He nodded. Thought about the vagaries of life.
One thing was for sure. He was not going to make the same mistakes his parents had made. Men like him and his father were not meant to marry.
“It must have been hard on you and Jim, knowing what was going on, not being able to do anything to help.”
“It was.”
He turned his head. “And what about you, Aunt Marta? How did you cope all these years with Jim out there?” He motioned to the water.
“It wasn’t easy, son, but it was probably easier because I didn’t have children. I wasn’t bearing that responsibility alone like your mother was. I was lonely a good chunk of the time. It probably would have been better if I’d had a job. But I got involved with the other wives, got involved in the politics of lobstering, made myself a part of our family’s business as best I could. I was better at being alone than your mother was.
“And sometimes Jim and I had hellacious fights.”
It was getting dark. Jim would be home soon. He could smell Marta’s casserole.
It was time to go.
* * *
EMMA CALLED CHRIS. Twice. He wasn’t picking up. And her news shouldn’t be left as a message. But she wasn’t going to drive out to the docks. Not at night. By herself.
Not ever. She couldn’t see Chris again.
She had one more conversation to have with him and then their connection would be severed.
She went home. Made some tea. Drew a hot bath. And prayed that when she got out she’d be ready to tackle the rest of her life.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE FIRST THING CHRIS DID when he got back in his truck was check his phone. Her doctor’s appointment had been at four-thirty.
He couldn’t move on until he knew for sure that he and Emma Sanderson had not made a baby together.
Adrenaline pumped through him when he saw two missed calls. Both from her.
He pushed a button to return the call, and then just as quickly, his thumb hit the end-call button. She’d called twice. Which bespoke urgency.
Meaning her answer was that she was pregnant? Or was she just in a hurry to let him know he was free?
If she was pregnant he needed her to know that he would be there for her. That he was not going to desert her.
Or be shut out.
Not a message that could be imparted over the phone.
* * *
THE PHONE RANG while Emma was in the bath. She’d brought it in the room with her.
Chris’s number flashed. And the call was lost.
Drying off, she put on a pair of cotton underwear that her mother had bought her for Christmas. A no-nonsense bra that she’d bought to give her extra support when she exercised. A T-shirt, baggy sweatpants and dark blue slipper socks completed her attire.
She needed a glass of chocolate milk. A glass and syrup in hand, she jumped when the phone rang again.
But she didn’t procrastinate. She wanted to be brave enough to be fully alive. Journal entry number two in mind, she grabbed her phone, trying to ignore the fact that her hand was shaking.
She’d be fine. She always was.
“Emma? Lucy Hayes here. I hope it’s not too late.”
“Detective Hayes?” She hadn’t even looked at the caller ID.
“Don’t we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis?”
“Yes, Lucy, sorry. I…” Stopping short of telling the detective who she’d thought she’d been about to speak with, Emma’s mind went to Rob. “It’s not too late,” she said.
“I just got off the phone with Ramsey Miller,” Lucy said. “We have some news, and I told him I’d give you a call.”
Flipping off the kitchen light, Emma sank into a chair. “Okay.”
“First, Cheryl Diamond came in today. Ramsey had already told her that Rob was in custody, hoping that she’d want to make a deal, but she’d denied knowing Rob. But computer-savvy woman that she is, she went on the Comfort Cove police public website, found Rob’s booking record and when she saw the charges—when she realized she could be named an accomplice to kidnapping, blackmail and attempted murder—she decided to talk.”
“Rob was charged with attempted murder?”
“He’s being held on those counts, but charges are pending a grand-jury indictment.”
“What about the fact that Chris was holding the gun when the police came in?”
“It was Rob’s gun. He brought it to the scene, which incriminates him. And the officers testified that Rob had an arm locked around your throat on the floor when they burst in, and the marks on your neck supported that account.
“Chris was there at our request, as part of a department-approved sting, and he agreed to give up the gun as soon as Rob was in custody. Ramsey talked to the D.A. and he agreed that there was enough evidence for an indictment.”
Numb inside, Emma ran her fingers along the glass of milk. Her ex-fiancé was in jail for what would probably be a very, very long time.
She’d almost married him. Her life, her mother’s life, would have been a total nightmare.
She’d once thought she loved Rob. Now she wanted him in jail.
“What did Cheryl Diamond say?” she asked softly. If the woman had led them to Claire, Lucy would have told her that first. Miller probably would have called her himself.
Sometime over the couple of weeks, Emma had come to accept that her baby sister was gone.
