by White, Karen
Linc straightened, glaring at the older man. “Or heard anything, either, since you had the monitor off.” He pocketed the car keys. “I’m hanging on to these for now. Officer Weber is on his way over, and I don’t think he wants you going too far. Just don’t come in the house. Jillian doesn’t want to see you, and I might kill you.”
Mark tried to push open the door and step out, but Linc held it firm. “You can’t hold me here! I’ve done nothing wrong. Give me the damned keys now, you son of a bitch.”
Linc pressed against the door, and glanced past Mark to where Jillian’s mother was pressed against the side of the car, looking as if she might be sick at any moment. “I don’t think so. I guess you can’t be arrested for an inability to watch a sleeping child, but there is the matter of your relationship with a minor.”
Mark’s face paled. “She was past the age of consent in this state. There’s nothing there to charge me.”
Linc grabbed the man’s collar again. “Except for her murder—and that of her unborn baby.”
Jillian’s father pushed on the car door again, his eyes narrow and his lips white. “Was it your baby? You probably killed her when you found out she’d found a real man instead of a street punk whose mother was a whore. Lauren decided it was time to come up in the world.”
Linc felt the rage consume him but was amazed at his control over it. Maybe because the rage wasn’t in defense of himself. He marveled at how calm he was as he pulled the door open and yanked the man out of the car. He pulled his fist back and felt a finger break as he plowed it into the older man’s jaw. “This is for Lauren, you son of a bitch.” Then he pulled his fist back and pummeled the man’s nose, feeling bone snap beneath his hand and barely feeling the pain from his own broken finger. “And that was for Jillian. You never stood up for her. You never cared enough to just show up for her.”
Linc stood back, panting, as he watched the man collapse against the side of the car and slide down into the grass, blood streaming from his nose and lip. He glared at Linc but didn’t move.
Linc turned away toward the house, knowing he couldn’t stay in the man’s presence for a minute longer without finishing the job he’d started. He found Jillian where he’d left her, the phone still clutched in her hand, the baby blanket in the other.
“Did you reach Mason?”
She hung up the phone. “He’s coming right away with the chief.” Her voice was faint, as if from far away.
“Do you think Rick had anything to do with Ford’s disappearance?”
“No. He wouldn’t do anything like that. I know he wouldn’t.”
She started fraying the fringe around the edges of the blanket, her hands shaking. “This isn’t Ford’s blanket. It was on the porch with the turtle egg, and I’d left it in the laundry room.” She looked up at Linc with wet eyes. “Why was it in his bed?”
He gently touched her shoulders. “I don’t know. We’ll tell Mason when he gets here.”
“Janie said that someone was coming to take the baby. She said, ‘They’re coming to take the baby.’ Who was she talking about?”
A cooling breeze blew through the screen door, chilling his spine, and he noticed the setting sun. It would be dark soon. He pulled Jillian closer. “I don’t know. I don’t think your parents had anything to do with it, though. I really don’t think they’d go to that much trouble and risk getting involved in your life.”
“She’s not my real mother,” she whispered.
He smoothed his hand over her head. “I’ll help you find your real mother. When this is all over, we’ll do it together. But first we need to find Ford. And we will find him—I promise.”
Jillian rested her forehead against his chest, and he felt her nod her head. She was silent for several minutes, and he could hear Grace’s laughter outside through the screen, a welcome reprieve from the thickness of the air inside. He could feel Jillian still pulling at the blanket.
She lifted her head. “This is identical to a baby blanket that was in a chest in my parents’ attic. I always thought it had been mine. But why would Janie have the same one?”
Bright pockets of air seemed to burst inside his head and he felt the breeze again, almost as if it were a hand pushing at his back, urging him toward the door. Jillian must have felt it, too, because she pulled away from him and moved to the door, throwing it open and then stepping out onto the back porch. She walked toward the boardwalk, where she could see Gracie and Rick throwing the red Frisbee in the growing dusk.
