Carolina Blues

by Virginia Kantra

  He couldn’t recall all the details through the fog of Jack Daniels. But he remembered her, a pixie-faced blonde smiling out of an inset photo on his TV screen.

  Before his suspension, Jack had been a sniper on the county emergency response team, the guy you could count on in a crisis when negotiations went sour. In his experience, a hostage’s best chance of survival lay in staying calm and staking out a middle position—not too passive, not too assertive—while the professionals did their jobs. But Lauren Patterson had defied expectations and the odds. She’d actually taken an active role, befriending the bad guys and persuading them to surrender.

  Even mired on his couch, Jack had found her courage foolhardy. Admirable. Dangerous.

  Her hair was darker now and she’d let it grow in the intervening months, scooping the slippery strands into a messy bundle on top of her head. Her face was older and thinner than in her photograph. But he remembered her. The smile. The strong, arched brows. The dark, intelligent eyes.

  “You’re ‘Hostage Girl.’”

  A flicker crossed her expression. Not quite a wince. “Guilty.”

  Interesting word choice. “What are you doing here?”

  Meg answered. “She’s writing her next book.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s sort of my problem.”

  “It’s a follow-up,” Meg said firmly. “Hostage Girl: My Life After Crisis.”

  Jack kept his eyes on Lauren. “And that’s a problem, how?”

  “Maybe because I don’t have a life.” Her voice was low and amused, a late-night radio voice. But he didn’t think she was joking. “I don’t know where I go from here.”

  “So which is it?” he asked. “Are you moving forward? Or running away?”

  Her head snapped back. And then she aimed a smile like a punch. “You’ll have to buy the book to find out. Excuse me.”

  She nodded to them both and slipped through the door into the hall.

  Definitely running. Jack frowned, watching her go.

  “Here’s your trap.”

  He turned.

  Meg held out the cage, a gleam in her eyes. “Happy hunting.”

  Three

  THE BANK ROBBERY had left Lauren too aware of her surroundings. She tensed at loud noises. Froze like a stupid rabbit when someone walked into a room. Sometimes she got anxious just walking down the street. Oddly, the constant bustle of the bakery acted as a kind of white noise, screening out distractions, allowing her to concentrate.

  But today the shop was almost empty. The sky outside was a cloudless, brilliant blue. Everybody was at the beach, squeezing in one last, glorious sunlit day before the rental week ended.

  “Sweet.” The man’s voice cut easily through her absorption. From his tone of voice, low, suggestive, he wasn’t talking about cupcakes.

  Lauren flicked a glance toward the cash register. Some guy in a ball cap was chatting up Jane. As distractions went, he was no Jack Rossi. Good-looking, though, in a rough and scruffy way. Dirty blond hair, lean, stubbled face, long, lanky body in ripped jeans and a torn T-shirt. He looked like a grad student who’d spent too much time at the lab, or a homeless guy who’d been sleeping in the park.

  He leaned across the counter, pressing in close, stroking Jane’s arm. “You done real good for yourself, Janey.”

  Jane closed the cash drawer with a little snap and said something too quietly for Lauren to hear.

  It was none of her business anyway.

  She dropped her gaze to her laptop, staring blindly at the blank screen, willing the words to come.

  Hostage Girl: My Story had spewed out of her in a matter of months. Honest and raw, Publishers Weekly had praised. An intimate portrait of courage and compassion, wrote the reviewer in the Washington Post.

  Nobody would say that about her writing now.

  Jack Rossi’s hard face popped into her head, his dark, deep-set eyes, his sardonic mouth. What is it that you do?

  I’m a writer.

  She closed her eyes. I’m a fraud.

  Overgeneralizing. Focusing on the negative, chided her therapist training. Choose a positive, helpful thought.

  Fine. She would think about Ben, who had written to her yesterday to let her know that his brother, Joel, had enlisted in the Army and was now at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, doing his Basic Combat Training.

