“I hear you.” Carly said. “I went out to the Fisher place today to check on Tammy and the kids. I was trying to get them to apply for assistance. Darren was weird and intimidating.”
Stevie shot her a look. “Next time you go out there, call me. I carry a gun.”
“I will. Mrs. Fisher had taken the kids to visit her sister. With just Darren there, the place had a whole different vibe. I’ve had enough of him, but I worry about those kids.”
“I know you do, but promise me you won’t go out there alone.”
“I won’t. I hate to admit it, but he scared me today.” Carly rubbed her forehead. “But back to Dad. You think someone caused him to have a heart attack?”
“I don’t know what to think.” Stevie got up and paced a few feet away and back. “But something doesn’t feel right. I was wondering if you could ask Seth to help. He’s part of the new task force on this drug investigation.”
“If you want Seth’s help, you’ll have to ask him. We had a huge fight.”
Stevie stopped and pivoted to face her. “Doesn’t matter how much you fight. He’ll do anything for you.”
Carly felt her eyes bulge. “What are you talking about? I can’t get anywhere with Seth. We can’t have a single conversation without him going berserk.”
Stevie shook her head. “If you snapped your fingers, Seth would come running like a golden retriever. Or maybe a Rottweiler.”
“Doesn’t feel that way,” Carly said. “It always feels like he does the opposite of what I ask.”
“I’ll bet you a dollar he says yes,” Stevie challenged.
“You’re on.” Carly dug the lighter out of the backpack. “Now I really want to blow something up.”
Stevie grinned. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER NINE
Crickets chirped and frogs croaked as Seth lifted his sleeping daughter out of the backseat. He draped her limp body over his shoulder and bumped the door closed with his foot. Patsy was waiting, her front door open and welcoming, as always.
Smiling, she pointed up the stairs, and Seth carried Brianna to the room she usually used when she slept over at Grandma’s house, the room that used to belong to Carly and Stevie. He flipped the light switch. Posters of Disney princesses all but covered the pale-purple walls.
The oak floor creaked under his foot as he transferred Brianna from his shoulder to the twin bed closest to the door. A pair of pajamas lay across the foot of the mattress. Not wanting to wake her, Seth just slipped off her sneakers and tucked her under the covers. Turning off the light, he left the door ajar.
He descended the stairs and poked his head into the living room. Patsy sat in her favorite overstuffed chair. Her feet were curled under her body. He hesitated in the doorway. What did a man say to his soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law?
“I didn’t change her clothes,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake her.”
Patsy looked up from the photo album in her lap. She pulled off her reading glasses and waved them in the air. “A little dirt never hurt anyone.”
“Good night.” He backed away.
“Seth?”
The voice pulled him back as if he were an obedient child. Patsy had that way about her, a combination of sweet and firm, love and expectation.
“Sit down.”
He dropped into the chair angled next to hers, the one that Bill used to sit in every night to read his paper. The seat felt too big, as if Seth would never be able to fill the dent in the cushion left by Bill’s body.
She set her album on the coffee table next to an open book. Thirty-year-old pictures of a young Bill and Patsy filled the pages. In every sepia-tinted photo, their arms were around each other, as they had been in life. Seth recognized Bill’s handwriting on the open book’s pages. His journals. Patsy was reading Bill’s accounts of his days and looking at pictures of the corresponding years. Loss swelled in Seth’s heart.
He’d been a late-life baby, an only child. His parents had died years ago, and he’d left New Hampshire with no regrets. When he’d married Carly, he’d been folded into the Taylor clan. It had taken him a long time to adjust to their constant presence. At times he’d resented what had felt like intrusion, but now he missed them almost as much as he missed Carly. He hadn’t appreciated what he’d had until it was gone.
Patsy leaned forward. “You know I love you.”
The words struck a jarring chord in Seth’s heart. He could hear the but on his mother-in-law’s tongue. She’d never given him a harsh word, not even after her daughter left him to move home, and up until this moment, she’d never butted in either. But Seth had an uncomfortable feeling that was about to change.
“I love her.” The words slipped out before he could stop them, frustration compressing his chest and weakening his normal reserve.
“You’re a good man, and I know you love my daughter, but love isn’t enough. Bill and I were married for a long time. Marriage involves a lot of give and take.”
“I never saw you and Bill fight.”
“We didn’t fight often, but we talked every day. We didn’t let issues fester.”
“I think that ship has sailed halfway to India by now.” Seth dropped his face into his hands. “Besides, you were home. Carly and I both work. Depending on my shift, there were days we barely saw each other.”
“I had four kids under the age of twelve. There were days I was barely awake when Bill got home.”
“You left your career to raise your kids.” He regretted the words as they left his lips. He sounded petulant.
“I did. That was my choice. I did it willingly, not because Bill made me. Never once in all the years we were married did Bill make me feel like his job was more important than what I did.”
