Forever Grace

by Linda Poitevin

  “All of them?” she asked. Behind her, she heard Josh smother a laugh into a snort.

  “Ahh…” Sean cleared his throat, guilt sliding across his expression. “Things kind of got away on me.”

  “You think?”

  “And I may owe you a roll or two of masking tape.”

  “Three rolls,” Lilliane corrected. “Because Annabelle wanted all her animals to have casts like Mr. McKittrick, and then she wanted to do ours, too.”

  “All of them,” Grace said again. A statement this time.

  “I take full responsibility,” Sean said. Then, with a grimace, he added, “I had no idea two-year-olds could be so loud when they don’t get their own way.”

  Staring down at the frog and bunny in her hands, Grace tried to wrap her head around the idea of seventy-two casted animal legs. Or rather, how she was ever going to get that much masking tape off seventy-two animal legs. Fuzzy ones. Her lips twitched. She pulled them straight, digging deep for the modicum of severity the occasion seemed to require.

  “Right,” she said, directing a pointed gaze at the three main culprits, each in turn. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to take Mr. McKittrick back to his cottage before he causes any more trouble—”

  Lilliane and Sage giggled, and Grace’s heart melted a little. Sage? Giggling? In the presence of a virtual stranger, and a male one at that? That alone was worth seventy-two masking tape casts. She blinked back a sudden sheen of tears and made herself frown—but not too deeply.

  “And you two,” she continued, “will put all the animals back where they belong and then pick up every little bit of tape. Before breakfast. Understood?”

  Both girls nodded, and Lilliane sighed. “Yes, Aunt Grace.”

  She turned to Josh, who looked like he might burst if he held in the laughter much longer. “You’re in charge. Oatmeal for breakfast.”

  Valiantly maintaining a semi-straight face, Josh nodded. “Yes, Aunt Grace.”

  Grace handed the frog and bunny back to Annabelle, then took the shoe from Josh that he’d carried back from the other cottage. As the two older girls scrambled to gather up armloads of stuffies, she dug the pill bottle out of her pocket and dropped it on Sean’s lap before she cleared a spot on the coffee table for herself.

  “I really didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand,” he said.

  “Uh huh.” She sat down.

  “Hold on.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not nearly as put out as you’re letting on, are you?”

  She nodded at the bottle in his hand. “You might want to take one of those before we head out. Assuming you didn’t take more of the codeine?”

  “You’re very good, you know. You had me fooled. And no, I didn’t take anything.”

  “More importantly, I have them fooled.” Grace tipped her head toward the cleanup operation. “Can you imagine the mayhem if they knew how funny I thought they were?”

  Sean chuckled, a warm sound that wrapped the two of them in an intimate cloak of shared conspiracy. Grace sat a little straighter and gave the pill bottle another pointed look.

  He twisted off the cap and dumped two tablets into a palm. She raised an eyebrow. He recapped the bottle and held it out for her inspection.

  “Up to two,” he said, pointing to the directions. “Given that I’m about to make a second hike through the woods, the two idea seems wise.”

  He downed the tablets before she could speak. She sighed.

  “And given that you’ve just taken two heavy-duty painkillers on an empty stomach,” she observed in a dry voice, “we should make that hike sooner rather than later. Before you have to crawl home.”

  “Damn.” Sean made a face. “Didn’t think that one through, did I?”

  Grace handed his shoe to him as she studied the fatigue lining his face. “I don’t imagine you’re thinking about much at all besides sleeping in your own bed right now.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “The thought may have crossed my mind once or twice.”

  He crossed his good foot over the cast to put the shoe on. A muscle quivered at the corner of his jaw. Grace put a hand over his and took back the shoe. Without speaking, she lifted his foot and guided it to her lap, then slipped on the shoe and laced it up.

  “Thank you,” Sean said.

  She set his foot on the floor and reached to retrieve his crutches. “Give me a few minutes to look after the kids, and then we’ll leave.”

