Songbird's Call

by Herron, Rachael

  Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose and made a rueful noise. “I wish you’d been around when I was a kid.”

  “There’s always been help out there. It’s just sometimes hard to find. The Migration Foundation will be a national aggregator of places to go for information on all types of abuse, and its main goal will be to help people make themselves safer.”

  “Well.” Jack popped his palms down onto his knees and snapped them back up again. “I sure as hell didn’t have any plan to break down on national television.” He cleared his throat. Molly could practically feel the country stopped in their tracks, drawn towards him. They were listening. “But I did have a little plan up my sleeve.”

  Molly glanced questioningly at Adele, who only shrugged.

  “We have a special guest here who would like to help.”

  “Oh, boy.” Molly’s stomach flipped.

  “You’re pals with the sheriff of Darling Bay, do I have that right?”

  “What?”

  Jack looked at the teleprompter. “Sheriff Colin McMurtry, come on out here and say hello to the two Songbirds!”

  The Jack and Ginger theme song played triumphantly as Colin walked on stage.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Colin figured he was going to throw up.

  That would be something. Try to do a good deed at the same time that you attempt to win the woman you love by apologizing in just the right way, but end up hurling on national television.

  He stuck a finger to his neck and pulled on the Windsor knot the girl backstage had tied. They’d tried to put him in a bolo tie but he’d flat-out refused. He was going to look like a country bumpkin with an old, out-of-date blue suit because that’s exactly who he was. This was the suit he wore to city council meetings and when he had to swear in new deputies. His mother had bought him the dark-blue silk tie when he’d graduated from college. He didn’t need fancying (or even worse, countrifying) up.

  Molly was sitting next to Adele on a short, low couch, her legs crossed at the knees. Her legs looked amazing in those tight jeans. He hoped all of America could see how gorgeous she was. Adele, next to her, also looked pretty, but he only glanced at her for a split second.

  It was Molly his eyes went to. It was Molly his heart tugged him towards.

  It had been Molly from the very second she’d come back to town.

  He wanted her to stand, to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to kiss him as hard as she had on the one night they’d spent together, but this was national damn television and if he got through this without her cussing him all the way back to California the way he deserved, he’d still be coming out ahead.

  Jack O’Malley stood and shook his hand. Another chair rolled in out of nowhere. “Sit, sit, won’t you? Yes, next to Molly, that’s perfect. We’re so glad you’re here. Tell us, won’t you, what it is you do in Darling Bay?”

  “Well, I’m the sheriff.”

  Laughter rose around him. Was that funny? Up felt down, right felt left, and the only thing he knew for sure was that Molly drew him like a drug he hadn’t known he was addicted to.

  “You go around arresting people?”

  “Sometimes. My deputies usually do that part.”

  Ginger, whose face was pretty but actually lacquered, said, “Our sources tell us that you recently pulled people over and instead of tickets, you gave them donuts?”

  He groaned. “I knew that would come back to haunt me.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Well, you know. People are scared of the cops.”

  Ginger inclined her head. “You hold the power, is that right?”

  “That’s, well, that’s the reason I’m here. Yeah, we’re the symbols of power.” He parted his coat and touched the badge that he’d attached to the breast pocket of his shirt. “This right here. It says a lot about who I am and what I do. But it’s really you, the citizens, who have all the power. My job is an elected position. If I fail, I get voted out, and if I fail, I should get voted out.”

  “Have you failed in the past?” She was guiding him.

  “Oh, yeah.” More laughter. Was he suddenly a comedian? He didn’t mean to be.

  “How?”

  “Recently, in fact. I got a little drunk on duty, but it wasn’t on whisky, you’ll be happy to know. I got drunk on power. I thought that not only was I the guy to keep my sister safe, I thought I was the only man in the whole world who could do it. I was proven wrong by this woman sitting next to me right here. Molly.” As he said her name, he dared to look into her eyes, and the sheer shock that resided there made him doubtful this had ever been a good idea. He’d thought it was, and he’d held on to that hope for the long cross-country flight. When he landed, he had sixteen texts from Nikki encouraging him to get it done.

