Match Made in Court

by Janice Kay Johnson

  He wanted to be there for the nightmares. No, not just that. He wanted to be a part of Linnea’s and Hanna’s mornings and their evenings and everything in between.

  Definitely there for the nights, Matt thought, wondering what the pretty, blonde woman still watching him would do if he kissed her.

  Scream and scramble away, probably. Stare at him with dilated, frightened eyes. Lose what trust she had in him.

  Concentrate on Hanna. This was a really lousy time to be thinking below the belt.

  “You were right. I was wrong,” he said abruptly. “She is better off with you.” For now.

  Now her gaze turned grateful, and he felt like crud. He would hurt even Linnea if that was the only way he could keep Hanna away from Finn.

  “I’d better say good-night.” He pushed to his feet again. He had to get out of here before he said or did something he’d regret.

  “Yes.” Linnea sprang up as if propelled. “Gosh, I didn’t mean to keep you so late.”

  Either something in his expression had shaken her, or she’d been having dangerous thoughts of her own. Either way, she was suddenly eager for him to leave.

  He went, pausing at the front door to say, “Call me if you need me.” As he faced her, it was all he could do not to lift a hand to touch her cheek, brush strands of hair behind her ears.

  She nodded. “Um…I meant to ask. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  Surprised, Matt said, “Probably nothing special.” He sure as hell wouldn’t join the Sorensens even if asked.

  “Well, I wondered if you’d like to come here Friday. We’ll have Thanksgiving Thursday at my parents’, but—” Clearly she didn’t want to say, we won’t enjoy it. In a rush, she finished, “I could cook a turkey Friday and we’d have leftovers of our own and—” She swallowed. “We could celebrate. The three of us.”

  Oh, damn. He was rarely emotional enough to find himself without words. This time, it was a minute before he could clear his throat and manage to say, “I’d like that.”

  “Good.” Her smile was both sweet and gentle, as if she knew she’d touched him. “Then I’ll see you Friday. About noon?”

  “Tuesday morning,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll take Hanna to school.”

  “Right. Tuesday morning. Eight-thirty?”

  Out of long habit he was up by seven at the latest anyway. “Eight-thirty,” he agreed.

  “Okay. See you then.” She shut the door, leaving him standing on her porch wanting back in.

  Chronic state these days.

  Making himself turn away and walk to his car at the curb, he thought it was past time he started building a life of his own, rather than hovering on the edges of hers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LINNEA’S DEEP RELUCTANCE made her realize how much she’d come to hate all family holidays. They felt like command performances; she had never quite dared make other plans, with the exception of one Thanksgiving when she’d gone on a cruise with friends from the library. Her mother hadn’t been happy.

  Hanna withdrew noticeably during the drive to her grandparents’, and, sneaking glances at her, Linnea couldn’t helping remembering Finn’s visit last week.

  He’d been annoyed from the beginning at his daughter’s shyness with him. He had—mostly—kept himself from saying anything too scathing to Hanna, but on the way out the door, he’d glowered at Linnea and said, “I can see this was a mistake. You’re going to turn my daughter into a terrified mouse like you. For God’s sake, at least she used to have some spirit.”

  That night Hanna had lain tense in bed, unable to sleep but also unwilling to articulate what she felt about her dad. When Linnea asked if she wanted to talk about the visit, she shook her head so hard her hair flew. Linnea felt very nearly violent toward her brother. She wished with all her heart that the commissioner had ruled against any visitation with Finn.

  But then…what would happen if he was found innocent? He could reclaim his daughter, who would no longer know him at all.

  If she ever had.

  Oh, Linnea wished with all her heart that today was over and it was already tomorrow morning and the turkey was in the oven, starting to smell good, and she and Hanna were anticipating Matt’s arrival.

  But it wasn’t tomorrow. And today was still to be endured.

  Which was an awful attitude, she thought. She would try. Maybe Finn would be in a good mood, and he would tease his small daughter the way he used to and Hanna would giggle for him and they would feel like a family again.