  CHAPTER 11

  ………………

  “You still sure it was wise to take two of those things?”

  Sean swayed on his crutches, trying to bring one Grace into focus out of the three before him. They weren’t very cooperative.

  “The instructions said one or two,” he reminded her. Them.

  He blinked twice. The three Graces stayed.

  They sighed. “Yes, but it might have been better to wait until you were home before taking the second,” they suggested.

  Sean considered the idea. Then he grinned. “Too late.”

  “You are so hammered, it’s not even funny.”

  He giggled, disproving the latter part of her statement.

  The Graces rolled their eyes. “Come on. Let’s get you into the cottage before you keel over. I don’t have a hope in hell of getting you off the ground in this condition.”

  “Then maybe you could just join me.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Then he frowned. Wait. He was waggling his eyebrows, wasn’t he? Damn. He couldn’t feel them. He balanced on one crutch and put a hand to his forehead. Shit. His eyebrows were gone!

  Fingertips encountered fuzz and he gave a gusty sigh of relief.

  “They’re still there,” he told the Graces.

  They stooped to pick up the crutch that had fallen away from him. “I’m not even going to ask,” they muttered, tucking it under his arm again. “Now come on, Wonder Boy. Home and bed.”

  He turned his head and nuzzled an ear. “Is that a promise?”

  The Graces jerked away. “Oh, for the love of—” They sighed and regarded him narrowly. “If I say yes, will you get your butt in gear?”

  “Oh, honey. You have no idea.” Sean swung his crutches forward and followed them eagerly across the clearing, bypassing the Graces and heading for the cottage. “Race you!”

  “Slow down, Romeo. We’ll never make it to the bed if you fall, remember?”

  He scaled back his speed, but only a little. “I thought I was Wonder Boy,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Tell you what.” The Graces reached out to steer him straight as he yawed to the left. “You can be Wonder Boy and Romeo if you can get into the cottage in one piece.”

  It took three attempts to negotiate the stairs. By the time he made it onto the deck, Sean’s teeth ached from gritting them, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. He paused at the top to catch his breath, waiting for the pain meds to compensate for the meat grinder he was sure his leg had just gone through. A gentle hand covered one of his on a crutch.

  “You okay?”

  He opened his eyes onto the three Graces. This time, the middle one seemed more in focus, so he concentrated on her. “That,” he announced, “is why I took two pills before coming over here.”

  “Bad?”

  “Very.”

  “Can you make it into the cottage?”

  He studied the distance to the sliding glass doors. Four crutch-strides, maybe five, assuming the meds hadn’t skewed his depth perception as well as his inhibitions. He nodded. “I can make it.”

  “All right. I’ll go around and open the door. You aim for the bedroom.”

  “And you’ll follow?”

  “Absolutely,” the middle Grace told him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  In her absence, he made his way across the deck and leaned against the cottage wall, forehead resting on rough cedar siding. He may have dozed off for a second, because when the door beside him slid open and Grace’s sharp voice called out, “Sea
n?” he nearly fell off his crutches.

  “Here,” he said. “I’m here.”

  The Graces stepped out onto the deck. There were four of them now.

  “Thank God. You scared the life out of me when I couldn’t see you.”

  Four Graces were much better than three.

  He grinned. “You care.”

  “Of course I care. I’d care about anyone in your current condition.”

  “And you called me Sean.”

  “What?”

  “Twice,” he said smugly. “Sean. Because that’s my name.”

  Four sets of hands rested on eight hips, and the Graces pursed their lips as they surveyed him. “Wow. You are getting more blitzed by the moment, my friend. You don’t usually do a lot of painkillers, do you?”

  “Nope. Clean as a whistle.” He pursed his lips to follow up with a demonstration, but only a sad, wet hiss resulted. He frowned. “Hm. That’s harder to do than I remember.”

