by Lauren Carr
He knelt before her as she sat on the edge of the bed. “What are you going to tell her if she asks where you went last night?” He placed his hands on either side of her.
Hesitating, she took in his scent. He smelled like the fresh outdoors. His breath brushed her jaw and feathered across her breast. That was when she realized that she had picked up the nightshirt, but forgotten to put it on.
“Ah,” he said in response to her silence, “you don’t want to tell Sierra about us. Does she know about our past?”
“Sierra and I don’t have secrets from each other.”
“All teenagers have secrets,” he whispered.
“Sierra is different.”
“So was I, and I kept a lot of secrets from my parents and you did, too.”
“I did n—”
“Homecoming night,” he breathed into her ear.
Helen blushed.
With a chuckle, Chris started to stand. She grabbed his arms to pull him back onto his knees.
“I don’t want to hurt you again. I just—I haven’t dated at all since Sierra’s father.” She rubbed his chest with her hands. “I didn’t date much at all after you. Sierra’s dad came along and he asked me to marry him and—” She shrugged.
“What happened to us?” Chris asked. “Why’d—”
Her mouth opened. Tears filled her eyes.
Seeing the tears, Chris shook his head. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” He clasped her face in his hands and kissed her. “I love you, Helen, and whatever you decide to tell Sierra—”
“She’ll be fine with us,” she said. “I just don’t want her to know how fast all this happened. From me not having any life to suddenly—” She gestured at the nightshirt that she had allowed to fall to the floor. “this.”
“I get your point.” Chris kissed her on the cheek and rose to his feet. “You don’t want your sixteen-year-old daughter to know that you’re sexually active. You want her to think you’re a virgin.” He picked up his fitness monitor from the nightstand and buckled it around his wrist. “You have about as much chance of pulling that off as I have of convincing my mother that I’m still a virgin.”
With a laugh at his quip, she pointed at the monitor. “I imagine you register a lot of steps on that pedometer with all the farm chores you do.”
“I average twenty-thousand steps a day.” He picked up the nightshirt.
Her mouth dropped open. “Twenty-thousand?”
“My health insurance plan pays me money when I reach certain thresholds,” he said. “So, theoretically, I’m getting paid for doing my chores.”
“The state police have the same deal with our health insurance,” she said. “We’re all required to wear them. Not only do they register our steps, but our heart rate, too. Some officers who are really into conspiracy theories are afraid the insurance company is sharing data with human resources to give them a heads up of any health issues.”
“Some guys I’d worked with were afraid that they had GPS chips to track us.” He bent over to kiss her on the lips while handing the nightshirt to her. Enjoying the taste, he kissed her again and then once more.
“I need to go downstairs before Sierra wakes up,” she whispered while holding onto his wrist. She pulled him down to kiss him again—deeply. She leaned back across the bed.
“You should go,” he said in a soft voice while climbing on top of her.
“I know.” She slipped her hands under his shirt. She could feel his heart thrumping. “I want to see exactly how much activity your monitor can take.”
“You look happy.” There was a smile in Doris’s voice.
She bent over the back of his chair to kiss Chris on top of his head on her way to the coffeemaker. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”
“Like a log, Mom.” He released his hold on the mug with which he was warming his hands to pat her hand on his shoulder.
Dressed in multiple layers of clothes and his boots, he was drinking a hot cup of coffee to work up the motivation to go outside in the zero degree temperature. Helen had sneaked downstairs ahead of him to slip back into the guest room. Chris assumed by the silence she had been successful in climbing back into bed without Sierra realizing she had spent the night with him.
“Logs sleep alone and in silence.” Doris continued her way to the coffeemaker. The full skirt of her robe billowed behind her while Sadie and Mocha followed on either side like a couple of attendants. At the counter, she prepared her cup of coffee—extra cream and two sugars.
Chris set the mug down on the table. “How did you know?”
“Nothing happens in this house that I’m not aware of,” she said. “It’s an old creaky house—especially the stairs going up to your room. I heard Helen go up—”
“Could have been one of the girls,” Chris said. “Emma comes up to my room half the time.”
“And climbs into bed with you and goes straight to sleep.” A sly grin crossed her face. “Helen’s footsteps were softer—like someone making an effort to be very quiet. Then, once she got up there, based on the noise coming from your bed, you were much busier than usual.”
Chris buried his face in his hands.
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” She sat across from him. “It’ll be nice to have a daughter-in-law who I can actually have a healthy relationship with.” She raised one elegant brow at him while taking a cautious sip of the coffee.
“Mom, Helen and I have just gotten back together,” he said. “Don’t go sending out wedding invitations yet. A lot of time has passed. We’re not two teenagers sneaking around anymore. We’re two middle-aged single parents sneaking around.”
“Did she tell you why she dumped you?”
“No and I don’t want to know.”
“Why not? I’d want to know. What if you did it again?”
“It’s in the past,” Chris said. “If I did something to tick her off, then—”
“Not only did she break your heart, she broke mine. Your father and I loved Helen. She became like a daughter to me. I truly expected the two of you to get married and give us beautiful grandchildren.”
