Low Tide

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “Who are you, please?” the dumpy woman asked Maggie, looking disinterested in the answer.

  Maggie pulled her ID and opened the leather case. “Lt. Redmond with the Sheriff’s Office. What’s going on?”

  “We’re removing the children from Miss Carpenter’s custody.” The woman said it as though Maggie ought to know already.

  “Why? Do you even know this girl?”

  “She was negligent in having them in this…environment, and in having them here in the middle of a violent arrest. This is not a safe situation for the children.”

  Maggie swept a hand toward Grace. “She risked her life to get these kids out of their situation!”

  “She risked their lives by having them in it,” the woman said, her voice raised.

  “They were being held against her will!”

  The woman took advantage of the fact that Grace reached up to wipe her face, and she pulled the little girl to her, handed her off to the blond man.

  “No!” Grace yelled. “These are my children!”

  “Mama!’ the little boy cried.

  “Mr. Howard,” the woman said to the blond man, and he started walking the kids to the SUV.

  “Please! You don’t understand—”

  “You don’t understand, ma’am,” the woman interrupted.

  “Where are you taking the children?” Maggie asked her.

  “They’ll be placed in a caring foster home for the moment, and we’re in contact with their father’s parents. We’ll be discussing possible placement with them after proper screening.”

  “Sure, ’cause they did a great job of raising their kid!” Maggie snapped.

  “Miss Carpenter will be permitted to present her case,” the woman said. “Everyone’s just going to have to trust us and trust the process.”

  “Trust you?” Grace shrieked. “Three of my teachers called you people and you still left me with my daddy so he could keep putting his hands up my dress! You don’t care! You take kids away from good parents and leave them with animals!”

  The woman didn’t deign to answer, simply started walking toward the tan sedan.

  “No!” Grace yelled.

  Maggie followed the woman.

  “Hold up,” she said, and the woman stopped, throwing a sigh in Maggie’s direction.

  “Can I take the kids? I’ll take them,” Maggie said it before she’d even thought it.

  “No, you will not, and this is not the purview of the Sheriff’s office.”

  “She loves her children!” Maggie said, forcing herself not to yell.

  “Love isn’t everything,” the woman said, and Maggie wanted to punch her sanctimonious face. She held up a hand instead. “Wait here. Do not move.”

  She jogged over to Mike and spoke quietly. “This isn’t right, Mike.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said, almost whispering. “They call and ask for an escort, we have to come.”

  “Who can we call?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, we’re usually the ones that call them, you know? I don’t know who you call about them. A judge maybe?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes and thought a minute, but came up empty. When she turned around, the woman was getting into the front passenger side of the sedan and the blond man had started the engine.

  Maggie jogged to the passenger window.

  “What’s your supervisor’s name?”

  “Nancy McFarland is our director. You’re more than welcome to discuss this with her, but this isn’t actually your problem.”

  Maggie felt dangerously close to pulling the woman out of the window by her face. “Yes, it is.”

  “Wait!” Grace shrieked, and Maggie turned around. Grace was running out the front door, a blue teddy bear clutched in her hand.

  “Wait!” Grace yelled again, and ran to the back window of the car, which was closed. “Tammi needs him!’ She put a palm on the window, but the blond woman didn’t lower it.

  “Give it to me, please,” the other woman said, her hand out the window.

  Grace put the bear in her hand and the woman tossed it onto the seat beside her. Grace leaned toward the window and looked in the back seat.

  “Don’t be scared! Don’t be scared, Mama’ll get you!”

  The window hummed closed in Grace’s face and the SUV and sedan pulled away. Maggie stood there with her hands on her hips for a moment, then looked at Grace, who was watching the kids ride away.

  “I’ll get someone to help us, Grace. I promise. They’ll be back.”

  Grace turned to her, her pale, thin face wet with tears.

  “They don’t come back,” she said. “When they leave them, they never come back to get ’em, and when they take ’em, they don’t come back, either. I’ve known these people all my life!”

  Grace’s face crumpled and Maggie stepped to her and put her arms around her. Grace leaned against her, her face in Maggie’s shoulder, and let out just one wail. Then she straightened up and wiped her face with the back of her hand.

  “Grace? I’m going to find someone to help you. And I’ll speak on your behalf. We’ll go to court if we have to.”

  Grace nodded, but Maggie wasn’t sure she was listening.

  “You shouldn’t stay here by yourself,” Maggie said. “Do you want to come with me? Do you want to stay the night?”

  Grace hugged her arms around herself and stood up a little straighter.

  “No ma’am. No, thank you. I’m stayin’ right here until you or somebody brings my kids back.”

  Maggie didn’t know what else to say. She reached out and squeezed Grace’s birdlike shoulder. “You call me if you need to. I’ll call you as soon as I know something, okay?”

  Grace nodded and Maggie hesitated a moment, then headed for her car.

  “Sorry, Maggie,” Mike said as she passed.

  She nodded, then got into her Jeep and pulled away.

  Maggie pulled into the Piggly Wiggly almost automatically, although she’d lost her appetite for spinach pizza and Ovaltine.

