Twilight Christmas: A Carolina Coast Novella (Carolina Coast Novels Book 3)

by Normandie Fischer

  “Don’t wander. Stay where you can see me, and where I can see you.”

  Katie skipped up to the stone guardians that watched over a largish family plot, and Annie Mac knelt to dig a hole. Auntie Sim would have loved the crocuses, so like ones she’d grown and tended in her yard. The loss of Sim hurt like a knife poking at her gut—a very pointy knife.

  “I miss you so much.” She dashed a wayward tear with fingers that had probably smeared dirt across her cheek. “I hope you know. I hope you saw what happened to Roy, because we’re doing just fine. Except, I could use some of your wisdom.” The whisper of a breeze picked up a strand of her hair, glossed its way over her face. “I could sure use one of your hugs.”

  As if she’d heard her mommy’s words, Katie skipped over and leaned against Annie Mac’s bowed back. “Angels, Mama.”

  Annie Mac dropped the bulbs into the ground and turned to draw her baby close. “I see them.”

  “I’m gonna be one for Christmas.”

  “Won’t that be fun?”

  “You ready t’go?”

  “Almost. I just have a couple more things to finish.”

  “’kay!” Katie danced back to the statues.

  As Annie Mac covered the area around the bulbs with additional dirt, something caught her eye, a flash of black. A crow sauntered across the empty plot beside her.

  She fell back on her heels. That was the plot meant for her. And a crow walked on it, cawing as if she were the intruder.

  What had Auntie Sim said? “It’s a comfort to me, little girl. You not having to worry about this. And someday—not too soon, mind you—you’ll be lying there, next to me. You’re my family.”

  Annie Mac swiped at more tears even as the scent of turned earth engulfed her. The empty spot seemed to leer. You were this close, it whispered, this close to decaying here, years ahead of time. He’d almost killed her. Roy. Killed her and taken Katie.

  Shaken, she brushed herself off, gathered her things, and hurried toward the car with her precious one, trying not to cling too tightly, trying not to hear that crow’s caw as a presage of disaster. On the drive home, she tried to play the mind games her counselor had suggested, that litany of safety, while keeping a smile pasted on for her little girl’s sake.

  It had only been a crow.

  3

  Annie Mac

  After a dinner of macaroni and cheese, Annie Mac read two chapters from Winnie-the-Pooh with her sweet girl curled in her lap. Then it was bath time, followed by another chapter once she’d tucked Katie in bed, and, finally, goodnight prayers.

  “Sleep well, my princess.” Annie Mac pulled the extra quilt over her little one, because the furnace was still out.

  Of course it was still out. Why should anyone else care if their noses froze?

  Okay, fine, the temperature probably wouldn’t drop below fifty overnight. But that shouldn’t matter. She paid rent for what was supposed to be a heated apartment.

  “Mama, I do get to be an angel in the play, don’t I? For real?”

  “You do. And Ty will be a shepherd.”

  “An angel’s important, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Annie Mac nuzzled her daughter’s nose. “She gets to announce that baby Jesus has been born.”

  “Do I get wings?”

  “You do.”

  “And a halo?”

  “A lovely silver halo.” She kissed the sweet cheek. “Good night, my love. Sleep tight.”

  She left nightlights burning in Katie’s room and in the hall and wandered through the chilly apartment before deciding to seek comfort by snuggling in her own bed. The story she picked up should have been compelling enough to keep her awake, but here she was, yawning, her eyelids heavy.

  After one last trip to the bathroom, she turned off her light and closed her eyes. Nothing. She stared into the dark, hoping her lids would shut on their own. They didn’t.

  Instead of quieting, her thoughts swirled, focusing on her small community of friends, what each was doing, what might be bothering them. Which sent her straight to worries about her own plaguy issues like lack of money and fears for her children’s future.

  She might as well add loneliness and world hunger to the mix-up.

  That got her flipping to her other side, tucking and straightening her nightgown to get a wrinkle from between her thigh and the sheet. She wouldn’t fix the world by staying awake. And if she didn’t sleep, she wouldn’t be any good to anyone.