“But—” He almost said “it was” but stopped himself just in time. His gaze swept the homey Taylor house. This was what he’d wanted when he married Carly: a bunch of kids, some animals, home cooking, and a wife who was content to take care of it all. Instead he’d gotten a woman who was driven to improve everyone else’s life instead of theirs. “It isn’t that I think her job isn’t important.”
“How could you?” Patsy said. “What could be more important than protecting children in need?”
God, he hated when people pointed that out.
“You’re a stubborn man, Seth, and a strong one. You want what you want.”
“Did you ever regret giving up your career?” he asked.
Patsy had been a promising folk singer when she’d chucked it all to settle down on the farm. “This isn’t about me. I couldn’t do what Carly does. I’m not strong enough. I couldn’t deal with seeing children suffer and not being able to fix everything. Can you imagine walking into a home with three hungry kids where the only food in the kitchen is a jar of mayonnaise? I couldn’t handle the shortcomings of the legal system or be satisfied with working within its boundaries. Nor would I have any patience for the reams of paperwork she sits up till midnight finishing or being reprimanded in court because a box was checked incorrectly on a form.” She waved a hand toward the back of the house. “Obviously I have to take everything in and rescue it.”
Maybe Patsy was right. Maybe there was no resolving the differences between him and Carly. Maybe he wanted what she couldn’t give him.
“I hate both of us working crazy hours, and it’s not like I can quit my job. We couldn’t live on her salary,” he snapped, anger eating away at his self-control.
Patsy gave him that I’m-disappointed-in-you look that always made him feel about as tall as a toy soldier.
“I understand that you’re frustrated. But you can’t say that you love her while you’re trying to change who she is. I think you need to ask yourself if you really love Carly or if you’ve cast her into a role that you love.”
Seth lifted his heavy head. His entire body felt weighted down.
“She doesn’t do it for the money,” Patsy said.
Seth
bit off the sarcastic obviously that wanted to roll off his lips. “I know.” Deep down, he did realize his wife was driven by a true need to help others.
“Do you know that she has room in her heart for more than you and Brianna? It’s not a you-or-them situation.”
Seth sighed. “But that’s how it feels when she leaves in the middle of the night because of some crisis.”
“How is that different from you being called away off-hours?”
“I don’t know. It just is.” And yes, he was aware his response sounded lame, archaic in a 1950s way.
“Do you know what’s happening during one of those crises?”
“She doesn’t like to talk about it with me, but I do.” He’d provided backup to social services in his patrol days.
“When she gets called in the middle of the night, it means some child is in immediate danger. A baby with broken bones. Toddlers left alone while their junkie mother goes out for heroin. A father in a drunken rage.”
“All those situations are dangerous and exactly why I don’t like her job.”
“Did you know she doesn’t tell you about her job because she knows you don’t want to hear it?” Patsy said in an oh-really-Mr.-Smarty-Pants? voice.
Seth recoiled from the sting. Carly never talked about her work with him, but then he didn’t like to bring his work home either. It hadn’t occurred to him that Carly was intentionally holding back because she didn’t think he could handle the truth. He was supposed to be the person she could talk to about anything. She should have shared all her fears and frustrations with him. Instead he’d cut her off. The revelation flooded him with shame.
“And that, Seth, is the problem,” Patsy said. “Until you accept Carly as she is, not as you want her to be, you aren’t going to get her back.”
The smell of damp meadow grass welcomed Carly back to the cabin. She slung her backpack strap over one shoulder and headed for the porch steps. The moon was full, but the roof overhang shadowed the front porch. Darkness hadn’t fallen when she’d left, and she’d forgotten to turn on the porch light.
Had Dad really been murdered? Her heart reeled with the possibility that anyone would want to hurt Bill Taylor, but her mind knew that all cops accumulated enemies. Her father had protected the people of Solitude, and in doing so had put criminals behind bars.
Crossing the dark porch, she tripped on an uneven board and dropped her keys. They hit the wood with a metallic thunk. She stooped to pick them up.
“Ms. Taylor?”
Carly jumped at the voice emanating from the darkness. A shadow stepped around the corner of the cabin.
Eyes on the large figure, Carly scooped up her keys. She sorted through them blindly and clutched the large vehicle key in her hand like a knife. “What do you want?”
His shape, large and burly, seemed familiar. Was this the man who’d watched her from the lake earlier?
“I just want to talk to you.” He stepped into the moonlight. His face was familiar. Not a man, but a teenage boy with an atypically mature frame. Gary Fisher.
“Gary.” She relaxed her hand.
“I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“I was just startled,” she said. “But you really shouldn’t have come here. You should have called me.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
Though she didn’t think Gary was dangerous, the darkness created an unwelcome sense of vulnerability.
“Let me turn on the light. Have a seat.” She pointed toward an Adirondack chair.
“Okay.” He went up onto the porch. The way he collapsed in the chair sparked Carly’s suspicion.
“Have you eaten?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ll be right back.” Carly unlocked her door and dumped her stuff inside. She flipped the lock behind her. Ideally her clients wouldn’t show up on her doorstep, but this wasn’t the city, where a social worker could maintain some semblance of anonymity. In Solitude everyone knew where she lived. She filled a plate with leftover fried chicken and biscuits and grabbed a Coke from the fridge.