  Now, he just wanted to run.

  Colin McMurtry was many things, but he’d never been a coward. At least not till now, and he didn’t intend to make such a big life change on national television, so he stayed in his chair and kept talking. “Molly stepped in to help my sister in a dire situation. My sister is the one she was talking about, the one in an abusive relationship. You’d think it wouldn’t happen to a woman whose brother was the sheriff, right? Or to a woman whose dad was the sheriff before that.” He slowed his words down as much as he could. He had to get this right, for so many reasons. “But maybe it’s because we were in the business that she knew how to hide it. It took a person not in my family to help her. My sister was scared to come to me, scared I’d abuse the power of my badge the same way my father had done in the past. And while I like to think I’m better than him, I’ll never know for sure. And that’s okay. Molly helped my sister get to safety. We don’t have a women’s shelter in little old Darling Bay, so she got my sister to the nearest thing we have, a simple room in a simple house. Molly gave her a job, and more than that, she gave my sister a purpose.”

  Next to him, Molly twisted in her seat and made a noise of protest.

  He went on, “I wouldn’t be telling y’all this if we didn’t know where the guy went. Apparently, he heard that even his friends in the next county couldn’t keep a warrant from being issued. He ran to Alaska to work in the fishing trade with his brother. Hey, where’s the camera that’s on me?”

  Jack mutely pointed to a camera lens ten feet away.

  Colin looked straight into it. “Todd Meyers, you piece of shit, don’t you dare come back to town unless you want to argue with me about that warrant, which I’ll be thrilled to do. With my bare hands.”

  Molly laughed out loud, and the sound of it went right to his head.

  “And it’s a good thing we have a three-second delay! With that,” continued Jack cheerfully, “do you have something to surprise the girls with?”

  “I do have a surprise for the Darling women, yes.” He turned in his seat so he could look at them. Molly was biting her bottom lip.

  “That folly of mine? It’s exactly that, beautiful and useless. I’m in the process of selling it.”

  Molly’s eyes widened and she raised her hand a few inches before letting it drop back into her lap. Colin wanted with all his heart to catch it, to kiss it, but he had to get through this.

  “It’ll fetch a fair price. Y’all have country music to raise charity funds. I don’t have anything but this country boy’s heart to bring. I’m going to use the money to help you start the safe house you wanted in our town. It’ll be small but it’ll be a start.” He cleared his throat, suddenly thick with salt. “It’ll be the opposite of a folly. It’ll be boring on the outside, completely hidden in plain sight, and it’ll be useful as hell. Someday, someone like my sister will have someplace to fly away to.”

  “Colin –”

  Ginger spoke, her words clear that their time was almost up. “What a lovely thing to do. In the spirit of that generosity, the network would like to match that donation…”

  Colin tuned her out. If he didn’t speak to Molly now, he wasn’t sure his nerve would co
me back. Seemed to him he’d left a lot of it behind, when he’d stalked out of the café and out of Molly’s life.

  He turned to her, turned so far he knew the camera would have a hard time catching his expression, but that was good because there was a fair chance he was going to cry. “Molly, I don’t deserve you. I told you that you didn’t deserve my trust, and I’ve never been more wrong about anything in my life.” He caught her hand in his – it was cold and small and he wanted to tuck it against his heart. Instead he just held it. She could probably feel his pulse racing under her fingertips. He hoped she could. “Molly, I love you. You’re everything I’ve ever looked for in a partner and about a million times more. Will you forgive me? Asiago learned to meow and I want you to…” Her hand started to tremble in his – or was that his own fingers shaking? “I want you to know that I love you.”

  “Holy crap.”

  Colin’s heart juddered in his chest. Holy crap wasn’t exactly what he’d been hoping for.