  Fine. She’d lie there with her eyes closed and pretend to sleep until it happened.

  And suddenly, Roy was in the room with her.

  She flailed an arm to protect her face from his curled fist. His boot connected, bones crunched, and breath hissed. The odor of rancid flesh filled her nostrils.

  Scuttling backward, she screamed.

  O Lord, help! God, please no . . .

  And she woke.

  Clutching the sheet to her breasts, she uncurled and inched down off the headboard. She lay alone in her dark room, sweating, shaking, and nauseated, but at least Roy was no more. She pressed a palm against her lips to stifle a second cry, this one from frustration and a different fear. Awake, she no longer feared a ghost. No, now she questioned her sanity.

  She longed to be normal. She tried to be normal. But, obviously, normal wasn’t happening. Not when she couldn’t stop the nightmares.

  She shouldn’t have gone to bed so early. It was only eleven-thirty now, and she was wide awake. She tossed back her covers and pulled on her bathrobe and then tiptoed across the hall to check on her children.

  The sight of Ty’s empty bed startled her before she remembered. He was at Clay’s. Thank God he hadn’t been here to hear another scream from her.

  The nightlight in Katie’s room illuminated her little one’s sweet face and the thumb that lay unworked in her open mouth. Annie Mac stood over the bed and listened to the breaths whispering past her daughter’s lips.

  How had Katie escaped unscathed?

  Not for the first time, she imagined a child’s guardian angel. How else could she explain Katie’s unwavering trust in spite of the damage Roy had done to her as well to her mama?

  Unless—and this was one of the big fears—her daughter’s issues just hadn’t manifested themselves yet.

  She leaned over to drop a light kiss on her baby’s downy cheek before wandering to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. The tea company called it sleep-inducing. They lied. Or perhaps it was only soporific for those whose hearts weren’t cluttered with debris.

  While she waited for the water to boil, she looked for some boring reading and came across The Life of the Blue Crab. Ty had insisted they buy it, “Please Mama,” because he needed to know all about crabs so he could catch them off Clay’s dock. She smoothed her fingers over the shiny picture. Pokey eyes stared up at her, accusingly.

  “Sorry,” she whispered and then caught herself. She hadn’t trapped and killed the fool thing.

  Talking to a book cover. She was obviously on a slippery slope, and it was all downhill.

  Her boy really loved Clay and had been praying for a wedding. She’d hoped for it herself, but it hadn’t taken her long to figure out marriage was not for the likes of her, not after all the mistakes she’d made and the haunting she experienced when she let down her guard. She didn’t deserve a man like Clay, couldn’t deserve him. Tonight merely emphasized how right she’d been. Imagine if he’d slept in the bed next to her? She shuddered just thinking of it.

  This was the second nightmare in a row. Sure, sometimes, like tonight, a trigger set her off, but nightmares could just as easily sneak in after a peaceful day. With that sort of record, she’d have to gut it out, because she couldn’t hand over her level of craziness to another person.

  She was pretty sure tonight’s trigger had been her visit to the cemetery. But inciting event or no, she hated that Roy maintained any control over her. A dead man should be just that: dead.

  She poured boilin
g water over the tea bag, stirred in a spoonful of honey, and drank it slowly, letting it warm her. It didn’t make her sleepy.

  Maybe the cold air would. She tightened her robe and stepped out to the small landing at the top of the stairs leading from her apartment to the ground. No one lived in the lower half of the duplex, and she was grateful for the privacy.

  She stared down on a Front Street full of shadows created by the street lamps. The moon was hidden behind clouds tonight. If it were out, she’d be able to see a narrow marsh on the other side of the road, and just beyond it, Taylor’s Creek. The air was redolent of salt air and plough mud, stirred up perhaps by last night’s storm. In the quiet of midnight in December, she could even hear the faint lapping of water. She pulled up the collar of her bathrobe and breathed deeply.

