Chesapeake Bay Saga 1-4

by Nora Roberts

  Brooding, she thought with an impatient shake of her head. And if he wasn’t brooding, he was looking for a fight.

  She had broken up what would certainly have been bloodshed over the weekend when she walked in on the three brothers going nose to nose in the boatyard, Seth looking on with avid interest.

  Whatever had caused it remained a mystery as she’d bounced straight off that same united male wall. Shrugs and snarls were all she got for her trouble.

  Well, it was going to stop, she decided, and attacked some chickweed with enthusiasm. Women knew how to share and discuss. And if she had to bang Grace Monroe over the head with her garden spade, Grace was damn well going to share and discuss.

  It was with pleasure that she heard Grace’s car pull in. Anna tipped back her hat, rose, and offered a welcoming smile. ‘‘Hi, there.’’

  ‘‘Hello, Anna. I thought you’d be at work.’’

  ‘‘Took a mental health day.’’ Oh, yes, misery here as well, she mused. And not quite as well coated as Ethan’s. ‘‘You didn’t bring Aubrey with you.’’

  ‘‘No. My mother wanted her today.’’ Grace ran a hand up and down the strap of the oversized bag over her shoulder. ‘‘Well, I’ll get started and let you get back to your gardening.’’

  ‘‘I was just looking for an excuse to take a break. Why don’t we sit down on the porch a minute?’’

  ‘‘I really should get the first load of laundry in.’’

  ‘‘Grace.’’ Anna laid a gentle hand on her arm. ‘‘Sit down. Talk to me. I count you as one of my friends. I hope you count me as one of yours.’’

  ‘‘I do.’’ Grace’s voice wavered. She had to take three breaths to steady it. ‘‘I do, Anna.’’

  ‘‘Then let’s sit down. Tell me what’s happened to make you and Ethan so unhappy.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know if I can.’’ But she was tired, bone-tired, so she sat down on the steps. ‘‘I guess I made a mess of everything.’’

  ‘‘How?’’

  She’d cried herself dry, Grace thought. Not that it had helped. Maybe it would help to talk things over with another woman, one she was beginning to feel close to. ‘‘I let myself assume,’’ she began. ‘‘I let myself plan. He picked me flowers,’’ she said with a helpless lift of her hands.

  ‘‘Picked you flowers?’’ Anna’s eyes narrowed fractionally. Rabbits, my butt, she thought, but filed it away for later retribution.

  ‘‘And he took me to dinner. Candles and wine. I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. Ethan does things stage by stage, and I thought he was leading up to proposing.’’

  ‘‘Of course you did. You’re in love with each other. He’s devoted to Aubrey and she adores him. You’re both nesters. Why wouldn’t you think it?’’

  Grace stared for a moment, then let out a long breath. ‘‘I can’t tell you what it means to hear you say that. I felt like such a fool.’’

  ‘‘Well, stop. You’re not a fool. I’m not, and I certainly thought it.’’

  ‘‘We were both wrong. He didn’t ask me. But he loved me that night, Anna. So tenderly. I never believed anyone would feel so much for me. He had a nightmare later.’’

  ‘‘A nightmare.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ And she understood it now. ‘‘It was bad, very bad, but he pretended it wasn’t. He told me not to worry and brushed it off. So I didn’t think any more about it. Then.’’ Thoughtfully, she rubbed a faint bruise on her thigh that she’d given herself bumping into a table at Shiney’s.

  ‘‘The next day I decided if I sat around waiting for Ethan to do the asking, I’d have gray hair on my wedding day. Ethan doesn’t exactly rush through life.’’

  ‘‘No, he doesn’t. He gets things done in his own time, and gets them done well. But he could sure use a poke now and then.’’

  ‘‘He does, doesn’t he?’’ She couldn’t stop the warm, wistful smile. ‘‘Sometimes he just thinks things to death. And I thought this was going to be one of those times, so I made up my mind to do the asking myself.’’

  ‘‘You asked Ethan to marry you?’’ Anna chuckled, leaned back on the steps. ‘‘Atta girl, Grace.’’

  ‘‘I had it all worked out. Everything I wanted to say and how to say it. I thought, on the water where he’s most content, so I asked him to take me out for an evening sail. It was so lovely, with the sun setting and the sails bright and full of wind. And I asked him.’’