  She could write to Ben. That would really be helpful.

  She clicked to open a new document. She knew her letters gave Ben a kind of status in prison. Any mail did. She tried to write at least once a week. It hadn’t been easy, at first, finding things to say. Her days were all the same. His, of course, were worse.

  They didn’t have a lot in common, except the robbery, which they never mentioned. And her dad was dead, and his dad was gone, and they both had younger brothers. So she wrote to him about her brother, Noah, about to start his senior year, and he wrote to her about Joel. Sometimes the contrast between their brothers—their situations, their opportunities—overwhelmed Lauren, despite the money she sent to his mother every month.

  Ben’s mother never wrote to Lauren. Never acknowledged her checks or her existence, never forgave Lauren for getting rich off the story of their ordeal while Ben rotted in jail.

  Breathe.

  “Travis, please,” Jane said. “I can’t talk to you now.”

  “Then I’ll come by later. To the house.”

  “No.”

  Lauren looked up, nerves skittering over her skin.

  “I have a right to see him,” Scruffy Blond Guy said.

  “You left him.”

  “That don’t change my rights.”

  Lauren’s heart beat faster. She didn’t like his tone of voice. She really didn’t like his grip on Jane’s arm or the sudden tension in Jane’s body. She’d seen that same body language too many times in clinical settings, in controlling men and battered women. She knew how suddenly a situation could turn and go south.

  Jane pressed her lips together. “We’ve been through all this before. There’s nothing else to say.”

  “I’m not leaving you, darlin’.”

  “Bit late for that. Darling,” Jane said with unexpected spirit, tugging her arm free.

  Lauren forced herself to relax. Not every confrontation was a crisis. She was not involved, it was none of her business, Jane had the situation under control . . .

  “Come on, Janey, don’t be like that.” His tone turned wheedling. “I’m not asking for much. You want to have this discussion in front of Aidan and your daddy? Or we settle things now.”

  “Fine.” Jane yanked her apron over her head. “Thalia, I have to go to the bank. Can you keep an eye on the shop for a minute?”

  The teenager put down her book. “Sure, Jane.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  The girl glanced curiously from Jane to the waiting man. “Yeah, no problem. It’s pretty quiet anyway.”

  In the doorway, Scruffy Blond Guy tried to take Jane’s arm again. She averted her face.

  The teenager—Thalia—watched them stalk out, a little pleat between her eyebrows.

  Not your clients, Lauren told herself. Not your responsibility. She was not the girl in charge anymore, the one who stepped in to quiet the screaming kid at the grocery store, who organized every department birthday party. Who talked three gunmen into laying down their weapons and got one of them killed.

  Keep your mouth shut and your nose out of it.

  And heard herself ask, “Who was that guy?”

  The teen met her gaze, unconsciously seeking reassurance from the only adult around. Lauren had volunteered as a youth leader in a homeless shelter. She knew that look.

  Thalia opened her mouth. Shut it. Shrugged.

  Because, yeah, dishing about your boss’s love life with total strangers w
as not cool at any age.

  Lauren waited. Nature abhorred a vacuum. Silence was one of a therapist’s most effective tools for getting clients to talk.

  After a minute, Thalia said, “I don’t know. He came in once before, I think.”

  Lauren nodded encouragingly. When that didn’t provoke a response, she tried again. “He and Jane seemed . . .” She searched for a word. Not friendly. “Close.”

  “Yeah.” Thalia hesitated and then added, “I don’t think he’s from around here, though.”

  Lauren smiled. “Well, you would know.” On an island with a year-round population that hovered around two thousand, everybody must know everybody else. “Maybe he’s here on vacation.”

  The dirty clothes, the scruffy beard . . . He looked like he might be camping. Sleeping out. Living rough.

  “I guess.” Thalia’s eyes behind her Smart Girl glasses were wide and troubled. “It’s not like she has a lot of options.”