  No such luck. There were hugs all around when they arrived, and Linnea immediately began to help in the kitchen while Hanna sat on her granddad’s lap. Finn had never been required to do women’s chores; when they were growing up, their family had been completely traditional. Finn did carve the turkey, because Dad’s hands were too shaky these days.

  But the minute they sat to eat, Finn took over the conversation. Their mother agreed with everything he said.

  He broke off once to ask Hanna if she missed her own house, a question that froze Linnea with her fork halfway to her mouth. Was he kidding? It gave her the creeps that he could continue to live there, in a home imbued with Tess, who had lovingly decorated it. How could he sit in the family room, where Tess had died, or stand in the kitchen where he’d be able to see the exact spot where she’d bled into the carpet?

  Hanna gave her father a startled, scared look, then ducked her head and mumbled something unintelligible.

  “For goodness’ sake, speak up!” her grandmother snapped. “And look at you. You’ve hardly eaten a bite. Don’t waste good food, Hanna. In this house, once you dish it up, you eat it.”

  Looking like she was going to choke on them, Hanna forked a couple of green beans into her mouth.

  Finn was still watching her, his gaze brooding. “You’d think I was a stranger,” he complained to all of them.

  “It’s been months, and she’s hardly seen you,” Linnea said, trying to keep her tone mild.

  “I’m her father.”

  Hanna hunched her shoulders.

  He swore. “I’m working on a defense so our lives can go back to normal. Isn’t that what I should be doing?”

  “Of course it is, Finn,” their mother soothed. “This whole thing is absurd. Every day I wake up and wonder how this could be happening when Tess’s accident was so obviously exactly that.”

  “Mom,” Linnea said quietly, nodding toward Hanna. “Please.”

  “Well!” her mother said tartly. “What else should I talk about? Finn is right. Until this is over, all of us have to be focused on it.”

  “Hanna is six.” Linnea glared impatiently at her mother and her brother. “It’s the last thing she should be thinking about.”

  “Ah, I think I’ll skip the pie for now,” her father said, easing away from the table. He patted his stomach. “Maybe a little later.”

  Frustrated, Linnea watched him disappear toward his study. Movements jerky, she stood and began clearing the table.

  As if grateful for an excuse, Hanna joined her to help clean the kitchen. Linnea was wiping counters and Hanna was putting away pans she’d dried when Finn, still talking to their mother in the dining room, changed topics from what imbeciles the police were and said impatiently, “Having Hanna living at Linnea’s isn’t working. You and Dad can take her, can’t you?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Linnea saw Hanna go still. Fury greater than she had ever felt rose in her. For her niece, she kept her voice calm. “Why don’t you go get your coat, honey? We’re going home.”

  Then she marched into the dining room and said, “You do know Hanna and I heard that? To suggest you’d take her away from me right now when she’s already feeling terribly insecure is cruel. I am not a nanny you can dismiss. I’m her aunt. Hanna loves me. And right now, I have legal custody. Not you, not Mom and Dad.”

  Her brother’s face reddened. “You think I couldn’t take her away from you in a heartbeat if I put my mind to it? Don’
t mess with me, sis. Hanna is mine.”

  “We’re going home,” she said flatly, and walked out despite his rising voice behind her.

  “Linnea, you come back here right this minute,” her mother called.

  Linnea was quaking inside as she hustled Hanna into the car and locked all the doors while she started the engine. She half expected the front door of her parents’ house to fly open and Finn to charge out to prevent her from leaving. Even though he didn’t come after them, she didn’t quit trembling until they were blocks away.

  “Your dad was venting,” she said to Hanna. “He’s scared with the trial, and I’m sure he misses you. He didn’t mean what he said. I promise you’ll stay with me. Okay?”

  Eyes huge and dilated, Hanna studied her face for at least two blocks before she nodded. “I love you, Aunt Linnie.”

  Fury still burning in her chest, Linnea whispered, “I love you, too.”

