Mother’s heels clicked on the floors and the treads of the stairs. She was already halfway to the second floor by the time I got out into the foyer.
By the time I gained the second floor, Mother was halfway down the hallway, standing in front of the photograph of William. I bypassed my own door to come and stand next to her.
Like most of the early family portraits in the house, this one was black and white. An early photograph rather than a painting. (We do have some of those, too.) It showed William’s head pretty much from the shoulders up, a bit smaller than life size, and it had become somewhat faded with time. Not surprising, maybe, considering how many years had passed.
William might have been around thirty, or maybe he was younger and people just looked older earlier back then. He was wearing a dark jacket, buttoned higher than we’re used to seeing these days, with a high-necked white shirt underneath. The tie was also dark, and while it wasn’t quite a modern-day bowtie, it was closer to that than the ties men wear now. Above, his face was almost as familiar to me as my own, and certainly as familiar as those of my brother and sister.
He’d been a good-looking guy, with a strong jaw and a firm, full mouth. He had thick, black eyebrows over dark eyes, and his hair was slicked back wetly, as must have been the fashion at the time. The photograph must have been taken—I counted on my fingers—sometime between 1890 and 1895, perhaps, if William had been born during, or just after, the War Between the States.
Mother didn’t say anything. I slanted a glance her way. “He looks a little like Catherine, don’t you think? Or Dad?”
Mother didn’t answer. Not the question. “Are you sure...?” she began instead, and then trailed off.
I shook my head. “All I know is what Aunt Regina told me. I haven’t looked into it. And I don’t know that there’s any way to find out for certain, either, after all these years. Aunt Regina said he was raised with Caroline’s other children. She had a bunch, I guess. But given the times, I’m sure the name on his birth certificate was Caroline’s husband’s.”
Mother didn’t respond.
“I think it was one of those family secrets that was passed down from generation to generation, orally. Aunt Regina said her father told her and Dad. I’m not sure there’s any written proof anywhere.”
“So it might not be true,” Mother said.
I shook my head, even though I recognized the grasping at straws. “It might not. But if you look at him, you can kind of see it. And let’s be reasonable here. The Martins got that black, curly hair and sallow skin somehow.”
Mother had no response for that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Of course it matters.” Mother’s voice was sort of faint.
“Not to me. It was a hundred and fifty years ago. I’m still the same person I was before I found out. So was Dad.”
“He never told me,” Mother said.
I figured he hadn’t. Aunt Regina had told me she didn’t think he had, that she didn’t think Mother knew.
I had my mouth open to tell her I knew that when I realized what Mother meant: that this was yet one more thing someone had kept from her. Dad might not have known about Darcy, and he obviously hadn’t seen the need to tell Mother that he’d slept with Audrey before the two of them got together. But this, this was something he could have told her. And maybe should have told her. And hadn’t.
She looked at me. I opened my mouth again, but there wasn’t much I could say. To explain why he might not have—she wouldn’t have been happy with the news—would only make her feel worse.
After a moment, she turned away. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“It isn’t even nine yet,” I said. And unlike me, Mother wasn’t pregnant.
She didn’t answer. Just continued up the hall to her door, her feet managing to drag even in the high heels. I watched as she crossed the threshold, head bowed. The door closed with a soft but final click.
Ten
I don’t know if she lay awake tossing and turning all night. I don’t know if she cried herself to sleep. I put my own head on the pillow and dropped off, even though it wasn’t nine yet. I didn’t stir when Rafe slipped into bed in the middle of the night, or if I did, I don’t remember. The first I knew he was there, was the next morning, when I woke with sunlight slanting through the windows, with his breath in my hair, his body spooned around me, protectively, and his hand on my stomach.
I figured I’d let him sleep—he hadn’t gotten to bed as early as I had—but it soon became apparent that he was awake.
“Morning, darlin’.” The hand started moving.
“Good morning,” I said, stretching.
And that was all that was said for the next little bit. It wasn’t until thirty minutes later that I got a good look at him. My eyes widened. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Rafe said, putting a hand to the side of his jaw and the bruise there. There was a small cut on his bottom lip, too, and the lip itself was a little swollen. The cut didn’t look deep and had already scabbed over, so I didn’t mention it.
“Did someone hit you?”
He shook his head. “I walked into the door on my way home.”
Sure. “Who did it?”
“Just some guy in a bar,” Rafe said. I stared at him until he added, “It’s no big deal.”
It didn’t look like a big deal. I’d certainly seen him look worse. And he’s perfectly capable of assessing his own damage. However— “Is this all of it?”
“Pretty much,” Rafe said.
“What else is there?”
He showed me his knuckles. They were bruised, too. I tilted my head. “Who did you hit?”
“The guy who hit me first,” Rafe said.
“Why did he do that?”
He sighed. “I shoulda known better, OK? It was my own fault.”
“What did you do?”
He flopped back down on the bed so I was forced to sit up to see his face. The blanket slipped off and down to my waist, and his lips curved.
I hiked it up. “Don’t get any ideas about distracting me. I want to know what happened.”
