A Daughter's Story (17 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“N
OOOOO
!” S
EEING
THE
INTENT
in Emma’s eyes a fraction of
a second before her arm moved, Chris lunged, bumping her hand just as the gun
went off.

He fell, taking Emma and Rob and the gun with him.

She was not going to live with Evert’s murder burdening her
soul. And she wasn’t going to die, either.

Rob reached for the gun, but Chris got to it first, just as
Emma’s front door burst open. “Police! Freeze!”

Two uniformed cops stood in the archway into the living room
with guns pointing at them. They’d obviously heard the shot, alerting them that
all was not well inside the townhome.

Rob still had an arm around Emma’s throat. She lay still, but
her eyes were wide open. She was blinking. Chris didn’t see any blood.

“Drop the gun.” The voice of the officer was menacing.

Not on his life. Keeping the barrel pointed at Rob Evert’s
head, Chris said, “Just as soon as you get him away from her,” he said. “I’m
Chris Talbot.”

While one officer held a gun on Chris, the other moved in on
Rob, prying him and Emma apart.

She coughed and bent over, and the officer helped her to a
sitting position on the floor, his other hand holding Rob captive.

“We need to see some ID,” the second officer said to Rob. While
holding him up against the wall, he dug inside Rob’s back pocket for a wallet.
And then, not so gently, cuffed the man.

As soon as he heard the click, Chris surrendered Rob’s gun and
reached for Emma.

She might not need reassurance, but he did. He’d thought they
were both going to die.

* * *

E
MMA
RODE
WITH
Detective Miller to
her mother’s place just after eight on Tuesday night. She’d refused the medical
examination Ramsey had suggested she submit to and insisted that she needed to
be with him at her mother’s home, no matter what they found. Rob had been in
custody for fifteen minutes, and, although she didn’t know everything he’d told
the detectives, she knew he was insisting that he hadn’t done anything but visit
with Rose.

Please, dear God, let this be one time
he’s telling the truth.

Rob had also claimed to have been in her home to pick up some
discs he’d left in her office. He said he needed them for work.

When Miller had looked, the discs had been there, but Emma knew
for certain that he’d brought them that evening. She’d made sure nothing of
Rob’s was left in the house after she’d kicked him out.

Rob maintained that Chris Talbot had been the one to threaten
their lives that night. That he’d been pulling Emma away from Talbot when the
gun went off.

There was a bullet hole in the wall near the window of her
front room.

She had no idea where Chris was. He’d been ushered out of the
living room by a couple of uniformed officers and she hadn’t seen him since.

“You sure you won’t let us run you by the hospital?” Detective
Miller asked, sitting beside her in the backseat, while a female officer drove
the unmarked car they were in.

The key to her mother’s house clutched tightly in her hand,
Emma shook her head. The emergency room couldn’t help her where she hurt.

She had to make certain that her mother was safe. She couldn’t
think beyond that.

* * *

“T
HE
LIGHT
’
S
NOT
on in
the corner of the living room,” Emma said as they pulled up in front of what
used to be a newish house in an up-and-coming neighborhood, but was now an older
home in a below-average neighborhood.

“What does that mean?”

“She always turns that light on when she’s leaving. She leaves
others on, too, randomly, so there isn’t a pattern, but she always leaves that
light on in the corner so she can see the whole room when she walks in. My
mother has an aversion to shadows.”

“Is it ever on when she’s home?”

“Yes.”

Miller turned to look at her. “You see anything else
amiss?”

“No. It looks perfectly normal. But if Rob took her, there
probably wouldn’t be much sign of struggle. It’s not like he’d have to break in.
My mother had no reason to fear Rob.”

She should have told her mother what was going on.

Detective Miller opened his door. “Let’s go in.”

“If she’s there, if everything is okay, will you let me tell
her what’s going on? Please? Mom doesn’t do well with police officers. They
weren’t a huge help when Claire went missing. For months they treated her like
she was a suspect.”

“Stay in the car, would you, Brown?” The detective spoke to the
officer in the front seat.

“Of course, sir. You want me to keep the car running?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

T
HE
MINUTE
HE
was told he was free to
leave the police station, Chris sped back to his side of town. He made it to the
Son Catcher
without getting a ticket, and was on
board with an open beer before he’d turned on any lights. He’d take the boat
out, anchor her and make himself inaccessible for the rest of the night.

Evert was in custody.

Emma was safe.

For now, until she saw her doctor, he was free.

Tempted to throw his cell phone overboard, Chris held himself
back.

