Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  She was quiet a moment, and he shot a glance at her. It was a disgusting topic to raise with your sister, but who else was he supposed to ask?

  “I’m pretty sure oral sex would still be considered a sexual relationship,” she finally said, sounding not one bit rattled at the question, and he thought, as always, that Anthea was the one who should’ve been a Ranger, and more. She was Delta Force material all the way. A mind like a steel trap, a heart like a lion, and blood like ice water.

  “Probably manual sex, too,” she went on, “if people found out, which would be the real issue. Does it count as sexual if there’s no penetration? How about if nobody climaxes? Interesting questions, in a legal sense. I’m guessing the answer would be yes, once you got into contact with anybody’s genitals. Needless to say, you wouldn’t want to be texting her any pictures of your junk. And I can’t believe I just said all that to you,” she added, which at least made her human. “I feel all dirty, suddenly. But if you’re thinking she’ll get a dispensation if you two don’t go all the way? Might work in high school. Probably won’t fly in a court of law.”

  “Didn’t work all that well in high school, either,” Jim said glumly. “I’m not that good at not going all the way. That was kind of the problem.”

  “You realize that’s too much information. Again.” She shook her head and sighed. “But, yeah. She’s my best friend. Don’t break her heart again. I mean it. Looks like you already did enough. I knew something had happened, but I thought it was her dad. She was so weird before she went off to college, and she wouldn’t tell me why. I thought maybe we weren’t going to be friends anymore. And then, at Christmas, she was still so . . . stiff. But finally, eventually, it got back to being the same. It wasn’t her dad, though, or not entirely. It was you.”

  “Yeah.” The guilt was right there. “It was me.”

  She waited a minute, then said, “You going to tell me more? Without any gory details, of course.”

  “Nope. Just wanted to know about the . . . sexual relationship thing.”

  His twin didn’t get all-the-way serious too often, but she was serious now. He could feel it. She said, “Unless you want to mess up her chance at that money—and that’d be a lousy thing to do, after everything else you apparently did—don’t make a move for six months. Period. Which you aren’t going to listen to, and neither of you is exactly the sneaky type, which spells ‘disaster’ to me. But I’m telling you this. If you don’t mean it, don’t do it. Go find somebody else. You know you’re my other half, and I know how long it’s been since Maya died. I know you’re lonely, and I know Hallie is . . . she’s great, and she’s pretty, and you like her. That’s obvious. And it’d be easy, because she’s lonely, too, and she likes you. She always has. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. But she’s fragile. I know I joke, but . . . she’s not good with men. She gets hurt too easily, and by now she thinks she doesn’t have what it takes to keep a man happy. It wouldn’t take much to knock her right off the ledge, and dammit, Jimbo, she deserves better. You don’t want to be that guy.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to be that guy.”

  Hallie was drinking the last beer. It was a bad idea, especially since she had to get up in the morning and make the long drive back to Seattle, but she was doing it anyway. And she was calling her mom.

  “Hey, baby,” Elaine said. “You didn’t call me last night. I hope that means it wasn’t too bad.”

  “No,” Hallie said. “It was bad. And then it was better. Maybe.”

  “Tell me,” her mother said, so Hallie did.

  “Well, that’s all a surprise,” her mother said at the end.

  Hallie huffed out a little laugh. Trust her mother. “Serene” was one thing. “Teflon” was another. “I’d call that the understatement of the year. I thought he’d disinherited me. He said he would. He never forgave me for the teacher thing. But, Mom.” She steeled herself. It was time to ask this. If she were going to lay the ghosts to rest—if she were going to come back here—she needed to know. “Why did you marry him? Why did you stay with him? Why didn’t you take me away from him?” The questions wanted to run away with her, so she forced herself to stop before she could add the last one. Why did you let him do all that to me?

  A long silence on the other end, and then her mother said slowly, “I suppose that’s a fair question, and that you deserve an answer.”

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “I think I do.” She’d never asked before, and her mother had never offered.