  She’d been working on her fears, the fear of drowning, fear of her babies drowning, fear of Roy coming back from the dead. Fear of making another mistake because she was so good at them.

  She’d agreed to rent a place this close to the water because it was the only one she’d been able to find that had a long flight of noisy stairs. The racket they made when anyone stepped on them meant no one could sneak up without sounding an alarm. She’d hear it, hear rattles and squeaks and the scream of the motion sensor she set for nights, and she’d call for help faster than he could walk to the steel door she’d insisted on, faster than he could get all locks undone. Never again would a man smash her or her kids or her stuff with his fists. Not on her watch. And he—whoever—would have to get past her to grab either of her darlings. She’d be ready next time. All the way ready.

  No way on God’s green earth would she have gone back to live in the house where it had begun, that disaster from which she still recoiled. The disaster she’d let in. No, she had a tenant there, one who paid good money—or at least good enough—and she had her substitute teacher’s pay. And just maybe she’d have a full-time teaching job by the first of the year.

  Yes, she and her babies were safe, although she knew too well the bad things that could happen if you turned your back.

  What if Clay turned his back on Ty out there on the water? Hadn’t she just read about drowning victims, how they didn’t look like they were going under for the last time, because they couldn’t really flail? They just sank. And died.

  She grabbed the railing, slammed shut her eyes, and forced herself to hang on. Sweat and the shakes made her throat feel as if it would close up and cut off air to her lungs. Why had she let Ty out of her sight even for one night?

  Popping open her lids so she wouldn’t fall, she backed toward the wall, gulping air even as she worked to turn her mind to truths. Ty could swim, and he always wore a life vest. Clay had promised.

  Breathe. Release. Breathe. Release.

  Ty can swim.

  She’d finally steeled herself to let Ty and Katie take swimming lessons. She remembered the chlorine scent of the water, the moldy odor in the pool showers. She’d known those as a child. Known the fear. Remembered her father forcing her in, forcing her to swim, almost forcing her to drown. And thinking her worthless because she couldn’t stop sobbing or shivering or begging.

  Footsteps sounded on the sidewalk below, even as late as this, and a light laugh slid across the night air, as if somebody were mighty pleased with life. Annie Mac peered down at the retreating figure silhouetted in the lamplight before she went back inside, closed and locked the door.

  Maybe now she’d be able to sleep. It had looked like Agnes down there, heading home from her job at Aqua. Annie Mac would think about what Agnes and her daughter must have to deal with, not about herself. Or her babies.

  Or the nightmares that wouldn’t leave her be.

  She rubbed her hands across her stomach. Then she whispered the litany: “Ty is fine. Katie’s fine. I am fine. Ty is fine, Katie’s fine, I am fine.”

  She didn’t want to be the crazy mother who raised crazy kids. There had to be an answer, somewhere. Because, if there weren’t, she didn’t know how she’d cope. The thing about being crazy, the real truth that scared the daylights out of her, was that sooner or later folk would find out, and when they did, she’d lose her job, and then she’d lose her babies, and then she’d die.

  4

  Clay

  Clay Dougherty padded barefoot into his kitchen and set the kettle on to boil before getting out his French press and grinding enough beans for a good strong cup of Sumatra. While he waited for the water to come just shy of a boil, he opened the blinds shielding the great room from the early morning sunlight bouncing off the creek.

  Perfect. The sun was doing its job of warming the air and the water, making it ideal weather for a day of sailing. He glanced toward the guest hall where the boy lay asleep in his old room.

  And something cracked open a little wider in Clay.

  He rubbed away the image of the second bedroom, empty of the woman who’d occupied it not that long ago. The what-ifs, the could-bes did him no good at all.

  No, it was a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day, and he was away from work, away from the demands of the station house, which admittedly had been limited to petty crimes this week. And last week.

