Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Yeah.” He hesitated, not sure he wanted to open this can of worms. “Probably.”

  The compassion in her eyes weakened him. “Did he just...leave you?”

  “Not like you mean. He was a marine. I don’t remember him at all. He was a lot younger than I am when he died or disappeared, depending on who you believe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He was deployed to Lebanon in the early 1980s. It was after the Israeli invasion. I guess it was a mess. There was a multinational force there trying to restore order. The part you might have read about is that a truck bomb blew up the marine headquarters. Killed 241 of them.”

  She listened, her expression troubled. “But he wasn’t one of those?”

  “See, that’s where it gets hazy. There was some suggestion he was missing up to a couple of days before that. His body was never identified. Mom thinks the military was being evasive when she asked questions. Basically, he was just gone. She held out hope for a long time that he was being held captive, that there might be a ransom request, he might escape...” He shrugged. “Something.”

  “They wouldn’t have just left him there if anyone really thought he was alive, would they?”

  “I doubt it. Like I said, he probably died when that bomb went off. Or, conceivably, was already dead. Mom and he were really in love, I think. Having there be any doubt really ate at her. She blew up at any suggestion he disappeared on purpose.”

  Bailey scrutinized him with those crystal clear eyes. He had trouble not squirming.

  “So that’s why,” she said finally.

  “Why what?” Seth asked, although he knew.

  “You work on cold cases. Because you know what it’s like to have to live with doubt.”

  “I imagine it is,” he conceded, “although it’s not a conscious objective like, ‘I’m going to bring Hope home because I can’t bring my father home.’”

  “No?”

  “No,” he said firmly, but didn’t expect her to believe it. He wasn’t sure he believed himself.

  With a small nod, she let him off the hook. “Dinner smells really good.”

  “Did you get lunch?” He hadn’t let himself ask in the brief moments they had alone that afternoon.

  Her face clouded. “Yes, but I didn’t eat very much.”

  Did that mean her time with Kirk hadn’t gone very well?

  The timer went off, and Bailey hopped down to set the table while he took out the casserole dish and put the biscuits into the oven. This was the first time they’d eaten in the dining room, which, like the rest of his house, was pretty minimally furnished. Table and four chairs. He didn’t entertain on any kind of scale. The dining room, accessed by open doorways from the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other, wasn’t huge, but it looked kind of empty without at least a china cabinet. Not as if he owned any china. His mother dreamed of him choosing a bride, who naturally would register for a china pattern and probably silverware and all that other stuff he still couldn’t imagine using. He knew it wasn’t the lack of china that bothered his mom; it was that she didn’t like to think of him living alone.

  Of course, she lived alone, with him and his sister long since moved out. His mother hadn’t dated when he was a kid, and as far as he knew she hadn’t since, either, even though she was a pretty woman who was still only—he had to stop and think—fifty-seven. Could she even see his father’s face anymore without looking at a picture? Seth couldn’t imagine. But the subject was one she shut down anytime he tried to raise it. “I’m happy,” she insisted, but Seth had always known she wasn’t. He didn’t pursue cold cases because of his father’s disappearance/death; he pursued them because of the sadness he caught on his mother’s face in unguarded moments.

  He waited until the biscuits came out of the oven and he and Bailey sat down to eat before he said, “Are you going to tell me about your day?”

  Now she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It was okay.”

  When she concentrated on buttering a biscuit as if that was the most important thing in the world, he raised his eyebrows. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”

  Bailey lifted her head, her cheeks flushing. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. I mean it. You really don’t have to tell me anything. All I was saying is if you want to talk about it, I’m listening.”

  She set down the butter knife, picked up her fork and poked at the chicken. “It was... I don’t know how I feel about it,” she said in a sudden burst. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said mildly. “Me, I arrested an eighteen-year-old punk for knifing the guy his ex-girlfriend had taken up with. So far the new boyfriend hasn’t died, but he’s in critical condition. Seventeen, supposed to be a senior in high school this year. The girl, too. Previous boyfriend, who graduated in June, doesn’t seem to quite get that this was a little more than macho posturing. If he’d still been seventeen, and if the guy he stabbed doesn’t die, it might not have been the end of the world. As it is...” Seth shrugged.

  “And the girl?”

  “She’s hysterical. The ex-boyfriend has apparently been making threats. Ugly stuff on his Facebook page. He’s texted her some ominous stuff. Of course, neither she nor any of the friends and acquaintances who looked at his Facebook page thought to tell any adults.” He shook his head. “There’s no getting through to kids. We talk at the middle school and the high school regularly—”

  “You, too?”

  “Not anymore, but I used to.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “The idea is to send in the really young officers. That way the kids can identify.”

  Bailey made a face. “I remember being the age when there’s this great divide. I think I would have told if I knew of a girl being raped or something like that.”

  He nodded, not letting her see how that made him feel.

  “Otherwise...who knows? Plus, kids are always so melodramatic. Don’t you remember? Dark poetry. The world is ending. It’s hard to pick out when one of them is actually going to act on it.”

  “I do know that.” Seth stared down at his food, suddenly feeling a lot more tired than he should. Old, too.