  Once she parked, she grabbed her phone, slid through her contacts list, and dialed the State’s Attorney’s office.

  “State’s Attorney’s Office,” a woman answered.

  “Is Patrick Boudreaux in, please?”

  “I’m sorry, he’s left for the day. Can anyone else help you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  Maggie hung up and sighed. It was after five. The storm clouds were so low that she was pretty sure she could reach up and see how full they were. It was almost dark, though hours early for darkness.

  She got out of the car and went in to find something that would make her feel like everything was as it should be.

  Thirty minutes later, Maggie ran to the Jeep just as the first few huge drops began to fall. She tossed the bag onto the passenger seat and climbed in, and the sky fell the instant she closed her door. The rain sounded like hoof beats on her roof, and across the parking lot, the Sabal palms were thrashing.

  Maggie pulled out onto the street and turned toward downtown and home. Hers was one of very few cars on the road. She wondered what the kids were doing at camp with this storm, and suddenly felt lonely.

  She was at the one traffic light again, waiting to turn left, when she dialed Wyatt’s number.

  “Hi,” he answered.

  “Hey. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Good,” she lied.

  “Are you currently engaged in a bullfight? Because maybe you shouldn’t be on the phone.”

  “No, I’m driving. It’s raining.”

  “Yes, I see that it is. Where are you going?”

  “Well, I was sort of in the neighborhood, and I was wondering what you were doing.”

  “Oh. Well, I was watching a documentary on African seamstresses, but my dish crapped out. Now I’m standing on my front porch with an umbrella.”
/>   “What for?”

  “I’m waiting for you.”

  “Oh. Okay,” she said, and looked at the empty street behind her before cutting over to make a right instead of a left.

  “Maybe you could hang up and drive with two hands so that we don’t have to discuss your driving habits when you get here.”

  “Sure.” Maggie hung up without saying goodbye and tossed the phone on the console. “Dink.”

  A few minutes later, she pulled into the driveway of Wyatt’s sage green cottage, a block away from Lafayette Park and a couple of blocks away from the bay. She’d only been there once, to give Wyatt a ride to work when his car was in the shop.

  As he’d said, Wyatt was standing on the porch when she pulled in, and he was halfway down the short driveway by the time she’d turned off the car. She got out to find him standing there in sweatpants and a gray tee shirt, holding a black umbrella over her head.

  “Well. That’s downright courtly,” she said with half a smile.

  “I have my smoother moments,” he answered. “Come on in.”

  He led her into the house, and a small living room with wood floors and rattan furniture. It was cozier than she’d expected, though she hadn’t actually expected anything.

  “You want a towel for your hair?”

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, ruffling her hair a little. “It’s not that wet.”

  “Well, come on back here.”

  He leaned the umbrella against the wall and led her through the living room to a kitchen/dining room with French doors on the back wall. The rain was hitting the glass sideways and she couldn’t see anything outside.

  Wyatt walked around a tiled breakfast bar and into the kitchen area. “I was just going to have a glass of wine in lieu of cultural enlightenment. You want one?”

  “Sure. Thank you.” Maggie leaned against the bar as Wyatt grabbed another glass from an overhead cabinet and set it next to the glass and bottle of red already on the bar.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she asked.

  Wyatt poured them both some wine, handed her a glass, and took a swallow before answering. “I wasn’t mad. Well, I was. But mostly I was scared. Men behave oddly when they’re scared.”

  Maggie nodded and took a drink of her wine. It was sweet and full and warmed her throat and chest. When she looked up, Wyatt was standing there, looking expectant.

  “They’re taking Grace’s kids away,” she said.

  “Who is? DCS?”

  “Yes.”

  Wyatt huffed out a breath and took a drink of wine. “That sucks. But she can fight it, maybe.”

  “How much have you dealt with DCS?”

  Wyatt looked at her for a moment. “A lot. Mainly with kids that should have been taken and weren’t.”

  “I believe completely that the system needs to exist, but this one is broken. It’s hard to fight a broken system.”

  Wyatt sighed and Maggie took a long swallow of her wine.

  “I let her down,” she said.

  “How, exactly?”

  That gave Maggie pause. “I’m not sure.”

  “A couple of days ago, you killed a guy, albeit a psychotic toad, and today the girl you were trying to help has lost her kids because she was with that psychotic toad. Hopefully, that’s temporary, but either way, it’s not your fault. You’re just a little too damaged at the moment to see that yourself.”

  “I’m not damaged.”

  “Sure you are. You’d better be, otherwise you should consider changing your line of work. It’s not like the movies. Having the power of life and death is one thing, having to use it is another thing altogether.”

  “Have you ever killed anyone in the line of duty?”

  Wyatt leaned a hand on the counter.

  “Yes. And I was drunk for a week, even though he was a child molester who had dumped a nine year-old girl out of a moving car the day before.”

  Maggie nodded and took a drink of her wine. For just a moment, it smelled of Cordite, and she heard Grace’s words in her head. You’re just gonna have to get him this time. She climbed onto the stool beside her, feeling a little weak in the knee.