  Luckily, the murder they’d solved in early November justified their pay. A husband had left his wife for his mistress. Only, the suspect—the wife—hadn’t plunged the knife in the guy’s throat. That had been a former mistress who hadn’t liked losing her sugar daddy to bimbo number two. Or number three or four, for all Clay knew. At least the wife got something out of his death, while the mistresses didn’t. Except prison time for one of them. And maybe a lesson learned for the other.

  More thoughts he needed to shrug off. He didn’t want work issues or memories of ugliness to mar this time with Ty. Nope. That boy was one of his real joys. And teaching him to sail? A huge perk. Huge.

  He poured hot water over the coffee grounds and waited for the brew to steep. Then he got out a mixing bowl, flour, eggs, and milk, and prepared to make pancakes, their favorite.

  When Ty’s door opened, Clay announced breakfast in five. That would get a twelve-year-old front and center.

  He grinned and turned on the griddle.

  Ty held up the wetsuit Clay’d bought him and then put it back in its box. “It’s supposed to be seventy-five degrees this afternoon. My sweatshirt’s good enough.”

  “One wave,” Clay said, zipping up his own windbreaker, “and you’ll be wet, Indian summer notwithstanding. And the water’s cold. Let’s at least go with this water-resistant jacket, just in case.”

  Ty accepted the jacket and slipped it on. Then he picked up the small cooler filled with water bottles and sandwiches and followed Clay toward the dock. Clay’d already rigged and tied up the small boat so they wouldn’t have to go wading as they launched it. Wading was best left for summer.

  Ty settled himself at the stern to man the tiller. Clay pushed off from the dock and sat slightly forward.

  As they sailed out of the creek and into the wider waters of Core Sound, Clay said, “You need to check your mark, check the wind, and think about how high you need to point us to compensate for some leeward movement. Give yourself enough wiggle room.”

  Ty’d been with him a couple of times when the wind had fallen to nothing and they’d had to paddle home with the daggerboard. A lot of work, but Clay’d just flexed his biceps. “Muscles, son. Muscles.” No man minded a little work, he’d said, or the results of that work.

  He also remembered Ty’s wide eyes the first time they’d rushed home from Cape Lookout with storm clouds looming and a hefty wind blowing up behind them. The little boat had acted like a surfboard, waves breaking over the stern and washing on past them. Ty’s mama had been white-knuckled when they pulled the little boat up on shore. Annie Mac had hustled Ty into her car and lit off so fast she’d churned gravel. It had taken a whole lot of sweet talking after that to get her to let go of the boy long enough for any lessons. Didn’t matter to her that Ty was safe—or that, if t
hey’d overturned and been unable to right the boat any place out there, they’d eventually drift to one shore or another, or at least to a sand bar where they could stand. Ty had been wearing a life vest, for heaven’s sake.

  Annie Mac was a piece of work all right. Some of it understandable, some not. Clay still didn’t know what made the woman so freakish about water. He figured she’d tell him when she was ready.

  Or maybe not. He’d been so certain she was the one, so certain she thought so, too. When she said she needed time on her own to grow stronger emotionally while physical therapy helped strengthen her physically, he’d agreed. Absolutely. He’d seen the strength in her that she hadn’t believed in and figured a little time to discover it couldn’t hurt her or them.

  What a joke. Instead, her “growth” time—the word made him gag—had hammered a wedge in deep enough to snap their obviously imaginary relationship like a dried-up log being split for kindling.

  “How far we going?” Ty bent forward, checking under the boom to see what was to leeward.

  Wake up, Clay told himself. “Over past marker number ten. That work for you?”

  “That’s on the line heading toward the Cape?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They weren’t likely to find too many surprises out here, but you never knew. There were always stakes marking leased fishing grounds, sometimes a fishing boat anchored off a shoal. Rarely did they glimpse another sailboat.

  The sun danced off the small wind waves. Ty mimicked Clay’s movements when he checked the sail trim.

  “Looking good,” Clay told him.

  As they settled into a quiet glide over the water, Ty said, “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, there’s this new girl, Brisa.”

  Clay kept his eyes on the water to give the boy a chance to say what he wanted.