by Mary Behre
Sweat trickled down his temples. He wiped it away, panting. He wouldn’t go back to Kandahar. Not in reality and certainly not in a memory. He fucking wouldn’t go back. He was home. Stateside. Permanently this time. And the attack had been months ago.
“Niall?” Ross’s voice was thin. Distant.
Niall swung his gaze to meet his brother’s wide-eyed, worried expression. Ross righted the stool but didn’t move closer.
With a calm Niall didn’t feel, he grinned and gestured to the computer. “I hate math.”
Ross glanced at the darkened screen and back, doubt digging grooves around his mouth. “If you want to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Niall feigned confusion. The last thing he wanted to do was to discuss his claustrophobia with his younger brother. Or the disaster that had caused it.
The only living person who’d even had a clue what Niall had been through was a bartender who hadn’t bothered to give him her correct phone number after a single night of mind-blowing sex.
He wasn’t going to think about her. Hadn’t he told himself that twice daily since he’d returned to Tidewater in May and discovered he had the wrong number?
A lesser man might have broken down and called Heaven’s Gate trying to find her after he returned stateside. Not that he had. Not that he’d heard she’d left her job shortly after graduation. And certainly not that he’d been told in aggravatingly clear terms that no personal information would be given out on Hannah, since Niall hadn’t bothered to learn her last name.
Fuck it.
“Bro?” Ross laid a hand on Niall’s shoulder, concern in his light green eyes.
The haven in the doorway evaporated. The walls of the tiny room shrank two sizes again. Too many people . . . too small a space.
“Excuse me.” Niall sidled out of the room.
Unlike the little dark gray office, the kitchen was large and gleaming white. Granted, there were things both rooms shared, like wire racks lining every available wall space.
But his office shelves were loaded with books, extra bags of flour and sugar, reams of paper, and files. The racks in the oversized kitchen were loaded with dishes, canned goods, pots, pans, plates, and utensils. Two sets of everything. The previous owners had kept to the kashrut, the body of Jewish law dealing with food, when serving kosher meals. While the Boxing Cat didn’t need two sets of everything, it came in handy since Niall had added certified gluten-free options to the menu.
On the wall to his right hung a bulletin board littered with schedules, notices, various pictures, notes, and business cards. Next to that was the sink. Over it hung a magnetic knife rack covered in the best cutlery their business could afford.
In the center of the room, between three pillars, were two steel worktables. Two cooks ran the kitchen. The men were dressed in crisp white chef coats and chef pants covered in ugly dancing chili peppers. With the fluidity of dancers, they moved around the kitchen and each other as they prepared meals. The air was rife with the welcoming scents of oregano, caramelized onions, and freshly baked pizza. Niall’s stomach rumbled.
“Hey, Paulie,” Ross called out to the short, young chef. He spoke around a mouthful of apple. “Wanna hit the clubs tonight?”
That single question had Niall grinding his teeth to stem the flood of words burning his lips. Their business was barely hanging on and his brother wanted to go out drinking. Again. No doubt to get drunk enough to screw some random woman in another pointless attempt to prove to the world that he wasn’t gay.
Wish the damn kid would grow up and come out of the closet already.
Ross jabbed a friendly elbow in Niall’s side. “You should come too, big brother. You need a night out. Virgil can handle closing after the dinner rush. Right, Virg?”
Niall glanced at the taller chef who’d been on staff for more than thirty years. At sixty, Virgil looked eighty. Skin leathery and bronzed. Hands twisted by arthritis. But his mind was sharper than some recruits fresh out of boot camp. And he was still the best chef in Tidewater.
Virgil lazily shrugged his shoulders and said in a thick southern Tidewater drawl, “Sure can. Y’all go out and have some fun. You boys work too hard, especially you, Niall. Go on out and live a little while you’re still young enough to do it. Why, if I was forty years younger, I’d be right there with you.”
