. and try to get a quick fingerprint match? Or subject Wren to the horror of looking at the faces of dead men in hopes of identifying one of them as the father of her child?

  He knew what she would want. As reluctant as he was, Alec felt respect for her, maybe even pride in her. She was a lot gutsier than she believed herself to be.

  Swearing, he found his lieutenant and explained where he was going and what he had to do. Then he drove home although it was barely two in the afternoon.

  WREN HAD BEEN halfheartedly rooting through a box filled with miscellaneous papers, separating potentially interesting items such as photographs or what looked like a stock certificate from copies of ancient utility bills and bank statements. Her attention kept straying. She knew what she wanted to do.

  “Enter not into temptation,” she muttered.