  “There are always options,” Lauren said, slipping automatically into therapist mode.

  Thalia’s slightly round face set. “Maybe if you live someplace else. It’s bad enough when you’re my age. But Jane is twenty-nine.” From the tone of her voice, this was ancient.

  Lauren winced. She was thirty-one. “Twenty-nine isn’t old.”

  “It is on Dare Island,” Thalia said. “Most guys her age are already married.”

  “What about Jack Rossi?” Thirty-eight and still, according to Meg, single. Virile. Lauren’s pulse picked up just thinking about him.

  “The chief? He’s not married. But he’s not that into her.”

  Lauren’s pulse fluttered again. “He comes in all the time.”

  Thalia snorted. “So does old Mr. Rogers.” Lauren recognized the name of one of the older bakery regulars. “That doesn’t make him Jane’s boyfriend.”

  “So Jane and Chief Rossi aren’t . . .” Dating? Sleeping together? “A couple?” Lauren hazarded.

  “Nope.” Thalia tilted her head. “Why? Are you, like, thinking of going out with him?”

  Was she? The thought was intriguing. Terrifying. That would certainly get her out of her rut.

  And into emotional quicksand.

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” Lauren said.

  “Why not? The chief’s kind of hot. For an old guy.”

  He hasn’t asked me. But that was a—haha—cop-out. “We’re too different,” Lauren said.

  Thalia grinned again, perfectly comfortable now that they were off the subject of her boss’s love life and onto Lauren’s. “Well, you know what they say. Opposites attract.”

  “On a biological level, certainly. Women are hardwired to respond to chemical cues. Basically, we use smell to find mates who are genetically different from us, increasing the chances of survival for our potential offspring.”

  Maybe that explained her response to Jack Rossi. It’s not me, it’s my DNA. Not that she was going around offering to smell his armpits or have his babies or anything.

  “Cool,” Thalia said. “So is that, like, what you’re writing about?”

  No, because that would be interesting.

  “Not exactly,” Lauren said.

  The chimes jangled as two young mothers, six kids in tow, came into the shop.

  Thalia gave them a quick look before turning to Lauren. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Um.” Back to work. For both of them. However fascinating this discussion of Jack Rossi was, Lauren couldn’t take up Thalia’s time when she had other customers. On the other hand, she couldn’t sit for hours using the WiFi, taking up a table, nursing a single cup of coffee. You had to buy. “Maybe iced tea? And . . .” She surveyed the bright, glistening pastry case. “A chocolate croissant, please.”

  Thalia smiled. “You got it.”

  Lauren took her croissant, retreating to her table so that Thalia could serve the bakery’s other customers. But as the lunch crowd began to straggle in, it was clear that the teenager had more than she could handle. She shuttled between the register, the panini grill, and the espresso machine, making change, sandwiches, drinks, struggling to keep her head in the rising tide of orders. Lauren felt a twinge of sympathy. Jane’s errand must be taking longer than either of them had expected.

  A buzzer went off somewhere in the back of the bakery. Thalia threw a panicked glance toward the kitchen.

  Lauren moved without thinking. “I’ve got this,” she said to Thalia, sliding behind the counter. She pulled the portafilter from the espresso machine. “Go do what you need to do.”

  Thalia wavered. “But—”

  Lauren grinned and dispatched the spent grounds into the knockbox with a well-placed thwack. “I used to be a barista. But I can’t bake worth a damn. You’ll have to take care of whatever’s buzzing back there.”

  “It’s the bread.”

  “Okay.” Lauren tamped fresh coffee into the portafilter. “Don’t let it burn.”

  “Right.” Thalia smiled. “Thanks.”

  Thank you, Lauren wanted to say. It felt good to be busy. Helpful. Heck, it felt good simply to be moving again.

  Jack Rossi’s dark, sardonic eyes gleamed. Moving forward? Or running away?

  She shoved the thought aside and turned to help the next customer.