  The Graces gave a snort of laughter. “All right, enough is enough. We need to get you into bed to sleep this off.”

  “Bed, yes. Sleep? I don’t think so, darlin’s.” He stretched out an arm to snag the Grace nearest him, but they sidestepped in unison and caught the crutches he dropped. Sean scowled. Now there were four crutches, too? That didn’t seem right.

  “Darlin’s? Plural?” The Graces leaned in to peer at him, frowning. “Just how many of me do you see?”

  Oh, wait. He was still holding a crutch, so that was a total of five. Much better.

  “Sean?”

  He leaned against the cottage again. “Mm?”

  “How many of me do you see, Sean?”

  “Four,” he whispered. “Four beautiful, glorious Graces.” He lifted a hand, watched it morph into four, and stroked all the soft, deliciously smooth cheeks before him. “Whoa.”

  “Whoa is right.” She caught his hand in hers and slipped the crutch back into it. “Come on, sunshine, let’s move while you still can.”

  He wasn’t sure how he made it through the cottage and into the bedroom. One minute he was standing inside the living room while the glass door slid shut behind him, and a heartbeat later, he was flat on his back on the bed. He stared at the ceiling.

  “This is weird,” he muttered.

  “Which part of it in particular?” Grace inquired, lifting his foot to remove his only shoe.

  “How did I get here? To the bed, I mean?”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t piggyback.” With a grunt, she hefted both his feet and tugged them around until his body had no choice but to follow, putting him more or less straight on the mattress…he thought.

  He listened to her come around to the side of the bed. Four of her faces swam into view above him. “And the answer,” they said, “is that you walked.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Together, the Graces reached down to lift his head and shoulders, and slide a pillow under him.

  “I’d be surprised if you remember any of this tomorrow.” They smiled and brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Now close your eyes and sleep. You’ve had a long couple of days.”

  He caught one of their hands in his and held it to his cheek. “Stay?” he murmured.

  He didn’t stay awake long enough to hear her response.

  CHAPTER 12

  ………………

  GRACE STOPPED IN AT THE cottage long enough to collect her cell phone from the top of the fridge and make sure the kids were safe and settled, and then she headed down to the lake shore. Two Adirondack chairs sat on the grass at the edge of the beach. She turned one so she could look out over the water but still see the cottage. Sean McKittrick’s arrival in their lives had resulted in her eyes being off the kids way too many times over the last twenty-four hours. Between that and Sean’s presence itself, her paranoia had reached all-new levels.

  With luck, Luc could put her mind at rest about at least one of those factors. She flipped open the cell phone and auto-dialed her friend and lawyer.

  “Lucien Tremaine,” a deep tenor voice boomed in her ear.

  “Luc, it’s Grace.”

  “What’s wrong?” Luc’s voice turned sharp with concern. “The kids—?”

  “The kids are fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing serious—at least, I’m hoping it’s not.”

  They’d agreed on as little phone contact as possible, she and Luc. The private detective he retained for his law practice had given her a temporary cell phone to use in case of emergency but cautioned her not to call any of her contacts with it. Not her colleagues at the job she’d taken a leave of absence from, not her friends, not even Luc unless absolutely necessary. She was to disappear, completely and utterly, and to stay that way until Barry was found.

  “There’s no such thing as too careful,” Paul Kingsley had told her. “Barry’s smart. He’s been a cop for twenty years, and he knows how to find people. You can’t just lie low; you have to be invisible.”

  “Hold on,” Luc said now.

  Across the connection, Grace heard footsteps, then a door closing. She leaned back in the chair and gazed out over the lake. Fall’s brilliant colors were beginning to fade along the shoreline, and many of the trees now stood bare of leaves. High overhead, a flock of geese winged past in their v-formation, their calls to one another made faint by distance. Grace shivered. As warm as the autumn had been so far, it wouldn’t last forever. The nights had already turned cold enough that she’d taken to stoking the wood stove again most mornings, and snow was likely less than a month off. Then what? If Barry hadn’t been caught—

  Lucien Tremaine came back on the line. “All right. Talk.”

