Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Yum, yum.” I pretended to eat them and tried to prevent contact with the spit. Taylor kicked and squealed. Oso scooched closer to him, looking hopeful.

  Nick clanked a plate down in front of me. When had his arm gotten so brown? “Homemade cinnamon rolls.”

  I looked up and saw the Pillsbury can on the counter.

  He saw my gaze. “Home made,” he insisted. “Try one.”

  “Too tired to eat.”

  Nick shook his head. He handed me a fork. “Eat.”

  Oso gobbled Cheerios from Taylor’s hand. I pretended not to see it and started to cut into my roll with a fork.

  “Stop!” Nick yelled.

  I froze and glared at him, fork hovering. “Make up your mind, mister.”

  “Do you notice anything special about it?” he pointed at the cinnamon roll.

  I peered at it. It was iced. And not very well iced, at that. I squinted. The icing was squiggly and sparse. “They’re really well-done?”

  “Read it,” Nick said, his tone wry, but also something else. Excited.

  “I can make out an M. M, something something something, something something. I can’t read the next word at all. Then there’s a short word, kind of melted. Starts with an N.”

  “No, it starts with an M.”

  I contemplated my breakfast again. I bit my lip.

  Nick came over to my side of the breakfast bar, saying, “Taylor, she’s making this awfully hard.” He rubbed the boy’s head, then took my hand in one of his.

  “Katie, you complicated, difficult creature, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and we’ve wasted too much of it apart already. I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”

  I studied the cinnamon roll again, looking for it, dazed, stunned. “But what does it say?” I asked.

  “Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and the sainted Virgin. It says ‘Marry Me.’”

  Marry him. Marry him. Marry him. So fast. Yet so not fast. We’d known each other for nearly two years. I’d loved him from the moment I met him. I’d given up on him to protect myself. I had quit hoping. And now . . .

  I’d given up on him.

  Oh, shit.

  I jumped up, knocking the barstool over behind me. “Oh no, Nick, oh no, what have I done?” I wailed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, looking stunned. Stricken, even. A frisson of guilt ripped through me as I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. So I ran.

  I flew down the stairs and out the back patio door. I stopped and grabbed a piece of broken tile as Nick ran out the door with Taylor on one hip and Oso on his heels, calling, “What’s the matter?”

  I didn’t answer. Down the sloping side yard I ran, slipping barefoot on the baby grass. When I was about a hundred yards from the house, I stopped and twirled in a slow circle, scanning the ground below me for a flat gray rock.

  Nick stood back about ten yards, watching me. Taylor was holding a hand down for Oso’s tongue. I saw the rock to Nick’s right and fell to my knees beside it. I pushed it aside and dug the edge of the tile into the soil, but it didn’t do much of a job, so I dropped it and started digging with my hands. When I’d uncovered two inches of dirt, I shoved my fingers in, probing. Nothing. I dug another inch of dirt out, then probed again. My fingers hit something solid.

  I looked up at Nick, who was watching me, bemused.

  “I had given up on you,” I said.

  He came and stood beside me. “Honey, is there some kind of medication you take at a moment like this?”

  “I’m serious, Nick. I had given up. And I needed something to make myself let go.”

  He lowered himself and Taylor to the ground and sat cross-legged, setting Taylor free to play with Oso. “OK, I’m listening.”

  I took a deep breath. I plunged my hands back into the dirt and walked them along the surface until I found a small square of plastic and smiled. It had only been eight months since I’d buried it, so it was still in pretty good shape. Or maybe old SIM cards never die. I pulled it out and handed it to him.

  “What’s this?”

  “A SIM card.”

  He pursed his lips. “I give up. Why a SIM card?”

  “So I wouldn’t wait around for you to call me anymore.”

  His mouth opened. “Ah. You changed your phone number. Yes. That’s why I had to get your number from Emily.” He reached out and touched my cheek.

  I nodded and started digging again, carefully uncovering the plastic Cruzan Rum bottle on which the SIM card had rested. I pulled it out and held it by its neck.