  “I was young,” Elaine said. “I was naïve. I was dreamy, easy to manipulate. All those things. He was so . . . dynamic. Much older. Smarter. Tougher. Richer. Everything. I was a waitress, and he was practically a god down there in Boise. He was in the paper all the time. Rough around more than the edges, but that was sexy. And then he pulled out the big guns. I got off work one day, and he’d bought me a new car. I was Cinderella. I told myself it was love.”

  “But he changed.”

  “Yes. He did. Or he showed himself. Once he had me, he didn’t have to try anymore. And gradually, I stopped thinking I was worth trying for.”

  “Did he . . .” Hallie stopped, then forced herself to go on. “Hit you? Hurt you?”

  “Nothing that blatant. He belittled me. In little ways at first, then in bigger ones. You saw them.” It was true. Or rather, Hallie had heard them. The digs, the offhand comments. The same kind she’d heard about herself. “He made me feel stupid and worthless,” her mother went on, “and I just . . . drifted off into my own world. I did what he wanted, kept the peace. I started doing yoga and meditation because they helped me feel calmer, helped me float someplace above it, so I started doing them more, and something happened, eventually. I realized I couldn’t keep putting him into a different compartment and floating through my life. I decided that however bad it would be when I left him, it would be worse to stay. And worse for you, of course,” she added.

  Hallie tried not to notice that she’d come right at the end. “Why didn’t you try to get me full-time?” she asked. “Why did you leave me with him during those summers?”

  A sigh came down the line. “I can see you want to blame me, and I suppose I can understand that.”

  The guilt was instant, and sharp. “I didn’t say—”

  “Yes, sweetheart. You did. Your father was a powerful man. He said if I pushed it, if I made it tough—the divorce, the settlement, the custody—he’d make sure I got nothing, and that he got you. He said he’d go for full custody, and who knows if it would have worked? And he actually did want you. That was a good thing.”

  Really? Hallie thought. Sure didn’t feel that way to me. “Did you know about the other women? And that it wasn’t always consensual, at the least? He had a child. I had a brother. If you knew, if you suspected—why didn’t you say anything?”

  A long silence at the other end. “I didn’t know about any of that.”

  Or you didn’t want to know, Hallie thought.

  “You’re trying to make this about me, baby,” her mother went on. “It’s not about me.”

  “I’m not—” Hallie had to stop. This call had been a bad idea. Her mother had been serenely accepting of Hallie’s decision to cut ties with her father, had never pressed her. If she’d always been a little remote, too—she’d just said why that was. Or it was her nature. And there was no changing her.

  Her mother spoke again. “It’s not all bad, you know.”

  “Really?” All right, that was too much. Hallie was starting to burn. “Which part of finding out your father is a rapist isn’t bad?”

  “You don’t know that’s true.”

  “Yes. I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “If he was,” her mother went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “that’s nothing you did or didn’t do, and it’s nothing I did. Look at it this way. You’re better off for having been his daughter, not even considering the money. He wanted you to go into his business, even though you were a girl. He didn’
t care that you weren’t a son, and that’s something. Maybe because you’ve got all his good qualities. His drive, his independence, his intelligence, his clear thinking, his strength.”

  “No. I do not.”

  “Yes. You do. Look at how you’re challenging me right now. That’s not easy for you. And you’re there, cleaning out his house, making it yours. You’re taking him on. I never took him on. I just ran. You can do that because you’ve got his strengths in you. But you have something more, too. You have kindness. You have integrity. You have heart. You’ve got the best of him, and none of the worst.”

  “Mom,” Hallie said, suddenly so weary. “You can’t make lemonade out of these lemons.”

  “No? I’ll bet you can, though.”

  Hallie sat in silence for a moment. The setting sun was lighting the edges of the clouds with an unearthly pink glow, and the air was cooling. It was beautiful. Peaceful. And it was nothing like those things inside her troubled mind.

  “You overestimate me,” she finally said.