  Quarreling with Finn had been a huge mistake, she was afraid. He would make a very bad enemy. But she had to somehow make him see that Hanna’s needs should come ahead of his wounded ego. Surely, he loved his daughter at least that much.

  Linnea prayed he wouldn’t come over tomorrow to confront her. If Finn arrived angry on her doorstep while Matt was there…

  She wouldn’t answer the door. I don’t have to, she thought, surprised at how defiant she had become. What was it Matt had said about how, in killing Tess, Finn had forfeited his rights to his daughter? She couldn’t remember the exact words, but she felt the same. Finn didn’t deserve Hanna.

  For the very first time ever, Linnea let herself admit that he never had deserved her. As a little girl herself, Linnea had loved her brother. She still wanted to believe Finn hadn’t meant to kill Tess. That the police misunderstood what happened or at least that Finn had picked up the coffee table and thrown it without actually intending to hit his wife. He always had thrown things and kicked furniture when he was mad.

  But whether he’d committed second-degree murder or had merely been criminally careless in his hotheaded way and was now lying about it, he wasn’t a nice man. Linnea had been afraid of his razor-sharp tongue for most of her life. She hadn’t figured out how she would fight her brother if he wasn’t convicted, but she had made up her mind: Finn couldn’t have Hanna back.

  Ever.

  MATT HAD SPENT THE WEEK anticipating Friday. Holidays meant something to him. His mother had loved traditions. Miniature pumpkins and gourds had spilled out of a cornucopia in the center of every Thanksgiving table when he was growing up. Certain foods were always served come Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. The outside lights had gone up on the eaves the day after Thanksgiving, regular as clockwork. Once when he was seven or eight, he had helped his dad put them up. And Mom was always firm about gifts: they could all open one on Christmas Eve, but the rest had to wait until Christmas morning. Beloved ornaments might get shabby, but they went on the tree anyway.

  He thought about those ornaments, which had spent years in storage along with some of the furniture from his parents’ house, Mom’s best china, the log-cabin quilt Dad’s grandmother had pieced by hand. Matt had told Tess to take anything she wanted once she had a home of her own, but after graduating from college she had shared various apartments with friends and never had room for much. Then once she married Finn…Nothing from their childhood seemed to fit into the home she and Finn had made. Their Christmas tree had a color scheme—silver and mauve one year, gold and red another.

  Well, who was he to talk? At least Tess had made a home. Matt himself had gone from a Norman Rockwell childhood to a rootless adult career. There hadn’t actually been a conscious choice—just one job leading to another, until it was his life. He had to guess that their parents wouldn’t have been thrilled with the choices either of them had made.

  Or, hell, maybe they would have understood. Tragedy had a way of severing past from future. He had raised his sister; there was never any question that he would do so. But since then he’d been careful to make no personal commitments to anybody but his sister and niece.

  He didn’t like the fact that it had taken Tess’s death to motivate the change, but he found that he was happy about finally settling down. One of the best parts of renting a house had been closing out the storage unit and moving everything to his garage. Matt had been happy to see how much of the furniture from their family home he and Tess had kept. Two bed frames, a pair of dressers, the dining-room table and chairs, and an antique rocking chair Mom had used to rock him and Tess to sleep when they were babies went a long way to furnishing the small house.

  Tradition.

  Thanksgiving Day itself, he went for a run in Lincoln Park, then pretended he was content reading in front of a fire. He made burritos for dinner and tried not to think about last Thanksgiving, when he had flown to Seattle to be with Tess and Hanna. He hated the vivid memory of saying goodbye to both of them at the airport, or the way they’d lingered to make faces at him, laugh and wave until he disappeared through security. What if he had known then that his sister would be dead before a year had passed, that his niece would seem more like a ghost than a vibrant little girl when he next saw her?