  Nick nodded in appreciation. “A rum bottle.” Barks and squeals and dog fur and little boy face flashed by in the background.

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes and put my hands back in the hole. Carefully I lifted out handfuls of dirt and sifted them onto the grass between Nick and me. Handful by handful, I excavated the hole as Nick sat like a stone.

  And then I found what I was looking for, and tears welled up in my eyes. I grabbed Nick’s right hand with my left and pulled a handful of dirt out. I sifted again, and I dropped a ring into his hand. He worked it between his thumb and forefinger until he could see it was a dirty gold band.

  “It was my mother’s. And her mom gave it to her when she married my dad. She’d always told me that she would give it to me when my time came.” A sob welled up in my throat, but I swallowed it. “It never did. And then she was gone. And you were never going to happen. So,” I gestured over the hole, “I buried my past so I could move forward.”

  Nick pulled me to him, into his lap, dirt, wild hair, and all. He hugged me and rocked me. He kissed my forehead. Then he slipped me back to the ground and got down on one knee with my mother’s ring clasped between his thumb and forefinger. “Katie Connell, will you please marry me?”

  Now it was right. “Yes, of course,” I said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  Nick put my mother’s ring on the third finger of my left hand and leaned his forehead against mine. A cold wet nose poked between our faces, and then a grubby little hand smacked Nick on the cheek.

  I started to laugh. Once I started, so did Nick. He grabbed Taylor around the middle and held him against his side. I slipped my hand through his arm and we walked in lockstep back toward the house, the valley echoing behind us.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  July passed in a blur of happy, of wedding plans, sleepy days, and magical nights under a tropical breeze. Happy. I was happy. Something I’d never been until Nick, and now was to the nth degree. I’d even had a month’s break from my deteriorating ex-boyfriend, holes in my house, and thieving contractors. Sure, we worked hard, too, but I’ve always worked hard, and I didn’t mind.

  But that didn’t mean I’d say no to a day off. When Ms. Ruthie arrived one morning and set about washing the breakfast dishes, Nick whispered to me, “How about we play hooky at the beach today, just you and me?”

  “How about yes?” I responded. I turned to go get ready, but I heard Taylor singing, and it stopped me short. “Do you recognize that song?” I asked.

  Nick smiled. He always understood Taylor. But it was Ruth who spoke.

  “You are my sunshine,” she said.

  She joined in with Taylor, her soprano voice shaky with age or a delicate vibrato. Either way, their duet sounded lovely.

  “What she said.” Nick grinned. “And bravo, Ms. Ruth. Very nice, Taylor.”

  There were plenty of explanations why Taylor would know that song. All kids know it, practically. But still. The possibility was there.

  Right after lunch, Ruth and Taylor waved goodbye from the driveway as we drove away. I rolled my window down and stuck my face into the warm breeze, turning it up to catch the sun on my cheeks. I whooped.

  Nick was behind the wheel, practicing his left-hand driving. He was getting pretty good at it. “Yah mon,” he said, and I laughed.

  I navigated Nick down out of the rainforest to the west end of the island, opposite of our normal route
to Town, then southward to the secluded entrance to Turtle Beach. We drove another half a mile down the service road to a tiny dirt lot.

  “Where’s the beach?” Nick asked.

  “Through there,” I said, pointing through a thick stand of sea grape trees. I grinned at him. “It’s kind of remote.”

  He leaned across and kissed me. “Sounds just right.”

  A strip of swampy land webbed with mangroves and sea grape trees protects Turtle Beach from vehicles and casual visitors. We threw our bags over our shoulders and each grabbed an end of the cooler and set off down the path, following signs to the turtle nesting sanctuary ahead. Within ten yards, sweat was running down my neck. We rounded a bend that emptied out onto the wide swath of white sands that cover the southwest point of St. Marcos and the sparkling turquoise water beyond.

  “Wow,” Nick said. “This is the best beach I’ve seen on the island yet.”

  “Those sea turtles know how to pick ’em.”

  We waded through the sand. My calf muscles were burning.