  Anna slipped a hand over Grace’s. ‘‘I gather he turned you down. But—’’

  ‘‘It was more than that. If you’d seen his face . . . He went so cold. He said he’d explain things to me when we got back. And he did. I don’t feel right telling you, Anna, because it’s Ethan’s business. But he said he can’t marry me, won’t marry me or anyone. Ever.’’

  Anna didn’t speak for a moment. She was Seth’s caseworker, which meant she’d had full access to the files on the three men who would stand as his guardians. She knew their pasts nearly as well as they did. ‘‘Is it because of what happened to him as a child?’’

  Grace’s gaze flickered, then she stared straight ahead. ‘‘He told you?’’

  ‘‘No, but I know about it, most of it. It’s part of my job.’’

  ‘‘You know . . . what his mother—that woman—did to him, let other people do to him? He was only a little boy.’’

  ‘‘I know that she forced him to have sex with clients for several years before she abandoned him. There are still copies of the medical reports in his file. I know that he was raped and beaten before Stella Quinn found him in the hospital. And I know what that kind of trauma, that kind of consistent abuse can do. Ethan could very well have become an abuser himself. It’s a miserably common cycle.’’

  ‘‘But he didn’t.’’

  ‘‘No, he became a thoughtful, considerate man with nearly unflappable control. The scars are there, under it. It’s likely that his relationship with you has brought some of them closer to the surface.’’

  ‘‘He won’t let me help. Anna, he’s got it into his head that he can’t risk having children because he’s got her blood in him. Bad blood that he would pass on. He won’t marry because marriage means family to him.’’

  ‘‘He’s wrong, and he has the best example of how wrong in his own mirror. He not only has her blood but he spent the first twelve years—the most impressionable years—with her in an environment that could warp any young mind. Instead, he’s Ethan Quinn. Why should his children—children that come from the two of you—be any less than he is?’’

  ‘‘I wish I had thought to say that,’’ Grace murmured. ‘‘I was so shocked and sad and shaken.’’ She closed her eyes. ‘‘I don’t think it would have mattered if I had. He wasn’t going to listen. Not to me,’’ she said slowly. ‘‘He doesn’t think I’m strong enough to live with what he’s lived with.’’

  ‘‘He’s wrong.’’

  ‘‘Yes, he’s wrong. But his mind’s made up. He won’t want me now. He says the choice is mine, but I know him. If I say I can accept this and we go on as we are, it’ll eat at him until he pulls away.’’

  ‘‘Can you accept it?’’

  ‘‘I’ve asked myself that, thought about that for days now. I love him enough to want to, maybe to settle for it, at least for a while. But it would eat at me, too.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘No, I can’t accept it. I can’t accept only one part of him. And I won’t ask Aubrey to accept anything less than a father.’’

  ‘‘Good for you. Now, what are you going to do about it?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know that there’s anything I can do. Not when we both need different things.’’

  Anna let out a huff of breath. ‘‘Grace, you’re the only one who can decide. But let me tell you, Cam and I didn’t just float to the altar on gossamer wings. We wanted different things—or thought we did. And to find out what we wanted together, we hurt each other, we got in each other’s faces and we dealt with it.’’

  �
�‘It’s hard to get in Ethan’s face about anything.’’

  ‘‘But it’s not impossible.’’

  ‘‘No, it’s not impossible, but . . . He wasn’t honest with me, Anna. Underneath it all, I can’t forget that. He let me spin my daydreams, all the time knowing he was going to cut the threads of them and let me fall. He’s sorry for it, I know, but still . . .’’

  ‘‘You’re angry.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I guess I am. I had another man do that to me. My father,’’ she added, coolly now. ‘‘I wanted to be a dancer, and he knew I was pinning my hopes on it. I can’t say he ever encouraged me, but he let me go on taking lessons and wishing. And when I needed him to stand up and help me try for that dream . . . he cut the threads. I forgave him for it, or tried to, but things were never the same. Then I got pregnant and married Jack. I guess you could say that cut his threads, and he’s never forgiven me.’’

  ‘‘Have you tried to resolve things there?’’