Chris set down his coffee mug. “You never did approve of Blair.”
“Christopher, it wasn’t Blair I disapproved of,” she said, “but how she treated you. She didn’t appreciate you and all the sacrifices you made for her.”
“Maybe.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Mom, can I ask you a question?”
She touched his hand. “Of course.”
“Suppose a genie or angel or whatever told you that he could turn back time to when Helen and I had graduated from high school. Only this time, we’d get married. Helen and I would have spent the last thirty years happily married. We’d have those lovely grandchildren that you imagined—” He stopped when he saw Doris grinning.
He laid his hand on hers. “But, there would be a price in exchange for that wish.”
Her smile fell.
“You’d have to give up the grandchildren you already have. Katelyn, Nikki, and Emma.” He leaned toward her. “If Helen had not broken my heart, I would not have married Blair. And as much as you disapproved of her, Blair gave me three daughters who are my reason for getting up in the morning.”
Doris blinked away the tears that started to well up in her eyes. “Mine too.”
“Helen feels the same way about Sierra.”
Doris smiled with pride at her son. “When did you become so wise?”
He chuckled. “I got it from my momma.”
They exchanged good-natured grins while sipping their coffee. Sterling and Thor sat side by side, peering out the window at the bird feeders in hope of spying the first squirrel of the day violating their territory.
Waiting for the caffeine to kick in, everyone, human and fur-covered mammals, drifted off into e
ach one’s own thoughts.
Finally, Chris broke the silence. “Tell me about the mother and baby that the women’s fellowship group buried out at Edge Hill Cemetery.”
“Wh-what mother and baby?” Doris stammered while Chris sipped his coffee in silence. “What are you talking about?”
“How many mothers and babies have you and your friends buried?”
“Oh!” Doris waved a hand in the air. “Tamara and her little angel. Nobody knew her name. The hospital had been given a phony driver’s license when she got dumped there. She was in full cardiac arrest. Fred took her straight into OR and delivered the baby by caesarian. They had no idea how long Tamara’s heart had been stopped—”
“During which the baby would have been without oxygen,” Chris said.
“The baby only lived a little bit.” Doris blinked. “Her husband, boyfriend—nobody knows what he was—abandoned them. No one ever claimed them from the morgue.”
“Were the police ever called in?” Chris asked.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “She died of natural causes. The medical examiner said Tamara—that’s what everyone called her because it was the name on the phony driver’s license—had died of heart failure.”
“Did you ever see her body?”
“No,” Doris said. “She’d been dead in the morgue at least two months before LeAnn told our women’s group about her at one of our fellowship breakfasts. That was after the hospital had discovered that her identification was a fake.”
“As far as the hospital was concerned, no crime had been committed,” Chris said. “That’s why no one ever called the police.”
“She and the baby had been abandoned by their family, probably because they couldn’t afford to bury them,” she said.
“The hospital wrote off the bill.”
“The two of them were going to be separated and donated as cadavers to a medical school,” Doris said. “We took up a collection for a casket to bury the two of them together. I got a plot donated at Edge’s Hill. Oh, it was such a nice plot, right under a tree with a pleasant view of a pond. Reverend Ruth did such a sweet eulogy for them. It was a pleasant spring day. You couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. As a matter of fact, a sweet breeze blew cherry blossoms across the cemetery at just the perfect time during the blessing.”
She looked across the table at him to see that Chris was cocking his head at her. “Why are we even talking about Tamara and her baby? You were in Washington when all that happened. How do you even know about it?”
Chris leaned across the table and took her hand. “Mom.” He flashed a grin at her. “Mother. Tamara got dumped at Jefferson Medical Center on the same day that Sandy Lipton, who was nine months pregnant, disappeared.”
Doris’s mouth dropped open in a loud gasp. Her mouth hung open while she blinked at her son, who sat back in his seat to sip his coffee.
When he received no response, he sat up to tell her, “Sandy Lipton is the girl whose murder everyone thinks Dad covered up for me by the way.” He drained his cup and set it on the table.
Doris was still gathering her thoughts when he leaned over to whisper into her ear on his way to the mudroom to get his coat. “Of course, no one is going to think anything when they find out it was my mother who buried her and her baby.”
He called to her while shrugging into his coat, “When you’re ready, we’ll have a long talk.”
He opened the door to a howling wind. When he slammed the door shut behind him, silence fell over the kitchen.
“This isn’t good.” After taking a sip of her coffee, she looked down at Sadie and Mocha, who cocked their heads at her. “This isn’t good at all.”
“Sterling, I wouldn’t get too close to them if I were you,” Chris warned the German shepherd inching toward the cats eating breakfast at a row of foil pie plates.
Judging by the curiosity on the dog’s face, Chris wondered if he had much experience with cats. Since the dog had been trained strictly for law enforcement, Chris doubted he had many encounters with cats, especially barn cats. He had easily adapted to his new environment. His curiosity proved to be a problem—evidenced by the yelp Chris heard before Sterling scurried into the room where he was trying in vain to bring the security monitors back to life.