Trust him to take it all the way back to the top instead of just telling me what I wanted to hear. “I took your car to Yvonne’s and talked her into going with me. We started at a place in Columbia that she said she and Darrell used to frequent. I walked up to the bar to order two beers, and the bartender objected.”
“Why would he do that? Isn’t that his job?”
He made a face. “It was the same bar where I found Billy Scruggs thirteen years ago. And the same bartender.”
Ah. “I guess he liked Billy?”
“Not so much,” Rafe said. “But while I was doing my best to kill Billy, and he was doing his best to kill me, we broke a lot of chairs and tables. And glasses and bottles and everything else.”
“So the bartender was holding a grudge.”
“Seems he musta been. I shoulda thought of it. It’s just...” He glanced over at me for a second, and away again, “—it feels like a different life, you know?”
I nodded. The altercation with Billy Scruggs—the one that had sent Rafe to prison for two years—had taken place when he was eighteen. Before he was recruited by the TBI. Before he and I hooked up. Before he’d turned his life completely around. “So what happened? Did you arrest him?”
“I guess I coulda done that.”
I happened to know he could. He has a badge, and a pair of handcuffs, and the authority to make arrests anywhere in Tennessee. And someone had attacked him, unprovoked. He’d had every right to do just that. “But you didn’t.”
“I figure I knew where he was coming from. He just wanted some of his own back.”
“By hitting you?”
He shrugged. “I hit him back.”
“Only as hard as you had to, I hope?”
He grinned. “Naturally.” And then he muttered a curse and swiped at his lip.
I leaned over to
grab a box of tissues from the bedside table. The blanket slipped again, and Rafe’s grin widened.
“Knock it off,” I told him, as I dropped the box on the bed between us.
“I’m already bleeding.” His voice turned muffled as he picked up a tissue to dab at his lip. “I might as well enjoy my wife.”
“You’ve already enjoyed your wife this morning.” Although I didn’t bother hiking up the blanket this time. If the sight of my breasts made him forget the way his face no doubt hurt, I was happy to sacrifice for the cause. “I don’t suppose, after that fiasco, the bartender told you anything about the Skinners.”
Rafe shook his head. “We left, after I waved my badge in front of his face and told him he was lucky I didn’t haul him in for assault. Wasn’t nobody in that place gonna talk about the Skinners after that.”
No. They’d spend the rest of the evening discussing Rafe and his many failings, and probably drinking to Billy Scruggs’s memory. And the Skinners’ too.
“I don’t suppose you packed up and came home after that fiasco?”
He shook his head. “No, darlin’.” He took the tissue from his mouth and inspected it. The result must be satisfactory, because he dropped it, and his hand, to his lap. “We went to the next place on the list. Nobody hit me there.”
Good to know. “How did Yvonne handle the whole thing?”
“Offered to kiss it and make it better,” Rafe said.
My eyes narrowed. “Really?”
“I told her no thanks. But you can kiss it and make it better if you want.”
“I already kissed it.” And a lot of other things. Although I could kiss it again. I had nowhere else to be. So I leaned forward and put my lips, very gently, on his. His arm went around my back, and one thing, as they say, lead to another.
“So how did you spend the evening?” he asked me when another thirty minutes had passed, and we’d come up for air again.
I told him I’d gone to dinner with Mother, Catherine, and Darcy, and watched his eyebrows rise. “All of them?”
I nodded. “Mother was worried about getting together with Darcy, but I talked her into it.” Or guilted her into it. Whichever. “It was all right. A little awkward at times, but we got through it. It’ll be easier next time.”
“Will there be a next time?”
“Well...” I thought about it. “Maybe not, now that you mention it. The dinner was all right. If that was all it was, I’d say yes. Nothing happened that would have made Mother refuse to have a meal with Darcy again. It was what happened later.”
He scratched his chest. It’s a lovely chest, and for the next few seconds I was distracted. Then I pulled it together. “She wondered whether she should tell Darcy about the dangers of tanning beds. Since Darcy must be going to a tanning salon to look so tan all the time.”
“Oh,” Rafe said.
I nodded. “I ended up telling her about Caroline and William. It wasn’t really a conscious decision. One thing just sort of led to another, and it fell out of my mouth when I wasn’t looking.”
He arched a brow. Just one this time. “You sure about that?”
“Positive.” I nodded. “If it had been deliberate, I would have planned it better. I was keeping that in reserve for some time when she insulted you and I had to get her back. I didn’t mean to throw it away on something like this.”
A corner of his mouth quirked, but he didn’t say anything else. “How’d she take it?” he asked instead.
I grimaced. “About as well as you’d expect. Disbelief. Denial. Anger.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “She angry with you?”
“I don’t think so. Mostly she was angry with my dad. He didn’t know about Darcy, and I can see why he wouldn’t want to tell her he’d slept with Audrey, when she and Audrey were living in the same town and ended up being friends. But this was something he could have told her, and didn’t. She’s feeling betrayed all over again.”
Rafe nodded. “Hard to blame her for that.”