He ran his business through his phone. The satisfaction he’d
gain from trashing it wouldn’t be worth the cost of a new one.

* * *

“L
ET
’
S
GO
AROUND
back.” Emma—moving rapidly across the grass in her mother’s front
yard—wasn’t giving the detective a chance to refute her.

“Mom!” she called as she unlocked the double-locked dead bolt
into the kitchen. “I always call out to her so she’ll know it’s me,” she
explained to Miller.

“Emma? Who are you talking to? I thought you said you were
having dinner with friends tonight.” Rose’s voice initially came from upstairs,
but trailed downward. “I was going to call you later. You’ll never guess who
stopped by…”

Her mother, still wearing the tweed green dress and matching
jacket that she’d probably worn to work that day, stopped in the doorway to the
kitchen.

“Emma? What’s going on? Who’s this?”

Steeling the alarm from her voice, her expression, swallowing
back tears of relief, Emma said, “Mom…”

“Is this the friend you were having dinner with, Em? As busy as
you’ve been these past few weeks, I’d hoped you met someone, but then when Rob
stopped by…”

Her mother was fine. Just fine.

And open to Emma bringing home a new boyfriend.

“I’m D—”

“Mom, he’s not a friend,” Emma interrupted, giving Miller a
pointed look. “Can we sit down a minute?”

Rose paled. Her shoulders closed in on her. “What is it? You’ve
got bad news. I know it. I can tell by the way your mouth is trembling. You’re
upset about something.”

Her mother was filling the teakettle. Next she’d get out the
cups. And saucers. She’s put tea bags in each. She’d pull out a little plate and
put some sweetened crackers on it.

“Tell me about Rob coming to see you,” Emma said.

“First tell me who
he
is.” Rose
stared her down.

“He’s a detective, Mom. Rob tried to hurt me tonight. He said
that he’d taken you hostage and that if I didn’t go with him he couldn’t
guarantee your safety.”

Rose sank into the chair at the head of the small table. “And
you believed him?”

“He had a key to my house, Mom. You have the only copy.”

Shaking her head, looking dazed and frightened and reminiscent
of the little girl she’d regressed into those first days after Claire went
missing, Rose turned and pulled out the hidden drawer underneath the ledge of
the butcher-block island. “My copy is right… He took it.”

“Tell us about Rob Evert’s visit, ma’am.” Detective Miller
pulled the saucers down from the cupboard, set the cups on them and placed them
on the table before pulling out a chair and sitting opposite her mother. “If you
don’t mind, that is.”

The teakettle whistled and Emma turned off the burner while
Rose told them both about Rob’s impromptu visit, repeating what must have been
close to verbatim every word of the five-minute conversation that had taken
place before he asked Rose if she wouldn’t mind looking in her computer room for
the discs he needed, in case he’d left them there.

“That must have been when he took the key,” Emma said. Standing
behind her mother, her hands resting lightly on Rose’s shoulders, she looked at
Miller. “He knew where it was.”

“I assumed so. You ladies let him into your lives. Trusted him.
He has a lot to answer for.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” Rose was trembling. “I left the room and he
took the key and… I put you in danger, Em. I can’t believe it. I put you in
danger. I’m so sorry. I—”

“As you can see, your daughter’s fine, Mrs. Sanderson,”
Detective Miller said in a voice Emma hadn’t heard before. “You taught her to
take care of herself well.”

“You saved yourself, Em?”

From Rob? Yeah, she’d found a way to get out of giving in to
his demands. But she’d have ended up a murderer if not for…

“Yeah,” she said now. If she’d hurt Rob, killed him, it would
have been self-defense. She knew that. But earthly laws didn’t make her feel as
though taking a life was okay.

“She outsmarted him,” Miller said, and Emma gave him a warning
look.

Rose stared and Emma forced herself to erase any trace of the
past few hours from her face.

“You’re really fine?” Rose asked.

“Yes, Mom, I’m fine.” Rob was in custody. Chris was gone. And
she wasn’t concerned about being pregnant. Claire was still missing, there were
no further answers in her case, but that was normal for them.

“Where’s Rob?”

“In jail,” Detective Miller said. “Where I hope he’s going to
be for a very long time.”

“Even though he didn’t hurt her?”

“He was in her house when she got home tonight. He held her
there against her will, which is considered kidnapping. He threatened bodily
harm and he attempted to blackmail her. All serious felonies punishable by
twenty years or more in prison.”