The need to know what happened wasn’t about finding Claire anymore. It was about learning to live without her. Learning to live with whatever had happened to her.
She no longer needed hope. She needed closure.
“Cheryl testified today that she met Rob through a website where men have sex with women via webcam, just like we thought. They became close enough for Rob to tell her about you. About why he stayed with you. He told her he first met you at a fund-raiser you and you mother were hosting to raise money for child-safety awareness.”
Rob had sex online? In her office? She shuddered, vowing to sterilize everything in the room.
“We were holding a fingerprinting clinic.” She forced herself to remember that day. “Statistics show that if there are fingerprints for a missing child, there’s a much better chance that they’ll find the child during the critical first hours.”
“That’s right.”
“I guess you knew that.”
“Yes, but not enough people do. The work you and your mother do is so important, Emma. Please don’t stop.”
“We won’t.” Even moving on now, she knew that she wouldn’t give up helping others have a chance at a happier ending.
“Anyway, when Rob heard your story, he saw a lawsuit in the making. Apparently he’d been on the lookout for the perfect suit ever since taking a law class in college. In your case, he had no idea if there was proof of wrongdoing, but he knew he could make it look as if there was. When he told Cheryl about you, she wanted in. She got the clerk’s job at Comfort Cove’s traffic division so she could have access to the evidence box. There was no reason for anyone to trace her to you or anyone who knew you.
“The plan was for Rob to plant some incriminating proof that the police didn’t do their job regarding Claire’s abduction. Rob told Cheryl that the police never tried to find your sister. That they were so certain the culprit had been Frank that they never looked anyplace else.”
He’d heard that from Rose. And Emma hadn’t denied her mothe
r’s assertions. She didn’t know them to be true. But she didn’t know that they weren’t.
“But Miller went looking for the box before they could get it back into evidence and the whole thing fell apart.”
“What was in it for Cheryl?”
“A quarter of the payoff.”
Her milk was getting warm. She didn’t want it, anyway.
“That’s it, then? Another dead end?” The missing box of evidence had nothing whatsoever to do with her sister’s whereabouts.
“That’s it.”
“Well, thank you. For everything.”
“I’m not giving up, Emma. I’m not going to quit working on your case.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be in touch if I hear anything else.”
“Thank you.” What else was there to say?
“You can call me anytime. If you think of anything else, or just need to talk, I’ll be here.”
Just like she was there for Tammy.
“Okay, I will. And…if you ever need to vent…about your mother and all…I’m here, too.” She needed other women in her life. Her journal said so.
“I might be taking you up on that sooner than you think.” The detective’s answer surprised her.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“We have a lead on the guy who took my sister, the guy who raped my mother. I can’t say anything more just yet, but when I can, I’d like it if I could call you.”
“I’d like that, too.” Emma heard a car out front and, phone in hand, got up to peek around the front window blind.
Chris’s truck was in her drive.
Hanging up with Lucy Hayes, tucking the knowledge of a new friendship inside her heart, Emma prepared to say goodbye to the man she’d been willing to kill for.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“LET ME JUST SAY what I have to say.” Chris didn’t even wait for her to invite him in. He had to speak first. Before she thought that anything he said had to do with the possibility of a baby.
He went straight to her living room. Sat on the couch. And looked around. “There aren’t any lights on in here.”
“I know.”
“You don’t ever come downstairs without turning on a light.”
“I turned them off after I came down.”
That meant something. He wasn’t sure what. He couldn’t get sidetracked.
“I don’t know if I could ever give up the sea, Emma. If I was in love with a woman, married to her, and she asked me to quit fishing, maybe I could.”
“If a woman loved you back, she’d never ask you to.”
“She would if having me out at sea scared her to death. If she couldn’t handle it,” he stated emphatically. “Anyway, that’s not what I came here to say. I’m not my father. But I’m a lot like him in some ways. If I ever fall in love, it will be with one woman until I die. No matter what.”
Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. She was standing about a foot away, close enough to touch. But he couldn’t reach for her.
“All of that aside, what I really have to say is that I don’t believe that fishermen have to be alone. I believe that being married to a fisherman is hard. That a woman has to be strong enough to deal with the lifestyle, but that it could work. All of that stuff I said, about it not working out, it was because I used fishing as an excuse not to risk my heart as my father had done.”
“You were afraid?” The odd note in her voice stopped him for a second. Was she smiling at him?
Or crying?
He wished she’d turn on a light.
Or come closer.
“I didn’t trust women.”