  * * *

  JANE CLARK LEFT the tiny branch bank, shaking in the aftermath of conflict.

  She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t give in again. That Travis was out of their lives forever. But like most promises in her life, this one had crumbled like a piecrust under pressure.

  It’s only money, she told herself as she walked away. A couple hundred dollars was a small price to pay for her stupidity ten years ago.

  She would have paid a lot more to save face with her father. To protect her son.

  She inhaled slowly, breathing in the familiar island smells, sand shoals and shell banks, mudflats and rolling sea. Above the electric lines and utility poles, the sky was as bright and blue as an inverted mixing bowl.

  She set off toward the bakery, resisting the urge to walk by the school where six-and-a-half-year-old Aidan was in camp. He needed normalcy. Routine. Not a mother who embarrassed him in front of his friends by hanging around the playground, hoping to reassure herself with the sight of him.

  The buildings were a jumble of shingle, brick, and cinder block, separated by sandy strips of short, thick grass. Jane was born on this island, one of a tough, perennial breed as hardy as the daisies blooming beside the road. Her roots were here, in the island brogue that occasionally haunted her speech, in the centuries-old gravestones marked CLARK. After her mother left them, Jane’s life had totally changed. But the island was constant.

  She belonged here. And so did Aidan.

  Maybe sometimes Jane dreamed of a second chance, a fresh start, a cooking apprenticeship in New York or Paris. But she’d never act on it. A sense of belonging, of continuity, was critical to a child growing up with only one parent.

  Besides, as her father once pointed out, who would watch Aidan if she left?

  It took a village to raise a child. On the island, there was always a neighbor around to provide snacks, supervision, and car pool rides. Jane was grateful for the help of other single moms like Cynthie Lodge. And she absolutely depended on her dad. She had to leave for the bakery at four every morning. She catered weddings on weekends. Somebody had to be home to see Aidan off to school, to be backup in an emergency.

  No matter how bad things got between Jane and her father, Hank was always there for her son.

  She swallowed against the ache in her throat. Maybe Dad’s semiretirement gave him more time. Or maybe he was simply more comfortable with his grandson than he had ever been with his daughter.

  After her mother took off, Hank’s days went on the same as before. He went to work, came home, ate in
front of the TV, fell asleep after dinner in his old recliner. At twelve, Jane was already taking care of herself and the house, washing the dishes and their laundry, doing her best to fill her mother’s place.

  She was lonely, haunted by the awareness that she was somehow unworthy of her mother’s love and her father’s attention.

  Most island kids worked, at least during the season, waiting tables, babysitting, helping out in their parents’ shops or on their fathers’ fishing boats. But Jane had felt isolated, set apart by her father’s job as deputy sheriff, hedged by rules, afraid of letting him down. Mortified when he stopped her friends or moved them along when they hung out under the pier or on the sidewalk.

  She would never marry a cop.

  Jack Rossi, lean and dark and tough-looking, was not for her. If only he’d been a little more approachable or a little less dedicated, if only he’d reminded her a little less of her father, she might have . . . But no. She was done living with if-onlys. Because they never worked out. Jack’s quiet attention was flattering, but she wanted more in her life than another man’s neglect.

  By the time Jane was eighteen and Travis sauntered into her life, she had been starved for affection and ripe for rebellion. Hank had tried to warn her. Shiftless son of a bitch. But her father’s disapproval only increased the thrill of her first romance. Travis was four years older, already—at least in her mind—a man, a carpenter following construction work up and down the coast. He had paid attention to her, Jane remembered. To her breasts. Her body.

  She could still remember a time when she had wanted that. Welcomed it. When she hadn’t been so tired and preoccupied and terrified of her own bad judgment that sex still seemed like a good idea. Or at least a possibility.

  Those times were gone.

  Jane’s Sweet Tea House came into view, the blue tin roof and wide, welcoming porch just visible between the trees. The corners of Jane’s mouth softened.