He watched as Gracie missed a toss, then trudged up the dune to retrieve it. There was something so familiar in that walk, and he remembered again how he had once thought that her expression had reminded him of someone, too—someone whose identity still hovered on the edges of his consciousness.
Jillian touched his arm. “Do you see it, too?”
“She reminds me of someone—someone I can’t quite place.” He furrowed his brow and stared back at the beach where Rick and Grace had stopped playing and were now gazing back at them.
Gracie pushed the hair off her face with both hands as they watched. He felt Jillian’s hand fold itself into his. Her voice was thick with tears. “Where’s Mason? What’s taking him so lo—”
Her voice stopped in midsentence, and Linc followed her gaze toward Gracie. Jillian’s fingernails dug into his palms. “Janie,” she said quietly. “How old do you think Janie is?”
“I don’t know—definitely not more than fifty. Why?” He felt that same breeze against his spine again, like a storm breeze that blows right before lightning strikes.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. She squeezed his hand, tighter now, and he knew she’d broken skin on his palm, but he didn’t feel any pain. “Oh, God,” she said again, and sank down into the sand, finally letting go of him and burying her face in her hands.
Her voice was mumbly beneath trembling fingers. “It’s something Janie said to me—when she found that turtle egg and then left it on my doorstep with the blanket. She said something like how all mothers know their children. And that if her baby were stolen from its nest, she’d find it and take care of it.” She stared up at him, and he knew all of her secrets at the same moment he realized that they were both learning them for the first time.
He squatted down on his haunches and cupped her head in his hands. “We need to go to Janie’s. I’ll tell Rick to let Mason know where we are, and also about your parents.” He patted his pants pocket. “They’re not going far. They’ll be very helpful in figuring out all the missing pieces.”
He kissed her forehead soundly and then pulled her up. He expected her to lean heavily on him, to clutch at his arm. Instead, she pulled away and started moving quickly toward Rick and Grace. “Hurry, Linc. I can’t wait another minute.” She put her hands on her hips while she waited for him to catch up. Her gaze swept behind him, up the dunes toward the two identical houses. “I’m going to find out the truth, Linc—I’m not afraid. But I need you with me.”
He watched her face closely, at the way her chin jutted forward and her arms were at her sides, not bothering to hide the large, round wet spots that were beginning to dry around the edges. The ocean wind whipped at her hair, and he thought with a brief smile that she looked like Mother Earth, an elemental role she played with grace and beauty. If he hadn’t known it before, he knew now that he loved her, and probably always had. It was hot and lovely and humbling as the emotions shot through him, making him sway on the dunes like the sea oats around him.
Nodding, Linc took her hand and they went to talk to Rick together before heading off in his car to Janie’s house on the other side of the island; the house with the silk flowers that bloomed all year long under a mother’s loving care.
Janie answered the door with a tentative smile that broadened when she realized there was nobody else behind them on the front steps. “I’m so glad you’re here. Ford’s hungry and needs to eat, but he wouldn’t take a bottle from me.”
Jillian nearly swooned
with relief. The whole ride over she’d kept fighting the thought that she had been wrong, and that Ford was somewhere else with a stranger. But when she saw Janie’s brown eyes that were so much like her own, she knew her first instincts had been right.
Linc followed her inside as she moved through the front room to a corner where Baby’s crib was set up. Ford cried out a loud, impatient cry, and Jillian reached for him, her own tears spilling over as she held her baby next to her heart, a part of her whose capacity to love she was only beginning to realize.
She sat down in an armchair and began unbuttoning her blouse, oblivious to the other occupants of the room. As soon as the baby began to nurse, she sat back in the chair and felt the relief flood her. She bent her head to the baby’s as she cried into the soft down, remembering how she hadn’t wanted him when she was pregnant, and how now she couldn’t imagine life without him.
Something cold touched her shoulder, and she looked up to see Linc holding a glass of ice water. “I thought you could use this.”
She took it and drank a grateful sip, carefully leaning forward to place it on the coffee table in front of her.