  “I love you, too.” She gave a laugh that sounded like a sob. “But I am not doing this on national television.”

  He wanted to kiss her—he needed to. How could he possibly wait another second? But Molly was up and disconnecting her mic. He did the same to his, as Jack and Ginger both made hand signs at the camera operators to follow them. He heard Ginger say something he couldn’t understand and he heard Adele laugh.

  Honestly, Colin didn’t give a shit if the whole thing was broadcast on every channel in the world, translated into every language. That would be fine by him. Molly had just said she loved him and he could fly, he knew he could.

  And he might have to—Molly was running so fast off the stage and around the camera crews that he had to leap a black pile of cables to keep up with her.

  A man with a handheld camera dogged his heels, but ahead of Colin, Molly was fast. She yanked open an unmarked door and threw a panicked look at him. “In here.”

  Colin followed her inside and bolted the lock behind him. They were inside a storeroom of some sort, full of bottles of cleaning liquid and dozens of brooms and stacks of boxes. One bare bulb burned above them. The air smelled acidic and musty.

  To Colin, it was heaven.

  “Say it again,” gasped Molly.

  Gladly. Always. “I love you.”

  “One more time.”

  “I love you.”

  “Oh!” Her face was light, and happiness, and everything he’d ever wanted to see.

  He went on, “I’m so sorry I was such an ass. You did everything right, and—”

  “I’m sorry for not keeping my promise to you. I know it turned out okay, but it was the only thing you’d asked of me, and I didn’t do it.”

  Colin wanted nothing from her but the promise of the rest of her days. He’d work up to that—he’d wait at least a week before asking her to marry him. Or five days. Maybe three. “You said on stage that…” His courage ran out suddenly, like a clip ran out of bullets.

  “I love you.”

  “God, Molly—”

  “I love you.” She grinned, and the brilliance of her smile made his knees wobble. “With all my heart.”

  Behind them, someone unlocked the door with a click. Colin heard it open, and felt, rather than saw, a camera lens aim at them.

  He didn’t care.

  Happiness was a hot air balloon in his chest, and in another minute, he was going to float away and take her up with him. So right there, on national TV, before he drifted into the sky out of sheer joy, Colin kissed the hell out Molly.

  And goddamned if she didn’t kiss the hell out of him right back.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  Maybe if Molly jiggled her headset a little more, it would break, and they’d have to get the I.T. guy back in to fix it. Or maybe the power would go out, and the computers would switch off.

  Molly would never, ever be ready to flip the switch to open Migration’s hotline.

  It would take bravery she didn’t possess. It would take way more than a plastic badge in her pocket, more than a new office four doors down from the Golden Spike Café. It would take more than three new desks, computers and chairs.

  It would even take more than the small, sparkling diamond on her left hand, the one that kept freaking her out every time she forgot about it and saw it fresh all over again. Yes, it helped that Colin was standing next to her, that Nikki was at the next desk. She needed more than just guts, though. She wasn’t sure what. But she was pretty sure she didn’t quite have it yet.

  Flipping the switch wasn’t so much as a switch as it was pushing the button that made their phones go live. Pushing that button meant that Migration would be ready to go. That it would be ready to help women who needed it.

  It would mean they had all the answers.

  And Molly knew they didn’t.

  She looked up at Colin, who stood next to her. “What if –”

  He cut her off. “You’ll know what to do.”

  “But –”

  “Just do it. You’re fully staffed with volunteers for what, the next two months?”

  To Molly’s right, Nikki nodded and fiddled with her own new headset. “More like for the next six months. You’ll never have to be in here again, if you don’t want to be.”

  Molly stared. “I want to be here.”

  “I know you do. But you’ve already done so much, bringing in the counselors, training everyone in all your free time from the café, and I work with you, so don’t deny it’s taken over your life.”