  “If you loved me, you’d carry the cooler on your head,” I told Nick. He was not only carrying his own beach bag, but also lugging a beach umbrella with a heavy wooden base that kept uncollapsing into the back of his calves.

  He raised his eyebrows. “If you loved me, you would have hired me a Sherpa.”

  “I’m not sure, but I think that’s racist,” I replied. “I’m an employment lawyer, you know.”

  Nick laughed. “I didn’t suggest you kidnap and enslave him,” he said. He stopped. “How about here?”

  “Just a few more yards, around that bend. It’s perfect there, you’ll see.”

  He grunted and we resumed our sand march. Around the point, the beach widened. One hundred yards of fluffy white sand tapered off to meet an endless turquoise sea. And we were the only ones there.

  “Holy shit,” Nick said. “I recognize this place.”

  I looked around us. Of course I recognized it, I’d been there before. But in the months since my last visit, something felt different, yet more familiar. “What do you mean? This is your first time here.”

  He set down his load. I set mine down, too. He turned in a small-stepped circle. “It looks like someplace I’ve been before. With you.”

  I reached for his hand and peered down the beach. Wind rushed past my ears, masking everything but the sound of the waves. Except for one other sound. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the noise. Barking. It was the sound of my dogs on the beach, but it was only in my mind, in a memory. And without opening my eyes I saw the white sand ribbon in front of us, and an old woman walking toward us.

  “Our dream,” I said.

  Nick squeezed my hand. “Yes, that’s it. This was the beach in our dream.” He stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. “Empress.”

  My lips curved into a smile under his. We were there. In the exact spot we had dreamed about together. My lips and the rest of me lit up like a sparkler. When we broke apart, I was still smiling.

  We set up, which was easy since my brightly striped umbrella had popped up again as we rambled the last few yards. I laid my thick white beach towel in its shade, slipped off my yellow Fresh Produce sundress, and stuffed it in the beach bag.

  “We’re getting married this weekend,” I said, looking up at Nick from under the floppy wide brim of my straw hat.

  He smiled at me, his eyes obscured by sunglasses but his mouth soft. “This is true.”

  “Wanna get wet?” I asked.

  He dashed off. “Race you!”

  “Cheater,” I yelled, running after him.

  Nick turned around and ran backwards in exaggerated slow mo until I caught and passed him at the water’s edge. I splashed out until the water slowed me down, then strode farther until I was in up to my rib cage. Nick slipped his arms around me from behind, and I put my head back under his chin, loving his height, loving his hard body and the way mine molded into it.

  “That hat makes it awfully hard to kiss you,” he said.

  I rolled the brim back with both hands and turned my head up until our lips met. His tasted of sweat and seawater, tangy and salty, and I let mine cling to them for several long beats.

  “Better?” I asked.

  He moved his mouth to my forehead as I turned until the fronts of our bodies pressed together. “Much. Makes me pretty happy we have a whole beach to ourselves.”

  Reflexively, I checked the beach. Damn.

  “Well, we did. Now we have to share.”

  He looked, too. “We could drown them.”

  I laughed. He grabbed my hand and we walked back to shore together. A family of five had set up twenty-five feet from our umbrella. So much for sexy times at the beach. As we neared our spot, I heard the heavy bass opening bars of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” Nick’s ring tone. I was shocked we had signal.

  “Could you answer it? My hands are wet,” he said.

  I reached deep into the beach bag and pulled out the phone. “Hello?”

  “I just leave you a voice mail,” Rashidi said. Usually, Rashidi drove me crazy by his very refusal to do just that. It’s an island thing.

  “What?”

  “You and Nick need to come home, straight along.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone been here, and Taylor and Ruth gone.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The world froze. I stumbled into Nick and grabbed his arm.

  “Rashidi said someone broke into the house, and Taylor is gone.”

  Nick ripped the umbrella out of the sand and started shoving towels back into bags. I grabbed one end of the cooler as he hoisted the other, and we took off down the beach, his longer legs stretched out and pulling me along. I forced myself to keep running even though my lungs were burning and my legs were turning to lead in the heavy sand. We made it to the truck in half the time it took us to trek out.

