by Anna Adams
“Evelyn decided what to give you on the spur of the moment.” Lydia’s skin warmed as she lied.
“How lovely, but she didn’t have to do that. I got a nice commission.”
“I think it’s more a thank-you because you supported her in buying Barker’s when I thought she should consider the other places,” Josh said.
“Also my job.” Geraldine twisted the bag closed. “Thanks again. I’ll call her later tonight. Lydia, you have much better color.”
“I’m improved, thank you. How are your grandsons?”
Josh’s fingers clenched hers, but the boys were their real reason for coming, and clearly things weren’t going well with them. Geraldine looked everywhere but at Lydia.
“Luke and Mitch are great. Just fine.”
One of the boys staggered down the stairs behind her, his hair oily, his dark khaki shirt big enough to accommodate his twin as well. He eyed Lydia with hostility. Then he saw Josh and scowled as if the juvenile authorities had shown up.
“Whaddaya want?”
“A word with your grandmother. This is Mitch, Lydia.” Josh’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on her. Mitch probably hadn’t missed it either. “I’d recognize him anywhere.”
“It’s nice to see you under better circumstances,” she offered.
Mitch glowered at her. “Yeah?”
She felt sick.
Geraldine sprang into action. “Thanks so much for the lobster. Tell your mother we’ll enjoy it, but I think we’ll have to wait for tomorrow night.”
“I’m not helping at your booth tonight,” Mitch said. “I have a date for that fish fry.”
“Shrimp boil.” Geraldine smiled, but a hint of anxiety leaked through. “The Rotary Club is holding a shrimp boil at the armory. Maybe you all planned to go?”
“My mother’s enlisted us to clean the shop,” Josh said. “I’m not sure when we’ll finish.” Something in his tone alerted Lydia as his glance brushed Mitch.
She sensed they’d be looking for the troubled boy later.
“We’ll probably be there until late,” Geraldine said.
“Gran.” Mitch was clearly trying to shut his grandmother up.
She only smiled. “Luke already left. Did you walk from the shop?” Then she saw the car. “Oh. I thought you might have seen him along the way.”
“Gran.” Mitch came to the door. “I don’t know what you think this guy can do for us, but Luke and I don’t want him.” He turned to Josh. “So leave us alone.”
It’d take more than one angry kid to put Josh off. “Stop by the store, Mitch.” He lowered his voice. Lydia had rarely visited his office or watched him in court after she’d stopped feeling safe. She’d forgotten how subtly he defused a situation. “Mother packed cookies in case anyone dropped by.”
His refusal to get angry worked the opposite effect on Mitch. The boy turned on him, almost out of control. “Why don’t you get the fu—”
Geraldine slammed the door before he could finish. Lydia stared at the painted panels, an unwilling witness.
“He could hurt her.”
“I don’t think he will.” Josh nodded at her doubt. “He was different with Luke. He was obviously in charge. He’s still struggling with Geraldine for power.”
Lydia decided on bluntness. “We’ve proven we’re the worst at assessing actual intimidation.”
Josh pulled her down the steps. “I see your point. Why don’t I look for him later and maybe have a word with him about Geraldine?”
“And Luke.” She touched her stomach. “I don’t care if I’m overreacting. One day he’ll grow up, and surely regret hurting his own family.”
Josh opened the car door for her again. “When I was Mitch’s age, I’d have given a lot for someone like Geraldine.”
“I’d like a few minutes alone with his parents. We nearly split up because we lost our son, and they’ve abandoned their boys.”
Josh’s set expression made Lydia realize how much the Dawsons’ situation was reminding him of his own childhood.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she said when he took the steering wheel, “but I wonder if we should make sure Geraldine knows what Mitch is doing to Luke.”
“Good idea, but what if she does know? She loves both boys, and she might lie to protect him.”
“Surely she couldn’t choose one at the risk of harm to the other?”