Janie picked up Baby from a chair and sat down on the sofa next to Jillian, not raising her eyes from the yellow yarn of the doll’s head. “I didn’t want them to take Ford. So I rescued him. I wanted to ask your permission, but you weren’t there. It was so important that they didn’t take Ford, so I didn’t wait for you. I’m sorry.”
Jillian looked at the older woman and felt no anger, just grateful-ness and a lifetime’s worth of sorrow. She reached over and patted Janie on the hand. “I know. Thank you for that.” She met Linc’s gaze for a moment, then turned back to Janie, looking into eyes that mirrored her own. “Why did you think my parents would take Ford?”
Janie bent her head back to Baby’s. “Because they did it before. I had a little baby girl once, and they came and took her.” She looked up briefly at Jillian. “Your grandmother said it would be best if she had a mommy and daddy instead of just me. But they said it was because I couldn’t take care of her, but I knew I could. That’s why I have Baby—to show them that I know how to take care of my own child. So that maybe one day they would give me my little girl back.”
Jillian felt the sob deep in the back of her throat, but she managed to find her voice. “What happened to your little girl, Janie?”
She saw that Janie was crying, too, with fat tears sliding down the rounded cheeks. “They took her away to live in Atlanta. But they always brought her back in the summertime, and that’s when I got to see her.”
Jillian wanted to ask the question, to bring her life to this point of change. She felt Linc at her side, touching her knee as he squatted in front of them.
“Janie, what did they call your baby—the one they took to Atlanta?”
Her voice was hardly audible. “Jillian. They named her Jillian.”
Jillian had known that, of course, but to hear it was like stepping into a tall wave and feeling as if the world had no top and no bottom for a moment.
Linc placed his hand over Jillian’s where it lay on the baby’s leg as she nursed, and his gentleness made Jillian want to weep. She noticed for the first time the scrapes on Linc’s face and the way his second finger hung at an odd angle. Glancing down, Jillian saw that Ford had fallen asleep. Carefully laying him on her lap, she fixed her bra and re-buttoned her blouse before putting the baby up on her shoulder.
Linc spoke gently again. “Janie, do you know how babies are made?”
She buried her face in Baby’s belly and slowly nodded her head.
“So you know that every baby has a mama and a daddy?”
She nodded again, peeking up at Linc with one eye.
“Who was your baby’s daddy?”
Janie clenched her eyes and buried her face against her doll. Her voice was muffled but her words were clear. “It was him—it was Mark.”
Jillian turned her face away, settling her cheek against Ford’s in an attempt to ground her world and keep it from shaking.
And then Linc’s voice drifted over to her again. “And did Mark ever do to another girl what he had done to you?”
“She was my friend. I didn’t want him to take her baby, too.”
“Who was your friend, Janie? What was her name?”
There was a short pause, and Jillian lifted her head to watch Janie answer. “It was Lauren.”
Linc sank back on his heels and held his head in his hands. Slowly, he stood and moved toward Jillian. He had almost reached her when Janie spoke again. “She told me that she and Mark were going to run away together.”
Fear and panic rose in Jillian at Janie’s words. She wanted to tell Janie to stop, but she sat silently with the sleeping baby in her arms and listened to the rest of Janie’s story.
Janie tapped herself on the forehead. “But I’m a lot smarter than he knew. I knew that he only wanted to take her baby like he took mine.”
The silence in the house was like a deafening roar, and Jillian realized it was now full dark outside, the sky surrendering its last light with a pale pink banner. Her eyes met Linc’s for a moment, half wanting to tell him to stop, but knowing there was no going back. She kept her gaze on him as Linc walked back to Janie and sat on the coffee table in front of her.
“What did you do, Janie? To stop them?”
She smiled up at Linc. “I told Lauren that Mark had changed their meeting place and wanted to meet her in the tunnel instead.”
“You knew about the tunnel?”
“Oh, yes. My brother told me about it. He had a girlfriend that lived there before the Millses did. But then he died, and I was the only one who knew. I know how to keep a secret.” Her smile halted halfway.
“Why did you tell her to go there?”