If they could prove any of it,
Emma
thought. She was sure Rob would try to turn it into a case of her word against
his. Rose said he could take the key. Emma said he was welcome to his discs.
Both statements were true, but in a different time and under different
circumstances.

Which they had no way to prove.

And between Rob and Chris? Chris was the one with the gun when
the officers burst into the room. And he’d refused to relinquish it at
first.

Hopefully the Cheryl Diamond thing was going to pan out.

Or they’d find out what Rob was really up to before it was too
late.

* * *

“Y
OU
’
RE
GOING
TO
come
clean with me.” Ramsey Miller stood over Evert, who was sitting, hands cuffed in
his lap, at a table in the interrogation room Tuesday night.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He tossed a picture of Cheryl Diamond in front of the man. “She
gave you up, man. She’s talking. Now’s your chance to have your say before we
agree to the deal she’s asking for.”

“I’ve never seen that girl before in my life. If she thinks she
has something on me, I’m willing to take my chances.”

“You’re already going away for a long time, you get that, don’t
you?”

“For what? Defending myself from my ex-fiancée’s jealous lover?
You heard your guys. When they burst in, Talbot had a gun on me.”

“Uh-huh, and you just happened to stop by for…what? A friendly
chat?”

“I came by to get some discs I forgot in Emma’s office. I
needed them for work. She’s given me a key.”

Evert was not changing his story. At all.

Because it was well rehearsed? Or the truth?

“What about Rose Sanderson?”

“What about her? Last I saw her, she was fine.”

“You admit to seeing her, then?”

“I did see her, briefly, yes. This afternoon. I stopped by her
place to see if she could help me iron things out with Emma. We talked for a few
minutes, and when I could see she wasn’t going to be much help, I asked her if
she minded if I look for the discs that I later found at Emma’s. She looked for
me, said she didn’t have them, and when she said she thought it was best that I
leave, I did. I’m sure she’ll verify that.”

“Emma says that you claimed to have forced Rose to call the
organizers of the conference she was supposed to attend and say she wasn’t
coming.”

“Emma says a lot of things that aren’t exactly true, but that’s
a stretch, even for her. All those years, growing up with a mother like hers,
always having to look over her shoulder, never trusting anyone, being afraid,
it’s all taken its toll on her.”

The lowlife was twisting the truth into lies, but Miller wasn’t
done with him yet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

E
MMA
WAS
AT
HER
doctor’s as soon as the office
opened Wednesday morning. She was only five minutes from school and had plenty
of time before she had to be in her classroom. She’d learned a long time ago
that the best way to survive tragedy was to go on. To find normal again.

“The doctor’s not here yet, but we can get the blood work done
so the results will be ready when she arrives,” the receptionist, a new woman
she’d never met before, told her. “Because you’re one of our patients, the test
is free of charge.”

She already knew that, and couldn’t care less about the money.
Not that she bothered explaining either point to the poor woman behind the desk.
It wasn’t her fault the mere thought of Chris Talbot—the man who hadn’t called
her at all last night, hadn’t picked up when she’d called him—made her tense
enough to snap.

“My appointment with the doctor isn’t until four-thirty, but
she’d suggested that I get the lab work done this morning,” she told the
receptionist, forcing herself to smile in hopes that the expression somehow
translated into her voice.

“Of course.” The woman called for Christine, a nurse that Emma
knew by sight, and the whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.

By five o’clock that afternoon, she’d be free of her last tie
with Chris Talbot. She hoped. And then felt like crying again.

Minutes later, Emma pulled into the teacher’s parking lot at
school, found a space and picked up her phone, calling up the notepad
feature.

Detective Miller had suggested that she should take the day off
work. Maybe see a counselor. He’d offered to set her up with one.

After all, she’d been involved in an attempted murder the night
before.

Chris’s. Miller didn’t know Emma had tried to turn the gun on
Rob, instead.

He also didn’t get that her job was what kept her sane. Not
counseling. She’d had enough of that over the years.

She’d go into school. She’d do her job.

And then she’d do the last thing she was ever going to do for
Chris Talbot.

She would set him free.

But first, she had another journal entry to make.

5. I want to have children.

* * *

A
S
SOON
AS
he secured the
Son Catcher
for the night and sold his day’s take to
Manny, Chris left the docks. He went home, showered, put on fresh jeans, a black
T-shirt and flip-flops, ran a comb through the wet hair tipping his shoulders
and went straight back out to the truck.

It wasn’t Friday. And it wasn’t even dinnertime yet, but he
pulled up outside of Marta and Jim’s place and went to the door.