“I don’t know.” He started the car. “She told me about the DUI, but she didn’t tell me everything. If she knows, she’s ashamed or deliberately closing her eyes.” He looked at Lydia as he put the car in gear. “Which we know to be a mistake.”
He had changed. He was taking Mitch’s threats seriously.
“EVELYN, what would you think of knocking down this wall and giving your customers a view of the kitchen?” Lydia seemed engrossed in structural changes.
“What? Knock down the wall?” His mother fluttered with alarm as if Lydia had suggested maiming a dear friend.
Josh leaned his mop against the wall and eased outside, holding the bell so that it barely tinkled. Wind grabbed at his hair and sprayed ocean water at his face.
Grandma Trudy would be lucky if someone looked up from the sidewalk on an evening like this. Moving beyond the shop’s windows, he dialed Geraldine’s number, but got her answering machine. “Just calling to say thanks again from my mother—” He checked the anger he found hard to control. “—since we left so abruptly. I hope you and the boys enjoy the lobster.”
Lydia’s anxiety for Geraldine was contagious. The explanation for her unanswered phone might be simple. She could be out with another client, or she might have left for the armory already.
Sand scudded along the almost empty boardwalk. He lowered his head to blink a handful out of his eyes. It’d take a stern customer to shop for property in weather like this.
He returned to the store. Lydia had joined his dad in repainting the white walls.
“Lydia, what the hell?”
She and his father turned and then froze, their long-handled rollers raised.
“It hasn’t even been four weeks. You shouldn’t be painting.”
“I’m fine.” Color flooded her face. “Look at everything I’ve done since we came here. Besides, I like to paint.” As if she realized she was holding the roller in a parody of the Statue of Liberty, she lowered it and his father followed. “Thanks for asking, though.”
“Maybe I was abrupt.” She nodded. He took the roller. She could listen to him for once. “But, Dad, you know Lydia’s not supposed to overexert.”
“Blame your mother,” Bart said. “She was almost hysterical at the thought of touching a nail in this building. She scared Lydia.”
Josh leaned over to dip the drying roller in paint. “I can see that, but take shelter with a book—in a chair, Lydia.”
“I’m not an invalid. I’m better and you’re embarrassing me.”
“In front of my dad?”
“If she’s all right to chase after troubled teens, she’s fine to paint. Give the woman a break.”
Josh looked up, willing to accept a challenge, even from his father.
“Back off,” Lydia said. “We’re all on the same side, and if you two don’t lower the tension, I’ll go suggest your mother add enclosed booths in here.”
“I can’t afford that.” Bart waved his son toward the wall. “Step up. If we finish this, we get shrimp.”
That suited Josh. A discreet new look at Mitch and Luke and the friends they hung out with would tell him plenty.
“WE’VE BEEN UP and down this place three times.” Lydia patted her stomach. “I’m so full of shrimp it’s starting to spill out my ears, but I’m starting to think Mitch kept Luke away once he thought we might show up.”
Josh linked his fingers with hers. “After I complained to you and Dad, I’m wearing you out. Why don’t you sit and I’ll make one more circuit. If I don’t find them, we’ll go.”
“I’ll lean on a spot near the door
.” She took a conspiratorial tone. “They won’t get past me.”
Laughing, he pulled her close and kissed her temple. He walked away smiling, and Lydia enjoyed her view of him in jeans and a sweater that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. How long since she’d looked at him and thought, “That man is my husband. I’m a lucky woman”?
She cracked a small smile at the grizzled fisherman, who was holding up the wall nearest the door. He’d clearly come to the community shrimp boil straight from his boat. His aroma could put a woman off.
He held up his plate. “Starving,” he said.
She nodded.
“You’re Bart Quincy’s daughter-in-law.”
“I forget what a small place Kline is.”
“Yeah—everybody knows everybody. We’re all surprised Josh is back here. This town was always too small for him.”