  “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Nick replied. “I’ll call Rashidi.”

  He pressed Talk and I heard the distinctive sound of a call failing.

  “Shit,” Nick yelled.

  “We may not have good service on this side of the rainforest.”

  Nick blew an O out of his mouth. “OK.”

  I reached for his hand and squeezed. “I love you. I’ll get us there as fast as I can.”

  I felt him looking at me, and I turned and met his eyes. The panic in them tore at me. But they focused as we looked at each other, the black centers shrinking. He blinked. “I love you, too. Thank you, Katie.”

  I sped along the coast and up the winding road through the rainforest to Annalise. We arrived in a cloud of dust with a skidding stop. The dogs circled the truck, barking. Ms. Ruth stood between her old Buick Lacrosse and Rashidi’s Jeep.

  She ducked her chin back into her neck. “Wah the matter?” she yelled.

  Nick reached her in three giant steps. “Where’s Taylor? Who’s been here? Is everything all right?”

  Her hands flew to her bosom. “Lah, you scaring me. Taylor asleep in he car seat.” She pointed into her back seat. “I ain’t seen nobody, and everything OK. We at Lotta’s all day. What wrong?”

  Rashidi came out of the side door and stopped behind Ruth. He held up both hands. “I no wanna scare she.”

  I joined Nick and searched Rashidi’s face for clues. “What’s going on, Rash?”

  “The house unlocked. Somebody do bad things in the office. They left this in the kitchen.” He held up a sheet of paper.

  “I lock up before I leave,” Ruth protested, her hand raised toward the side door.

  But I’d never changed my locks after I lost my keys.

  Shit.

  Nick took the paper from Rashidi and angled his body toward me. I put my head to his shoulder and we read the typed note together.

  You took something of mine, and I want it back.

  “Who?” I asked. A parade of possibles ran through my mind. Bart, me? Junior,
money?

  “I don’t know,” Nick said.

  The sun was descending, throwing a glow on Ruth as it sank behind the hills to the west. She shook her fist. “No bad man gonna mess with things round me.”

  Me either, I thought.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Nick and I watched Ruth and Rashidi drive away, his Jeep just behind the dust plume trailing her gold sedan. The rainforest swallowed them one after another.

  “That note is creepy,” I said.

  “Very.”

  He pulled me into him. I tucked my head down into the nook between the side of his chin and his shoulder. The unyielding edge of his collarbone supported my cheek. I traced his shoulder blade with my finger, the tip dipping off the blade and over his shoulder muscle.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  Someone had left a really strange note in my kitchen, and Nick and I’d had the bejeebers scared out of us. We were about to face whatever it was that had been done to the office. Yet somehow I wasn’t completely freaked out. “I’m fine, baby, I really am.”

  He squeezed me. “Why don’t we put Taylor in bed first? Then we can deal with the rest of it.”

  “Good idea.”

  We went together to Taylor’s room, Nick carrying the boy in his car seat. I unbuckled him and Nick lifted him gently and placed him in the pink playpen. He sighed and nestled himself against his blue blanket. Nick leaned all the way in and gave him a clean diaper. The boy’s dark lashes lay against his cheek, and his back rose and fell in a slow cadence. He usually flung his arms out, but this evening he tucked them around his face.

  “You know he’ll be up at some ungodly hour,” Nick said.

  That I knew. “That’s all right, this once.”

  “We’d better go check out the damage.”

  “Right.” I followed Nick up the stairs to the office.

  “Oh no,” I said. I grabbed the door frame to steady myself.

  The room looked like a cyclone had blown through. Paper blanketed the floor. The file cabinet lay on its side. Whoever was in there had swept every item off the desks, including our open laptops. Mine was upended but fine. Nick’s screen was shattered. And like the heavens themselves had rained down upon it all, water had pooled over everything. Taylor’s dump truck was parked in the middle of the mess with its bed in the unload position.