Her instincts about Gary told her he wasn’t a threat, but when she went back out, she brought her cell phone.
His face colored with shame as he accepted the plate and napkin. Carly perched on the chair next to him. He was a big-framed boy, and he was hungry. From living with two brothers, she knew the number of calories required to maintain a maturing body of that size. She would bet Gary had missed some meals. While he ate, she took in his grubby clothes and the unwashed-body smell that drifted across the night air. When he’d finished, he wiped his hands on the napkin.
“What’s going on with you, Gary?”
He set the empty plate next to his chair and leaned back. His posture relaxed, as if now that the decision to come to Carly had been made, he could live with the fallout. “Darren kicked me out.”
“Your dad threw you out of the house?”
He nodded. “Darren’s my stepdad, though. The girls are his kids.”
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday morning, right after he came back from jail.”
“Does your mom know?”
Gary nodded. “Not much she can do about it, except leave him. But we both know she won’t do that.”
“Where have you been staying?”
His wide shoulders lifted and fell. “Slept in the woods last night.”
“Were you down by the lake earlier?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I saw you there. That’s when I got the idea to come see you.”
“Do you know when your mom and sisters are coming home?”
His body jerked upright. “What?”
“I stopped by there today. Darren said they’d gone to her sister’s place.”
“Mom doesn’t have a sister.”
Gary and Carly stared at each other for two heartbeats.
“Do you think she could have left him?” Carly asked. “Maybe he just said that to save face.”
Gary was on his feet. “No. I told you she won’t leave him. She doesn’t have anywhere to go, and she’s afraid of losing the girls because she can’t support them. And she knows Darren would come after her anyway.”
“I’ll get the police.” Carly yanked her phone out of her pocket.
Her pulse accelerated as she spoke with dispatch. The officer on duty was tied up with a domestic dispute. Zane and Stevie had already been called in to handle a nasty three-car accident on the highway, but the dispatcher promised to get someone out to the Fishers’ house. The county sheriff’s office and state police provided backup for Solitude PD, but it would take time for outside assistance to drive the distance. She dialed her boss and left him a message outlining the situation and the steps she’d already taken.
What had Darren done with his wife and daughters?
“Gary, the police are on the way,” she said.
No one answered.
Carly scanned the porch. The Adirondack chair was empty. Gary was gone. He was going after his mother and sisters.
No. No. No.
Wait. Breathe.
She calculated the distance to the Fisher house. It was at least five miles, maybe six, straight out into the country. He couldn’t possibly get there faster than her. The whine of a small engine carried over the meadow.
Unless he had a dirt bike.
Carly ran for the Jeep. There was someone close by who could help.
Seth.
It was ten o’clock. He should have dropped Brianna off an hour ago. She dialed his number. Please be home.
CHAPTER TEN
Unable to face the emptiness that filled his house, Seth sat on the back porch step. The concrete was hard under his ass, but an uncomfortable seat was better than being inside—alone. Brianna’s laughter had filled the house for a few hours tonight. Now that she was gone, the heavy silence had returned. Quiet smothered the walls with loneliness.
Why
hadn’t they gotten a dog or cat or something?
Oh, yeah. Because they were always working. The poor animal would have been alone.
Like Seth.
A pity party was a sucky way to end a night.
The chirp of crickets wasn’t enough to drown out the replay of his conversation with Patsy. Her words echoed in his head, and her arguments made more sense each time he listened to them.
Great. He had a good idea of what was wrong but no idea how to fix his marriage. Was that a step in the right direction? Behind the ache in his heart, certainty rested. Each painful beat verified that he loved his wife with every cell in his body. He’d give his life for her in an instant, but he couldn’t let her do the same. Was that, in some twisted way, selfish?
Was his grip on her too tight, too desperate? Was he suffocating her with his love?
Did he need another talking-to from Patsy?
The answer was yes on all counts.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out of his cargo shorts. Alarm rushed through him as he read Carly’s number on the screen.
He stabbed the “Call” button. “Carly?”
“Seth. I need help.” Her words were rushed, her voice breathy, as if she was running. Over the line, he heard an engine start. “I called Solitude PD, but there’s no one available.” She outlined a terrifying scenario. “I’m scared, Seth. Gary has a head start on me, and he’s going through the woods. He might beat me there. I don’t know what Darren has done with his family, but I can’t let him hurt Gary.”
Seth rushed into the house, the screen door slapping shut behind him. His gun, stored in its safe while Brianna was home, was soon in his hand. “What’s the address?”
Carly read it to him.
“Promise me you won’t go without me.”
Her response was garbled. She was moving west, out of range of the local cell tower, away from him.
“I’ll be right there,” Seth yelled into the phone. “Damn it, Carly. I’m on my way. Don’t you go in there without me. Wait for me a half mile out.”
Gone to Her Grave (Rogue River Novella Book 2) Page 7