There. He’d said what he came to say. He’d been lying to himself. He hadn’t trusted Sara to be true to him. It wasn’t the sea that ran her off, it was his inability to commit completely to her that had done that. His horrified reaction to their possible pregnancy had stemmed from the idea that Sara would have his baby and be unfaithful to him while he was out earning the money that would feed them. He’d been petrified at the thought of being so irrevocably tied to a woman that he’d have to stay with her no matter what she did behind his back.
“Fishing is all I know,” he said aloud.
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because I had to be honest with you.”
“Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You’re a good man, Chris. I will never regret having known you.”
Her words reminded him of the note he’d left her that first morning in the hotel across from Citadel’s.
What an ass he’d been.
“You were willing to kill for me.”
“I’d have done the same for anyone.”
He didn’t doubt that. “When I saw what you were going to do, when I heard the gun go off, I…” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Hell, yes.”
* * *
LEAVING CHRIS IN the living room, Emma took her time opening a new bottle of merlot, and pouring two glasses generously full, but not so full that she spilled them as she carried them into the other room with trembling hands.
Settling next to him on the couch in the still-dark room, she held a glass out to him. “Here’s to truth, Chris,” she said, and watched him over the rim of her glass as she sipped.
He tipped his glass and drank.
“I’m not sure why you’re here, telling me this, but it doesn’t really matter.” With no plan, no analyzing or forethought, Emma started to talk.
“I’ve been keeping this journal.” It was her private secret. “More and more I’ve been looking at it. Reading it.”
“When do you have time to read?”
“It’s only six sentences long.”
“Six sentences?”
She nodded. Feeling tears burn the backs of her eyes, she said, “That day I found Rob in our bed with another woman…I was…empty. I knew I didn’t want him in my life for another second, but I didn’t know what would be left when he was gone. I didn’t plan to keep a journal. I never made a conscious decision to try to work through my thoughts. It just happened. And it helped. Anytime I felt absolutely certain about something, anytime I made a discovery about myself that felt completely true, I’d write it down.”
“And you came up with six truths?”
“Yes.”
His gaze serious, his eyes glistening with an emotion that took her back to the night she’d first heard him play the piano, he said, “I’d like to read them.”
The journal was in the drawer next to him.
She’d held it on her lap while she slept on the couch after Ramsey Miller had dropped her off at home last night.
She’d read it that evening when she’d come home from the doctor’s office.
And she’d known that she was meeting her true self.
“We have a lot of things against us,” she said. “I have an aversion to the docks, you live on them. I want to be loved by a man who loves me so much that love changes him. My mother will probably hate you. While I have to admit I didn’t hate being on the water, or even helping with the catch, I did hate throwing up the whole time we were out there. I’m eleven years younger than you are, and I most definitely want children. As many of them as I can have. But all that aside, I also know, clearly and unequivocally, that I love you, Chris Talbot. Not only that, I am in love with you.”
“Is that in your journal?”
“Some of it is.”
“The loving-me part?”
“Wait—” she held up her free hand to ward off his questions “—let me finish. I’m not asking you for anything. I’m just telling the truth. You said that age brings experience, which brings wisdom, and that being true, I’ve gained something really valuable from Rob Evert. I now know the difference between settling and living, and between security and being in love. I didn’t love Rob. And I know that now because of how I feel about you.”
She could see his eyes shining in the darkness. “I’m afraid of a lot of things, Chris. I’m afraid of the monsters out there who do terrible things to people. I’m afraid of living life without the feeling you bring into it. But I am most definitely not afraid of loving you. I would have killed Rob, without hesitation. And in that moment I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone but you.”
“Emma Sanderson, will you marry me?”
“What?”
“I think I was pretty clear.”
“Well, yes, but…” She sipped her wine, clinging to the glass with both hands. He drank, too. But he put his glass down afterward.
“It’s not going to be easy. For either one of us. But you’re up to whatever challenges life brings you, which means that you have what it takes to keep me on the straight and narrow and I…I just know that when that gun went off, when I saw Evert’s arm choking the air out of you, when I thought I might have lost you…every bit of hope I’d ever known went out of my life. I can’t live without hope, Emma.”
She’d been willing to do that. To give up hope. Even though she’d known that holding on to hope was the one thing she did best. Was it because Chris had become entwined with her hopes?
Hope wasn’t just about Claire. It was about all that life held. It was about living.
“You’re a wise man, Chris Talbot.”
“I’m an old man, Emma. Wisdom comes with age.”
“Wisdom comes to those who are willing to open their minds,” Emma said. “That’s what I tell my students.”
A Daughter's Story Page 22