  “No, baby,” her mother said. “You underestimate yourself.”

  It was only afterward that Hallie realized the thing her mother had never said.

  That she was sorry.

  CHEAP TASTES

  The killer was glad to discover that Hallie had left town on Sunday and gone back to Seattle. Maybe she wouldn’t come back.

  She could only be gone three days. Those were the terms of the will. Sunday was one. Monday was two. If she didn’t come back by Tuesday night, that would be it.

  Monday afternoon arrived, she hadn’t showed, and the hope grew. And then came the news that she’d donated half of the contents of her father’s house to Goodwill—so much that they couldn’t fit it all in the donation center. Including an almost-new Jet Ski and snowmobile that were already sitting on the lot at Don’s Recreation and Marine up in Coeur d’Alene.

  She’d donated them. Them and so much more. There were rumors that she’d hinted she might donate Henry’s car and truck. Next, she’d be giving away his guns. Those, the killer hadn’t heard a thing about.

  Hallie might not have even realized the guns were there, though, tucked into the niche in the den inside their safe. She surely wouldn’t know how much they were worth.

  The killer took the risk of driving up to the house on Monday evening, just to check it out. Empty houses were vulnerable to burglars, everyone knew that. Even if she’d locked up, how hard was it to break a sliding door?

  The vehicles, maybe not. It was too much to hope that she’d have left the keys inside. Anyway, they’d be impossible to sell anonymously. Pink slips, VINs, all that. Impossible. But the guns were so portable, so beautifully salable. Liquid assets of the very best kind. All you’d need was a few strong men to load up the safe. Some boys from down in a bar in Union City, maybe, who wouldn’t have known Henry or his house and wouldn’t care, not for a hundred bucks apiece. Drive down and pick them up right now. Another five hundred for the use of one of their trucks. Seize the moment. And then you could figure out how to get that safe open. There would be a way. A locksmith a good distance away, safely across state lines, someone willing to do a job with no questions asked? Missoula, maybe. And then the more incurious type of dealer. All of them gone by Tuesday afternoon, and all that cash to take their place that you didn’t have to report or account for to anybody. That was yours to spend . . . however.

  The house loomed, satisfactorily empty and seemingly unguarded, and for a moment, hope surged. But then the killer saw the red light mounted on the eaves of the garage that winked its message of Not a hope, and had to turn around and leave in disgust. No way you could get that safe out and loaded before the cops showed up, once the alarm went off.

  Hallie wouldn’t really donate anything else big, though, now that she’d made her point. That was an easy hundred grand right there—the truck, the car, and the guns. Nobody would be that stupid or care about money so little that they’d give all that away. Or rather—if she actually didn’t care more than that, and since she’d already showed that she hated Henry enough to get rid of that many of his possessions without even getting anything for them, she probably wouldn’t care about inheriting the money, either. She’d have a million, and she’d figure a million was enough.

  She had simple tastes. Call them what they were. Cheap tastes. Bad taste. You could tell by her clothes, and her car, and her career. She was her mother’s daughter, not Henry’s, which had been the whole problem as far as her dad was concerned, hadn’t it?

  The guns were small change compared to the house. She’d stay gone, she’d sell the house, and it would all be over, the money divided only two ways, and divided right now.

  It would be so easy. And much fairer, really.

  HIGH SCHOOL DREAM

  When Jim got the call from Hallie on Tuesday that she was on her way back, he might have had to take a walk around his patrol car to calm himself down.

  Makes no difference to you, bud, he told himself. No difference at all to your life.

  He answered himself, too. You lie like a dog.

  “I’ll drop the keys with Anthea,” he told Hallie with regret. He was on duty until eight. “I’ll come get those guns late Friday afternoon, though, if you still want to get rid of them.”

  “I still want to. Unless Cole wants one of them. Or you could keep it for when he’s older if you think he’s too young for it.”

  “I asked. He said no. He doesn’t care for hunting much.”