  ‘‘No, I haven’t. He gave me a choice, too, just like Ethan did. Or what they seem to think of as a choice. Do this their way. Accept it, or do without them. So I’ll do without.’’

  ‘‘I understand that. But while it may buffer your pride, what does it do to your heart?’’

  ‘‘When people break your heart, pride’s all you’ve got left.’’

  And pride, Anna thought, could turn cold and bitter without heart. ‘‘Let me talk to Ethan.’’

  ‘‘I’ll talk to him, as soon as I can work out what needs to be said.’’ She blew out a breath. ‘‘I feel better,’’ she realized. ‘‘It helps to say it all out loud. And there was no one else I could say it to.’’

  ‘‘I care about both of you.’’

  ‘‘I know. We’ll be all right.’’ She gave Anna’s hand a squeeze before she rose. ‘‘You helped me stop feeling weepy. I hate feeling weepy. Now I’m going to work off some of this mad I didn’t realize was in there.’’ Shemanaged to smile. ‘‘You’re going to have a damn clean house when I’m done. I clean like a maniac when I’m working off a mad.’’

  Don’t work it all off, Anna thought, as Grace went inside. Save some of it for that idiot Ethan.

  IT TOOK TWO AND A HALF hours for Grace to scrub, rinse, dust, and polish her way through the second floor. She had a bad moment in Ethan’s room, where the scent of him, of the sea, clung to the air, and the small, careless pieces of his daily life were scattered about.

  But she drew herself in, calling on the same core of steel that had gotten her through a divorce and a painful family rift.

  Work helped, as it always had. Good, strenuous manual labor kept both her hands and her mind busy. Life went on. She knew it firsthand. And you got through from one day to the next.

  She had her child. She had her pride. And she still had dreams—though she’d come to the point that she preferred to think of them as plans.

  She could live without Ethan. Not as fully perhaps, not as joyfully, certainly. But she could live and be productive and find contentment in the path she forged for herself and her daughter.

  She was finished with tears and self-pity.

  She started on the main floor with the same singleminded fervor. Furniture was polished until it gleamed. Glass was scrubbed until it sparkled. She hung out wash, swept porches, and battled dirt as if it were an enemy threatening to take over the earth.

  By the time she got to the kitchen her back ached, but it was a small and satisfying pain. Her skin wore a light coat of sweat, her hands were pruny from wash water, and she felt as accomplished as a corporate president after a major business coup.

  She checked the clock, measured time. She wanted to be finished and gone before Ethan came in from work. Despite the purging wrought by labor, there was a small, simmering ember of anger still burning in her heart. She knew herself well enough to understand that it would take very little to fan it to full flame.

  If she fought with him, if she said even a portion of the things that had careened through her head over the last few days, they would never be able to be civil again, much less friends.

  She wouldn’t force the Quinns to take sides. And she wouldn’t risk putting her precious and vital relationship with Seth at risk because two adults in his life couldn’t mind their tempers.

  ‘‘I won’t lose my job over it, either,’’ she muttered as she went to work on the countertops. ‘‘Just because he can’t see what he’s throwing out of his life.’’

  She hissed out a breath, scooped her fingers through her hair, which the heat and her exertion had dampened at the temples. And calmed herself by giving the drip pans on the ancient range a good scouring.

  When the phone rang, she snatched it up without thinking. ‘‘Hello?’’

  ‘‘Anna Quinn?’’

  Grace glanced out the window, saw Anna puttering happily among the back garden. ‘‘No, I’ll—’’

  ‘‘I got something to say to you, bitch.’’

  Grace stopped, two steps from the screen door. ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘This is Gloria DeLauter. Who the hell do you think you are, threatening me?’’

  ‘‘I’m not—’’

  ‘‘I got rights. Do you hear me? I got fucking rights. The old man made a deal with me, and if you and your bastard husband and his bastard brothers don’t live up to it, you’re the ones who’ll be sorry.’’

  The voice wasn’t just hard and harsh, Grace realized. It was manic, the words shooting out so fast that one ran into the back of the other. This was Seth’s mother, she thought as more abuse rang in her ear. The woman who’d hurt him, who frightened him. Who’d taken money for him.

  Sold him.