“Not tonight.” Niall shook his head, then noticed a yellow sticky tacked to the bulletin board. He’d put it there yesterday, before he’d left to help his father move his mother into the rehabilitation center. “Ross. You did deposit last night’s money at the bank, right?”
Ross screwed up his face in a pained expression. “Ah, crap, Niall. I forgot.”
A hot ball formed in Niall’s belly. Training warred with breeding. He wanted to give his brother a proper dressing down, but he couldn’t do it in front of the staff. Instead, he counted to ten silently.
“Fine,” he said, hoping the venom didn’t leech into his voice. Two months. Ross had been in charge of the Boxing Cat for two months since their parents had decided to take an early retirement after Pop’s heart attack. Their retirement plans took a sharp turn two weeks ago when a drunken jet skier crashed into the kayak Niall’s mom had been paddling. Thank God, she hadn’t been killed. That could have given Pop a second heart attack.
At this rate, Ross would give the man another one.
Not if Niall could help it. He was here now. He’d handle things, starting with the bank deposit. Turning on his heel, Niall returned to the tomb of an office, beelining straight for the safe.
In under a minute, he’d pulled out the bank deposit bag, relocked the safe, and walked back into the kitchen. Both chefs kept their eyes on their work and their mouths closed. Only Ross had the temerity to try to pick up their conversation.
“So we on for the club tonight, Bro?”
The cooks hustled to their respective stoves, as if trying to blend in with the walls.
Niall’s training gave way to his temper. He stepped closer to his brother and dropped his voice to a deadly whisper only Ross could hear.
“I’d worry more about doing your job and less about partying unless you want to see the Boxing Cat go under. Now I’m taking the money to the bank, like you should have done last night. Then I am taking the hope chest over to Mom and Pop. Instead of partying tonight, why don’t you join us at the rehab center for dinner?”
Ross scrunched his face like a child. “I hate it there. Why don’t we bring them over here?”
Niall was pretty sure he was going to break a molar from grinding his teeth. Inhaling a breath for patience he said, “Mom broke her leg. In three places. Doctor says she cannot leave the building, let alone her floor for another six weeks. Whatever. Don’t join us. I suggest while I’m out today, you run this business the way I know Pop trained you and less like a spoiled frat boy. The toilet in the men’s room is leaking, the light bulbs are burned out in the pantry again, and the walls and floors behind the shelves need cleaning before we get another surprise inspection. Do it.”
“We’ve got staff for all that.”
“Wrong.” That single word had come out harsher and louder than he’d intended. Counting to ten again, Niall reminded himself that pummeling his brother into the cement floor would only drive their mother to tears. “The people who work for us are waitstaff and cooks. You don’t want people fixing the toilet, then handling food. This is why you and I are here. We do the maintenance, the hiring and the firing of staff, and the paperwork. The waitstaff handle the food. Period. Since I’m going to be out for the rest of the day, and there’s no one to hire or fire, that leaves you to clean.”
Ross’s cell phone beeped. He grabbed it from the holster on his hip and checked the message. His face fell. He looked like the sad little boy he’d been the day Niall had told him he was leaving to join the Marines. “Uh, we might have a sma
ll problem.”
A knot formed in Niall’s empty stomach. “What do you mean?”
“That was the client. The guest list just grew.” Ross inhaled a deep breath and said quickly, “She’s just added twenty more people to the dinner. We’re going to need to hire more servers to keep it covered.”
Fucking perfect.
* * *
HANNAH CLASPED THE heart-shaped sterling silver locket in her hand and allowed the psychometric vision to take over. All around her, present-day Tidewater dulled to gray shadows and muted sounds. Her consciousness spiraled down to the world captured in the metal between her fingers.
Instantly, she was in someone else’s body. Thinking someone else’s thoughts. Feeling someone else’s feelings. It was bittersweet, because for the moment, she was in her mother’s body.