“No.” She defended him without thinking. “He just never has much time off from work.” She leveled a look at the other man’s salt-stained, fishy overalls. “You know how that is.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They reached an amicable silence.
It turned out that waiting at the door was the best way to find the Dawsons. Pushing his brother ahead of him, Mitch parted Luke from the crowded floor. Lydia tried to make herself small. Luke saw her. He dropped his head and then stopped, coming to a decision. He faced his brother, bracing both hands on the door.
“I’m not going, man. I’ve had it. You want it—you go. I’m staying here.”
“Chicken.” Mitch made the classic clucking sound, but Luke only waved a disgusted hand at his brother and stomped away. Mitch caught up with Luke, leaning over to say something that was plainly a threat.
Whatever he’d said made Luke stare at his brother and then shove him in anger. Laughing, Mitch leered at Lydia before he continued his exit from the armory.
Luke gave her one last wary glance and then sank back into the crowds. She hated his fear. She wrapped her arms around her waist. No child should feel like that, no matter how old he was.
Lydia straightened, looking for Josh, but seeing no sign of him. Mitch had to be up to trouble. She couldn’t let him go. He might hurt someone else. She wanted to loathe him, with the kind of rage she’d felt toward Vivian Durance, but he was just a kid, an angry kid, whose family had let him down.
He reminded her of Josh, and he might do some thing in this mood that would change his life forever.
She had to go after him.
“Excuse me,” she said to her fisherman friend and darted around him, through the door. Down the sidewalk, buffeted by wind and sea and rain, Mitch was hurrying alongside the empty shop fronts.
Lydia held back. He probably couldn’t hear her in this weather, but she gave him time to get ahead of her.
Fighting the storm and sand and cold that drilled straight to her bones, Lydia found she’d given him too large a lead. She lost him. When she looked up from a strong buffet of rain, he’d gone. Simply disappeared.
She looked back at the armory, at the far end of the boardwalk. No light, other than the dim ones left by their owners, shone from any building. Mitch must have ducked down one of the narrow alleys.
She turned back, staring down the darkened streets, waiting for movement, since she could hardly see. Tucked into the corner of a photo shop, she stood stock-still when Mitch swung out of an alley.
Holding something—a box—in his hands, he peered just as Lydia had. He didn’t want to be seen. She relaxed as far as she could into darkness.
He emptied the box into his hand. Something clinked, even through the howling wind. He dropped the box and ground it into the sidewalk. Then he strode off as if bright sunlight and calm seas beckoned.
Lydia waited for him to go back inside the armory. Her heart pounded as she ran for the box. His shoe had all but glued it to the wet sidewalk, but she read the blurred print. Bullets. .22 caliber.
She ran.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOSH’S PHONE RANG. He opened it, and someone was speaking, but he couldn’t discern words over the crowd noise.
“Lydia? Is that you?”
“Who else? I’ve called you three times. Where are you?”
“In the armory. I guess I didn’t hear my phone.” Wind was roaring from hers. “Where are you?” He started for the front doors.
A family turned in unison ahead of him and he saw his wife. He shut his phone and went to her. She wasn’t hurt, but he took inventory to make sure.
“Let me go. We have to find Mitch.”
“Why so urgent?”
“Look at this.”
He took the tattered, wet cardboard. “Bullets? Where did you get it?”
“Mitch broke into a store down one of those alleys toward your mom’s place, and then he emptied the bullets into his hand and dropped this. If he took these, he must have a gun. We have to tell Geraldine.”
Josh shook his head. “I like Geraldine, but she’s not doing them any good. I’m calling Simon.”
Lydia caught his arms. Her eyes were almost too bright. “I care so much about this kid because he makes me think of you.”
He tried to shake her off. “I was never like that boy. I had real problems, and I never hurt anyone if I could help it.”