  Friday at noon on the nose he presented himself at Linnea’s house. A joyous thunder of feet presaged Hanna flinging open the door. “Uncle Matt! You’re here! Wait’ll you smell the turkey. I’m so-o hungry, but Aunt Linnie says it won’t be done for an hour and I can snack if I want but not too much or I won’t be hungry anymore when we eat. But she’s opening a can of olives ’cause I really like black olives. Do you like them?”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said, startled by the transformation from Tuesday’s subdued child to today’s ebullient one. He’d have guessed that she’d had a good Thanksgiving at her grandparents’ house, except she seemed more manic than joyful. Maybe what she felt today was relief. “I like green ones, too.”

  “Eew,” she declared, leading him to the kitchen where Linnea was peeling potatoes.

  He took in Linnea’s appearance swiftly. She’d dressed up for the day, wearing a short black skirt over black tights or leggings of some kind, and an apron over a pale blue sweater that looked like cashmere. The bow of the apron emphasized her slender waist and drew his eye to the perfect curves below it, outlined by that stretchy black fabric.

  He had it bad, Matt thought, as he tore his gaze from her incredible legs and butt.

  To please Hanna, he inhaled. “You’re right. It does smell great. Now I’m hungry, too.”

  “Have a carrot stick,” Linnea told him, laughing. Her eyes sparkled as if, like Hanna, she was in a fabulous mood. Maybe because of the hot oven, her color was high, but he thought she’d put on more makeup than usual, too. Because it was a holiday and she wanted to look pretty? Would she believe him if he told her she always did?

  To distract himself he grabbed a handful of those black olives she’d put out in a cut glass dish, then said, “What can I do?”

  “You’re a guest. For goodness’ sake, you don’t have to do anything.”

  “No reason you have to do all the work.” He took the potato peeler out of her hand and nudged her away with his shoulder. “This I can handle. You can do something else.”

  She tried to argue, but he started peeling and she gave up. Next thing he knew, she was making cranberry sauce from scratch, something his mother had done. Now his mouth was watering.

  Hanna spread an ivory lace cloth on the small table, then set it with great care, repositioning the silverware several times. Matt watched her sidelong, and he and Linnea exchanged smiles when their glances intersected. When the turkey came out of the oven, he dug out the stuffing and carved while she made gravy and Hanna, standing on a step stool, mashed the potatoes.

  “See?” he observed, after they’d sat and said a simple grace, then started passing serving dishes. “We can help, can’t we, Banana?”

  His niece’s ponytail bounced emphatically. “Yes! I was good at mashing, wasn’t I, Aunt Linnie?”


  “Very good.” Linnea leaned over to kiss her cheek. “And you’re right. A group effort was more fun.”

  Looking at the food, then at the woman and child across the table, faces glowing, Matt was hit by the stunning realization that this might be the best Thanksgiving he’d had since his parents died. There had been good ones with Tess and then with Tess and Hanna, but those holidays had never been without complications or undercurrents. For the past eight years, on those occasions Matt had made it to the States, Finn had been there, too.

  Today, grief should be a heavier weight than it was. He felt it—a shadow on his mood, a flicker of longing to hear his sister’s laugh, to see her impudent grin. But he also had the startling realization that Linnea was becoming important to him. So important, he didn’t like the idea of the day without her, or with her no more than a ghostly presence that barely registered on him, as had once been the case.

  He and Hanna and Linnea…They felt like family. The kind he’d grown up with, and had, he realized, craved ever since.

  So why, he asked himself, had he lived an essentially solitary life from the moment he’d fulfilled his obligation to Tess?

  The answer to his question wasn’t hard to find. He still remembered how he’d felt when the uniformed officer told him that both his parents were dead. He was a sophomore in college. Home was still his parents’ house. He’d been a long way from being ready to let go. He hadn’t only lost two of the three people he loved most in the world, he’d lost his foundation.

  So, okay. He’d been running ever since from what he wanted most: a home, love, a true sense of security. He guessed he’d been too afraid that, if he tried for a real family, he’d end up devastated again.

  But now…Stunned, Matt realized how much he wanted what was surely an illusion to be reality.

  This was the family he wanted.