Her first mother. The woman who’d loved and nurtured her until Hannah had been three years old. Until the breast cancer had snuffed out the woman’s life just shy of her thirty-first birthday. And this was the closest Hannah could come to touching her. Dipping into the memory carried by the energy wrapped in the locket.
Clutching the pendant tighter, Hannah let go of the modern world and delved further into her mother’s memory. The scent of the magnolias sitting on her mother’s table was fragrant and sweet. The hazy watercolor painting of three roses hanging on the wall came into sharp focus. And the connection was complete.
Love overwhelmed Hannah as she watched through her mother’s eyes, while the woman carefully cut and glued the picture of three little girls into the pendant’s right half and her own picture in the left. “Never forget me, my darlings. Momma loves you.”
Less of a participant and more of someone who had no control over the body she temporarily inhabited, Hannah mentally stepped back and just observed. Her mother’s consciousness mingled with hers and she temporarily became her mother.
She glanced out the front window. Across the street, a royal blue Geo Metro was parked in front of a pitched-roof brick church. A circular stained glass window depicted Jesus dressed in white robes with arms spread wide, as if beckoning welcome to all who passed by. A pair of three-foot-high Japanese maples stood as proud red-leafed bookends on either side of the front steps. The small patch of neatly trimmed bright green grass lined the walkway to the front door. Someone had even taken care to edge the white public sidewalk.
Pain stabbed from the center of her left breast. She sucked in a breath and held it as she glanced from the pictures of her daughters to the church across the street. Her chest ached and not just where the doctors had stitched her up after the biopsy earlier that week. Slowly, she expelled air and pain. Not much longer now. Two months or two years, the doctors weren’t certain. But what hurt most was the knowledge she’d never see her daughters marry in their church.
In the distance, a horn beeped rhythmically five times.
“Two bits,” she sang, finishing the seven-note musical couplet out of habit.
Her heart sank as realization set in. Earlier that day she’d learned exactly what kind of selfish bastard he was. Her husband, the father of her children, was a polygamist. And she’d thought the cancer diagnosis was bad.
Sick to her stomach, she watched the old green Chevy truck turn into the driveway and debated her decision. If she did this, her daughters would have no father and, all too soon, no mother either. But she couldn’t live a lie and the selfish jerk had hardly been there since Hannah had been born.
The man behind the wheel tugged off his baseball cap, revealing a swath of hair so black it appeared almost blue with the sunlight beating on it through the windshield. He wore large sunglasses, had a bushy black mustache and a weary smile. He hopped out of the truck just below the Woodshire Avenue street sign. He carried a small red-wrapped package with a silver bow.
A gift from his trip. Another lie meant to convince her their life was something it wasn’t. The sight of it made her stomach pitch and seemed to ignite the pain in her chest again.
Aching and gasping with redoubled pain, she glanced at the picture of the three smiling siblings and whispered, “I’m sorry, my darling girls, but it’s better to be alone than with a liar.”
Hannah pulled back from the vision and released the pendant, letting it dangle from the chain around her neck. She took a moment to center herself.
“I’m Hannah Halloran.” She slowed her rapid breathing and let go of the last of the lingering pain from her mother’s cancer. But it was hard. The only time she could even remember what her first mother sounded like was during a psychometric event.
While she took the pendant with her everywhere, she’d touched it only a few times since her adopted parents had given it to her last winter.
The morning after she’d spent the night with her handsome Marine.
A different sort of pain snuck into the space in her heart he’d somehow claimed in those few hours, but she refused to let it ruin the memory. She’d known he’d leave and not return. She’d seen the signs before their first kiss and still she’d taken him to her bed. Thank God!
The snippet of sorrow at his never calling was worth every second they’d spent together. Not that she’d had much time to grieve that day.
Her parents had surprised her with the news that her birth sisters were searching for her. She’d grown up with the memory of her adoption at the age of three. Still, having a private detective come to Fincastle looking for her was unexpected. Something she’d had little time to process that morning because her parents followed up the big news with something even more amazing. Her mother’s locket.