  She wasn’t aware that she had twisted the phone cord around her hand, that it was so tightly wrapped it bit into the flesh. Struggling for calm, she took a deep breath. ‘‘Miss DeLauter, you’re making a mistake.’’

  ‘‘You’re the one who made the goddamn mistake, sending me that fucking letter instead of the money you owe me. You fucking owe me. You think I’m scared ’cause you’re some asshole social worker. I don’t give a shit if you’re the goddamn Queen of goddamn England. The old man’s dead, and if you want things to stay like they are you’re going to deal with me. You think you can hold me off with words on paper? You’re not going to stop me if I decide to come back and take that boy.’’

  ‘‘You’re wrong,’’ Grace heard herself say, but her voice sounded far away, echoing in her head.

  ‘‘He’s my flesh and blood and I got a right to take what’s mine.’’

  ‘‘Try it.’’ Rage tore through her like a storm surge. ‘‘You’ll never put your hands on him again.’’

  ‘‘I can do what I like with what’s mine.’’

  ‘‘He’s not yours. You sold him. Now he’s ours, and you’re never going to get near him.’’

  ‘‘He’ll do what the hell I tell him to do. He knows he’ll pay for it otherwise.’’

  ‘‘You make one move toward him, I’ll take you apart myself. Nothing you’ve done to him, however monstrous, is close to what I’ll do to you. When I’m finished, they’ll barely have enough left to scrape up and toss in a cell. That’s just where you’ll go for child abuse, neglect, assault, prostitution, and whatever it is they call a mother who sells her child to men for sex.’’

  ‘‘What kind of lies has that brat been telling? I never laid a finger on him.’’

  ‘‘Shut up. You shut the hell up.’’ She’d lost track, mixed Seth’s mother and Ethan’s into one woman. One monster. ‘‘I know what you did to him, and there isn’t a cage dark enough to lock you in to suit me. But I’ll find one, and I’ll shove you in it myself if you come near him again.’’

  ‘‘I just want money.’’ There was a wheedle in the voice now, both sly and a little scared. ‘‘Just some money to help me through. You’ve got plenty.’’

  ‘‘I don’t have anything for you but contempt. You stay away from here, and you stay away from that child
, or you’ll be the one who pays.’’

  ‘‘You better think again. You just better think again.’’ There was a muffled sound, then the clink of ice against glass. ‘‘You’re no better than me. I’m not afraid of you.’’

  ‘‘You should be afraid. You should be terrified.’’

  ‘‘I’m . . . I’m not finished with this. I’m not done.’’

  The click of the disconnect was loud. ‘‘Maybe not,’’ Grace said in a soft and dangerous voice. ‘‘But neither am I.’’

  ‘‘Gloria DeLauter,’’ Anna murmured. She stood just on the other side of the screen door, where she’d been for the last two minutes.

  ‘‘I don’t think she’s human. If she’d been here, if she’d been in this room, I’d have had my hands around her throat. I’d have choked her like an animal.’’ She began to shake now, fury and reaction crashing against each other inside her. ‘‘I’d have killed her. Or tried.’’

  ‘‘I know how it feels. It’s hard to think about someone like her as a person and not a thing.’’ Anna pushed the door open, her eyes on Grace. She would never have expected to see that white-hot rage in such a mild-tempered woman. ‘‘I see it all too often in my work, but I never get used to it.’’

  ‘‘She was foul.’’ Grace shuddered. ‘‘She thought I was you when I answered the phone. I tried to tell her at first, but she wouldn’t listen. She just shouted and threatened and swore. I couldn’t let her get away with it. I couldn’t stand it. I’m sorry.’’

  ‘‘It’s all right. From the end of the conversation I could hear, I’d say you handled it. You want to sit down?’’

  ‘‘No, I can’t. I can’t sit.’’ She shut her eyes, but still only saw that blinding red haze. ‘‘Anna, she said she’d come back and get Seth if you didn’t give her money.’’

  ‘‘That’s not going to happen.’’ Anna moved to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of wine. ‘‘I’m going to pour you a glass of this. You’re going to drink it, slowly, while I get my notebook. Then I want you to try to tell me what she said, as close as possible to exactly what she said. Can you do that?’’