It was. Even though I could understand why Dad hadn’t. He must have known she wasn’t likely to take it well, and had thought it safer to keep the information to himself. Although I have to say it was something of a miracle that after thirty-three years, someone else hadn’t told her. Sweetwater is a small town, and in small towns, people always know all your secrets. Someone around here—someone other than Aunt Regina—had to know the truth, as well.
“I’m sure she’ll get over it,” I said. “There isn’t much else she can do, after all. I mean, it is what it is. A fact. And it’s not like she can divorce him, posthumously.”
Rafe shook his head. “Not like she’d want to, either, I guess, once she thinks about it. Just as long as she doesn’t take it out on you.”
“I don’t think she will. She didn’t last night. Just gave me this sort of sad, betrayed look before she locked herself in her room for the night. It wasn’t even nine o’clock!”
“At least she didn’t start drinking again.”
Oh, God. For a while after learning about Darcy and my dad, Mother had drowned her sorrows in a bit too much alcohol. Not that she became a raging drunk or anything. But there were mimosas for breakfast and a dollop of brandy in the afternoon tea when there usually isn’t. Hopefully she wouldn’t start that again.
I threw off the blankets. “Maybe we should go downstairs and make sure she hasn’t fired up the blender.”
“We’d hear it,” Rafe said, although he rolled out of bed, too, his movements lazy. When he stopped beside the bed to stretch, my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth. He grinned. “You wanna share the shower with me?”
“I don’t think there’d be room for both of us.” Not with the way I was bulging these days. And frankly, if we were both wet and naked and in the shower together, I’d probably be tempted to jump him again, and this much sexual activity might not be good for the baby. The doctor had said we could continue normal activities as long as I was comfortable. Even though I’d had a couple of miscarriages prior to this pregnancy, I’d had a perfectly normal pregnancy this time, and sex was allowed. But I wasn’t sure three times within a couple of hours constituted ‘normal,’ and the last thing I wanted, was to put the baby at risk. Losing the previous one at just a couple of months had been devastating. I was into my third trimester now, but it was still too early for the baby to be OK outside my body, and I didn’t think I could handle it if anything happened to him or her.
Rafe studied me. “You sure?”
I nodded. “I’ll wait. You go ahead.”
He went ahead, but before he did, he came around the bed and bent to kiss me. I resisted the temptation to pull him back down, and instead let him straighten. “Everything all right?”
I nodded.
“No stomach cramps? Nothing like that?”
I assured him I had nothing like that. “As far as I can tell, everything’s fine. And I want to keep it that way.”
“You and me both.” He gave my stomach a stroke before he padded across the floor toward the door.
“Check the hallway,” I told his back, “before you walk out. My mother might be out there.”
“God forbid.” He opened the door a crack and peered out. The coast must have been clear because he slipped through. A few seconds later, I heard the bathroom door close and the shower come on.
He came back a couple minutes later, with a towel hanging low on his hips and water droplets still clinging to his skin. “All yours.”
I rolled to my feet as he headed for the chair where his overnight bag sat. “Why don’t you give me the towel. I’ll take it back to the bathroom and hang it up.”
He grinned at me over his shoulder. “You just want to see me naked.”
Damn—darn—straight. “Who wouldn’t?”
He chuckled, but whipped off the towel and tossed it to me. He even added a playful little swivel of his hips, stripper style, and then winked. “You better go. Or we’ll never get outta here.”
He was right about that. I took the towel and left.
* * *
By the time I had finished my own ablutions and got back to the bedroom, it was empty. He hadn’t stuck his head into the bathroom to tell me he was leaving, so I had to assume he was somewhere in the house still. It was a slightly disconcerting idea. While my mother and my husband get along these days, I couldn’t remember them ever spending any time together, just the two of them. I’d always been there as a buffer.
Although Mother might still be wallowing in bed, and in her suffering. Rafe might just be in the kitchen by himself, feeding himself breakfast. All by himself.
That possibility was more reassuring. Nonetheless, I hurried through dressing and drying my hair. It was still slightly damp when I made my way down the stairs.
Mother’s bedroom door had been closed. Just in case she was sleeping, I hadn’t knocked. When I got down to the foyer, I heard voices, however. My husband’s baritone—he usually sounds like he’s just rolled out of bed, all husky and a little rough—and my mother’s well-modulated tones.
They weren’t yelling. That had to be a good thing.
They heard me coming, of course, and stopped talking before I reached the door to the kitchen. I don’t know whether that was because they were talking about me, or just talking about something they didn’t want me to hear. Or maybe they were just being polite. Both of them were looking at the door when I appeared.
“Good morning, Savannah,” Mother said graciously. “Coffee?”
Rafe didn’t say anything, just saluted me with his cup. The corner of his mouth was turned up.
“No,” I said. “Thank you. It isn’t good for the baby.”
Mother nodded. “There’s milk and orange juice in the refrigerator.”
Looked like I was on my own. I headed that way and fixed myself a glass of milk. “What’s going on?”
Mother didn’t answer.
“Just talking,” Rafe said.
Bad Debt (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 14) Page 11