“Chris?” Marta had a worried smile on her face when she met him
at the door. “Come in,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “What’s
wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Jim’s okay?”

“I haven’t seen him today, Aunt Marta, but there wasn’t
anything out of the ordinary going on down at the docks. Did you expect him back
early?”

“No.” The older woman’s grin lit up her face. “I just…seeing
you there, I thought—” She sat down in her rocker. “No matter how many years
pass, I guess you never quite get past the fear of…well, never mind.”

He understood. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“No, it’s fine. I just let my imagination get away with me
sometimes. So, tell me what’s up.”

He didn’t pretend this was just a social call. If he’d made
more of them in the past ten years, maybe he could get away with it. But what
was the point?

“I need to talk to you, Aunt Marta. Have you got a minute?”

“Just put the casserole in the oven. I’ve got forty-five
minutes before it’s due to come out.”

“I need you to be completely honest with me.”

“I don’t lie to you, son. I never have.”

“I’m not accusing you of lying. I’m just saying I need the
complete truth.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. Then tell me about my mother.”

“I knew Josie most of her life. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know the things you don’t talk about. The things
you’ve never told me.”

“I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, Chris. You know it’s
not right.”

“I’m asking you to tell me the truth about my mother,” he said
again. “Besides the panic attacks. I think I have a right to know.”

“Your mother was a good woman, Chris. She adored you and she
adored your father.”

He had cause to doubt her on both counts. Looking out at the
ocean in the distance, he held his tongue. There was a right way and a wrong
way. A phrase he’d heard his father say a million times.

“She…had problems.”

An understatement. “She had men, you mean.”

“You knew?”

“She didn’t tell you about the day her twelve-year-old son
walked in to find her naked in bed with a man he’d never seen before?”

Marta’s head bowed. “No.” Her eyes, when she looked back at
Chris, were shadowed. “Chris, I didn’t condone what your mother did.”

“But you knew about it.”

“Yes.”

“You knew that she was being unfaithful to my father and yet,
all those years, all those Friday nights, we’d sit here together like family and
you never once told my father what you knew?”

“First, it wasn’t my place to tell him about it.”

“You and Jim were his best friends!” Chris stopped as his voice
raised. “Who else should have told him something like that?”

“And secondly,” Marta continued as though Chris hadn’t spoken,
“he didn’t need to be told. He knew.”

“Later, yeah, he found out somehow. But if he’d known from the
beginning—”

“He knew fairly early on in their marriage.”

The time when he was twelve wasn’t the first? “You’re sure
about that?”

Marta nodded. “He talked to Jim about it.”

“He did.”

“He was heartbroken, of course, but he still loved your mother.
And she loved him. She hated what she was as much as anyone. She begged your
father, time and again, to forgive her, to not leave her.”

“He should have left her.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not for us to say. Their relationship
was between the two of them and who knows what was best for them.”

Chris shook his head.

“Your mother grew up in a different time,” Marta said. “You
never knew her parents, but they were quite wealthy. Her father was a strict man
who expected his wife and daughter to know their place and not to stray from it.
In exchange they were pampered and spoiled and protected. There wasn’t much
money left by the time your grandmother died, but your maternal grandparents
gave your house to your mom and dad as a wedding gift. Your mom loved being the
boss of her own home, but she never learned how to be self-sufficient, how to
rely on herself for anything. And each time she’d have a panic attack, she’d
think she was going to die. She’d do anything to stop from having them. Being
with…someone…stopped them.”

Funny, for a woman who couldn’t take care of herself, she’d
certainly taught him how to.

“She was weak, Chris. She needed a man around to feel safe. And
she fell in love with a man who couldn’t be around.”

She fell in love with the wrong man.

“I don’t think she knew, when she first married your father,
quite how isolated her life was going to be in that beautiful cottage on the
hill. Her father had just died of a heart attack and her mother had remarried
and moved to Europe, and your dad had been great with her through all of that.
She was so in love with him. She found him exciting and different from anything
she’d ever known. Where her father stifled her, your father gave her freedom. It
seemed as though they were great for each other.

“It didn’t hit her how completely alone she was until she went
into labor with you. Your dad was out to sea and there was no way to reach him.
She was in so much pain and petrified. You came very quickly and she
hemorrhaged, and she had to face that all alone.”

It was the challenging times in life that shaped you, that
provided you with the opportunities to make the choices that defined who you
were. More sage words from his father.