  Bailey tentatively touched his hand. He couldn’t move for a moment. She was reaching out to him.

  He turned his hand over and gripped her much smaller one, feeling the delicacy of her bones. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Your day was a lot worse than my day. You should have said that in the first place,” she scolded. “I can’t believe I prattled on about shopping.”

  He smiled at the way she said it, as if the fact that she’d hit the discount mall that morning made her an incredibly shallow human being. “Buying a disguise was important.”

  “Yes, but—” she wrinkled her nose at him “—I bought this dress, too, and some shoes, and I don’t even know why, considering my tuition bill will be waiting when I get home and I’m not even working.”

  “Has it occurred to you the Lawsons will want to help with tuition?”

  Bailey’s eyes widened and she didn’t move for a long moment. “No!” she exclaimed. “Do you think that’s why I’m here?” She tugged her hand free. “So I can soak them?”

  Seth laughed, releasing her hand against his inclination. “No, Bailey, I can honestly say that never crossed my mind. If you were a gold digger, you’d be playing this a lot differently than you are.”

  She scowled at him. “What’s that mean?”

  “You’d have fallen into their arms. Moved right into that pink bedroom. Cooed over photo albums.”

  “I did that,” she mumbled. “I told you.”

  “Cooed?”

  She grimaced. “I made noises. I couldn’t sit there in dead silence.”

  His smile grew. “I can just see you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Maybe. Just a little.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I didn’t actually see Karen today.”

  “But you did have lunc
h with Kirk.”

  She nodded.

  Seth continued eating, letting the silence extend. He hadn’t intended using an interrogation technique, but... If it worked, it worked.

  “I remembered, okay?” she burst out. “That freaks me out.” And, yes, her eyes were dark with panic.

  “Remembered what?” he asked.

  “Him. Dad. I did from the first time I saw him. His smile, but mostly his hands. Isn’t that weird? I almost wondered—” She broke off.

  “Whether there was a bad reason,” he said slowly.

  Her face went through some contortions. “I guess. But I didn’t really think so. It was more like... I wasn’t afraid of him... I was afraid to remember.”

  “Because you were conditioned not to.”

  “Yes.” She looked so unhappy, he suddenly couldn’t stand it.

  That son of a bitch.

  But he also knew he’d scare Bailey all over again if he suggested she come sit on his lap and let him hold her. So he settled for saying, “I’m sorry, honey. Pushing past a block like that isn’t going to be easy.”

  “No.” She looked skittish, and he thought, Shit, an endearment? What are you thinking? Dumb question. He knew.

  Trying to sound matter-of-fact, he asked, “Did you tell Kirk you remembered him?”

  Bailey nodded. “I sort of cried on him. It’s embarrassing.”

  “No, it’s healthy. It’s normal.”

  She looked at him as if he was speaking Greek.

  “Eat,” he said, nodding at her plate.

  After a moment she picked up her fork.

  “Any more plans?” he asked.

  “I’m having a girls-only lunch tomorrow. Karen and Eve. At the Lawsons’, unfortunately. Reality is, neither of us wants to get emotional where a cell phone camera might capture it. Or, God, a forest of news cameras.”

  “Makes sense.” He frowned. “Anybody still following you?”

  “I think so, but I’ve gotten really good at racing through a yellow traffic light, or making enough quick turns I lose anyone behind me.”

  He made some grumbling sounds. After a discernible pause, she asked a few questions about the town and the area, which he answered. Maybe she was curious, maybe it was filler.

  “Where did you grow up?” she asked finally.

  “Vancouver. Washington state, not Canada. Mom works in Portland.”

  She kept sneaking looks at him. “Did you go to college?”

  “Yes, WSU. Washington State University in Pullman. Top-notch program in criminology.”

  “So you always knew what you wanted to do.”

  He took a minute to answer that. “I wanted to get a degree first, but I thought about joining the Marines. Then I saw what my mother was trying to hide when I talked about it, and I realized I couldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t have been making her proud because I was walking in my father’s footsteps. I was scaring the shit out of her.”

  “For the armed forces, this hasn’t exactly been a peaceful couple of decades, either.”

  “No, I’d have been in a lot of action.” He shrugged. “I don’t have any regrets. I was probably like any boy, trying to convince myself I could be a real man.”

  Bailey smiled at him. “No, you were being romantic.”

  “Romantic?” he echoed, with mock loathing.

  A teasing grin lit her face, although what she said was spot-on. “Wanting to make your dad proud. Vindicate him.”

  He let himself smile, if wryly. “Yeah, probably. A young male’s form of romanticism, anyway.”

  Bailey’s smile faded. “Is your mom okay with what you do?”

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought so. “She was happier when I left Spokane PD and took the job here. She thought rural county, no crime. I haven’t disillusioned her on that. She liked it when I was promoted to detective, which tends to be less dangerous.” His mouth curved. “Despite the way we’re romanticized on TV and in movies.”

  “I think—” suddenly she was entirely serious “—you ought to be. What you did...looking for me, I mean, that was pretty amazing.”

  He shifted, uncomfortable with such direct praise. “But not exactly heroic.”

  “I suspect Karen and Kirk would argue with that.”