“Because you made good choices.” She grabbed his arms again. His wife possessed more strength than he’d realized. “If someone had helped your family, maybe no one would have gone to jail. You might not have lost your sister. Give Geraldine a chance, but if she can’t do what she has to, we’ll call Simon.”
“I understand this situation better than you do, Lydia. He could hurt you.”
“I know that.”
Tempted to argue, he made himself stop. He headed for the quietest corner he could find. Lydia stuck like glue. Geraldine answered on the first ring.
“I have to tell you something about Mitch.” He related Lydia’s story. “We think he has a gun if he’s stealing bullets.”
Geraldine was silent. For a moment. He turned toward the huge room, searching for either of her grandsons.
“Luke?” he said in a whisper to Lydia.
Shrugging, she pointed to the citizens of Kline, crammed into the building.
“Mitch doesn’t have a gun.” Geraldine’s voice sank to a whisper. She cleared her throat. “I’ll go home and search his room before he gets there.” Her dread traveled all the way through the phone.
He didn’t blame her. What grandparent wanted to go through her grandson’s personal things, expecting a lethal weapon? “Searching isn’t enough. You have to tell Simon Chambers.”
“I will. I don’t want anything to happen to Mitch.”
“Or to Luke and you. I think he gave Luke that black eye.”
“I’ll take care of this, Josh. Thanks for your help.” She shut him out with a New Englander’s repressiveness.
“I’ll have to tell Simon if you don’t. Mitch is angry with my wife, and I won’t leave her in danger. That kid will be better off if he explains what he’s doing and why.”
Geraldine thanked him again and hung up. Josh shut his phone and faced Lydia, who was lost in thought. “Why aren’t you afraid?”
“I’ve been wondering that same thing.” She laid her hand across his forearm. “I think it’s because we’re together. Really together, for the first time in years.”
She broke his heart. It was that simple—because she’d doubted him, and now she didn’t. “I was always on your side,” he said.
“I couldn’t tell.” He pulled her as close as she could get, close enough that he seemed to feel her heart beating. “I’m not confused now,” she said. “I know I matter most to you. Neither of us knew how to work at marriage before.”
He kissed the top of her head, then glanced back at his phone.
He dialed Geraldine again. She answered, but her breath rattled. “I’m busy, Josh. What do you want?”
“Has he come home?”
“No. I’m
still searching his room.”
“Have you called Simon?”
“Not yet.” She stopped whatever she was doing to sound defensive. “I will.”
“I can’t wait for you to do that. I have to because of Lydia.”
“Josh, please.”
“I’m sorry, Geraldine. I have to protect my family, too. I am sorry.”
He hung up and then called the police station. A dispatcher connected him with Simon.
“What can I do for you, Josh?”
“Hold on.” He passed the phone to Lydia and she told her story about chasing Mitch in the dark. The more he thought about that, the angrier he grew. They seemed to have switched sides on the safety argument.
“What?” She craned her neck to look around the room. “I see a patrolman by the punch bowl.” Startling Josh, she laughed. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to get him in trouble. Consider it community policing.”
Josh made an impatient move, and she got back on track. “We’ll go to him, but I haven’t seen Mitch or Luke since I came back.”
The patrolman’s phone rang immediately after Lydia hung up. He was getting off the line by the time they reached him. He shook Lydia’s hand.
“You’re supposed to stay with me until the chief gets here.”
“Right,” she said.
“Do you know Mitch and Luke?” Josh asked, moving so that Lydia was somewhat sheltered between him and the cop.
“Unfortunately.” The younger man scanned the crowds. “They’ve been headed down this road for about a year. Too bad, too, because I remember when they came by the station as part of some school program to wash the patrol cars, not to soap them.”
“Alcohol and a gun up the ante,” Josh said.
“I’m surprised at you saying that.”
“Me, too.” Josh put one arm around his wife. She’d changed him. He looked at her anxious face. He’d changed her, too.
Finally, Simon arrived and took notes as Lydia repeated her story. There was still no sign of the teenagers.