  “Amen,” said Colin fervently. Molly knew he was proud of her, and she also knew he wished she was working less. A lot less.

  Nikki flapped a binder in her direction. “We’re prepared. Every volunteer knows what to do. What to say.”

  “No one knows what to say all the time.”

  Colin smiled at her and went into a crouch at her side. “You taught them that, too.”

  “Oh, crap. So it’s time.” Terror made her bones feel as weak as tissue paper.

  Nikki nodded. “Do it. Flip the switch. No one will call, anyway. What are the odds that the phone will ring even once on the first day?”

  Molly put her head on the desk next to the fancy keypad that had myriad transfer capabilities, all of which Molly knew how to use. Theoretically. They’d tested every functionality. But they hadn’t needed all the bells and whistles when it really mattered. Not yet. “We advertised. Someone will call.”

  “Not much, we didn’t.”

  “Excuse me?” Molly thought of the checks she’d been writing from the album sales fund. Big checks. “We advertised in the New York Times. The Washington Post. We were featured on HuffPo and the Guardian and they did that segment on the Today Show.”

  Colin squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “People are going to call. Oh, God.”

  “Molly? It’ll be okay.”

  His voice was soothing, but not quite soothing enough to make her push the button that pulsed on the screen at her, getting redder and angrier by the moment. LIVE, it read. It meant that they were live and receiving calls. On the other end of that button, there was a guy named Steve in Eureka who was watching to make sure all connections ran smoothly, that their internet connection was robust, that technical glitches wouldn’t put a caller in danger.

  Only Molly and her volunteers could accidentally do that. Oh, God. The LIVE button seemed to mean more. It could be the difference between life and death for someone someday. This was huge. Enormous.

  This was too much.

  Colin stood, kissing her cheek as he rose. “You’ve got this. Do it.”

  She slid a glance up at him. “Are you bossing me?”

  “Would I do that?”

  “Because you’d better not be.” Riled, she moved her mouse and clicked the LIVE button before she changed her mind again. “Holy crap. I did it.”

  Nikki gave a short whoop. Colin clapped.

  Molly leaned back in her new
chair. “Oh, man.”

  The phone rang.

  Lord. Molly held her finger over the keypad. “Should I get it?” She looked at Nikki. “Should you?”

  Nikki, her eyes wide, pointed at Molly.

  Swallowing the deep breath she didn’t have time to take, Molly hit the “Answer” button. “Migration, are you in a safe location?” Her voice shook.

  “I’m on my cell phone. I’ve got the kids with me. I saw your ad, and I cut it out, but I didn’t think I’d have to call – we’re in the car, and we can’t go back, but I don’t know where to go.”

  Molly stared at her screen. Apps of all sorts littered the desktop. Five seconds ago, she knew how to use each one. Now her mind was completely blank.

  The woman on the other end of the line said, “Hello? Are you there?”

  Colin’s hand rested on Molly’s shoulder, warm and strong, as reassuring as his body was to her at night. He believed she could do this.

  Nikki believed she could do this.

  And deep down, Molly did, too. “Okay, tell me where you are. We’re going to get you some help.”

  Colin grinned at her and Nikki did a silent happy dance in her chair.

  The woman was in Florida, running away from a boyfriend who had hit her with his fists and then walloped their son with a length of wood. While they talked, Molly confirmed they didn’t need an ambulance, then pulled up the resource-management guide and directed her on the fastest route to the police department. She told the woman which words to say to the officer inside. She had the woman say them back to her.

  “Okay. I’m parked in front of the station.” The woman’s voice was thin, as if it were a guitar string stretched too tight.

  “You’re doing the right thing. What he did was not okay. It’s all right to take care of yourself and your children. Now go in there. While you’re in talking to the officer, I’m going to be texting you the directions to the safe house nearest you, okay? All you have to do is click the link, and your phone will guide you there. Does that make sense? I’ll send you a bunch of other resources for you to look at when you have time.”