  He suspected they would, too, but that hadn’t been what he meant. He was rarely in physical danger anymore. But he also guessed Bailey knew exactly what he was saying and still wanted to make her point. So he dipped his head in some kind of acknowledgment and had the appalled realization that his face felt warm. Good God, was he blushing?

  Bailey had bent her head and didn’t see, to his relief. She pushed her food around her plate some more.

  “You’re not eating much.” He dished himself up a second helping.

  “Oh! And it’s so good, too.” She immediately took a bite.

  Seth hoped she wasn’t cramming unwanted food in just to please him. But she continued until her plate was clean, as if she’d just needed a jump start.

  “I’d suggest we go do something, if you weren’t, uh...”

  “Notorious?” she supplied with a sigh. “And what do you mean by ‘something’?”

  “There’s a local bar that has pretty decent bands. We could dance.” Or maybe that wasn’t such a good idea, given that he’d taken Eve to that same bar on one of their dates.

  Bailey’s eyes sparkled. “Really? You like to dance?”

  “I like to shuffle around and cop a feel.”

  Man, she looked good when she laughed.

  “We could put some music on here and dance.”

  Hell. That’s all it took for his blood to rush south. He retained enough of something like common sense, though, to motivate him to say, “That might be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Her surprise morphed by degrees into comprehension. He must be giving away too much. “Because...” She put the brakes on.

  Because we’d be alone. Because it would be all too easy to dance her down the hall to his bedroom.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Bailey. You must know that.”

  She shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again. “I try to look good, but not—” she bit her lip “—for guys.”

  “You don’t like men.”

  “It’s not that.” She folded her napkin, then folded it again, concentrating on her task as if she was creating a bird that would have the ability to fly away. “I mean, I’m not a lesbian, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just...” She lifted those big blue eyes to him. “Sex seems...”

  “Dirty.” His jaw tightened.

  She shrugged, looking almost brazen. As if she didn’t want to admit to any weakness. “I guess so. Do you blame me?”

  Seth frowned. “Have you had counseling?”

  “Years’ worth of it,” she said flippantly. “Courtesy of the state of California.”

  “Did it help?”

  He could see that she wanted to keep being flip, but gave up. “Sure. You wouldn’t ask if you’d ever met my twelve—I mean, eleven-year-old self. But sex, that’s complicated.”

  “You must have tried it later.”

  “Of course I did. Lots of it.”

  Not what he wanted to hear, and something told him it was going to get worse.

  “Until I was ashamed of myself.” Her eyes were more navy than slate blue. “I didn’t even like it. Big surprise there, huh? But it was the only way I knew to get attention, okay? Only, one day I thought, why is it important to see myself through a man’s eyes?” The hint of darkness when she said “man” was much like her tone when she mentioned Hamby. “It wasn’t like I was actually impressing those guys anyway. I’m sure they all thought I was a slut. I was a slut,” she said more quietly, but then her chin came up defiantly. “So I quit. I’m trying to be worth something in my eyes, not in anybody else’s.”

  “Well, you’ve impressed the hell out of me,” he said. “And, Bailey, you were never a slut. That’s a shitty word to apply to yourself.
You knew only one way to ever have any control. Isn’t that right?”

  She stared at him. “How do you know?” she whispered.

  “It’s logical. And I get the feeling you’re big on staying in control.”

  “And you aren’t?” she shot back.

  “Yeah, I probably am. My mother loved me, but I always knew I didn’t have what it took to make up for what she’d lost. To make her really happy.” Jesus, he thought. I’m laying myself bare here. For her. “So you’re right. I don’t like feeling helpless.” Now he was the one to shrug, as if his skin wasn’t crawling at the admissions he’d just made. At his shocked realization that Bailey, too, made him feel helpless because he wanted to make everything better for her and knew he couldn’t. “Cops tend to be control freaks no matter what. We kind of have to be.”

  She stared for long enough, he couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved back his chair and stood, grabbing his dirty dishes. “There’s ice cream if you want dessert. Let me get the dishwasher loaded.”

  “I can do that—”

  “Tomorrow night.” If he could survive another evening with her. Or even this one. “I brought stuff home to work on reports. I’d better get on with it.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She followed him to the kitchen carrying her own dishes, then went back for the serving dishes when he yanked open the dishwasher.

  He rinsed and loaded from habit, his awareness of her like the brush of fingers down his spine. He was done too soon. Closing the dishwasher, he turned to see her standing on the other side of the kitchen. In the dress that molded itself to every ripe, tempting swell of female flesh. But then his gaze rose to her face, and the shyness on it made him feel like a creep, lusting after a woman who’d just told him she hated sex and didn’t want anything to do with men.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, utterly confounding him. “For everything you said.”

  “Everything?” he echoed hoarsely.

  “Understanding why I did what I did. Saying I impressed you. Admitting—” she lifted one slender shoulder in a way that went with her now-rueful expression “—that you’re not always as confident as you look. That’s really nice.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I do.” Her smile held all the complexities that made up this woman. “That’s why it means so much. Well...that’s all I wanted to say. Except I’ll get out of your way so you can work. I think I’ll watch TV, if you don’t mind.”