  “I could have shot him in the shoulder,” she said.

  “You think?”

  Maggie looked at Wyatt and shrugged a little. “Maybe.”

  “I think he was a tweaker with a busted knee and a dead body in the trunk of his car. I think he was gonna blow your face right off your head and then let us shoot him.”

  They stared at each other a moment, then Maggie looked down into her wine, took another drink.

  “Anything else you want to talk about?” Wyatt asked her finally.

  Maggie looked up and took a long, quiet breath. “I’d like you to kiss me finally.”

  She saw one end of his mouth curl up just a hair before he made it stop. “Am I behind schedule?”

  Maggie suddenly felt shy and didn’t know what to say. Wyatt came halfway around the counter and stopped, leaned his elbows on the end of it. His face was inches from hers.

  “Let me ask you a question, Maggie. Have you ever been with anyone other than David?”

  Maggie swallowed, felt self-conscious about an unpopular answer.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever kissed anyone other than David?”

  “I kissed Will McKnight in eighth grade.”

  “Will McKnight from State Farm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “It was truth or dare.”

  “So, you’ve kissed a guy that you were in love with since, what, kindergarten—”

  “Fifth grade.”

  “—whatever, and you’ve kissed a gay insurance agent.”

  “Well, he wasn’t selling insurance back then.”

  “That’s adorable. So, do you want me to kiss you to make sure it’s okay to kiss someone other than David, or do you have some other reason?”

  Maggie thought about her answer for a moment.

  “I want you to kiss me because I think about it all the time, even when I’m not thinking about it.”

  “That’s a really awesome answer,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she almost whispered.

  He straightened up and walked over to her and she tried not to swallow too hard when he put both of his hands in her hair. Even sitting on the bar stool, she had to look pretty far up to look him in the eye. It made her feel like a little kid, which was not altogether how she was trying to appear, so she stood up on the rungs of the stool.

  “Well then,” Wyatt said quietly, and then he kissed her.

  It was not at all like kissing David, and once she got over the initial strangeness of Wyatt’s mouth, and the initial strangeness of kissing the boss that she had worked and been friends with for six years, it was like nothing else at all.

  And Wyatt was right; he was an impressive kisser. But when he finally pulled away from her a little, it was Wyatt’s face that seemed just a bit flushed.

  “Well,” he said, with half a laugh. “I guess there’s something to be said for practicing on the same guy your whole life.”

  Maggie smiled, somewhat relieved. All the same, she was finding it hard to breathe.

  “So, are you still going to be thinking too much about kissing me?” he asked her.

  This time, Maggie smiled wide. “I think I’m going to be thinking a lot, in general.”

  “Then we’re in a heap of trouble.”

  Maggie stepped down off the stool, brushing against his solid chest as she got to the floor. He stepped back, but reached out and took her hand.

  “Good trouble, though,” she said. “Right?”

  “The best kind,” he answered.

  “I’d better go. I have ice cream in the car.”

  “You should probably keep some ice cream in the car at all times. It gives us an out.”

  “Do you need one?”

  “Hell, yes. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

  He
held her hand as they walked to the door, then grabbed the umbrella and followed her out. The rain had let up a little, enough to see, but it looked like it was settling in for the night.

  Wyatt let go of her hand when they got to the Jeep, then opened the door for her. He shut it once she got in, and she started the engine.

  “Hey,” Wyatt said through the glass, and Maggie rolled the window down. “Wait til you get a load of my slow dance.”

  He leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss, then stood up and raised a hand goodbye. “Be careful.”

  Maggie smiled and backed out of the driveway before she could say anything stupid.

  Maggie finally got through to Patrick Boudreaux late Monday afternoon. It had taken four calls and three messages for him to call her back.

  “What can I do for you, Maggie?” he asked.

  “I have a problem with DCS. I was hoping you could help.”

  “For you?” he asked, and sounded surprised, but there was some happiness under there as well.

  “No, for Grace Carpenter, the girl who gave us the information on Richard Alessi.”

  “The girlfriend.”

  Maggie wanted to say something snarky, but she needed Patrick’s help.

  “Yes. DCS took her children away Friday.”

  “I’m a prosecutor, not a social worker.”

  “You work for the state. They’re state. I was hoping you might know someone who could help.”

  “No, I really don’t,” he said, and sounded less than upset about it.

  “What about a friendly judge who might be able to help?”

  “I don’t work family court, Maggie.”

  “So you don’t have any way to help this girl and her kids.”

  “Nothing I can think of, no. You can always vouch for her in court, if it gets that far.”

  “You really live up to your family’s reputation, you know that?”

  “Is that right? Well, our reputation doesn’t seem to get in the way of you two-stepping with my father.”

  “It was a waltz, you putz.”

  Maggie disconnected and banged the cell phone down on the kitchen table. Patrick might work for the court and Boudreaux might be a crook, but he was three times the man his son would ever be.

  She leaned on the counter and took a few deep breaths, willing herself to calm down. Then she picked up the phone again, looked through her call history, and clicked the number.