They had expected her to be angry for keeping the chain and pendant from her for almost twenty years, but anger was the last thing she’d felt. She understood their reason for keeping it sealed in a bag in their home safe. Their care of the locket kept her mother’s energy undiluted. Had it been handled repeatedly for twenty years, the vision Hannah received would likely have dimmed with time.
She tried explaining this, but it didn’t erase the worry from their faces. It was their worry that kept her from returning the call to the private detective of Tidewater Security Specialists. As illogical as it seemed, her wonderful, caring parents feared she’d choose her old family over her current one. Like adoption made their bond somehow less.
Sometimes parents could be so silly. She loved Axel and Rosalind Halloran for giving her a home and a family and better life than she could ever have hoped for in the system. So she’d waited six months before telling them she intended to spend the summer in Tidewater getting to know the sisters she only vaguely remembered. Perhaps it was illogical to want more when she already had so much. But as her father had so often said when she asked why they’d chosen to adopt her and not another child, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
And right now, her heart wanted to find her sisters. But her head buzzed as she fought to withdraw from the vision.
She’d sunk too far into her mother’s memory and the present seemed like a faded dream. “I’m Hannah Halloran,” she said again, trying to center herself firmly in the current reality.
She tugged off the necklace and dropped it into the small zippered pocket of her tie-dyed backpack. She repeated her name twice more before she broke with the past and was fully herself again.
The Woodshire Avenue from her vision was a bit different from the Woodshire Avenue of present day. The car across the street had changed from a Geo Metro to a Prius. The maple trees were no longer dwarfish but towered at eighteen feet. The pitched-roof church with the stained glass window still stood tall and proud.
Hannah turned on her heel and sought her mother’s house. This was the right spot. But it wasn’t her mother’s cottage. The little house had been torn down. It was now a parking lot for a restaurant.
Hannah stared at the old, two-story, Victorian-style building and something tickled her memory. Laughter and t
oy dolls at a tea party on a rickety porch came and went quickly like a dream.
There was nothing decrepit about this building. It had clearly been part of the city revitalization project, along with every other building on the street, save the church. Only the church had remained ageless.
The restaurant’s mauve walls and dark blue shutters gave it a charming old-world appearance. The front porch was freshly painted with sturdy steps that led to the grassy front yard. At the edge of the short yard, someone had hung a large wooden sign with an orange tabby cat wearing only gloves and boxing with its shadow.
Now that had definitely not been there all those years ago.
Hannah couldn’t suppress a grin at the whimsical feline drawing. It was a sign to keep fighting. Keep going. Exactly what she needed.
A breeze kicked up, carrying with it the salty scent of ocean on the Tidewater air.
Man, you really can smell the salt in the air, even five miles from the beach.
The wind also carried the delicious smells of cilantro, bacon, and oregano carried from the restaurant’s open window. Her stomach rumbled. Okay, maybe she needed a bit of food too.
A tall blond man wearing a garishly bright Hawaiian shirt plopped a Help Wanted sign in the front window of the Boxing Cat.
Hannah couldn’t stifle the grin. Another sign that her trip to Tidewater was destined. They needed help and she needed a job for the summer.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
“Momma,” she whispered into the wind, “I’m home.”
CHAPTER 4
“YOUR AURA IS off. Did you have another fight with your brother?”
Hannah sat at the bistro table near the window, toying with the business card of the private detective. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on the pretty waitress and the man who had posted the Help Wanted sign. Not that she could help it. At three thirty in the afternoon, the place was virtually empty.
Hannah had walked in as eight people, in boring business suits, shuffled out. Only four other people were in there and they sat around the corner in the next room. An empty place wasn’t uncommon in Fincastle, but in a city the size of Tidewater with more than a million residents, it seemed strange.