“By the time your father got there, it was all over, but she
didn’t ever seem to get past that feeling of being alone and helpless. She
started to obsess about your father being gone, about something happening while
he was out at sea. Her father had taught her that she couldn’t do things on her
own.”

Chris didn’t want to understand. It was easier to blame
her.

“Your dad didn’t take a single day off when you were born, or
at any other time, either. When you had colic, had your tonsils out, played your
first T-ball game. The sea beckoned to him, just like it does Jim and you and
Trick and the others. He had a family to support and the ocean was his sole
provider.”

She didn’t have to explain that part to him.

“He wasn’t there for many of the important moments, Chris. He
missed not only your first steps and first words, but the time you fell and hit
your head and had to have stitches…the time you had rheumatic fever.…”

Marta’s voice trailed off, but Chris didn’t need her to remind
him of all the times he’d needed his old man and hadn’t had him there. He knew
better than Marta all the things his father had missed. Baseball games. Science
projects. Father-son campouts.

“I used to think that your father stayed because of you. He
wanted to raise you. He worried about what kind of life you’d have if your
mother took you to live with her someplace else.”

“With her whoring around, he could have sued for custody.”

“You were a baby, Chris. Back then, they didn’t take babies
from their mothers. Besides, she was a good mother. A really good mother. She
put you first in everything she did. No one could doubt how much she loved
you.”

A flash of memory surfaced. His mother, beautiful in a dress
that came in at the waist and then flowed out around her, was smiling at him. He
wasn’t sure why. He’d loved her so much. The memory faded.

“Later, I understood that your father stayed with her because
he loved her too much to let her go. And because she loved him. It’s hard to
understand. Lord knows I spent years trying. I was the one she’d come to after
she’d been with another man. She’d cry so hard I thought her ribs would break.
She hated herself. For a time, she talked about suicide. I went with her to
counseling. But nothing was stronger than her need to feel safe. Secure. Cared
for. Her affairs were short-lived. Far between. And discreet. Your father made
up his mind that they weren’t worth losing her over.”

“Until she decided to divorce him.”

“She was older then. More mature. She’d accepted who she was.
You were grown and out on the water, too. It was obvious you’d chosen to follow
your father’s way of life. And she couldn’t face growing old alone. She’d gotten
to the point where she dreaded getting up every morning to face another day. She
was afraid something would happen to her and no one would know. She was
forgetting things and was afraid she’d lose her mind. She asked your father to
turn the boat over to you and give her the rest of his life, but he couldn’t do
it. He came over here. Talked to Jim about it at length, but he just couldn’t
leave the sea. He knew he’d be no good for either of them.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think she’d have gone through
with the divorce.” Marta started to rock, staring out at the water that ruled
all of their lives. “She loved him too much.”

A love story doomed from the beginning.

“She didn’t lie to him.” He let the revelation sink in. Those
times he’d known his father had known, the times his father had come home and
treated his mother as though nothing was amiss—his father hadn’t been living
with a lie, he’d just been living with an unfaithful spouse.

An openly unfaithful spouse.

“No, Chris. Your mother never lied to your father. She didn’t
hide things from him, either. The very first time she was with another man, she
told your father right away. She was so ashamed.”

He nodded. Thought about the vagaries of life.

One thing was for sure. He was not going to make the same
mistakes his parents had made. Men like him and his father were not meant to
marry.

“It must have been hard on you and Jim, knowing what was going
on, not being able to do anything to help.”

“It was.”

He turned his head. “And what about you, Aunt Marta? How did
you cope all these years with Jim out there?” He motioned to the water.

“It wasn’t easy, son, but it was probably easier because I
didn’t have children. I wasn’t bearing that responsibility alone like your
mother was. I was lonely a good chunk of the time. It probably would have been
better if I’d had a job. But I got involved with the other wives, got involved
in the politics of lobstering, made myself a part of our family’s business as
best I could. I was better at being alone than your mother was.

“And sometimes Jim and I had hellacious fights.”

It was getting dark. Jim would be home soon. He could smell
Marta’s casserole.

It was time to go.

* * *

E
MMA
CALLED
C
HRIS
.
Twice. He wasn’t
picking up. And her news shouldn’t be left as a message. But she wasn’t going to
drive out to the docks. Not at night. By herself.

Not ever. She couldn’t see Chris again.

She had one more conversation to have with him and then their
connection would be severed.

She went home. Made some tea. Drew a hot bath. And prayed that
when she got out she’d be ready to tackle the rest of her life.