Neither would power on. They had worked before the power outage. Must have been a power surge. With a curse, he yanked the surge protector from the outlet.
Keeping a close eye on an orange tabby, Sterling pressed against Chris’s leg while his master slid the paddock door open and whistled to call in the horses.
“Well, if this doesn’t feel like déjà vu.”
Chris heard Helen enter the barn just as the herd of horses raced in from the paddock. She was standing in the center of the aisle between the two rows of horse stalls—directly in the path of the horses galloping in for their morning meal.
“Stand back!” He grabbed her by the waist and body slammed her up against the far wall as the horses split up to go into each one’s stall.
Helen’s knees buckled when she realized she had almost stepped into the middle of a small stampede. When he felt her slump, Chris picked her up and pinned her against the wall with his body.
“Another instance of déjà vu,” she murmured looking into his gray eyes. “I keep forgetting how dangerous this barn is.”
Her hair smelled like the winter breeze. “The loft is pretty safe.”
The heat of his body against hers made her heartbeat quicken. “Oh, I do have fond memories of that loft.”
“I got a new pulley up there. I don’t suppose you want to see it.”
Her heart said yes, but her mind reminded her that their children were in the farmhouse preparing for school—any of whom could walk in at any moment. She swallowed. “The girls are up,” she said in a low voice. “Can I have a raincheck?” She winked at him.
He brushed her cheek with his lips, slowly making his way down to her neck, then back to her ear. “Anytime for you.”
She tried not to melt to the floor when he stepped away to close each of the stall doors. She counted a dozen horses and two ponies. Spotting the gray Thoroughbred she had petted before, she let out a soft gasp. “He’s beautiful.” She took a step toward the horse. When he tossed his head, she stopped.
Chris reached into the stall to stroke his head. “His name’s Traveler.” He urged her forward to stroke his muzzle.
“Like Robert E. Lee’s horse.”
“I don’t know if he was named after Lee’s horse or not. Dad bought him from a horse trainer who wanted to race his own horses. Only the guy had a big gambling problem. He bought Traveler with the winnings from a lucky long shot. Then he got unlucky with a series of long shots and owed money to the wrong people. They wanted Traveler to pay off his bets.”
Traveler warmed up to Helen enough to hang his head over the stall door to allow her to scratch his ears.
“How did your Dad end up with him?”
“These people he owed money to were into drugging horses and he didn’t want that to happen to Traveler. So he went to Dad. The guy agreed to wear a wire and helped the police to bring them down.”
He fished a carrot out of his pocket and broke it in half—handing half to her. “That was Dad’s last case. He got shot when they went in after the suspects discovered the guy’s wire. Dad took a bullet to save the trainer’s life, and he gave Traveler to Dad to thank him.”
“Then, both your dad and Traveler retired.”
Traveler rubbed his head against Chris’s chest. “Dad rode him every day. I try to take him out as much as possible.” He fed his half of the carrot to the horse. “You’d like that, huh, boy?” He told Helen. “He didn’t really like racing. His thing is jumping.”
Chris picked up the handles on a wheelbarrow filled with horse manure and wheeled it to the other end
of the barn to deposit outside.
Helen stuffed her hands in the pockets of her winter coat and shivered. The temperature was so low that it was freezing even in the barn.
Pressure against her leg informed her of Sterling’s presence. Sitting, the German shepherd leaned against her with all of his weight. He gazed imploringly at her with his brown eyes as if to request that she scratch his ears like she had done for Traveler. She complied.
“I see you made a friend,” Chris said when he returned with the empty wheelbarrow.
“Can never have too many friends.” Reminded of Felicia’s death only hours before, she swallowed and blinked her eyes to fight the tears yearning to return. “I’m sorry. You must be thinking I’m such an emotional wreck—breaking down last night the way I did.”
“You had a natural reaction to the brutal death of a friend who we saw only twenty-four hours ago. I’d think less of you if you didn’t react.”
She flashed him a reassuring grin.
“Did you contact your superiors about you being on the scene at the hospital?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s my case. Sheriff Bassett went over to Rod’s house last night to give him the news—the rental where he’s been staying since him and Felicia separated. The arson investigator will meet us at the house at ten.”
Lost in their thoughts of the past—the days of their youth, they strolled out of the barn. Sterling galloped on ahead to where Sierra and Chris’s daughters were climbing into Doris’s blue sedan.
“Sierra, what are you doing?” Helen broke into a run to stop her daughter from driving off in a car that did not belong to her.
“We’re going to breakfast at iHop,” Katelyn said. “Wanna come?”
“I thought Nonni was making pancakes and sausage,” Chris said.
The girls broke into a storm of giggles.
“Did a dog get them?” Chris asked.
“The dogs won’t even touch them,” Nikki said. “Nonni mixed up the sugar and salt again.”
“So she gave us a credit card and told us to go get something nutritious for breakfast before school.” Katelyn extracted the credit card from her pocket and waved it for them to see.