  “Your neighbor turned up.” She didn’t have to specify which neighbor, because Luc and Sean’s cottages were the only ones at this end of the lake. The seclusion had been one of the greatest advantages to holing up here in the first place.

  “McKittrick? I didn’t think he went up there at this time of year.”

  “He’s recuperating from a broken leg.”

  “And he came to see you?”

  “More like I had to go see him.” Grace filled her friend in on the events of the last couple of days, ending with, “I just wanted to know what you and your P.I. thought. Should I sit tight here with the kids, or do I need to worry?”

  “Given that McKittrick is one of our finest, I suspect you’ll be fine with him there.”

  Grace blinked. Now there was a tidbit she hadn’t expected. “Sean is a cop?”

  “Fourteen years with Ottawa Police Service, I think he said. So you can breathe again, sweetheart. You and the kids are safe where you are.”

  Grace closed her eyes, holding back tears of sheer relief. Until Luc had spoken those words, she hadn’t realized how worried she’d been. The idea of packing them all up and moving them again, of having to find somewhere else that would be safe from Barry…

  But still. A cop? Given the kids’ history with their own “finest,” she’d have to keep that information away from them.

  “Thank God,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure what I would have done if you’d said otherwise.”

  “Rough week?” Luc’s voice was gentle. Concerned.

  That didn’t help ease the whole self-pity thing she had going at the moment. Grace swiped at the tears that spilled over. She tried not to sniffle.

  “Challenging,” she admitted. “Annabelle is teething, and the girls seem to be taking turns having nightmares. I’m up just about every night with one or the other.”

  “Hell, Grace,” her friend muttered. “You can’t keep this up. Not on your own.”

  “It’s not like I have much choice. Even if I could afford a nanny, it’s not like I can hire one all the way out here.”

  “I know. I just wish there was something I could do to help.”

  She laughed a short, bittersweet laugh. “Besides letting us live rent-free in your cottage, you mean? Or having Paul give me a safety rundown? Or looking after Julianne for
me?”

  “All things that take next to no effort on my part.”

  “It’s more than you think, Luc, believe me. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She took a steadying breath. “Speaking of Julianne…”

  “Unchanged.”

  A single word, filled with so much.

  Unchanged. Still in hospital. Still breathing on her own but attached to tubes and wires and machines monitoring the shadow of life that remained.

  Still not Julianne.

  She glanced toward the cottage where her sister’s four children sat at the picnic table on the deck with their drawing materials. It took several attempts to force the next question through a too-tight throat.

  “And Barry?”

  “Every cop in the city is watching for him. The blue line ends with what he did to Julianne, Grace. They want him caught at least as much as you do.”

  She curled her free hand into a fist so tight, her fingernails dug into her palm. “I know. But he’s smart, and he knows how they work, and—”

  “They’ll get him. Give them a chance.”

  “It’s been four weeks, Luc. Every single day he’s out there puts him closer to tracking us down.”

  “You’re still following all of Paul’s instructions? Lying low?”

  “Of course. We go to Perth no more than once every two weeks, and I never shop in the same place twice in a row.” She extracted her fingernails from her palm and rested an elbow on the arm of the chair. Wearily, she cradled her forehead. “Hell, I don’t even gas up at the same station two times in a row.”

  “Then you’re good. The van is rented in my name, Barry doesn’t know about my connection to your sister, you’re using a burner phone, you’re not in touch with anyone you know…there’s no way he can find you, Grace. I promise.”

  She nodded, needing to believe him.

  “Now, about Sean McKittrick,” he said.

  Grace’s heart kicked against her ribs. “What about him?”

  “I think you should tell him about your situation. He might be able to help.”

  “How? By throwing a crutch at Barry if he turns up?”

  “I don’t know. With the kids, maybe.”