Janie didn’t answer at first. Instead, she moved to the crib and put Baby inside it, humming a little lullaby as she did. Slowly, she moved back to the sofa. “So I could lock her in there until Mark went away by himself, and then Lauren and her baby would be safe.” She paused, and Jillian watched as Janie’s face crumpled. “She was my friend.”
Linc’s voice was patient. “We know that, Janie. We know you wouldn’t hurt Lauren on purpose.” He squeezed her hands. “But what happened when you went to unlock the tunnel?”
Janie started sobbing, her words unintelligible, and Linc’s arms went around her in the same way Jillian had seen him comfort Grace. “It was all water. It was deep and I called her name, but she never answered. She didn’t want to come out again.”
Jillian stood on shaky legs and carefully laid Ford in Baby’s crib, moving the rag doll to the corner, where it sat like a guardian angel. Jillian went into the kitchen and got another glass of water and returned to the sofa where Janie and Linc now sat, and handed it to the older woman. Janie stared at it for a long moment, as if wondering what to do with it, but then took it and drank with long gulping sounds.
Jillian sat down on the other side of Janie. “But you never told anybody where Lauren had gone?”
Janie shook her head, her braids flying. “I told you. I’m good at keeping secrets.” She paused, looking first at Linc and then at Jillian. “And Lauren told me that it would get me in trouble. She said she wasn’t afraid of the water anymore and she would wait.”
Jillian’s eyes met Linc’s and neither one spoke, but Jillian was sure they were thinking the same thing. Gracie. If the genetic bond had not already been established, there would be no doubt now.
Janie looked down at her hands, and Jillian noticed the green stains from Janie’s beloved garden. These were nurturing hands, caring hands that knew everything about coaxing life from brown earth, silk flowers and a child’s heart.
With a sigh, Janie laid her head on Jillian’s shoulder. “Am I going to get in trouble?”
Linc patted her shoulder. “We’re going to take good care of you so you don’t have to worry, okay? I have a lawyer friend in Charleston I’m going to call tonight. H
e’ll know what to do.”
Jillian met his eyes again and mouthed the words “thank you.”
Janie sat up straight and looked toward the front window as if noticing for the first time that night had fallen. “I’ve got to go turn on the lights in my garden. My children are afraid of the dark.”
Jillian stood. “I’ll go with you and help.”
Linc grabbed her hand. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay here with the lights on and wait for Mason?”
She kissed him lightly and smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
She gave a quick glance at Ford in the crib as she walked by, then followed Janie out the back door to the sleeping garden. She descended the stairs and stood behind Janie amid the unscented begonias, gardenias and roses, but smelling the air of the marsh at night and feeling the beauty and serenity of this place. Darkness surrounded her, but it held none of its former terror. She reached for Janie’s hand, thinking that maybe the dark wasn’t full of things she couldn’t see, but rather filled with all the colors of light that remained hidden until you opened your eyes wide enough to see.
CHAPTER 26
JILLIAN FINISHED ZIPPING UP THE BACK OF HER BLACK DRESS AND shook her head at her reflection in the mirror, making her bright pink shell earrings dance. They were similar to a favorite pair of Lauren’s: pink, shimmery and fun, and Jillian wore them to honor her friend in a way that wearing black to her funeral never could. Spot sat on the bed watching her, and Jillian could almost swear that she read approval in his eyes.
As she was walking down the stairs, she heard a knock on the front door. A loud thump—most likely Grace jumping off her bed—sounded from upstairs, followed in quick succession by racing feet. Jillian called up the stairs, “Don’t you dare come out of your room until you’re dressed. I’ll get the door.”
A gratifying silence answered her as she moved toward the door and peered through the sidelights, surprised to see Rick there, holding a small flower arrangement.
She held the door wide and took the flowers from him. He smiled softly. “I came to say good-bye to Gracie and Ford. But I”—he shuffled his feet before speaking again—“I wanted to send these to the funeral. I didn’t know her, but I knew she was a good friend to you. I hope you don’t mind bringing them for me.”