  Jim’s brother had gone deer hunting a few times with Cal Jackson or some friend’s dad, but had come back the last time saying, “It’s kind of boring. I’ll pass.” Which could mean anything, Jim knew, from “I’m not actually their son or their brother, and I feel weird being this kid with no dad, tagging along,” to an honest “it’s kind of boring.” Jim had felt the occasional pang of guilt that he hadn’t taken his brother out himself, getting in that bonding time. It seemed, though, that he’d lost the taste for it himself. Maybe he’d hunted enough in his life, one way and another.

  Cole’s reaction to being asked about the guns had been more complicated, though, than Jim had told Hallie. In fact, the boy had stood still a minute, then said, “I guess I should want one, huh, if they’re valuable. Why would she give it to me, though? Is she stupid? Or does she expect me to buy it from her, and she wants the money? Or did you maybe not tell her they were worth a lot, so she’d give one to me?”

  “Of course I told her.” They’d been at Jim’s mother’s house, where Jim had dragged Cole out to mow the lawn. And to talk about this. “And no, she’s not stupid. She was as smart as Anthea, growing up. Maybe smarter. She’s just generous.”

  “I guess,” Cole said, leaning on the silent mower. “So she’s not, like, a bitch? She seemed kind of stuck up to me. She seemed like she had a stick up her ass that day.”

  Jim forced himself to breathe and said, “Those are some pretty lousy words to use about a woman. Especially your sister, because that’s what she is. It wasn’t any easier for her to sit in that room than it was for you. And giving you one of the guns was her idea. She said that you were his son and you had a right. She had no reason in the world to have to say that.”

  “Did you guys have a thing going on?” Cole asked. “Is that why there was that part—” He stopped, and Jim realized that his face had probably gone hard, in what Mac called his “crazy wild mustang” look.

  “Like you’re about to run somebody down and stomp them to death with your hooves,” she’d said, and he’d said, “Well, that’ll never be you, so you don’t have to worry.” But Jim was showing that face now.

  “I like Hallie,” he told his brother. “She’s a good person. And the rest of it is none of your business.”

  “Yeah, but did you—” Cole began, and Jim gave him some more of the wild mustang, and Cole finally shut up.

  “You might want to come with me to her house on Friday,” he suggested to his brother after a minute. “You
could help me load up the safe. Get to know her a little bit, maybe. As long as you can be decent to her. She’s been nothing but decent about you.”

  “Maybe,” Cole said. “Tom Ingeborg was saying that I should try to keep her from sticking around, because she gets almost half the money if she stays, and I get more than half of her part if she leaves. That I should look out for my self-interest, because otherwise, it’s kind of hypocritical. Besides, the invisible hand.”

  “The what?” Jim said, not trying to hide his disgust.

  “Adam Smith,” Cole said. “We learned about it in European History. It says that the highest social benefit arises when individuals act in their own self-interest.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me,” Jim said, for once not caring about his language. “Excuse to be an asshole. In my experience, the highest social benefit happens when people act like they actually care about other people, even if they don’t.”

  “They’re still teaching about the invisible hand, though,” Cole said. “So I guess maybe Adam Smith knew more about economics than you do.”

  “I suppose you should do the self-interest thing, then,” Jim said. “If you’re more interested in money than in being a decent human being. Which was Henry Cavanaugh all over, by the way. Congratulations on your inheritance.” Which had shut Cole up, but had ended the conversation, too, with a score of Effort: 1, Bonding: 0.

  Jim didn’t say anything about it to Hallie on the phone, of course. Cole was fifteen. Jim wasn’t sure he’d been all that much better at fifteen. Resentful, angry, and hormonal made for a fairly potent cocktail. He just told Hallie that Cole didn’t want any of the guns, then said, “See you about five thirty Friday, then? With a moving crew.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He hung up, and he didn’t swing by to check on her on Wednesday, or on Thursday, either, because she hadn’t invited him, and there was no point. He waited until Friday. And he did bring Cole. He brought his cousins, too. Cal and Luke Jackson.